April Goals & Progress Thread

[mlogan]

Sorry this is a bit late guys. Life has gotten in the way. I'll spruce this up tomorrow, but feel free to start posting.

 

[Bonkers]

Currently working on ST's sequel script again and will hand it off to a few people. It's good to be writing for myself a bit. I've finished my testing on Mercury: Cascade into Madness, and hope to see the thread for it soon on the forums.

I'm also looking at setting up an art thread, and will get myself using the new 13hd cintuq to do some busts. It will be nice to have an on site portfolio of work outside of restaff submissions.

 

[TriceratopsX]

Finally! Been waiting all day for this.
April Goals:
1 Create the five spells for the first "Phantasm"
2 Finish main forest map
3 Figure out what was wrong with Thunderbolt Spell (part of goal #1)
4 Figure out how to implement "Conscience" Spell (part of goal #1)
5 Get at least one enemy created

Alright! Gundam fight all set, ready? GO!!

 

[mogwai]

When I finally do get started on a game, I'm going to incorporate most of the scripts I came up with in the MV help/request threads.

My sprite-ing isn't going so well. Only 1 out of every 10 I make are keepers and I've only made 10.

 

[Reapergurl]

Goals for the month aside what Real Life throws at me (and trust me, that's a LOT):

1. Finalize the bloody syntax for Rift Chronicles and get the custom key mappings working as flawlessly as possible.
2. Finish all the events in the first town and make sure custom shops are working correctly.
3. Get and/or create the needed graphics for enemy battlers (I still need them gators!)
4. Figure out where all this BGM/BGS/ME/SE came from and give proper credit to those who made them.
5. Barter with people about Fair Use Licenses for scripts/other resources.
6. Make @Trihan 's gift and make sure he gets his own set.
7. Make sure my team is still a team and I'm not on my own here.
8. Acquire at least one more member for dev team.
9. Play Phase Shift and Frets On Fire less and work on RM a lot more during my off shift time.
EDIT: 9.5. Make sure RMN approves my game submission.
10. Finish the Crafting Section of the game.
11. Expect to not complete all this in one month.

Team - @Reapergurl @Ryzler Amyrakunejo (You could be here!) lol

 

[TheTitan99]

Finalize how movement works.

Start making some doodads.

Lots, lots, lots more art.

 

[Kes]

I'm going to be away for nearly a week later this month, so even less time than in March. Still, here's hoping...

• Map the exterior of the next town, Dorgate. This will require 3 separate maps plus a night time version of the main part of town. I will need a full tile sheet and a half of new stuff before I can even start.
• Unless I've forgotten something, I will need 12 detailed interior maps plus a couple of generic house interiors. These will need at least another tile sheet of new stuff. Goal is to do at least 8.
  
• Plan out a tricky cut scene. Technically easy, it's getting the dialogue right so that the player doesn't feel that it's too artificial that's going to take the time.
• Set up two side quests.
• Stretch goal - start the town NPCs dialogue, which needs to reflect the social tensions of the place and which has nothing to do with the main story. This is life going on irrespective of what our heroes may be up to.

 

[Alexander Amnell]

Ugh... it's April already? I told myself I'd release a game sometime in July, right? Okay so April's goals:

• Migrate more dialogue into MV, and edit sprites where needed to add some of that lively movement and emotion to the scenes.
  
• Figure out how to make enemies take advantage of the same strategies afforded the player, and have them react to player action where rows are concerned. (might end up commissioning this one, Yanfly's row plugin is great on the surface but it's been a perturbed puppy when it comes to setting up enemies to take advantage of it's features so far for me and unlike Final Fantasy my whole combat system is based around party formations.)
• Rewrite Caleb Grumley's dreams of the past sequences to be less adult. Game is meant to be E12 roughly but with serious story, and these sequences though optional go way to dark and need to be revised to be less politically charged and more hazy on the details of his actions to fit with the tone of the rest of the game without being watered down so much that it loses it's purpose within the game.
  
