Dev Report August/September 2022 (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Just wanted to give you a little update about what I'm working on. I spent the later half of August on some changes in preparation for Chapter 3. These were somewhat technically challenging changes that would break everything and I was hesitant to delve into them but also felt they needed to be tackled before expanding the game's content any further. After about two weeks everything seems to be stabilizing again but the game needs to be tested front to back. 

Sorry I don't really have a lot pictures for this stuff, this is more technical stuff for nerds and hardcore gamers but I'll explain the reasons behind what I did.

Game/World Restructuring

When I started the project I envisioned a game where you would have a central hub town and then a map screen where you would select dungeons and begin an expedition. Somewhere along the way this tossed out the window. I think the map screen was the first to go and then Chapter 2 became like this more open world space and I had to start copying code from the town hub to make stuff work like the zone transitions and shop in the goblin encampment.

In the original design it might have made sense to have separate code to handle the town and dungeons but that distinction has fallen by the wayside. So what I've done is combine everything into the same scene and use the same code. 

I think the game is trending more towards a metroidvania style world and I would like to add fast travel options instead of just having a menu to teleport to specific dungeons. In chapter 3 and beyond I want there to be more optional side content that would expand the existing zones and create interesting connections between them to make exploration a bigger part of the game.

Numerous bugs ensue and Hero suddenly suffers from narcolepsy (Yep that's him sleeping at the town gate.)

Attribute Growth Rebalancing

The second "break everything" change was come up with a better system for attribute growth. The goal was to, in theory, have an easier time balancing battles for the rest of the game. So what I did was made attributes grow based on an animation curve that can be easily adjustable in the editor with the option to preview values at any given level. I think this helps a lot and is much better than the system I had before (basically nothing.) However, since the values of every attribute were changed, everything needs testing to finetune it back into a feel good place. 

Previously a lot of values were entered by hand, just to quickly get the exact value I wanted. The downside of that was if I wanted to have a higher level version of the monster those attributes were not scalable. Now everything is scalable so that should be interesting to play around with more in the future.

One of the bugs encountered while working on this was that I forgot to set the max value of an attribute when a new attribute set was created for each character. This lead to a situation where combat speed was set to "Infinity" this by itself would just make whatever character got initiative to have infinite turns in battle. However, since the combat speed also modifies the speed of certain battle animations, basically the character models just fell apart in a very confusing way as they tried to animate at an infinite speed.

Did Ash lose his legs or are they just moving so fast we can't see them? Hero was stuck in that pose showing off his ass to the enemy. Only Lyric was immune to the effects of this bug.

Status Effects

Status effects are kind of a weird thing in JRPGs that are mostly there to just frustrate the player but I don't think the game would feel complete without them. Up to this point, the only status effects I had available were attribute modifiers and DoTs (Damage over time.) That's why there are a lot of them in the game right now. Since I wanted to expand my selection and add more complex effects, I needed to work on the way statuses are handled. This was the third "break everything" change or at least break most things. This is mostly a behind the scenes thing but now every status is added to a character when they are initialized and then activated/deactivated as needed and each status effect can call it's own scripted behavior. This was mostly done for cleanliness and better status checking. 

As a result of this rework, Mantraps will now use sleep status instead of stun, allowing the player more options to deal with it. 

Bleed does damage over time based on the initial attack damage value with diminishing damage until it expires.

Regen/Poison/Curse now have a flat value with an attribute multiplier based on whether it is a magical or a skilled based effect. Previously they did damage/healing as a percentage of the target's maximum health, making them extremely powerful on high HP targets but very weak on low HP targets.

Damage Calculation Improvements

The calculations behind melee/magical/ranged damage have been changed so that there is a more gradual damage multiplier around attack and defense values that are close together but ramps up/down quickly the further apart the values are. In addition, each ability has an added attribute modifier that scales the damage as the character levels up.

As a result of these changes, Ash's magical damage has been boosted and should scale better as he levels up. Ash's magical attack and defense growth has been increased so that it should be more likely he will take less magical damage and dish out more magical damage than other characters given that they are near equal in level.

Next Steps

I think I'm mostly done with reworking existing game systems and I'm hoping that will carry us on to the final game. There's still a ton of game mechanics I want to add but hopefully that stuff won't have to disturb existing systems too much. Since I've spent a lot of time working on stressful technical stuff I think it may be time to work on new content.

I'm not sure exactly what I'll be working on yet. I want to get started on chapter 3 and I think people will be eagerly awaiting new monsters and hero's new monsterforms. There was also a lot of request to finish the tavern which is something I agree needs finishing but also I'm not sure how to approach it yet. I do want to consider tying it into the "alley activities" which in turn also ties into hero's "reputation" which will influence how willing he is to surrender to enemies.

From now on we really have to keep the whole game in perspective. While there may still be content I want to add to chapter 1 and 2, including some great suggestions from you guys, we have to make sure we are making progress towards a finished game. That is the top priority but we can take some time afterwards to pad out the content in places where it is needed.

If you made it this far, then you're awesome! (Even if you skipped, you're awesome too.) Thanks for all your support and feedback and your interest in the game that we are really making, right here, right now! Hope you have a great weekend!