May Goals & Progress Thread

[bgillisp]

@mlogan: Squirrel!

@mirpono: What I do is I open up the second project when I need a break from the first. However, you do have to be careful with that or what will happen is none of them get done as you constantly hop back and forth.

@ksjp17: I hear you on the character development, in fact that was why I had to rewrite some cutscenes last month as they were going in the wrong direction for some characters.

Rest of posters: Looks like lots of plans for this month! Good luck, and try to not get...squirrel!

5.1 Update: Spent today coming up with the remaining two skill sets that I had to do. I had put them off as those characters don't join the party until Chapters 4 and 5 respectively, but getting them down means I can now make enemies that use those skills.

Plan for tomorrow is to draw that last map I need for chapter 3, then write the dialogue for that map if I still have time left.

 

[Marquise*]

Let's start. The beta is out now so my goal for May will be to kill all the bugs in the game.


*sings*


99 little bugs in the game.


99 little bugs in the game.


Take one down, patch it around.


127 little bugs in the game...


*stops singing*

You made me giggle in there!


Typing about Squirrels, I got one today flattening down the low metal fence in my neighborhood on my way. So well I wondered if this was a fur toque or anything. Then when I made sure and it understood I saw it because I started to stop and talk to it. It started to flee until I chittered squirrel to it and it turned stunned and looked at me and I stuck my tongue out in plain universal mammal Peace sign. I knew then it was Summer!


All right MY TODO list in here; (Hope personal goals don't get in but it is on a 15 lines French todo list Let say if I can only make 5 of them I'll be happy in my current situation.)


RPGMaker Vx Ace wise;


*do the map story contest


*finish secret spriting special project II


*do the Dragon


*Get a new Custom Housing! housing


*Do two log to what I know this month minimum


*Do Signature video


*Do banner graphics (animated?)


*Do one of the to do list in Custom Housing!


*Translate one JaM full Episode into English


*Translate RPGM2K3 into French if possible


*Get new files on drives


*Get more elaborated on dope-sheets on someone's experiment


*DON'T GET MORE PROJECTS BEFORE JUNE


*Pool-list my game ideas


*Classify by importance, non-commercial to commercial, my game ideas.


And I think I can wait tomorrow to order my IRL TODOs as I survived April!


(I wish I could describe how a very God blessed day I had today. ^^ But I wish I could had saved a seemingly lost nice cat! )

 

[VideoWizard]

@Denna And then it could be a signed 8-bit integer, that either has rolled over a few times, or a few more bugs will give you something ridiculous like -114 bugs. Yes. MINUS 114 bugs. Isn't it grand? It'd probably be lucky to "only" introduce 28 more bugs in a patch.

@Marquise Ambitious for just May. What happens in June, where it says don't get any more projects before June? That list probably would keep me well into Fall, if not Winter. I'm not an expert, but I would think translating RM2k3 would take at least until the end of July and not May. I'm basing that off RMVXAce releasing in December in Japan but March in the rest of the world.

@mirpono I used to try to balance projects like that, with the end result being that nothing really got done.

Ah, it's that time already.

Goals for May

-Reach 8% completion of Dragon Kingdoms Remake. That entails getting to the end of the Lakeland-Renzan Caverns. I'll need some of those Mana Tree lookalikes for the Renzan and Renzola area. For everything (and almost everyone) is of epic scale in that part of the world. A fantastic landscape to be sure. But that (probably) is in June.

-Post more screenshots. Starting to reach some different areas, so everything doesn't look too much the same. Round 3 of screens is roughly around the 5th, round 4 perhaps the 20th and round 5 late May/early June.

Best bet: May 1-7, 15-21 & 29-31. So-so: May 8-14 (Mother's Day) and 22-28 (Memorial Day). Cinco de Mayo, the May-Pac boxing event and Armed Forces Day shouldn't impact development too much overall. Expecting May 2 to be similar to Super Bowl Sunday, but nothing severe.

Fri 5.1.15- Starting off May finishing off an area started in April. There are about 15 maps left of Lakeland Island, so it's gonna be close. That also about equals the amount done so far, but there is something to be said about momentum.

