Range attacks in

The range attack is really just an upgrade of the melee attack. Since the "range check" was already in, the only new mechanism needed was something to check line of sight. Again, there was plenty of resources on the web to understand how to accomplish this.

To determine if a target is in the line of sight, I used Bresenham's line algorithm. All I really wanted to achieve is to make sure there is no obstacles between the attacker and its target.

There's many explanation of this algorithm but what was most helpful for me was this article on Code Project. My function receives coordinates of the attacker and the target as well as an array for "collision coordinates" which are coordinates of props with an elevation higher than 0 (characters are always on elevation 0 while buildings, trees and such have an elevation of 1.). So instead of drawing a pixel, there is a check against the array (which is in fact a generic dictionary). If the current calculated coordinate is found in the array, the function simply returns false, meaning you "can't see" your target. The checks are made at the same time as the line is "drawn" so it doesn't have to calculate it all if a collision is found before it reach the target.


To test this I only needed to create a new prop type (crossbow) part of the range weapon family and create a skill called "Basic range attack" part of the family "Range attack". Just like melee attack, when the skill is used, we make sure the weapon type currently equipped match the skill type. Everything else is just the same code used for melee attack.


This took about 3 hours to code and get it running which is great. Being able to "finish" a system in little time really does help for motivation.

The more it goes, the more I only see some tweaking tasks on my to-do list which mean that after I'm done with the crafting mechanic, I'll probably start to work on the interface. We're getting there and I can't wait to invite some people to help me test this.