April Goals & Progress Thread

[Celianna]

Last month I reached my goal by releasing beta 0.2 of my project! Very happy that went smoothly, except I forgot to turn on saving, hah.

This month, my goal would be to draw some more content for the dress-up portion of the game, and hopefully my programmer has got something working soon that people can test.

 

[Punamaagi]

@Vox Novus: barriers and swirling vortexes sound not only like a very wizardy thing but also fancy, heh. It would be interesting to see what these wizard doors you like or where they are used.

@TriceratopsX: hopefully you will be able to find a simple solution to the problem. Plugin compatibility can sometimes be quite fickle, and I remember once fixing an issue by simply rearranging the plugins I had.

@Amysaurus: I adore how you can make your characters look so lively without using a very large palette for any single part. Your style is nice as well. Seeing your pixel art makes me feel inspired to try out honing my own skills.

@HexMozart88: I can only imagine the challenge in trying to voice all the characters in your cutscenes. If you feel like you can't sound like the character, perhaps you can focus on how the character speaks (accent and whatnot)?

@Marquise*: As someone who had to fill and return their tax return forms today (and felt incredibly drained afterwards), I feel for you. Good luck with tackling the taxes and the pangofly dragon.

I managed to complete my first week(end)'s goal and update my project and its plugins, but I found out that Yanfly's Standard Turn Battle plugin doesn't work with my channeled spells. I have submitted a bug report, but I'm slightly worried that the issue is less of a bug and more of an incompatibility with what the plugin does and what I want to do (especially since DreamX's ITB plugin had issues with my channeled spells too and it is very similar to Yanfly's STB plugin).

Tonight's progress was writing down more details about my sorcerer's skills. All of his elemental spells now deal the same amount of damage, and his single-round spells have unique secondary effects to make up for the fact that they cost TP and deal less damage than multi-round channelled spells.

 

[HexMozart88]

@Punamaagi already tried. I get his accent wrong all the time. It's really not easy doing a British accent if you have a Jamaican one.

 

[TriceratopsX]

Update #2
I got the skills to deal damage for a little while last night so some progress there.
Decided to have Thunderbolt inflict 2 states instead of the 1, the second one will be "deafened" or something similar and will prevent sound based attacks from effecting them, so that the player can't spam Thunderbolt on the same enemy to keep dizzying them.

 

[Marquise*]

@EveryoneAbove you read all like having a blast with fantastic goals there!
@Punamaagi That is exactly what I waited in line from 8am to 1 and a half pm and we had an unrecoverable power down after 11 am! Still had to run for photocopies and post, and housing rent agent and self-employed monthly form... *looks at the time now* Might explains the tiredness and hungriness!

Progress;
Well all RL paperworks stage cleared! (but it was epic and had two cool encounters and electricity kinda shorted on the whole neighborhood on cue when I positioned myself to sleep in the taxation clinic waiting room.)
Plus got my bro's mouse now for a bit
annnd... yikes! I thought I had money supposed to drop in the bank but. Well lets hope soon enough!

I am awake from more than 24hr up with too much cola in the belly... (Yeah... I wonder if I should wait 'til I reinstall FallOut2 or sleep! guh... Zut with the electricity! Still cola and FallOut goes so well together... Aww forget that, I gonna try to fetch some squirrel bits!)

 

[Kes]

If I'm going to respond to people's posts, I shall need to post here more often - already there are 2 pages since my last post, so I can't manage that. I do find it encouraging, however, to see so many people getting on with things. It helps my motivation.

My update:
More tile creation. However, I've started the external map of the main part of town. I'm using different wall tiles, as well as size and location, to try and give an indication of differing wealth levels, and building function.

 

[Another Ned]

Okay, I have half a litre of black tea in my stomach, I can do this. Focus, brain!

