January Goals & Progress Thread

[RetroBoy]

@Lihinel


That is utterly amazing.


So, the dust cloud remains the entire time (like switching shape, etc) as different sound effects flash up and when it clears, one man is standing and the other is seven shades of pain after having their butt kicked, right?


Love the idea. Probably the most original thing I've seen on RPG Maker yet!


If you want to spice up the difficulty, you could add "Chair", "Stool" and "Bottle" or to the options along with the Fist.


Is there any kind of reward?


Do increasingly big and angry people come and try to kick your ass if you win a lot?


Are there different angry people at different bars?


Can winning too much earn you a reputation with NPCs in the bar(s)?


If you win do you get gold or rare items?  (Like hobo teeth or broken dreams)


If you win 100 battles in a row, does your testosterone increase so much that you gain the ability to do this?










Does winning earn you extra attributes?


Does winning grant you access to special meals at restaurants that up your stats (like in River City Ransom)


Does winning teach you rare moves you can't learn any other way?


Does losing leave you damaged?


Does losing cost you anything?


If you win enough, can you fight Gorthar -- the God of Inebriation, Poor Judgement and Deadbeat Dads?

 

[bgillisp]

@Lihinel: Interesting. Will keep an eye out for it.


@Sharm: Sometimes the time off is what we need though.


@AceOfAces_Mod: I see. Looks like you work like I do, with one main project and one to dabble in from time to time.


@Kes: Yep, it is! I got ahold of her about two years ago about using the tiles, though it seems I mainly only use the snow and desert cliffs of theirs. Have you used hiddenone's children? I think they have a few child recolors that I've been using in my game.


1.13 Update: Spent today writing and testing the first character scene in Chapter 3, then playtested the game up to the second character scene in Chapter 3. Now need to brainstorm ideas for this sequence, as the party is a little tense this time due to recent events. Though, once this one is done, that will complete all the optional scenes for Chapter 3 (which was one of my goals this month!)

 

[Lihinel]

Sorry to disappoint you, but not even halve of it.


The first fight is simply about getting information out of some dudes and you can skip it or repeat it till you win.


Later on I plan to make some gold coins as well as item rewards. (different kinds of alcohol, whatever fits the region the bar is in)


Also an achievement and house decoration item that grants statboosts once you have fought and won against the champion in every bar.


Though I could add some bottles and other stuff as kind of special moves for extra damage, that shouldn't be too hard.

 

[Arithmetician]

@Kes  I plan to use Thalzon's actual battlers.

 

[Marsigne]

Report: Posted a workshop. We'll see how that goes  NaNoWriMo's editing stage is already on-going, but I'd like to wait for a feedback from an editor to come in first, so the book isn't currently being edited. Unfortunately, the holiday event that I was going to participate did not get hold due to not enough participants, so it was halt until late February-March.

 

[bgillisp]

@Marsigne: I saw that! Hope the workshop goes well! Maybe once I have the full game made I might have something for you to do (though that might be 6 - 8 months later still).


1.14 Update: Wrote 3 of the 5 character scenes for the last chapter 3 one. Might have written more, but my last one was very typo ridden which I think means I need to take a break. Will resume the last 2 tomorrow or Monday. Probably Monday, as I usually don't do game dev on Sundays (my rule is take one day off a week, or at least 24 straight hours off at minimum), and I got all day Monday off and will be stuck home due to an ice storm more than likely.

 

[Lihinel]

Finished my bar brawl minigame and with it the second part of my intro:










The last part is also almost done, what's left is a battle that requires the battle system to be remade, there is halve a month left, I hope ill get it done bys the end of the month.

 

[AceOfAces_Mod]

Progress Report #6


Immortal Sins:


-Figured out why Yanfly's Equip script had the actor status not showing up. One of the Luna Engine compatibility scripts sent the window to space. Returned it back to the game by removing the specific code.


-Playing around with fonts.


-Made a special cast animation for some skills, along with one skill animation.

 

[Vox Novus]

@Lihinel Nice work on the mini game, looks good.


@AceOfAces_Mod Some nice little bits of progress. Finding the right font can actually be quite the task.


