Devlog 2

Another 3 weeks have passed and progress has been made. During that time, I programmed the game's gameplay, puzzle elements, and placeholder art assets. 

Grow Ability

The player has 5 mana points in total. Each mana point can grow a sprout for 7 seconds. When the 7 seconds is up, mana is returned to the player. To help update the UI and mana count, I used events. I wouldn't say this is the best way of doing things (my first time using it), but it works well enough as far as I can see. 

The picture above is the base class of growable objects. Inside, two events are created, 1 for when the sprout starts growing, 1 for when the sprout ungrows. 

This function invokes the ungrowth event, which calls every function that is attached to the event. 

attaching a function can be done by using the += operator continued by the function you want to attach. In this case, in the grow ability script, it attaches the RegenMana and AddSeed function from the UI manager. This means that when onSproutUngrowth is invoked, the two attached functions are called. This means that the seed or sprouts don't need a reference to the UI manager, just the grow ability script which is attached to the player.

One more thing on the grow ability, if the player didn't hit anything and the ground is dirt, small flowers grow. Just some small interaction I added.

Machine

For machinery (and other similar things), I used interfaces to make connecting objects easier. The lever for example, has an array field for targets to activate and deactivate. If the objects in the target field implements the IActivatable interface, the Deactivate function can be called without knowing what the target object's script is. 

Simple Particle Effects

I added simple particle effects to the game to help give feedback and signifiers to the player. For some objects that can interact with the growth ability. I will remove it in the future if playtesters don't have any problems differentiating growable objects and non growable objects. There is also another particle effect for objects that have been grown. When players use the growth ability, a moving particle effect is created.