December Goals & Progress Thread

[Arithmetician]

@ksjp17  Well, I found a way to implement the MP shield as I originally intended it, via Yanfly's Magic Guard Tricks and Tips when I was looking for ideas for the Mimic's skills.  It works!  So now Valkyrie has that instead of magic reflection.  But maybe Magic Reflection will appear on another class, like the Astromancer.


I've also gone ahead and re-appropriated the scanning skill from the Ranger to the Mimic as stated, giving the Ranger a skill that regenerates TP automatically instead (which also fills out the trio of HP, MP, and TP-regenerating skills in my plans).  


Edit 2:  And now I have a full and more dynamic skill set for mimics!  Thanks to Yanfly!


Mimic Skills

Spoiler

6/16 Jobs Complete (Skill and Sprite-wise)


Also, renamed the Mimic's Job Command Theriomancy (lit.  "Beast Divination")  rather than "Mimicry"  since several of its new skills, which are more thematic of mimicry are equipped skills outside of its Job Command.  Besides, "Theriomancy" sounds cooler than its Final Fantasy counterpart, "Blue Magic", or plain old "Monster / Enemy Skill".  


Additionally, adjusted the Knight's Fortress, so that instead of forcing all physical attacks to be directed at him/her  (which seems too powerful for a job command in of itself), it guards with doubled effectiveness and prevents the user from being afflicted with negative statuses for the turn.  The cost is that it only gives half of the TP that a regular Guard action would provide.

 

[Milkdud]

After 3 months of doing nothing with it, I'm back to work on my game for the time being. So here's my goals for right now:

• Create the last remaining map needed for the second quest
  
• Finish the second quest
  

So my goal is to achieve this by the end of this weekend. That's all I've got planned out right now, but here's a sneak peek of the game.

Spoiler

 

[AceOfAces_Mod]

Progress Report #2


-Playing a bit with the fonts. (I wonder if using a different font for specific cases could be useful. Say, have calligraphic fonts for diaries)


-Balancing battles.


Misc:


-I'm experimenting with a side project. I occasionally work on it. Here's a picture from the prototype:

 

[Marquise*]

@Chiara@ksjp17All right... playing FallOut New Vegas now and huh... will be preparing the appatment against the roach invasion now (yeah... seems to be in fashion, after one specie invasion is rid off another takes over.  Let say I regret now the old itsy bitsy ants that kept everyone of those invasive bugs away) and maybe work on my recycled Christmass boxes!


@ZeriabImagine myopic actors stumbling in those backgrounds...  Or that infamous Ed-Woodian scene!


@SchlanganIf I could hide some of my stuff in some of those useful empty rooms of our imagination and get them back as I need them


@bgillisp Woah the tag don<t work...  err I wonder where he is too?  I thought I saw something interesting to comment on but scrolled and... are my eyes already THAT bad now?


Progress...


Sorry folks, I am regenerating a wee bit 3 folks on the internet asked me so.....  I guess if I don<t listen to IRL peoples I should here. 

 

[IamDes]

I want to give a huge shout out to @Ultima2876 for his MV Asset Converter. I've taken the plunge and converted everything in my project from VX Ace to MV. It's only been a couple days but I'm sticking with it so far. There's still a few bugs with events and scripts that I'm getting fixed/commenting out to be fixed later but I think it's a good choice. I miss VX Ace but I think it's just growing pains as I become comfortable with MV during this transition time.


So besides fixing new bugs from transitioning engines I need to continue eventing my story and game. My artist finished all of my portraits which look great, just need to get some expressions done for them. And since I'm working in MV now I need to get familiar with it's battle animation systems and plugins that I could use to achieve what I want. So a lot of work to do!

 

[Arithmetician]

So I managed to do the Thief job's skills and connect its sprites to the characters.


Thieves

Spoiler

Mug is the first additional command to appear within the Job Command box.  It unlocks from Master Thief, but does not advance the "Job Level" of the equipped skills that can be learned.  Evade + 20 is the next in the "Job Level" sequence.  Think of Mug as a subsidiary ability of that Job Level.  

