November Goals & Progress Thread

[mlogan]

 
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[SIZE= 18px]Only two months left for 2016?!? I hope everyone can finish out the year strong! Happy posting![/SIZE]
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[Mimironi]

Seeing that there's only two months left makes me feeeel more motivated.


I've been working pretty behind-the-scenes in art and moving things to MV.


This game was originally planned for VXAce (so that I could at least get one project out in VXAce after having it for so long),


but I decided to switch it over. MV has been sitting in my steam account ever since i bought it on sale a few months ago, and it's easy enough to switch things over, since im not far into development.

• This months goals: Make custom HUD's for all the menus and a custom message box. Low priority is to find some fonts.
  
• End of the year goal: Have a playable demo of one dungeon ready. Some things may end up as placeholders, but that's fine by me.
  

 

[PsychicToaster]

I want to start working on official mapping instead of just test maps by January, which requires me to finish writing out and detailing world locations and lore for Act I. Degica needs to release the Medievalungeons pack so I can see what I'll be working with in the future. 


Goals for November


-Write out Act I's in-game locations and their history, people, and lore. My favorite thing to do, and probably the easiest for me.


-Get plugins for diagonal movement, idle animations, and more SV battle frames set up, including the spritesheets. Ugh. Time consuming as hell.


-If I can't figure out how to make visual equipment, then pursue the only option:make a separate sprite sheet for each of the main party actors wearing each combination of gear. There isn't that much right now, so this should only take a day or two. Frustrating and a horrible waste of time, but for the time being, that might be all I can do.


-Prototype the huge city of Ironwatch. Like Baldur's Gate, this city is going to take up a lot of space and consists of more than one large map.


Lot on my plate. Solo developer who is motivated by youthful exuberance and possibly some measure of madness. I'll get it done if it kills me. 

 

[Kes]

Slinking back in, a little embarrassed at how little I was able to do last month, what with being away and so on.


This month doesn't look much better, as between 4th and 14th I shan't be able to work on the game at all, as I shall be in ultra high pressure mode in RL work, though I hope to put in a daily appearance to do a bit of modding.


Therefore suitably modest goals.

• I'm having huge difficulties making class changes compatible with stat allocation by the player.  I think I've worked out how to ensure that the player modified stats are carried over accurately into the classes chosen.  Whole problem caused by the engine's insistence that when you change class you go back to level one, and if you simply restore the level, you only have the database stats, not the modified stats.  It's going to be very finicky to do.  Lots of opportunities to muck it up.
  
• Map and event a major side event.
  
• If the world smiles benignly on my endeavors, I shall try and start mapping the next main plot line area.
  

And good luck to everyone else on achieving their goals.

 

[bgillisp]

Ugh, October was terrible for me due to having to get that book done. Thankfully, it is done (except for the proofreading run, which I need to do this month sometime). Hopefully this means I can do more game work now.


Goals:


-Finish the NPC's for Elmwood and Silas Rest. Those are the first two towns, so having them back and finished would allow me to call the first 3 hours or so of the game completely done.


-Finish the Character Sequences for Chapter 3. There's two of them to write out, but since it is different per character in the party that translates to about 13 or so sequences (due to who is in your party for each one).


-Finish rebalancing the monsters for Chapter 2.


-Flex goal: Rebalance the monsters for Chapter 3.

 

[hiddenone]

I've been AWOL from these threads the passed few months, but I'm really hoping that I can get more game making done this month.  I have worked a bit on my game, so maybe this is the month that I can actually get something out.  I'll go with some easy-ish goals to ease myself back into things:

• Make a game thread and get my demo up - I've reached the point that I need people to try out my game's crafting system, so I need to find some playtesters
  
• Work on more potion recipes and get them implemented - My game's all about crafting, so I need to add in more possible things to, well, craft
  
• Get a few systems tested and working - Got a few ideas that could add to my game, so I've gotta see if I can actually get them functional
  

Hmm, yeah those should keep my busy.  Good luck to everyone!

 

[bgillisp]

Good luck on all of your goals everyone!


11.1 Update: Fixed a couple Chapter 2 maps that were slightly off, tweaked a couple cutscenes, and got a few more NPC's made. I figure that's a good start for the first day of the month.

 

[PsychicToaster]

Update:established PC backstory. Original, he/she didn't have one that really connected to the plot. The only reason the PC was originally involved was essentially "because you were there when a thing happened". Not a great reason to get invested, and it felt shoehorned in just to connect the dots.  Now the PC has two things:


1. A personal reason to get involved in the story. 


2. A past that can lead to some conflicts in certain areas of the game world, open up potential for side-quests, and allow for some new companions for the party. 


So much for writing out lore today. Heh. At least I accomplished a thing. 

 

[Lantiz]

Oh you guys started already!


Wait for me!!


I'll try to work on the main city of the game, main NPCs and think about the lore.


Gona try to ballance replayability and felling... I want it to be memorable somehow even being random.


Let's see what I can do....

 

[Sharm]

Goals:

• NaNoWriMo!
  
• Finish that silly map tileset I started ages ago (didn't even add one thing to it last month)
  
• Finish my space station sidescroller tiles  (It'll take one day, tops)
  
• Work every weekday on Tiny World
  
• Update my blog once a week with previews and progress reports
  
• Maaaaybe do a really small fun tileset like for a mini game.
  

I'm not doing bad so far.  Got over 3k on NaNo already.  Now I just need to push some pixels and I'll feel accomplished for the day.


Edit:  Made some progress on the space station tiles.  Didn't do anything on Tiny World but I'm still counting it as a win for the day.

