Codex Devlog 2: Athenaeum Lost Devlog 0?

We have decided to rename the game. Codex as a name wasn't very exciting for us and when I ran a search for that name I found a couple other games already using the same title, causing concerns that it would make our game more difficult to find. The new title is Athenaeum Lost which is both unique and something we find more interesting.

Additionally, we have our first look at the hero of the story. Currently unnamed, but if you have any ideas feel free to post them.

In the realm of coding we have had some big changes/additions. Firstly, we have added in text localization using the gettext  python module.

Once I have all the in-game text written, I will be translating the game into Spanish, French, German, and Romanian with the assistance of some friends.  When adding the localization feature, I coded it to automatically detect which language the player was using and spent an additional forty minutes or so troubleshooting why mine never translated it when I adjusted the LANG variable on my computer. I didn't realize at the time how the gettext module actually works and it checks a few variables and whichever responds back first is the language it uses, so even though I changed LANG, LANGUAGE may have been checked first and thus reported my actual language instead of the one I tried setting it to. In short, the autodetection was working, but my method for testing it was flawed. I added in the ability to change the language in case the one automatically selected didn't suit the player (this was done while coding in the ability to save/load sound settings).

I also coded in breakable walls. This seems to be a staple in a large portion of these games and one part that I found frustrating as a player was one particular wall in one particular game. It had seemingly no indicator that it was breakable, yet was 100% necessary in order to complete the story. I accidentally hit it after hours of looking and the whole experience left a bitter taste. Thus, behind every hidden breakable wall in Athenaeum Lost will be a stat boosting item. I want to reward players for looking, but not punish or trap them if they can't find it. In fact, players will be able to complete the game without ever finding a hidden item; it will just be harder. To round out this section of code, I coded in a few key items and added the coding to track if the player has them or not. If the player already has the item, then the wall hiding the item will be removed when the player reenters the room. This way the player can see they already cleared specific section.

I reworked some of the game code to make it more sound. Specifically, I fixed a bug I found while working one the menus where if the player swapped between the main menu and a submenu, every time the player reentered the main menu a new iteration of the theme would play. This would be quite annoying until the game was either quit or progressed to the actual in-game screen. I also reworked the random step sound generator to simplify by 3 lines. I also processed some of the game sound assets to remove white noise and artifacts. Lastly in the sound development section, I balanced some effects audio so it wouldn't be overpowering.

For the main menu, I wrote code to remove the continue option if there wasn't a continue file found. This really just highlighted the need to rework or recreate new buttons. The way it is currently coded, only the middle portion is actually button, thus when the continue option is gone we have these dangly bois which really belong to the background.

I recognize the selector is a little narrow for the buttons as well. 

For smaller fixes: I made it so the health bar will flash when the player receives damage and continues until the invulnerability window is over. The dashing enemy (currently unnamed, I call him the spoopy guy) no longer dashes forever after seeing player and will now stop after reaching a certain distance threshold from the player in order to resume patrolling from the new spot. I have passed 2.7K lines of code in the main file.