As for the area in question, if you head north into the sands too early, you'll hit a sandstorm. Not only do the Sand Worms not mind it, but Cactots love it, too. Thomas will warn you of the conditions in the desert, and if you insist on continuing, you'll be shoved back out of the desert. "Where do you think you're going, (hero)?" Do this three times, however, and William will give up and let you pass. That's not a good thing, though!

There's an elemental that comes out during sandstorms. Attacking it does minimal damage, and magic spells just aggravate it to the point that it will utterly destroy you. Just run for now!

 

[Another Ned]

@mlogan: Squirrels! note to self: don't admit that I've been staring at them for ten minutes.
@Galenmereth: Looks very interesting, love how the items fall down at the beginning.
@ksjp17: This I have to take notes on: adding foreshadowing afterwards (just realized how much I've missed extrapolating pieces of wisdom such as this one from updates).
@Mirpono: You could flip a coin. If you feel reluctant to use what the coin flip tells you, take the other one (it's something I tend to do. Though this comes from someone with two active projects, so...). In any case, good luck with your choice. : )
@bgillisp: I like it when enemies have "access" to the same skills as the players.
@everyone (else) who posted goals: Lots of motivation and what else might be needed!

@VideoWizard: (you were posting while I was typing this, almost didn't see you. This has happened before D: ) The sandstorm area sounds fun (in a way) and I feel somehow reminded of the first Darksiders game, where walking on sand wasn't at all encouraged (loved the mood this set). Can the player somehow survive this or is it designed to punish the player who thought that ignoring warnings was a good thing to do?

Yesterday's progress:

• Island Crawler: thinking about the... well, not exactly the antagonist, but part of the antagonistic force, Akkid, and just what exactly made her become someone like that. Then I noticed that she actually was lacking something that was considered a given by her people which led to some of her motivations. I also thought more about the main character Fhal and their motivations and realized that I need to write every other character with their possible interactions with the main character in mind (and not only because I had decided early on to write every in-game text from Fhal's POV) which led to some interesting developments regarding NPCs and party members
• also decided to un-discard the first sketch I made of one NPC since it's actually quite close to the new image I have of her in my mind (some revisions are still needed, though)
• did an unrelated sketch, so yay for drawing stuff!

 

[DragonVine]

Goals:

• Finish my main map.
• Get started on my getting my systems set up
• Keep reading tutorials on Ruby in an effort to learn how to script.
• Potentially buy the Luna Engine.

 

[Hollow]

@Mirpono: Perhaps you should sit down for a bit and write down what excites you about each project. That might help you narrow down which one really interests you more and would be more fun for you to work on. Of course, if that still doesn't help, Chiara's suggestion is an excellent alternative!
@Marquise*: Oh my, that is quite ambitious for one month. Maybe you should move some of those to a "Would be Nice" list instead? Just don't want you to stress yourself out trying to finish all of that in such a short amount of time.


May 1st and 2nd, Progress:
Both days have been spent working on sprites for the main party. I actually finished three yesterday (the first two, plus one for another outfit of the first's), but it took a lot of messing around to get the red-haired guy to look how I wanted. Still not 100% liking it, so I may go back and redo it at some point, but he's good enough to call "done" for now.  

 

[wynautastronaut]

Let's try this again

- Mapping. I would like to get it all done, but I always end up coming up with more stuff to map. 

- Battle system is partially complete. I would like to finish adding all the skills, states, animations, enemy stuff, etc. 

- Event tons of things, including the first dungeon.

I wish I had more to show for my progress more often. Maybe I should make that a goal too. Here's a little something I added last month.

Spoiler

This is supposed to be inside a vardo day and night. I realize it's a little wide but the sprites are fat :/

These are the things I added:
- Change outfits at the closet. There will be very few individual armor pieces (head, chest, legs, feet), instead they will be combined in outfits and each will have different stats. 

- Cook food at the little stove thingie

- Craft jewelry at the table to be equipped, sold, exchanged, given, etc.

 

 

[bgillisp]

@Chiara: That's the intent of my battle system. Everyone is of one of 8 elements (plus a class), except for the rare (and outcast) Nulls, which cannot cast at all. For that reason, everyone has access to the same spell bank. It has resulted in some spells the enemy will be able to better use than a player (as it is better at slow whittling of resources) and some that the player will be able to better use than the enemy, but that's for the player to decide.

