Weekly Update/Preview Aug 21-28 (Patreon)

Just two tweets this time, it looks like. Getting closer to the actual update itself, there are fewer things that feel novel enough to put up, since more of my time goes to just having to write. I suppose I could just throw up more previews of skills/curses/whatever being added, but a lot of the time it doesn't feel like those give me a lot to talk about, especially if I don't intend to show their exact function ahead of time.

But whatever.

For how things are going... Well, MECHANICALLY, I believe I have almost everything that I want to add working now. That, along with being done dealing with moving stuff for at least the rest of this month, is the good news. 

The bad news is being behind on writing, which has probably been the case for long enough that everyone is used to hearing it by now. I'm still working on things, and want to have at least some written content to go along with the gameplay changes being introduced, but it is a bit of a struggle. There's something going wrong with my brain chemicals/medications, but I'm sure nobody wants to hear about that.

Instead, you get to hear about:

"Permanent" Corruption

So yeah, permanent corruption being healed/removed. This was something that I've always intended to be possible, I just happen to have a good way to implement it now. I have some concerns about it making things easier when the whole game is still easier than I would have intended, but I can always adjust it depending on how things shake out later. 

Actually, lately I've been feeling somewhat out of touch with the game difficulty/experience for normal players in general. More than the usual, that is. Haven't been hearing much feedback one way or the other, but it does get a bit tiring to keep bugging people on that front. Is no news good news? Maybe.

But anyway, with the way in which removing permanent corruption is implemented right now, it is not easy, not cheap, not able to remove large amounts of it at once, not able to be used on multiple allies at once, and not guaranteed to be available. If the game were made significantly harder somehow, I doubt that this mechanic would help THAT much. Despite the quotation marks in the tweet, I still don't see any reason to change or remove the word Permanent from that type of corruption.

I can't really think of what I would call it otherwise anyway. Sticky Corruption doesn't sound quite right.

SMACK it with the stamp

I think the similar UI theming probably makes it obvious but yeah this is all a part of the same set of mechanics as the previously shown Coraline shop thingy. I have no idea if I'm being properly mysterious about how it works. Me already knowing the answers makes it hard to tell.

So to continue to be vague, I'm going to instead talk about UI stuff a bit. There's something very satisfying to me personally about this little animation, mostly just due to the impact smacking out the particles and stuff. I think it's appropriate in this case, but it does make me stop and consider other parts of the UI and if those should be similarly juiced up.

I mean, I think the way that the UI works now is pretty decent. The slidy paper stuff and whatnot is simple and pretty consistent. There are various parts of it that I would do differently if I was going to do them now, but that's just part of the process I suppose. With me having a lot less experience with Godot when I first started, that shouldn't be a surprise. I wouldn't say it's NECESSARY for me to go back in and make UI/gameplay things flashier when they happen. Doing so might even end up being more annoying than worth it, but the thought is in my head. Maybe later when polishing things up is of more importance.

Oh yeah, speaking of later

Still being a little vague here, but unlike some previous updates I do feel like this current one has ended up giving me a direction to go in for the next update after this. TENTATIVELY, that one MIGHT end up being the last one that I'll be considering alpha. Assuming things work out properly, it feels like it will be a decent place to cut myself off from diving into more and more mechanics on the game. I have had plenty more ideas, but it's probably better to stop at some point, and instead focus on building things up.

So as a preview that I HAVEN'T actually tweeted yet...

See you later in Alpha 15!