2023 Goals and Progress Thread

[Kes]

@Ms Littlefish You've certainly picked highly contrasting tracks.

 

[SLEEPERER]

Alright, alright…”Through the Fog“ is donezo after a full-on fist fight with the loop point. The chimes pan across both ears of the headphones so that was the worst experience I’ve ever had looping something, lol. Just did a volume envelope on that channel so none of the reverb was all wangjangling at the time of the loop.

I think next week I’ll either start on a “Her Walk Home” remake or “The Mountain Waits.”

It's great! The flute in Her Walk Home is like made for jrpg games, the adventure in medieval era. I hope the flute can be adjusted/changed so it will be more suitable for modern rpg horror/drama games.

 

[bgillisp]

So I had to drop off a while due to work obligations, but the term is over and game dev has resumed:

Week of 5.15 - 5.19 Update:
Worked on polishing up my Driftywood gam jam entry from January so it can become a full release. Switched tiles to FSM, found some taller sprites for MZ RTP, and added a HUD. Here is what it looks like at the moment


I still need to add the upper left part where it will be a time/day display, and still need to update the icon for G (its a skull for now). Then I need to add improvements to the gameplay itself, which is the plan for next week.

 

[stramin]

My goal is to finish the first half of my game, I can´t believe how long is taking, 4 years and I am at 40%

 

[TESTOSTERONE]

At this pace, only 6 more years and you’re done

 

[SLEEPERER]

Progress:
Written the full plot of first chapter, including the items needed to finish the quests.
Got the most important sprite of first chapter story, the MC's science project box.
Made the full rooms of the MC's house, mudroom, family room, kitchen, mom's room, 1st floor corridor, 1st floor bathroom, rare room, basement, stairs, 2nd floor corridor, study room, 2nd floor bathroom, brother's room, MC's room, and attic.
Added some furnitures.
The parallax mapping progress for all rooms around 25%.
Read some posts in Commercial Game Discussion (I just found the thread. It's quite intetesting to read!)

 

[BreakerZero]

Not a lot of progress planned until further notice as I'm in solidarity on the issues that led to the writer's strike, not that it affects me personally of course. Maybe a few minor edits and bug fixes (and ideas that simply cannot wait) but that's about it until Hollywood gets its **** together. (Not that it's that big of an issue since the game's like 70-80% done, but depending on how long the strike goes on there's going to be a sizable delay in release.)

 

[CineadH]

Well, obviously I'd love to complete my game, or advance it as much as possible. I've got 1 out of 12 "chapters" completed. I doubt I could do 11 chapters in 7 months so... But who knows!!

 

[SLEEPERER]

Progress:
Last week so busy, doing parallax mapping first chapter: 30%

@CineadH you can do it! I am doing my first chapter currently, can't wait to finish it for the demo!

@BreakerZero almost!

 

[Ms Littlefish]

I decided to do some practice with one of my favorite RPG Maker XP tracks. Dungeon #1. I'm mixing this in the morning. EXHAUSTED.

EDIT: The linked music has since been updated so if a bunch of the stuff I said about the WIP doesn’t make sense anymore, you’re not hallucinating. No. I am. I’m tired.

I took the key up so that the low strings and alto flute wouldn't be as strained. I did harmonics on a violin instead of the mega high notes it has in the original MIDI. Added a lot of delay on a soprano and glockenspiel 'cause, oh yeah. Other than that, I just changed a few chords around to give what I feel is more momentum to the track. I also made a more suitable loop point.

• first and foremost...the piano needs a bit more reverb/pedal
• not sure about the alto flute, I like the timbre better than the oboe the original uses but...is it too breathy? I also hate that the alto flute I have doesn't have a CC for vibrato. If you know, you know. Like...WHAT?!
• there is a velocity value in the cellos and basses that is annoying the HECK out of me at 1:03, where it just goes ham suddenly.
• I have lost my viola section which introduced a new layer of harmony that the original doesn't have, so I need to go fish that out.
• I may take the tempo up to what it's supposed to be but I like it a little slower to really juice the strings.

