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Fungoblin + Battle Videos + Mardek's Race
4 years ago - Edited 4 years ago5,191 words
I made a new monster model; here's a bit about the process! I've also continued implementing and refining the revised battle mechanics; here are four short battle videos showcasing my progress!! Also, should Mardek be a pink elf??? This is a long post!!!!

It's been a few weeks since the last Divine Dreams post! Both the MARDEK stuff and the website issues got in the way of posting about my progress with it, though I have done a bit more, so there's a lot I'll be covering here.

In the previous couple of posts, I talked about some drastic revisions to the battle mechanics. I've continued developing those, and while they're not complete yet, I feel I'm getting to a place I really like with them. I'm finding the battles really fun to play, and have to stop myself just repeatedly playing the game when I should be working on it, which is always a good sign.

Before I talk about that though, here's what I would have talked about last week if not for the website issues:



Creation Process of a New Monster


I'd only added a couple of monsters to the game previously (Stratapillar and Neuronaut, shown in older posts). It doesn't make sense to add too many at a point where things might change drastically! Still, neither of those are physical attackers, which meant I had nothing to test the new physical/mental battle mechanics with.

I like the idea of reusing my old monster designs, as a lot of series do. It gives a nice feeling of continuity and familiarity even if there's no direct connection between the worlds or games in a lore sense. Since this is a Reimagining of MARDEK, it makes sense to reuse some monsters from that.

In ∞ a post from 3 months ago ∞, I showed some concept art of potential monsters for the Dreamcave area I've been making first. There were a few designs of Fungoblins - one of the first monsters you encounter in MARDEK - as well as a variant called Psilocyblin (a ∞ magic mushroom ∞, har har), though I couldn't decide on a design and didn't intend for it to be one of the ones I'd include for this dungeon. For whatever reason, though, I gave it another go, and ended up with this page of chaotically arranged and crudely rendered concept drawings:



I considered combining them with the silly 'Happy Johnny' enemies from MARDEK (which were a bouncing cactus in a single boot), but nothing felt right. Eventually I settled on a sort of combination of the old armless, faceless fungoblins and the more 'standard' goblins from Alora Fane: Creation. Interestingly, AFC also included fungoblins as a separate species, as well as a purple-capped variant called Myconimp:



With a design decided, I got to work on bringing it to digital life. Here's what I made in about an hour; I feel I'm getting better and more confident at 3D modelling (I'm still hardly an expert). And of course that's the base male human model for comparison; useful to get the right scale. I originally intended for it to be eyeless.



This how it was after about another hour, when it felt good enough to call it done:



To animate a model, it has to be 'rigged' with a skeleton, and its vertices have to be 'weighted' to the bones in that skeleton. It's complicated, and this is no place to try to explain it! Making this rig took about an hour too, probably?



I build my rigs manually, and I add the vertex weights manually too rather than relying on any auto weighting (which the tutorials I started learning with always recommended, but which I feel gives me less control and contaminates the model with a whole lot of 'sloppy' values; assigning my own feels so much neater and cleaner).



The next step is to do what's called 'UV unwrapping', where you specify the locations of the faces on the texture. Again, complicated to explain, though not as time consuming to do as adding the rig. My UV unwrapping is crude; professionals can create these really neat, tightly-packed unwrappings where every pixel of the texture is used well, but I end up having these big areas which aren't used by any parts of the model because I can't be bothered refining it! It doesn't really matter for the style I'm using, which has mostly flat colours without shading.



And here it is with a final texture and idle animation! I feel I'm getting much better at animation too; look at how complicated this animation is compared to the ones in my other work like MARDEK, where I often just tweened between two poses. (Also yes MARDEK is making a silly face here and it is amusing, much laughter.)



I'm quite pleased with this model! It turned out much better than expected. It's an ugly thing, but that's sort of the point! I still see myself as very much an amateur modeller, so the confidence I felt making this and the quality of the end result gives me hope for the other models I'll need to make for this and any other future games. It's nice to feel I've evolved beyond the "still figuring out how to do this" stage.

Still, it takes a while to create and animate a new model. At first I was planning to make every monster unique, like Pokemon - or like the monsters in FFVIII (and I think FFIX too?), to avoid the whole ∞ Underground Monkey ∞ thing... though there's a good reason many games - including MARDEK - use that. I remember monster creation for MARDEK giving me little trouble and not consuming too much time, because I mostly made variants of existing models. Perhaps I'll do a similar thing with this; it's more practical, and I doubt anyone would be upset by it!



Battle Mechanics


With that out of the way, I shall talk about the battle mechanics! I wanted to make a gameplay video like the one from... ∞ wow, two months ago? ∞, but I wasn't able to achieve that, so I'm aiming to have one for next week instead. Probably not a bad time if people will be playing MARDEK on Steam not long after, and hopefully coming and having a look at what I'm doing now.

I do have some short videos though, which I've emdedded directly rather here than YouTube videos (far less hassle); hopefully they'll work!

Rather than just dryly explaining the mechanics like I have done previously, let's look at a few battles, after which I'll explain some of the features they showcase. Here's the first one:



The player would be introduced to the game's mechanics with battles as simple as this. Just a familiar back-and-forth of physical attacks, healing when necessary. You don't have to worry about light or dark or runes or any of that.

That's a fungoblin variant, called Psilocyblin, though it doesn't look like the original design for that from the post 3 months ago. It was quickly-made, and I'll probably change it for the final game! It's also a bit silly that it's a 'magic mushroom' but only uses physical attacks, but I'll likely change that too; perhaps all the monsters in the final Dreamcave will be magic-users, unlike the monsters in most areas in the game.

There's this ∞ letterboxing ∞ effect when you're taking a turn, party to direct the player's focus to the menu in the centre (I've used centred menus in most of my earlier games, apparently, though MARDEK is an exception), but also to clarify the status UI things (they're called 'statues' in the code, from status + depiction of a person) which might otherwise get lost in complex backgrounds.

I've also added a turn order bar, like MARDEK's! Originally I had it in essentially the same place as MARDEK's:



But I felt that the letterbox effect was already covering up a lot, and I don't think it's necessary to see that many turns in advance anyway. I used the current position because there's nothing else there, and this width because there are eight 'slots' on either side, so this is how much space would be left if all eight statues were visible.



I'm not sure about it, though; it feels imbalanced, aesthetically irritating. Perhaps it'll grow on me though; I only added it last night.


Effectiveness Rainbow
In the video, you might have noticed that it says "Eh" in blue under the damage numbers. This shows the effectiveness, and I'm still trying to decide what to do about it! I feel that Pokemon's "super effective!" is iconic in a way that "2x damage" (or just nothing) wouldn't have been, though it bothers me how an electric attack hitting a Gyarados is still "super effective" despite being 4x effective instead...

So I like the idea of using a 'rainbow' of words which signify different degrees of effectiveness. That is, there are seven different ones, with violet as the least effective, and red as the most effective. Blue - rather than green - is used as the neutral to allow more range for above-average effectiveness.

At first I wondered whether to use words like "Okay", "Good", "Great!", "Amazing!" and so on, but currently I have these, which I found funnier:



I personally would use 'bleh', 'meh', 'eh' (like the 'eh' in 'pet', not the Canadian 'ay'), 'ooh', and 'wow' in that way, though 'eyy' makes me think of Fonzie from Happy Days (a character I only know from references in other things like The Simpsons), or an Italian American stereotype (I think?), and 'aah' reads like a scream of fear or an orgasmic moan as much as an expression of awe. I think they'd all be subjectively read, not necessarily as they were intended.

