November Goals & Progress Thread

[Lantiz]

@Lantiz Hope the short game is making good progress.

It's going good, as long as editing database can be good... hahaha so much better coding.

Now, however, I have a simple, but elegant, solution which allows for the cost to increase in a smooth fashion without any additional skills

How's that? I would like to use something similar but for monsters in my game so they level according to the player. Maybe changing their skills that way can do the trick.

 

[Kes]

@Lantiz I'm afraid it wouldn't work for enemies, and certainly wouldn't permit levelling up of the enemies to match the actors.  You need a script for that, of which there are several for Ace, and I assume also by now for MV.  Actually, if you're levelling up enemies the last thing that the player is going to be concerned about is how much MP the enemy is using.  What totally hacks players off is facing a level 40 enemy, taking significant damage, maybe using a potion or two, and then at the end, still only getting the level 2 EXP and gold drop.  That's the scaling that, imo, needs addressing first.  As for how you do it, no idea, I've never investigated it.

 

[Lantiz]

@ksjp17


Actually I thought about scalling their skills instead of leveling, but thinking again it would still have low hp when scalling only the skills :[

 

[TheTsunaru]

Haven't had a whole lot of time to actually work on my game. Already a month and a half behind on rent and on the verge of eviction, so finding a job has been a priority for me. I have spent a small amount of time working on my battle UI though. Nothing fancy yet but its something I can pick up and put down at any time without having to worry about being lost for a bit when I pick it back up again.

 

[Lantiz]

I had to stop the game because I found a problem on displaying messages.


It gets really weird when using high resoluion, because of the hand made line breaks.


So I added a feature for word wrapping on my UI plugin. Much better now

 

[Vox Novus]

@ksjp17Glad you got your scaling figured out, map looks playable to me unless you have some objects hidden in the dark. It could probably take a little lightning without losing too much of the effect. Could always do a comparison to be sure. Granted I'm not a fan of darkish maps and lighting effects for the most part. The important stuff is noticeable though.


@Marsigne What exactly does NaNoWriMo entail and what are your goals for it?


@hiddenone I need to try out that demo when I'm done with my project. Recipes for a cooking system of some sorts?


@TheTsunaru Good luck looking for a job, its been tough for me finding one as well. Winter seasonal stuff is opening up if your in the states.


@EliteZeon Usually I have regen heal just a bit more than the DoT so that it isn't totally negated. Normally, I use it for strategy purposes like a boss that heals constantly and needs to be hit with DoT so that the party can do enough damage to overcome the healing. Also, even a bit of healing can be useful or save a character from K.O.


@AceOfAces_Mod Nice work. I can't help but think those shopkeepers are master and apprentice or are related because they are dressed so much alike. Either that or its their shop uniform!


@Canini Reminds me of table top hex tile games, cool! That Elephant is clearly the final boss or something though, right!?


My update: 11/14/2016:


Finished my secret boss monster; since I've slowed my progress and might start a seasonal part time job soon, I guess I should just make my goal to finish it by the end of the month or even year. There really isn't a lot left to do though now, just mostly final dungeon area related aspects.


My monster and the fight rewards are a reference to Magus's fiendish trio from Chrono Trigger. Their english names are from musicians Ozzie, Slash and Flea, so I took inspiration from a rock musician for it to keep in line with the English naming theme. Here it is, can anybody guess who the inspiration was? I took a couple pieces of clothing worn during his performances and added it into the design.

Spoiler

 

[Arithmetician]

Was busy with standardized testing and observing hours for my graduate program recently, but I had some more opportunity to plan out the backstory to my game.  The backstory is pretty clearly conceptualized now.  What remains is to work out the key events occurring in the main story.


Not requesting feedback here, as that's for the Plot/Characters thread (which has been pretty dead for nearly two weeks), but if any of you are interested in what I came up with:

Spoiler

On the world's northern continent, there was a prosperous civilization, advanced beyond its peers in the study of the arcane arts.  Among their achievements, the accumulated wisdom of its greatest scholars and heroes was recorded onto twelve magical stones, serving as a trove of knowledge facilitating the continued advance of the civilization, as well as allowing their powers to be wielded once again in times of need.   This forms the in-story justification for our job system.


However, about twenty to thirty, years ago, this civilization came to an abrupt end.   A prophet foretelling the civilization's doom whipped rival factions within it into a vicious civil war, and in the confusion, the stones were either stolen or scattered.  And then, no one knows exactly why, something went terribly wrong.  A great rift opened up in the capital city, swallowing up its central districts and spawning a horde of monsters onto the land.   The rift also leeched vitality from the land and drove the native wildlife mad too, leaving it a hostile place.


