Here I'm going to post images, gifs or videos from future updates.
You can get the motorcycle pretty much right from the start. I made the quest for its aquisition very simple and quick for now. I will make it harder in the future.
This is suposed to be one of the first vehicles you will get in the full game, so it has some disadvantages. Future vehicles will be faster, allow you to have followers and will be able to ride through more types of terrain.
One thing that will be missing in next version will be visible clothing / mutations while sitting on the motorcycle. I modified the script so it works with vehicles wihout a problem and I added differen hair color sprites for riding sprites as a proof, but adding all those clothing and mutation sprites would take way too much time. I will be turning main character into a model in near future anyway so it would be pointless work.
I'm working on a new cutscene and I found out the system that shows NPC sprites while in dialogue (One of the first scripts I wrote) was incredibly bad. So I rewriten it from scratch. Now it is about 40 lines instead of 500. NPCs can now talk between each other plus adding new NPC sprites doesn't require any new code. And as a bonus, it doesn't require me to go through any text.
I will try and go through previous cutscenes and make them take advantage of this system.
I did more improvements to the save screen. It now shows your current location and the character background now also changes depending on the save location. It also supports even the biggest girls (Thanks Osur for the suggestion).
Thanks for reporting. Imprints created on version 0.23.1 worked fine, but those created before didn't. I fixed the issue (I hope) and release new version, 0.23.2. Be sure to write if it's still broken.
I also fixed the problem with the mutant hunter. Thanks for reporting.
As a sidenote, I created new topic specificaly for bug reports. In the future, I would like everyone to post any bugs you find there, or in the latest blog post. Thanks.
War screen has now all important features in working order. I can control the battle size and place enemies. Players can place soldiers and initiate fighting. Soldiers attack enemies in oposing rows (Red ATK soldiers attack front rows, blue ATK soldiers attack back rows). If there are no enemies in the proper row, they attack the other row. If both rows are empty, the battle ends and you either win or lose.
Things left to do for war window:
I will also have to make recruitment windows, command squad editing windows and war map windows. After that, I will have to plug all of that into the game properly by making changes and adding conditions to the overworld.
I'd like to, but I will have to get it into good enough state, which means implementing all bullet points above and the rest of the windows, except for the animations a UI steps. I might be able to make it in time for the next demo day.
Basic abilities are now working. Most of the abilities will be buffs or debuffs, so that's what I'm focusing on now. Every turn, you get a command point (you will be able to change the amount you get and the max amount by putting different people into your command squad). Abilities cost points. Most abilities will last for the duration of the battle, unless you decide to change the composition for that slot. Morale also works. It decreases by one every turn. You will be able to increase both the starting value and the value while in battle.
Abilities will still need more work. I need to make enemy targeting abilities and healing abilities.
Took a break from the battle window and "finished" most other windows. They work as they should, but they are ugly and don't show all the important information. I will work on them more, don't worry.
"Dismantle" screen allows you to transform your old weapons into generic war resourcess. There are several resource types (Small melee, Heavy melee, Bows, Guns), so different weapons will give you different resourcess.
Recruiting is simple. You select soldier type you want to train. You need recruitable population (kobold grunt requires kobolds, war dogs require dogs and so on), correct weapon resource and armor resource.
Only screen left to do is the map screen, but even with that one done, there is still way too much work left to do. I will need to test everything properly and eliminate as many bugs as I can and redesigning parts of the system that are not fun. After that, I will have to balance everything as best I can and then I will have to make everything look better. Not to mention actualy putting everything into the game and making all the dialogue and world changes.
No ETA for release yet, but it is comming.
Meanwhile, I'm also playing around with other parts of the game. I'm editing the main character model, trying (and failing) to make new hairstyles and generaly slowly chipping away at all the other things I want to do.
Try to guess what that means.
If you guessed custom music, then you are correct.
Next version will allow you to use your own custom music in the game. Simply place your music files into the proper folder (Music in "Hideout" folder will play only in your hideout, music in the "Overworld" folder will play everywhere else. Caves and dungeons will still be silent and cutscenes will still force the proper music to play. The game will scan these folders and play one random track at the start of every week, just like it does now.
This serves as a basis for the future radio you will be able to get in the game. I don't have any original tracks yet so I decided to allow players to atleast play their own tracks for now.
I want to finish one last thing and then I will release next version. This picture should tell you what that thing is.
Farming overhaul is progressing smoothly. I completely scrapped the old system and made entirely new from scratch.
From that tiny gif you might be able to see that there is now no stutter when you harvest plants. And that's only one benefit of this new system. It is, at its core, much more simple than the previous one, but has more features I can actualy use. This is what this system can do right now
Bear in mind that fertiliser or growing periods probably won't be in the initial version, or they might not be in the game at all. Last thing remaining is to make the seed selection window and then I have to port all old plants into the new system.
Since I pretty much tore out a large part of the game, previous save files will NOT be compatiple with next version. Unlocks will still work fine and imprints should also work. But you won't be able to load your old files otherwise. I will try and add a popup to the game that tells you precisely what is happening instead of some random error message showing up.
