As you might have noticed, this developer's log seems to have skipped a month. Ultimately, May ended up being a much needed month of rest and recharging after we worked very hard on the game's story and integration during the spring. But I'm pleased to report that there is a lot of exciting progress to share as a result.
Content & Integration
Progress on the first "draft" of the entire game continued, and we were able to finish up several more passes. All that's left is putting in placeholders for audio and special effects, which we plan to finish up during July.
Chests, Collectibles and Enemies
All of the chests, collectibles and enemies have had placeholders implemented into the game. This means the basic level design for fields and villages is about 75% done. The only thing left here is integrating the side quests. Dungeons are 100% completed in this regard, which is a pretty big milestone!
While the maps themselves are not visually completed, and the items in chest are just placeholders, you can run through and interact with every possible chest, collectible, and enemy in the game. In a way, it makes the whole game playable start to finish!
Katie as always was a massive help with this. She took care of integrating all of the monsters and setting up their movement patterns to really give us the push we needed to wrapping this portion up.
Side quests & NPCs
All of the extra backstory and side quests have been drafted up, ready to be integrated. Katie made some lovely sketches of the NPCs and created a unique story to tie in to the several cities and towns Oliver visits throughout the game. We plan to begin integrating these side quests into the game in the coming months.
Features & System
I continued to make progress on the core components of the game, both by programming features that streamline the development process, as well as add important gameplay elements. This may or may not include adding some bugs, too, but hopefully those will all be crushed before release 🐞🔨
Party Switcher
It's exciting to finally share a few more characters besides Oliver and Azel! Indeed, you'll be able to choose from a handful of playable characters to construct your battle team with, and I finally got around to adding the core mechanics needed to make that happen.
This is a very rough first draft of the party switcher, which will be available from the menu at all times. As such, you'll be able to mix & match your team however you'd like. I've always found this kind of flexibility in RPGs to be a core aspect of what makes them fun.
And with this, we're finally able to start implementing the main characters' gorgeous battler sprites, created by the artist Burt. Of course, the character art is still placeholder as it's being worked on, but I'm looking forward to sharing more regarding these new characters in the coming months.
Map Transitions
One of the last steps for finishing the first "pass" of the game is lighting, animation effects and music. Something that's always bothered me was the default RPG Maker transition effect, which was rather reminiscent of Windows Movie Maker and looked a bit amateurish:
To make matters worse, if I wanted to change the map's zoom or color tone, I had to manually set each step of the fade out and in for each map that I wanted to do such a transition for. This was an unwieldy and repetitive process, and left room for potential errors and bugs.
So I killed two birds with one stone, and programmed a proper transition that applies globally to all maps, as well as a special method that allows me to very simply set a few parameters for a map's color tone, zoom, and other screen effects while the map is transitioning:
This allows us a lot more flexibility, and I believe will really shine as we work on effects in the next few months.
That's all for now! I hope this extra-long developer's log felt worth the two month wait. Thank you for your support and understanding as we continue to work hard on the game.
-Jaiden
Developer's Log - April 2023
This devlog is unfortunately an extra short one. We're hard at work, but a lot of the progress made is still stuff that isn't really visually appealing or worth chronicling, unfortunately. Still happy to report what I can!
New Screenshots
As mentioned in the previous developer's log, the demo download has been removed from Steam and Itch.IO temporarily.
As a result, I was able to update the screenshots on the store pages to match the graphics overhaul announced in November. Here are a few of those screenshots!
Regarding the demo discontinuation, it is unfortunate my development predictions haven't been great, and I admit it's a little embarrassing to take down the demo in favor of yet another "improved, revised release" in the future. But I think this is all a part of being a learning indie developer, and I recognize that this journey is not dissimilar to a dev making their first couple of games before establishing a proper process.
So far this year though, the game's development process and workflow has been greatly improved, which is something to look forward to. And we hope to relaunch the demo for Steam's NextFest in the fall, ahead of Chapter 1's release.
Development Progress
Progress continues to be made through the various "passes" through the game. As mentioned in a previous devlog, the new process for creating the game involves going through the entire game and adding a certain type of content. We're not quite at the visual stage yet, so development these months is a lot of tell, not show.
The past month, the placeholders for story were completed, so I've moved on to adding all of the "collectibles" and placeholders for NPCs. These are just empty shells of the objects that you'll be able to interact with, that will eventually have pretty graphics, flavor text, and progression (such as quests) added to them.