@bgillisp Yeah, typos happen to me the most either when I'm tired of working and trying to power through it or think its just a quick simple thing to type in and then sort of not pay attention to what I typed in. The tiles I'm working on are sort of both for fun and for a possible future game. I mostly wanted something to keep busy with and practice doing but also something I could make use of in MV when I'm done releasing my game in playtesting.


@Schlangan A temple? Is this where the heroes find out one of them is the chosen one to travel in time and defeat the great evil in the future. Nice work, sounds like you got that pretty much wrapped up.


@Mirpono Looks good, I like what I'm seeing.


@Palladinthug Yeah, I agree with Kes. Really neat you are doing them from the back like that to.


Update 1/15/2017:


I didn't do much this week, was in kind of a depressive mood and didn't feel like working on much. Also had a date on friday so that took up some time there. I did finish making up stairs-A5 tiles so I'm basically ready to tackle the water tile I'm dreading trying to make. Also did some adjustments based on a bit of feedback from playtesters for my game in the works. Did a quick run through of chapter 2 of the game afterwards and I think mostly everything is in order so I'll await feedback for chapter three next before proceeding with my testing further. Trying to keep at the pace of my playtesters so I can test out the adjustments I make as I go along. Sorry If I missed anybody up above but I got so behind this week. Hopefully my mood picks up a bit.

 

[HexMozart88]

Alright, I'm seriously behind on this thread, so I may only reply to a couple of you. 


@Lihinel That battle system is beautiful. Really creative idea. I like it! 


@Marsigne I saw your workshop. Interesting idea to help with cut scenes. 


Update: Nearly done my intro scene, got to find a good time to do a voice over for it though. My family is still trying to get me to let them do the voice acting, but after seeing a game where someone did that (namely, Chaos Wars), I'm adamant on doing my own. 


I think I'm going to start a workshop, though probably with a little bit less slots than a usual one simply because of exams coming soon. It'll be for character art, GUI and possibly events (can you make an event workshop?). To be honest, I think I've been spending more time taking requests in the request section than actually working on my own game.


As far as the game goes though, I've been steadily working on fixing up my switches and variables because I had to move my game to a different file and now my switches are everywhere. I'm also trying to do this battle system, but it was quite hard to get an interesting idea. I think I may have locked onto something though. I'm basically all over the place with my goals, but my main one is to finish this intro. 

 

[VideoWizard]

@All Sorry I've been MIA here this month. However, that doesn't mean I've made no progress. Watching Yanfly's video had me thinking that I'm trying to do the same thing as poor Ralph and will take years, and years, and years, and...  I was also trying to get SumRndmDde's Camera Core Plugin to work for me, like to zoom out for a bird's eye view or whatnot. It does work, if you don't zoom out too far. I was hoping to get it to zoom out and then use the resulting map for William the giant to walk on, but that turned out to be a dead end. *shrugs*


Oh, goals, right.


I guess I could flesh out the placeholder maps that I made after watching Yanfly's video (for those that don't know, there is a comic out that FlyingDream made). I'll give myself until mid-February to be fair, since it's already halfway through January.

 

[Schlangan]

Oops, I missed a few days on the forum, because of the Lego Death Star and because I might have focused too much on my project (using the Lego as a break). So, I won't try to reply to everyone, I'll just say :


@Vox Novus : No the temple had an item that the Yosha cult was looking for, there is no hero in this time period. There were in the past, but heroes are relative to the place they live in and the people they fight for. A hero for a group of people can be a dangerous foe for another group. There is no good or evil in my universe, only people with different opinions and ways of life.


My update :


I finished mission XIX, added a new area in the Death Realm, and already started mission XX. One more time, the goals of the month have been swept away, and I'm going much further, which is good. I reached what I at least wanted to do, but nothing can stop me from doing more. Mwahahahaha.


The beginning of mission XX made me draw some new ships, that belong to the members of the Ragnarok alliance. Not all members are present, so I only needed three ships. Here is a picture of all the current ships in the game. We've already seen Schlangan's ship (of course), Vandrich del Kelten's ship and the massive ship of Dreethero. But, you'll now see three more ships.