So if you are in the middle of playing the game, be sure to finish what you started before you download the next version (0.26)
New farming system is now complete. There might be some bugs still present and some edges to smooth out, but I will be testing the game a lot this week so I hope I catch most of them.
The core of of farming is for the player pretty much the same. Largest changes are under the hood, but there are some differences.
First, there is new "tool chest" in your hideout. Using it will show the new farming UI.
Now you can press shift to show the new seed selection screen.
This screen shows all the seeds you have, as well as some information about the plant and the process. Growth period, amount of produce you will get, how many seads you have and how much produce you have. You simply select a seed and you can start planting like you did in previous versions. Step on the proper tile and and press action button, but now you just have to press the button once, since the selected seed will last until you select different one.
You can see the amount of seeds and produce you have together with plant name in the bottom right corner. This HUD element will dissappear if you close your tool chest, or when you rest or leave your hideout, so it won't bother you anywhere else in the game.
Plants will rot if you don't harvest them when they are ripe. Also, some plants will grow back after harvesting, like the tomatoes in above picture.
Last new thing is the "remove" tool. Now you can't accidentaly remove young plants by interacting with them too soon. If you want to remove unwanted plant, select the "remove plant" tool from the seed menu and interact with plants. Ripe plants will be harvested instead of being removed, so you realy can't accidentaly remove them.
As I said before, this system is much faster than the previous one and there is zero lag when harvesting or planting. It also gives me more freedom in designing new crops and is easy to expand. Planting is much faster also, since you select the seed you want to plant only once instead of multiple times for every tile you interact with.
Also bear in mind, this update will make old save files not work, so keep that in mind. I should release this new system sometime next week, if everything goes smoothly.
Another thing that will be in next smaller version.
I reworked the way inventory system works and while I was at it, I also added the expanded item description window.
Original RMXP inventory screen is pretty horendous. If you played Sinathir for some time, you might have noticed how slowly your inventory loads once you have large number of different items. In my testing, I gave my self all ingame items and I had to wait for several seconds before the inventory screen loaded. This was not my fault entirely, since this was happening in freshly created new projects too. This is happening because the game tries to render all items you have at once.
I edited the inventory screen, so it only renders first ten items and renders new items as you scroll down. There is no slowdown once the items are rendered, even when it is something crazy like 2000 items showing at once. It's the initial drawing that slows the game down.
Next, I added the description box I was talking about earlier. This will allow me to make longer descriptions for certain items and to show what they do. Things like showing exact stat gains from eating food, weapon damage type and ammunition and so on.
This is quite new, but it should be in the next version I will be releasing next week.
I cought some kind of cold, so my progress slowed down a bit. However, both the farming and description window is finished an only thing left is to test everything.
Descriptions were added into the shop and even equip screen, Most items use the default description text, but I added custom descriptions to all edible food items. They show you how much they affect different stats. I will do the same for drugs and do the rest in the upcoming months.
I also added very simple compatibility check. Load screen will simply label incompatible save files and make you unable to load them. Much better than the game crashing when you open the load window when you have old save file present.
This update should release early next week, unless I manage to finds some serious bug or something.
😌No longer do new players have to run around panicked like I did when I first found out about some saves not being compatible with new versions. Also, I hope your cold gets better Quentin!
More improvements to the new description system. Bonuses now have different color and they can display differently depending on the window.
I also made you able to move when certain NPCs are leaving the scene. Mainly John and Helena.
I will spend large portion of this week refining certain parts of the game. If everything goes smoothly, I will release new minor version before friday.
>I didn't know that the tomboy had different dialogue than the other
what the fuck, it does?
Yup, when talking to the bridge bandit the dialogue is more blunt than when you're playing a different character
That's pretty much what this system does. You can combine traits in any way you want. There are some traits you can't pick together, for example being more afraid of abominations and being less afraid of abominations can't be picked together. You can take only one, which means there is less room for conflict. You can still take more than one personality trait however. You can be a psychopath who is good at haggling, enjoys company of other people and is a lazy worker. The system makes it very easy to check what traits the player has, so making unique dialogue for certain situations will be easy.
By the way, what dialogue is different for tomboy? I completely forgot about it.
Sorry for the late reply, I've really only noticed the dialogue being different for the bandit guard at the bridge. The protagonist is simply more blunt and rude
I think there might be more dialogue like this. The cure quest deffinitely has multiple outcomes when you talk to the kobolds that want the cure from you and I'm sure there is even more I simply forgot about.
With all those traits I added, making more varied dialogue will be very easy. I just have to get to it.
A little preview of the future character sprites.
This is not my highest priority right now, but I still tinker with the main character model from time to time, trying to improve the way it looks. These are the results of my experiments.
Again, this is me just playing around with blender. None of these are meant to be final. However, my goal is to make the shading softer than what the game has now. I just have to strike the propper ballance between the model looking like a drawing and looking like a plastic doll.
Another thing I will most likely put in the game is variable skin color.
Making the skin of the protagonist get darker as she gets older seems like a nice touch. You spend quite a lot of time working outside so it's only natural for your skin to get tanned. I would like to tie this to some variable, so I can change the skin color depending on things you do and not just your age. This will most likely not happen though, since this would highly increase the amount of sprites I would have to do. I will think about it.