Really, these areas look kind of ugly right now. This is why visual updates have been so scarce. Sorry!
I've been plenty "side-tracked" by bugs in the meantime as well. Interacting with objects is a lot smoother though, and overall I remain pretty proud of gamefeel--walking around the overworld and collecting stuff should just feel *good*.
That's all for now. Thank you for your patience as always, and see you next month!
-Jaiden
Developer's Log - March 2023
This month's developer's log comes a bit late, so I apologize for the delay. It includes an important announcement regarding the demo, and a progress report on the game. This month continued to be productive thanks to Fangsoft's help, though a lot of the work we did was "behind-the-scenes".
Let's take a look!
Temporarily Discontinuing the Demo
Can you believe it's been over one year since the demo for Legends of Astravia released?
At that time, it was a great soft launch experience for the game, and it helped me garner a lot of valuable feedback.
However, because it's been such a long time, and because the graphics were changed back in November, I think it's time to discontinue the demo until the game is ready to release.
The current demo is far too dated, and I think it's simply not an accurate reflection of the final product. I also need to update the screenshots on Steam and other platforms to reflect the new graphics, which I cannot do if the demo with the old graphics is available on them.
As such, the demo will be temporarily discontinued on April 30th, 2023 until the game's release.
We hope to relaunch the demo for Steam's NextFest in the fall, ahead of Chapter 1's release. This finalized demo will feature the opening area with the new 16-bit graphics, as well as gameplay improvements based on player feedback.
Of course, the old version of the demo won't go away forever. I will probably put it back up on Itch.io for archival purposes some time after the game has been released.
Development Progress
Development on the game is moving steadily along, with achievements in character and quest pre-production, as well as general production. The game continues to take form as, well, a game!
NPCs & Side-Quests
Thanks to Fangsoft, almost all of the designs for NPCs in the major areas of the game are complete, as well as some drafts for side-quests.
She's been doing an excellent job creating characters with personal lives that really flesh out the world and its culture. While we don't have anything visual to show for it just yet, I think it will be very exciting to share once it's ready!
Second Pass
We've taken another broad "pass" through the game, adding more and more important elements. I completely designed and set up the lock-and-key mechanisms for the remaining major dungeons, as well as added placeholders for the various story events in the game.
Poor Oliver has landed himself in prison. Did he evade his taxes again?!
I thought it also might be fun to share some screenshots of what things look like in the development environment:
It's not terribly complicated or interesting... but maybe I'm just saying that because I look at it all the time!
This map in particular is pretty cool: it contains a bunch of "Events" (that is, the objects in the game that do stuff) that can be cloned across other maps:
So instead of editing every single individual mushroom in Mordin Swamp, this map allows us to edit just one, and affect all the others in the game. Pretty neat!
And lastly, some of the earier, more complete areas of the game are continuing to get updates to fit the 16-bit graphics. The mysterious lady from the intro now has a pretty new sprite:
Bugfixes
Development is not without mistakes and mishaps. The process has lead to a lot of new bugs to crop up...
Arlyn's moonwalking, unfortunately, did need to be addressed. I also fixed a couple of other things that have a pretty heavy impact on how the game "feels", such as smoother interaction with objects.
I'm pleased to report this item will not crash the game in the final product.
Website Updated
While this technically isn't game progress, I did want to report that the Studio Alemni website got a spiffy re-work. Since I built it myself, naturally it took a little time out of development progress for the month.
I think it was a very worthwhile improvement, though. It is much faster, and feels a lot more professional.
If you find any broken links as a result, feel free to report them via the website's contact form.
That's all for now, see you next month!
-Jaiden
Developer's Log - February 2023
February was a very productive month, and development on the game is going well. Similar to January, the focus is laying down the foundation and organizing, while simultaneously working on the game's content.
No Longer "Solo"
The first key detail I'd like to mention is that the project is officially no longer a "solo" project. Granted I've always had help from various collaborators and freelancers, I have not had anyone actually assisting me with development. But that's no longer the case, because Fangsoft has joined the team to help me get Legends of Astravia's first chapter to the finish line!
She first helped with the project by composing the soundtrack for Ch1 in early 2022. And now, a year later, she's officially a member of the team.
I cannot understate how big of a help Fangsoft has been so far, and it's only been a few weeks. She's helping tackle the overwhelming number of tasks, including production, writing, and planning. I was very wary going into the year, thinking that it just wouldn't be possible to finish the game in a timely manner by myself, but thanks to her, I have renewed confidence in the project and its release.
