Mischief Manor Development 🦇 (Patreon)

Hi everyone! It's March and I have some updates on the progress of the game!

It's been quite a tumultuous month for me, but I've been keeping busy with the game's slow and steady progress.

To give you guys a brief summary:

 I decided to work on the back end data to get some of the functionality for the menus and systems. Pretty much all of the data that needs to be stored and displayed. Now this can be quite an iceberg with the amount of data that needs to be stored, so a lot of work was put into the infrastructure of designing these containers. 

To make sense of it, all of the info you'll see in the following screenshots is raw data that needed to be stored. Along with that, the player data needs to save your data for any progress you have made in the game. 

This is important because if I am developing this game over time, there will have to be updates to the game. Because of this, this can corrupt save data, if not done correctly. So I've been focusing on making a system to protect that from happening. 

Along with that, a lot of future systems can also mess with save data, including if i add Quests or dungeon missions / so on. So a lot of that had to be thought out. Along with that, I was designing the characters for their combat abilities and iterated on them heavily. I wanted to have it be very simple at first and over time the characters would grow and improve. 

So a lot of planning was done, along with a lot of coding and UI Design.

Whats Next:

For the meantime, I'll still be focusing on this, along with trying to simplify my art so I can draw quicker. Trying to improve since I want to have a lot of spicy art for the game, since that'll be why most of you guys play. I also would like the gameplay to be fun, so we'll see how that goes.

Continuing from last month, I'll still be working on the main game mechanics and systems. I want to make sure that functions correctly and it will give me some comfort that one of the harder parts of the game is completed for the most part.

I want to post more fan art, but I've sort have been prioritizing the game. It's a bit difficult to advertise just my art, and I will get back to posting it probably when I need a break from all this programming. We'll see what happens. I do have a bunch of sketches I havent posted which maybe you guys wanna see, I can always post them in the Discord when I get to it.

Long Detailed Version:

Programming:

- The Dialog Data System was updated, with a better system to handle different lengths of dialog lines for any scene.

- Adjusted the Dialog Module to remove the backgrounds so it can be used as an overlay in the Overworld.

- Fixed an issue that the Dialog Data System was not properly copying the data into the temp variable, which would cause an issue if you repeatedly tried to replay the Test Dialog Scene with Towa

- Attempted to used Resources to save data. Unfortunately, this does not work if the save data structure changes, such as adding new zones, character data, etc. It would corrupt the data. Going to use serialization with a text document which will be parsed on startup, checking the version and adding all the data into the game's save data, and then updating your save file so it is current with the game version

- Complete overhaul of the original Data Structure for the game. Created all sorts of containers for character data, outfits, expressions, quests, items, story, scenes and so on. Split the save data into a separate container which will be used for serialization. 

- Adjusted and added new menus for specific scenes, as the main menu was not needed during a combat scene or dialog scene. You can still access important settings or quit game / skip scenes / forfeit combat.

Design:

- Worked on designing the combat system's basic premise. Sistine, Pandora and Luna's combat classes theorized, and am working on implementing it into the game in a future update. Will be testing the core combat system and eventually getting feedback in the future. This is only needed the idea since I needed it to store the Combat Data in the save file.

- Simplified the Character's abilities. Still being tested but I wanted to work on a turn-based system with low numbers. Simple abilities but feels good to play. Not a lot of jargon of numbers, stats and other arbitrary information for combat. Characters don't level normally, and rank up with items dropped from quests and dungeons.

- Idea of a dungeon mission system, similar to games like Phanstasy Star Online 2, Monster Hunter, Grandblue Fantasy Relink. Where you start a mission and complete the objectives in the mission for rewards. Rewards will be ranking up the Manor's Renown, currency, items, Affection EXP for unlocked new story events for characters and scenes, story progress, unlocking new characters, etc.

- This dungeon system will be simple, and allow me to mostly just focus on designing one level at a time. I would love the game to have a big overworld but it's not feasible just yet. It would take a ton of time and I would like to get the demo out sooner than later.

Art:

- Worked on some sketched and ideas for some of the main scenes, including Sistine's introduction scene and some assets required for the main menu.

- Menu UI design

This is the character display UI. It's using a lot of placeholder art but this is mostly for viewing all of your companions as you unlock them. Clicking on one of them will open up additional menus.

Still using placeholder art for the images, this menu is a more detailed version of the character, displaying their information of their character. Affection is the rank of the character and will unlock scenes and story content by increasing this. Affection has an EXP bar, which fills up from doing quests for them and other things like finding a rare item they like and so on.

This tab will contain the story that you have completed or are in progress of completing. This is placeholder text but this is the general layout. Some events you can replay the dialog scene if available, but if its too much, i may just remove the replay event. The Left side will categorize all of the story events for the Main Story (As Emery's Story Info) and each of the characters will have their own sub plots.

More placeholder art, but this is where all of the scenes you've unlocked will be. You can simply replay them at will once unlocked. Still using placeholder art for now.

Outfits will be another tab but I havent started designing it yet. It'll be a place where you can change the characters outfit in the overworld and you can obtain new outfits throughout the game from different sources.

Since the main character Isn't going to be a combative character, this will be what the combat data will eventually look like. It's still being adjusted since there are not many stats that need to be displayed. Important info would be Rank, which will increase the potential of the character's stats. HP is health. Special is the characters unique class ability. Resistances are damage reductions (flat) from sources of attacks. There's also a bit of a graph showing the capabilities of the character. I also added a small description, which I may remove for more important combat data later on.

Skills will contain all of the information of that character's abilities. It'll detail each skill, it also has a more detailed description and shows all of the effects and debuff percentages it can apply to. For passive skills, it'll just show the details.

For upgrading the characters, that'll be a menu in the overworld. You'll be upgrading stuff at the "Blacksmith" and other menu stuff for Quests and Missions will be added when we get there.

Wrapping Up

So that's what I've been working on when I can. It's still looking like quite a long journey but I would really like to have most of the important things functioning before throwing a demo at you guys. Especially if there isnt much content, it'll feel kind of bad to not have much for you guys to mess around with.

Content wise, i wanted to have the first small part of the main story, and give you guys a bunch of spicy scenes and story scenes for some content. It'll be a good vertical slice to see if people are interested. I think first impressions are key and if the game is received well, then I can maybe work on it full time. That's the goal.

Anyways thanks if you read all of that, I'll be working on this and give you some updates during the month. I'll try to post as much as I can, unfortunately most of this work is programming, UI and design so there isnt much to show, more just to write about. 

See you soon!

- Miz 🦇