Milestone 5 - Card Animations (old)

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Milestone 5 is done! Not quite as all-encompassing of an improvement as the total UI overhaul of Milestone 4 but many minor upgrades that make it feel much more complete.

New this Milestone:

• Card animations! The whole flow of the duel is way smoother and easier to follow. This is one addition from this milestone that looking back I can't believe I was living without, it looks so much better.
• Music and sound effects. This alone does a lot to make it feel like a complete game. This is my first time working properly on sound design so I'm admittedly not sure how it is and will probably change in future milestones. If you provide feedback on one thing, please let it be this.
• Higher resolution cards. It may be hard to notice at first, but all the cards have been upscaled and uniformly aligned. If you click through the cards on the last milestone you can really see the difference. A huge thanks to the pkmncards.com community for those.
• Some custom deck improvements. You can now save up to four custom decks. You can no longer use the default decks, as it will be in the real game. Instead, you have the three default decks from the original gbc game. They're...not very good, and in so encourage you to try building your own deck. You can also name your deck.
• Limited card inventory. You now have a limited number of each card across all decks. For rarer cards this means you can't put four of them in multiple decks, and for promo cards you only have one of each. This is in preparation for next milestone's improvements to card inventory. (see below)  
• Some ai improvements related to retreating. Now it actually works correctly, although the ai still makes some odd Pokémon selection choices. Improving the ai algorithm is still an ongoing project.
• A minor improvement to the outline of selected cards and Pokémon attacks. It might not sound like a lot but with the way Unity handles UI layer order it was way more annoying than it should've been.
• 16 new cards from the Rocket series. The slow trickle continues.
• A few minor behind the scenes algorithm changes. Card shuffling is more efficient. The deck builder loads a little better when switching between tabs.   

What's Next?

I'm incredibly excited because Milestone 5 marks the end of focusing solely on the duel engine. There will of course continue to be improvements to it, but it's finally at a point where I feel comfortable shifting focus to the next higher tier of the gameplay. Right now it's a competent simulator of gen 1 of the Pokémon Trading Card Game. Next milestone will be the first steps towards an actual single player experience!

I mentioned last milestone that it would probably be overworld movement. I've since decided that we're not quite there yet. Instead Milestone 5 will focus on many of the steps required to facilitate the overworld. Right now all of the setup for each duel is handled via the main menu, and most of the aspects of milestone 6 will be to move away from that.

• A pause menu! Moving all the customization options to a proper pause screen. The deck builder, the coin selection, and a settings menu, with room to add more.

•  Booster packs! You'll need to build an inventory of cards by winning duels against NPCs. You know, the way the actual game will work! It's happening!

• The start of the movement system!  I'm envisioning a basic point and click system to interact with character portraits. Nothing fancy yet, but that will allow me to lay out some groundwork before everything that needs to happen with that. Including:
  •  NPCs! But all the information for their duels will be stored on the NPC and passed into the duel as parameters.
  • A basic dialogue tree system. You'll be able to talk to said NPCs. They'll ask to duel. You'll say yes or no. They'll react accordingly. Riveting stuff.
  • Moving between locations. As I said no WASD movement or anything but through that point and click system I at least want to be able to have different location.
  • Game flags. You already have a master medal? A club member acknowledge that. That sort of thing. This is a HUGE step for game progression.

Beyond this, I have some ideas for Milestone 7 to be adding a tutorial duel. That may or may not be on its own enough to be its own milestone, I'm not sure yet. As you can see, Milestone 6 will be a MASSIVE departure from everything I've been working on for the past six months, so I don't have a full picture for what comes next with it. We'll see!