So I'm still deciding what to do there, and I'm interested in hearing some thoughts about it!

I also considered just adding coloured stars, or even a numerical percentage, but they felt a lot colder and less likely to stick in players' minds outside the game (as "super effective" does).


Let's move onto the next battle, where Mardek is now accompanied by Deugan:



Buffs
In a previous post, I talked about my uncertainty regarding buffs. I described a system of 'buff petals' where characters had a limited number of 'buff slots' which could be filled with these petals... but it all seemed a bit unnecessarily complicated. The buffs were also permanent, which is something I dislike about MARDEK's stat reductions and status effects in general (I think resistance to status effects allowed you to recover from them each turn, though I don't remember).

So I'm using a more simplified system of buffs now. Characters can have up to six buffs (or debuffs) at a time, and each one has a duration. So a buff might increase your Defence or Attack by 3 points, though it expires after a couple of turns to prevent infinite stacking. I feel this would work better on a gameplay level.

There are still other things like Moods and arousal on top of buffs.


Taming!
This is the biggest change from the old system, which I feel makes these battles way more interesting! I've touched on it previously, but I think seeing it in action goes a whole lot further towards selling its appeal than words could.

You tame opponents by increasing their Light, using skills which have that effect (such as MARDEK's Tame here). These skills typically use the runes, element, and the user's Light stat to calculate their effectiveness. It's not something you have to really think about every time you use them; it's more like if you understand the underlying mechanics, you can manipulate conditions to produce huge effectiveness chains for enormous 'damage', but you could otherwise tame more slowly using less effective skills. Kind of like if you didn't understand Pokemon types and just used Scratch and Ember on everything (like child-me playing Red for the first time); you could still get by, just not as efficiently as someone who knew the mechanics well.

Tamed monsters move to your side of the battlefield, and can be used like any other ally. I'd have been so excited by something like this when I was younger! I still am now!

Notably though, tamed monsters would be at full Light and 0 Dark (since you just filled their Light to convert them), meaning any skills they had which used Dark as the offensive stat would be useless straight after taming. This means the player has to manipulate the battlefield carefully if they want to tame a monster but then use it for violence. This Stratapillar has a skill (Balance) which balances its Light and Dark (and arousal), allowing it to use its Dark spell, Stonesplosion, on its second turn. Other monsters would have taming skills of their own to help you tame the other opponents; they wouldn't use these themselves on the opponent side, but the skills you could use when controlling a monster wouldn't necessarily be the same as the ones it uses itself in its AI.

Tamed monsters disappear (with a gold dissolve effect rather than the defeated purple) at the end of battle; they might grant different rewards, though I'm still deciding what to do there.


Next battle!



(There's an annoyingly-placed rock next to MARDEK because I've changed the positions of the camera and characters, but haven't edited the battle background around that yet!)

There's not much that's new in this one (the Psilocyblin's movement isn't enough like a run though, and it shows the wrong icon on its Attack command!), so now's a good time to talk about what you might have noticed in the others, and which people have talked about a lot in previous posts:


Skill XP
Skills have a level, from 1 to 6. Increasing the level increases the power of the skill, or what it can do; for example, at level 1, Heal might heal the lowest Body ally for 100% of MARDEK's Light, while at level 2 it might heal the two lowest Body allies for 120% of MARDEK's light, etc.

Skills have an XP cost to level them up. The amount of XP that a skill gains is equal to the 'damage' that it inflicts when you use it. That means that using a skill well is the best way to level it up quickly. I feel that clever players would get a lot out of setting up all the multipliers (runes, elements, etc) in such a way that they can level up their skills most efficiently; it'd still take effort on the player's part, but it wouldn't just be restricted to spending time grinding the same action again and again.

A potential issue is that you could just grind against the weakest enemies with the lowest defences... but there are a couple of ways to tackle this. One is that things like runes and elements don't exactly have numerical values anyway, so it's not as if some have 'weaker' runes than others; it'd still be up to the players to either find monsters with the right elements and runes, or to manipulate them to what they wanted. Also, I could perhaps make it so that damage inflicted - or at least the skill XP gained from it - never exceeds the opponent's Body/Mind (as appropriate)... So if you dealt 600 damage to something with only 10 Body, you'd only gain 10 XP rather than 600. Though that seems to remove some of the fun of building up those ideal situations for huge effectiveness combos, so I'm still thinking about this. I feel it should be about fun first and foremost though, not putting restrictive barriers in the player's way. If a player would enjoy going and grinding around the first forest, why not let them? Most players wouldn't play that way even if it seemed the most efficient way for a few. Most players are neither completionists nor min-maxers (or whatever the term is).

Skills that don't deal damage (such as both of Deugan's here) are more like MARDEK's in that they accumulate 1 XP per use, but they obviously don't cost nearly as much as the other type.

I wasn't sure how the UI for the skill's level and XP should look, and played around with a few possibilities:





I really like what I decided on:



I also edited the concords menu for clarity and consistency:



Emeela's getting a debuff from a piece of her equipment:



Some items would grant permanent buffs or debuffs, like in MARDEK. This one, Isolate, was added partly out of necessity. One of the concord effects is "Cheer", which causes someone's allies to cheer them on when they take their turn, restoring their Light a bit. Emeela requires Dark to fuel her dark spells, which means these spells are actually weakened every time she takes a turn and gets cheered on. It was annoying! Isolate disables all effects from concords, including this... but while I like that it maybe feels in character, it seems like a sloppy and short-sighted fix for the issue. A better solution would probably be to rethink the Cheer thing entirely. Maybe it could restore Body instead, which is always desirable? That makes no sense, really, but aren't gameplay mechanics full of stuff that don't realistically make sense?


Here's the fourth and final battle that I'll be showing here:



Some monsters have skills which don't deal standard Body damage, but which instead increase Dark, like the Neuronauts here. I talked in previous posts about uncertainties regarding what happens when Dark fills, but I like what I've got here: when a character turns fully Dark, they convert to the other side!

Mechanically, I like this, but I've been thinking about the lore behind it. I think that the characters should undergo some kind of transformation to show that they've 'fallen to darkness', that they're not in their right mind, so it's more about something beyond their control than anything they can be blamed for. Since it's a fantasy game, that opens up a lot of possibilities.

One is to give characters some kind of 'beast form', which looks and acts feral. It could be subtle, like a posture change and maybe some bits of fur on their face, or perhaps it could be a full werewolf-like transformation, or even a change to an entirely different animal form? Emeela could turn into a deer, Deugan into a wolf. It seems an interesting way to add an additional layer of character, by having their transformation represent some aspect of how they see themselves.

Another alternative is to have them become sort of undead, or possessed. Perhaps they become Lost, and their eyes turn fully black, their faces expressionless?





Either way, it seems that whatever they become should play a big part in Alora Fane's general lore, and the way that the story develops. It's too big of a thing in their lives to be relegated to some gameplay mechanic nobody even talks about! It's not something I thought of until recently, though, so it's not written into what I have so far. But it's still early - and my plans are still so incomplete - that I definitely could tweak some things to make use of something like this.

So I'm still thinking about how best to handle this.

Mechanically, their lost/beast forms would each have maybe three different abilities, which are unique to the character, but which wouldn't necessarily overlap with which skills you'd actually equipped on them. They'd use the same AI mechanics as monsters. Interestingly, you could even deliberately use these monster forms to your advantage in certain situations. Perhaps one character's monster form uses a skill that rouses their entire party, denying their new monster allies the opportunity to use their calm skills. The mechanics afford a lot of potential scenarios.

