March Goals & Progress Thread

[Celianna]

@Kes I just tested it, 10 chapters (18k words) take 50 minutes to finish. With the full 12 chapters, which are 24k words, I'm expecting around an hour and 20 minutes or so of gameplay. I think it takes you like an hour per 20k words, so his route will take 3 hours to complete. And this is just the reading portion of the game, when it's finished, you'll be forced to create clothing to progress the story, instead of being able to read one after the other without pause.

Either way, I'm excited for having so much done already!

Just look at some of the backgrounds I've made for it:

Spoiler

 

[Marquise*]

@Kes you're right, even if I am still nursing her as a kitty, DC is yet of a respectful age and... yeah... she is now WAY much more mature than me even if I am an ol'geezer. (In fact she knows better than me how I sleep. I guess I have an IRL teddy bear except she is a live cat with a mother hen instinct protecting my sleep! awww)

Progress;
Close to officially, my paperwork is done! (and just when I close the books another piece of paper work arrive via snailmail )
All right had been freezing my bitmaps outside and the only paperwork I wanna do involves good level bond paper, an animation disk and a few Staedtlers or some 2f pencils! And the rest in mostly PyxelEdit but I am frozen and famished and have to prepare to busk for ST-Patty's day. $%^$%$ *really wants to jump back on PyxelEdit*

DC has her way to say "Hi" to you folks and I think she tries to say do as they write to you. (I think typing to this forum might just reduce my blood pressure or something and she detects that, so she loves you.)

 

[Arithmetician]

@bgillisp Nah, even if I haven't adjusted the element rates at all, it still just nulls the damage. I know someone said that it's a feature that got broken with an MV update, but this isn't the place to discuss plugin problems in detail.

Continued working on implementing the spells and animations for the Hex.

Spoiler: Hex Spells in Progress

One balance issue I have to work out is determining an appropriate success rate for ailments. I want them to be useful, but it's also easy to incapacitate the entire enemy party in short order with a bunch of Hexes. And come to think of it, the Binding Curse seems kind of poorly balanced against group ailment spells like Lullaby. I'll have to spend more time on working out the proper balance tomorrow.

 

[Shinma]

Thanks, @Kes. I look forward to utilizing this thread as a way to keep things goal oriented and help me progress. It's an honor being able to test such awesome games, not to mention getting an early play through before anyone else.

 

[Lantiz]

@Kes Really thankful!

And here's the video, hope you guys enjoy:

@Arithmetician Looks like your poison mist image is broken :[
Edit: Nevermind, it seems to be working again

 

[Andronius]

... it's simply A LOT of preplanning... I would look at the island that I created & ask myself things like "Okay where would the people living on this island have settled?", "What route would they have traveled over time to reach their nearest neighbors?", "What would their economy of been focused on?" ... "Oh I know, these two towns have a trade relationship" ... "Okay now I've established a trade route between two settlements, in game lore for two settlements, potential game conflicts for two settlements, all based on nothing more than using a collection of pixels as a brainstorming tool".

I liked this 'cause there's a lesson (depth/immersion-wise): one does find RPGs in which, while mechanics are great and all, many things are there just for no reason whatsoever. I like when there's a reason for everything, and I've tried to do that a little whitin my project: like if there's a little random drake somewhere I must think "WHY is it there? What does he eat? Whose pet is it? Does it have magic? Is it lost? Can I adopt it? Can my Druid speak with him? What happens if I interact with it... O__o..." (takes time though, thinking of all these details). I was reading precisely today a conversation regarding immersion and logical continuity whithin the story.

Regarding progress as such... I should like to think there's some kind of progress in research for inspiration too? (perhaps it's just wishful thinking and sugar-coating to deal with my own procrastination, I know ), but I was busy in my scholarly research about skills, the Alchemist Class and the different approachs to Poison, when I suddenly found the most delightful things about Gandalf's Spells. just felt like sharing, for inspiration. Hope it helps someone somehow, as for me I was very inspired by it.

 

[bgillisp]

@Kes : It's funny you bring that up as I was supposed to have an Orc town in my game, but I couldn't find sprites for that either. Ended up replacing them with another race in the end though.

@Celianna : How long did those backgrounds take you to draw? They look really nice.

@Marquise* : Paperwork, no fun. Maybe you can make a sprite of the deadly paperwork that you have to defeat next? Take out frustration that way?

@Andronius : It's funny you mention that, because I had to actually think about dragons in my game and how to handle them. Lead to some interesting lore in the end, and a few misconceptions about dragons.

@Lantiz : Congrats on getting that system done!

3.15 Update: Had a little free time in the afternoon today due to Spring Break, so spent it rebalancing a few skills which were too powerful, fixing a skill that just didn't work, and then fixing the NPC's in Emberfield so they change what they are saying based on where you are in the plot. Though, since they are in the middle of nowhere, and more worried about their crops or fish than anything else, they don't usually know much of what is going on in the area either.