Other than that, I have one minor patch almost ready for release. It fixes two mutation related traits which were not working properly and two completely new traits. I might release it this weekend.
I played through the game few days ago and found out two bigger problems
Not enough half-day activities and not enough ways to increase wellness.
I quickly put together a simple workout system. You select atribute you want to raise, then you select equipment. Time passes, you get wellness and your atribute increases a bit.
You will need food and some equipment will require you to have certain level in your atributes before you can even use it.
I will do some more testing and relese new version. I also improved the inventory and description system a bit. Now you won't get kicked to the map screen when you use an item, so you can heal your self or eat food quickly without having to open the inventory after every use.
Next version will have basic world map.
Bear in mind that I made this in MS pain in like five minutes and put a filter on it. This is in no way final.
People were getting lost way too often, so this should help them a little. You can access the map from the radial menu. It doesn't show all locations and move routes, so there is still plenty of exploration to do, not to mention shortucts.
I will most likely keep the map "hand drawn". My idea was to make the style of the map change together with the age of the main character. The map itself will be professionaly made, but there would be hand made notes and scribbles, which would change as you get older. I think this is doable.
I also want to fit NPC locations in there to make it even more useful.
And I will reintroduce getting bottles or bowls back after eating food, which is something I completely forgot about after the inventory overhaul.
Another thing I promised long time ago. Bestiary.
Still not finished. I would like to fit item drops and other information in the. You will be able to scroll the information screen too, so there is really no limit to the amount of information I can fit there. I will also obscure most of the information at the start and reveal more and more depending on the amount of kills.
On top of that, I will add a system that changes the damage you do / receive to enemies depending on the amount you killed.
War system will take me longer than I thought, so the next major update will have the bestiary together with some new locations and enemies.
Bestiary is now pretty much finished.
As I said, it reveals more information depending on the number of kills. You can switch between the drops and description windows and you can scroll windows down and up.
Drops work as you might expect. If enemy drops an item, it will appear in the bestiary together with its drop rate. Items you didn't get from that enemy yet will display as "???" so you know exacly how many items are missing.
Two more things for me to do. Actualy add all enemies currently in the game and make the amount of kills influence the combat in some way.
Full character customisation is on my wish list, but I highly doubt I will add it before the rest of the game is finished, or if ever. The games story would still work if you could be both male and female, but it would pretty much double the amount sprites I'd have to do, not to mention doing all the alternate dialogue and cutscenes.
As I said, I'd like to do that, but I don't think it's relly going to happen.
Ooh, this looks really cool. Maybe you could implement it as a sort of item like the Pokedex from Pokemon and have a quest where you retrieve it before being able to see these stats. Maybe the thing could be broken and it'll only get more information as you encounter new things and input it in the Pokedex.
That's pretty close to what I want to do.
You will get a PDA like device at the start of the game, which will pretty much explain all of the hud elements in the game. This is an old picture the wip main screen.
Also, the bestiary added in 0.29 already works like that. You get an empty list of enemies that gets filled as you encounter them and fight them.
I'm still not decided on what it's actualy going to be . It might be strapped to your arm like fallout pipboy, or it might be a slightly bigger phone you keep in you pocket. I might also scrap it and give the main character bionic eye that shows you the UI like in deus ex. I'm still experimenting with all of that since all options sound nice to some degree.
It was just an idea. While the major plot points are set and I won't be changing them, minor details might be changed.
I have an intro section pre-planned. You start in Russia. You wake up, eat your breakfast and go play with your friends. Police then shows up and arrests you and your parents. You spend few days in a cell and then get put onto a ship with your parents. Before the ship arives at Sinathir, the prisoners rebel and try to escape. They all die, your parents included, but you stay alive. You get a letter some other prisoner was supposed to get and your task is to give it to Mr. White. If you do so, you will be set free.
What I wrote is set in stone and I won't be changing that. However, I will be adding and changing minor details.
Maybe you got a high-tech contact lense as a birthday gift the morning you got arrested,
Maybe you got cought in the crossfire on that ship and your eye got damaged and since you are a child, they took pitty on you and gave you cheap bionic eye.
Maybe when the prisoners were fighting, you managed to steal the PDA from some dead soldier. Or maybe you got it together with the letter.
More experimentation with graphics.
Again, nothing is final. I quite like the door, but they don't quite fit with the walls.
And even more experiments. With lighting this time.
The best way to make something look "good" is to simply make everything dark so it is harder to see anything bad. But I want to use the tilesets in brightly lit areas too so I can't really skimp on anything.
The story dungeon I'm working on will have a part where you restore the electricity in it, so I'm trying to strike a good ballance between "too dark" and "not dark enough".
The whole scene looks different once you add lights. The shadows in the door sprites, around the pipes or around the wall corners make the whole thing look much better in my opinion.
I'm working on the new and improved character model. This includes improving it both visualy and "technicaly" I guess is the right word. Working with the old model was sometimes painful. Exported images had to be edited by hand or sometimes created from scratch. This made things like eyes or mouth animations nightmare to create. I managed to improve the model and my workflow well enough so that any editing I have to do will be minimal. Thanks to this, I will be able to add some decent enough facial animations. This will make your main character seem more alive as her expression changes in dialogue. I can also make better expressions for low health, being drunk and other states. Here are some work in progress faces I was playing with.
