June Goals & Progress Thread

[Marquise*]

@Ksjp17


Mixture. Sounds fun to assemble and a lot of time to plot! I definitively have to LEARN my way around those tileset some day. REALLY!


I'm glad you also found a way to not go over the top with your budget. I got outside today overcompensating for my current situation that gets me crazy since 9 month at home now! And yeah... It is also that MONTH of the year! :x I need to pamper myself but... well I need to do it solo because of those bed-vampires... GRRRRRR!


Don't despair with your graphic task. :3


@Jeneeus Guruman


*whistles* Wooo impressive. Well bed bug count this month 4 been a week no news of my s*ckers! I know better now than thinking they are gone! As soon as I can start putting back stuff in their righteous places because it is confirmed they are gone and I see none... I'm gonna finish my RPGMaker apprenticeship! It has been more than a year I have it and 9 months out of it was spent after domestic vampires! It is time I figuratively start to kick pixels butts!


@Schlangan


Mmmm... ^^ Even if we don't like the battles in our stories; Bestiaries! <3 ^^


@morlockhater


Good luck for your play.


@ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ


Do you use a 8 colors only palette? Seems sometimes limitation level up talent skills and optimization. In your case it is really artistic. We can't deny it!


On my side (and the $Dragon side), head cycle good, neck cycle... not yet certain... Front leg cycle now good... Just realized I can have pieces to make the dragon pounce or start a flight move with all that fancy dance cut-outs X~ ...no... I'm not getting there! ... Yet!


Also... ack the exterminator comes next week... I will have to get the Dragon made in energy conservation mode! That is where everyone should type "Aaaawww!"


So I am also having to do extensive scrubbing but on the good side I displaced (I should had typed move) 2 square cube today! Don't think it was nothing; it was in my kitchen and it is an inverted Tetris puzzle case! XD


And... yeah... I am starting to get previous look back toward translation of Luna Engine to do and... errr more WW, Dread and Red stuff done ^^; It's like juggling with balls that reproduce themselves!

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Thanks, guys. I actually don't mind the T-rex arms because that makes me laugh. But the legs. You know, they are sort of long. This is why I do music! XD

@Jeneesus I really like the look of the battles. I really like that you use maps and the sprites in the sideview, and how the camera pans in. Looks great!

@Bearface Really like the old school look of this. I'm no pixel artist but the only thing that stands out to me as off is that the tree trunks look so straight up and down. I feel they could taper a little.

Update June 2nd. Jack's concept art is fully lined and colored. He's an asthmatic paramedic with terrible bed side manner and more interested in being part of the fray. 

Spoiler

 

[Hollow]

@ksjp17: Thanks! And yeah, I guess having no books and such does make things tricky, huh? I'd suppose in those situations you could focus on the physicality of a hobby instead (so like, if the person likes gardening you'd find gloves and tools and whatnot in their house). The exterior of that tower looks really good, btw. However, on the inside, I'd recommend putting some kind of texture on the roof portion, and maybe blurring the edges of the staircase as they're very pixellated atm.

@Ms Littlefish: Wow, they look like a fun character, haha! I really like the design--I've got a good feel for their personality already.

@bgillisp: Ouch, that can't be fun. I've always tried to avoid that by writing out everything in a spreadsheet first before ever opening the database itself (plus leaving lots of space between things, too, lol). Although, I guess sometimes it can't be helped.

@ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ: That is stunning! I think all the windows would need is a line or two of reflective light, and they'd be just fine. Is that doorway meant to be open? If not, then I think it needs a bit more detail so it better reads as an actual door.

 

 

June 2nd, Progress:

So, I'd wanted to work more on the enemy's stats today, but I forgot that some exterminators were coming over. Believe it or not, it's very difficult to focus on numbers when there's constant banging, thuds, and the occasional muffled "****," just beneath your feet, haha. Instead, I decided to work on editing some battlers and creating placeholders for the rest of the level's enemies.

