Devlog #070: Lots of things again (Patreon)

Once again, I was able to make a lot of progress! Though a lot of it was graphical improvements, so I won't have as much to say as last time.

First of all, I improved a lot of the fight's graphical effects. The weird blue and red spike thing that appears when you take a hit and the pink spike when you heal were last minute additions in the demo, and I really didn't like them. They have now been replaced and look much, much nicer, on top of making sense in the setting. I also improved the "spell ready" animation and some particles. On top of that, something that wasn't really obvious in the demo is that enemies have weaknesses and resistances. Now, a special message will appear when an opponent gets hit by a spell they resist/ are weak to (or absorb, or nullify, that's a thing too). The rainbow effect on the heart weapons (stars in the demo) has also been improved. I also worked on the "end of fight" animation, and it now looks perfect!

Next, I improved the result screen by changing the placement of some objects. I also changed the background, which now looks similar to the character reveal background that I've been using recently. This same background is also used in the character select menu and the amplification menu, and the background's color will change depending on the selected character.

The amplification animation has also been improved a bit, and the stat changes caused by a rank up will be displayed after each amplification.

The palette selection has also been implemented! Most characters will have alt color palettes (or even alt costumes, rarely) that can be unlocked, and you'll be able to change it in the chara select screen.

The gallery has also been implemented! It's still a bit rough, but it allows you to look at the full art of unlocked characters/ranks/palettes, and at... normal art. I still don't really know what to call it, CGs maybe?

The settings also got a few new options: there is now a rank lock option, which locks every girl at rank 1 (only graphically of course, gameplay related changes aren't affected by this). I've also added a music volume slider and an SFX volume slider! Another sound related change is that the music will now continue from where it left off after a fight.

The almanach received a few upgrades as well: There is now a shape tab, the bestiary and quest pages have been improved a bit. The "world" tab has been improved as well (it's unused in the demo, and meant to contains gneral lore and such), and the page can now show anything instead of its base template. The first thing I used this for was to add the color mixing guide as an almanach entry after you find it in Vuu's house, making it available at any time.

I've also added a tip system. Under certain circumstances, the option to get advice will become available (if you're stuck at a puzzle for a long enough time, this kind of thing). Quests can now be discovered and completed.

There is now a file select screen after the title screen! Up to 5 save files can exist at once, and it's possible to delete an existing save file as well.

Finally, I've optimised a bunch of things to improve perfomance, the main one being the way rooms are loaded. Each object of each room has about 6 variables (sprite, x coordinate, y coordinate, xscale, yscale, etc), and each room contain more or less 100 objects. In the demo, every single room of the current floor you're on is loaded at the same time, so that's a lot of useless data loaded at all times. It's fine in the demo since the floors aren't too big, but it would have become a huge problem later. I've now fixed this so only the current room is loaded. I've also optimised a bunch of other scripts and some of the inventory effects, and I've improved the spellcard and combometer sprites as well. The minimum combo for combo spells appears in the inventory  too.

There was a very minor bug in the way chibis changed during dialogue, so I fixed that. I've also made it so you can't leave the room during dialogue anymore, but you can middle click to skip it instead.

Oh also! I believe I forgot to mention it last time, but the monster AI has been improved, and the spell your opponent chooses to cast will change depending on the situation.

Other than that, it's just a bunch of minor improvements that don't really deserve to be mentionned.

There isn't really a point to posting the whole list again, so I'll just write what's left to be done:

- Story mode

- Improve training mode

- Add tutorials (fight, shape fight, alchemy)

- Improve the close game function

- Implement consummable items

- Improve map menu (add % discovered and % chests opened) 

- Other fixes and improvements (especially an annoying cursor bug)

And that's it! It's very probable that I'll be able to all this in October. After that, I'll finally be done with the skeleton of the game, and it will be time to add the flesh! Meaning content. New areas, rooms, characters, items, spells, etc. I think it's a good idea to begin with the story itself. There are a bunch of things I want to change in what I've already written a while back. I'll make sure everything is solid and go from there!

So yeah, exciting stuff ^^
I think I said everything I wanted to say now. This devlog ended up being about as big as the last one somehow!

Before I say bye though, I should mention that I've enable a few Patreon functions:

- Currency choice: If your local currency is Euros (€), British Pounds (£) or U.S. Dollars ($), the tiers should be listed as such. Pledging in your own currency will help prevent you paying extra conversion fees from your bank or card when pledging in a currency that’s not your own.

- Annual membership: You can now choose to pledge on an annual basis, which will get you a 16% discount (2 months off basically). I'll switch the discount to 8% soon after the next demo comes out.

So yeah, Patreon told me I should enable this stuff, so sure, why not. If you need more info, you can look here and here.

Alright, time to draw. See you! ^^