November Goals and Progress Thread

I'll start by saying that I'm glad to see this thread being active - and people talking about IGMC stuff! I didn't participate, myself, but I will try to test a few games.

My progress for the first week seems to be full of "no, but..." sentences. In other words, I didn't get anything from my list completely done, but I worked a little on a few things.

• I've spent most of the week away from my apartment and forgot to take with me the notebook containing my plot outline, but I decided to write down the rough backstory of town 2 anyway and plan the buildings it will contain.
• The commentary I got for my bust graphics didn't help me out as much as I would have perhaps hoped, but I came up with a few idea for possibly improving them and jotted them down.
• I also finally updated my project and plugins to be compatible with MV 1.5.1.
• While the title screen is still in works, I got greatly inspired by a music pack someone bought me from the Steam sale, and now I have a relatively good idea of what it will look like (and finally came up with a logo/typography of sorts).

It'll take me a few more days until I can access my notebook and tools again, but I think I'll try to map town 2 next and maybe try my hand at making those rocky cliff tiles.

 

@lianderson I'm trying to imagine myself mapping 13 mini-dungeons in one day, and failing. How small is 'mini'? Smaller than default map size? How much 'decoration' do you put in?
@Schlangan Oooh, that's evil, specifically targeting the healer. Well done.

Good to see so many people continuing to work on their IGMC games. Looking forward to seeing how they turn out when they've been polished/expanded/debugged or whatever.

My update:
Aaannnnnnd another cut scene bites the dust. Just one more small one to do to pull together a few threads, and then I'm going to have to get serious about tiles and mapping out the next area. I still haven't tracked down animated SV battlers for my enemies (at least the ones I have in mind), so I may do that when I need a break from messing around with tiles.

 

@Kes Hope you don't cut too much in your cuts (cutscenes).

 

I think I finally ironed out most, if not all of the glitches in my demo. I'm going to upload a fixed version soon, then after than an expanded version of the demo that includes some of the things I didn't have time to add, like history books on the book shelves, and side quests.

 

YAY Got back on tha Pangofly Dragon! Annnnd... gah! After all back wings setting had to stop to go to the vet tomorrr ack... Later on today! Else I would had spent another 20 hours on it

 

@DragonVine But are you the person I think you are? Have you changed your avatar, or are you someone else?
@Marquise* So Pangofly Dragon is still with us?

My update:
Finished the final cut scene, so that's this location finally wrapped up. I've pulled together some of the tiles I need for the swamp. Tomorrow I'll try and do a quick colour test map.

 

@Kes They're just 60x90 side dungeons scattered throughout the game with little to no decor. They're more like tiny mazes that have a few fights and a collectible (demonic shard) at the end.

Created a new town with 22 buildings. Also made it so that the more demonic shards you collect, the more buildings you're allowed in, and the darker the place becomes. (ya, I know, the game is naturally dark, but this town starts off as one the brightest in the game due to it being so Southward)

Speaking of which, made sailing Southward automatically brighten up the screen, and created 5 more puzzles to help populate the new forest areas up in the North East.

All I got now is linking up a few areas, and then the mapping phase is fully complete. Getting my head ready for this large writing phase coming up. Gonna have to do 50+ NPCs, 20+ books, and at least 5 quests. Should take 2 weeks. After that comes a week of databasing, then testing, and then finally, upload.

 

4 intense days for work meant almost no game progress. Finally got some progress to post today though.

11.10 Update:
-Finished Blackmire Castle. Now the NPC's are there, and everything is set up to respond to the key events late in the game. Also the guards will now say something when you talk to them (something I had left out and the testers caught).
-Fixed up the Mushroom Caves in Blackmire. Deleted about 3 battles from the main route where I had them a tad bunched together.
-Added more Secret Rooms. Due to the side dungeons in Chapter 9 that I've added on and giving them some Secret Rooms, it looks like I'm going to now have 50 Secret Rooms. Edited the numbering for the Secret Rooms for Chapters 1 - 3 to reflect this.

 

@Kes Hahahaha, I'm the same old DragonVine. No more Batman in the avatar, at least for now. It's pixel me for now hahahaha.

I am now working on compressing the image files and sound files to reduce the size of my game a little bit. I shaved off a ton of file size without losing quality. I'll be uploading a fixed version of the demo before long.