@Vox Novus : Thanks for the [error: word not detected] regarding battlebacks. Haven't even thought I could simply go with a single image. Makes sense, now that I think about it. xD
Ooh, barrier to swirly vortex sounds like it's quite cool and fancy-looking, but maybe a little challenging to get the transition from barrier to swirly looking right. Or I'm thinking too complicated. And yay for water tiles!
@Schlangan : 22 already? Sounds like you made a massive amount of progress since the last time I was active in the progress threads (though this was several months ago). Have a big YAY for the end approaching. Though isn't it a new beginning at the same time, or will you take a break before starting the next game?
@Hellpug : Lots of motivation for your goals!
@Celianna : (belated?) Congrats for last month's release! : D
@Punamaagi : Hope that incompatibility gets sorted out. D: All elemental spells having the same damage, does that mean that elemental weakness is a big thing? Just curious, and not sure I understood it right. ^^"
@TriceratopsX : Sounds like a good way to make players think a bit more and not relying on one skill all the time.
@Marquise* : Yay for finished paperwork! Also, hope you got some good sleep after that sort of ordeal. Or at least had a nice time playing.
@Kes : I'm always for environmental storytelling, no matter if it tells what happened, or simply indicates something about the environment's inhabitants. Do you have a certain method for thinking about your maps/cities to figure out such things or is it simply experience at this point?

Yesterday's progress:

• finished reworking the item-related systems by simply saying "area 1 has this amount of things" so I get it done. Balancing will happen by gut instinct, I guess. More effective than numbers in my case D: Goal completed!
• had an idea for simplifying the whole loot drop thing even further (for me at least), but I'll tackle it once I'm done with my current set of goals

 

[Kes]

@Chiara A lot of it is experience, but there is also a fair amount of planning involved so that towns are differentiated from each other. I always think it's a bit sad when a game has, in effect, totally interchangeable locations. And as for battlebacks, I have used single images in all my games - so much simpler. Stick them all in Battlebacks 1 folder. It doesn't like it if you put them in Battlebacks 2.

 

[Lantiz]

Edited the world map generator to be able to generate over worlds.
So, the goas are:

• Create an over world procedural map generation extension (done)
• Comission an artist to make over world tiles for the main project (new)
• Put together an introduction for the game
• Define monsters database
• Start eventing the over world

 

[AceOfAces_Mod]

@Kes , around 60% done...
@Marquise* , these bugs won't know what hit them.

Progress Report #2:
Immortal Sins:
-Fixed a graphical bug. One more...
-Finished the implementation of save archives.

 

[TriceratopsX]

Update #3
Sooo, after some testing this morning I found out that MAYBE the skills MIGHT have been doing damage as when I used Fulminis (Thunderbolt) it insta-killed the spider (poor spider) THEN when I was typing this up I turned off all plugins before going through and turning them all back on one-by-one testing to see when the damage stopped working... And it never did, problem solved?

April Goals Progress:
(Create first five skills)
1 Three of five skills inputted into the database, I have an idea for the fourth skill and I've got the magic type of the fifth

(Figure out the problem with Thunderbolt)
1.2 Complete, I guess

(Figure out how to implement Conscience)
1.3 No progress, need to figure out how to inflict damage to something when they deal damage. Bosses and some enemies will be immune

(Finish Main map for the forest)
2 No progress

(Create one enemy)
3 Just about every enemy I'll need for the forest has already been entered into the database, just need to get their stats and moves done (after solving the attack damage issue)

 

[Arithmetician]

Brainstormed a skill list for the Ronin class.

 

[ashikai]

Whooo April~

Had a few setbacks last month with some compatibility issues so I got none of those things done, but ended up building out three tilesets instead so... trade off?
The plan is to keep things simplier this month.

• Work on battle GUI
• finish first boss battler sheet
• finish MC battler sheet
• put together 1-3 basic animations (I'm hand-drawing these. The particle effects look so weird with the game's graphical style...)

*finger's crossed*

 

[Marquise*]

Progress...
Err I am still at recuperating from yesterday... sorry. But I still made things in order for the busking part as I have to do a pledge drive for a shelter this week. (yeah not my money! LOL)

@Kes *cybermentally sends good vibes to enourage your progress*
@Chiara Yay some progress and completion!
@Lantiz hope they have fun with your tiles.
@AceOfAces_Mod I didn<t knew you could do THAT!

