I'm still working on changes inspired by tester feedback!
I've been really focused and productive all week! ...Which I just wrote about in a lot of detail, but I doubt anyone would really care so I won't bother clogging this post up with it.
The productivity's been a result of retreating into my bubble completely and avoiding doing anything remotely social, like replying to messages or reading more feedback that some people gave. I feel bad about not replying to things sooner, but the difference between getting lost in creative work and trying to engage with other people despite my crippling mental issues is like day and night. I'll need to get to that eventually though; I can't just focus on the creative side of things, unfortunately.
I wanted to focus completely on dev work though so then I could get to the point where I could update the alpha with the revised mechanics, so then I could start getting feedback about that and move forward with development. But everything takes so long, and I've not got to that point yet!
Most of the week was spent fixing bugs or recoding stuff behind the scenes. Most bugs don't take more than a few minutes to fix, though it's so frustrating when I lose like an hour to trying to hunt down the one line of code that's causing some obscure but game-breaking issue, which happened like three times this week. Grumble.
...I also just played the game a bit to record a gif for this post, and stuff I thought I'd fixed is suddenly buggy now. SIGH. I'll have to fix that next week. Here's a gif though:
Now the skill name capsule thing that appears is the same one you select from the radial menu, and the XP bar fills when the skill is used, showing if you "Level Up!" that skill. Feels satisfying seeing it right in your face like that, at least to me. (Should be lower down though; another issue I only just noticed!)
Some other stuff:
Save crystals bring up a slot selection menu! You're also fully healed after every battle, so saving is now their sole purpose.
I implemented the revised version of this damage predictor. Took a while!
I also updated this skill log. Took even longer! (And it's still buggy, I see from this screenshot! The rune percentages aren't being set, and the reaction bits are off; should say "Block" and 50% on some.)
Oh, I revised reactions; can't remember if I already mentioned that. Previously, they drew from stats on weapons - for example, one might grant +2 damage on a successful reaction - but here it's just 100% for a gold Hit, 150% for a blue Bonus, and 0% for a Miss. I might revise the Miss to be 50% instead though, based on someone's comment about not punishing failure so strictly. I could even make most of the reaction bar a 100% 'Hit' while the gold and blue sections are varieties of Bonus (125%, 150%, or something).
Now, when you press the menu button, you get this, from which you can access various menu pages without actually going into a menu. This is also where you trigger the 'party chat' dialogue from by pressing a different button when selecting a character option.
The idea behind this was to reduce the number of both menus and key presses required to access any one of them. I only added it on Friday evening though, so I'll likely revise it as I continue. I haven't added a working Lore page yet!
I've done a bunch more - as I said, I've been focused and productive all week, unusually so - but it's been mostly technical stuff which is important, but too tedious to talk about and not really possible to visually show. I rewrote most of the code for how skills, stats, and menus work!
I was hoping to be able to update the alpha and get more feedback, but I think what I'm going to do is rewrite the beginning section with more tutorials, then upload an update. I'm hoping that I'll be done with that by the end of next week. I'll try my best!
I also started and finished playing another game this week: Oddworld: Soulstorm. It's a 'reimagining' of a game I played and loved as a child, which got me thinking a lot about what people would want or be disappointed by in my own reimagining of MARDEK (Divine Dreams; Atonal Dreams is a prequel to it). ∞ Here's the post I wrote about it. ∞
I was trying to get those music albums out every week, but I've been so busy focusing on making changes to Atonal Dreams after the feedback - the thought that I "HAVE TO FIX THIS RIGHT AWAY" has really energised me - that I haven't put one up in a couple of weeks. There are 7 left, and the biggest issue is making album art; the music files are mostly ready. I'll get to it eventually!
15 COMMENTS
randomstranger13374~4Y
Thanks for letting us know what you're up to and I wish you great success with your work :) I'm eager to play the reworked version when it's out!
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Falcon64~4Y
Considering there are no random battles, is there still a purpose to the saving crystals at all? I imagine you can always backtrack to a crystal undisturbed, so it's just increased tedium for what is essentially saving at will.
It's nice that you take the time to to write these updates even when you're "in the zone" and avoiding social contact. Good luck with everything!
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Astreon152~4Y
Do crystals fully restore the party ?
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Tobias 1115~4Y
You're now fully healed after every battle!