Quick Escape was tricky to find the right code for... until I read on one of the other forums that one could simply create a "No Escape" state that is automatically applied to characters at the start of certain battles to seal the skill when an unconditional escape is not desired.  


As for dual-wield.... I see that the default for RPG Maker MV seems to be aggregating the bonuses from the weapon into a single attack with a different animation (a cross-slash).  It's a bit different than the two discrete attacks that one would get in Final Fantasy, but it makes sense given the mechanics of MV.  And it's not hard to add an extra attack and a penalty to damage to offset it a bit to mock up the effect... but then it triggers that cross-slash animation twice.  And then it's technically possible to equip a pair of Greatswords which are generally meant to be two-handed.... not that I actually mind this too much.  


Well, I can decide specifically how I want to implement Dual-Wield later.  The key thing is, it's in my game now in a functional state.


7/16 Jobs

 

[Another Ned]

@Arithmetician: Yay for the skills! And yay for steal. As someone who almost always chooses rogue-type classes when the choice is available, I do approve of robbing enemies blind. Wait, the enemies do get blinded, don't they? *coughs*


@Saint Federacy: Good luck with your goals! Hope getting back to it won't be too hard after so many months. The dialogue got the expected chuckle out of me, though only on second glance did I see that there's a name above the box, almost didn't notice it. D:


@AceOfAces_Mod: What kind of prototype is it? I'm curious! Also, on the topic of fonts, you probably know it already, but I still say beware pretty-but-illegible fonts, even for diaries. Unless it's on purpose and the characters comment on it and read it out loud so the player can read the thing without problem (which is kind of the route I'm going).


@Marquise*: : D Yay for the break and regeneration time! Not so yay for another invasion. Can't they go somewhere else? What happened to my childhood geography fail image of Canada as a super cold place where no insects survive? D:


@IamDes: Yay for the progress you got done! I also can imagine that getting those portraits is a huge boost to morale as well.


Progress, 06th:


Still didn't make room for my scanner. But today! Today I will! ... Hopefully.

• decided that Salin really needs a really stupid wide grin for having just made a pun and similar occasions. And I need to expand my vocabulary for her to make the corresponding puns. Or add in things like narration text "Then, Salin made a pun that had Barysh double over, groaning, like he's taken a fist to the gut." or something.
  

Also, before my move, I'd shown what I've got of the project so far to a friend to motivate and maybe inspire her and when I got back to having internet, she'd written me a mail with a sketch of Salin in it, indicating an idea she'd had. I really need to poke her about that. <3

 

[MiniTitan]

So, December came around quickly... 


Last month I was mainly exploring MV and I played around with some code and made a simple plugin following some online tuts. Then put together a couple of small maps.

Spoiler

Started an online drawing course at the end of October and set myself a task last month to draw a character from scratch - it's possibly been around 20 years since I sat down to draw something like this...

 

Spoiler

So for this month!

• Working on a plugin idea for a battle system and have made a start on getting to know that region of RPG maker's codebase. 
  
• Continuing to draw with an end goal of drawing four, (yes, four!) characters together; using perspective, light and shadow to add some flavour.
  
• Make a (really) small game with a handful of maps and a simple quest. Get to grips with some eventing.
  

Have a couple of weeks off this month, so hoping that offsets the crazy, busy period that is Christmas and get most of what I want to do done.

 

[Schlangan]

@Chiara : Your formations of historical battles are a good idea, but all robots are identical. However, they built cannons to attack too, so I can try to think of a formation with infantry and ballistic. 


@Arithmetician  : MP shield makes me think of Maple Story, with the Magic Guard skill from Mages. The MP were essentially shielding the low HP of the mages.


@Saint Federacy  : Good luck for your goal. You should maybe rethink the automatic shadows on your map, they appear a bit strange and too much in constrast with your tiles.


@AceOfAces_Mod : Balancing won't be easy, good luck for this.