 

Also I realized that it may be a good idea to work on some full-bodied images of the main characters to use in promo material, so I got started on that. One more goal added to my list, but I'm just aiming to get all their sketches done and ready for line art this month--it's not that much more work.

 

Here's a sketch WIP for the protagonist:

(Ugh, that chainmail is gonna be the death of me when I line it )

 

[esby]

@ksjp - Yeah, it's a map. It's good that you figured it out yourself, I presume it was a Common Event with a conditional event?

@Marquise - I think I used about 15 colours in that image but I think I could easily reduce that if I tried. Your dragon sprite is looking real good, are you planning in doing this for all the big monsters?

@Hollow - I'm planning on using events for the door so that's why it appears open right now. That's really clean for a sketch, my lines are usually everywhere.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

@Hollow. Chain mail is the reason that all of my characters can just go get stabbed and die. 

 

[Kes]

@bear

It's not quite so simple.  I have no way of knowing when the armour will be equipped, nor can I know who will equip it it - and, of course, the player might choose not to equip it.  So it has to be a common event on a parallel process.  Then the tricky bit - what should it be checking for in that conditional?  Answer: this -

Sgame_party.members.any? { |member| member.equips.include?($data_armors[armor id]) }

If yes, call up another common event which does all sorts of fancy stuff in case they are in a place with lighting effects, pictures, tints etc., and that second common event calls the cut scene.

Life would be so much easier if gear could call common events directly.

 

[Jeneeus Guruman]

@Marquise* and Ms Littlefish: Thanks. I hope my other battlebacks, which are also map-based, are also fine with this.

As for my progress now, I placed an option to let the players choose between random and visible/evented encounters before the start of the game. And also putting all evented enemies invisible one by one (from the very first field to the field past from 2nd town) when random encounters are chosen.

EDIT: Forgot to add my other progress but it's really not that major. I just add the game time in the menu. That's all.

 

[Another Ned]

@Everyone who posted goals after I did: Lots of motivation [and other things] to you, too!

@Hollow: I like your mapping (from what I've seen so far), and I just love the top left room with all those sheets of paper and books.
As for your post after that: SAI! So that explains the clean lines! (Just kidding, you probably simply have good control of your hand, but still. SAI makes lines look so smooth and pretty). Lots of perseverance for the chainmail! The mean thing about lineart is that you can't simply suggest your way out of every material, like with painting. Or can you? *lazy, so tries to get away with only suggesting material pretty much all the time*
@ksjp17: On the exterior screenshot, I at first thought one of the trees was cut off weirdly since the falling leaves have almost the exact same colour as the grass. But I like the feeling of "this is not a place you want to go on vacation” the screenshot emanates. Without much shadows, this also really feels like it's overcast, so very nice.
Yay for getting the shading done – not so yay for having to re-do it.
@Ms Littlefish: Haha, love the quirkiness (is it the right word?) in your characters. They're fun to look at. <3 The proportion issues have already been pointed out, so as for your lines, I'd like to suggest to maybe look a bit into utilizing line weight more (I can't really explain it well, but there's a video by Scott Robertson on that subject).
@Marquise*: So there will be more dragon movements after the walk cycle is done? In any case, yay for progress!
And I just imagined a juggler juggling with things that split in half every time the juggler throws them into the air. But because my mind is weird, the juggler grows additional arms at the same rate.
@bgillisp: I hope the database re-structuring proves more time-saving in the long run, then. D:
@Mushinronja: Another person with reworked database mid-development? Fingers crossed you don't have to do it again in the future. : )
@ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ: Love your take on the Sword&Sworcery aesthetics. I also like it composition-wise. Feels very tranquil.
@Jeneeus Guruman: Nice to give the player a choice. Can the player also change this setting later on if they change their mind and want e.g. random instead of visible mid-game?

