Hey everyone!
I mentioned last update that I would be adding an encyclopedia to the game, with the intention of filling it with information about everything in the game from enemies to interactables. I am still working on that, but I keep going back and forth on what it should look like and it has taken longer than I thought. Eventually I got sick of that so I decided to try to fix some bugs and add some improvements to the game!
Changes
Attacks are now automatic if the button is held down
Increased Axe damage
Quick Traps now reduces cooldown in addition to previous effects
Trap Expert can now place up to 10 traps instead of 6
Bombs now accurately reflect cooldown, allowing far more bombs to be placed
Blocking an attack with a shield no longer flickers your character
Bug Fixes
Attack animations now all properly use animation events
Fixed bug where attacking quickly when swapping weapons could result in weapons being broken
Fixed faulty magic wand occasionally not firing a spell
Fixed Hover Boot unlocking properly
Fixed bug where potions would be unequipped after use even if you had more in your inventory
Improved logic for overhead attack animation triggering. Alternate attack animations now always play after a normal attack if attacking rapidly.
Auto Attacking & Broken Attack Bugs
If you've played Plague Breaker enough you may have ran into a rare but game breaking bug where suddenly your attacks do nothing. There are also a few times when the Faulty Magic Wand just doesn't work!
A long time ago, back when Plague Breaker was unrecognizable and I was still learning game development, the entire combat system was based on timing events. An attack would take 1 second, and at 0.7 seconds the damage area would activate. This "works" but is horribly brittle and not a good practice, and it gets even worse when you equip items that increase or decrease attack speeds. The fix for this is to use proper animation events, which ensure that events execute on individual frames in an animation rather than guessing with the timing. I swapped over to those a long time ago, but I apparently didn't clean up the timing events properly at the time.
I spent some time diving into every animation in the game and cleaning them up. I also crawled through the code and found some bandaid fixes I added a few years ago to try and fix them, which ironically had made the bugs much worse! Now the code and animations have all been cleaned up and I haven't had the bug reappear yet, but if you come across it please let me know!
Auto Attacks
Fixing that bug also made it possible for you to hold down the attack button instead of mashing it, which was something I wanted a long time ago but didn't have the time to get working properly. Personally I think the game is a lot nicer with it!
I also made it so if you are holding down attack with a weapon you won't change direction when you move, but I open to feedback if that isn't what people like.
What's Next?
Next I will probably finish the encyclopedia. Unless I get sick of it again and move on to more fun things like Seeded Runs (which admittedly sounds more fun already) or expanding the rooms available in the levels. Who knows, just like Plague Breaker the future is randomly generated.