March Goals & Progress Thread

[bgillisp]

@Lantiz : Thanks, but...what light overlay? Would you believe that's all done with the default events?

@Ms Littlefish : Haha, so true! Plus there's a huge mountain range between those towns full of many bad monsters. Let's just say the residents tend to fly over instead of walk that.

@Marquise* : Actually, it's pretty close.

@mogwai : Looks like good progress there on the conversion.

3.5 Update: Spent some time today coming up with side quest ideas for Eastwood and Winerglen. That's it, as once that was done I took some time off of game making for a few hours.

 

[Lantiz]

@bgillisp Oh, ofcourse I do! And it looks really nice [:

By the way, as I'll probably work on my game today, I'll change my goal a bit.

1. Remake the procedural town generator plugin
2. Create a The Sims inspired interaction system

 

[Schlangan]

Grr, I forgot to post one day, and I am so far away. Since it is almost time to sleep for me, I'm going to reply only a little bit:

@Kes, @Ms Littlefish : The outcome ? Well. Imagine Schlangan and his usual rudeness against something so strong that even the bestiary computer cannot give its stats (the stats exist, but the Schlangan's technology is not high enough at this part of the story to give the values). Of course... Schlangan lost. Though, he managed to escape and survive the next ordeals. That mission was tough . Interestingly in the next games (since the whole story is divided in many games), we'll get revenge

My update :

Speaking of mission, mission XXI is over ! One goal done already. After the mission, Schlangan tells the team to train while he is going to train too. Notably, the next mission requires two characters to be level 95 before you can take the mission (you should be around 90 when you finish mission XXI). A little bit of training. Schlangan will come back level 55 (he should be 46-48 at the end of mission XXI). The maximum level is 99, which is the maximum potential power the characters have at this point of the story.

Before releasing the new version, I will probably tweak a few things, for example replacing animations with Hue modifications with animation files already recolored to avoid RPG Maker MV's lag. Then, I'll start working on a new area in the Death Realm for the four dead soldiers. The idea is to make them level up easily until 80 too, since I want to add bonus content after the last mission of the first game, mission XXII (the next one, yes). The bonus content will only be available to players with all characters level 99, including Schlangan. He will be level 90 at the end of mission XXII, so do not worry, you won't need thousands of hour of grinding.

 

[Arithmetician]

Reworked some spell descriptions.

Decided to give Freelancers limited healing and attack magic and implemented this, both so the player has some early game magical healing before the Cleric is unlocked, and so they aren't as much of a load in battle.

Began implementing revised JP costs for learned abilities. Also swapped the learn order of a few abilities.

Implemented a new version of a Berserk skill that I think should be more balanced this time.

 

[Marquise*]

@mogwai I just learned that to do Animation in RPGMaker I must learn Json But nice to see someone who can so well gets it to works in mass. ^^
@bgillisp My sympathies then! :/

Progress:
Finally shook-off from net nervousness... Only to find a very old e-mail from January contest about asking my permission to post my work and credits. ^_^; Awww... My best anti-virus cannot roll on my quirky rig! CS4 just barely recently stabilized...

Uh well PyxelEdit is a very lightware; I am certain a certain new dragon sprite will get along with it. And that's what I will continue to do with the pesky critter! (Just realized it is 240x80px)

 

[Gastin]

Level design from notes to game. (Next week) Put npcs in place with dialogue. Events, triggers, etc. (Last week in March). Worok on combat mechanics and insure level, stat, damage, skills, etc. Is not brakeing game and flow has a good feel. Work on Spriter, get frustrated, do second pass through on level design and all others. Do it a third time, do it a fourth time, do it a fifth time.

Just learned some maps need to be children of other maps Wooohooo .

 

[Gastin]

OK, guys. I'm in this month. For reals. I'm mostly starting with just blocking out the story for a small game. That in itself is vague. But, @Goldstorm and I have already done some massive brainstorming and taken notes, so that's a start. My main goal this month is to work up mock-ups and stretches for various design elements and pacing. I mostly only have weekends to work on this at the moment, but I am determined to not let everything pile up and push this on the back burner again. I'll do my best to keep up with everyone this month. This thread shreds pages at times. XD

On paper i do story, dialogue, characters, levels, instances. Rpg maker i do (place holder) levels, npc, dialogue, combat, and then i go ovrr it 5 times replacing stuff as i go. Thoughts? Im new to this.

