If you worked with RPG maker in some way in the past, you surely remember this image.
This generator allowed many people to make high quality character sprites very quickly. I use it too to make quick and good looking placeholder sprites. You don’t even have to know japanese to use it. It is that simple.
However, some time ago, yahoo shut down geocities and with it this site. Thankfully, there are multiple ways to get access to it. I will now detail one of those ways. This won’t really be a in-depth tutorial, but i’m sure you can figure the intermediate steps out your self. If not, you can still ask in the comment section.
The rest is self explanatory. From my experience, there are like two colors missing for one outfit, but otherwise it works very nice. Hope that helped you.
About one month ago, I released the first sinathir version to the public. It is time I write something here about the release itself, the future and so on.
The release
Everything went pretty smooth all things considering. The initial version was pretty messy and even the current version still is. However, I can safely say that the amount of old bugs is decreasing every new version (and new one crop out)
The release itself was pretty silent and the game itself still is pretty silent. I expected that and I don’t really mind. I can see the numbers. People visit the game page and people are downloading it. Some people started even following me.
Gif from the game page, showing different outfit and weapon options as well as the character aging system
The lack of comunication makes me slightly sad however. I don’t care about praise, I care about bug reports or ideas for balance or new features. I received one e-mail with some ideas and bug report and honestly, e-mails like this are much, much better than receiving blind praise or something like that. I have very few people playtesting the game and even then they can’t play it all the time, so receiving bug reports from other people is very helpful. So, if you care and you find a bug, tell. Write me an e-mail, comment below this post, on the game page, it doesn’t matter. I will find it.
Progress
The lack of communication didn’t discourage me. As I said, I’m making this game primarily for my self. Even If I receive no comment for a year, it doesn’t mean I will stop working on the game. Unless I die, or I somehow loose all game files (Unlikely. I back up regularily both online and offline), I will continue working on it. Since the release, I released multiple patches adding features and fixing bugs, I changed the game page design a bit and I’m working on new game version even now. The general long term roadmap can be found on the game page. The shorterm goals are:
Add placeholder graphics for dialogue with all major NPCs.
Add missing dialogue for existing topics with all major NPCs.
Add more functionality to overlooked NPCs (Helena, George, Arf).
Add more skills to overlooked NPCs and make existing ones more useful.
Make walking around more enjoyable by adding new events and adding more fast travel points.
Ofcourse, there is more. But these are the most important to me right now.
So, to close this off, I’m generaly pretty happy with the game launch, I will continue working on it and I would apreciate more comunication.
So it finaly happened. After all these years, I finaly released first public version of the game. It is still pretty barebones compared to what I want it to be, but I’m in a stage where public opinion and wider feedback is necesary. I will write something longer next time. For now, go and play.
Get the game for free from the download section above, of ftom this link:
I’m happy to say that the initial public version of the game is almost ready for a release. I fixed most of the bugs and generaly made the game as playable as I could without taking another year to work on it.
Everything is pretty much ready for a release. I set up the itch.io page and uploaded the first version there, but I still want some time to make sure everything is 100% working.
So, the page will be made public 20th of March 2021. Meanwhile I will be working on fixing some minor bugs I find and trying to replace the last pieces of art that could potentialy be copyrighted. Once the game gets released, I will post a link here and in the Downloads section.
Just a small update. Testing is going all right and the number of issues is getting smaller. To make it easier for you to see how the progress is going, I decided to put the most recent updates from my changelog / bug tracker online instead of the offline document I was using up until now.
Just wanted to say that testers are back for testing and everything continues at a steady pace. And while there was little testing done in the past month, I was not entirely idle. I worked on some simple features that require little to no time to test.
Achievements
I added a achievement system. You can view these in the quest window. They are relatively simple and straight forward, but completing them actualy does something. Completing achievement gives you renown (for now, high renown unlocks new quests) and also unlocks new outfits for wardrobe. Which means…
Wardrobe
This system allows you to change your clothing without altering your stats. Lets say you want to wear the cult robes, but you don’t like their look? now you can have all the benefits of wearing said robes with different look. These outfits are unlocked by completing achievements and you will have to upgrade your hideout to unlock the wardrobe.
Age switch
Similiar to wardrobe, after doing certain “thing” you will be able to alter the way your character looks age wise. This is meant as a end game reward and is only a cosmetic change. Your stats will still stay the same.
Last two features are in some way temporary. I would like to do a proper new game+ and these would make for a nice reward but for now, they are part of the base game. If you play your cards right, you should by able to unlock both of them by the second ingame year.
That is it for now. I hope I will be able to release the demo this month, but no promises.
Short post today. Tech-demo will be delayed a bit, mainly because of the christmas thing. People who test my game for bugs have other things to do this time of a year and I want to make this thing as playable as possible.
But I still have something to show today. The game is very hard to play blind and developing a proper tutorial at this stage would be a waste of time since a lot of things change too often.
So I decided to make a writen manual. It should give answers to pretty much every question people could have while playing.
It will be in the game folder, and I will put the copy of it here for download in advance, so you can read through it before playing if you want.
This will most likely be the last blog post before the demo / prototype gets released. Lets have a closer look at things that the demo will contain and things that are going to be missing.
But before all that, here you can look at this picture. I finished sprites for another age stage.
This leaves only few more stages left.
And here is a gif showing all current age stages.
Now with that out of the way, lets talk about the demo.
Demo will contain the following:
Five different graphical age looks for your main character.
16 different outfits, two head accessories. All of which have their own individual graphics.
37 different weapon graphics. Number of weapons in game is higher since some share graphics.
Small number of quests. Some simple, some more complex with multiple options.
Small number of very simple repeatable fetch quests.
