Devlog #071: All the small things (Patreon)

So!

Turns out I had a lot left to do. So much in fact, that there is one thing I wasn't able to do in time despite me being so confident I'd be done coding mid October. Sadly that's often how it is, and I've learn it's usually a pretty good idea to multipliy your expectation of how long something will take by at least 1.5. Anyway, let's see:

First of all, some dialogue related changes:

Characters now turn toward the speaker at the beginning of a conversation.

I've also added a topic choice system. When clicking on some characters, a selection of possible conversation will appear and you can choose what to talk about. Some topics will however require some characters to be present in the party to be selected. If the required characters haven't joined your party yet, they'll be represented by a question mark. This will be a great way to do various things, like character specific quests, tutorial selection, etc. And it's just a nice thing to have as well.

Speaking of tutorials, the  new tutorial system has been implemented! I initially wanted to have Mario & Luigi style tutorials, where the fight is simulated and stopped at key points so you can learn when to press what. I ended up deciding that this would be too much work for something that can be explained in a simpler manner though, and instead opted to have frozen frames of whatever I want to teach and to highlight the important parts while a character talks over it. Not only was it way less time consumming, it will also allow me to add tutorials about anything very easily, not just for the fights.

Training mode has been improved as well: it now looks more like a normal fight and is easier to understand. Having a separated tutorial also means there doesn't need to be a floating text box ocer the puzzle grid either.

In the demo, you have to press escape, followed by enter to close the game. This was a quick addition after the demo came out to avoid the player closing the game by accident. It worked but looked really bad, so I changed it to a small menu that can only be accessed through the overworld (by pressing escape still). You then have to press the confirm button for about 2 seconds to close the game.

Pressing escape or enter during a fight will pause the game. That was already a thing for the demo (only with the enter key) but was never explained. Pausing the game now looks nicer.

I've also implemented party events in the overworld. If some conditions are fulfilled, a "!" will appear above a party member's head, and a small discussion between party members will occur.

Story scene mode has been implemented! This was oneof the things I kept pushing back because I didn't want to do it. Just as the name implies, this will allow me to have story scenes for important moments in the story, but with more freedom than in the overworld. It's pretty similar to the Disgaea story events.

Boss fights have been implemented! That's one of the things I completely forgot about. There are already preset fights in the demo, like the first goblin you encounter, Nightmare or Saen'Liz, but these are just that, oreset fights. Actual boss fights will happen a bit differently: At several points, you'll click on an important event object/character, which will trigger a story event. If this story event leads to a boss however, you will first be brought to the prefight screen where you'll be able to choose your character, or back out if needed. In most cases, the boss' identity will be hidden. This goes for both normal bosses and Shape bosses!

Speaking of, Shape bosses needed the fight system to be reworked a little, and I also made a special boss intro for them.

Losing against a boss will lead to an actual game over, so make sure you save first!

Another thing I had forgotten about was the random shops: Every now and then you'll encounter a friendly NPC in dungeons. Depending on who you meet, different things will happen, and the selection of item they sell will vary. Some of these NPC will need to be unlocked before you can actually find them. This will allow me to do a lot of interesting things, but I won't say anymore for now.

Yet another thing I didn't remember was the consumables. Some item can now be used in the overworld through the inventory, and will have all kinds of effect. The only implement item right now causes the fight to disappear instantly (if there is one), but there'll be plenty more effects: Teleport back to the last save point, decreased/increased encounter rate, and a bunch of other more interesting stuff.

I also implemented a food system! You don't actually need to feed anyone, but any food item can be used the same way as consumable items. You will then select who you want to feed it to, and if they like the food, you might get something out of it!

I've also improved the map menu: The area/floor selection was a bit hard to see, so I added a small background to make it... easier to see. I've also added a map discovered percentage and treasure discovered percentage, which displays exactly that for the floor you're currently looking at.

Something that caused me a lot of problem when the demo released was the cursor. Game maker doesn't have a clean way to lock the cursor in the window (or screen for fullscreen + multi screen setup), so I had to make my own. Maybe GM 2 does, but that's not what I'm using. Anyway, what I did worked great for me and most people, but I got a few complaints that the cursor would get stuck in a corner for some. I looked and looked, but could not find a way to fix this, so I had to work around it. Now the first time you launch the game and each time you change the resolution the cursor will be calibrated so this doesn't happen. This solution works very well based on my testing, so I believe this won't be a problem anymore.

I also got some reports of memory leaks. I thought I had been pretty careful with what I know can cause this, but it turns out I really wasn't, so a lot of optimisation on that front has been done. It was extremely boring to do, but it was just as necessary.

Other than that, I also worked on a lot of minor bugs and improvements, but I won't go into details for each of these.

And so, the one thing I wasn't able to do in time is the puzzle system improvemnt. I know of a few rare bug that can occur when clearing the puzzle grid, and I also need to make it a bit easier to work with so I can add new types of blocks and such easily in the future. The puzzle system was actually the very first thing I made for BE Witches over 3 years ago now, so it stands to reason that it would need to be reworked now, since I was lacking both experience and vision at the time.

And that's that! This ended up being yet another big devlog. I feel like the puzzle system improvement will take 4 days at the very most next coding month (December), so the rest of that month will be used to get as close to a final version of the story as I can. Once that's done, I'll know where I want the next demo to stop, and I'll begin to add new content!

It took a while but pretty much every mechanic I'll build upon is ready! To be completely honest there is a very high chance that I'll keep finding small things to change and improve over time, but at this point it wouldn't be anything fundamental, so I can safely add new content (areas, items, spells etc).

Of course no need for a TODO list anymore! I'll now be working on Tiger girl and Hydragirl ^^

See you!