• Add Caleb Grumley's and Sarah's dreams of the past sequences into MV and finish Lynn's, so that all thirteen major influences have their sequences more or less complete finally.
• Figure out why the special movement abilities from the dreams of the past sequences keep activating outside of the dreams and fix them so that the player stops being able to walk over everything while awake seemingly randomly.
• Maybe start looking around for beta testers if I get all of the above finished.

 

[Amysaurus]

April, huh? I honestly can’t tell if the year is going by quickly or slowly.

Life goals:

• Finish up this semester with some semblance of sanity. Only 30-ish more days!
• Write, or at least start writing a pixel art tutorial. I'm not sure what I'd want to cover just yet, but I've felt like making one for a while now. (Suggestions are welcome, lol)

Project goals:

• Continue updating my existing sprites to the new style.
  Spoiler: Old -> New

  
• Finish up the building designs for the first case.

 

[XIIIthHarbinger]

Let's see, goals for April.

I covered a good bit of ground on my various maps in March, I can actually walk around the sandbox now via the roads, enter & exit the various cities, villages, castles, & temples. Even though everything is still rather sparse looking in the fields, & the towns, villages, castles, & temples are largely empty .

So for April I am going to switch gears & work on non-map items, most of which I have been putting off for months , & see how many items I can chip away at or better yet scratch off this list.
1) Create face & character graphics for remaining NPCs. (Elfs, Merchants, Maids, Butlers, Guards, Caravaners, Imperial Soldiers, Imperial Scouts, Imperial Spellcasters, Ship Captains, Sailors, & Smiths).
2) Create the face & character graphics for various monsters so I can use Visual Encounters for my battlers.
3) Create the improved icon set to replace the placeholder icon set I've been using.
4) Create the improved map pictures for world map common event to replace the placeholder pictures I've been using.
5) Finish eventing the entries to the tutorial section & fill in the text for the various data entries.
6) Create the various enemy skills that will only be used by enemies & not by the player characters.
7) Finish creating the various enemies & troops in the database, so I can start placing them on the maps as well.

 

[Punamaagi]

I'll try something new in April and list weekly goals in the hopes that it would help me to get more done and work on my game less sporadically.

Week 1 (April 1-2): update the project to 1.4.0 and make sure that all the plugins are up-to-date as well.
Week 2 (April 3-9): work on skills (as currently over half of them are missing damage formulae and other effects) and try out Yanfly's STB.
Week 3 (April 10-16): Back to spriting. The minimum goal is to finish the standing sprites for all four main characters, but ideally I'll get a complete walking sprite done for at least one of them.
Week 4 (April 17-23): Continue storywriting and plan some side quests.
Week 5 (April 24-30): Map town 2 and, if time allows, any possible caves required by side quests and so forth.

 

[Marquise*]

Goals;
Finish the bite (the Pangofly Dragon bite)
Find what is wrong with my motherboard killing every mouse I plug on it (yeah... To replace another one before the whole ol' computer. *sad pout* I like that old thing!)
Find where the $#%$#% disapeared my taxation papers and rent papers. (Yeah doing taxations gathered everything and tidyed neat photocopies to any instances asking for them... but the original seems to had vanished. Seems I was THAT much disturbed by the exterminator two fridays ago with moving all my furniture all rounds. :S)
Once all is over -if it ever cease- take time to busk and have fun!

@mlogan No worries! It left us time to deal with april fool day...

 

[bgillisp]

April is a terrible month for me for game dev, due to RL obligations. Therefore, I only have two goals for April.

-Implement as many side quests and NPC's as I can.
-Stay sane.

 

[Arithmetician]

Let's see... my goals.

Well, the first goal that I set is already mostly complete: recover from a backup after my original project encountered a weird bug that I couldn't eliminate by removing plugins, and seemed unrelated to any state I'd implemented.

Continuing from last time:

• Finish fully implementing the first 9 classes we'll need in the game (Freelancer, Warrior, Thief, Magus, Cleric, Knight, Ranger, Hexer, Bard) - currently 7/9 complete
• Finish implementing the remaining 8 classes, insofar as possible at this stage: (Mimic, Alchemist, Ronin, Elementalist, Astrologer, Monk, Merchant, Valkyrie) - currently 2/8 complete. Lower-priority "stretch" goal
• Spend some time reworking the plot this month
• Also, needless to say, keep working on balance tweaks as necessary

 

[Another Ned]

I've been thinking about it quite a bit and realized that my first goal for April is actually...