She's also Astravia's resident Screenshot Expert™, and responsible for all of the great pictures of the game you'll see in this and upcoming devlogs, as well as social media promotions.
New Tactics
With Fangsoft's help, we've taken a different approach to the game's development. Previously, I would go one area at a time, creating full and complete maps with all of the little details. While this made for great promotional material, it also lead to "tunnel vision".
But thanks to this new method, all of the groundwork and infrastructure has been laid down, and Oliver is already able to reach the credits! A rough version of every map from start to finish is created.
In this ant-sized preview, nearly the whole game is mapped out. Many of these are still empty shells without any interesting details, but it's the perfect starting place for creating a real game. It's also really motivating!
The immediate areas after the demo also received some touching up. Mordin Village is structurally finished, and just needs some NPCs to be brought to life:
New Tools
With this new approach, I needed to create a lot more placeholders, and ended up making some special tools to speed up the process.
Automation tools are incredibly important in game development. If there is a task you find yourself manually repeating over and over, there is a good chance you can write a script or macro to make it go a lot faster.
In this case, we needed placeholder graphics for every object in the game. Characters, enemies, items, doors, etc. But I wasn't about to create hundreds and hundreds of graphics by opening an image editor, saving the file and naming it, or even copying each file repeatedly and renaming it. This would have taken days.
Thus, I created "Astravia Tools"-- a separate RPG Maker project written in the same old Ruby, that can handle this particular task, and any future ones.
For now, there is only one function in the tool. But it packs a punch: I feed it a Comma-Separated Values (CSV) sheet with every single filename I want generated, its dimensions and a color, and it spits out an image file for each one.
This allowed me to take my spreadsheet asset list and turn it into workable files--within minutes instead of days.
I'm honestly a little excited to see what other development tasks I can streamline by making tools like this!
Other Notable Progress
Overall, this month felt super productive. Here are a few more things that didn't really warrant their own section:
- Created lots of additional documentation, including a spreadsheet that shows how every map in the game connects. - Completely planned the structure of the game's other major dungeons. The final dungeon is more than 3x the size of the one in the demo! - Cleaned up some code and fixed a few really sneaky bugs
I'm looking forward to sharing more updates at the end of March as the game continues to take form. Thank you for your continued support!
-Jaiden
Developer's Log - January 2023
Hello everyone,
Apologies that this log showed up a little late! I have a lot of fun milestones to share in this slightly more long-form developer's log.
Organization & Documentation
January's primary focus was organizing and preparing documentation. This is actually a pretty common aspect of development that takes a lot of time, but it's hard to discuss in a developer's log since it's not entirely visual. There were two really big milestones in this category.
Ch1 Story Outline Finalized
The story outline for Chapter 1 has been completely finalized! In a document nearly 10 pages long, every aspect of the major story that will occur in the game has been summarized. There were a lot of sections I was worried about last year that are now completely cleared up.
I think the story will feel very fulfilling to experience, even as a "Part 1".
Game Development Document
Generally, before starting work on a game, it's good practice to create a "Game Development Document" that serves as a blueprint for the entire game. While Legends of Astravia has always had plenty of digital documentation that describe the game's mechanics, story, and key elements, I never created a formal "document".
There are some differing perspectives on this. Some believe in having an organic, digital, and always changing document, since the game very much can change throughout development. However, in my case, having a physical, printed document that I can hold in my hands is a valuable asset and motivator for the project.
So, at over 50 pages, the game has it's first official physical game development document! It's easy to understate just how incredible it feels to hold something like this in your hands and flip through it. For aspiring game developers who are feeling a bit "directionless", I really recommend this method.
The employees at the print shop that I had this done were also incredibly kind. They expressed that they were amazed to be able to work on something for a video game, and can't wait to check it out. After feeling a bit discouraged about my progress the past few months, this was a huge confidence boost.
To those folks from the shop: if you're reading this, thank you for your kind words, and I hope the game meets your expectations!
1K+ Twitter Followers
The official Twitter reached 1,100 followers. This was a huge milestone! As a special celebration, I commissioned some art of Oliver:
Many of you have been following this game's development for a really long time, and it means a lot to have so many people wait for something and continue to have faith in it. I really hope to meet everyone's expectations with this project.
