Alright, you've probably read the title so let me get to the point.

I'm aiming to make a choose-your-own adventure RPG. What the player does will affect the events of the game in some way. It's a simple, linear, one-shot classic JRPG with turn-based battle system.

Engine: 

Wolf RPG Editor English 2.10D

Main Features:

• Two types of weapon: lethal and non-lethal. Non-lethal weapons aren't as good as its lethal counterpart, though. Basically kill or don't kill. (Scracth this. Don't have a good idea of using it. Also requires equipment customization, so see point #3)
• In-battle events. Dialogs, transformations, add enemies/allies, abort battles, etc. will happen in battles. Turn count, remaining HP, actions used, etc. can trigger some events.
• Static money? I don't know what to call it, but basically, buying price and selling price is the same. I want to encourage mix-and-matching equipments with this. Using consumables you've bought will return your money. :D (I'll come back for this some other time. Screws balancing. For this project I want a nice, controlled player experience, So no customization.)

Story:

Unfortunately, I haven't come up with a working idea. I'll give it some thoughts. I'll have to. Just some short dialogs and bits as an excuse to go dungeon-diving. A light, straightforward story where the protagonist has to clear a dungeon (a forest) to get a license to use weapons.

Scope (for my own sake and more like a mental note):

• Make only two branches in events (like just yes or no) EDIT: Minor changes depending on the player's choicesEDIT:EDIT: Make it linear.
• Normal mode, normal end (difficulty-wise, with lethal weapons)
• Hard mode, good end (non-lethal weapons, and some choices)
• 1 town and 1 dungeon. Don't want to bother with various themed maps. EDIT: Not really a town. Just a safe place for the story to begin.
• No complicated, fancily-animated  complex-damage-formulated ridiculously-set-up skills. Just turn it into an event on a specific occasion. EDIT: Ended up tweaking the skill's type definition in the database for future convenience.

To-do List:

1. Clean up the default sample project (unused actors, class, skills, items, etc.) [Done]
2. Make a minimum (but working) common event to check turns, enemies', and allies' conditions and to call other events in battle [Done]
3. Placeholders and databasing 1 (actors-clones, square maps, themed bosses, dummy enemy, equip types, basic skills, recovery event, level-adjust event, basic shop event) -for basic playtesting stuff [Done. Skipped shops and equips.]
4. Placeholders and databasing 2 (basic connected maps (dungeon rooms, town parts), minions and troops, more main skills, adding main story NPC and dialogs (killer branch first)) [Done]
5. Databasing  1 (make equipments (lethal), items, differentiate actors, and add those in-battle events but leave the branch alone) [Actors and skillset done. Skip damage types, equips, and items. And the branch.]
6. Databasing  2 (make equipments (non-lethal), fill the branches in events and NPCs) [Done. Only NPC events matters. And doesn't branch.]
7. Mapping 1  (work on the maps and its flow, set up random encounters) [Done]
8. Balancing  (tune enemies' and/or actors' stats (and AI for enemies) as necessary, adjust player's money and item pricing)[Done. So simple no balancing needed.}
9. Mapping 2 (furnish the maps~ might take quite some time) [Might not be needed][Left as-is. I'm out of steam...]
10. Aesthetics (add skill animations, sound effects, BGMs, character portraits, enemy graphics, review the story)[Done. Some defaults are already satisfactory.]
11. Playtesting (play the whole game, fixing bugs (if any), adjust the game to make it flow nicely) (try not to radically change stuff, refer to past to-do list)[This. This! See if I'll make any change.]

...

Thanks for stopping by!

Edit 1: 2019/07/07 Added the engine I'm using. Checked to-do list #1~2

Edit 2: 2019/07/14 Scratched a bunch of items in the to-do list. I'm keeping that double-n in "annother". Also, eventing should have its own place in to-do list. Never reached that point before...

Edit 3: 2019/07/17 Scratched some more. Updated the first part with what the project is right now. This post is getting harder to read...

It's Sunday, morning of day... 3?

Anyways, so far I've made and set up the necessary common events. Basically they get the battler's parameters, store it, and checks the conditions to call other common events. Events are called at battle start, turn end, and when an enemy gets attacked. They check the enemy's group number (e.g. group#1: wolf x3) or the specific enemy's ID (e.g. enemy#1: wolf). Then, they call the corresponding common events (group-specific or enemy-specific event). This makes it possible to make every battle unique (if I want to).