Again, work in progress and all that.
Added another menu screen. The game now has three. One with no saves, one before finishing the game and one after finishing the game. The new menu screen shows when you have a save file but didn't finish the game yet. I even added simple animation that shows shortly after the main menu gets loaded.
It looks slighly different in the game since I had to chage the framerate and what not for the gif to fit here.
I will also add an option to switch between these three screens once you finish the game once.
I tried that and it didn't look good because the movement was too exagerated (And I pretty much don't know what I'm doing since I'm not good at animating). What I did is moving one of the frames 1 pixel down compared to the rest, which looks pretty decent and makes a illusion of breathing.
Model with 5 frames of animation. Each frame is rendered into separate image. Last frame is duplicated five times so I have 10 images total. I aplied a filter to each image and saved it (Shaders are non existant in RMXP). In the game, first five frames show at the start and after that the last 5 frames keep repeating.
Model and animation was done in blender: https://www.blender.org/
Background is AI generated using this: https://nmkd.itch.io/t2i-gui
All of the editing, including the title text, menu options and the pencil filters were done in PhotoFiltre Studio X: https://www.photofiltre-studio.com/news-en.htm
This is a very weak program compared to photoshop or even gimp so if you use any of those daily, there is no need to use this I think. But I have been using it for almost two decades and it is really great for simple editing like this because of how easy it is to work with. I use gimp for more complex things.
As for the gif itself:
I recorded the game with OBS Studio (I didn't update it for years so I don't really know if it still works the same): https://obsproject.com/
I then uploaded it to: https://ezgif.com/video-to-gif
There I cut it to size, clip the length and converted it to gif.
I spent some time improving the work window. I will be redoing all UI elements rather soon, but the work window was really ugly. This should make it more bearable.
Some screenshot from the story dungeon.
The story dungeon will be the direct continuation of the last cutscene with the generals. After some time, you will get contacted by them and they will help you find Mr. White (The old way of reaching him will be removed from the game). They will refuse to take you there if your weapon skills and physical stats are too low. In later versions, there will be more ways to reach Mr. White, many of which will not require combat.
The dungeon it self will be pretty linear with plenty of dialogue explaining some lore bits and giving more personality to the generals and one other NPC that will acompany you. Dungeon will end with a boss fight and you will meet Mr. White after that. You will give him the letter and get more lore and dialogue.
After that, he will act just like he did before. Selling equipment and training you. The dungeon in the basement will also be locked and you will need a special key to open it. He will give it to you. The event for getting certain number of humanoid kills will also be different.
Work is progressing smoothly. I still have some tiles to make and I will have to make a lot of dialoge and eventing, but I'm slowly getting there.
Definitely. There will be three major branches.
Second option will be achieveable without killing anything. You will learn a trade, join a faction, improve your trade skill and get popular with the faction residents and then talk to the faction leader, who knows where Mr. White is.
And that's only the first part of the main quest. Next part will be about deciding if you want to get rid of Mr. White, help him or just not get involved.
This is very rough simplification, since I don't want to spoil everything, but there will be multiple ways to finish the main story line and finishing the game without fighting anything at all will be possible.
The dungeon is now, graphicaly speaking, complete.
I don't want to spoil everything so here is a screenshot of Mr. White's hideout.
Apart from the layout, I also finished the boss fight at the end of it. The boss will be using skills and will require some tactical thinking to take down, but it won't be that difficult to take out.
Only thing left to do is to make all the dialogue and some other minor things. If everything goes smoothly, the dungeon should be released next monday.
Also, this version will NOT be compatible with old saves (Unlock will stay, as always) so be sure to finish your playthrough before that.
If I manage to finish the dungeon, then yes. I don't think anybody playing on the demo day will get that far though. I don't think I will be adding any kind of shortcut to enter the dungeon early, because it will serve mainly as a story setpiece and most of the things happening in there will not make much sence without playing through the rest of the game beforehand.
Another screenshot.
I don't think this should be considered a spoiler. You will obviously be fighting abominations in this dungeon.
There will be quite a bit of dialogue in this dungeon. You will be walking through it together with the generals and they will have different dialogue depending on your character, or decisions.
One example is the picture above. This is the first enemy you encounter in the dungeon. Ordinary hungry abomination. After fighting it, you will get different dialogue depending on multiple things:
There are more situations like this. Some are affected by traits and there is one that is affected by how fast you do certain thing.
Large portion of the work needed is done. I still have to finish the encounter with Mr. White and change some existing events that are already in the game (Event for humanoid kills will be different, he won't be in the forest basement). If everything moves smoothly, new version might be released even sooner.
Small thing I'm currently working on. Morality system.
This isn't really anything new, since basis of this system are already in the game. This will simply visualise your morality and flesh them out a little.
The way it works is really simple. Doing bad things, like taking drugs or killing animals and humanoids will lower your morality. Doing good things, like talking to people, working, doing quests or taking care of animals will increase it.
It will range from -100 to +100. Every ten points you will gain a perk/trait. For example, first positive trait will give you 5% discount in shops. Next trait will increase the money you get from jobs and next one will incrase your mood gain and money you get from completing quests and so on.
