November Goals & Progress Thread

[Cash12121]

@bgillisp 5-7 Acts. I want to use act one to establish the world you are in and who you are. Just to hook people in. I'm more than likely to use act 1 as a "demo" for the full game.


My secondary goal is to keep the player enthralled throughout the whole story

 

[OmegaGhost]

When I joined the forums, I had promised I would be active. While I lurk daily, I can't really say I'm ative. I've been studying so much and I'll take an exam this weekend that might change my life. That also means I'll stop studying for a while and I'll finally able to tackle my projects. With that said, I'm aiming low for this month:

• 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)
  
• Create a small demo map with my own tileset
  
• Create a twitter and/or blog to be social and spread some of my stuff
  
• Dedicate at least 1 hour every day to spriting
  
• Finally decide how I want my style to look like (currently I'm trying to balance realism and cartoony)
  

Not very easy, but I suppose I can take it.

 

[Arithmetician]

@bgillisp  I have a shell of a story, except I still need to work out some key details of that, and then I would like at least an outline with each of the major dungeons conceptualized. 

 

[Lantiz]

@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?

Not really, I've been focusing on the game engine and mechanics only, I'm not good with plot... :/
At last I can end up doing a silly time killing infinite roguelike with random jokes. Those you would play when you just have 15 minutes before a meeting.


Joking hahaha... I'll probably start with some "utility" NPCs, like shops and other stuff like that.


Like you suggested, the required ones... looks like a nice idea. 


Thank you.


By the way, adding one more thing to my goals: prepare the visual assets.

 

[Sharm]

Hmm, space station tiles are going to take more than a day I think.  Once again it's the details that trip me up and take the longest.


@bgillisp Hehehe. But I do have one!  Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!

Yeah, it's not really armed or very operational, but I couldn't pass up the joke.  So these are the sidescroller tiles I've been working on.  It's a bit of a mess at the moment and I've got two scales for things because I don't know which one I want to use (I'm making them to sell so my brother says to do both).  I also started the color conversion for some of the Halloween tiles and wrote 1,284 words for NaNo.


In other news Celianna's streams have me wanting to draw trees.  That maaaay end up being the small set I was considering starting for the month.  I always get like this during November, I want to do everything like it's a NaNoWriMo project.

 

[EliteZeon]

I managed to get some free time to begin working on my VXAce RPG again for a little while...


This time, I have decided to go and reorganize my ENTIRE database... which also means changing out the ID tags in my events... KILL ME!!!


On the bright side it isn't too many items (under 60-ish) with only a handful of working maps... it would have been a nightmare had I done this much later in development.


I managed to get my combat balanced after going through a couple of trials of a ranking system and redid the concept of many of my states after finding out just how bad the scripts I was using decided to conflict with one another. (Bye bye Lunatic States T_T)


Oh and my second boss fight seems to be working and balanced (in my books), but I seemed to have gotten a single crash during an attack phase, but haven't been able to replicate it. Hopefully it's nothing?


I got most of my formula's on my Google Sheet if anyone is curious:


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-FeoFmMLIKhhJWnLmCiqdVDCDL6noIq9le3-N_U-NF8/edit#gid=1274634419


Alright let's see if I can get my game's item database fully organized by the end of the month!

 

[Schlangan]

November already, huh ?


Well, let's set some goals. It would be nice if I could finish mission XVII by the end of the month. We'll see, since I have a lot of mapping to do this time, as well as adding tiles to my current tileset. 

 

[Kes]

@Sharm I'm glad to see your avatar back, it's more as I would imagine you to be! I checked out your blog, you write in an interesting way.  I'll keep an eye on it.  As for your space station tiles, normally I'm not a huge fan of platformer tiles, but these I find appealing.


@Marquise* A mustache!?  Now I genie bottle I could go along with, that would seem to fit, but a mustache?


@bgillisp Shame about the meetings, you were making good steady progress.  I find that if I stop for a few days it takes a while to get to the same level of focus.  Hope you're different.


@PsychicToaster Ah, you're a bit like me.  I think you can never have too many variations on ground tiles in your store cupboard.


@Lantiz Seems like you're stretching those goals by the day!


