Journal Entry #3

Date: 12.05.2024

Activity:
- Finished the enemy behavior
- Created spikes and flame pillars as obstacles.
- Created a main menu, a saving system, and a level switching system
- Added two modes to the game: speedrun mode (where the timer that always runs in the background of the game is visible) and deathless mode (where dying erases all your progress).
- Added drops of progression souls and healing souls to the enemies.
- Figured out the game progression and the boss.

Notes:
To fix the issue I was having with the mage ghost where the behavior when switching from melee to ranged attacks was inconsistent, I switched from having two colliders to detect whether the player is in melee range or ranged range to having only one and tracking how far away the player is from the mage.
The gameplay will consist of the player killing all the ghosts in 3 zones and collecting the orange souls they drop. Once the player has all the souls in the level, the door at the end will open and they can progress to the next zone. The enemies will also randomly drop healing items with different frequencies. If I have time to implement it, at the beginning of each level after the first, the player will have the chance to choose a special activity to have active for the duration of the level. I decided to go with 3 levels total (intro, multiple enemy challenge, boss) and to hand-build them, not have the enemies be placed randomly, although I have not done this yet so I may change my mind yet again. I also decided to only have checkpoints at the start of the level, so if the player dies, they'll have to redo the level, to add a greater risk. If this proves too difficult, I will make the probabilities of enemies dropping healing items higher. 
I had a problem with the timer not restarting after being paused when transitioning between levels, and I figured out that it had something to do with the way I was destroying the game controller that was already in the scene I was transitioning to, since I had made the game controller persist between scenes, but I had to have another game controller already present in each scene for the case when the game doesn't start from the beginning. At the end I decided since there was no data I needed to persist between scenes that was not already saved in the save file on transition, I was just going to have a separate game controller in each scene. I also decided to not have a player controller in the level, but have it be spawned by the game controller in each scene. I have yet to implement the scoreboard at the end for the speedrun mode.
I spent some time solving an error that made the game crash when I tried to pick up a healing item, which had something to do with the updating of the HUD and would only occur the second time I ran the game. I figured out that it was caused by me forgetting to unsubscribe listeners from events when the game was being shut down.
I figured out a story for the game and I found a necromancer enemy that would serve well as a boss encounter, and he will have 3 attacks which incorporate things the player has already seen in the other levels (the flame pillars, the fireballs from the wizards, and the divebombers). The arena will also have some hazards like spikes and the crawling ghosts.
In the next two days I will design the levels, create the boss encounter, create the scoreboards, and if I have time, add the bonus abilities.

Duration: 6 hours