November Goals & Progress Thread

[Lantiz]

@Lantiz I assume that's just until a demo is done, progress wise I mean?

The break? I just was not in the mood hahaha.


Been working on the demo again, just need to playtest.

@Lantiz: Do you try to do what I do and take one day off a week as well then?

I try to... but, being honest, sometimes I take long breaks and spend the week doing other stuff, like "nothing".


Thing is, I'm not really sure if I want to take game making only as a hobby (which is) or if I want to go ahead and try something bigger.


Ofcourse as every game developer I dream of success but, sometimes, when I'm a hobbist the game making goes slow, when I'm a developer it goes fast.


Makes sense? hahaha

 

[AceOfAces_Mod]

Progress Report #11:


-Continuing the story.


-Released Immortal Sins to the Windows Store! It's essentially the same game and engine, just packaged it in an appx package (along with a few tweaks so it works). Link to the store listing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/immortal-sins/9nblggh4spf3

 

[Celianna]

@Lantiz don't worry, I do this too with my work. In fact, most days I do nothing... This is due to my creative juices not flowing, and if I attempt to work, I get over exhausted and drained from the experience. So I only work in small bursts, even if it's only once a week. If it's more, I think I would grow to hate it. 

 

[Schlangan]

@Vox Novus : The boss before the final boss, I hope that it won't be stronger than the actual final boss  


@bgillisp : Is there a way to extend the allocated time ? Time limits are extremely annoying if not done well.


@AceOfAces_Mod : Congrats on the release.


My update :


I'm done with the cannon the party has to fight. Its firepower sends AoEs which require proper healing of the party, and the two androids on the way need to be beaten quickly if you don't want to suffer extended damage. I also added a new skill from the cannon, a diruptive EMP. Usually, when the fight gets hard, Michael's black aura triggers and he finishes alone the fight in berserk mode. Now, the disruptive EMP stops the black aura and increases for a few turns the attack power of the cannon and the androids. But the fight is doable, albeit hard.


Next step will be the cutscene with Schlangan explosing another similar cannon in one hit and joining the party before blasting through the mountain to reach the enemy base.

 

[Lantiz]

@Lantiz don't worry, I do this too with my work. In fact, most days I do nothing... This is due to my creative juices not flowing, and if I attempt to work, I get over exhausted and drained from the experience. So I only work in small bursts, even if it's only once a week. If it's more, I think I would grow to hate it. 

Exactly! Sometimes I don't event want to think about my game.


Updating: Testing and balancing, I think my demo will be ready by tonight. [:

 

[Kes]

I've fallen right behind with responding to individual posts and now there are so many, it's a bit overwhelming even to think of doing so.  My apologies to everyone.  I have, however, read them all, so I think I'm more or less up to speed on where people are.


It's the 30th, so time to evaluate progress against goals.  Here is what I set myself at the beginning of the month.

• 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.
  

I got the class changes worked out, the major side event has been completed, and not only did I start to map out the next area, but I have done a big chunk of it.  On the way, I sorted out a number of other issues, so I think I've finished way ahead of where I thought I would be.  I'm pleased with what I've managed to achieve.


Now for next month...

 

[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.

Look back on my goals for the month. Here is how I did on them:


-Finish Elmwood/Silas Rest NPC's. Nope. Didn't start


-Finish Character Sequences for Chapter 3. Didn't start.


-Rebalance the monsters for Chapter 2. Done.


-However, I did manage to get all my NPC sprites made, and all of them placed in the towns Dragonblast and Riverdale.


So overall, some progress, but not as good as I hoped. If not for that burst last week I'd have done awful.


A few replies too:


@Lantiz: I know what you mean. Surprisingly, I'm in this as a hobby and hopefully extra cash. I figure in this market the odds of going full time with game making is about 0.000001%, but if I can make enough to pay off a few bills I'll be happy with that.


@AceOfAces_Mod: Congrats on your release!


@Schlangan: Afraid not. However, it is 45 minutes, which is 3x how long it takes me to get all the treasures and run for the exit. I figure odds are good that will be plenty of time. Plus, the fact there is little penalty for failure (short of starting over) means you could go in once, take your time grabbing the treasures and getting a feel for the map, then come back and run for the exit (which takes maybe 5 minutes with battles if you know the route). Plus, the dungeon is completely optional on top of that, so if someone really hates the time limit, they can skip it.


@ksjp17: Congrats on the progress!


See you all on the December page!