When a character has been lost to the other side, you can deal with them either by taming them like any other monster, causing them to regain their senses when they reach full Light, or you can just KO them using Body-damaging attacks. If you did that, they'd be handled the same after battle as if they'd died while on your side (that is, they'd revive with 1 Body).

From playing with the few assets I currently have, I've found this mechanic really immersive and emotionally engaging. Upon seeing Steele converted, I put myself in Deugan's mind: he won't let this monster hurt Emeela; Taunt! I've been wanting to do this for ages; Attack! But when it's Emeela who's lost, Deugan taunting feels so different; there's an extra layer of interest beyond the technical mechanics. Now, Deugan's drawing her attention to him so then he can endure the pain to be the hero in her eyes, to avoid hurting her, to help his friends, and he guards against her sorrow spells while feeling his own sorrow, seeing her lost. And so on. It's interesting!

Also, Steele has a skill here which rouses both himself and Emeela, so then he can use his "Ultraviolence!" attack and so then she can use Hate. That's another thing born of character which I quite like... though I need to balance the numbers, because currently he needs to use it twice before she can use Hate, and after just one use she can't use Despair anymore. Maybe that's not inappropriate though? Interactions like this will be more tricky to balance than just deciding on how powerful to make an attack, but I feel the results will be more interesting too.

(Steele doesn't have a proper animation for that skill yet; he's just using Deugan's taunt one currently and it looks stupid.)

Also, the battle models were animated for their respective sides, so when switching like this, they end up facing away from the camera in a way I don't consider acceptable. I'm thinking about how best to handle this without adding too much extra work. I want to add different idles for the feral/lost forms of the playable characters anyway, so that should address that, though I'll need to consider other options for monsters.

There's also a bug where Emeela starts rotating as she runs back to her party after being tamed; that's not intentional!



Phew! There are a couple of other things that I want to mention before ending this.

Skill Learning


One is about skills, and their acquisition. Currently, characters have a relatively small arsenal of skills unique to them, which they can equip up to 6 of at a time. They'd acquire new skills through dialogue, either through plot events or as sidequest rewards. That is, you'd witness them have the ideas for their abilities through words said to or by them.

I also like the idea of binding skills to 'memento' items though. These items would strongly remind the characters of certain feelings from past events, and it's those feelings that they draw upon to shape the miasma into spells. I think this is fairly accurate to how our actual minds work; it can be very surprising how much raw feeling certain objects can cause to explode within us, even if they're reminding us of something that we think about all the time.

There's no real point having items as an additional layer in what I've got currently... But I like this on an immersion level more than a technical one. Perhaps the mementos could also be used to trigger scenes, similar to the Dreamstones in MARDEK 3? Perhaps Mardek has a Stick as a memento that grants a helping skill, and you can press a button on it to show a (text) scene where he once helped Deugan out of some quicksand using this long stick. It seems like an interesting way to explore the characters.

Also, if every monster is tameable and has its own skills, it's going to be hugely taxing and time-consuming coming up with abilities for all of them! It'd be more reasonable to make a set of 'standard spells' which could commonly be available, like Final Fantasy's Fire, Fira, Firaga, etc, or, to a lesser extent, Pokemon moves. I thought of some potential names and effects for some:



It's interesting how the six runes fit quite nicely with the six elements!

Perhaps characters could also acquire spellbooks as 'mementos', with these standard spells as linked abilities? That would mean that each character would have their personal list of more nuanced abilities, but that you could also customise them with a more limited selection of spells from every element?

I'm uncertain about this. Final Fantasy games did this sort of thing, but MARDEK didn't. It's been interesting seeing people discuss the viability of certain MARDEK characters in recent blog posts based on the abilities available to them, and I always felt that my characters in Final Fantasy games were essentially interchangeable because they were all capable of equipping the same abilities.

But I suppose it's like how Pokemon species each have their own natural move lists, and some of what they learn are signature moves unique to their species, but there are also TMs to grant a wide range of other moves. This means that most Pokemon end up with the same few best moves (eg every Fire type has Flamethrower)... but wouldn't it be way more restrictive, way worse, to be stuck with just the moves they learned naturally?

I'm undecided! What do you think?

On a technical level, if skills were bound to mementos, I'm not sure how the menu would look. I don't much care for having the skill list 'broken up' like this:



But would the mementos be in separate slots above or below the skill list? That seems awkward. It'd make more sense to have them side-by-side, but there's no room. Could these skills be made horizontally narrower? Maybe. Things I need to think about!



MARDEK as a Pink Elf


FINALLY, in MARDEK, Mardek's skin was white, because his father - despite coming from another planet - looked exactly like a Caucasian human. In Taming Dreams, I did away with the other planet thing, and instead Enki was from another 'petal world' of Alora Fane. He was one of the dark-skinned Mhandisi; his alien-ness was obvious on the surface. As such, Mardek had dark skin too (though as his mother was a Bold, he was somewhere between their tan skin and the Mhandisi's dark skin).

The design I'm using for him in this is the same one as that, though his father is no longer a dark-skinned Mhandisi.

I have this image from December 2019 that I don't think I showed off here? I wasn't happy with some of the drawings (I'm still not, bleh), and wanted to redo them. I can't be bothered though, so here's how the five extant Alora Fane races look:



The 2013 ones are the Bold, Meek, Mhandisi, Sindrels, and Varnyn. They all look fairly bland to me now, like something you'd find in a D&D campaign.

The 2019 ones feel more mine, at least. They're the Bold, Meek, Lucen, Sindrels, and Varnyn. (I've also designed the extinct sixth race, the Elarna, but I've omitted it for now.)

The Mhandisi were a kind of 'steampunk African' which would have been quite similar to Wakanda from Marvel (which I'd never heard of when I designed them; this was pre-Black Panther). The Lucen, on the other hand, are more like "alien angel-demons". Their petal is a sparkling sci-fi city called the Enlightened Technopolis, and they devote themselves to opening their minds both scientifically and spiritually. The Magisterium - Divine Dreams' Governance de Magi - are all Lucen.

Mardek's father is still from another world, though this time he's called Savitr rather than Enki, and he's half Lucen. Mardek's mother is a Bold woman called Idalia.

Lucen skin tones range from purple to red, and instead of human ears, they have long horns which serve a similar function.

As such, it doesn't make sense that Mardek's skin should be the colour that it is. He should probably look something like this:



(That's Deugan and Emeela too, obviously; I was going to draw the whole cast, but ran out of time and energy and stopped here.)

That is, a sort of magenta colour, with spiky ears.

Like a pink elf.

He looks like something out of World of Warcraft or Star Trek though, and I really like the shade of brown that I'm currently using for his skin, so I've been wondering for a few weeks now whether to make the change or not.

I've also been wondering about annoying political stuff that would inevitably get drawn into character perception. I've no intention of making a 'woke' game; I'm not that kind of person. I don't want to make any political points about forced, unnatural representation since that's not something I feel I have the personal experience to do any justice to. Still, I like the idea of the player character having a skin colour which resembles the majority of the human population (that is, brown), and ambiguous facial features, and I know that people do... notice these kinds of things, for better or worse.

But then wouldn't him looking like a pink-skinned elf be even more race-transcendent, such that anyone of any human race could identify with him instead of seeing him as a representative of an existing group they're not, with all the connotations that come with that?? Or would it instead be harder to relate to because he looks too alien?!?!

I don't know. I just know that the lore would suggest an appearance like this more than like what I've already got. But then wouldn't he stand out too much among the other Bold? Wouldn't he anyway if he was dark-skinned?