@Marquise* : I'm not sure there can be a room that can contain imagination. An interesting concept, though.


@IamDes : Be careful of converters, you will have to check if everything is really properly converted.


@MiniTitan : Your goals seems good. But battle systems aren't the easiest to start with when it comes to plugin. Maybe you should try easier things first.



My update :


Nothing much, I added one new map, made sure that it fits with the huge map of the planet until now, and started to ponder about the army, as well as a minigame for the next part, where the player will have to decide of how many stacks of robots to move against the remnants of the army, some kind of strategic battle. It should be interesting to do.

 

[IamDes]

@IamDes : Be careful of converters, you will have to check if everything is really properly converted.

@Schlangan Yeah I have been. There's a few pixels missing in a couple of sprites and a few lines skewed in tilesets but all easy fixes.

 

[MiniTitan]

@MiniTitan : Your goals seems good. But battle systems aren't the easiest to start with when it comes to plugin. Maybe you should try easier things first.

@Schlangan Yeah, I won't be trying to make something all in one go, that's for sure. Starting with the ability to swap characters in and out of battle - a la FFX.


While playing around with the code last month I made a plugin to increase the screen size and scale the title and battle screen. This gave me an idea of how the code has been structured. Am a Front-end/UI developer by trade, so work with javascript quite a bit - hoping that experience will help with creating a more complex 

 

[Arithmetician]

@Chiara Yes, Steal is a classic skill.  My version may not add status effects, and there are other ways it could be expanded with Yanfly's Tricks and Tips, but it's still fun seeing what you can get... or frustrating trying to get that rare steal.  But that's what Master Thief is for... to tilt the odds a bit more in your favor.


@Schlangan  Maple Story is exactly where Yanfly based his Magic Shield code on, so necessarily mine will resemble it as well, though I've never actually played Maple Story myself and I modified the code a bit so that it's outright damage immunity instead of an 85% reduction while the shield is up.  When I go back to balance things I'll probably see about altering the formula so that it burns through your MP at a faster rate.  As for its situation on the Valkyrie job, that idea is taken from Bravely Default, but I also thought it was fitting to be there in that it rapidly drains your MP bar, while the Job Command I gave it, Ragnarok, instantly depletes all of the character's TP for a burst of damage.   Besides, Valkyries are shield-bearers, so it was only appropriate that they have some sort of shielding skill that was different than a Knight's.  


@MiniTitan  It may not be on the fly as in FFX, but Yanfly's Formation plugin allows you to switch out any members of the active party with any reserve member at the start of each round.  It's simple enough from when I tested it in a project which existed solely for messing around with mechanics, and I saw it used to good effect in Disako's Chronicles: Fate of a Princess, a completed MV game out there.

 

[Milkdud]

@Chiara Thanks! I wasn't sure about the name being on top, though I prefer it like that, I'll take a look and see what I can do to improve that.


@Schlangan That's what I was thinking too, I had the autoshadows as a parallax and noticed it was looking too awkward in certain places, so I'm going to remove that.


While I'm on the topic of parallaxes in areas, I've also made any character that talks have a speech bubble pop up and that ends up not being visible. I might remove it entirely or replace it with like the NPC flashing or something.

 

[Arithmetician]

Found Victor Sant's Dual-Wield plugin, which does exactly what I want for that skill in a convenient package... but then noticed that when paired with Yanfly's class change core it causes a weapon duplication glitch whenever jobs are switched.  


Another reason Victor's plugin was appealing was that it allowed me to apply a Two-Handed effect as it should be, instead of still allowing a weapon to be used in each hand with Dual-Wield (even when I tried to have one state disable the other... I guess the Yanfly's equip skill overrides that)  while giving Two-Handed's attack bonus that's meant for when you have just on weapon.


Oh well....  there will be time to figure it out later.