 

[Gastin]

I hit a brick wall in development last month after working tirelessly on my project for the last month or two. I made so much progress and then BAM!!! I am trying to make a magical "base" or "hub" of sorts, where the players and their little rebel army will act from. I can see the vision in my head, but no matter how hard I've tried, I just can't recreate it in Rpg Maker. I've been beating my head against the wall on this for almost 2-3 weeks now and have made almost no headway on my project because of it! My goal for this month is to, at minimum, create the map and just run with it, knowing that I can always come back and make changes to it at a later date.

Use vanilla assets as place holders. Then slwly replace with intended items. Take on piece a week thats it. Slow is better than stopped.

 

[Gastin]

@Ms Littlefish Ty for the heads up i had no idea. But i am learning .

@Arithmetician Your game sounds like its coming along very nicely. Hopeing i get to see it.

 

[Arithmetician]

@Gastin Umm... Gastin... I see that you're new... but double-posting, to say nothing of quadruple-posting is against the forum rules. Next time just edit your post. Also, the mods don't like it when you quote whole posts. Just a friendly point of information.

As for my progress:

Incorporated the Cleric and Magus' spells into their proper places in the skill learning prerequisite structure (whereas previously they were automatically learned for testing purposes).

Created a bunch of "Scroll" items to be consumed, along with some JP as a price of learning the spells, and implemented this functionality with Yanfly's plugins. It would be highly problematic for balance if some spells were available too early, so this lets me gate them by storyline progress.

Made some minor balance adjustments to some skills and spells.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Gastin, please avoid double posting, as it is against the forum rules. You can use the "Edit" function on your posts to add additional information you've forgotten or respond to multiple people. You can review our forum rules here. Thank you.

If you have additional thoughts after you submit or have multiple people to reply to, edit your first post and tag the people you're responding to. Thank you.

 

[mogwai]

@Marquise* For dynamic animation I think, but doesn't MV have a built in animation maker? I guess I've never made animations in MV so I'm not sure. That sounds about right.

I know the animations.rvdata2 makes a huge JSON, and I had to stop reading the ruby stdout and have the ruby script puts the unmarshal to a temp txt file to be read with jQuery ajax, because the stdout stops at 200kb. I hope the JSON is readily compatible with MV like the Map000.json seems to be.

 

[Marquise*]

@mogwai... sorry I wait the end of patches and java to jump into MV

 

[Little Adventurer]

Idea I've had for awhile for a game: You awaken by a road or washed up on a beach, and when you come to, being awoken by a girl, you have no memory of who you are. I think you should get to choose your gender and potential class at the start (or perhaps you'll get a choice of what you want to be later), and as for your name... I haven't decided yet whether you'll be able to name yourself at the beginning or it's a choices set of names or perhaps both.*

However. There's a twist to this. Amnesiac heroes are nothing new, sure, but there's also another problem: You come to, and you realize that you cannot speak to anyone and you try to emote somehow how you're feeling... and you can't. Your face is blank, your movements rigid. Mentally you talk to yourself, though**, and frankly you're not exactly pleased at the idea of someone making all of your decisions for you and getting you involved in something that you feel you have no business butting into, yet have to do so because your companions are adventurers/a Prophecy said that YOU would be the hero of the lands/the Gods work in mysterious ways/etc.

And yet, perhaps by getting dragged into these adventures, you'll find out what happened to you, recover your memories, and maybe lift the curse blocking your emotions and voice...

I have no name for this project yet.

* For example, say you name/choose the choice of the name of Drifty. (Yeah you can tell whom I've been watching lately on YouTube!) Your companion is the one who actually names you, something that you don't exactly approve of, but can't exactly complain about either. The Drifty name would have her response be something along the lines of, "Hmmm... you look to me like a bit of a wanderer, someone who drifts along from place to place. I know! I'll call you Drifty!" Or perhaps you call yourself Echo instead? "Hmmm... you seem to look familiar, but I can't quite place it. I've seen your face before, but I don't know where... perhaps in another life long ago? I think I'll call you Echo!"

