Retrospective look at 8.2 and some future planning (Patreon)

Coming off the back of yesterday's update, I felt it might be productive to put down some of my thoughts on how things have been going. After thinking about it, it also provides a decent segue into where things are heading in the close future, so let's go ahead and talk about that.

So basically, content has always been a bit of a problem. By its very nature, the game's design allows for endless replayability but individual replays/runs of the game aren't necessarily distinct without having distinctly written content. In a way, that is literally always going to be an issue. People will always want there to more content, not to mention that the game has developed to a point where the different places that scenes can be added is practically limitless already.

This is actually a good thing, or rather, it's a problem that is better to have than not. I'm very happy with most aspects of the game, and think even what it has right now is a fantastic framework (which is part of why modding is still very much intended to be added). That you're here reading this post for supporters suggests that you, at least to some degree, agree with the potential here and want to see more.

So yes, it's a good problem, but it's still a problem. Since I'm one of those computer science/engineer people, my brain is predisposed toward problem solving. That makes me want to look at what I'm doing whenever things aren't going as smoothly as they seem like they should. 8.2 had shades of that while it was coming together.

After releasing 8.0, the decision was made to start working on content rather than another major gameplay change. Seems fair enough. There are lots of holes where fun scenes could fit in, and people like content. Simple. 

A bit too simple, actually

Having an update goal of "write content" was... Unfortunately vague. It's like if somebody suddenly told you out of nowhere to "tell a joke". If you don't have anything prepared ahead of time, maybe you'll be able to come up with something, but your brain's going to have to stutter through figuring out how to make sense of the blank slate you've been given to figure something out.

And I did. I ended up starting a whole lot of different things, many of which did make it through to implementation in 8.2.

It was just messier than before.

Partly in the abnormal amount of typos that people have already started pointing out (writing a bunch of text in a bunch of different places makes it harder to catch at a glance than a more centralized update), but there's some more to it than that. Lack of a theme to work around for the update just made it a lot harder to decide what should be done, along with how much of it.

The addition of trance actions was more or less in response to the prevailing choice in the content direction poll. It's an addition meant to allow for the player to initiate mind control based changes/scenes with the knights in a way that makes sense. I'm happy with it, but it doesn't quite have as strong of an introduction as it could simply because it was put in with a bunch of other pieces of content at the same time which were largely unrelated.

So with all that said, I think this is a good opportunity to change things up a bit to avoid unfocused work like this going forward. 

When the decision is made to put a chunk of time into just content, I will make it a point to get a tighter focus on the kind of content. 

This should be good news to supporters that can vote on content direction polls (and really everyone else who likes seeing the game's development progress).

So what's up next, then?

While working on threats for this update I was starting to feel a bit constrained by the way things are currently set up. 

Internally, threats (the catchall term I use to mean "monsters and traps") don't have very many knobs to tweak. There are only a few numbers that define their strength. Yes, there's a lot of different options as far as what a threat does if and when it hits, but up to that point there's only really the attack and health. This is what led to me adding armor for some more variety, but armor is fairly simple. Previously I've had ideas for new threat modifiers to add in but decided not to.

If things are going to get any more complex, we quickly run into a problem.

More complicated ways of changing interaction between threats and the knights currently don't have a good way to show the player what's going on. A lot of players have mentioned that they only vaguely understand the basics of how combat/disarming works as it is now. Slapping more on top of that? Sounds like a recipe for some frustrated players. No good.

That means we're talking about UI

In order to move into 9.0 I think I'd like to target a couple of different areas. One of them has been much requested by many people, and while it's not a super FUN thing to make, I understand what the importance of having it.

Obviously just a mockup, there's no information in it YET.

A place where players can review tutorial information (without having to actually replay the tutorial) as well as read specifics about mechanics/effects is pretty important. While I don't want the game to get exceedingly complex, there is still more that I want to add in terms of mechanics.

Speaking of;

Super behind the scenes screenshot, you can even see how it's in the Godot editor.

So threats can already have modifiers which are prepended to their names, but those are just stat increase/decreases applied to a base form of the threat. In order to make things more clear, why add icons for that information in the same area as you would find everything else about that specific monster.

Pictured: trap modifiers that are already in the game, I just haven't had anywhere to put their icons.

And if I add a place where modifiers can be displayed/explained, then why not also put status effects there? 

It's actually kind of interesting, but I don't think many people have commented on the fact that threats currently can't have status effects at all. It feels like a bit of a gap in possible ways to make things varied. Adding threat status effects means that skills and spells can then be made to debuff those threats while also playing around any buffs that they're able to give themselves or to other rooms. 

Ideally, this will open up new ways to make encounters with different threats feel different without requiring them to hit the player (or as is the case with some current threats, hit multiple times) in order to apply the stuff that makes them unique.

So that's what I'm looking at currently

Focus on 9.0 being the time to introduce the information page of the notes and threat status effects, and using that more clear goal as the frame for how to fill in content around it as I go.

Of course, that's not to say I won't branch out and poke my writing hands into other areas here and there as well. The creative mood can sometimes strike out in random directions. Like with everything I've been talking about though, that is still a "problem" that can be handled.