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I can't believe that it's been 3 years since I started working on this idea. However, I don't really have anything else planned at the moment. I might share a .zip of all of the files that were used behind the scenes, but nothing else. I probably should've planned this whole thing out so it didn't have to end up like this, but that's all in the past.

I love the German thrown into some of the dialogue, really makes it feel immersive

This is a great game—that is, as a satire

Pretty fun, would recommend

Wow, 2 years... I honestly didn't expect to get so little through the game in so long of a timeframe, but at least progress is being made in general. I don't know what else to say, so I'll just leave it at that :)

This doesn't mean that the full game is coming out anytime soon, but I now have a clear idea of when I want the demo to actually stop. Just know that in the next update, many things will be polished up and some more features are going to be introduced.

Update: I noticed that in the game Mysterious Mage's design is already 8x9, but I was looking at a text file I made for the symbol art, which had the earliest design. I did notice that I used more asterisks because I couldn't get any backslashes to work while typing them in, but now I figured out how to implement both backslashes, so the new design will still be used. I will also clean up the other enemy designs as well, since I can use both types of slashes

For reference, these are their old designs:

 ///////////////////////////// 
/        _       _           | 
|        .       .           | 
|        _       _           | 
|          /    /            | 
|          (    )            | 
|                            | 
|    _____________________   | 
|    \___________________/   | 
|                            |  
 \    //////////////////    /   
  \________________________/

      _______        
     /       \       
    /     /\ /      
   /      \//     
  /        \    
 /__________\   
/____________\   
|////////////|   
|////////////|   
|////////////|   
\   ___      /

Here are the new designs for the dad and Mysterious Mage so far:

 //////// 
| _   _ | 
| .   . | 
| -/ /- | 
|  ( )  | 
| |___| | 
\ ///// / 
 \_____/

    ____ 
   /  __\ 
  /   \// 
 /_____\ 
/_______\ 
|///////| 
|///////| 
\  __   /

Now, something about the demo that I haven't even had much thought about was the inconsistencies in the art. First of all, the art for the dad doesn't even show up, which is obviously different than all of the other battles. Second of all, the art of Mysterious Mage doesn't fit the scale of 8x9 characters like the rest of the enemies, so I'll be changing it so that it will all be consistent. Don't worry though, not too much is going to be changed from the original

I'm implementing a system where the program does not stop when you type an invalid input, and just tells you to try again. I don't know how I didn't think about  making this, but I just now realized and am currently working on that

I'm going to be revamping the soundtrack, now that I am more familiar with making music and can make it suit the game better. I will also delete achievements entirely if I have to, I haven't had any time to really WORK work on the game, so we'll see when we get there

Update: The achievements are staying, since I found out a thing about static and non-static methods (I won't go into detail since it's too complicated for this little message)

I started development on this game 1 year ago on November 8th, 2021 with the question "What can I do with my current programming abilities to make a game?" in my head. It was firstly named "RPG in only one .java file" as a placeholder name for what would be later named "The Path to Power". I started development with guns blazing, super hyped and getting lines and lines of code written for everything. I then stumbled on some 8-bit music on YouTube one day and I thought that would be fitting for my game, so I started teaching myself to use programs to make it. This was sort of a setback, with all of the editing I had to do to everything to include audio and whatnot, but I am happy that I now have music and sound effects for the game. I was finally done with integrating the music and sound effects into the game, so now was the time to add to the story, but my motivation was going down and it doesn't help when you're on writer's block, are barely a writer in the first place, the .java file taking forever to open, and now have Marching Band as an extracurricular activity, so I just took a break from making the game (I did however strengthen my music making skills for the game's OST to be better in the future). Marching Band was fun, we went to State Finals at Lucas Oil Stadium (the place where the Indianapolis Colts play football) on November 5th, 2022 and got 8th place out of 10. I will probably go back to working on the game and fix some stuff. Maybe the game should be made of many .java files to make programming easier, because last time I opened the .java file, it took like 30 minutes to actually get up and running. Ok, yeah, I'm gonna do that, nobody's even here to care that the game will no longer be in "only one .java file" so it's fine.

Happy anniversary to The Path to Power's development

In the full game, there will be differences from the demo, including:

1. More efficiently programmed battles and code overall

2. Includes a Game Over feature with saves

3. Symbol graphics (example below of what that means)

****
*  ^*__^
|*|   *
* * 0  0|             
| | __._|            
|* * E 3*            
||  *  *|            
*,,, ,,,*
 ___      ___      __ __     ___      ___      ___      ___     ___
/  _\    /   \     || ||    /   \    | | \    | | \    | __|    | |
\  \     | | |     || ||    \ | /    | | /    | | /    | _      | |
_\  \    | | \     |\_/|    / | \    | |\\    | |\\    | _|     | |_
\___/    \__\_\    \___/    \___/    |_| \\   |_| \\   |___|    |___|
*finished product may vary

4. An achievement  counter when you get an achievement

5. Better pacing (Basically, I felt like the game had too many saves for how short it was, so there will be less saves)

6. Other things that aren't planned out yet (This post may be amended if I ever make a change)

I will take suggestions (if there are any, but most likely not) for changes.

I finally polished up the features of the 2022 update so that it's actually playable now. The full game will be in another page. The link to the page will be in the disclaimer.

I got a better laptop for coding, and I have been working on adding music to the game. Hopefully adding music will make the game better. (It did make the game better, so that's cool)

It turns out the laptop dying was a false alarm, I was able to fix it

My laptop that I was working on decided to glitch out and not work anymore, which will set the development back by some time

It's now called "The path to power", but the game can also be referred to it's earlier name, RPG in only one java file