@Videowizard: How are you deciding your % completions? I've been going by chapters, but that is even a poor way to measure as some chapters take longer than others. Just curious what methods others use.

@Hollow: Sprites look fine to me, but I'm the gamer that could care less about the graphics as long as they are functional. Maybe other posters will have better feedback for you?

5.2 Update: Spent today eventing the rest of the rescue mission to retrieve your 2nd party member that you got separated from in Chapter 2, and set the stage for rescuing the third and final party member. Also tweaked the map a little in Old Elmwood to better match Chapter 3's use, and updated the optional boss down there to make it a challenge, but beatable for a Chapter 3 party. For those who beat it in the demo or demo beta, its a tad harder now as it actually has more than 2 skills (prepare to die, mere mortals).

Plan is to now map out the next location. I'll probably paper draw it sometime tonight still, so that I can implement it tomorrow quickly.

 

[esby]

@Hollow - They look fine from the front, do you have a side view ready yet. That's where I think Mack sprites usually suffer from only having three frames available. I'd consider softening the outline at the bottom of the face of the middle sprite, it looks a little unnatural right now.

@Wynaut - Looks good, I think you need to add a visible exit though.

Update 1
 - Got a decent grip on how the new tileset works and have settled on a scale to use throughout the game.
- Created a bunch on example maps I can use to test scripts, events etc.
- Started to import the scripts and decided to switch over to Gubid which, thankfully, isn't as complicated as I thought it would be.
 

 

[Kes]

@mirpono

congrats on getting the April goals done.  It sounds like you're going to have to use some will power to keep to just one project.  Decide, and then go for it.

@bgillisp

I find I'm tweaking (and sometimes more than merely tweaking) the skill sets long after the characters have joined the party.  Do you manage to get more or less the whole set sorted in one go?  Being a mere mortal, I expect I shall die in your game.  Actually, I've noticed that recently I'm dying more than I have for a long time.  I wonder if we're all gradually moving back to the difficulty levels/death rates of earlier games?  Some of those were insane (I've recently been replaying a couple from around 2002/2003 and so I've got the comparison fresh in my mind.)

@Marquise*

That is an exceptionally challenging list of goals.  I agree with Hollow, perhaps move some of them to a "nice to do" section on your list.

@Video Wizard

I like your device (which seems to be in several places) of giving the player ample warning, but then letting them go ahead and get themselves killed if that's what they really want to do, instead of permanently blocking the route until the "right" time.

@Chiara

You have a very professional way of going about your character/story development process.  It sounds like it's producing a lot of fruit.

@Hollow

I like the design of the sprites.  But the one on the right, the demon, there is something about the arm movement - I can't quite put my finger on it, and perhaps it's the combination of the arms with the movement of the clothes, but there's something not quite right about it, imo.

@wynautastranaut

I do like your 2 maps, very nice feel to them.

@Bear

(How do you get those symbols in your name?)

I personally haven't played a game using Gubid's system just seen lots of screen shots etc.  Does it play out like the old era games (e.g. Shining Force) or is it basically it's own thing entirely?

My update

Did the first big cut scene, and decided that the dialogue was a bit stilted.  I find that when this happens it's better for me to do another task for a while, and then come back to it with a fresh mind, so I carried on polishing.  Found a number of small things that needed a bit of tidying up, but nothing of great significance, which is a relief, apart from discovering a sitting sprite which is the ordinary standing sprite, instead of one of my special sitting down properly sprites, so I shall have to make another one.  Once she's done, I think I can say that the first 8 hours of game play have been thoroughly polished, and the remaining 7 hours (so far) are fairly well polished, so that pleases me.  I think the final length (assuming the player does all the side quests) will be around 17-18 hours.

 

[Blah_Blee]

I've finally released the beta of my game for today. Lots of bug finding and balancing left to do.

 

[VideoWizard]

@Blah_Blee Congrats on the beta release! Now the fun truly begins. "Why can I walk on water in this dungeon?" "Why can't I walk on these small pebbles?" "Why did the game run out of memory and eat my save?" (Actually happens in Hero's Realm, IIRC)

@ksjp17 Yeah, I might start back on events and such after I finish the eastern part of Lakeland. It does help to change tasks from time to time.