With their capital destroyed, their stones lost, and most of their population killed by war or monsters, the survivors were scattered as well.  Meanwhile, the prophet proclaimed the calamity to be divine retribution.


The collapse of the civilization also caused great social unrest in the years to come.   Many flocked to newly formed religious orders, seeking salvation from the ruin that threatened their world.  In the south, a small kingdom rose to prominence under the leadership of its gifted Prince Theodore, who soon came to be the absolute ruler of a large Empire, aided by his chosen Generals.  For restoring order and stability to much of the globe, along with his own prodigious talents, he came to be viewed as an almost messianic figure.  


The third major power remaining after the destruction of the northern civilization was the Academy, the inheritor of the lost civilization's Magus Stone, which it had held in safekeeping, and was now the premiere center for arcane research and storehouse of ancient lore in the world, though the Empire's laboratories strive to rival it.  In the new order, it dedicated itself to studying the Rift, and any smaller ones that opened up around the world.  Consequently, it has increasingly become a paramilitary organization to train those to combat the threat.  Not simply devoted to magic, it also trains nobles and talented individuals from around the world  in the sword and other arts.  Officially neutral, an uneasy peace exists between the Academy and the religious orders, which see it as meddling where it should not.


There are also a number of smaller kingdoms between the Empire and the ruins of the northern civilization, which still remains abandoned, save for a few outposts.  Some of these have risen to local prominence in recent years, and may have come into possession of some of the lost stones.  


The survivors of the northern cataclysm and their descendants are intensely discriminated against for bringing it upon the world, whether  that is just or not.


So forward to the present, where do our player-characters fit in?


Arthur - student of the Academy, sent there at a young age by a noble family from a small kingdom and now the headmaster's favorite pupil, dispatched to investigate a new rift disturbance in Vanet.


Lorelei - princess of the small but prosperous coastal kingdom of Vanet, renown for her singing voice.  Emperor Theodore is interested in having her hand in marriage to create an alliance between Vanet and the Empire.  She is concerned about the rift that has appeared in her kingdom.


Brenna - half-blooded descendant of the survivors of the northern civilization. She looks like an ordinary human, save for her unusual hair and eye colors.  Has grown up without any formal training in her inborn magical gifts and works as a freelance mercenary, though they may compel her to follow her destiny through visions.


Angela -  A former member of one of the religious orders, who rebelled against its authority by studying hexes and later ran away.  She used her spells to blackmail the corrupt merchants of a city on the southern continent not yet controlled by the Empire, establishing herself in their place.  

I expect to be busier in the coming days, since I will be trying out my new PS4 when it arrives.


@Vox Novus  Nope, not familiar enough to hazard a guess.

 

[Marsigne]

@Vox Novus NaNoWriMo entails writing, primarily. It tells its participants to just write, because with writing, you can communicate worlds, and with NaNoWriMo, you can challenge yourself to write a novel in a month. My goal primarily is to flesh out plot ideas and finally write a long story, since most of my stories are short. I think I've attained that already and as a bonus, I'm much faster at writing, along with a thing or two. There is also a revising and publishing process in January and February so probably I could publish the book!

 

[Marquise*]

Sorry everyone... been out of the loop this week-end.  Powered up my bot to gather money for my favorite animal charity and spent my Sunday at church, Laundromat and cleaning and recuperating.


But on a RPGMaker related note I found back my precious teasing box of planning carnets with my list of lists in order of difficulty and costs of the game of RPGMaker.  Also started up small sketches of spaceship sprites.  I am wondering if I should let someone test my stuff before trying to turn them into DLCs?


ADDENDUM...   I just posted this and I heard a notification for the like of this post!    Vox????

 

[skatasticdinoboy]

@Vox Novus, I actually agree with you; I tested it out in game and it kind of looks like it's reflected in a fun house mirror or something. I'm honestly thinking about redoing it and going with a Silent Hill sort of vibe if I can pull it off.


@ksjp17, that does seem like it'd be more efficient. A question for you, will tile sets, sprite sheets and such update in real time in the engine or do you have to import them again? 


As as far as progress, not a whole lot the past few days, I've been watching scary movies and playing scary games for inspiration lol.

 

[hiddenone]

@ksjp17  Good to hear you were able to keep the cave feeling for the map while still making it easier to see.  Your scaling skills sound great, it's much nicer than getting more and more copies of almost the same exact skill.


