Improved Combat System and Targeting

I've tidied up the code for the combat system to make it more efficent and easier to understand by removing all involvement of the quick slots from the main game class and integrated them as methods in the actionBar class.

I also reworked the targeting system so that there is just one global target variable as part of the player class instead of each mob having their own targeted flag. this will save much confusion in the future, it also allowed me to draw the target graphics without actually having to attack the mob and instead just show by clicking on them or the player.

I've added two spells to test out using magic ingame, one is a light healing spell and the other is a fireball spell for attacking mobs at long range.

I've also added a new graphic for the custom cursor to show that the cursor is over a sprite and that a move from the actionBar is selected.

Escape now also clears any target or actionBar selection.

next step I have planned to do is implementing the ability for mobs to chase the player or run upto the player and attack if in agro range and also join in fights if the mob links and player is attacking another mob of the same type nearby.

check out the next video for a demonstration of current progress.

Sprites and the Content Pipeline

Been awhile since I've last posted. I've been spending the couple of days getting my head around how to work with the content pipeline in regards to saving and loading of npcs and other sprites using XML documents. Its been very complicated work and a nightmare debugging but I'm proud to announce that I've implemented the ability to save and load npcs and other sprites using the content pipeline successfully which brings me to my next announcement:

Houses! I've designed some Ultima7 perspective style wall and roof graphics and added support to create houses through the editor. I didnt make up a new video demonstration this time as creating a house is quite a time consuming process at the moment but I've added a new screenshot that shows a simple, already created house.

For now I'm going to work on speeding up the creation of houses as right now it does take a long time, they use pixel perfect positioning instead of clipping to the tile grid as the walls are a different shape to the tiles. But perhaps I'll work on making it so the walls clamp together when nearby each other to get positioning correct instead of carefully placing each wall exactly right.

And thanks for those who helped out with the sprite flickering issue, its now also been resolved.