@wynautastronaut It seems like the maps just keep coming, don't they. 

@Chiara I suppose it is, if you don't stay in the sandstorm for too long, don't use magic on the elementals (they're weak to magic but it also aggravates them to the point of casting powerful spells to wipe you out), or don't see Spike Shot 100 from letting the Cactots stick around in battle too long (you don't want 100 damage). If you stay outside and away from an oasis too long, you'll get too hot and pass out.

Sat 5.2.15- Started on the Lakeland Ranch map. Not a lot else was done, but it's something!

 

[Marquise*]

@Marquise Ambitious for just May. What happens in June, where it says don't get any more projects before June? That list probably would keep me well into Fall, if not Winter. I'm not an expert, but I would think translating RM2k3 would take at least until the end of July and not May. I'm basing that off RMVXAce releasing in December in Japan but March in the rest of the world.

Doing 5 of this will keep you busy until winter? alllllright....

@Marquise*: Oh my, that is quite ambitious for one month. Maybe you should move some of those to a "Would be Nice" list instead? Just don't want you to stress yourself out trying to finish all of that in such a short amount of time.

I saw many more doing more than five things on this list last month... What is it with peoples I know that I caught 7 bedbugs since last exterminator visit and been siphoned by one bigger than an apple seed... But to think I am too drained...


BTW did nothing today but aim my pants... by mitain! No machine! All alone. Not over yet! I walk too much too many kilometers.


@wynautastronaut


Beauty... Just beauty

@Marquise*


That is an exceptionally challenging list of goals.  I agree with Hollow, perhaps move some of them to a "nice to do" section on your list.

There is a line over that list ending with a parenthesis! :S That's it I am getting so old I am typo aphasic or something...

 

[Another Ned]

@Hollow: I don't know much about spriting, but somehow, the middle one's hair seems different stylistically from the other two's. Maybe because it's a larger area of the same colour..? But that is nothing I'd notice while playing, just thought I'd mention it. Another thing, the red-haired's face mask has very low contrast/is really close in value to the golden rims of his cape (note: me getting into detail to write something is a sign of me liking what I see).
I just realized that all three of them look like they are of different heights and builds, which I find great.
@wynautastronaut: Lovely colour schemes in your screens.
@bgillisp: Can the optional boss be revisited at later chapters? For those who give up after the Nth try and want to return at a later date?
@ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ: What I can see looks good to me (unintentional rhyme!). Learning how to use a tileset before the actual mapping process is something I need to remember. *takes notes*
@ksjp17: I can't even begin to imagine how much work polishing so many hours of gameplay is. *impressed*
@Blah_Blee: Congratulations! May you exterminate every last bug you can find.
@VideoWizard: Your game really sounds like it's fun to try out things (how to die/not die). And yay for starting on a map!

Yesterday's progress:

• more unrelated sketches. Even if ugly, they're a sign of me not giving up! note to self: do more photo studies!
• resisted the temptation of another several years old story idea I remembered and instead used its background information to flesh out the Island Crawler characters' backgrounds

 

[bgillisp]

@ksjp17: Not really. I had a (very) rough skill set for the IGMC version, then I redid all of them in August. Now that I've developed a few more chapters I decided to redo all of them so they are more balanced out. So technically this is pass 3 for creating/balancing them. However, this time I did notice I kept around 50 - 75% of the old skills (some moved locations, some changed skill sets), so I think it is getting closer. But chances are I'll be tweaking them more as the game is developed, especially the high level skills, as all I could do was throw numbers and hope they stick (for now).

@Chiara: That's the plan. Though if you do return, by then the reward might not be as awesome in comparison to your current equipment. For example, the boss I mentioned, you can return to anytime until end of Chapter 4 (as 5 and 6 take place far away, so a return is not feasible until those chapters are done), or you can return in Chapter 7, but by Chapter 7 the party has better stats than this boss, making it a bit of a pushover.  