Continued 16-bit Progress
The 16-bit overhaul, while initially started in November, is somewhat of an ongoing process. Some of the areas that were already completed have been mostly reworked, and later areas whose assets were already created need to be recreated. It is going exceptionally well, and here are a few more screenshots and gifs of the demo areas in the new style:
As well as a preview of the new face graphics in action!:
Overall, development is going well, and I'm feeling very good about February's progress as well (which is in part why this devlog fell so far behind schedule!)
Thank you for your continued support!
-Jaiden
2022 Year End Summary
Hello everyone,
While the game had a lot of great milestones this year, the later half was met with some challenges. This devlog will serve as a short summary of the achievements for the year, as well as the goals for 2023 and on.
December Progress
The month of December itself didn't have a ton of progress to report--between the holidays and some personal illness, it wasn't as productive as I'd like.
That said, I was able to get quite a few things sorted out in regards to planning, writing, and preparation for 2023. The game's main story outline is looking very good, and I've created a clear roadmap for the various tasks that need to be done to advance progress on the game.
Of course, I can't have a devlog without any visuals, so here are a few more screenshots of areas using the new 16-bit graphics:
And some more character artwork in the new style:
2022 in Summary
Demo Release
After years of development, the game received a new demo, marking the first time the game was playable since 2019. The demo served as a "soft launch" to both gauge interest in the game's core concept and see how much people enjoyed it.
Overall, the response was very positive. I received a lot of incredible feedback, as well as viewed dozens of Let's Play videos--all of which I am super grateful for.
Japanese Demo Translation
A unique opportunity, the game's demo received a Japanese translation. This was an important personal goal and also a test to gauge interest. Though it unfortunately did not spark a lot of interest from Japanese audiences, it was a great experience that proved the game can eventually support other languages in the future.
Engine Upgrade & Demo Fixes
While the demo launch did not immediately lead into the game launching as I hoped, it lead me to making a lot of important changes and improvements later in the year.
I was able to use all of the feedback provided through the form, discord, and in the let's play videos to make the necessary adjustments to the base mechanics to ensure the final product will be as enjoyable as it can be.
Graphics Overhaul
The biggest, and perhaps most divisive change, the game's graphics were completely overhauled to support a more unique 16-bit look. While this was ultimately a "downgrade", it was met with some positive response, and made me feel a little less worried about doing it. The change serves to greatly reduce the workload for creating visual assets, and ensures the likelihood and quality of the final release.
Plans for 2023
Given all of the setbacks, the most critical goal for 2023 is the release of Chapter 1. I hope that all of the "setup" I've completed in 2022 will ensure that people get to play and enjoy that which I've worked on for so long without waiting much longer. Any extra goals such as porting, localization, etc. will come after.
While the start of the year has already been a bit rocky, I hope to be able to share more development successes with you, and appreciate the patience and support from everyone who reads these logs and follows the game's process.
Happy new year!
-Jaiden
New Graphics! (Developer's Log November 2022)
Hello everyone,
I am very excited to announce that Legends of Astravia will be taking on a new 16-bit pixel art look, reminiscent of the Super Nintendo / Game Boy Advance games that inspired it!
As some of you might have noticed, the past couple of months of developer's logs have been thin on progress--and that was for good reason. I've been quietly working on this change to the game's graphics.
With it comes a lot of progress, too, and I will explain the reasoning for such a drastic change after having released the demo within this developer's log.
Examples & Reasoning
This is definitely a big change, and I was worried whether or not folks who are excited for the game would be disappointed. While the graphics are a lower detail than what was in the demo, I think this is a visual upgrade and a much more appropriate direction.
First, I think it's important to go over what did and didn't change, to address any concerns.
What Changed
The overworld (map) tiles, character graphics, and character art (as discussed in the last devlog) have changed. Future updates will all showcase the new design.
What Didn't Change
The engine, battle system, and underlying mechanics are completely the same.
The game still plays and feels exactly as it does in the demo--so think of it as a "reskin" of sorts. The user interface will also remain "HD". While this doesn't give the game a fully retro feel, I think it's worth taking advantage of the higher quality text for accessibility reasons.
Why the Change?
First and foremost: development scope. The game is currently already too big, and a lot of work for a solo developer such as myself. The new tiles and character sprites are exactly half as big as the other ones--and the time saved creating new tiles and characters and sprites for later areas is effectively halved as well. In fact, I was able to already replace all of the graphics for the areas featured in the demo.