And...probably a bunch of other problems I'll run into when I actually mix it, lol.

 

[SLEEPERER]

Progress:
Parallax mapping chapter 1: 50%
New style for main MC sprite

In progress:
Parallax mapping chapter 1
Teaser video

I am so happy with this teaser image:

 

[bgillisp]

Weekly Update:
-So I missed a week as I had trips to take, but back at it this week. Worked on more updates to the Driftwood Jam game to polish it up.
-UI still being worked on. Added Day/time placeholder for now.
-Added 4 more maps, all of the forest around town.
-Added a story mode. This is to slowly introduce the players to the game while they try to figure out who is out to mess with the timeline to make sure they have no chance.
-Spent an entire day pondering combat and how it was going to work in this game, as I did want to add combat to the game but was unsure how to handle it. I think I got a solution now though, will try to implement it next week.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Excuse the sketches of an absolute mad person, but you weren't kidding @Kes

The rhythm in XP Dungeon #2 is really quite special.

Something I really like is that no matter how off beat those mallets and bells get...it's all rooted in this on-the-beat 'G' throughout the rest of the ensemble. The tonality is also more interesting than I thought at first. Despite the home note being this G natural, almost all the Es are natural.

Very cool. I absolutely look forward to arranging this one.

-

So, as eluded elsewhere on the forum...first we have the challenge of the mimosa tower this afternoon. One of two things can happen. Stroke of music genius or...see you Tuesday.

 

[Kes]

@Ms Littlefish It's that rhythm that makes the track, imo. I'm really glad you're having a go at it. Good luck.

 

[cthulhusquid]

I've made A LOT of progress on the Cube Trail lately, the demo is almost here! All I have to do now is some more playtesting.

• New color icons for all skills
• Squashing bugs
• Finishing up quests
• Finishing up dialog
• Finishing up the final map of the demo
• Testing preliminary balance (to no surprise, it was totally out of wack)

 

[Prescott]

Had a super productive morning working on my game, God's Disdain!

I did a lot of stuff, but here are the basics without spoilers:

• Polished up the main story quest objectives
• Fixed some bugs regarding retrying boss battles after reviving (not loading a game, two separate systems)
• Made retrying boss battles easier by skipping cutscenes
• Updated the look of one of the maps slightly
• Fixed some bugs with battle states
• Changed balance of battle states

Basically, everything I worked on today was stuff that I have already done but desperately needed to be polished. Not just for the sake of cohesion and bug fixes, but also because the side quest I was supposed to work on today actually relied on these main story quests having better objectives.

I've been working on this game nearly every day since the beginning of March. It has been very hard to maintain motivation until now, when something just clicked in me. I have been working on the game for over 7 years. It is getting pretty close to a beta at this point!

My goal is really just to work on it every day. At least a little bit. Can't always meet that, because life gets in the way or sometimes I really am just a little too strained. This is much better than before though, where I would work on the game for 6 hours a day for a few days and then get very burnt out, not touching it for several weeks or even months. Now that I have told myself to only work on it a little each day, it has become much more manageable. This morning was a bit of an exception because I had a lot of energy I needed to pour into something.

 

[SLEEPERER]

Had a super productive morning working on my game, God's Disdain!

I did a lot of stuff, but here are the basics without spoilers:

• Polished up the main story quest objectives
• Fixed some bugs regarding retrying boss battles after reviving (not loading a game, two separate systems)
• Made retrying boss battles easier by skipping cutscenes
• Updated the look of one of the maps slightly
• Fixed some bugs with battle states
• Changed balance of battle states

Basically, everything I worked on today was stuff that I have already done but desperately needed to be polished. Not just for the sake of cohesion and bug fixes, but also because the side quest I was supposed to work on today actually relied on these main story quests having better objectives.

I've been working on this game nearly every day since the beginning of March. It has been very hard to maintain motivation until now, when something just clicked in me. I have been working on the game for over 7 years. It is getting pretty close to a beta at this point!