After that, I'm jumping into my other goals.

 

@Kes yup! Still alive for a sprite and kicking... errr panting!

 

Update 1.0
Finishing my first game this month is nigh-high impossible.
Revised Novembuh goals: Finish 1/4 of the game.
Didn't know that even scaling the game into 12 maps, two dungeons, less than 20 NPCs, is this taxing.
Well, that's what a noobie is!
(Got that out of my system, okay.., back to lurking)

 

Just started to get back into my project and couldn't stay away from this thread.
I'll start small for my goals:

• update MV to the newest version and hunt down updates for the plugins I'm using (after three or so months, there's bound to be updates)
• figure out where I left off and avoid it like it's contagious as it's sure to be the reason I was in a huge slump with no drive to work on anything and change it into something else since it obviously did not work out

Well, and the usual "Try to work on my game every day" and "Try to post updates at least every other day". : D
It's funny how my "Trying to learn a language or two, oops, how did that happen; nope, two is too much, one has to go, I'll try again in a few years" adventure was the thing to reignite my drive to create stuff, definitely recommend it. xD

Hope everyone's gonna have a productive month!

 

@lianderson Hmm, 60 x 90 with no decor. Hmm...
@bgillisp Having to renumber all the secret rooms - I know your pain. Been there, done that.
@DragonVine Yaaayy! Someone else who takes the trouble to reduce file size! I wish more people did it.
@pandadodod I think until you've done it, everyone underestimates what's involved in making a game that's playable, especially the time needed. Don't rush it. It is much better to take a bit longer and have a game that's fun to play then a quick fix which is boring.
@Chiara So good to see you back. I'm looking forward to seeing what you get up to.

My update
Been messing around with the skills for the final character. I've also got the sprites for my enemies done.

I'm going to be more or less away now until Friday (work things, sadly, not a break).

 

@Chiara YAY~! You're back! ^^ Aww please show us what you have been to recently. ^^

 

Huh, it seems that I return at the same time Chiara does. Who would've thought?
Anyway, I don't have anything ambitious planned for November, being that it is the busiest month of the year for me. It *is* almost Thanksgiving, after all, and working in a supermarket makes that interesting, let's say.

 

@Kes : The skills for the final character bit sounds like you're quite advanced already, or does it only sound like this? Hope work things won't drain you too much.
@Marquise* : I haven't done anything those last months, sadly, so nothing to show.
@VideoWizard : Didn't that happen before or am I imagining things? xD Good luck getting stuff done despite November.

Progress, Nov 11th:

• identified what I'd worked on last and mentally removed it from existence. Which means I'll have to figure out an entirely different architectural style but that shouldn't be much of a problem
• turned out I already had updated MV some time ago, so I only had to update the plugins, which I then did

This means I've finished my first goals already. Small steps and all that.
So my next goal is:

• play around with Yanfly's Quest Log Plugin and see if it does the things I'd want it to

 

@pandadodod
Wow, sounds like a good progress, and aiming for a small size is the best you can do! Most games that were cancelled were cancelled because they grew too large to ever be finished^^

@Chiara
Good luck with that! Do you have something specific for your questlog in mind?

So my goal for november is to finish my advent calendar, which means:
-preparing the resources for the missing days (17/24 are done)
-prewriting some of the days (as there are some days where I just come home to sleep)
-(optional) making an banner for the calendar

The hardest thing is to find a good size for the daily content, and to create something I really think people have a use for. I considered asking some people if they want to help me with some small mockups using the content of that day, hm. Maybe I should try that?

 

- Fix the few bugs left in my entry for the IGMC 2017 and submit a slightly better and updated version of it. DONE

NEXT
- Play some entries.

 

I managed to upload a fixed version of my entry for IGMC. You can find it in the link in my signature. Next up for my progress and goals, I hoe to add some side quests, rework the intro scene a little bit, and finally add a little lore in the form of books to the world I'm working on.

 

@Chiara I'm fairly well advanced. I have 9 hours of game play at the point where this character is about to join, but I would expect that for a player that would be 10-11 hours at least, assuming they do everything. Total running time (for me) will likely be around 12 hours, so say 15 for a player.