 

[Kes]

@Lantiz Err, I've obviously missed something - what world map generator?
@AceOfAces_Mod 60% is not bad. Something I have been wondering for a while - does all that stuff show up in Greek simply because that's the default language of your system, and so when it's shipped it will automatically be in the appropriate language, or will you have to translate everything first? I see even your title screen has Greek text.
@TriceratopsX So are you saying that it was a balancing problem which left the skills apparently doing zero damage?
@ashikai I'd say that was a decent trade-off. Progress was made.
@Marquise* Recover properly.

My update:
A bit more mapping. The town is beginning to take reasonable shape. Did some more tiles. My bakery will now have a proper bread oven - this may be a first in RM land, as I don't recall ever seeing one.

 

[Amysaurus]

I decided to delay starting on some new sprites until the weekend (I'm trying to get a head start on a new school project), so today I went ahead and tweaked a few more portraits.

Spoiler

@Vox Novus Yup! That's for sure!
@Punamaagi Thanks! If you do end up putting together some pixel art, I’d love to check it out!

 

[TriceratopsX]

@Kes I honestly don't know, I had the damage formula inputted correctly which was the first thing I had checked when it didn't work, though I HAD rearranged my plugins prior to my test earlier so I might have fixed it with that and just not known...

 

[M.I.A.]

April Goals for RPG Makering, eh? Well..

I'd like to spend at LEAST 1 Hr per week with RMMV.. lol. Sounds lame, yes, but spring + Farm = No free time..


-MIA

 

[mogwai]

I have still not given up on @CriticalGames, @Kest, and our idea for pixel perfect text. I've spent the last five days converting Window_Base into a DOM Element for that crisp browser text instead of canvas fillText image letters.

I'm just now realizing that if I'm going to use CSS3 transitions for the opacity/size animation, I probably should have used pure CSS window relative vw and vh (which I just now learned about), instead of px and onwindowresize in JS.

It looks crazy when you resize the window.

Spoiler: video

DOM elements as window and game text means so much more than pixel perfect though. When I get this done you will be able to make your game windows look like an html Tumblr theme.

 

[Another Ned]

@Kes : Ah, that's a good way of doing things. Now I'm curious, do you also go back to your previous games, re-using older town ideas/formerly unusable ideas? And good to know about the battlebacks 1 thing, that probably saved me a few minutes of time in the future. Also, yay for the bakery. Now I'm hungry.
@Lantiz : The first thing that popped into my mind when I read the "edited" and "over world" bits was: What did this world map generator previously do? Yay for having gotten it done!
@AceOfAces_Mod : That is quite interesting. I just wonder, don't RM games automatically have their save files appear in the main folder thing, or is it because your save system works differently?
@TriceratopsX : Erm, yay for the solved problem? : D
@Arithmetician : So few words to describe something that took probably a ton of words (if your brainstormings ever go like mine do). : D
@ashikai : That does sound like a pretty good trade off. Lots of luck no compatibility or other issues keep you from your goals, then.
@Marquise* : Get some good rest.
@Amysaurus : Nice tweaks! The new versions look a lot more lively, it's amazing what a few little tweaks can change. One question, the upper character has that odd 'boobline' even though I think the shading alone might hold the shape, have you maybe checked what it looks like without? Just thinking out loud, I implode if I keep those thoughts in. D:
@M.I.A. : Sounds like a reasonable goal for a busy life. Good luck with it.
@mogwai : Okay, I didn't understand half of what you wrote but the kinda-dancing text and box were entertaining. Not so much for what you're trying to do I guess, though? xD

Yesterday's progress:

• took a closer look at (MV stock asset) battlebacks -- originally, I wanted to see what perspective they're using, but then I noticed that it's different from one to the next, and a transform tool might have been involved in getting textures into a semblance of perspective. Good idea, actually, it might come across as somewhat wonky, but it's fast, doesn't look too bad, and might not even be noticeable if one doesn't look too closely. Definitely something to keep in mind. Then simply decided on a horizon and vanishing point and made myself some sort of template to be used in my chosen resolution (20 tiles wide for aesthetic reasons) for future battlebacks (, which are very low priority right now). I count this as 'figured out', so: Goal completed!
• prepared a file to prepare damage formulae in for Barysh's skills

I'm aiming to tackle the "implementing skills" part today (and probably tomorrow, too), so I'll be done with the first batch of goals soon and can start with the next.