Also, I tinkered around with common events' arguments and return values. Now I have a way to abort battles without knocking out all allies or enemies :D. Also made a "Get slot for ID:" and "Transform to:" events for future convenience. Templates for group-specific events are also done.

Now that the in-battle events are no worries, I'll move on to databasing and basic mapping. Played around with LICEcap so~

... well, sorry for the big-sized (640 x 480) stuff. All assets used are the default assets. Not mine, but it's okay to use.

Thanks for stopping by!

(Edit: 2019/07/09 Captions look fine in edit mode... Then why?)

Tuesday evening, I'll take it as Day 5.

Since last update, I spent most of the time messing around with the engine. That, instead of databasing, mapping, putting around placeholders. Not a waste, though. Made a workaround for the engine's "draw attention" system (like "taunting"), where an attack-all skill only hits once if there's someone with "draw attention" on. This will screw up a strategy in battle, so I can't tolerate it. And I've finished it.

Regarding lethal/non-lethal, kill-or-don't-kill branch, I might not implement it unless I get a worthy story to tell. 

Player's skill database is done (for 4 characters). One theme of enemies' skillset is also done.  Haven't made enemy groups, and maps are still only names. Equipments, only a few. 

(Again, instead of adding more contents, I evented some... nice stuff. Which gave me an idea for a story.) Anyway, I've made myself a mix of fixed map-encounter and mob-spawn. (Because fixed map-encounter is too monotone but random-encounter is annoying)

Thanks for stopping by!

great progress so far! this is a really interesting spawn system--ive actually never been a fan of random encounter either but the added randomness to fixed enemies is really interesting. neat stuff!

Sunday morning~ Day 9?

Finished most functional maps~ (might not bother adding cosmetics later). That, along with most placeholder for events, transfer between maps, enemy and item spawns, and spawn resets. And enemy move routes. Those are made with love.

... and yea, that's it for now. Next I'll be setting the enemy-groups for each of them. And mini-boss events. And story cutscenes. A bunch of eventing ahead...

Also I am not going to implement equipments and damage types (that lethal and non-lethal branching thing). I don't think the non/lethal is needed for this game, nor do I want to implement it anyway. As for equipments, also not needed. I have 3 themes for enemies  and 4 members for the player's party in mind, but at this stage I'll only bring 1 theme and 2 members. Not much customization. Not needed, I think. 

I want to finish this project. I have an idea of what is "enough" to achieve that. This doesn't have to be that dream game. Not now. So, I'm telling myself, like others have, to just "KISS" it. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

One week left, but don't wait for the deadline. Also, thanks for stopping by!

Is this day 12?

Last few days were just me eventing some stuff. Ugh... The first time I actually played around with event control... Writing down dialogs was pretty hard... Good thing I decided to throw away the branching-story part of the game. I'm not up for that much challenge yet. Thanks jam for teaching me how to scope! Though basically I'm just scratching one feature after another.

But! I managed to finish the game! Har har! Just a short, linear, 20-minutes classic JRPG. Nobody else have playtested it yet, but I believe it's not confusing. Not much of a hook, either, but, eh. 

Things I've done since last post:

• Eventing. Few but draining. Character dialogs, bits of lore and hints from stuff (bookshelf and shrubs), boss's dialogs-battle, and also title screen, retry, and moving to credits.
• Recoloring the chicken sprite. Because I don't know about good pixel placement and coloring.
• Opened up the graphics synthesizer and made sprites for 2 characters. With default parts.
• Drew some enemy graphics. Just a basic enemy with little difference between each other. And the boss, for more... excitement.
• Replaced the background music.
• Drew the title screen and the credits screen. Basically the same thing.
• Played through the game a number of times, fixing spacing and other formatting errors with the dialogs. And adjusting events in general.
• Cleaned up some debugging left-overs and exported the game. And played the game again.

I'll submit the game sometime soon. Before that I'll take my time to re-check stuff inside the exported game. Also there's a little hiccup that sometimes appear during playtesting... where the transition gets ignored and transfer between areas become not smooth. Reasons unknown. Not game-breaking though.