 

[Vox Novus]

@Schlangan Nope, lol. Final boss will definitely be tougher. Sounds like that's how a cannon would fight.


@ksjp17 Sounds like you finished the month strong and achieved your goals; congrats.


@Lantiz I'll look forward to it! 


@bgillisp Ah, just blame it on the holiday. Time to hit it strong next month, good thing there isn't a holiday that will interf...Never mind. See you in December.


@AceOfAces_Mod Hey, that's pretty neat! Congrats.


Well since its the end of the month, I wanted to make sure to post. I was hoping to have my game done by now but its quite close so over all I nearly completed my goal. Will probably do more tonight so hopefully can get one of my final boss monsters drawn up. I did settle on a title screen idea finally. The window design is meant to look similar to one of Sharm's window tiles from the Retro Halloween set I'm using, I tried to make it look sort of pixel-like to match the set so hopefully I captured the look:

Spoiler

Since Pixel art isn't something I'm familiar with, I have someone else working on the game over screen. Hopefully, it will be done around the time I am with the project. Cheers, everybody! See you next month. 

 

[hiddenone]

Great job everyone, looks like a lot of work was done this month!


I've been quiet recently, though not by my own volition.  My computer ended up getting broken, so I wasn't able to do much of anything the last two weeks.  Let's see how that affected my goals:

• Make a game thread and get my demo up - Done!  I've gotten a lot of great feedback, and it's been really helpful already
  
• Work on more potion recipes and get them implemented - Also done!  Not a ton, but nine more recipes are fully in the game
  
• Get a few systems tested and working - Not done.  I've done some more thinking on the systems, but without my computer I can't get things implemented.
  

So not to shabby, especially considering my end of the month issues.  Guess I'll just have to work on my last goal next month.

 

[Arithmetician]

Our goals:

• Actually get the plot properly fleshed out this time - Backstory well-developed, prologue planned in detail, arcs of game sketched out.  I'd say good enough!
  
• Create sprites for the rest of the character's job classes, and modify some designs as appropriate to the plot - 114% (we made portraits for more classes than originally planned )
  

And then we exceeded our monthly goals:

• Began designing a world map, with major landmasses put down and detail added to northern continent
  
• Came up with preliminary relative stats for each job
  
• Conceptualized two additional classes: Elementalist and Valkyrie.  That also gives us an even 16 classes, enough to fill two Faces files.  
  

Since I've now got all of the designs for the job classes for all characters, barring minor changes, I might as well share them:


Job Portraits

Spoiler

Arthur





Freelancer, Knight, Cleric, Ranger


Mimic, Warrior, Magus, Rogue





Bard, Monk, Chemist, Elementalist


Hex, Fencer, Astromancer, Valkyrie


Lorelei





Freelancer, Cleric, Knight, Bard


Mimic, Rogue, Fencer, Astromancer





Monk, Warrior, Magus, Ranger


Hex, Chemist, Elementalist, Valkryie


Brenna





Freelancer, Monk, Hex, Bard


Mimic, Magus, Warrior, Fencer





Knight, Rogue, Cleric, Ranger


Astromancer, Chemist, Elementalist, Valkyrie


Angela





Freelancer, Warrior, Cleric, Chemist


Mimic, Rogue, Hex, Ranger





Knight, Magus, Bard, Monk


Fencer, Astromancer, Elementalist, Valkyrie

 

[mlogan]

Got December up!




Will be closing this one in the next 24 hours or so, but feel free to post any last November progress.

 

[OmegaGhost]

So... I was writing a very detailed analysis on my progress but lost it all due to bad Internet...


Allow me to resume as I'm extremely tired now.


First of all, congratulations to those who were able to complete their goals.


As for me, I had a busy 15 days with exams all over that blocked much of my progress, but I still accomplished something:

• Write down at least 40% of the detailed story of my project (I've most of it on various handwritten notes/my memory, that must change) DONE (on 3rd week)
  
• Create a small demo map with my own tileset FAILED (moved to december)
  
• Create a twitter and/or blog to be social and spread some of my stuff FAILED (moved to december)
  
• Dedicate at least 1 hour every day to spriting MOSTLY DONE (except a few days of this week, but I'm fine with that)
  
• Finally decide how I want my style to look like (currently I'm trying to balance realism and cartoony) MOSTLY DONE (now I just need more actual tiles)
  

I'll be soon posting on the December thread with my updated goals, and maybe even pop on the Screenshots and Plot/Character threads.


To December!

