Arbiter - Monthly Recap - September 2022 (Patreon)

Hey folks!

Honestly this post came out way longer than expected, so we've got no TIME for quippy intros. Give us the meats!

Animation

I spent most of August continuing to animate the last form. I'm still a bit behind where I want to be (due to those pesky art blocks), but I've made good progress since then and can comfortably say I'm almost done! 

There will always be a little extra animation work once I start putting everything in-game, but as of right now I'm about 90% of the way through my list, so we're pretty close. Once I'm all wrapped with animations, it'll be back to programming land to get everything in-game. Yippie!

Design Docs

I've also begun a process I should have started years ago, but I'm finally porting Arbiter's design document to a more readable format. I used to just use Word for my design docs, but I've since switched over to OneNote to keep things tidy. Anyone can use whatever they want of course, but I personally find that OneNote gives me all the tools I need to keep things readable, organized, and synced across all devices. It's super lightweight and easy to use, too!

What I mean by "porting" in this context is basically just moving everything from the design doc in Word to my new format in OneNote. The doc was also a bit outdated in terms of its content, so I've also taken the opportunity to update all of the information to be consistent with my current vision of the game. It's been a very healthy process for me, and doing so has forced me to take a more holistic look at the game, which I think was long overdue.

I'm still porting so they're a bit sparse right now (also gotta' hide spoilers, hehe).

Reducing Scope

Something the holistic approach has helped me with is simply seeing which ideas were superfluous and which were important to Arbiter's identity. This is also something the transformations have shown me, in that I occasionally struggled to come up with new attack ideas due to not wanting too much overlap between all of the movesets and abilities. All of this essentially pushed me to a point in which I took a real, honest look at the content I need, and the content I don't.

With that, I've made some cuts! Since Arbiter is about stealing enemy powers, the enemy to ability ratio is just about 1:1. This means that, originally, I had about 32~ enemies and abilities in the game. That's a lot! However, I would be lying if I said they were all unique and interesting.

There's always been a few enemies here and there I wasn't 100% happy with, but with the abilities, it wasn't really an issue until I started working on transformations. Since there's four transformations in the game, that's essentially five variations of each ability. But there were some abilities that were so utilitarian in their design, that any variation I tried to give them just felt forced. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that these moves really don't fit my criteria for what defines an "ability" in Arbiter.

Very simply, I see abilities as unique, interesting, powerful actions that cost energy to use and have at least some variation between the transformations you're using them in. Most of them fit the bill, but some did not, and there were enough black sheep in the herd to justify doing a bit of a purge (sorry sheep). 

With that, I've cut the total amount of abilities down to 24. Some I've simply removed because they're unfun; some I've repurposed into other abilities/mechanics instead. I've also had some newer ideas while animating the forms that might fill some empty slots too. I'm still in the process of finalizing the details, but I already feel much better after being honest about the stuff I just wasn't enjoying. The enemies will be going through a similar restructuring, but I'd rather the abilities inform the enemy design than the other way around, as we're a gameplay-first household here! 🤓

New Mechanics

With that, Arbiter might get some new mechanics! Rather than just tossing the one-note (hah) abilities completely, I'm going to try and integrate the ones I find genuinely useful into Ashe's core moveset instead. 

For example, the Warp ability simply lets Ashe teleport in front of or behind the target enemy. There was zero variation for Warp across the transformations, but it's still a very fun move, so I think I'll be shifting it over to his core moveset so that it's something you can always do (by spending energy), but without the expectation for it to have variants across each form. There's a few similar abilities that I'll be repurposing in the same way.

I think a lot of this comes from me committing to the abilities some years ago before I was 100% certain I was going to do the transformations, and even then, before I knew the transformations would have ability variants. Ashe's moveset was much smaller back then, so these utility abilities made a lot more sense. But now that the focus has shifted to the transformations and how they differ, I'd rather have moves that can feel distinct and justified in being an ability. 

Conclusion

That about wraps things up for this recap! While I still have to get the last form in-game, it feels pretty good being so close to the finish line after such a long year. I've been having a blast (aside from art block), but I'm excited to get back in the swing of more gamey things like UI and Level Design once I'm all done. It's been too long! 

Also- I know there's a lot more I could be doing on the Patreon/Discord fronts, so expect some changes in these spaces in the coming months. I really want my Patrons to feel special and finally deliver on the exclusive content I've been promising, but I just want to finish up my work with the forms first so I can properly readjust my focus. Thank you all so much for your support and patience in the meantime!

Cheers,
Jordy