What do you think?



Here's this version of Mardek from some lost/beast concepts, which I didn't include earlier since I had to explain it first! (I haven't decided on which exact shade of pink he'd be...) The more I think about it, the more I like the one with the black void eyes since it looks like it lacks agency, like it's possessed, rather than acting deliberately... HMM.



Finally, we have reached the end! I would have preferred this to be three separate posts, but OH WELL.

(Also, account creation and validation are still not working... I'm looking into it, but again I'm waiting on my webhost...)

18 COMMENTS

vladandrei199647~4Y
First of all, Divine Dreams is beginning to look more and more like a game that's gonna make all of us sit and play for a quality time. I specifically adore how you're taking the MARDEK "parts" and making something different out of it, the game feels familiar yet also feels like a breath of fresh air. The lore behind MARDEK was well thought behind the humor and "don't take it too serious" nature, and Divine Dreams seems to take that style and expand upon it.

The skill learning system you talked about seems solid, mementos could work pretty well for both lore-wise and mechanical points. Your characters could find mementos and have a dialogue or short-cutscene about it followed by "X learned Y spell". Also, maybe after maxing that skill given from the memento (you mentioned 6 levels to each skill), you can unlock another piece of dialogue that expands upon that memento and the character's past.
I'm indecisive about the "spells that everyone could learn" thing. Characters should feel unique enough so they don't powercreep and just feel like different flavours for different playstyles.

I couldn't help but observe you talking a lot about Pokemon mechanics, so I have to ask something. Ever thought of re-imagining/remaking Beast Signer? I'm a sucker for the genre and played Beast Signer like 3-4 times. I'd like to see how a "Beast Signer" game would look and play like from your perspective now, as your artistic direction became clearer.

4
Tobias 1099~4Y
I'm glad Divine Dreams seems interesting to you!

I like the idea of memento items which remind the player as much as the characters of certain events. Sort of like if you'd got Moric's scythe in MARDEK; just looking at it would remind you of that battle, and a character being able to summon up a skill because of the same memory seems really appealing to me.

I worked on a few monster-catching games. There was one before Beast Signer which is now lost (to my great annoyance), then that, then Miasmon, which I consider a kind of "Beast Signer remake" at least in a spiritual sense. That was way more complete, but obviously wasn't finished either, and it's years old now.

YouTube's algorithm's been suggesting a lot of Pokemon-related videos to me lately, and I always think that it'd be nice to give that genre another go... But I also realise that my biggest mistake in the past was jumping around between projects and never finishing anything, and that I need to focus wholly on one thing if I'm to make this work. I suppose incorporating these taming mechanics into Divine Dreams is a way of partially scratching that itch. It's not exactly the same since you can't keep the monsters, but it's something.

Whether or not I'll ever make another Pokemon clone depends on whether I finish Divine Dreams and it makes money! And whether Pokemon continues to be appealing to people, though it doesn't look like it's going away any time soon!
3
codyfun12329~4Y
This lost form stuff is great! And I'm not just saying that the constant back-and-forth that occurred in Belief is hilarious and having that carry over into Divine Dreams is a great thing in my eyes.

There could be plot points revolving around townsfolk who went "missing" but it turns out they had succumbed to the darkness and you have to pacify them. Or how about a band of cultist/bandits who intentionally invoke their beast form to do crime, and so you can stop them through violence or empathy. What if there was a twist on Taming Dreams's nightmare demons where a character BECAME the embodiment of their negativity and absorbed a bunch of miasma to become a boss, abandoning the party in the process? There's a lot that can be done with it!
4
Tobias 1099~4Y
I definitely don't intend for conversion to be as common as it was in Belief! That'd just get too silly. But I'm looking forward to getting back to Belief as a prequel one day and fully exploring that then.

Interestingly, the bandits from MARDEK 2's Gem Cave are now cultists... though the lore behind them since way back when I designed them for Taming Dreams has been really light-based: they're trying to make people 'wake up', to 'see the light', etc. I'm having to think about how best to have this work with the new mechanics!

There are a lot of possibilities that'll need considering though! I like the idea of the first time you lose an ally in this way being as part of a boss battle, where it's a big deal, rather than just randomly happening against some random monster.
3
Ampersand68~4Y
RE: Mardek's "look"- I definitely feel attached to his current skin tone as well. I feel it really matches his personality in a way that a more "fantasy" look wouldn't capture.

Perhaps it could be solved by Bolds having a wider range of skin tones, from tan to quite dark? They're the closest thing to "baseline human" in the setting, after all. Idalia being some kind of "ambiguously brown" like Brock from Pokemon, but without the distinctive Lucen hairstyle would bridge the gap, I think.

Alternatively, Meeks could also have various skin/fur tones, and Mardek's dark complexion and pointy ears could be speculated on as Idalia getting together with a dark-skinned Meek, which could add another angle to the story (perhaps providing a pretext to explain anti-Meek sentiment?).

There could also be more subtle hints as to Mardek's heritage as well- perhaps he blushes an unnatural magenta, maybe even "glowing" a bit. Eyes, rather than having yellow "whites" (which feel a tad too bestial), could have deep purple irises, which could get more noticeable when being "possessed", turning into a psychedelic violet. Etc.

I don't think the "pink elf" design would need to be discarded completely- after all, Mardek's half-Lucen father could still use it, and Mardek looking more like a Brave is of course explained by his being only 1/4 Lucen.
5
Tobias 1099~4Y
Some interesting ideas here!

Now that there's no longer any Mhandisi, it seems like the Bold should include dark-skinned variants. MARDEK had the Northern and Southern races, with the southerners having a Middle Eastern aesthetic, so I've been intending to do a similar thing here... But there was also Zach, and Vudu, who hailed from ~distant lands~ or whatever, hmm...

The Meek are supposed to be essentially mythical though, never seen; that's why Emeela covers her ears, because she'd look too different and attract too much attention. I might have rethought this a bit though; I'll need to refresh my understanding of my own story and lore!

I like the idea of more subtle signs of Mardek's 1/4 Lucen heritage, like the magenta blushing, and eye colour; Lucen have yellow sclera, so I could do that.

If you look closely at the head of Mardek's UI statue thing, you'll see that the shade of his skin is more purple and less orange than his model. This was an earlier attempt at deciding on a skin shade, so maybe something like that could work? That is, not obviously pink, but pinkish brown? I'll need to think about it, and the different perspectives in these comments all present valid possibilities which make it tricky to decide!
4
Maniafig219~4Y
Should Mardek be a pink elf? Of course not, he should be a pink Goblin!!

AND SPEAKING OF GOBLINS: Goblins. Finally. Beautiful, beautiful Goblins. I'm still fond of that lankier version of the AF:C design. Maybe that's what happens when an AF:C Goblin goes bald?! Goblins are very protective of that one hair, on account of only having one.

I'm glad you didn't join them together with the Happy Johnnies, those were very distinct designs, so you can still make some other reboot version of those later on! Of course, mixing the Fungoblin with the absolutely immaculate AF:C Goblins is the best idea.

What are Fungoblins to Goblins anyway? Goblins who get lost in the woods and consumed by mushrooms? Do Goblins grow and consume Fungoblins? DO THEY HAVE SEX? Interspecies romance! [LINK]

Anyway, the reboot Fungoblin is absolutely fantastic! I love him and will tame him and have him in my party temporarily every time all the time. I like how the stem of the mushroom cap is also kind of like its hair, that's a clever design element!

The idle animation is very good too. It looks like it's ready to fondle anyone with those long fingers. Yes, much to fantasize about.

