As a celebration the 3,000+ views of this topic... this is update time!
The point of no return is reached, I'm now past the 50% milestone.
Right now I'm working on creating maps for the rest of the game. As I've found that it's my weakest point - and can sometimes almost stop me from going forward - I've decided to have my maps ready as much and as soon as possible. With what I've done so far, I can go smoothly to the 75% milestone.
Getting these tasks out of my way allows me to work serenely with the funnier part: creating the story events and the dialogues.
To have the game ready for full beta test sooner, I'm stopping temporarily my translation into english. Once the game will be done in french and the texts are OK, I'll resume my translation process. There are a few passages where I'm not sure if it won't be needing a rewrite so I prefer to get a stable text base first.
Talking numbers, the current english demo (without the control codes - pure dialogue) is 2,550 lines and 33,400 words
Current french version is now 4,800 lines and 70,000 words. Much more than I thought initially. An early estimate was 80,000 for the entire game...
Of course, one playthrough won't cover every written dialogues as there are alternate paths. Rest assured, you won't be just reading while playng Bleeding Moons!
About the game, recently I merged two missions into one for some simple reasons.
1 - I prefer to have a good, entertaining mission rather than two boring ones.
2 - It keeps the flow at a faster rate.
I'm not trying to make a 20 hours game. Actually, for the kind of game I'm creating, that would be too long. If I can make it a 6-8 hours interactive story, I think that'll great.
List of changes I made that concern parts you've seen in the demo (please note that the demo is NOT updated with these improvements. I'll upload one when I'm closer to the final product).
- Updated the Mouse script with a newest version that allows interaction on the whole height of the NPCs, not just their lower part.
- ...and added the possibility to run while holding down the middle mouse button.
- Slightly updated the multilanguage script to read and save successully with a UTF8 language name (previously only ASCII was allowed)
- Added a sprite for Ian when he picks up the flour bags. All 4 directions, of course.
- Quest for the flower: added a hint if the player cannot find it after some time.
- Quest for the flower: You no longer need to speak twice to River after having found the flower to activate the dialog.
- Some minor esthetic updates here and there. Recolors, pixel-size improvements etc.
- Remade the lightmap for the bakery's cellar.
- Truncated a name of a NPC which was too long for the display since I use busts now.
- Added reflections in the mirrors.
- Improved the worker's sprite in the warehouse when he's not holding a crate.
- Added animated water in the well of Valbois.
- Added in the inventory the waiver required by the worker in the warehouse. You only have it for a short time but, well, at some point you have it on you.
- Had to redo some sprites because of a licence issue that may arise later... Luckily the new ones look good too so that's OK.
- Remade the maps for the zone transition cutscenes in the forest.
- Added an option to skip altogether the infiltration sequence if the player get caught too often.
- Fixed some typos and spelling errors.
Things I intend to make, someday later:
- Remake the exterior maps. Valbois is so badly mapped... That was my first city done with RPGMaker, you bet it's crap.
- Redo the intro scene with the physician. I'll add an option to skip the tutorial (Ian's childhood) and also add lines to make it clearer that Ian is troubled by his past. Even if his memories are blurry, he'll remember some hard moments during this new intro. As an incentive to catch the player's interest on what really happened
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