• figure out proper goals for this month

Today, my desk situation has been fixed for the most part, but it's still suboptimal for productivity, and I currently have a hard time accessing my own brain (stopped taking ADD meds in January due to side effects and caffeine isn't reliable enough to help) so instead of choosing some goals from the top of my head, I'll try to take some time and think/plan a bit. Trying for the October deadline again, need to figure out what I can get done by then.

 

[AceOfAces_Mod]

Goals for April:
-Complete refactor the launcher's code. Transfer some code to library.
-Work on the second part.

Progress Report #1:
Immortal Sins:
-Added some code for compression. I'm thinking of adding the option to make an archive to save the save files.
-Transferred a Windows Form (a UI file with some code) to the library. Had to edit the Designer Code, so it matches with the Namespace of the library file.
-Fixing up bugs on the game.

 

[Kes]

@Alexander Amnell Those look like a pretty comprehensive set of goals, good luck with them. On a different note, badass granny now has a great sprite courtesy of hiddenone. I'm working out her side quest. Should be fun!
@Amysaurus How many more characters do you have to update?
@XIIIthHarbinger I hadn't realised you were an artist as well. Nice to be able to do all those faces etc. yourself.
@Punamaagi Weekly goals seem like a good idea, given the pressures of life.
@Marquise* I'm glad you remembered to add "have fun" to that list. After the taxation papers you will probably need it.
@bgillisp You mean you want to stay sane as well? You don't want much out of life, do you?
@Arithmetician I'm glad to read that you've almost recovered from the random bug. Those are my biggest nightmare.
@Chiara Wisdom indeed to take time to sort out proper goals. Hope you get your desk space sorted.
@AceOfAces_Mod So where does that leave you in terms of overall percentage of game completed?

My update
Tile creation mainly. It's going quicker than I had thought it would, but it's still quite a time-consuming job.

 

[hiddenone]

There are some great goals here, good luck to everyone! For myself, I really want to make some progress on resources so that'll be what I focus on this month.

• Get the basic npc outfits done - for the working-class pieces I'm making, I decided to make at least three possible base outfits for everyone
• Determine what exactly I need to make for the specific pieces - gotta figure out just what people like bakers, carpenters, and farmers need to do their jobs

A stretch goal is to actually make the specific pieces, but don't know if I'll manage to do that.

 

[Marquise*]

@bgillisp Please stay sane Bgillisp! I understand how RL can take over badly!
@Arithmetician & @AceOfAces_Mod STAY AWAY FROM BUGS! Both IRL and in game. Sincerely I do hope all goes well.
@Chiara Good luck with your health and goals. Best challenge yourself by steps after all of your late adventures. *cybermental hugs* Just at the end of the month, look back at all that you've accomplished.
@Kes Thanks Iwill attempt to share too. You know.. Have enough for at least also here! ^^

Progress;
found half of my papers. *phew* (must NOT work more than 5 hours on taxation papers it seems!)

 

[XIIIthHarbinger]

@XIIIthHarbinger I hadn't realised you were an artist as well. Nice to be able to do all those faces etc. yourself.

My update
Tile creation mainly. It's going quicker than I had thought it would, but it's still quite a time-consuming job.

Oh no, I am completely inept when it comes to artwork, I've lost count of the number of sketch books I've incinerated over the years. Mostly I just use a combination of recolors, frankensteins, the generator, game character hub, & gimp, to fiddle with what I have to increase my options.

For example since I am using visual encounters I needed to come up with a body for the snakes I am using, which are from the RTP VX Ace & the DS resource pack. So I took the three headed snake body from the XP RTP shaved off the heads & gave it a base recolor.

It still needs work mind you, smoothing out the lines & all of that. But it's still much quicker than trying & failing to draw an effective snake body from scratch.

As for the faces, I often use the battlers for portraits once I am done working on them, especially when it comes to monsters.