Negative traits will do pretty much what they do now. First perk will remove mood loss from killing animals, second will lower loss for killing humanoids, third will allow you to butcher humanoids and so on.
While the initial system will be quite simple, it will give me more options in the future and it will give you more roleplaying options. You will be able to go from good to evil and vice versa, so you can play as a good character but then something bad happends and you can start acting badly, which will in time remove your positive perks and give you new negative ones.
It will also allow me to make better dialogue and quests.
For example, someone asks you to rescue a cat from a tree. Neutral character will get an option to say yes or no. Slightly good character will say yes automaticaly. Very good character will say yes and refuse any reward. Slightly bad character will say no automaticaly, but the NPC will offer you some money upfront. Very evil character will say no, no matter the reward.
This is all just a concept. I will see how things turn out.
So how would the current traits like psychopath, afraid, brave and stuff work with the new rep system? Currently they say you can't get used to killing but double/nullify mood loss to certain mob types, also is the icon for evil Nika supposed to be a generic devil or are the black eyes indicating THAT thing?
Starting traits will be above any other traits affecting the same thing. If you take psychopath, you will lose no mood when killing humanoids right from the start and evil traits will therefore do nothing. However, later evil traits will start actualy giving you mood for killing humanoids, but you will get nothing because you have the psychopath trait. I think this will balance things nicely since you will benefit from these traits at the start, but they might prove to be less useful later on as you get more morality perks. I will also add a proper way to change your traits mid game so you are not stuck with traits you don't like forever.
As for bonuses like more money from working or sale discount, these will simpy stack with other traits.
The evil icon is a mix of both generic devil and things in the game.
First, I want to apologize for slower updates. I lost someone very dear to me which made it hard for me to do pretty much anything. I will get over it though and resume working at my usual pace in near future.
Most of the work on the morality system is done. Perks are ready, bars fill and decrease as they should and different actions increase / decrease your morality correctly. Only thing left is to actualy make the perks do something. No ETA yet, but I would like to finish this before the end of month.
sorry for your loss
take your time, there is no need to force yourself to work. excited to see this in action once it's ready
The number of successful work days is now pre-determined. What the "Total" values says is the exact number of successes you will get. Not more and not less. The exact days you mess up or work properly are still randomised to make the animations more interesting than first days being successful and the rest failing.
Training also works like this now.
I will do some more testing and then release this new version. This is a small, but quite serious change that will hopefuly make the game better.
I don't have anything great to show yet, but I decided to post something just to tell you how things are going. I don't think this is worthy of a new blog post just yet so I'm going to put it here.
Next update will have the dungeon loot overhaul and one very small dungeon. This dungeon will be the first dungeon you will be able to enter. The mine dungeon will be closed at the start of the game, but this change will come in even later versions.
Loot overhaul will only apply to the new dungeon for now, so you can see both the old and new systems in the same version and decide which you like more.
Other than that, I'm still playing around with AI. I won't be using it in any direct way, except for textures (The story dungeon was made pretty much entirely from 3D models with AI generated textures).
However, I might also use it to get inspiration when I get around making models for side characters. I have their looks and main features outlined and writen down, but details are still in the air. I'm no artist so making concept art is not that useful to me since the best I can do is very rough sketches on paper or mspaint. Images generated with AI are imperfect and each one is slightly different, which makes it good for the purpose of concept art.
I tried generating some images of the existing main characters and these are the results
I particulary like many of the elements on the cult robes and the hat for Helena. The black turtleneck also fits Mr. White more than the orange he is supposed to have. I'm not really happy with Suong, since she is supposed to look older, but some elements of her dress look interesting. I like Friedrich's haircut on the right and how cool he looks over all. I imagine Boris looking like a combination of the left and right faces together with brown leather duster and green military tank top and trousers. His haircut on the left also looks interesting.
Making models for these characters is still far away, but images like these will help me get inspiration once I get to it and.
Same goes for the main character. This is what happened when I put in the first image:
This gave me some ideas for improving the basic dress and making it look more interesting. I like the belt and the frills at the bottom and sleeves look more interesting than just white stripes. There is a high chance I will alter the 3D model and add some kind of belt.
That's pretty much it for now. Update is coming. Also, I would like to know what you thing about the recent small patch that removed random chance from training and working.
The most important part of the new dungeon loot system is now complete.
This screen will show up when you open a chest. It shows you the list of items you can get, how many you get and how many points they cost. Top part shows how many chests you found and how many points you have. Right part of the screen shows you the item description.
Only thing I'm still not 100% sure about is handling of items you can't pick. Don't know if I should just show them as grayed out names or just replace their names entirely with "???" to make opening chests and getting point more interesting.
it's tricky.
on one hand, if players don't know what items they could get if they have X points, they'll play with the goal of getting those points to see what items are possible. the bad aspect of this is that, if it is an item they don't care about, it will create a situation of "i did all this work for *this*? ". i think since you are trying to reduce RNG and randomness in favor of the player being in full control, it would probably be best to give the player full control (of information in this case) and show them all options.