I think MARDEK was pretty clever about the whole thing! A lot of monsters do reuse the same base model, but they still look very different instead of just being recolours. The Dankrodo enemies look nothing like Gruul despite using the same animations and the game has like a dozen or so different Zombie variants which nonetheless all look distinct. It also meant MARDEK had a variety of Goblin enemies, which is good. Every area in Divine Dreams should have a Goblin variant of some sort.

Wow, that boy be hopping. I like the attack animation, having enemies actually run up to the player instead of attacking from a distance looks very good! You can almost smell the Goblin right up in your face. Wonderful.

Good to see there's a turn order bar now! Those are always nice to have.

The rainbow gradient kinda reminds me of how rhythm games handle it, or something like the Paper Mario series! Maybe you could just replace "Aah!!" with "Hee!!".

The way statuses work in MARDEK is that every turn a character/enemy has a chance equal to one fourth of their base resistance to that status to shrug it off. This did mean that sticking statuses on enemies with high resistance was hard since they can shrug it off, but it was negligible if enemies had like 40% or less resistance. I know I won a fair share of boss battles by abusing Poison and Sleep with Meraeador! I even stunlocked the Earth Guardian so bad that he never did any damage to me.

Anyway, having them linger a certain number of turns is probably better yes, in MARDEK you could do wacky stuff by pumping stats to 100 or lowering enemy stats to 0. This also means individual buffs can be stronger since they can't be stacked infinitely.

There should be UI for the remaining duration of buffs though! Something in Bravely Default which annoyed me was never knowing how much longer buffs would last!

It also seems Deugan's shield skill raises his own Light!

You didn't tame the Mycocyblins though!! Your pacifism run is over now, you can never get the Golden Hypertruth Plus Friendship Lovey-Dovey Doki Doki Ending at this rate!!

It seems that if not all enemies get beneficial actions for a certain tactic when tamed (such as the Stratapillar having no Light skills) it'll be worth it going for the enemies that do give benefits ASAP. Allied enemies can still be decoy targets for other enemies too, I guess. But skipping turns with an ally since you want to do another strategy might be annoying, so maybe most enemies should at least get something they can do when on your side that's usually useful, like being able to use Balance on other allies as well in the Stratapillar's case.

What happens if an allied enemy gets knocked out by an enemy while on your side, anyway? Does it still count as being won over by taming or by violence for determining encounter rewards?

The animation for the Psilocyblin waddling over to the player side is very cute!!

I do remember grinding skills in Taming Dreams being much more involved since it depended on effectiveness. There was actually a trick in chapter 3 that let you grind skills super quickly by using the Gruul's AI!

The UI you settled on looks very clean yes! Conveys all the information needed without taking up excess space.

Maybe Cheer could give a temporary buff that increases maximum Light? That way you let more Light without losing your current Dark. So if Emeela gets +5 max Light she goes from 20/20 L/D to 25/20 L/D. That what the player can plan in advance for when the buff wears off and her L/D goes back to 25/15.

I suggested allies should switch sides when turning Dark! I AM VINDICATED.

I do like the idea of having a visual distinction for character GOING DARK. In case of doubt, you could always just turn them into Goblins. But then I suppose there's no reason not to have everyone succumb to Darkness instantly so everyone can become a Goblin.

I do like the idea of the form being the negative self-perceptions of a character, or otherwise tying in with their (perceived) flaws. Similar to how the boss battles might be manifestations of these inner feelings.

Oh no, Mardek's hair turned into a W! He's become Wardek!! Next we're going to deal with Wadeugan and Wameela and Wasteele! For real though, Wardek's kinda cute. Perfect monster boyfriend material.

Anyway, I do like this idea a lot! I also liked it in Belief, and it's a more interesting 'fail state' than just getting knocked unconscious or becoming Confused. I'm sure you can work out the lore and gameplay details!

I wonder whether Steele can learn some sort of taming skills through a sidequest or building enough rapport with Mardek or something. That'd be an interesting way to show some character development, even if he's probably still be pretty ineffective when taming!

Oh that actually segues nicely into the bit on how to learn skills. I'm fond of tying skills to mementos and to cutscenes. Mementos given in cutscenes, yes!!

I like the idea of having these items also act as Dreamstones, maybe you can unlock these story bits through sufficient use of the item?

I like the names ARMAGEDDON and PHANTASMAGORIA. Those are some good names!!

Permit is a rather weird name, maybe Overindulge instead? Or just Indulgence. Or Judgement, that one would fit Taming Dreams Rohoph well. You could go in a lot of directions with these, the sentiments are kind of malleable.

Personally I'm more fond of FF games where characters have a set distinct progression, like FF4 and FF9. I also played a mod of FF6 which drastically limits the amount of available Espers per character, just 2 for some like Gau and Shadow and a maximum of like 5 for Celes and Terra. I thought that was a good way to handle it, since it means every character feels very distinct and not everybody can do everything, and certainly not everything at once.

Whaaaaaaat?! Enki is an alien?! I never saw that coming, I thought he was just an eccentric loon who likes cosplaying like those weirdos in Xanthusia with their unusual flying temple!!

I don't think you showed off the designs! I actually don't remember some of those 2013 designs either... I like the female Mhandisi's goggles!!

The 2019 ones are certainly more distinct! The Lucen look quite like those spacefaring people in MARDEK, with those spacesuit like outfits. I also like how the Varnyn towers over everybody, fitting that they'd look 'scary' like that.

Of course since the Varnyn are so tall, I bet the Elarna were quite small. You know who else are small? GOBLINS. I'm on to you, Tobias. You can't hide it from me.

Interesting that their petal would be so advanced, I guess they really are quite like aliens. Oh, they have those third eyes on their forehead too.

Oh, so Enki still exists, but with a different name and backstory. I wonder whether he still takes some of Social Fox's role, since Social Fox's role in Taming Dreams seems to have been divided into Enki and Sylvia's characters there.

Personally I prefer the current design over the pink elf design. Who really knows how it would look for a Bold to breed with a Lucen after all, they don't need to follow the way human phenotypes work!!

SOMETHING SOMETHING GOBLINS
4
Tobias 1099~4Y
Maybe eventually I'll redesign Happy Johnnies as hulking, muscular cactus men with needle beards and eyepatches and two huge guns, which still hop around in a single boot.

The map in that screenshot is really beautifully-constructed! Though the wider-than-intended resolution makes me wish AFC had a black border around the screen beyond the bounds!

As for the exact type of sex fungoblins and regular goblins enjoy together, I suppose that's up to the fanfiction writers and fanartists to reveal to us all.

Annoyingly, every time I look at MARDEK I wonder whether the animations for moving to and from targets were better in that than in this... I still don't know! Also, with tamed monsters in front of characters, that means the animations just clip through those models sometimes, and I've been wondering how much anyone would care about such things.

Ah, right, I'd completely forgotten that rhythm games have these more varied effectiveness words! I've never actually played Paper Mario (I feel like I probably should...); what does that use?

There is an indicator of buff duration! A vague one, at least. They're like bars which empty as their lives ebb away. I'm wondering though whether to include numbers on them, or whether it'd be too cluttered; do people really need to know how many turns are left in regular gameplay? I imagine the people who care about such minutiae might also be paying enough attention to track when the statuses were added anyway (where it says the duration in the text). Also, if there were numbers on the buff icons, shouldn't they indicate the number of points the buff is contributing instead?? Decisions!

Deugan's Shield does raise his own Light! So does his Taunt. They're interestingly 'costless' in that regard, and I've given some thought to whether that's how it should be, but I suppose it costs time, just like choosing to use an also costless Attack...

