November Goals & Progress Thread

[slimmmeiske2]

Up next: the Infanta based on Venere's portrait (XP), Alice Madness Returns (VXA), Ariel park dress (XP), Maya Fey (DS) and Miles Edgeworth (DS). Oh and I want to try out Sharm's XP/DS mix style :3

Finished all of them

Here's a preview of the chibi XP

Plan for next week is to make some more sprites in this style to use in my game ^^ As well as another mermaid sprite (a knight probably).

And Restaff! I definitely need to work on my Restaff submission.

 

[mlogan]

A mermaid knight?!? Can't wait to see it Slim!

@Michael - You'd probably be best off posting that map in the Screenshot Feedback thread. PM me though if you want my input - I don't want to clutter up this thread with it.

As for personal progress, it's been slow this week. I am trying to get past a boulder in my scripting knowledge that is blocking my path. But, I am learning a lot in the process and I think once I get it I will make big forward progress, not only for this script, but all future scripting.

Also, made an adorable title screen, so pretty things = fun!

 

[Marsigne]

November 6, 2014: I've made soldiers outside, and wanted to make the scene, but I thought of changing the ship, and reading and stuff, and I am going to make the map better with some tips and suggestions that mlogan told me. A lot of thanks, mlogan for the tips and suggestions, and for being friendly! . By the way, I am going to include a screenshot of the current state of the map, but tomorrow is where I'll start changing more according to the tips & suggestions mlogan gave me

 

[bgillisp]

11.7 Update: Redrew a map used in Chapter 1 to accommodate the regions needed for Chapter 3. Also started adding events and the first Chapter 3 boss fight. Starting to do some work on the sidequests too. Got tomorrow off so hoping to either take Chapter 3 up to the point where I need some new maps, or add my 2nd sidequest to the game.

@M_Michael: How do you get those screenshots of the full map? Mine take up more than the screen. Is there a good way to capture a screenshot of the map when it goes off the screen in the editor even?

 

[Marsigne]

11.7 Update: Redrew a map used in Chapter 1 to accommodate the regions needed for Chapter 3. Also started adding events and the first Chapter 3 boss fight. Starting to do some work on the sidequests too. Got tomorrow off so hoping to either take Chapter 3 up to the point where I need some new maps, or add my 2nd sidequest to the game.

@M_Michael: How do you get those screenshots of the full map? Mine take up more than the screen. Is there a good way to capture a screenshot of the map when it goes off the screen in the editor even?

Press any of the scale maps that fit the map completedly (1.2, 1.4, or 1.8), then use the Snipping Tool from Windows to get the screenshot within you want.

 

[TheoAllen]

Changed my goal on this month. I'm still burnout from scripting stuff lol

I have a plan to finish the entire translation for help file into my own language.

It's not something to release to international forum. But I believe it would be very useful for my local communities

Spoiler

 

[Kaelan]

Decided to move my week 4 goal earlier and finish my maps before doing all the testing. Don't want to have to test things twice, haha. Making pretty good progress so far, finished a map today. That makes 1 more down, 4 more to go. Going to try to finish two more this weekend.

Spoiler

 

[Galenmereth]

November 8: Started working for serious on the game again. First things first: implementing my easing script and custom movement transition settings for all windows. Going very well so far! The easing implementation will be an addon to my Easing scripts when it's ready; I'm making it "for public use" from the get-go, so it should probably be ready in not too long.

 

[Marsigne]

November 8, 2014: Ah, couldn't do anything yesterday because the computer got shutdown while doing a startup repair process and when it turned on, nothing would happen, not even the BIOS came up. But today, the BIOS came up and I could repair the startup with the startup repair utility . But today, I've focused on mapping, and got a very different map from the first one. Thanks mlogan for the tips! The map is 65 x 70, and the screenshot doesn't get all the map, but it's unnecessary to get it all and it will make the map smaller and harder to see because of having to move to 1/4 scale to get the full map.

 

[Galenmereth]

November 9: More progress on the easing window addon. You can now

• animate all attributes separately or group them. Example: In the video, choice lists like the title menu animate x and y coordinates differently, with different timings and easing functions (y bounces, x slides softly in)
• delay animations (or groups of animations) to make sequential effects. Example: In the video, when message windows close, the text fades and then the window slides out
• also animate tint values using red, green, blue and gray attributes
• make an animation group as a preset by naming it something other than a class, then reference these as settings for window element animations, making it easier to handle animations that are the same for different window elements

 

[bgillisp]

Nov 9th: I took today off of the game, so reports are from yesterday. I added in a break - in scene into Chapter 3 where the heroes have to break into a place and 'acquire' something, but it is heavily trapped and warded. All traps are implemented and all wards are up and running, just need to implement the final room, and what happens now. As it is, I am debating two ideas for what happens on the escape, but one would make the chapter really long, so not sure I want to do that. Will mull it over for now, might implement a side quest or two while I think about it more.

Next two days are my busy work days, so probably no updates until 11/12 for me.

 

[Marsigne]

@Galenmereth - Nice, keep it up! definitely makes the windows more smooth, live, animated, etc.