Progress, 2nd:

• took a look at which of the planned features will be needed for only the "camp” and changed some things. Make a lot more sense now that I know more about story and characters
• spent a bit of time inside the editor
• subconsciously fleshed out Luan's personality more (and she came to live. Just like that. But it's my own fault, allowing fictional people room in my mind to start commenting on things on their own)

Not much got done: Half the day I spent outside. Not used to talking so much, so I was pretty exhausted yesterday. On the upside, I got to observe atmospheric perspective and how shadows cast by clouds make forest-covered mountains look even more pretty.

 

[Jeneeus Guruman]

@Chiara: I'll only make them choose in the beginning of the game on purpose. It will make the players confused on what type of encounter did they choose if I do that. And also if I will enable it, maybe when the player change from random to visible encounters, the character maybe stepped at the enemy's position already (although its less than 1% probability that will happen).

 

[rondchild]

Update 3rd June.

Today i make Korona idle for battle mode in Kitten Mita.

I hope you like it guys !

 

[Kes]

@Marquise*

Great that the dragon continues to make progress.  I also read your thread about translating Luna.  Sounds very interesting, and that guy seems to be helpful.  Good luck with it.

@MsLittlefish

If ever I fall ill or injured, I think the sight of that guy coming along towards me will be a better aid to recovery than any number of pills.  He looks a really interesting addition to any party.

@Hollow

Thanks for the reminder about the texture on the ceiling tile. I completely forgot.  And for the tip about the need to make the stairs less pixellated.  You will be able to see the results of today's work on things in the spoiler below.  I love that sketch of your character.  But yes, chainmail.  Hmm, not for the faint-hearted.

@Jeneesus Guruman

I didn't really follow that bit about (quote)"And also putting all evented enemies invisible one by one" (end quote).  All you need do is when you give the player the choice of visible/invisible, for visible enemies activate a switch which triggers the visible events and for invisible enemies, just select 'Change Encounters' and then 'Enable' from the 3rd tab of the event command menu.  It sounds like you're making a huge amount of work for yourself, and if these are just invisible versions of your evented battles, then they are not really random.

@Chiara

I love how shadows from clouds change the landscape.  I can look at clouds for hours.  And I know what you mean about how draining it can be talking to people for long stretches, especially if you don't know them too well.  The world falls neatly into 2 types - those who get/regain their energy from being with other people and those who get/regain their energy from being alone.

@rondchild

Nice looking character.  I couldn't help thinking, though, that the way her fingers are, it looks like she's holding something with a much thicker handle than the sword actually has.  As you've got her knuckles showing through the guard, I think you could easily make her fingers shorter.

My update

Prompted by Hollow, I made a proper roof for the Tower interior walls.  That staircase has been a complete pain.  I think it might have been quicker and less work to have done it myself from scratch.  As it is, I decided to ditch the original pillar.  No amount of tweaking was ever really going to make it look anything other than pretty flat - trying to work around the stairs cutting in was too fiddly for words.  So I made a completely new one, worked a bit on reducing the pixellated look and decided to call it a day on them.  I then mapped the upper floors, so I've now got the structural stuff done for this location (there are a few maps before the outside of the Tower) and evented the giving of the side quest.  Got the graphics for the enemies here.

Here is what the entrance to the inside of the Tower looks like now.

I've still got the lighting/tinting to sort out.  That will make a bit of a difference.

 

[Jeneeus Guruman]

@ksjp17: Sorry I misunderstood you (see my primary language). What I mean by "one by one" is that I placed another page (placed to the last page) and put that if the player chooses to do random encounters, they will not be visible. "One by one", AKA, putting that blank page when random encounter (switch) is enabled for every enemy sprite.

 

[Kes]

@Jeneeus Guruman

That is still more work than you need to do, and may not work out quite how you want.  An alternative is this.

Page 1 has your enemy graphic and your battle processing command.  Its condition is the switch that is activated when the player chooses visible enemies.  If they don't choose that, then the switch is not activated, and so the page is not activated either.  So there is no graphic.