Spoiler

Now, I'll have to prepare a new tileset for Shlen's base, and many new characters will appear. I also need to put military NPCs in his base, with a different face for each NPC at least.

 

[AceOfAces_Mod]

Another quick progress report. I went on the battle system's UI and reworked it a bit. I converted the Stamina Meter to a gem and moved it to the opposite side of the status indicators along with moving and resizing the windows. Here's how the UI looks:

 

[KawaiiKid]

Got my HUD completed, finished my parallax map for my hub along with dynamic thunder/lightning (although in this video it was backwards, woops!), and tall sprites implemented.










Now my goal is to try to fix this lag....
I think it has something to do with the parallax map itself...


No clue yet though! The lag goes away though if I turn off yanfly engine...hmmm....

 

[mogwai]

I've got three games started up with as much as only 1 - 16 characters based on my 3 original vector templates (two typical RPGs and one beach game I'm remaking from a ZZT game I made in highschool). The templates walk funny so I've abandoned all three games. I'm still determined to make more; I may need to tweak the animation speed to look better.


Then I've got a My Little Pony template made up in the style of my underground pony webcomic; figured I'd do a fan game. I've got my 2 oc's and the six main ponies in one charset so far. It's an easy template, just change hair and color. I don't watch the show btw; I'm just not confident in my illustrations that are not of another artist's illustration. Speak of the devil I'm also doing a game with all ComiPo sprites. I like the pony remixes.


I've also made two bitmap templates, one big and one chibi, and I hope to get some characters made in pixels as opposed to the vector ones. I've been looking off eLouai doll maker parts because I don't know how to pixel.


This is a tall order for 2017 and a  big description to read so here are some random screenshots of my characters for future games that I keep neuroleptically losing motivation on.

Spoiler

Then here are some screenshots of the ComiPo game. (I'm kinda ashamed)

Spoiler

I've lost motivation with this one because my tilesets aren't very good and no matter how beautiful I make it, I can't claim it as my own. +my meds, I'm 32 and don't remember doesn't interested in school drama, etc... but at least with this game I got passed the char template stage. I have no idea how to write the story for a school game. I might just rip the plot from Fooly Cooly; do an anime homage which what a lot of the ComiPo manga might do.

 

[bgillisp]

@Lihinel: Remaking a battle system isn't easy. Good luck with that.


@AceOfAces_Mod: I assume DP is what you are using instead of TP? Looks good too.


@Vox Novus: Yeah, usually I find the typos happen when I'm rushing a cutscene because I'm tired and I want to get it done today before I take a break.


@HexMozart88: Does the game need voice acting? I've stayed away from it for my game as I feel it would add nothing to it but the stress of finding actors I can afford.


@VideoWizard: I know what you mean with that comic. I feel it comes down to either doing exactly what is listed there, or planning on 3 - 5 years for the first game (I chose the latter, though in hindsight not sure it was the smartest move, but too late to change it now.)


@Schlangan: Congrats on being ahead on your goals!


@KawaiiKid: I don't know if it is me or my monitor, but that video seems a tad dark to me.


@mog: Might help to either pick a small project and/or use mostly RTP for the game. That way you don't lose motivation before you even get all the sprites drawn.


1.16 Update: Took 1.15 off to rest, and returned to game work today. We're now in that time period where I have to work a half schedule for 2 weeks (evenings only), so progress will be slowed done a little. And I mean a little, as I've been stopping at about 2 - 3 pm my time zone all break anyways.


So....today I finished off the Chapter 3 character scenes, and edited the Chapter 3 End/Chapter 4 Start to account for a scene that has been moved to Chapter 6 (It's the group Christmas party scene. I just thought it made more sense in Chapter 6 as the mood is better then than it is in Chapter 4). Also fixed up the dialogue/move route errors on the opening cutscenes, and they are good to go now. Still got a couple early cutscenes to write before Chapter 4 begins in earnest (these scenes were skipped earlier, so now's the time to add them in), then it's smooth sailing to almost the end of the chapter as I only got one character sequence (4 scenes though, depending on a choice you make) to write this chapter, and its when the group rests for the night in the middle of a tunnel. Once I do that, another one of my monthly goals will be done.