@Vox Novus  The recipes are for potion crafting.  Kinda like cooking, but with less chances of ovens exploding.  Your monster looks interesting, but my lack of musician knowledge means that I've no clue who it's based on.


I spent the weekend reworking my recipe book, and I think I've settled on what it'll show.  The unknown recipes now let you know how many different ingredients and how many of each you need, though it's still up to the player to figure out the proper ingredients.  I've also added three new potions, and have been thinking on even more that could be added.

Spoiler

 

[Kes]

@Marsigne I notice that you're up to 50% so you're well on track for completing by the end of the month.  Congrats on steady progress.


@TheTsunaru Good luck with the job hunting.  Yeah, you're right, that has to take precedence over everything else.


@Lantiz Do you allow for different resolutions?  Will the word wrap still work on a smaller one?


@Vox Novus I, too, have no idea who that is referencing, but looks good anyway.  So it'll just be an Easter Egg for anyone in the know.


@Arithmetician It's not just the Plot and Character Feedback which is a bit quieter than normal.  I've noticed a lot of regulars are not around just at the moment and overall posts are fewer than normal.  Perhaps it's that time of year.  Maybe several people are involved in NaNoWriMo?


@Marquise* I think it would be an excellent idea (maybe even necessary as well?) to have someone you trust try out your sprites first.  Think of it as the spriting equivalent to a dev putting their game out for closed beta before showing the world.


@skatasticdinoboy What I do (I'm using GIMP) is to open up the tile sheet from the one in the game folder, do my work on it, export it directly back and test immediately.  If it needs more work I can do that and export again using the same process.  That is much quicker than opening it up from somewhere else, exporting it to there, then importing it into the game using the Resource Manager, testing finding it needs more work and rinse and repeat.  The only thing to remember is to ensure that the final version is exported to my tiles folder so that I always have a reference copy.


@hiddenone Much more helpful recipe book.  Players will be pleased.


My update


Had a frustrating time.  I have a number of armour items, mostly accessories, but not all, with some very interesting effects in battle.  I want these to happen if, and only if, the wearer is in the active party.  The obvious way is through loads of nested conditionals for every actor and every individual piece of gear.  Trying to find a more streamlined way of doing it using script calls.  But it's not easy.  What, for example, is the script call for Force Action, skill(n)? And so on.


Then spent ages trying to debug a really horrifying thing - all enemy stats reduced by half.  Only dawned on me much later than I don't have a bug.  I'd been testing various things on my test map which I reach by putting the player's starting position there and doing new game.  This has allowed me to test all sorts of things.  What I had forgotten about is that by bypassing the real opening, no difficulty mode had been selected, and therefore the variable was at zero, which equals 'Easy' where all enemy stats are (you guessed it) halved.  Relief, mixed with irritation at all the lost time.  Oh well, I won't forget that again.

 

[Schlangan]

And again, many days have passed, and I'm not able to reply to everyone, so I'll just say : congratulations !


My update :


As usual I'm mostly playing WoW recently, hence I keep very little time for my game. However, I created two new maps, ending the dry ground -> grass transition. Now I need to prepare some tiles for little patches of snow on the grass and some trees, with an increase of the snow density as we go up. So, little by little, the mapping progresses.

 

[AceOfAces_Mod]

@Vox Novus, they are brothers, actually.


Progress Report #6


-Drafted the first scenes of the second part and I'm writing the dialogue.


-Cleaned up the database.


-Worked on two arts:


--Joust: The user rushes to the target with their spear (ala jousting). This is affected by the agility of the user and the target.


--Dark Prison: This is one of the first forbidden arts (ie Do not use these if you don't want to have your head say bye bye to your body and parade on a dungeon). This stuns the target and makes them venerable to dark type mystical arts.

 

[Lantiz]

@Lantiz Do you allow for different resolutions?  Will the word wrap still work on a smaller one?

Yes, and yes. Actually it's more useful for small resolutions, as the big ones often does not need the line break.


About your update, that hurts... 


I passed by a similar thing last night: I had just finished the tutorial for my demo when I decided to use an older map I had.


Then I replaced the map data totally fogetting about the events... and as you can guess, my tutorial was deleted. :[


Had to start all over again.


Anyway,I finished the tutorial...it was actually funny.

 

[Punamaagi]

@ksjp17: Using busts in battle could be a nice idea and definitely a nice change from the usual faces (or names). I'll have to see if there are any plugins which I could use for that.