I'll definitely need to give monsters taming skills of their own more often than not. This is why I came up with the list of standard spells, which I could quite easily use for that purpose. I feel that Stratapillar needs a light skill in particular to balance its dark one.

I hadn't actually considered what happens to killed tamed monsters, hmm! I suppose it makes the most sense to count them as tamed for determining rewards.

What was the Gruul exploit in Taming Dreams? I don't remember that! But then again I remember little about the third chapter or episode or whatever of that... I really need to get it working again!

I definitely should do something different with Cheer, and I like your idea! That way it'd be giving you more Light, but wouldn't be reducing your Dark... Someone else also suggested that it could slightly buff the next attack, which is also an interesting possibility. I'll need to think about it!

Ha, I like the idea of their dark, lost forms being stupid Waluigi-style alter egos! I should totally do that, and have them dress and talk like that particular character because that is exactly what you meant.

But how long is Steele actually going to be with the party anyway?? I suppose he'd be there for at least one of Chapter 1's six Episodes (or whatever words I use), and he would just get in the way if you were going for a taming run, HMM...

But that would be a good use for the standard skills/mementos not bound to characters' actual personalities, yes! Giving characters skills not really in keeping with who they are for gameplay reasons.

I like the idea of the mementos unlocking scenes only when their skills are mastered, so I'll probably do that! If I include mementos at all; I'm still undecided.

The 'ultimate spell' names here are mostly related to the afterlife or world's end sorts of stuff! Except Phantasmagoria, which is just such a colourful word.

Hmm, Indulge, Judgement... Both of those are better than Permit! Would judgement actually be in line with bliss though? Definitiely with how "Good" is portrayed in, say, D&D, and Rohoph's personality, but Bliss is (meant to be) more serene, less about 'goodness' per se and more 'letting things be'... hence 'permit'. "You're a raging monster, and that's just fine". Is Indulge a word for what that'd be? I do prefer it over Permit, but, but?!? This is why I had the question mark!

I definitely get the appeal of characters having their set roles, but how do you feel about Pokemon TMs then? I prefer the set roles thing too, but I also liked how in FFVII I could just use my favourite character (Red XIII) all the time and didn't have to be restricted by any particular gimmick he might have used. I'm so undecided about this though, because I can see either working.

I actually thought the Varnyn looked quite cute! I imagine them as quite innocent and friendly actually, though I could also see any Bold who see one speaking of them as monsters.

The Elarna are about half the height of the Bold, and I'd describe them as a combination of a goblin, an owl, a Pacman ghost, Aztec art, and an octopus, if you can imagine such a thing.

Savitr is basically just the same as Enki in Taming Dreams! Well, sort of. It's complicated, but spoilers, obviously! Like in Taming Dreams, he's Deugan's idol, and you'd play as him in the intro sequence like you played as Enki in Taming Dreams. So I suppose that is Social Fox's role! Though more intertwined with the overall plot than Social Fox was.

I also prefer Mardek's current design, so I'm undecided about that too! I wonder what a design half way between the two might be like...
2
Maniafig219~4Y
Personally, I can't wait for the absolutely jacked cactus men in a boot.

I'm quite happy with that map too, but I think the maps in my most recent quest are my best work. It took many iterations but I'm quite happy with them, given the limitations of the engine! These images are also taken in the native resolution, so they look much nicer! [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]

Me and some other people from AF actually did have a speculative biology discussion about Goblin reproduction at some point. It involved wonders such as impregnation by applying the hair in another Goblin's nose, a bifurcated digestive tract that leads to the left and right ears, laying eggs by belching them out of the mouth and breastfeeding using the penis. Sadly the AF:C engine is incapable of rendering these wonderful acts!!

Paper Mario's system is rather similar to that of the handheld Mario & Luigi RPGs, where as you input more correct inputs it cycles from something like OK to Good to Great! to EXCELLENT!! or PERFECT!!

Maybe for the buff/debuff UI, it could show you the numbers if you hover over the buff? That way it doesn't clutter the screen unless you're specifically looking at it. I know I personally want to know how long buffs last, but don't like keeping track of the numbers in my head!

The Gruul in Taming Dreams had a deliberate AI Quirk where if you set up its runes just right it'd make both itself and a party member go to maximum excitement and both became Brave, which meant your affinity shot through the roof and you could use any offensive action to instantly master it! It also made defending instantly master, at the cost of that character getting knocked out.

Would you believe me if I said Waluigi is oddly popular? He seems to have obtained some sort of meme status due to being a by all means wholly unnecessary copy's copy! The Luigi to Wario and the Wario to Luigi, where both Luigi and Wario are already foils to Mario, leaving Waluigi in a bizarre situation where he's a foil to a foil. Truly a puzzling existence! Does Mario even know Waluigi exists?! Does Waluigi even truly exist, or is he a collective nightmare given form as a physically real tulpa? We may never know. And that's for the better.

I don't know how long Steele spends in the party! I can't imagine his old MARDEK self ever rejoining the party, but who knows whether he would in this new universe!

Well, Bliss is like the typically good sentiment, so of course everybody has their own ideas of how it's ACTUALLY BAD and CORRUPT! I know that in my quests whenever there was a Bliss villain they'd either be judgmental bigots ("I don't want my son to marry a Goblin!") or amoral hedonists ("Oh it is probably very dangerous! But that's what makes it fun, and exciting!").

Pokémon's TMs are in a bit of a weird spot, they can make Pokémon feel samey, but on the other hand Pokémon that are already similar would also still be samey without TMs. I do think it's important that Pokémon can only learn TMs that fit them sensibly, with exceptions like Mew who can learn them all and some Pokémon that seem like jack of all trade allrounders with oddly big TM pools like a lot of Normal types. Anyway, Pokémon still do have distinct set roles by nature of their stat distribution, TM/natural movepools, Abilities and Typings!

But what I liked about this FF6 mod is that it made every character's unique gimmick actually worth using, rather than just making everyone spam Ultima!

I also think the Varnyn look cute, but I was indeed reasoning from an in-universe perspective! It happens all the time in JRPGs that the cast are talking about some FOUL HIDEOUS THREATENING MONSTER but it turns out to be an absolutely precious Goblin or whatever.

I can't imagine what the Elarna look like but it sounds very good!! All the more shame that they are indeed extinct, I hope we get to meet one anyway. There'd better be an Elarna party member somehow!

It actually struck me when playing MARDEK again before how incongruous the player and the party's relation to Social Fox is, since Mardek and Deugan really look up to him like a hero, but to the player he's just some faceless entity who gets mentioned once or twice by a random NPC before suddenly being a twist final boss. I think the path you took with using Enki instead in Taming Dreams was much better!
3
codyfun12329~4Y
Excellent, then 1000 needles will refer to how many bullets (made out of miasma) Metal Johnny puts into you. That doesn't sound survivable, but then, people don't seem to have 1000 HP in this game.

Re: Number indicators on buffs
This seems like the sort of thing that can be tucked behind a tooltip, if you're worried about clutter. At a glance, you know what buffs you have, but you can roll over an individual buff to read both its exact duration and effect.
1
Dingding32167~4Y
"But then I suppose there's no reason not to have everyone succumb to Darkness instantly so everyone can become a Goblin."

And then it turns out that the main aim of Belief is to get rid of speciesism by converting everyone into Darkness and turn humans in Goblins!!
4
Ptyrell37~4Y
Wow what a post!

New Monster Creation: It's interesting reading stuff like this, because it is sooo not something I could ever see myself doing. Props to you for having the patience and talent/skills to do this.