 

[Celianna]

@bgillisp I streamed 3 of them, took me 4 hours for 3 backgrounds. It depends on how much detail is in them though! The convenience store with all the little food items took away longer than just a simple hallway. Regardless, I can make them quite fast due to the simple perspective and art style.

Currently working on adding chapter 12 to my game, and readying all art for it. At least I've finished the backgrounds, but I still need to do some more portrait expressions.

But it looks fancy!

 

[Lantiz]

Thank you, @bgillisp

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Oh, God. It's been a minute. One massive power outage, one car tuneup, and just some life later I finally got back on my desktop today. I'll have to catch up with everyone's updates here later on, but I started a few new drafts and I'm sticking to one. It's a different piece (wow, this is so typical of me). So, come Hell or high water I'm hoping to have some sort of new resource done this weekend. XD

 

[bgillisp]

@Celianna : 3 in 4 hours? That's still pretty good! Ever thought of making a battlebacks pack in that style once you get all the Ancient Dungeons stuff done (and your other new tileset)?

@Ms Littlefish : Welcome back!

3.16 Update: Spent today mapping the tower needed for the last quest for Emberfield, implementing said quest (and rewards), and placing all the monsters and drops. Took very little time in the end as all the monsters were ready to go (thankfully), as they were the same groups used in the last few Emberfield quests.

From there, I revisited the start of Chapter 3, where the party has to pick a way to get to a destination. I've only ever had one route implemented well, so I looked at the others, and decided whether to keep them, or axe them. I decided to drop one route, and put in an alternate route instead, one which made more sense in the game world (and also fixed a slight problem of the party hitting a point of no return when they shouldn't have been able to, as this route is 2 way). Set up the transfer events for the route, still got to place the other events related to it.

Then edited a Chapter 1 sequence since it now references a route that doesn't exist. Have to do the same with the Chapter 3 intro too, but will do that tomorrow as I need to take a break, so I noted it in my design document that it needed to be done so I don't forget about it.

 

[Kes]

@Arithmetician I hope you're getting all you need from that thread on balancing ailments. I thought there was a lot of useful stuff there.
@Andronius That Gandalf list was fun. Thanks.
@Marquise* Hope the paperwork is done now.
@bgillisp I find it perfectly understandable that people will be more worried about their crops than what this bunch of itinerants is up to - unless, of course, they suspect them of raiding the fish stocks.
@Celianna 4 hours for 3 backgrounds sounds like top speed to me, despite your disclaimer about simple style and perspective. It's still a heck of a lot of work. I'm glad that you're able to get through them like that, seeing as how you have such a slog with the text typing.
@Ms Littlefish Nice to see you back on the thread.

My update
Didn't have much time. Made more orc-sized furniture. Seems a lot of work for something that I shall probably never use again. Oh well. Mapped the outside of the village, and evented the cut scene there where our heroes have to continue to try and prove their innocence.

 

[Marquise*]

@Kes and @bgillisp -BTWnice critters I hope, BG- well, Taxes and rent papers... :S Kinda half done a bit but too late on some bits as I wait some bits! ^^; But as for revenging myself on sprites (I start from papers anyway)...

Progress;
Had finally a full day with PyxelEdit... my computer fighting my mouse and DC fighting a lung clog :x So I enjoyed a lot of double click and single click to nothingness... My old HEAVY pro MouseManWheel from Logitech was of no help *insert cries*and random erase all layers from plain sight bug and we don't recognize your keyboard/harddrive updates (I HATE WX!!!). But otherwise than that, PyxelEdit was a SMOOOTH operator and I was quickly at above my regular speed with spare crap mouse. And finally, tried to experiment with animated .gif

And it gives...

Yeah Rambo blade tail and wings to finish and see if I made more mistakes! I kinda didn't yet learned how to deal with my semi transparencies and animated functions yet. That is why wings looks like crap! Sorry!

 

[Arithmetician]

@Kes Yes, I think I got several useful ideas from it. See some of them in practice below.

Spoiler: New Bard Skills and Balance Tweaks

Implemented cool downs on a number of spells that I don't want spammed, such as Lullaby. I also increased its MP cost by 50%, and shortened its duration slightly. Also, sleeping enemies will recover a little bit of HP each turn.



Also implemented two new skills, with animations, for the Bard for a total of 12 (partly so they have the same number of spells as the Hex, their opposite class, and partly because I wanted them to be able to have songs affecting/based on TP).

As for why Mystic Chorus's MP is out of whack compared to the others, it is simply 40% of the user's MP. Given that Muse's Melody now exists, I may need to think about the balancing a bit more carefully, as that temporarily breaks the regular game balance for a turn. But on the other hand, getting 100 TP takes a while.

I guess I'll revisit the issue tomorrow, and nerf if I deem necessary after more play testing.

