October Goals & Progress Thread

[bgillisp]

@Sami-Fire64: The way I'm approaching the battle system is in my first game, I stick to (mostly) the default or well known scripts (I'm using Yanfly's for the game). This way I just focus on the game and what I can do within that battle system. My second game though I want to tweak the battle system to allow for rows for players and enemies, like say Wizardry 6 and 7 did...you could fight 4 bats, then 2 bats, then 4 bats, but the 3rd row of bats might not be able to attack you or be attacked except at range. I figure though implementing that is a *long* ways off (next summer maybe) so don't go looking for that script anytime soon!

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Update. Screw being done with my song in a couple days. It's done now! 




It may get another small edit. Depending on how much that cello section decides to seem too loud to me. But the composition itself is complete.

 

[Sami-Fire64]

@Ms Littlefish: that sounds lovely! I love the strings and the flute- they mesh together fantastically. The cello part seems fine to me, but I'm horribly biased towards cello/related strings spam in songs anyway. (That and timpanis. I think I have more songs with timpanis than without.)

I blew out my writing muse doing something intense, so I'm probably going to be poking Musescore for the rest of the night. Earlier poking did produce a melody I like, but right now I just... don't know what I want and that's making it difficult for me to make anything coherent. Like, I have a theme: I want something a bit slow and a bit soft, relatively simple so I can focus on the structure without messing with tons of instruments. But I can't decide what instruments would work best (my soundfont might not be too helpful in that department), or whether to do the song in the style of BGM (has a clear loop point and may not have a decisive ending) or a traditional song (apparent choruses and verses, comes to a clean end). I'm leaning towards BGM because I feel that's something I should get practice with anyway and it won't need to be terribly long because it'll be looped, so maybe it'll be a bit less taxing. We'll see what happens.

 

[Sharm]

What a beautiful piece of music!  I am constantly surprised at the high quality of music and musicians that can be found here.  It makes me happy.

Yesterday I didn't do anything I said I was going to do but I did fix the water I'd been trying to get right since before I even finished the Germania pack.  I'm counting that as a huge win.  I also worked a while on those cliffs and got to the point where I needed to draw the top but for some reason it's not working.  I keep drawing fabulous tiles that just don't match.  They'll come in use somewhere I'm sure, but not for what I made them for.

Nothing done today, health was not cooperating.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better, I'd love to finish that cliff and get the basics of that ship exterior done.

 

[Sami-Fire64]

Sharm, I'm always surprised by the music here too (pleasantly, of course). I think I might make this forum my new music-mining place. Those days when you just can't get anything done stink, whether it's for physical or mental reasons. Here's to hoping tomorrow is better, yes?

In other news, I finished the practice song I started! I aimed for a more consistent melody and structure, and I think I got closer than I did with my other songs? Yeah, I finished it kind of quickly, but it was a short song, and most importantly, I didn't put percussion in. Throwing percussion in tacks a huge chunk of time onto my composition process. I was originally shooting for just a simple, lonely, reflective violin-piano piece, but then the piano turned into a harp and it evolved from there. I do have some concerns about the soundfonts I used- most of the instruments are from Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra but the organ is from a separate soundfont- namely, the harp sounds very much like a piano (that's probably how it's supposed to sound, isn't it) and the organ got kind of swallowed up by everything around it. Ah, well, I was proud of this piece when I finished it... 10-ish minutes ago, but I'm already starting to side-eye it a bit. Hmm.




Tomorrow's goal is to make a song that actually has percussion in it. And hopefully write, I don't know, at least one more sentence for my game's prologue. We'll see what happens.

 

[Raider]

Successfully implemented Khas Light Script and the mapping progress is also really well.

Here is the first completely finished map (in terms of mapping, eventing will follow soon )

Spoiler

 

[Ms Littlefish]

@ Raider I absolutely love what difference lighting scripts make to the appearance of maps. I can't wait to start messing with them myself. I'm all about ambiance in games.

@ Sami The phrasing has improved greatly in this piece of music. It flows much better! Sontiana is a pretty good soundfont. Don't worry about mixing from other packages though. Before I used VSTs I had a collection of 1000s of soundfonts and I mixed them all the time with great success. Check out sf2midi.com and dskmusic.

@ Sharm Thank you so much. c:

 

[kenibatz]

@Kenibatz I love your drawing! Her attitude is really coming through that pose and expression. Can't wait to see more. And thanks for stopping by my soundcloud. I have identified what's wrong with the hyperlink. The hyperlink is still leading to my old address for some reason. Edit: I think I fixed it. I typed it out instead of copying/pasting. Why it works. I don't know. But, whatever.

@Sami I've been  listening to a few pieces this morning and I'll see if later I can do a write up for you. Don't worry about being new. I wrote plenty of stuff like this when I started out, too.