Just to recap, here are the original goals in the spoiler:

Spoiler

-Go back and fix up Chapters 3 and 4 dialogue errors. I noticed a few when doing my speed run, so might want to fix those up. (bonus) Fix Chapter 5 as well. Chapter 3 done, Chapter 4 start done except for the missing cutscene.


-Add the couple missing dialogue sequences to Chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 3 Done.


-Fix the Character sequences for Chapters 1 and 2 to match the plot (most of them I've had in the game since 2014, and never updated). Done


-Write the Chapter 3 character sequences. (bonus) Write the Chapter 4 character sequences. Chapter 3 Done.


-Finish my lore books. I've written about half of them already, got the last half to go. Not started


-Repopulate the NPC's in the towns of Aurora and Icetop Fortress, and add the sidequests for those towns as well. (bonus) Silas Rest as well. Icetop Fortress is done, Gnoa is done. Also did a huge percentage of Elmwood's as well, though still need about 10 more NPC's for that town before I can call it done.


-Fix the mapping errors in Tall Oak (that map is still a placeholder).


-Map 2 of the bonus dungeons. These are completely optional areas for the party to explore (and occasionally where they need to go to finish a side quest). Done. Actually did three, the old Ice Temple, the Lava Caves, and the old Tower.


-And finally, if I still got time left, map one of the Chapter 9 side areas the party is *supposed* to go to (they were told to go there at the start of the Chapter, but the player can ignore that advice if they wish) and get items that will make the final fight so much easier. Not started

 

[KawaiiKid]

@KawaiiKid: I don't know if it is me or my monitor, but that video seems a tad dark to me.

It's supposed to be at night, even with that - do you think it's too dark?

 

[HexMozart88]

@bgillisp Well, yeah. Not for the whole thing but I have cut scenes at the beginning and end of each chapter that are fully animated, and I find it weird to have an animated cut scene with just subtitles. 

 

[Lihinel]

@bgillisp: To quote the arcitect from the matrix:

Rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.

And thats true, at least if I also count my conquest system too, which has been redone 3 times by now.


But as I see, your to-do list isn't short either, wish you success in getting everything done.

 

[Kes]

@Lihinel I loved the video of the bar brawl.  It looks great fun, though I suppose having good reflexes is going to be required in the later brawls?  These are optional, right?


@bgillisp Yes, I've got hiddenone's children.  What I find with a lot of children's sprites, though, is that they are virtually the same size as adult sprites, which isn't very helpful. I envy the way you are galloping through this month's goals.  You seem to have the wind behind you.


@Marsigne Congrats on your workshop.  I expect you'll get a lot of takers.


@Vox Novus It sounds as if your testers are being thorough, which of course is what you want.  Has the feedback so far been in line with what you expected?


@HexMozart88 I don't see what you shouldn't be able to do an events workshop.  I think it will prove quite popular.  Hmm, requests can gobble up your time, and maybe it might be necessary to say 'no more than X hours a week on requests', otherwise (especially if you do start a workshop) you could end up getting so diverted from your own project that you're unable to keep the motivation going.


@Schlangan Another batch of interesting ships.  Seeing them all together gives a clear idea of how varied they are.  Well done.  And glad you finally put up pics of the death star.  Looks awesome.


@mog I think bgillisp's advice is sound - start with something small, otherwise it can get just too overwhelming.


@KawaiiKid I didn't think it was too dark.


My update:


Had to do a small cut scene (less than one minute) but for that I needed a whole new tile set, with a lot of editing and some making.  It is a set which I will need later on, but it seemed to just take forever.  One of the reasons is that I am using ceiling tiles with a void in them, and you know the top right small tile which is part of the auto-tile; well that always takes me ages to do, and the first time I made a complete botch of it, so had to start all over again, as I had weird extra lines whenever I made an angle.  Also, for everything I need a blue set and a more stone colored set.  I think I'm slowly sinking.