However, you need to decide what you want to happen at the end of the battle.  Obviously you want the graphic to disappear, but do you want the enemy to disappear for ever? Until you return to the map?  Until you return to the dungeon?

• If you want the enemy to disappear for ever, then you need to turn on self switch A and have a second page with nothing on it except its condition set to A.
• If you want the enemy to disappear until you return to the map, then you don't use a self switch.  You use the command 'erase event'.  That removes the event (and therefore the graphic) until the next time you load the map up.  No second page.
• If you want the enemy to disappear until you leave and then return to the whole dungeon, then you have to do some fancy work with switches.  I won't list it all out here as it will derail the thread.  If you want details, let me know.

You also have to decide what to do about escaping.  Can the player escape an evented battle?  If they can, then you will need to make sure that they are not plunged straight back into battle again by putting a set move route command on the enemy so that it moves a couple of steps away from the player.  That will be enough to give the player a chance to get away.

 

[bgillisp]

Too tired for replies today, so I'm going to say Go progress. I'll try to say more tomorrow.

6.3 Update: Finished the database edits for all 8 elements, now my buffs are (hopefully) balanced against each other and dup spells are eliminated (except for the cases where one element gets a spell earlier than another, for instance,  Fire, Earth, Water and Life get a Heal I, but at different points depending on how heal based the element is). Almost all the class skills are rebalanced too, though the ones that are left are for classes (except one) not yet in the game so hard to say if any work is needed. Probably going to just leave the others alone until I can use them and see if any work is needed.

Hope is to now return to plot work. Got some chapter 4 events to write.

 

[Jeneeus Guruman]

Now the misunderstanding is getting worse.

I actually know all of these and I made them ALL applicable, both respawning when changing maps and not respawning.

How should I say what I really meant in my post properly...

EDIT:

This is what I meant for the term "one by one". Since I already put the enemies in the earlier parts of the game, I put in every single existing evented enemies a blank page when the switch for random encounters (I also used a switch and not just the Disable/Enable Encounter command) to make those visible enemies not shown from the map. I hope I'm now understood this time.

 

[Hudell]

I lost track of the thread, there's too much to comment on now. Good work you all, though.

Today I'm working on a request, but yesterday (and the day before yesterday) I finished my "minimap" script and created some base classes to my mod system to allow the easy addition of new kinds of animals through mods.

The minimap shows everything that is going on on the current map with a small zoom and then increases the zoom of the characters so that the player can easily find them all.

At first I was showing the minimap on the corner of the screen, but I decided to show it only when the player pressed a key, because the small minimap on the corner was causing some lag (since it draws all events on the map a second time)

 

[Hollow]

@ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ: Yeah, I've learned from experience that if I don't keep my sketches clean I end up not knowing what the heck I'm looking at when I line it, haha.
@Ms Littlefish: I wish I didn't have to do it, but it feels like one can't make a medieval-based RPG without at least a little bit of chainmail. *sigh* If only gender-neutral bikini armor was a practical battle tactic...
@Chiara: SAI definitely helps, but the true hero of this story is CTRL+Z, lol. And yeah, I'll have to draw them all out for lineart, but I'm planning on making those lines a bit lighter so they're not as prominent in the final image (you can see what I mean in the spoiler as to them standing out a bit too much atm).
@ksjp17: Wow, what a difference! That looks a million times better--and you redoing that central pillar was so worth it.
 
 
June 3rd, Progress:
Exterminators were here again today (the dehumidifying of our crawlspace is going to take longer than we thought ), so I mainly focused on art again. Edited some more battlers, so now not only are all the level's enemies in the database, but they also all have proper graphics~ I started to work on another map, but I didn't get very far. I was watching Indrah's livestream, and ended up being way more interested in watching her map than doing it myself, haha. Though, I did end up finishing up the protagonist's sketch, so yay! I may actually change up that goal to be to finish his and then start on Ana's, since unfinished sketches left on my harddrive for too long run the risk of me never getting back to them.