One ingame year worth of events. These happen only at specific time.
Fully functional farming system.
Fully functional crafting system.
Fully functional alchemy system.
Upgradeable hideout. Improve the hideout itself, build new facilities or install new workstations.
Working stat and skill system. Raise your stats to learn new skills.
Functional combat system with weapon reloading and attack speed determined by stats.
9 main NPCs. These can train you, teach you new skills or you can work for them to earn money.
4 of these NPCS are close to fully functional. These NPCs can teach you more and can follow you.
Multiple minor NPCs. These either serve as simple vendors of they serve as window dressing.
Basic “living world” features. Some NPCs will react to your clothing or social standing.
Small open world with multiple secrets to finds
After the first year, you can play as long as you want. There won’t be any new events however.
Ofcourse, there are more things, but listing it all would take a lot of time. Now for things that WON’T be int the demo.
Some quests were not working properly and I won’t be able to fix them in time. They will be removed for initial release.
Some of those weapons and outfits won’t be obtainable in the game by “legitimate” means since the quests adding them won’t be in the game. I will most likely put them into the clothing store and blacksmiths inventory for now.
Some farming plants have no use for now. They will either be removed or be useless for the initial release.
Some NPCs and stats will be very barebones. You can work for them and they will train you in their trade, but they won’t follow you and they have very limited skills at offer.
Some skills will be useless in the initial release.
Some random events I talked about in earlier posts will be missing and some I didn’t talk about were added instead.
Some obvious interactions are missing. I didn’t fogot about them, I just didn’t really had the time.
Again, there are more things that will be missing, but these are the important ones. I have been calling this release a “demo” but it is more like a prototype. It has 99% of the features I want to have in the final game, but they are not fully fleshed out and finished. Think of it more like a taste of whats to come.
And lastly, here are the things I still have to do before I can release this to the world.
Finish one quest
Fix one NPC
Check the entire game for bugs and missing things. Put warning on those missing things or finish them.
As you can see, I’m really close. I want to release this before christmas, but I might be a little late. We will see.
One last thing I might work on is the “achievements” system. This system will have in-world explanation and will give you ingame rewards instead of some pointless pictures on some profile.
Time for another batch of news. First of all, I’m still aiming to relase the demo version before the end of the year. All of the systems are relatively bug free and 99% of all features I wanted to have are in. Only thing left is adding more content. I want to add more quests, more random encounters and some other details. I will take month long vacation in december, so I should have enough time to finish the demo since I won’t have to go to work.
Now for something a little more exiting. Few months back, I implemented free version of FMOD. This basicaly gives me more options when it comes to sound. Now the overworld music can continue when it got interupted by battle instead of starting all over again.
This also means I can add various sound options. Now you can set your sound options individualy.
You can set the volume in the new options menu.
Next thing I focused on was another age stage. Now you can get 14 years old without the game ending.
New look for age 14.
This also means I had to add new overworld sprite.
Left is for ages 10,11,12. Right is for ages 13,14,15. 16,17 and 18 will get new sprite too.
That’s it for now. Ofcourse, I did more than that. I added new low level dungeon and bunch of other stuff, but I will keep these a secret for now.
Don’t worry, I’m still alive. It has been a few months since I last writen here and I have plenty of things to write about, so let’s get to it.
New face + default hairstyle
Thanks to some input I got, I decided to change the look of the main character. Mainly the face and the hairstyle. The face needed some fixing and the hairstyle was slightly altered hairstyle of the first model I was using. Now it looks much better.
New look
Relationship window
I added new window showing the status of all people your character knows. It shows their icon, name, how much they like you and from certain point, even their location.
Only NPCs you know will be shown
Improved job window
I improved the job window a bit. Now it shows a little more information than before and is a little nicer to look at.
Week result window
At the end of every week, you get a window showing you how all your resourcess changed.
New age stage
I finished another age stage. The demo will still have things to only for the first two years, but now the player can spend one more year walking around and doing things he didn’t manage to do in time.
Look for age 13
New weapons and outfits
I spent some time adding new outfits and some old weapons I done months ago.
One of the new outfits
Hideout upgrade system
You could build some upgrades in the hideout before, but the system was too simple and done entirely with events. I completely overhauled that system and now it is entirely script driven plus it look much better than simple textbox telling you what you need and yes/no option.
You can now build well in your hideout
Weapon reloading / magazine system
I decided to give more depth to ranged weapons and made a new reloading system from scratch. Weapons have different magazine sizes and require reloading when they are empty (They reload automaticaly after battle). Reloading takes some time and it is often faster to switch to your next weapon instead of reloading. Some weapons, like Makarov for example, reload all their ammunition in one turn, while some weapons, like a shotgun, get reloaded one cartridge at a time. This will make ranged weapons a little more interesting and make player consider more variables instead of going “more damage = better than low damage”
Blunderbuss can hold only one shot before needing to reload
New alchemy system
I always wanted to make alchemy a little more interesting than just selecting the thing you wanted from a list pressing ok, so I decided to make entire new alchemy system from scratch. The old crafting system is still in place, but making potions and chemicals works differently now.
You can learn to make alchemy components. These components can than be combined together. Correct combination will give you a potion, wrong combination will waste your ingredients. The screen has integrated recipe window and all recipes you learned will show here. You can make potions even if you don’t have the correct recipe so you can experiment if you feel like it.
Left are the ingredients, top is the mixing screen and down are the known recipes
This pretty much concludes this blog post. There are several things I still didn’t show though.
I would like to release the basic demo before the end of this year. All of the game features are in “acceptable” state and so the only thing missing is more content. More events, more quests and more things to do in general. I should be able to have the thing released before christmas. Wish me luck.
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