 

[Mimironi]

Lets seee, my goal that I set for the beginning of the month was: "Make custom HUD's for all the menus and a custom message box. Low priority is to find some fonts."


Plan out Custom HUD for all menus: "Failed", but I wasnt expecting to get them all done anyway. Got the main menu's HUD planned, none of the others.


Custom Message Box: Success. I think I'll have to make the box a little bigger though, but thats not much of a problem.


Font: Success. It wasnt too crazy to find a legible font that fit the game, the biggest problem was getting it to show up in the game

 

[Punamaagi]

I think I can summarize my November as "busts & bugs galore".

• I finished the first busts for the four main characters, but implementing a system to show them turned out to be more complicated than I expected. I spent good many hours working on a common event system which didn't work with different resolutions and then replaced that with a plugin (made by @Zelgadis85) which is already a whole lot more convenient even though it's still a beta version. All in all, I got my busts implemented, but it took much more time (and effort) than I had hoped.
  
• I found out and fixed numerous bugs, some of which required quite a bit of work. For instance, I ended up combining two version of the same map (one with an intact bridge and the other with a broken one) into a single map, turned the bridge into events and adjusted the scene on the map to work properly with a evented bridge instead of tileset bridge. (I guess I should have listened to you two thread ago, @bgillisp, when you suggested combining the maps ).
  
• After having a bout of despair and this-is-not-going-to-work-aaahhh, I decided that it was time to get systematic and made a spread sheet for my skills, states etc. It proved to be a good solution, as now all characters have the same amount of skills and I have a clearer idea of their roles and differences in combat.
  

Although I spent a couple of days without doing anything related to my project, I could probably say that my "NaNoGaMo"/game-making month was at least a partial success. I feel like I have a clearer idea of how I ought to continue and what the game will be like.

 

[Marquise*]

@Lantiz; impeccable Bollywoodian taste!


@Vox Novus& @Schlangan You haven't seen/imagined the Rambo-knife whip tailing attack


@bgillispWell... didn't had time with the werewolf and all...  err I think all it was was 3700 words... (


@ksjp17Hey no worries at least you didn't stayed idle.


Well, at least took a new dragon for a walk $priting wise!


Got a NaNoWriMo fail but some many small in-door and outdoor wins this month...  Still I wonder if I should keep it for next year, I had fun with my action sci-fi mash up where I could explore and exploit non-used character and twist some eighties one.


And...  Well, powered up my prototype twice for a charity for animals annnnd...


Just finished my werewolf in the Gustave Doré style kinda. 


Next month maybe try on Vampire, Zombie and... those dragon bites and the whiptailing attack?

 

[Lantiz]

@Lantiz: I know what you mean. Surprisingly, I'm in this as a hobby and hopefully extra cash. I figure in this market the odds of going full time with game making is about 0.000001%, but if I can make enough to pay off a few bills I'll be happy with that.

Yeah, I guess most of us feels the same way around here hahaha

@Lantiz I'll look forward to it! 

Thank you!


I was so close to finishing it last night, but I found a weird bug that I could not fix... I have no clue about what the problem is.


It was right in the boss battle.


About your title, I think the red text is a bit out of place. Maybe would be nice to add a black outline to it.


I'm not sure if it's a mock up tho, just an idea...

Make a game thread and get my demo up - Done!

#envy

And then we exceeded our monthly goals

#envy²

Got December up!

You're mean :/


I'm not ready yet, wait for me!

@Lantiz; impeccable Bollywoodian taste!

Thanks God! I thought no one would notice hahahahahahaha


My update: dealing with a badass bug :[


Woo thanks everybody, see ya on the new topic.

 

[Marquise*]

@LantizI saw the Bodyguard, Gaijini and I am awaiting relentlessly after 2.0 (The second Endhiran) just love Superstar Rajinikant.  And sorry about the bug. Hope you find it before it reproduce!

 

[Lantiz]

@LantizI saw the Bodyguard, Gaijini and I am awaiting relentlessly after 2.0 (The second Endhiran) just love Superstar Rajinikant.  And sorry about the bug. Hope you find it before it reproduce!

Hahahaha, actually I just saw some trailers. But it's so funny.


About the bug, I fixed it. The game is ready to be deployed, but now I face a problem to deploy it to Windows :/

 

[Marquise*]

@LantizYAY for you... Grr I might have a Trojan on my side (

 

[Lantiz]

@LantizYAY for you... Grr I might have a Trojan on my side (

Thanks.


Well this seems to be bad... bid you good luck.