@EliteZeon Re-organizing the database.  I did that partway into my second game.  It was a lot of work, but it was so worth it.  Now I think I have super-organized databases.  Keep at it, you won't regret it.  You only mention the item database - are you going to do the other tabs as well?  Or did you have those organized from the beginning?


@Schlangan Mission XVII, you've come a long way down your list of missions from when you first started posting in the goals thread.  You did mention once the total number that there would be, but I've forgotten.  What percentage does 17 represent?


My update:


Finished eventing the completion of a side quest which results in our intrepid party being thrown into jail.  Life is so unfair!  But I've no doubt that they will find a way of avoiding rotting in there for years.


Normally I dread clients who are disorganized, but today I am ultra pleased that a client has changed their mind at the last moment.  It means that I shan't be working 18+ hours a day for the next 10 days as I thought when I set this month's goals.  I'm still going to be a bit busier than usual, but it should be possible for me to do a little something on my game most days.  I hope so, as I'm having a moderately productive moment.

 

[Arithmetician]

Jotted down a summary of my plot ideas so far on the Plot and Characters feedback thread.  If any of you want to check it out and help me develop my ideas, that would be very welcome.


@EliteZeon  Ouch.

 

[Lantiz]

@Lantiz Seems like you're stretching those goals by the day!

I'm lost... it's just improvisation hahahahaha

 

[EliteZeon]

@ksjp17 Mostly items for now, so the alchemy materials, potions, armor, weapons, etc... After that it'll be the Skills and States (super ouch) and then the Enemies. Skill will probably be the most painful if anything, but this is all so I can have the game balanced. If things work correctly, I can just recycle this system for future games and it will become very easy to cross reference data.


As of right now, my items (in my documents) are in a decent organizational situation I just need to maybe put them in ABC order (for non-equipment and combat items) and start adding in more things I will want, probably setting the equipment goal to about level 25 then stopping.


After that is done, I got to reorder the States in my game and then made a table that shows which character can inflict which state, that way I can begin to rebalance the skill system and make it so that each class plays in a manner differently from one another. The limit is about 8 skills per main class then a max of 10 skills for each subclass. I could maybe go the Dragon Quest route and give classes shared skills as well if I need to.


____


Edit: 3 Hr after original post


ZOMG, I just remembered how to work excel stat sheets, and seeing as how my data and character Stat Rank system is already on Excel...


Let's just say I made an automatic calculator meant to determine the stats of items, monsters and characters after plugging in a handful of numbers. This will make my life 10x easier, before I was actually calculating everything painfully by hand. >.<


Basically, I am using IF statements on excel, and example for calculating HP being:


=IF(B11= 5, (120+(31)*(B12-1)),IF(B11= 4, (100+(26)*(B12-1)),IF(B11= 3, (80+(21)*(B12-1)),IF(B11= 2, (60+(16)*(B12-1)),IF(B11= 1, (40+(11)*(B12-1)),IF(B11= 0, (20+(6)*(B12-1))))))))


Where as B11 represents how many rank points are in a stat and B12 represents the effective level of the character. Basically in my Excel Sheet if I plug in Rank 4 HP and Level 13 for the monster/character/item, the sheet is going to vomit out the number 438 HP for the particular subject.

 

[Vox Novus]

Oh dear, I've missed a lot  Some personal stuff came up and I wasn't able to do anything for the end of october or finish playing as many spooky games as I wanted. Guess my October goal will carry over to finish up what was supposed to be a Halloween game. Only should be about another week or so of development, so it is a very feasible goal to have it done this month.


Let's get it done this month everyone!

 

[Lantiz]

@Sharm


Your station is beautiful :0

 

[bgillisp]

@PsychicToaster: Maybe you could put some of that in a book, for the interested reader to find?


@Cash12121: Sounds like a plan. That's what I did with my game actually, Chapter 1 is the demo, Chapters 2 - 9 only for the full game.


@OmegaGhost: What exam? Hope it goes well!


@Arithmetician: That's about how I work too. Get the outline, do the fine details as I go.


@Lantiz: Just remember that for a while the town will feel really empty if you do this.


@Sharm: But is it a Death Star, so we can rule the galaxy? Mwa ha ha ha.