** Hopefully I'll be able to make our hero very snarky and sassy. But there's a point where like a fortune teller or psychic type of person looks into your mind to see what your destiny is... and they pull back from that after a few seconds (though they're still able to see something destiny wise regardless) after hearing nothing but the hero mentally screaming for release and help.

 

[Lantiz]

Hey guys and gals!
Just achieved a goal:

1. Remake the procedural town generator plugin (done)
   • I made another plugin extension and preserved the old one as "city" generator instead.
   • I'm still going to use the main town map I made and the towns that the player may reach while adventuring are going to be procedural.
2. Create a The Sims inspired interaction system

 

[Kes]

@Little Adventurer This particular thread is very specific in its objectives - to set oneself particular goals for the month/week and then post on progress, (setbacks, 'ahha! moments', whatever directly impacts on progress), maybe comment on other posts, all with the aim of helping us to develop a work plan and stick to it. It is not about giving a game/story synopsis. If you want feedback on those ideas, I think it best to post in Plot and Character Feedback.

With that in mind, what are your goals for the rest of the month? For example, flesh out your story, decide locations, get sprites, whatever will help you to get going.

 

[Schlangan]

@Marquise* : I don't know Pyxel Edit, is it efficient ? Can it support antialiasing and alpha channels ?

@Arithmetician : Yes, it would be strange if the characters had alaready access to high-end skill at mid-game. That's why my characters skills are learned through the story progression.

My update :

Some rest after release of mission XXI, I started to completely redraw all the icons in my game. The background color of the icons will be related to the element of the skill. For example, orange for fire skills.

 

[bgillisp]

@Lantiz : Thanks. I used Busted Ed's Tips and Tricks + a thread on tints that work well with the RTP (can't recall the name now), if you were wondering how I did that.

@Schlangan : Almost done! What you going to do once you finish this arc of the story?

@Arithmetician : I think that's a good approach. Some healing is always good early game, unless you make it really easy.

@Marquise* : Good luck with the dragon sprite.

@Gastin : My thought is to write out the story on paper first. If nothing else, just a "Then the party goes to town x to get the item, then they go to town y...". Just enough to know where it is going and what needs to be done, then you fill in the details with the implementation.

@Little Adventurer : Best to post it on the appropriate thread. And what happened to your other game? You don't want to hop projects all the time (even if the new one sounds more fun or a better game) or you will get to 2025 with no game done yet.

3.7 Update: No update on 3.6 as spent too much of the day playing storm dodge. Spent today mapping the inner part of Winterglen, and placing the NPC's. Now the town has stores, and a few NPC's who don't mind living in a town in one of the most harsh places in the world to live in. Or, to put it another way, one NPC says we still get 4 seasons: Winter, Still Winter, Why in the world is it still Winter, and Snowmelt. Let's just say that sums up why the entire town is in a cave (the screenshot from earlier is the entrance to the cave).

 

[Little Adventurer]

Oh whoops! Sorry!

 

[Kes]

@Schlangan Withdrawal symptoms beckon. You've spent such a focused time that it might feel a bit of an anti-climax once you've finished this story line. But your baby has to break free at some stage.
@Marquise* Great, another dragon. Presumably this one will go much more quickly as you've had all the previous experience to draw on (no pun intended).
@bgillisp I like the way you say 'no update' and then proceed to list a whole bunch of stuff.

My update
Finished the polishing run. I think I've got the skills more or less as I want them. I did a rejig on my basic formula to ensure that even basic attack can do something moderately useful against the party when their defense has increased a lot, without it wiping the floor with them before then. I was playing reasonably carefully, therefore a bit slower than I could have done, and did everything and it took me almost exactly 6.5 hours. However, I was still playing more efficiently than an ordinary player, so I reckon there's a solid 7 hours game play done, maybe a bit more. I think I may need to find someone to play it (not test it, just play) to ensure that it flows for anyone unfamiliar with it.

Did some mapping, and sketching out in my head what I want to happen a couple of maps from now. Did another mini cut scene.

So all told, a fairly productive time.