Thank you! She has an interesting backstory which I'm refining everyday, along with the other characters.

Glad you fixed your Soundcloud link. I think I have a Soundcloud account too. I'll follow your account if I can find mine.

I'm working on battle system script. Hopefully, I can finish it in this month. It's so tiring Q_Q

Also I'm learning Unity right now, and it's really interesting. I hope I can understand most of the basic of Unity this month.

As for progress, I made Tone and color on battler icon

This looks so cool. Looking forward to the finished script.

@Kenibatz: I love how your one sketch conveys volumes about Eli's personality. That pose looks sassy!

Thanks! Yeah, I was going for a sassy look because she's has a tough personality. I can't wait to start writing her dialogue.

Update. Screw being done with my song in a couple days. It's done now! 




It may get another small edit. Depending on how much that cello section decides to seem too loud to me. But the composition itself is complete.

it's a very beautiful piece! really loving it.

it reminds me of my time playing Ocarina of Time, my favorite Zelda game.

I'm amazed at how fast you composed this.

In other news, I finished the practice song I started! I aimed for a more consistent melody and structure, and I think I got closer than I did with my other songs? Yeah, I finished it kind of quickly, but it was a short song, and most importantly, I didn't put percussion in. Throwing percussion in tacks a huge chunk of time onto my composition process. I was originally shooting for just a simple, lonely, reflective violin-piano piece, but then the piano turned into a harp and it evolved from there. I do have some concerns about the soundfonts I used- most of the instruments are from Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra but the organ is from a separate soundfont- namely, the harp sounds very much like a piano (that's probably how it's supposed to sound, isn't it) and the organ got kind of swallowed up by everything around it. Ah, well, I was proud of this piece when I finished it... 10-ish minutes ago, but I'm already starting to side-eye it a bit. Hmm.

This was lovely! I was pleasantly surprised with what sounded like a choir at the 0:40 mark.

Today I made a pencil sketch of Asako.

She likes magic, hoodies and being a precious little ray of sunshine.

Her friends would love for her to switch to decaf.

 

[bgillisp]

@Sami-Fire64: Sounds nice to me! Where do you plan to use that music in game?

As for me, I took a day off and played a game instead. For some reason I got the wild idea today to rebalance my skills, though I did learn while doing this that late game magic was going to be way too powerful unless nerfed a lot or MDF raised a lot (or some combination of both). Otherwise, it was going to be 9999 all the time, which would get old quickly.

 

[Sami-Fire64]

@ Sami The phrasing has improved greatly in this piece of music. It flows much better! Sontiana is a pretty good soundfont. Don't worry about mixing from other packages though. Before I used VSTs I had a collection of 1000s of soundfonts and I mixed them all the time with great success. Check out sf2midi.com and dskmusic.

Thank you! Though I think it's more "the phrasing exists" than "the phrasing has improved." The issue isn't so much mixing packages so much as the packages I've got sounding kind of so-so... I'll sniff around those sites for soundfonts later.

Thanks! Yeah, I was going for a sassy look because she's has a tough personality. I can't wait to start writing her dialogue.

This was lovely! I was pleasantly surprised with what sounded like a choir at the 0:40 mark.

Today I made a pencil sketch of Asako.

She likes magic, hoodies and being a precious little ray of sunshine.

Her friends would love for her to switch to decaf.

Don't you just love that feeling when you hit upon a great character concept and you get totally hyped to write it out? I know I do! I have a character planned for a non-game project (well, that's not entirely true, I might slide her into Astral Awakenings too) who's relentlessly vulgar, crude, angry, and violent (and she's only 15, though maybe I should tack on a year to make the stuff she goes through a little less jarring). I'm really hyped to write her because I don't often get to write for those wildly antagonistic types and it'll be a fun experiment. And thank you! That is indeed a choir at the :40 mark. By the way, oh my god Asako is adorable! Just looking at her gives me warm happy fuzzies.

@Sami-Fire64: Sounds nice to me! Where do you plan to use that music in game?

As for me, I took a day off and played a game instead. For some reason I got the wild idea today to rebalance my skills, though I did learn while doing this that late game magic was going to be way too powerful unless nerfed a lot or MDF raised a lot (or some combination of both). Otherwise, it was going to be 9999 all the time, which would get old quickly.

Thanks! I just whipped this up as a practice track to work on my composition structure, so it probably won't show up anywhere. If I did put it somewhere, it'd be in some sort of holy sanctum, which I didn't think I had a place for in my game, but maybe, just maybe... we'll see!

I'm probably going to spend the rest of the night poking at this new composition... not feeling writing right now. I'm shooting for something with a grim, vaguely military feel. As expected, using actual drums instead of spamming the timpani is giving me fits. Also, I think the harp is going to join the timpani and the violin on my "most spammed instruments" list.