My goal is really just to work on it every day. At least a little bit. Can't always meet that, because life gets in the way or sometimes I really am just a little too strained. This is much better than before though, where I would work on the game for 6 hours a day for a few days and then get very burnt out, not touching it for several weeks or even months. Now that I have told myself to only work on it a little each day, it has become much more manageable. This morning was a bit of an exception because I had a lot of energy I needed to pour into something.

I am in a quarter old and life is getting harder day by day. I love this hobby so much, really. I am happy while working on my game, doing parallax mapping, creating my main character, the story, without the pressure of someone else. I even started to learn to create music, I just made a music with only 4 notes with my kalimba, but hey it sounds nice!

In the other side--of that pleasant activity, we have to work on our main job, to support life. It's really busy that makes me to touch my game only in weekend.

I thank to God for having this such kind community, with kind people. I spent my time in the bus after working to visit this forum, to read you all stories and games.

I hope the game finish as soon as possible, I hope it can make money, to support life.

 

[BreakerZero]

Major bug fix with my Xbox port this morning, but due to my weekly store duty at the bagging station (not to mention a rather annoying pain issue that had me riding the bus to the ER before my shift) I wasn't able to confirm it until this evening. It turned out that my method of determining which music track to play for a given scene without having to duplicate maps was resulting in timer overloads in the Xbox game container (since I still have to rely on the older version of the Edge runtime until Microsoft ports the Chromium embeddable over to the console side of software development, and it is very picky about the number of running code loops in parallel events which resulted in some very annoying stability issues and even outright crashes) so what I ended up doing was setting a flag in a control variable that is attached to the core script for map transfers and which fires after the transfer process is complete. Then, once the transfer has been processed the music is selected based on the situation (something somber sounding for crisis situations and then the regular town theme once the situation is resolved through the course of plot progression) after which the flag is immediately turned off to prevent the event from overloading the runtime process.

I might add this same flag change to either the options window or the map loading sequence to restore the functionality that having the parallel process was intended to provide (since I'm thinking of doing alternative soundtracks for DLC, especially if I go the licensing route so that I only have to withdraw the associated content and not the whole damn game when the terms run out for that) but otherwise this has been fixed to my satisfaction. All that's left to do is to remove a bunch of stopBgm calls that I was using for purposes that I no longer require, and also to restore, debug and test my controller disconnection code so that if you turn it off, run out of battery power etc. then the Xbox build will either freeze (or automatically go into the pause menu) in order to prevent any time-sensitive matters from becoming an issue, especially since my game makes heavy use of survival timers (read: environmental threats, self-destruct mechanisms etc.) as a part of major plot events. And on top of that, I have to implement my development build detection on Xbox as well so that it watermarks the screen for NDA compliance purposes.

UPDATE 6-9-2023: The testing of the code for the controller disconnection works without any further problems, and I am now trying to find a way to detect the system menus being open on Xbox hardware so that it does likewise for that. I now believe that what ended up happening is that repeatedly loading the same asset, which wasn't an issue in the NW.JS container that ships with MV (or one that you patch over), does cause problems in the older version of the Edge runtime that I have to use until the Chromium embeddable becomes available on Xbox (thereby resulting in unavoidable game crashes as a consequence of all the asset load attempts which were essentially overloading the system). Or at least that's the technical explanation for what happened.

 

[SLEEPERER]

2023/06/10 Progress
Parallax mapping chapter 1: 55%
Composed a music with 4 notes.
Camera movement follow player delay a little when focusing after walk/run.
Added black gradient bar in header and footer for cinematic effect.

 

[bgillisp]

Weekly update:
-Added the bio buttons. Found a font and tint that worked for making text readable for the bio. Still working on little tweaks there.
-Can finish the first full loop now, and tested it. Started design on loop 2.
-Figured out how battles will work. Its pass the stat check, you win. Nice and simple since this game is not about battles really.