I will probably do that. Seeing what you can actualy get and looking forward to it is better than just blindly opening chests and hoping the next things is something good.
The mini dungeon and new loot system are now complete. I will spend some more time testing everything, but new version should be out tomorrow, unless I find something really broken.
You remember these?
I almost don't. These events were not implemented properly and the success rate was pretty much always too low so I didn't bother doing them that often.
Next version will make this events more rewarding. You will always succeed and get a skill point plus some silver depending on your skill. Your morality will also improve a bit.
This will make doing these events always benefitial, unless you want to be evil.
Next new thing will be shrines.
You will be able to light the candles on these if you are member of the church faction.
But you will also be able to donate and pray / meditate on these once a week.
This will raise your mood, reastore some hitpoints and change you morality a bit.
Every ten points you get will give you a perk.
For example, if you get ten bad points, you will stop losing mood for killing animals and you will get a shop discount when you get ten good points. Morality goes from -100 to +100, so there are 18 perks you can get from morality in total.
This also means that you can lose these perks, so if you are good and decide to become bad, you will lose your good perks.
In the future, I will use morality in stead of most dialogue choices. The main character will simply say things and make decision based on your morality. You will still be able to select from multiple options whenever a major choice comes up.
i did sort of like the bloodstone quest, even if I never could complete it. It makes joining a faction feel meaningful since you needed to solve a puzzle to join, like some sort of exclusive club. It definitely made the church feel like a big deal, since it wasnt just a “yeah kill 10 boars and you can join” thing. I’d perhaps try and keep some of that secrecy if possible, so that “only the worthy” can join
I want there to be multiple layers to the church. Most members are supposed to be the initiates. They take care of minor things and don't have access to any magic or other more important stuff. They will accept pretty much anyone and give him the starting rank.
Higher ranks are a different matter. Only few people actualy get far enough to get access to magic and most low ranking church members don't even know this stuff exists.
That's my goal. Make joining the church easy, but getting higher is supposed to be hard. That's why you start with just praying at some shrines to join and later you have to find the bloodstone to get promoted to become a "proper" member of the church.
This is a feature few people have been asking about.
Next version will (among other things) allow you to escape from battles.
I added multiple escape items, like smoke bombs or fire crackers. Using these in battle will quit the combat, show animation over an enemy that attacked you and make them slightly transparent.
The enemy will stay in one spot for certain amount of time, depending on the item you used. Smoke bombs will stun them for longer and give you about 4 seconds to retreat. Crackers will give you about 1.5 second. Once the stun wears off, the enemy will continue what he was doing before, which in most cases will be chasing you. Getting out of their aggro range before that happens will return them to their idle state.
There are a few quirks. Some of these are by desing, some of these are limitations of the system I didn't bother changing.
Escape items will be craftable and you will be able to buy them too.
Next version will include a little rework of healing items.
Your character will have new "health" stat. This stat will be affected by your vitality and wellness.
Each week, you will be able to heal the amount of HP equal to your health stat by using healing items. Using healing items beyond that will have no effect. This number resets weekly.
This will basicaly limit the amount you can heal with items every week. Bandage sprites from using first aid kits will be changed to work with this system.
I had a power outage when I was working on the game and my files got corrupted. Same thing happened to me few years ago and since then I was making backups pretty much every week. I lost a few days of work, but I caught up to where I was no problem.
Health limit system should be now complete.
Every week, you can heal the amount equal to your (maxHP +(wellness / 4)). Every 20% of this value will add bandage on your body untill you reach the maximum number of 5. Skipping a week in any way will reset this counter and remove your bandages, allowing you to heal again.
One of the complains I get semi-frequently is the amount of things you "need" to do if you want to play optimaly. You have to talk to all NPCs, kill all enemies on the map, clear all dungeons, craft all items you can and so on. This means one week can take you multiple hours to get through if you really want to do everything.
My plan is to limit the amount of things you can do at the start of the game and increase it as the game goes on.
Hangout option will be removed, because I'm not really happy with it as it is and I will replace it with a better system later. Social points will stay in the game though. You will be getting them from the start of the game. Talking to NPC will take away one point from you and raise your mood and relationship. If you run out of points, you will get nothing. Only one point can be used for one NPC every week.
This means that you will have to talk only to a few NPCs to get the mood and relationship bonuses and you won't have to chase all of them every week. The amount of social points you get will increase with your age and traits. I will also bring back the chat option, so you can choose who you raise the relationship with so you don't have to find the specific NPC first before talking to anybody else.
Next, I will limit the amount of combat XP you can get per week. This number will increase with your age, overall combat level and other variables.
I will also limit the number of dungeons you can clear every week. Again, this number will increase as you play.
All of these changes should have multiple effects. New players will be less overwhelmed, since they will be limited in the amount of things they can do. Overall progression will be slowed down, which will allow me to gauge average player levels at certain dates more easily. Lastly, this will also make the growth of your character more apparent, since it adds more things that improve over time and allow you to do more things. Older players will be able to bypass some of these limitations to a degree by joining the cult early or usisng ichor.
Main reason I added hangouts was to add more personality to NPCs. You were supposed to take them out on "dates" and learn more about them and so on. The mood and relationship boost was just a bonus.