 I'll have to scratch a lot off the original post. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Thursday. Evening. Day 13.

Made a lot of improvements. Helped a lot with the flow of the game, I guess?

• Made a couple of tutorial cutscene  to help players understand what I want them to do. And for those who've never played a turn-based JRPG before (which was unthinkable for me before)
• Cut down the difficulty. Players don't know how to play the game effectively. Not yet. So I kind of bent it towards tutorial / first level difficulty.
• Allowed the player to roam my messy maps and weird experimental enemy move routes. After beating the boss, that is. Though it's very crowded because I set them all to 100% spawn rate.
• Tested the game on Linux, with Wine. Wrote a note for it in the game folder and included the font used.

I'm kind of tired with this project (yaaay~) so I'm glad that I've... put an end to it? All that's left is to submit it for the jam. Maybe a little fix sometime. Though I have a mind abandon this project. Maybe start a new one, redrawing the maps and all. Hopefully better.

Sorry for anyone who waited for the features in the original original post. My little designing mind can't quite think of how to make them interesting. Basically I lack execution. And this turned into another rant...

No pictures this time. Anyways, thanks for stopping by! Cheers.

Edit 1: 2019/07/18 typo. 1 sec after submitting, really?! Testes -> Tested

Post-jam post. Yay!

Don't really know what makes a good post-mortem, but I'll write one to bring closure to this devlog.

Post-Mortem

What I think I did right:

• Rescoping whenever needed. Basically I kept trimming the features I used to want on-the-go. They just don't feel necessary... the more I actually developed the game. Pragmatism over theory / idealism, I guess. This also helped me work with the jam's deadline.
• Don't spend too much time on one thing. Because I'm working solo. Don't know about teams, though. Still, I think it's better to spread effort on every part of the game, to prevent being too focused on one thing and ignoring other parts. Sure, I like tweaking the engine and making better battle system but the game is not just the battle system itself. Beats my perfectionist side. 
• Debug debug debug. Or maybe looking up tutorials and documentations for others. Still, when first using an engine, get to know it. I slipped a bunch of in-game messages (not just debug text on debug window!) on many parts of the engine. First week spent learning the sequence of events called on the course of battles. Their variables, functions, etc. Bugs squashed early and avoided.

What I think I did wrong:

• Only having a vague idea of a story and forcing to put it in. Plots and characters just float in my head but I can't ground them. Instead of placeholder texts, I forced some dialogs and formatting. Ended up redoing the formatting and bits of the story. And it's still floating...
• Manually, individually evented events. Basically I made one template event and copy-pasted it many times over. Which made me having to do a lot of copy-pasting again later on when I decided to change some details. I know many of those events have their own unique thing (enemy move route, for example, is different for each event), but I could have saved a lot of time if I made them call a common event instead of a series of commands in each event page. The "defeat" and "flee" events are the same for most battles, but I only realized that after copy-pasting them twice...
• Designer's self difficulty standard. Well... I made a rather hard boss battles, meant to challenge myself (with all my theoretical tactics and knowledge of enemy AI) when the player's don't even know the rules and how to play effectively... yet. And so I had to seriously tone down the difficulty. And add more generosity.
• Being inconsistent / carried away by things. I tried on mapping and settled quickly. But on enemy move routes, they change too much too quick. From simple line back-and-forth, then to zig-zag, loops, pseudo mind-reading, to varying speed (ninjas) and homing ghosts. Which was fun to make, but is a headache for the first-time players. Had to dummy-out all of them and redo.

Conclusion?

Well, those points I mentioned are probably specific to people using RPG engines. Anyways, I think it's important to have a clear idea of what game I (you, we) want to make. Keep that idea grounded (or ground them by writing them down) and prioritize the "feel" of the game. What feeling / message you want to get, what you want players to get. It might actually be simple. 

Also, keep your commitment through development. Try to be consistent. Plan some and stick to it. And try playing without the knowledge of being the developer / designer, because player's aren't like you. No hidden mechanics, okay? Tell players all they need to know and convince them to want to use those mechanics!

Sorry for the long read, but thanks for stopping by! Gotta clean up the OP.

- Chainsta