@EliteZeon: Yes, better to do it now than say when you have 400 items or so, like I did. Let's just say I still occasionally find an empty event due to that.


@Schlangan: Best of luck with that goal!


@ksjp17: Depends. I find one day off is good if I do it every so often. A few, yep, hard to get back into focus. Hopefully the heroes find a way out of jail, it would be a really boring game if the rest of it was spent in a jail cell. Though, I wonder if someone could make a game with all of it taking place in a jail cell? Hmmm...


@Vox Novus: Welcome back! RL obligations seemed to be haunting a lot of us in October for some reason.


11.3 Update: Since I was stuck in meetings or traveling to the meetings today, did some brainstorming. Mainly focused on the side areas around Silas Rest and what if I wanted to change then and if so, to what? I came to the conclusion some changes will be needed because early on I threw about any idea I had in that area, even if it didn't make sense logically. So some cleaning up is needed. I think a side dungeon is going to move to another area (as it would fit better there), and 2 more side quest will be relocated to a more logical area. Rest stays as is for now. Still leaves me with 7 side quests in that town, which should be a good number still.

 

[Lantiz]

@bgillisp


Yeaaaah... I don't want it to be "dead" also...got to work really hard on personality.


I'm afraid I'll need to give up on procedural city :/


Offtopic: I can't stop listening to this song 

 

[PsychicToaster]

@bgillisp


That could work as well. I just need to put a cap on it or I'll spend way too much time making in-game books lol.

 

[Marquise*]

@bgillispWell one tail... per pose per angle   I guess 12 by the look of it!    Only advantage not working 12 frames/seconds!


@ksjp17For Movember!  And genius is called genie in French which is also the name of the supernatural being.   


Errrr...  Shopped today broke my  obipurse that is also used to pull heavy trolley.  Sooo... Delays in 2nd Dragon sorry! (I have to fix everything to wear my everything again!)

 

[OmegaGhost]

@bgillisp Pretty much the Brazilian version of SAT/ACT, the ENEM, but it's much more dependant on your score. Thank you!


As for my goals, I'm actively starting them by Monday, but overall I can say I'm doing fine with spriting part, might even post a map in a week or so.

 

[MiniTitan]

Hmm goals for November ...
 

• Really learning the fundamentals of MV. Have set up a test project just for this. Going to try out making various maps (indoor and out), muck around with the character generator and try my hand at making items, weapons and spells/skills in the db. Then find and play around with some plugins.
  
• Artsy stuff! Started learning to draw. Hoping to have sketched a character that I've been thinking about including in a later project.
  

 

[Kes]

@Arithmetician You are being very methodical in what you're doing.  That's going to be a great help with your project, otherwise it might spiral out of control in terms of planning and complexity.


@EliteZeon I use Excel quite a bit in RL and can vouch for how much time and effort they can save.  If you can recycle your system, you will have made a huge contribution to future workflow.  I like the use of a table to keep track of the different states.  I see many games where the distribution of states between the characters seems less than optimal, either with duplications or omissions.  I think I've done it myself in one particular game.


@Vox Novus It's almost never too late to finish something (unless it's for a time-limited competition), so I hope you manage to pull it off this month.


@bgillisp I have actually been wondering what to do if the player - for reasons totally beyond me - decide not to take the escape route.  Maybe I could put some sort of hidden timer in so that after e.g. 30 minutes, someone comes along and lets them out and they miss out on items, gear and exp that they could have got.  I would like to avoid the "Oh but thou must!" trap, but it's difficult to see how to give them another way out.  Still having 7 seven quests in your town sounds like a lot to me.  I shall have far fewer than that.  How many side quests are you aiming for in total?


@Marquise* What is an obipurse?


@OmegaGhost Nice that you're getting on with your goals.  A good start to the month is a great incentive, I think.


@MiniTitan Sensible to start with a test project.  Great way to learn without the whole world seeing your first efforts.


My update:


Evented the way out for our heroes.  I've got what I think are some nice visual touches in the cut scene part of it - beds moving, being able to see people come up and go down a hole properly instead of just suddenly appearing/disappearing, that sort of thing.