It became obsolete the moment I added propper cutscene system, since it does pretty much everything I wanted to do with the hangouts.
As for the machanical part, I have two ways planned to make getting relationship easier.
First one is gifts. Quite a simple mechanic. You will be able to give one item to one NPC per week and and you will get a relationship bonus depending if they like that item (or it gets lowered if they hate it).
The second way to get relationship will be much more complex. I intend to overhaul the way working and weekly activities work. Instead of doing one thing for the entire week, you will be able to schedule every day of the week.
The core of the game will stay the same. You will still spend seven days doing some kind of activity and then get one day where you walk around freely like you do now. You will just be able to manage those seven days better.
You will be able to work, train and rest like you can now, but I will add way more options. Things like mining, cutting trees, hanging out with NPCs, begging, working for your faction and so on. You will asign one of these activities for each work day. You can rest the entire week, work for five days, rest for one and hang out with certain NPC for the last day, or work for all seven days, each day for different NPC.
You will schedule your work week from your hideout so you won't have to hunt down the specific NPC you want to work for, but there are still benefits for talking to every NPC from time to time.
On top of that, this will allow me to make certain jobs and activities locked from the start. For example, the blacksmith won't let you work for him unless you have certain strength level, Olaf won't let you work for him unless you already have friend and so on.
There is more, but this is a big enough wall of text already. This overhaul will take some time and I'm not sure if I should do this or the faction system first, since they would both benefit from each other.
Next update is almost ready. Only thing left is to add these bars into the status window and test everything as much as possible.
These bars will track your weekly limits. You can bring them up by pressing shift on the menu screen or by going to the status window.
All limits are fully working. Healing, combat xp, dungeon visits, chatting and eating are all limited in some way. These limits can be increased in some ways.
Dungeons now work slightly differently.
This means that you have to be really prepared when you are entering a dungeon, since simly going in and out will take away one visit point. If you run out of healing items or ammunition and you leave, you will be unable to enter again if you have no points left, or you will have to clear the dungeon again if you have some.
All those values can be easily adjusted and I'm sure I will be balancing them once the update is out and I get some feedback.
I'm currently experimenting with using AI for NPC graphics.
Current npc graphics are really bad and very inconsistent. These new ones look better and are quite easy to work with. Bear in mind that I wan't to make proper graphics in the future, so these will serve as a placeholders. Much better than the stick figures that are in the game right now.
Next version will arive later, mainly because of two things.
1.) I wanted the text window to change depending on what person you decide to join after the story dungeon. I was able to do it, but making the additional text windows and making the system actualy work took some time.
2.) Most of the character sprites are finished, but there are some characters with barely any dialogue, like Tadeas. I will be adding some simple dialogue when you trade, work or train with them and when you just talk to them. Basicaly what Billy or Suong has. This will also take some time.
I think the new version might get released this week, but anything can happen so no promisses.
Something I'm working on (It is much smoother in game). Should be ready with the next major update.
A very early version of the new work schedule screen:
A lot is still missing. The three windows at the bottom show nothing and a lot is still missing, but the general idea is here. You will select a day, then type of activity, then you will chose from a activity giver / activity type and then you will select a specific task.
As you can see, I selected work, Suong and fixing traps job. The icons next to the day selected will quickly tell you what you scheduled, for example the day two is: Work (money bag icon), your employer is Billy (Icon shows his head), and the specific job is smithing related (the icon is a stack of ingots with roman "1", meaning it's a low tier job that raises your smithing skill). I will be showing more of this new system as I work on it, but you can already see that NPCs will have more kinds of job for you, even focusing on skills that are not direcly tied to their trade.
Another picture of the wip work window. I will make a new blog post in the next 24 hours and tell you more about what to expect from this new system . It should be finished and released in early december, if everything goes well.
Small update. Work is progressing well. I have only two things left on my list.
I'm working on a system that will enhance the scheduling a bit.
I will be adding simple cutscenes that will play after you accept your schedule. These cutscenes will show up once in a while and will depend on the activities you scheduled.
For example, you will get a cutscene on your first ever day of working as a farmer. This one will basicaly show how unskilled you are. You will get a next cutscene after you raise your farming skill a bit, showing how you improved.
These will have static backgrounds and be quite short, which will make them easy to make while still showing how you are progressing / getting better and how other NPCs react to that.
Next patch should come out this week. It will include some minor bugfixes, hangour option for all major NPCs (with exceptions like Mr. White and the Generals), and basis of the cutscene work system.
Cutscene system in this initial version will be barebones in presentation, but it will have all the functions I want it to have. I will be addind support for some kind of animation that will show you days of the week and count down untill you hit a day with a cutscene.
Only interactions with Billy will have cutscenes in this version.
The way they trigger is simple. The game will check your schedule and then look at a list of conditions for triggering a cutscene. All cutscenes will trigger only once per playthrough and you can get only one cutscene per week for now. All of them have around 5 lines of text, so adding a skip function like the proper cutscenes have is not necesary.
For example, if your farming level is lower than 10, you spend atleast one day working for Billy and you select farming related job, you will get a cutscene where Billy explains the very basics to you. Different cutscene will play if you select smithing related job from Billy.