Effectiveness Rainbow: I definitely think words are the way to go. I'm a sucker for color gradients, so I like what you have as a base. Some other word ideas (in order):
LOL - oof - ok - nice - Boom - WOW! - GG WP
Does it seem excessive to have light blue words pop up for normal hits? Won't they pop up a lot to indicate essentially nothing? I guess I haven't seen exactly how all the battle mechanics play out, but that at least was my initial thought. Would expect words only to pop up for exceptional attacks.

The battles are looking really good! A lot of really nice, small touches. LOVE the skill leveling system! Was weird to me at first that you could see how many points/uses were needed before the next level up rather than how much you had accumulated. But on second thought, points left until the next level is waayy more informative.

Buffs: I like how you indicate how many turns are left on the buffs by having parts of it grayed. The only downside is that you can't tell how many turns are left unless at least 1 turn has passed. And you can't tell which buffs are permanent. Perhaps a dark-ish divider line to indicate where the buff status will be after a turn would help? If that description makes sense? Also a dark line around buffs that are permanent? I imagine some buffs would last several turns, so some kind of system to be able to tell how many turns are left would be helpful.

I think some players (myself included) would grind the beginning forest for big combos IF it took too long to level skills during the course of normal (completionist) game progression. Like if I am doing everything there is, and I'm still only level 3 on some major skills before some big fight, I'd probably go back and grind it. If I was level 5 by the end of the game, or if I was level 3 and destroying everything, I probably wouldn't.

It seems like a concord shouldn't impact light/dark, since it isn't really controllable from my understanding. Maybe Cheer could boost the effectiveness of the next attack/action that the character takes? Like by a percentage, or whatever it takes to go from Eh to Eyy.

Conversion: I'm glad you included that fourth battle, because the whole time I was wondering what will happen when Emeela flirts too close to the edge of darkness and gets converted! And to be honest, it seems like something that would be tedious to deal with in its current iteration. I too instantly felt an emotional connection when Deugan Taunted Emeela. However if this happened several times and every time you had to awkwardly skip turns and buy time for Mardek to convert her while Emeela herself was fighting against conversion? Might get a little old... The emotional engagement of watching Emeela lash out against Deugan would probably lose its strength after watching interactions like Deugan attacking Emeela or Mardek attacking anyone. Or even Mardek Taming someone while on the other side?? The faster solution of knocking her out seems like a non-option, given how counterproductive that is.

It kinda sounds like you are going full steam ahead with this potential huge lore change as your solution. I've also got some other options that would be much simpler:
One idea is that the entire party would have an action that could help convert old teammates back to their side, to speed up the process and prevent total disaster in a boss fight. These actions would not be as strong as Mardek's skill, not be usable on NPCs, and not be able to be leveled up.

Another idea is that a "darkened" teammate wouldn't join the other side, but would rather sit back or wander off or in some way stop being helpful. That way battles could still end if all other enemies are taken care of. Also conversion back to the field would still be possible.

A third is that a fully dark teammate would become uncontrollable, and use a skill similar to Pokemon's "Outrage", possibly hitting random targets or perhaps all characters on the field. Like some kind of indiscriminate thrashing attack on all.

I really like what you've come up with in terms of adding this whole other side to these characters. But when I think of it in the context of all the other ideas you will be introducing to players, I wonder if it starts to become a bit much? Maybe I'd feel differently if you were able to introduce these concepts slowly as a player progressed through the game? Though that seems difficult given how integral some of these concepts are to the battle system. Like I've definitely played some JRPGs where they go super deep on gameplay and themes, but in those cases a new battle concept might not be introduced until like 15 hours into the game. Do you kind of see what I'm getting at here?

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't think you should mess with the entire lore in order to try and make this battle mechanic work. There are a lot of cool potential things you can do with it, but you also have a lot of other important concepts that aren't necessarily simple that you are already going to be portraying. Some other change may be simpler. If you disagree and want to add it, consider waiting for a few hours of gameplay to pass before the player faces a character who can convert them, and introducing it there. Like maybe the 2nd or 3rd boss does it, and you sort of figure out/learn how to deal with it then.

Mementos: I'd favor something like 2 or 3 memento slots beneath the current active skill slots. Would give you some flexibility so every skill doesn't have to have a memento, but you could add some personalized skills or "flexible" skill items in still.

Skin color: I really like the light brown Mardek you've been using, and will be sad if that goes away. The main character definitely needs to be relatable. But maybe that's the benefit of using pink skin Mardek? His character is inherently relatable/likable, so people will develop an emotional connection with him regardless of his skin color. At least I hope that's the case? I guess I could get on board with that, though people won't feel that connection with him as soon as they otherwise previously would.

In general, most people are going to feel more connected to the Bold people, and consider the others as aliens. I don't know how much of that is planned/intentional, but seems like to some degree or another that may be unavoidable.

Wow writing all this took a while and is very long! Hope it is of some help. Also I'm glad the site is patched up!
3
Tobias 1099~4Y
I was wondering whether it was excessive to have a neutral word for every neutral hit too, so maybe if I had neutral wordless, I could use the blue for another degree of ineffectiveness?

I want to avoid anything too meme-y in general, since I feel slang terms like that will probably be outdated by the time the game's finished, at the rate language changes! I like the though of something more idiosyncratic, which wolud be associated with this in the same way that "super effective" immediately brings to mind just Pokemon.

I originally did have the accumulated XP number, because that seems to be the tradition, but why don't more games show how many points you need instead? It makes so much more sense! (Or maybe they do? I can't actually remember...)

I think I know what you mean about dividers for buff duration, though I wonder whether players would even need to know such granular information! I could definitely add a border to the permanent buffs though, either black or maybe gold!

My main concern is that skills will be too quick to level up, especially considering there are going to be three Chapters with characters carried between them. I wonder if people will grind everything to the max in the first one then get disappointed that they're so overpowered in the second... HMM.

I really like the idea of Cheer adding a temporary boost to the character's next skill! I could definitely do something like that, with the strength of the concord determining the percentage added. Cheers would stack too. Great idea!

I definitely understand your concerns about the conversion mechanic, and this is something I've been thinking about all week myself.

I showed these four battles here in this order because they introduce the mechanics gradually, and this would definitely be the case in the final game! The first dungeon - maybe the first two - would be all about basic physical attacks, the familiar stuff, and the light/dark mechanics would only be introduced later. It makes sense that you'd lose your first ally in an important boss battle rather than against some random monster.

Monsters which used dark spells would be few and far between; I wouldn't intend for it to be a common occurence! Kind of like how KO is rare in standard RPGs; it's a hassle when it does happen, but usually it'd be in big boss battles which feel dramatic enough to warrant it.

The original plan was to do something like you describe, where characters either lose control or just 'switch off' in some way when fully dark. I talked about it in comments on a post weeks ago, and maybe you were one of them, but it was a while ago so I don't remember! That's what I was playing around with at first, but I ended up with this more direct conversion mechanic after brainstorming, experimentation, trying the ideas from different angles to end up with what felt best.

This felt right to me because it's a direct parallel to the taming you can do to monsters, so there's a nice symmetry there. Plus mechanically it might not actually be all that different to what you suggest; some characters' skillsets in their lost forms might be Outrage-style thrashing which damages friends and foes alike. Others might just sulk or shut down, using a skill that only lowers their own arousal or restores their darkness. Them moving to the other side of the battlefield is for the targetting mechanics as much as anything, really!