 

[Canini]

I didn´t reach my goal for last month, although I am happy with what I accomplished. Since this is the second month I have failed with my stated goal this month I am going to do something simple:


Designing a event-based minigame (already got the basics worked out) and playtest it. Basically you move the characters to different tiles in order to become stronger and defeat monsters. All that really needs finishing up is designing the boards and deciding how many instances of the minigames there should be. I am thinking 3-4 at the momement. This month for sure!

 

[Punamaagi]

In the spirit of NaNoWriMo (at least somewhat), I've decided that I'll try to make November a game-making month (NaNoGaMo?) and get at least something done for my game every day. I'll imagine that I'll be spending quite a bit of time working on the graphics, but I still need to finish some music as well and hone the party chat system to make it more personal for each main character. As always, there's a lot of work to do.


I started the month with something I had been struggling with for a while - namely, busts. I twice tried inking a sketch digitally last month and failed miserably, so tonight I decided to ink one of the sketches by hand, then scan it and continue working on it on my computer. The end result was much nicer and works at least for a placeholder bust for testing the correct X and Y coordinates and plugins. The only downside is that I got so enthusiastic that I forgot to get some rest.  Oh well, good thing that I'm a freelancer who can sleep during the day.

 

[Kes]

@Sharm Actually, where is your blog?  I thought I'd check it out but have no idea where to find it.


@PsychicToaster I'm glad you've fleshed out the backstory, I've seen a number of games recently where the reason for the involvement of the main protagonist was flimsy to say the least.  It doesn't encourage me to look any further.


My ultra-mini update


Did the eventing to make the stat allocation system compatible with changing classes.  It 'only' required 18 Variables to be set and then used at the appropriate stages, 12 event commands and 8 script calls per class.  Needless to say, I didn't get them all correct the first time round and had to change the order of some things.  But oh, the sense of accomplishment when I play tested and everything went smoothly!

 

[Sharm]

Oh yeah, I should totally add that to my sig.


http://starwisps.blogspot.com/

 

[Arithmetician]

Let's see, November goals:


Well, between grad school and work, I didn't make too much progress, and I know I'm going to be spending a chunk of time this month playing Stein;s Gate Zero and Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, so I should set simple goals.

• Actually get the plot properly fleshed out this time
  
• Create sprites for the rest of the character's job classes, and modify some designs as appropriate to the plot
  

 

[Cash12121]

I'm been so tired from the lack of sleep I've been getting for myself due to School, Work, and Extracurricular activities.


Meaning I've been lacking from my personal goals.


So I'm going to use this to get motivated! 


November 2016 Goals:

• Finalize GUI
  
• Flesh out Act 1's story, people, lore, and add meaningful choices.
  
• Make a blog and be active on it
  

Optional Goals:

• Get a playable test of the first Act
  

 

[Marquise*]

COME BACK 2016!  COME BACK! 


Hem... sorry, the time flew too fast.  Typing about flying, goals for November;


Make pangofly dragon wings and finish 3 thirds of the tails on the right to left line


*ack... forgot rear position scales not made yet.... -_-; *


Optionnal;


Grow a mustache for Movember and find my hypothetical bottle in case I am a genie!

 

[Lantiz]

Make a blog and be active on it

This is hard... even more when people never comment on it hahahahaha


Hope you get it running tho

 

[bgillisp]

@PsychicToaster: Fleshing out that lore takes a while I've learned. Bet you are glad it is done?


@Lantiz: One thing I did was put only the required NPC's first, and worked on those. Then added back the rest. Have you considered maybe doing that?


@Sharm: Want a laugh? I read that as finish my space station the first time. Was like wow, she has a full space station!


@Punamaagi: I'm actually surprised more don't try the whole work on the game for November as well.


@ksjp17: Only? Wow. That makes my 12 variables to do a point build system in a side project via eventing look light. Glad it is working!


@Arithmetician: Do you write the entire plot down first, or just figure out a shell of the story, and add to it as you go?


@Cash12121: How many Acts do you have planned for the game?


@Marquise*: 3 thirds of the tail? How many tails does the dragon have?


11.2 Update: Took a look at the first round of optional dungeons for Chapter 2, rebalanced the enemies in the first one, and set tints and fixed mapping errors in the second. Didn't rebalance the second though as the party is really not supposed to be there until Chapter 5, so will double check the balance when in Chapter 5.


Unfortunately, I got meetings most of the day tomorrow and Friday, so will have no progress most likely until 11.5. More then.

 

[PsychicToaster]

@bgillisp


Not at all. In fact, I can't stop writing things. In-game readable books, side-quests related to some of Aramour's storied past, why there are ruins in certain areas, hell, all weapons and armor have a lengthy description you can read if you want. Unique items all have a history as well. Past battles, previous states of government, magical lore, creatures, just...so much stuff. I have to make a list of what I actually plan on using and maybe include the rest as a downloadable lorebook or something. Maybe some extra readable content if players are so inclined to indulge.

The problem is, I have less lore for the main story than I do the rest of the world, which is how I wanted to do it. I felt that establishing the other, less important parts of the world would keep me from forgetting to make them detailed and interesting like I would with the areas related to the central narrative. So that's what I've got to do this month, get the first act of the game's lore up and running. I seem to be easily distracted though, because I'm just making more practice parallax maps instead. I need the practice, so technically I could consider this conducive to making a worthy RPG. Another thing I'm working on is tile edits so I can have a more diverse color palette that isn't just "LOTS OF GREEN!". Brown, dead looking grasses, different hues of trees, etc. Rather than trying to adjust all that in GIMP as I place it and creating more work in the process of mapping, I'd like to just have some different patterns and tileset edits I can load up for easy access.