The system I made is easy to work with and all cutscenes are supposed to be really short. Adding large number of them should be quick and easy while making your characters progression more interesting.
Favor window is now pretty much feature complete and all the obvious bugs and shortcomings were fixed.
One of the shortcomings of this system was the lack of dialogue. This system pretty much removes need for any of the dialogue you got from some NPC when you raised their relationship level and they gave you something.
Now you can just ask for those items directly from the favor window, which makes the NPCs feel less "real".
I adressed this in two ways. First are cutscenes, which are already in the game and work quite well.
Second, I added two lines of dialoge for every favor you can pick. When you pick any favors from the menu and return to game, you will get multiple lines of dialogue depending on what you picked.
Is I said in the recent blog post, tying both the favor and schedule systems together and replacing the old work system will take some time. Don't expect any bigger updates any time soon.
Work is progressing well. I decided to add an option for favors you can pick repeatedly. For example, olaf will give you free ammunition as many times as you want (If you have enough spare favor points).
This will make raising relationship with different NPCs more important for certain types of characters. Billy will give you seeds, suong will give you some food, Tadeas will give you potions and so on.
Also, here are all the things that I have to do before I release new version:
I'm working on the first four points together and all necesary systems are in place, but it's still going to take quite a bit of time to put everything in and double check everything. Week report screen will need complete rewrite, but that should be quite easy. Construction will be slightly more difficult.
Can't give you any estimates as of yet, but don't expect the update this month.
Small update. All character favor data and jobs should be in the game. I decided to delay the addition of construction so that I can release this update sooner. There is still quite a bit of work to be done and I will have to rework the entire tutorial to reflect these changes, but I should be able to finish the update in the first half of the month. Unless something unexpected happens.
And the schedule window will now let you leave without accepting the schedule.
The report screen is now practicaly finished.
Last thing to is is to overhaul the tutorial and test everything. If I don't encounter any serious crashes, then I will release the next beta version. I will be doing some more testing after that and fix any bugs I or you find. After that, I will add construction to the scheduling.
If everything goes smoothly, then next test version should be released towards the end of this week. There will be some minor things missing, like construction progress not showing in week report window, but everything else should work without problem.
Gathering option will have to wait, since this will require expanding the map and bunch of other stuff. Once construction is released, reported bugs are fixed and all the small missing things are added, I will start properly working on the faction system.
Next version is now in the final testing phase. All construction projects should be in and should work. Now I just have to test things to make sure there are no crashes or major bugs. You can expect next update this friday, if everything goes smoothly. Here is how the construction system works:
This system gives you more freedom with your schedule and it gives me more freedom to make construction projects more interesting. All projects in previous versions either took no time to build, one week or one month. Now they can take as much time as I want and you are not forced to put entire week into doing nothing but building. You can build a "7" days project in exactly one week, or you can work on it slowly by scheduling only one day for seven weeks.
Construction progress now shows up in the week report window. This means all the features I wanted in the version 0.38 are there.
I will now start slowly working on the faction system. I will wait about 2 weeks before releasing the final 0.38 version in case some bug reports show up or if I find any my self. If nothing crops up, then I will release the full 0.38 version.
So if you find any bugs or have some suggestions related to the schedule system, don't be afraid to post them.
Once the 0.38 version is fully released, I will start fully focusing on the faction system, starting with the church. I will talk more about this system once I have something to show.
Small QoL feature I've been working on today.
I wasn't happy with the limited amount of save slots on offer, but I also kinda liked the limitation in some way. To make save management more forgiving and pleasant, I implemented "save profiles". Every character you make will have its own save folder with separate save slots. Each character still has only five save slots, but the amount of characters you can have is pretty much unlimited.
This system will detect and move your previous save files into "-OLD-" folder. Here you can load your old characters. Saving the game while playing those old files will create new folders depending on your characters name.
Faction overview screen will show you all factions you encountered, your rank, standing points and it will also give you short description of your relationship and short faction description. Pretty much every NPC will belong to a faction.
Next update will have several small improvements. For example, most locations will have new battle backgrounds. I also added a simple system that picks a random battle music before every battle.
I redesigned the main menu a bit to make it fit more with the ingame UI. I also added one new feature that was not requested, but will surely make everyone happy. Pressing the "Continue" option will now automaticaly load the latest save you made, so you don't have to choose your profile and then search for the latest save manualy.
I didn't post any progress reports for quite some time, so I decided to show you atleast a little part of what I'm currently working on.
Among other things, my main focus right now is adding a proper intro to the game. This will show you the events between your arrival and Billy making your hideout.
This intro will mainly serve as a story / lore introduction. The gameplay tutorial begins right after it ends, like it does in the current version. Intro sequence will be mostly on rails and focus heavily on cutscenes and dialogue options, where you can ask Billy about the island, different factions, recent events and so on.
You will be able to skip the intro at any time, since it will be pretty much one long cutscene, so you won't have to sit through it if you find it boring or if you are on your second playthrough.
There are some small systems that I will have to add to make this all work, but nothing major. Together with the intro sequence, I will also be expanding existing dialogue topics to other NPCs. No eta. for the next update yet, but I hope I can finish it before christmas.