It would require some lore revisions, but I've been meaning to do another draft of the story anyway, so it might actually be a starting point for some interesting story stuff. I'll have to see how I feel about it after trying to incorporate it into the story; if it feels like I'm having to force it in, I'll definitely rethink it.

There are plenty of stories where the main protagonist isn't human, but they're still relatable! So I wonder how much of a difference the skin colour thing would make. I'd be curious actually to experiment with it a bit, to make the change and give it a week or three to see if people (myself included) warm up to the idea or can't get on board with it.

The alien otherness of the non-Bold is definitely intentional; as I said, the main group of villains (and their member who lives in Mardek's head) are all Lucen!

Thanks for the long comment! I appreciate they take a long time to write; writing this blog post took hours! But they're really valuable, and definitely help to guide and generate ideas for how the game will go! Hopefully you get something out of contributing your thoughts too!
3
Terrafide2~4Y
Well, I'm gonna be honest, you just made me eat my post from a couple weeks ago about the combat system. I guess in my head I imagined a system where you needed to keep an eye on your physical, mental, and light/dark state and it just seemed to me like you would have 3 different health bars and 3 different ways you could get to a game over screen. My perception was very micromanage-y. But this looks absolutely amazing. It seems to add a layer of depth to combat that isn't too forced on you but still adds a wide range of possibilities. I am monumentally more excited after reading this post.

I also don't think that Mardek looking more alien would make him harder to relate to. There are plenty of characters in fiction that are completely relatable even though they don't look very human (I'm thinking of the Mass Effect series and every Final Fantasy non-human party member). I guess the argument could be made that none of those characters are the main character. But honestly I think that's a moot point. Characterization is what makes a good character, not what they look like. I also think that Mardek looking more alien could be a really amazing plot point! I'm thinking of in the original when Mardek lost Duegan and felt alone and isolated. How much more painfully would that loneliness sting if Mardek looked different and struggled with not having many friends his whole life? I think the possibilities are endless. And if anything, that would add to his relatability, who hasn't felt alone at some point?

Lastly, the dark 'corruption' or whatever you call it reminds me of Final Fantasy 10 where monsters are essentially spirits of people who died but were never sent. Is the idea that people who become dark eventually turn into these monsters? Because I think that could be a huge overarching plot point. Maybe through converting monsters to your side you can finally redeem them or 'let them rest'? Regardless, whatever you decide to do with the system, I think it makes sense that it would be a pretty big deal lore-wise. If people can fall into darkness, it seems like that should be a pretty central issue.
3
Tobias 1099~4Y
Comments like yours from a few weeks ago were what guided me through the idea-generation process! I knew that I had to make something that was simple enough to be understandable, but not so complex as to be too esoteric; that'd put most people off. So I'm glad to hear you like what I've got so far! I've still got more to do and refine; it's still rough around the edges. But I'm getting there.

One of the intentional - but in hindsight sort of annoying - things about Mardek as a character from MARDEK was his blandness; he was supposed to have 'no backstory', to comically contrast the dramatic, tragic backstories of certain other spiky-haired RPG main protagonists. Now, though, it feels like a limitation to use a character like that. But what you've said here opens up some intriguing possibilities!

I can imagine Mardek having a happy-go-lucky temperament thanks to his Bliss nature and Bliss mother, but perhaps his obvious otherness has made people avoid or tease him. So while on the surface he seems cheery, he's actually quite alone. It'd definitely add a whole other layer to the loss of Deugan too! And in MARDEK, Rohoph talked to Mardek about doing away with friendships... There's a lot of really intruiging character stuff that this would introduce! So that makes me look at this skin colour change in a different light; maybe I should at least give it a go.

I was actually thinking about Final Fantasy X's monsters when deciding what to do with the lost! It's been years since I played that, but I remember there being the 'fiends', which were once people, but also 'unsent', which were... different, somehow? Did unsent become fiends? I don't remember. In this, monsters are literally figments of the imagination; kind of like what we see in our heads, just given physical form. So I don't want to lose that by having people turn into these, as it's crucial to the overall lore. The "lost" (or whatever) would have to be something different. But then that opens up some interesting exploration of that difference, so there's a lot to work with there!

Thanks for commenting!
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Dingding32167~4Y
My original comment got deleted so this is going to be shorter!

I like how everything is coming together and seeing how the Fungoblin was made, especially the rigging!

Maybe "Whoo" or "Wheee" could be used instead of "Aaah"? I like the rainbow colours, though green = good and red = bad is still etched into my mind. Eyy also feels like it should be more effective than Ooh for me, since Ooh sounds like you're just discovering something new for the first time, while Eyy is when you're finally getting results consistently?

Taming is really cool and the way buffs are displayed and used are a lot more intuitive now to my mind! Having the turn order really helps as well. I never found the monsters repetitive in MARDEK, as their skillsets weren't just a generic Fire --> Water type change, and there were other enemies specific to certain environments as well. They also inflicted different status effects, which could be quite influential in choosing which team members to use to face them! I agree with the lost/black eyes, it's the most fitting in my opinion and also a lot less work for you!

Skills wise I think MARDEK's way of handling things worked out quite well, though it takes a lot of effort to make individual skillsets and get the right balance. Forcing certain characters in your teams for quests which I think you mentioned before sounds like a good idea to make people diversify and showcase more depth in those characters too.

I'm actually quite fond of the 2013 drawings, maybe exactly because they look like D&D races and for the familiarity reasons. Their designs are distinct but easy to relate to because they're humanoid. The Lucen design makes more sense after your explanation, and I'm sure it'll grow on me more (the fact that they're so serious makes it weird that they're Creation to my mind though!)

I'm also quite fond of Mardek's dark skin, though I remember it being a surprise when it was first revealed. It's still so rare to have dark-skinned protagonists for non-woke reasons! I think you have a lot of wiggle room with dominant and recessive genetics to say Mardek doesn't outright look Lucen in his skin color, though I like the idea of a purple blush or something like that when he's Roused. Also it depends how obvious you want him to look Lucen, as I can imagine he'd want to fit in with everyone else and not look too different.
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MaxDes45~4Y
I really like how everything's looking and honestly that's pretty much all I have to say about the new development, so this comment will short and sweet. About Mardek, I can very easily put myself in his shoes and connect with him even though I'm white and he has a darker skin tone, so that's not a problem with me. Personally I just love to see representation when I play video games, so I'd prefer it if he stayed that way; seeing someone with darker skin as a main character is so awfully rare, so it's nice to see here.
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Falcon62~4Y
I probably wouldn't have noticed it at all if I only saw those models in battle, but due to observing the fungoblin in isolation like this, my attention keeps getting drawn to how its leg clips through its skirt! Not saying that it's a gamebreaking issue or anything, and as I said, it likely wouldn't be noticeable in-game.

I definitely prefer each character to have a unique skillset. That way, they feel more like *characters* and one feels more of a connection to them, as you said. With how much the game and story centres on the characters, I feel like making them just repositories for generic skills would muddle this feeling.

*However*, this wouldn't perhaps be an issue if the generic learnable skills were an addendum onto their innate repertoire (kind of like essences), rather than potentially replacing it entirely. Perhaps each character could only add one generic skill to their palette at a time? What those generic skills do accomplish is expanding possible loot items (ones found in chests) by adding spellbooks, which would perhaps make loot feel less generic.

I don't think you've ever shared your current design of the Varnyn before! I'd be interested in hearing more about them. They certainly look very alien now!

I have no particular opinions on Mardek's skin colour. I feel like it's fine either way.

Amazing progress so far! It's honestly baffling to think about how much work went into all of this.
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