Kinda feel like I can't draw anything lately but I shall post anywaaayyy

Okay apparently it's been like three months since I've posted about Otter updates, and there's been a lot since then. I guess since my life was in chaos for the past few months I slipped up. Oh well! Here's a quick breakdown on changes and fixes to my C# game making framework thing.

* Fixed a bug with rendering a BoxCollider with a width or height of 1 or 0.

* Fixed a rendering bug caused by changing the font size of a RichText object at runtime.

* Added flags for Sound and Music to check if they're currently playing audio. Sound.IsPlaying and Music.IsPlaying will be true if they're playing back audio.

* Added Color.Shade(float) which will return a color from black to white with the specified float. For example Color.Shade(0.5f) will return a gray color where 0.5f is set for red green and blue.

* Fixed a bug in Input.CharToKey() (a key was missing...)

* Fixed a bug in CollideEntities where an Entity could collide with itself.

* Added Collider.Overlap(x, y, px, py) which will do an Overlap test with a specified point (px, py) Very useful for doing UI stuff and checking for a point overlapping a collider.

* Fixed a bug with LastPressed and LastReleased timers on Button.

* Added Util.ListCombine<T>() to take a bunch of lists and combine them into one list. I don't know if this is already a C# thing so whatever.

* Added Color.FromBytes()

* Added Axis.Reset() to totally clear an Axis's input state.

* Added Button.Reset() to totally clear a Button's input state.

* Fixed a bug where Gradient wasn't blending with its Color.

* Added DataSaver.FileExists().

* Added Particle.ActiveCount but I'm not totally sure if this works as intended.

* Fixed a bug where creating a Text object would not accept an SFML.Graphics.Font.

* Added MouseDeltaX and MouseDeltaY to get the mouse movement since the last update. Mostly used for locking the mouse inside the game window.

* Util.GetFieldValue works for static fields now.

* Added Scene.CameraFocus which if set to an Entity the Scene will then follow that Entity.

* Added Rand.IntXY which returns a vector2 of ints.

* Reworked EventQueue component into EventStack and EventQueue.

* Added GraphicList which is a Graphic type that is a list of graphics.

* Added Anim.OnNewFrame() which is invoked whenever the current frame of an Anim changes. Useful for tying code to specific frames of an animation.

* Huge debugger api changes which uses attributes now instead of RegisterCommand with CommandTypes. Check out the example here to see the new style.

* Added a bunch of stuff to the Debugger like tab auto complete and parameter help when typing in a command.

* Entity.UpdatedOnce is now public (private set.)

* Scene.RemoveNextFrame(Entity) will remove an entity with a one frame delay.

Wow that's a lot of stuff! I'm really happy with the new debugger API that uses all kinds of crazy reflection stuff now instead of a bunch of RegisterCommand method calls.

If you've been using Otter then you should drop by the official slack sometime and hang out with your fellow otter lovers!

This week has been pretty productive but I've neglected to keep up on my blog posts! I'm making pretty good progress and I've started trying out organizing my task list into week by week chunks. I'm trying to figure out the best way to keep my motivation up when I know I have a billion things to do, and I think just sorting tasks on a per week basis is a good start... maybe more on that some other time though!

For now this post is about using Otter's debug console to help run through battles in my current prototype.

I have a bunch of commands for manipulating the stats of different actors during the battle, and also some debug commands for stuff like winning an entire battle (for testing all that end of battle result screen type stuff.)

Also as I worked on this I realized that not a lot of people know about the debug console in Otter, so hopefully my next post coming up will be an Otter example regarding the console.

Some things are starting to take form in my current prototype. You may be able to see what is going on now more clearly:

Some elements may be familiar with stuff I've posted over the past ... year? Ugh how does time keep moving so fast. Anyway, I have most of the basic battle stuff down now and I'll be working on some more menus and such for when a battle ends. There is a little bit of an "overworld" right now but it's just a big grid with some monsters to fight.

I'm going to hold back talking too much about it still and just keep working on stuff to hopefully show in animated gif form!