 

[Anorak]

My goal is to get a demo out for my game by the end of the month. It's taken me at least a week to get three small maps done, so I'm not sure how this will work. #>.<

I also want to save up some money this month to buy some of dem smexy resource packs.

 

[Galenmereth]

Goal: Try to get started on polishing up and updating The Vendor with some needed changes, and proceed with related super secret plans. I say try, because this month is full of work related stuff and a business trip, so it's all a bit tight on the old schedule. But I really want to get started on it asap!

 

[mlogan]

Ugh, so haven't gotten anything done I've wanted to. My time to work has been much more limited than I hoped. And I keep getting distracted by things (hello Skype chat). Not good, not good at all.

But thankfully, I've divided my work up by weeks, right? So I still have two days for progress right? Right? Anyone?

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Nah, we had a super secret meeting about next year's IGMC. That's progress, right?

 

[kenibatz]

Don't you just love that feeling when you hit upon a great character concept and you get totally hyped to write it out? I know I do! I have a character planned for a non-game project (well, that's not entirely true, I might slide her into Astral Awakenings too) who's relentlessly vulgar, crude, angry, and violent (and she's only 15, though maybe I should tack on a year to make the stuff she goes through a little less jarring). I'm really hyped to write her because I don't often get to write for those wildly antagonistic types and it'll be a fun experiment. And thank you! That is indeed a choir at the :40 mark. By the way, oh my god Asako is adorable! Just looking at her gives me warm happy fuzzies.

Thank you! And Asako would thank you too!  

Yeah, it's exciting, no? Writing about new personalities outside one's comfort zone without making them two-dimensional is challenging. But when you get them right, they seem to take on a life of their own, right?

And do you know how some professional writers claim that their characters just lead them to their stories? That's what's I'm starting to experience now. 

Goal: Try to get started on polishing up and updating The Vendor with some needed changes, and proceed with related super secret plans. I say try, because this month is full of work related stuff and a business trip, so it's all a bit tight on the old schedule. But I really want to get started on it asap!

I love "The Vendor"! I played it for a bit and really enjoyed its unique direction.

Ugh, so haven't gotten anything done I've wanted to. My time to work has been much more limited than I hoped. And I keep getting distracted by things (hello Skype chat). Not good, not good at all.

But thankfully, I've divided my work up by weeks, right? So I still have two days for progress right? Right? Anyone?

I know what you mean! Yes, dividing your work by weeks is practical and I'm sure you can catch up with your stuff to do.

Today, I'm shadow-boxing with the design of my main protagonist. I had this initial idea before, but it needs some redesign after I saw how Eli and Asako turned out. It's tougher than I expected because so many factors are involved.

 

[mlogan]

Well, I got a bit done today. I fixed the main character's clothing change graphic. I couldn't remember much of the other graphical things that needed fixing so I decided to play through a bit. And got off on rabbit trails of all the other things that need fixing, lol. So, I might change my schedule up a bit, or just work on parts of it as they come. I also got sidetracked with a few things not related to this game directly.

But at least I can say today was productive.

Nah, we had a super secret meeting about next year's IGMC. That's progress, right?

Haha!  Yes, yes it is!

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Well, it looks like the main menu for this month is turning to music and with new software coming in the mail, I am so pumped.. I have Goldstorm working on battle systems in the background of everything, but my personal work load has evolved. 

I have two pieces I'm working on with games in mind but somehow I've also decided that the world needs a string quartet to play Eggman's theme song and for some reason it has gone from being a joke song into something I'm oddly serious about completing.

@mlogan Glad to hear you're knocking out a few of your bullet points, or starting to. I think it's difficult to get started on things, more so than the actual doing.

 

[Raider]

The new tilesets form the restaff-release boosted my motivation They're exactly what I needed for my game.
So I made an animated title screen with those tiles (ignore the bad cut in the middle X'D)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/244948376/Titel.avi

Edit: Sry for just putting the link here, but I can't figure out how to show avi files in a movie player by just using bb codes ._.

If somebody could tell me how to do it properly, I would be very thankfull

 

[mlogan]

Raider - I love it! Those new tiles are so lovely aren't they? I've really had to resist the temptation to open them up and play with making a lovely little map.

So on my schedule this week is the crafting system. I've always wanted the crafting tied in with a trading system. The game as it currently stands, has no shops, intentionally. It's got some half-assed events that are pseudo trading. So as I was looking at it this morning, I decided to see if I could script in a trading system to be what I wanted. So yeah, I'm scripting today. Kind of sort of related to the crafting system. Hey, it will all get there in the end, yes?

 

[bgillisp]

Played my game from start to finish to see how it looked all together, found some little details to tidy up. The long cutscene in the flashback scene is almost done too. Hoping to finish the flashback scene this week sometime.