Additionally, because the original tiles were so challenging to work with, creating later areas was beginning to become disheartening. It felt like no matter what I did, any "unique" graphics just didn't fit right. I found myself spending a very long time on something that, visually, was not acceptable to me.
Lastly, one of the aspects of the game that's been challenging to deal with is the "RPG Maker" look. The original tilesets that the game utilized were from RPG Maker XP, and they were just a bit too similar in pallet and design to the newer RPG Maker default assets. As a result, even the prettiest areas still invoked this "cookie cutter" look that I wasn't satisfied with.
These new tilesets are still technically RPG Maker. But because they're (mostly) 16-bit, and much closer to the SNES/GBA era, I think they invoke a greater sense of nostalgia than the other tiles did. It will also make changing to unique custom tiles a more viable possibility in the future.
New Matching 2.5D Battlebacks
As for the battle system, there was some concerns about it clashing with the changes to the overworld. After all, the battler sprites were even higher resolution than the original overworld sprites. However, a special change was made to accommodate this issue...
The battle scene now looks 2.5D, with battle backgrounds that match the overworld! This change would have been beneficial regardless of whether or not the overworld graphics changed, since the original backgrounds always looked a bit flat.
This is achieved using Crocotile3D. It's been an incredibly helpful tool for recreating the world in 3D and feigning the 2.5D effect:
Alas, it isn't truly 3D, so there won't be any fancy camera effects in battle. But this is something that I'd really like to do for a future game... or later Chapter if feasible.
Comparison Screenshots & Ch 1 Teasers
Here are some more screenshots showcasing the change, from the existing demo and including some finally-not-forest areas:
Mordin village in particular feels a lot more “homey” in the new style:
Creating new tiles for later areas is much less stressful, and as a result I was able to create some maps to preview:
Updated Schedule & Plans
From a development standpoint, I am actually "caught up" to where I was before I started changing the graphics. And because it is going much faster, I feel confident about Chapter 1's progress.
I plan to continue creating the new areas of the game, and now with these new graphics, developer's logs will be much more robust with many more updates to share.
What about the demo?
The demo will remain up on Steam as-is with the "old" graphics, until Chapter 1 is closer to its release. At that time, the old demo will be replaced with a special revised demo using the new graphics and more content--including the entire Mordin Village arc for a limited time! No formal release date has been decided for Chapter 1 yet though, so keep an eye on future developer's logs for news on that.
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Please be sure to let me know your thoughts about this change! You can share them on Steam or in the official Discord server.
I really hope that folks see it as a positive as I have. Because of the new graphics, I feel both more confident in the project and about development as a whole.
I am looking forward to sharing more progress soon!
-Jaiden
Developer's Log - October 2022
Hello everyone,
October has been a good month in terms of development progress. With some life issues out of the way, I'm finally back to a normal development pace.
I have a few exciting updates to share, as well as some news regarding a small art style change.
Engine & Feature Progress
The engine received an update to the core code that makes a ton of really great improvements, thanks to Struma's hard work on mkxp-z. Outside of some small performance boosts, it also gave access to additional options and controller functionality that will really improve the gameplay experience for a lot of players.
Controller improvements + Support
Controller detection has been greatly improved--which was one of the biggest issues noted by players of the demo. Currently, if you have a non-Xbox controller, button mapping would at best be in the wrong order, and at worst, not work at all.
With this, visual support for Nintendo and Sony style controllers was also added to the User Interface:
The hope is that with the final game and a potentially updated demo later on, players will have a much better experience, regardless of the controller they use.
New Options
Thanks to the engine, I was able to add a bunch of new options regarding the game's graphics (namely, pixel perfect vs smooth rendering).
Additionally, I took the time to add some accessibility options as well, which include disabling screen flash and shake effects. Difficulty options and other ways to tweak your gameplay experience will also be added in the future.
Art Style Change - Faces & Portraits
Last week, I had a poll on Twitter to see what the priority should be regarding the game's direction. And I admit, it had a secondary purpose of also gauging how some players may feel if I made some adjustments to the art style.
Thankfully, it seems a lot of folks are really happy with the game's mechanics, and aren't particularly married to Legends of Astravia's art style--understandably so, as a lot of RPG Maker assets are still in use. Even Azel's lovely portrait is just a modification of a popular character from RPG Maker VX.
