After the previous week, where we had to finish all the important features for the beta, most stuff that is left is polishing what we already have implemented. So I guess the artefact I am writing about this week is polishing because there is not really a lot to say about one specific thing.
For starters, we had some fixing to do with the power-ups we had implemented last week. I added cooldown for the flamethrower and fire shield. For the flamethrower, I added some code so that when the charge you have is gone you have to wait for at least half of the bar to fill up again to prevent it from being spammed. This is done with a bunch of simple if statements.
Another thing I have done is adding some more feedback to the teleport by using a particle system that activates when you hold down the teleport button. The particles are drawn inwards towards the player so it looks like she is charging up the teleport. An important part of the feedback for the spells is also our new reticle that our lead programmer Leevi worked on. You can find his post about it here https://leevidev.wordpress.com/2017/03/09/hud-2/
The team felt that the scrolls, that the player is supposed to pick up to get the power-ups later, were a bit easy to miss sometimes and looked a bit to static. I changed them so they grow and shrink in size so they appear to be floating and also added a particle system that adds some particles to the edge of the sprite.
A big problem we had was that our basic enemy (the farmer) was a bit too easy to avoid. The solution to this was to make the charge up of his attack faster while he stands still and also add some forward movement when he stabs. Now it looks like he lunges towards the player. This has made the farmer a bit more challenging and a bigger threat if he gets close to you.
The most pressing thing I have left to do now is adding lighting to the game. We want the game to be darker and be lit up by torches, fires and the spells. So that will be it for the blog this week. I’m off to learn about lighting!
Alexander Hjelm - Game dev blog 
Hi, cool post!
I like your generous use of descriptive images to show how things work in the game. The gifs are of great quality! These kinds of feedback polishing like teleport particles or scroll animations are great for communication with the player and interesting to tread about.
It could have been nice to see a gif of how the farmers worked before the change, but of course it’s not always easy to obtain one once you’ve done the changes. The thought behind the solutions for each feedback improvement could also have included more detailed discussion like how you came up with it or why you chose it over another solution; but the explanations are thorough and we can easily see why it would improve the game.
I hope that you have succeeded in your lighting adventure, it’s kinda risky to add it the last week before hand in! Good luck on Thursday
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