November 9, 2014: I've made the events of people, and the event of the scene, but what is left is the conversation, the ship, then the jump or enter to the ship. I'd like to say something also and it is that because of doing daily tasks and then placing it here, I've made more progress than I'd do normally, so this event is nice for doing daily tasks, and progressing faster and better . A thing that might struggle is finding the ship, as I've found ships but not quite what I want

 

[mlogan]

The map looks better Michael! Definitely less square!

This past week has felt pretty productive for me. I got a nice rough draft mockup of a menu scene done. (It will change a lot as I make final decisions on features and such.)  I've made a tiny bit more progress on that ambitious script I've been working on. However, with the tiny bit of progress, I've gained a large amount of knowledge that will be useful not just now, but for many applications in the future.

I'm in the process of hiring a scripter for the custom script work I would like done. (It's far beyond my current abilities.) Just waiting on funds to be transferred for that. Once that piece is in place, I will really be able to start cranking out the levels for this project.

The wonderful Amysaurus drew me a fantastically cute piece for it.

Oh, and I compiled tile sets I want to use for now, frankened a water tile to my liking and started mapping out the first ten levels. (It's a platform game, so the levels are pretty quick.)

I think that it is about it for the past week. This week, I want to start working on implementing some of the menu scene (yay, more scripting!) and to finish basic mapping of the first ten levels. I will also keep plugging away at that pesky script.

 

[Galenmereth]

M_Michael: It's a definite improvement. I'd try to shuffle the decorations (boxes, sandbags, pots and the like) on the road to make it less symmetrical; a tiny bit of asymmetry can go a long way in making things feel more "alive"

I took a break from scripting today, and been working on mapping the desert town instead. I've never made one of these before, so it's proven challenging. Very fun! Here's a work in progress gif of the process so far:

 

[Marsigne]

@mlogan - Thanks
@Galenmereth - Thanks for the tip! how about now? Nice progress on that town, btw

November 11, 2014: Well, I've got things irl done, but making progress is better than nothing, haha. Since I didn't have much time today also, haven't done much but at least doing something and some thinking in their conversation while they go to the ship from the base. I've changed the crates and stuff in the harbor area what is left is the coversation and entering the ship, then the scene of here is finished (of the first time here).

 

[The Emperor]

I'm going to join in. I just want to release my game, I'm so close to finishing but everytime I play test it I just find another bug or go "hey I should add this in to make the game better." It's been almost two months since I said "yup gonna release this game" and then I added more stuff / fixed things.

Currently my ToDo list is

- I have to do the shading on the art for the title screen.

- Tweek fighting a bit more. Right now some of the fights just go way too fast.

- Fix a bug where on one of the endings the party isn't reduced to the main character

- Fix another bug where some of the txt in boss battles doesn't appear.

- Some last grammar and spelling mistakes.

Once these things are done I can finally release my game.

 

[bgillisp]

11.12 Update: The last few days was pretty busy with work, but I did manage to get a side dungeon implemented in the game. Side quest needs tweaking now, working on that as we speak. Also added an optional *really* hard boss to the dungeon which drops one of the best headgears in the game if you can find a way to beat it.

I posted the map under the thread for feedback on maps, waiting responses now so I can improve it some.

 

[Kaelan]

I'm so close to finishing but everytime I play test it I just find another bug or go "hey I should add this in to make the game better." It's been almost two months since I said "yup gonna release this game" and then I added more stuff / fixed things.

Haha yep, that's the same thing I've been running into. After months of using my combat system, I thought it was pretty smooth and bug free; sat down to play through the game a couple hours yesterday and ended up finding and fixing half a dozen bugs I didn't know existed.

My update for the week:

• Fixed a bunch of bugs. Apparently my pathfinding was checking collision completely wrong, but wrong in just the right way to make it look correct in 99% of cases.
• Spent some more time adding misc polish features to make gameplay smoother and provide more information to the player, like setting reddish backgrounds on items you can't equip while looking at shop inventory windows.
• Had a friend playtest my game! Still not ready for open public testing, but man is it refreshing to finally see someone else play the damn thing in person. He liked it enough to ask me for the next build as soon as it's ready for testing, so I'd say that was a pretty good outcome so far. In other news, I now have like an extra page of notes on bugs / features that should be tweaked.
• Mapped about half of the main dungeon that will be used in the demo. Underestimated the time it takes to add details and clutter to a parallaxed dungeon 150x150 tiles in size. Still, making good progress.
• Spent about a day picking out music, found lots of really good original tracks that fit the tone and mood of the game, slowly replacing the copyrighted stuff.

Things are looking good overall. Can't wait to get to the point where I have the demo ready for public release.

 

[Marsigne]

November 12, 2014: Finished conversation, and laughing and stuff while making some with my friend, haha, he's really funny. Now the ship's left, and I've got one, but struggling to get it on hehe, let's see if I can put a ship and finish by tomorrow. There won't be a screenshot today because the map didn't change.

 

[TheoAllen]

Finished translate all the entire database help files. Now working on the event helps

Spoiler