Made some minor adjustments to the animations for the songs instead, centering most of the buffing ones rather than having them be over the screen.

Edit: Adjusted some cool downs, experimented with interactions with other skills.

Also, implemented Yanfly's Turn Order plugin and expanded my IconSet - I think hiddenone's potions will be quite helpful.

Spoiler: Turn Order Implemented

Additionally, spent time thinking about names for Armors and referencing those in games I've played for more ideas.

 

[Kes]

Yesterday was super quiet, could it be that a lot of people were celebrating in one way or another?
@Arithmetician I like the idea of sleep restoring a little HP. I'm doing that in my own project. It balances the skill, but also seems logical somehow.
@Marquise* I know he's not finished, but he's already looking threatening. He's moving too fast in the GIF to see much detail, but what I can see I like. I'm pleased that PyxelEdit is working out for you.

My update
Spent a long time - and failed - to solve the problem of lighting bleeding into ceiling tiles when using a script. As it's a light the player is carrying I obviously can't use an overlay. It looks like I will either have to go without the torch or accept what I think looks messy. Here's an example of what I mean.

Spoiler: torchlit ceiling tiles

I think I shall have to go without the torch, but that means not getting the dynamic shadows, which is an effect I like.

 

[Andronius]

@Arithmetician I also like the idea of sleep restoring a little HP, I recently had implemented that in my project too (the reasons @Kes said).
That's a nice Tileset @Kes ! which one is it? is it for MV? is it from an earlier verson adapted/resized for MV? could u provide the link to download it from FREE? That would be awesome.
As for my progress, not much recently, HOWEVER I do have a new March Goal: TO GET THIS TILESET.
And, I'm aware perhaps this is not the place to ask, please do forgive me if I'm seriously infringing the rules but I'm desperate! Been all day asking EVERYWHERE which tileset is this one and nobody has been willing to answer! I NEED THIS TILESET! Even sent the guy a PM to his YouTube account but nothing... NOTHING!
Perhaps one of u guys has seen it, or know where or how to get it?

Spoiler: WHERE CAN I GET THIS TILESET!!!!

 

[Marquise*]

@Kes Hey... your tile set gives me a taste to try mines over PyxelEdit too. BTW,I really have to DIVE into learning how to do a proper .gif in PyxelEdit... We almost don't see the jaw snap from the frontal angle!

Sorry for the lack of progress today I had to fix my prototype's gloves... only to remember that I am to do a St-Patrick's special... -_- Green gloves on P2! Uh well it will be done for later on!

PS: If I can't find a way to time out exactly the good way in PyxelEdit, I'll export a .png in Photoshop and work it from there! (yeah I know... this is how I started to do all my $Big_Monsters2 reputation... fixing a bug via Photoshop XD My panacea for almost everything.)

 

[Kes]

@Andronius I am using Ace, not MV. That set is a heavily edited version of Celianna's Ancient Dungeons, so not free.

The image in your spoiler is not a tile set, which is why you can't find it. It is a picture. It's creation almost certainly involved one of the map making tools that are around. Many of them are not free, but you might like to check out Celianna's World Map Maker. The post refers to having to open it in PhotoShop. That was true then, but GIMP (free) can now open psd files. Once you've made your map you can import it into any engine, as it is a picture, so the tile size is irrelevant.

 

[Andronius]

Thanks for answering @Kes , most kind and I do appreciate the info. Perhaps I should have taken a screenshot , but I wasn't refering to that yellow worldmap picture, but to the tilset shown in the video (if you could spare 2 minutes, when you hit Play the vid takes you automatically to min. 16', where those tilesets I was refering to are shown. I'm sure you must know or at least have an idea of which resource is that. Would you mind having a look? I've already asked everywhere else).

 

[Kes]

@Andronius In the main that's Celianna's tiles. There is a free set for Ace, but I'm not sure if there is for MV, you'd have to look. And not everything there is an equivalent of the free set.

External - At least some of it seems to be from Fantastic Buildings Medieval, which is a store pack, not free. If there is an MV version of Ancient Dungeons, then that would also account for some of them. The opening external section is using what appears to be BenBen's large trees - you need to search GranmaDeb's posts for the correct credits there, because BenBen used other people's resources as well as his own to create things. Those 4 sided thatched roofs are edited. I'm saying that because I've created a lot of roofs like that as roofs are usually flat A3 style, or straightforward slanted roofs like the middle one at 15:44. It could be that they are presets like the ones in Fantastic Buildings, but there is no tile set that I know of which provides them like that.

Internal, again they look like Celianna's. I am not familiar with what's available free and what's shop bought for MV, but I am certain that at least some of them are Celianna's - that chandelier is a signature item with her.

As this is now getting way off topic, if you have any other queries, it will need to be done either in Resource Requests (best, as other people may have information) or in a pm - but I don't think I know any more than I've said.