Even if I can't there are other options...  Ramza's plugin should probably work as it is designed for use with Yanfly, though it would require setting up Action Sequences, which may be time-consuming.  I can already use a state to add the extra attack hit and adjust attack power as desired.   It was just that Victor Sant or Ramza's plugins gave the opportunity to see the second weapon's animation, which really adds to the feel of Dual-Wield.


But I have other priorities for now.


Edit:  And yeah!  300 reputation on the site!

 

[AceOfAces_Mod]

@Chiara, the prototype is essentially a JRPG which uses a modified version of Immortal Sins' engine stack (it uses some of the same scripts as Immortal Sins along with tweaks and scripts specific for that prototype). I can't say about the premise yet, but the battle system is a combination of Final Fantasy VII and Deus Ex Human Revolution with a pinch of Street Fighter Alpha. Now about the fonts, I'd like to use a specific font for some things (one for signs and one for papers) and they are shown in the text box. Though this may work in some other style of game.


Progress Report #3:


Immortal Sins:


-Code cleanup.


-Transferring more events to Common.


Batrider (codename of the prototype):


-Set up the foundation.


-Added some custom sounds.

 

[Kes]

Just a gentle reminder to one and all.


There is a difficult line to walk in this thread.  It is principally about our goals, progress, stumbling blocks etc., and inevitably that brings in mentioning a range of issues.  However, this thread is not for detailed conversations about mechanisms and we are in danger of this thread losing its focus and becoming a sort of game making salad of things.  Some of the conversations might fit well into (Early or not) Project Feedback threads on your specific games.


Thanks.

 

[Arithmetician]

@ksjp17  Oops.  I guess I'm guilty of that.  I'll try to refrain from undue discussions of mechanics here going forward.

 

[Azurecyan]

Things to accomplish this December:
- Write first half of the story


- Draw a few characters


- Finish drawing world map


- write out Items, Weapons, and Armor


(Decided to do a new game, this time a bit smaller than my bigger ones I think of so I can finally finish making a game)

 

[EliteZeon]

Yall have been busy! Meanwhile I'm over here just playing Final Fantasy and barely finishing my map.


@Chiara For both maps, I used a brush set called Sketchy Cartography by StarRaven. That brush is what made all the trees, mountains and flora seen on the map.


What I did before that was, I took a texture of parchment as my image background, then added some layers and colored it blue. I set the layers to color and screen, played around a bit and got the blue hue for the sea on the map. The landmasses were made on yet another layer, I took a orange brownish color and painted them in. I then erased excess to carve out a better figure and create rivers and lakes. After that, I colored it in and placed the tree and mountain textures on a layer above that.

Spoiler

I could use more named towns and such, especially on the eastern side of the map. But this is how the map looks for now. Not every town will be ingame, but they will at the very least be referenced by NPCs and such.


My friends were interested in having me run my setting for a tabletop RPG, and wanted it to take place during the Thaumaturgy Wars (which takes place 50 years before my project). I thought it would be a good idea to help me develop the lore more. So I'm currently developing some rulesets for Hero System 6th edition in order to run the tabletop campaign on. Those curious, Hero System is a tabletop RPG system that allows essentially full character customization for any genre.

 

[Arithmetician]

Okay, keeping it progress and goal-oriented this time instead of rambling about mechanics.

• Implemented Chemist sprites for the protagonist
  
• Implemented two passive abilities for the Chemist: Eye Protection and Pharmacology
  
• Had some new ideas about unlocking secondary skill sets via states.  
  
• Implemented Preserve TP plugin
  
• Implemented Weapon unleash plugin
  
• Created a weapon unleash for Guns to completely override normal attacks, with a different damage formula
  

Now, modifying goals (though not necessarily all in December), especially once I finish the Jobs:

• Overhaul the story, coming up with a more original storyline (though the prologue is fine) and more dungeon ideas
  
• This will accompany working on completing / redesigning the world map as necessary, though I'll preserve many key features
  

Edit:  Okay, so both of those are actually in alignment with my previous December goals... but it reflects a shift in priority toward the story again once the jobs are done and more substantial revisions than first planned.