Before & After - Faces
Thus, I decided it was time to go with something that had a little more of its own identity. Realizing I could accomplish this myself, I drew some new faces:
I believe these new faces still capture the character's personalities, without losing too much of what player's enjoy about the game. As an added benefit, they are significantly faster to create, and will allow a much wider range of emotions for less work--which means more time to continue working on other areas of the game.
The profiles have also been updated to match, hopefully maintaining the character's personalities with the new style:
Feel free to give your thoughts on this change, either in the comments (Steam/Itch.io) or in the official Discord!
Battle System
The battle system got two major updates this month. One in visuals, and another in functionality and gameplay.
Layout Adjustments
The battle system has some lovely artwork, but the layout has always felt a bit "flat", and improving it is an important milestone for the final game.
Inspired by Breath of Fire II, here is a very early preview of the change to the layout to accommodate this (please note that the background is a placeholder):
The isometric view still works with the existing battle sprites, but overall makes the battlefield feel a bit more dynamic. Also, the new character artwork seems to work quite well!
Revised Enemy AI
This has been a to-do list item even before the demo was released, but I was finally able to improve Enemy AI and behavior. Currently, actions from enemies are purely random and unaffected by battles state at all. This makes for some boring battles, even with the exciting time-based system.
Now, enemies will react as battle changes, or when the player does certain things. Some enemies will behave a bit differently than others, adding a layer of strategy for handling new mobs. This should hopefully keep things engaging as you progress through the game.
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That's all for now. Thank you for reading!
-Jaiden
Developer's Log - August & September 2022
Hello everyone,
First off, I apologize for delaying August's report until now. August and September have been challenging months for me, as I've had some big projects to take care of at my day job and other things in my life that have interfered with development.
The good news is these things are starting to slow down, and I'm getting back into the groove of things. I have a lot of cool and exciting things to share about Legends of Astravia's battle system in this log that I hope you find interesting.
In the end of the log, I will have a little bit of real talk™ regarding the game's roadmap, the challenges with completing it, and more.
Overworld - Fixes & Features
Overworld traversal and exploration is a pillar of Legends of Astravia, and so time spent improving the player's experience in this area is always worthwhile.
I received a lot of positive feedback regarding how smooth controlling Oliver on the overworld felt--a result of the game's "gridless" movement that feels closer to Chrono Trigger and Golden Sun than the tile-based movement of the classic Final Fantasy games.
However, the system had some severe performance issues, made some unusual use of disk read/writes for the collision tables, and also caused great difficulty with handling dynamic objects--the final issue very much required fixing for puzzles later in the game.
The new system now performs much better, has less bugs, and permits doing all sorts of creative things with interactable objects:
Most importantly, dynamic layering of "multiple levels" that is much easier to accomplish with this new system:
All of the lovely Golden Sun-inspired puzzles I had in mind can now be a reality. I can't wait to share more map progress soon!
Battle System - Bugfixes, UX Enhancements & More
The battle system got a lot of much-needed love these past two months. After compiling player feedback from the demo, I finally was able to achieve some quality of life improvements, features, and enhancements that brings the battle system closer to where I want it to be for the final game.
Input Interrupts No More
Those of you who played the demo know this too well--the battle system is exciting and interesting, but the "turnless" gimmick quickly became frustrating whenever you were interrupted while selecting an action
A lot of the solutions I thought up for this problem removed the fluidity that the "turnless" system offers. However, I was able to devise a solution that feels good and stays true to the system's original design:
If a battler is "ready for action" while the player is actively choosing an input for a character, the time bar will slow down and the battlers will wait until the player is done inputting before proceeding with displaying animations. It is much less jarring and a lot more tactically interesting than the way it currently is in the demo.
Hold Improvements
The "Hold" mechanic was created with the following consideration: "What if the RPG 'defend' command wasn't useless?" But I noticed a lot of players still had trouble understanding how to use it, and the benefits for healing were unclear.
Now, the character in a "Hold" state will gently and consistently heal after a short time period. This eliminates the awkwardness of needing to wait for actions to occur to get the benefit of defending.
State Display Improvements
Many players were rightfully confused by status ailments and buffs. It was very unclear as to when a buff was added or removed to a character in battle. That has now been improved:
Additionally, states are time-based now, and all of them wear off after a certain period of time instead of after "turns" (which was rather arbitrary). This will eventually be indicated on the UI as well.
Targeting Improvements
Another gameplay issue noted from watching people play the game. If you attempted to use a revival item, or healing item, it would default to whoever was using it--making this pretty problematic for quickly trying to heal another character.