Spoiler

 

[TheGreatEater]

My goal is to have all 10 races, [with 2 Genders, and 2 Size Categories] completely drawn up as well as cleaned up, and to have a good map that doesn't have super derpy tiles when the player moves about in the intro level /(prologue / semi tutorial level).

Additional goal, but might not be achieved this month. Is to have the custom character creation, with random variance, and Strength / Weakness / Backstory padding [that'll effect the character at game start [past intro level] started up.] 

 

[Another Ned]

@Jeneeus Guruman: And what if you did something to check whether player and event coordinates match up when changing the settings? Or would this be too much work? (just thinking out loud)
@rondchild: Looks very nice. But I'm not too sure about the placement of the neck. Seems like it's a bit too close to her right shoulder. If I took off her right arm, the line of her neck and that of her back would line up, which somehow feels off to me. And for the fingers, the pinky looks equal in size to the finger next to it. Those are pretty minor things, but as those busts seem pretty important for your game, I wanted to point them out.
@ksjp17: And it's especially draining if one barely talks most days. xD
The new pillar makes such a big difference! Looks a lot better than before. But there seems to be a stray light pixel at the bottom of the pillar.
Good luck with figuring out what to do with the lighting! If it's abandoned, are there old torches that have been forgotten there? Maybe have the player light them, then. Just typing down what came to mind.
@bgillisp: Does Heal I behave differently if it's cast from someone using Fire or Water? Or are those elements more like classes, and the timing is the only difference? And yay, progress. ; )
@Hudell: I was caught off guard for a moment – the size difference. The sprites that are bigger than the houses. Then I read about the minimap thing – so this is the minimap, then? That's pretty cool.
@Hollow: Oh, almighty CTRL+Z! (CTRL+Y for my qwertz keyboard, since otherwise it'd kill my hand off).
Haha, I love the posture. So much personality in it.
But yes, I can see what you mean, the chainmail looks very dominant right now. I think that your style may also profit from utilizing some more line weight (like in the video link in my last post), though. To bring out a bit more depth in the lines already, without having to rely too much on colour/shading later on. But that's just what I think. ^^"
@TheGreatEater: Lots of motivation for your goals!

Progress, 3rd:

• took some notes of things I won't need for this month, but have out of the way right now (mostly combat-related things)
• worked on the layout of the player hub area thingy, what rooms are needed, etc.; noticed that my ground plan sketches steer too close to what I designed for my bachelor thesis back in 2013/14 (which was based on an actual building), so I had to step away for a bit and re-think. I hate it when I notice that I re-use the same shapes over and over, but I hate it even more when I don't notice
• caught a friend online yesterday and got some advice for indoor mapping. Didn't really get it at first, but this morning, upon waking up, I suddenly realized what he meant (yay for subconsciously working on problems!). Let's see if this helps [insert words of dislike for indoors mapping here]

 

[rondchild]

@ksjp : i see, somehow drawing a finger so hard orz.

Thanks for advice ^^b

wow your tower so nice, anyway what the about the collision ?

Are you use custome collision or by default in rm ?

@Chiara : Thanks for advice ^^b

I will redraw it, if i have free time. For now i just focus to complete all characters orz.

you making lot progress, nice one ^^b

@Hudel : ah nice mini maps =w=b

@Great : Lot a to do list, good luck !

Update new characters,[SIZE=12pt] Shade Dark Cloud.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]

[/SIZE]

Shade Dark Cloud is a very mysterious entity and never spoken of, she has only one friend, Korona. She originally went to Dead Roam Hill to help the residents. However her countenance only served to shroud the area in terror and fear. While this did in fact help the residents by repelling bandits and thieves it also created an oppressive environment. Although when Shade originally came she agreed to build scenarios to repel visitors and spread rumors to discourage would be bandits.