Scaling
My thoughts for scaling were different than what Oblivion and the others. I was thinking that everything would be scaled on the higher difficulties compared to their original in the normal difficulty.
This way the basic creatures at the beginning of the game are challenging the next play through with the same character even with the high level items from the first game. The weapons are then scaled X amount to compensate slightly for the increased difficulty.
Example:
Code:
Playthrough 1:
Angry Mudpie - 10hp / 2 attack
Wooden Sword - 3 attack
Code:
Playthrough 2:
Angry Mudpie - 100hp / 20 attack
Wooden Sword - 21 attack
This way you get to go through the progression again the second/third time around and still feel challenged each time through, and will have to get new armor / weapons each time through without me having to come up with an entire new set of items / enemies. I've coded my item spawner to allow for additional items that can only be found in the higher difficulties as well.
Art
I have looked into the free pixel art around, but in the end I wanted it to be original for the game. If that means the game takes a bit longer to release, so be it.
I was too frustrated today to program so I worked a bit on the art to calm me down a bit. I don't like to code angry because then things end up broken, or buggered up somehow, and I'll spend the next day trying to figure out what happened or where things went wrong.
Started on the item icons. Still need work, but they are a start and far better than the placeholders I was using, especially with me having zero experience with pixel art.
This should show up as the actual size of the icons in-game.
The picks need work on the shading, as they feel flat and there isn't enough contrast in some of them, like the gold one. Still, I'm happy with my progress. I'm going to have a hard time once I need to animate things, but I'll deal with it when I get there.