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Astreon152~4Y
I wasn't thinking about health, but rather the character's buffs and debuffs they receive during battle.
But maybe those never last outside of it ?
In Mardek I used to do leveling sessions near crystals, so i wouldn't use items like manaberrys or liquidsound in battle, which made it faster. Just one tap on the crystal, then spam exit and back to leveling.
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Tobias 1115~4Y
I suppose they're a bit of a relic at this point now, so I technically could just remove them completely... Personally I quite like save points though, as they hint that you probably should save when you find them. Plus there are technical reasons I like them, since being able to save whenever can introduce issues that have to be foreseen and handled by the dev. Save points in general might be too outdated though; I'd be curious to hear opinions about whether to keep or remove them!
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Astreon152~4Y
Well, since you just played a Bravely Default episode and that could serve as a model for recent RPGs, what did you think of the saga's "save when you want on the map, save only at save points (adventurer) in dungeons and towns" policy ?
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Tobias 1115~4Y
Saving on the world map was certainly convenient, but I got into the habit of doing that often and it was frustrating how rare save points were in dungeons! There's no real equivalent to the world map or towns in Atonal Dreams though, so a distinction like that wouldn't work here.
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Astreon152~4Y
There is also an autosave feature even in dungeons, so provided in AD it won't lead to missing an item or an optional dungeon, you could try that ?
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Falcon64~4Y
Avoiding the possibility of saving in unforeseen circumstances and thus extending dev time does make sense, and they probably make the map feel more "full", too... so I guess there are reasons for keeping them I haven't thought about!
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Maniafig222~4Y
It's good to hear you've been getting things done! It must be satisfying crossing things off the to-do list. I am somewhat curious which all the things are you did change, but I guess I'll find out when the next alpha drops.
The addiiton of the exp bar going up to a skill being used is good! Really gets that dopamine flowing to see numbers going up and progress bars filling up.
The question of save crystals came up. Personally I think having them liberally spread around is a useful reminder to save often. The save crystal system has worked well ever since the updated release of MARDEK, I much prefer it over saving in the overworld where it's easy to forget to save for a long time and suddenly lose huge chunks of progress. It also adds more stuff to fill out the overworld with, meaning less empty space.
The outcome of the equation being put above the equation probably needs some time to adjust to. Probably makes more sense to do it like that, though, since the outcome should be the first thing that stands out.
The image with the skill log did remind me of one thing I wondered about, which is that defense is calculated after accounting for element/rune/arousal/reaction modifiers. This makes damage output a lot more swingy than if it was substracted before all the modifiers, defense can outright nullify a lot of attacks if the modifiers are low (this is especially obvious with Savitr), while defense barely helps when the modifiers are high.
I'd be fine with always hitting and proper timing being a bonus. A miss being 50% would often be much more than a 50% decrease in damage due to how defense is calculated.
I look forward to the next alpha!
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Tobias 1115~4Y
A lot of stuff I changed was technical - like recoding how skills are stored in save data (which means old saves will no longer work properly) - which ate up a lot of time, but it's not worth talking about!
Someone suggested putting the damage outcome at the top of the predictor, which is why I did. It's tough knowing what feedback to try to make changes about though, since if one person makes a suggestion, it doesn't mean it'll be a good change for everyone! It's why I'm holding back from uploading constant updates, so then I can get to a point where I'm mostly happy with everything rather than making incremental changes that people aren't sure about... or something I'm struggling to put into words because I'm tired!
I really wanted the numbers to mean something, as you know, and I wanted the effects of manipulating the variables to really matter too, so defence being applied at the end means in some cases it would nullify damage completely unless you built the combos up enough to overcome it, which I quite like.
I wish everything didn't take so long! I still intend to get to your videos (it annoys me that you took the time to record them and everything and I haven't found the time to watch them yet), but I'm hoping by devoting all my focus to this, I can have an update ready sooner. It's still taking ages anyway though! How did I manage to make the original MARDEK 1 and 2 in just a few months with other stuff like school also going on?? Baffling! (I can't remember working on it at all though...)
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Astreon152~4Y
Maybe it's the Tyler Durden in you that programmed them while you were asleep :)
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astralwolf92~4Y
pseudo why havent you uploaded the taming dreams OST to your bandcamp?
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Tobias 1115~4Y
I've said in the blog posts that I've been too busy to get around to the remaining albums I need to upload (there are 7, I think, and that's one of them).
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