The targeting system was completely revised, and now special state-based targeting is available. Using a revival item, for example, will auto-target the dead character instead of the very much alive one. This may apply to other things like special buffs, healing items, and certain skills as well.
Other Little Things
- The Time Bar's underlying code was refactored and improved, both in performance and stability - The display for battle state on the time bar was improved - Various animation timings were improved - Animations no longer randomly lose SFX, and damage numbers display with better timing - Any button cancels "Hold" now--which makes it a lot easier to navigate - Escaping battles actually displays an animation for a couple of seconds now - Fixed a bug (feature?) where there could be a "critical evade" or "critical miss" - Caught a couple of nasty bugs that could result in the game crashing to desktop - I'm sure there's more but I'd be listing a commit history at this point
The Reality of the "Solo Indie Dev"
Disclaimer: I try to avoid being serious and talking about these challenges that are common and my own business to sort out. However, I do know quite a few indie developers--or perhaps people who are just interested in the process of game development--read these logs. And so this section will hopefully make those who feel a similar way feel some solace.
When I released the demo in February, I had anticipated at this point--the end of September--that the final beta for Chapter 1 of the game would be ready, and the game would release in November.
Of course, while I've made a lot of cool changes and progress... I am not anywhere near that point yet.
A hard lesson I still haven't quite learned in the past several years that I've been working on this game is that it is incredibly challenging to have a consistent production schedule as a developer who: - Works alone - Juggles a full-time day job alongside game development - Has no budget / pays for all assets out of pocket - Is a human being (I think) who gets sick and experiences burnout sometimes
Being a "solo indie dev" is a superhuman task.
While I did not get to achieve the goal I set, I have to constantly remind myself that the game will become what I envisioned it to be in time, and that I must be patient with myself so long as I continue to do it the "hard mode" way.
And so, at this point, the game will continue to have an unannounced date, "releasing when it is ready to release", as I develop it at the pace I am capable of. Perhaps I can locate an opportunity that will permit me to get the development support that I need to achieve these goals in a timely manner. However, as long as we are currently living in a difficult time (i.e. pandemic, record-breaking inflation) that demands prioritizing stability, this may be a hard thing to find.
Those of you who follow the game's progress and read these developer's logs every month--I really appreciate you, and will persevere for you as you continue to be so understanding and willing to wait for the game we both wish to see released.
Thank you, as always, for your continued patience and support.
- Jaiden
Developer's Log - July 2022
Hello everyone,
For the month of July, progress was made on some mechanics, as well as maps and assets for the next areas. Unfortunately, the pace of development is still slower than usual.
Also, a small note: In June's devlog, I mentioned a "Spring of 2024" release for Chapter 1 would be feasible--this was very much a typo! I intended to say Spring of 2023. (Thank you Mana for pointing that out!)
This is a shorter log. When there isn't much to show off in a devlog, then it is likely that progress was likely made in areas that can't be shared--storywriting, dialogue, system balancing, etc.
Battle System Changes
Some further improvements to the battle system core were made, part of the large list of changes garnered from the demo's early feedback.
A big issue I noted when watching folks play the demo was that when a selected item or skill was interrupted, it was actually easy to forget or lose track of what action you were performing. Given the limited UI space, and not wanting to clutter the screen too much, I devised two solutions:
The selected item or skill displays on the "command wheel", so you know with certainty which character is active and what the are using
The selected target shows a few more details in the "help" window, so you know who / what you are targeting.
Here's a little preview of it in progress:
It was actually a little more arduous than I was anticipating to get these windows to behave so dynamically, but I think it's a big improvement.
Collision Improvements
This was an issue that was going to be put off for a later build of the game closer to release, but after an epiphany on how I would accomplish the implementation, and a fresh eye on code, I was able to completely optimize the game's collision.
This took a fair amount of time, but the improvements are well worth it. One of the big flaws of the old system was that it had some pretty severe performance issues, and it also caused great difficulty with handling dynamic objects--the latter issue very much required fixing for puzzles later in the game.
The new system now performs much better, has less bugs, and permits doing all sorts of creative things with interactable objects.
Here's a little snippet of the test area, showing the dynamic layering of "multiple levels" that is much easier to accomplish with the new system:
Mordin Village - Area Progress
As for Mordin Village, there isn't too much to report just yet. But here are some screenshots that were shared on the official Twitter last week:
More to come soon, thank you for your continued patience and support!