So... I finally completed the busts for my main characters and made a common event which shows the main character's bust (since you can choose which one of the four characters the story focuses on). After testing, though, I realized that the busts are not scaled equally, so I'll have to fix that - and edit one or two of the busts because I'm not completely happy with them. Maybe I should try posting them in the Resource WIP thread or in the Art subforum...


I also had someone test the initial demo, and the test revealed that the game had more bugs than I had hoped (including, but not limited to, a campfire stuck on a wall) and wasn't very well balanced: the difficult of the first mini boss seems to depend on whether or not the player spams a certain skill. I should probably try to work a bit on skills and game mechanics next as I've been neglecting them a bit. I don't see myself doing much progress for the next week, unfortunately, due to a lot of work (and, if my back ache doesn't disappear as suddenly as it appeared, a need to reduce the time I spend sitting in front of my computer).


On the (more) positive side, I bought the FSM tile set and immediately found use for some parts. It made me think that I might end up not being as ambitious with graphics as I originally intended and make more or less everything myself but rather mix and match both premade and self-made things.

 

[bgillisp]

Been gone for a little while, but looks like there has been some nice progress while I've been gone. Congrats everyone!


Last few days update: Spent the last few days traveling so been more brainstorming than anything. Came up with a few ideas for the lore of the world, for those who care to read all of that. Also made a few more NPC sprites. Might have them all done in another week or so at this pace.

 

[Marquise*]

@Marquise* I think it would be an excellent idea (maybe even necessary as well?) to have someone you trust try out your sprites first.  Think of it as the spriting equivalent to a dev putting their game out for closed beta before showing the world.

@ksjp17That makes sense. I was to ask the devs first...  Well, Archeia and Lunarea to see if this was permitted.  I already trust everyone else than me for my sprites because...  WELL, I comes from the ol' geezer traditional animation school where animation should look like below;


 or












So I thought of two peoples maybe interested by that maybe one or two I had in mind to add.  I can't SEE really my own sprites animation, just the key frames since 3 frames walk cycle is really just end poses (and middle one not necessarily really a good example for animation from my POV).  But doing $Big_Monsters... errrrr... pixel by pixels it is still enough work ironically.   


As for your own armor and equipment effect animations.  May I suggest you to hide an Easter egg where you get a character teleported to a flashback/dream training room to test/view/experience all of your effects?


Progresswise;


Theorically, the back is done now with the scales; got to make the wings now on two levels.  (About every limbs are made that way if some saw my other sprites they could confirm it.)  Strangely it is the shortest statement of this post and the longest to do. 

 

[Lantiz]

Updating...


I adjusted lots of my plugins, adding features and mostly plugin commands so I can work with the events on the map scene.


There's a skippable tutorial on the start.


There's a random explorable solar system .


The player can land one planet. There will be 2 of them, for landing.


There are mobs spawned on one of these planets (gota work on the other one).


The other planets will work as exploration sites from the enemy, the player will need to rescue them and gain better gear by doing so (if he/she want).


My plan:

• enemies on space, to protect the exploration planets and engage the player
  
• main quest eventing on space
  
• random events on the first planet
  
• main quest eventing on the first planet
  
• one though monster spawn on the first planet
  
• landing on the second planet
  
• random events on the second planet
  
• main quest eventing on the second planet
  
• dungeon entrance on the second planet
  
• monsters on the second planet
  
• random events on the dungeon
  
• monsters on the dungeon
  
• boss on the dungeon
  
• main quest eventing on the dungeon
  
• ending scene
  
• credits scene
  

Guess i covered everything.


Everything working so far.

 

[EliteZeon]

Hrm, not much done in this week due unfortunately. Currently balancing out irl affairs, game making and running a D&D campaign on Roll20 (where I kill myself since I make pretty detailed maps and my players end up derailing my plans)


I've been overlooking my plot and redoing bits... it looks like I may have to overhaul the content I have already released as well. Those like four or five of you that have played my game (or those that have watched the letsplay or video I posted a few years back), have noticed how much I make the local religion seem like bad guys, since the player character works for a Magical Society and there is this clash of History, Religion, Magic and Development...etc... well... I'm going to aim for a more neutral standpoint and try to incorporate things that seem more realistic, or make it so that it feels like multiple governments are working together to figure out how to go about Religious and Magitechnical developments in a bit of a post-war setting. I also think I should redo how the first boss fight is introduced, since as of right now it is a religious guy that goes ballistic over the magical player character and thus they get into a fight without much explanation, then something happens and boss guy teleports away... it's a mess... I think I'll keep the base premise, but redo the dialogue and cinematic of how things play out. Possibly add in a few extra scenes as well.