#11: Few words about progress

This week was pretty crazy. First, I discovered a nasty bug that could corrupt your save file. This took me feh hours to fix. Then I decided to redo the status screen to make it slightly faster (not like anybody is going to notice. This thing can run on pentium II and 128 mb of ram.). Then I improved the menu screen a bit, Improved the job screen, added new weapon and basicaly finished the tutorial. So lets get into greater detail.

First, the save corruption. This was the problem with the job window. I was disposing of the windows, instead of just hiding them and this is something rpg maker hates for some reason. Everything is fixed (hopefully), so no more save corruption.

Next thing I did was the improvement of the job window.

It looks basicaly the same, but now the individual windows change size automaticaly depending on the number of lines in it. I should have done that from the start, but better late than never. Now I can fit around 8 lines of text into one window. This should be more than enough.

The tutorial is now finished. It is crude as fuck, but it should be enough for the first version of the game. So right now, there is one NPC that you can talk to and work for, two basic crafting stations, your hideout, where you can rest and raise your mood, store your food and do the said crafting, one use resource nodes (small pile of rocks, wild potatoes, plant fibers and scrap wood) which can be gathered only once per game (except for plants. These will grow back after some time.). I will also add unlimited resource nodes, but gathering from these will require tools, food and seven days of your time. There are also three recipes in the game right now. Wooden club, stone hatchet and baked potatoes. Also there are already 8 topics, excluding work and training. Raising your survival and cooking skill also unlocks new recipes (survival 2 = can gather wild potatoes, make wooden club, cooking 2 = bake potatoes). Transforming food items into “food” is also in. Just go near your chest in the hideout, press shift, select the food item you want to store, select how much and thats it. Also, cooked food gives you more “food” units than raw food.

Next thing I did was the improved menu screen. It now shows your most basic stats and your looks. so now you dont have to look into status screen whenever you want to check some of your skills. You character now also has new pose made for melee weapons.

Remember. This is still work in progress and I will be improving it as I go along.

And, this is it for this week. I might have fogotten something because there was shitload of things I did. I will continue adding new things.

#10: Few words about combat

Another slow week. Some prety bad stuff happened so I spent most of the time running around and fixing shit irl. Everything should be fine now though.

Spent some more time writing the dialogue. Fist NPC is about 25% complete. There is still shitload of things to do though. I also started working on that prerendered scene.

Now, lets talk about combat. Combat will be turn based, like in every rpg maker game. I want the combat to be strategic and dangerous. Getting hit will really hurt and will most likely leave you with some kind of permanent damage, like scars, missing eyes and so on. Most enemies will be stronger than you, so you will have to do some preparations before fighting them. Ability enhancing drugs, finding out weakness of your enemies by talking to other people,  using the right weapon and armor, learning the right attacks and so on. You will be able to evade most enemies above ground. There will be no random encounters where you just walk around and sudenly your screen shifts and you start fighting. All enemies will be visible and you will be able to outrun most of them, or sacrifice some money of food if they manage to catch you so you dont have to fight. Dungeons are exceptions though. There is no running away from things that live in the caves below.

You will spend most of the time alone, but getting more people to fight with you will be possible.

#9: Few words about something

This week, I started working on the actual game. Writing all the dialogue takes quite a bit of time, but is a steady progress, since there are no things to get stuck on. No screenshots this week, since there is nothing to show.

Another thing I did when I got bored with all the writing were the enemy models.

This is just something I want to test out. I did a simple model and made the animation set from it. It looks pretty bad, so I will have to improve do some fixing, but it works. Next thing I want to do is to try and do some kind of location using this technique. Will post screenshots next week if I manage to finish it.

Thats it for this week. Next week should be more interesting.

#8: Few words about demo and other stuff

This week was pretty slow. Mainly because terrarria 1.3 got released and I spent shitload of time on it. But I still did some work on the game.

So, I sat down and started thinking about future playable versions. I decided to write down list of features I want other people to see and try. This is the list of features and things, that will be available in the first playable version:

• You will be able to use and train these skills: Cooking, Farming, Survival, Crafting, Melee, Guns
• You will be able to talk, work and receive training from these NPCs: Farmer, Hunter, Policemen, Worker, Boy, girl, Mercenary
• You will be able to find, buy, get or craft these weapons: Makarov, Toz-34, Mosin Nagant, SKS, MP40, Knife, Machete, Hatchet, Hammer, Mallet, Shiv, Short spear, Stone hatchet, Salvaged axe, wooden club, Salvaged Mace, Wooden spear, Salvaged spear, Pipe rifle.
• You will be able to find, buy, get or craft these clothes / armor: Simple dress, T-shirt, vest, hoodie, Leather jacket, Scrap armor, Simple trousers, Denim trousers, Skirt, Cargo pants, Leather pants, Scrap armor legs, Eye patch, Glasses, Bandages, Straw hat
• Each NPC will have 12 quests. You will be able to finish one quest every week. NPCs will get new quests at the start of each in game month.
• You will be able to explore one minidungeon and one medium sized dungeon
• You will be able to choose from 4 hair colors and 4 hairstyles
• Other things: Upgradable hideout from t0 to t1, working mood system, NPC friendship system, Three events each month depending on your stats.

The demo will last about one year of ingame time. It will be split into two major releases. First release will use a lot of stock assests and graphic placeholders. This version will help me find out if people like this game. I will adjust the game depending on the feedback I get. When people end up generaly liking it, I will make some adjustments and go to stage two. If people end up really hating it, I will scrap everything and start all over again. Maybe even in different engine.

Stage two will be entirely about graphics. I will get rid of all the placeholders and make my own. If people end up liking them, then I will start working on the whole game. If not, then I will redo the graphic style again.

Getting this demo finished will take me shitload of time and I have no idea how long will it take. I MIGHT be able to finish stage one by the end of the year, but I am not promising anything.

• Mood and toughtness system

This will be pretty important part of the game. Mood will affect the way you do things. High mood means better result from working and training. It will also affect the way you talk to some people. Mood will decrease everytime you do something unpleasant. Which, at the start of the game, will be basicaly everything. If your mood gets below -100, your character will comit suicide and this will end the game. But dont worry. There will be plenty of ways to increase your mood. Eating good quality food, talking to people you like, doing work you like or just spending week at your hideout will raise your mood. But having positive mood is not always the best idea. Thats what the toughtness will be for.

Toughtness will affect how your mood changes. The lower your toughtness, the more will things affect your mood. This is both good and bad. If your toughtness is really low, leaving your character at home and doing nothing will raise your mood by 20. If your toughtness is high, it will only raise it by 2. This sounds bad, right? Lets look at different scenario. Your best friend dies. Before that, your mood was at -10. If your toughtness was at low level, your mood will decrease for 100. This will set your mood to -110 so your character comits suicide and you loose. If your toughtness is high, you will only loose around 50  mood, so your character will survive. High toughtness will make it harder to make your character happy, but will also make it harder to make it sad. Visiting dungeons and fighting will also lower your mood and raise your toughtness.

Toughtness will change every week depending on your mood. If your mood is higher than 0, your toughtness will decrease. If its lower, it will increase. So you will generaly want to keep your mood slightly below zero. But this will affect the way you talk to people and it will also make it more dificult to raise your stats. It is up to you how you deal with this.

But dont worry. You will still be able to finish the game with high mood / low toughtness character too. It will be more dificult, but pretty much possible.

Thats pretty much it for this week. Your character now changes expressions depending on your mood and toughtness, but I hove no graphics for that yet so there is no screenshot. I also updated the other stuff page again, so you can check that out.