5.3 Update: I did a playthrough of Chapter 1 of the game, fixed the couple of bugs I saw, then uploaded the updated demo. I did do a major edit to one of Yanfly's scripts before hand though (it appears the lunatic states script is missing the eval line, so you can't actually use the custom conditions part of the script, as it never runs them!), so I'm hoping I got all of the bugs out of the way before going public.

However, I found a bug right after uploading (not related to the edit), tried to update the download link, and mediafire appears to not want to let me upload right now. Go figure. Oh well.

 

[Kes]

@Blah_Blee

congrats on getting your demo out.  Now comes the nail-biting bit while you wait for people to try it out and give you feedback.

@videoWizard

something is better than nothing.

@Marquise*

7 of them?  Oh no. When is the exterminator due back?  It must be fairly soon, iirc.

@Chiara

sketching - oh good, I like your style of sketching.  Even if they are unrelated, I would have thought that it was important to do it anyway so as to keep the creative juices flowing.

@bgillisp

finding a bug straight after uploading?  Yup, been there, done that, got the t-shirt.  I think it's an immutable law of the universe, akin to the law of gravity, that this will happen.

My update

I deliberately had a light day today, just doing some more polishing, but not trying to do anything new.  Tidied up my resource thread a bit, because things have just been added as I found them on my HD, so it was a mess.  The nature of what I'm putting there means it will never look well organised, but it's a bit better now.  If I call it "resource management", can I make it count for here?

 

[EternalShadow]

Fixed over 50 bugs in one day (closer to 75 I reckon), added a couple of utility scripts, created four more maps, added two new cutscenes, modified balancing of some enemies, created about three or four new skills... and more. Phew - that's a lot for a weekend!

 

[Hollow]

@bgillisp, ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ, ksjp17, and Chiara: Thank you guys for the feedback!
 
@ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ: I did change that black line under the middle sprite's chin to be dark gray rather than straight black, and it definitely looks way better. I don't have a sideview for the third sprite, but here's the other two:

@ksjp17:Those times are impressive! It's also good to hear that polishing is going fairly smooth--I personally think it's the most satisfying part of the development process, since you can finally see your game come together fully. (Also, fun fact! The "demon" is not actually a demon, but an elf! <: )
@Blah_Blee: Congratulations! :
@Chiara: Hm, I see what you mean about the middle's hair. I'll try to put a few more shadows/highlights in and see if that helps. And yeah, his veil's color is still a little iffy for me, too, so I'll probably play around with a few other colors before settling.
I'm glad you noticed their heights! I usually don't worry about stuff like that, but since 1) these guys are the main characters, and 2) there are major height differences between them, I thought it best to try to show that.
(If you're curious, their respective heights are as follows: 5'5" (~165 cm), 5'11" (~180 cm), and 6'6" (~198 cm).)
 
 
May 3rd, Progress:
So, after a bit of fiddling with the red haired guy's sprite some more and a whole lot of hemming and hawing, I think I'm going to eventually commission someone to do the sprite. I just have such a distinct picture of him in my head, and my current skillset is not doing him justice in the least. What I have at the moment should do fine for a placeholder, though.
 
Beyond that, today was spent mostly working on the menu faces for the first guy plus this weenie who won't let me pixel him properly >:/

Tomorrow, I'm aiming to finish coloring the one face, as well as start and finish the girl's. Then that'll basically be my first goal of the month completed!

 

[hiddenone]

@Hollow - I like the horned dude's design, but something that stuck out to me was the his cloak went behind the shadow on the ground which makes it look like he's standing on his cloak to me.  I did a quick edit to shorten it a bit and think it looks a bit better.

I spent the weekend sneezing, which means that my allergies have fully hit.  I know that that means I'm going to be even less productive than I'd like because I'm either going to be distracted by sneezes or out of it because of allergy meds.  So I decided to mess around and did some simple edits to make some more roofs and NPCs between sneeze attacks.

 

[Denna]

@Hollow: I love the faces. D: Especially the horned one. And it reminded me how I wanted to hide the faces of my Maskierten (Masked) behind their helmet. Should someone ever open the helmet.

Spoiler

And my update for Listen: We fixed around 30 bugs and misspellings at the weekend. Some unexpected gamebreakers occured due to encryption. We worked night and day long to fix the gamebreakers so that our testers could test at all. But it seems like we make everything in time.