Alora Fane

I've done a lot this week, again! I've been working on some revised tutorial dialogue scenes, and I made a new monster!

My productivity this week has been consistently high like last week, other than a (thankfully brief) spike of depression on Thursday evening. I've got a lot done! But I've still been neglecting replying to social things (mostly). I'm nearing the end of the changes that I wanted to make before uploading an update though, so once I've got to that point, I'll redirect my attention to some other things I really should be focusing on.

What I'm trying to do is revise the intro section to be more tutorial-y. Previously - as those of you who've played the alpha will know - it started with a battle against Pierce in which you could choose to kill or tame a Pawnite, but nothing was really explained, and some players missed out on even realising taming was a fundamental mechanic. I think the only tutorial-like exchange was a brief explanation of elements mid-way into the area.

So I'm completely reworking this whole section to include the following brief dialogue scenes:

Pierce Intro

This begins the same, but instead of summoning a Pawnite using a 'Summon Pawnite' skill, he uses a skill called Manifest Mind on himself to create a monster called an Ignorat from his subconscious thoughts. I'll talk more about the Ignorat later in this post, and this Manifest Mind hints at something later in the story and serves as a narrative introduction to the mental nature of monsters. I'm thinking it could be a thing the Beyond Ponderer monks practice.

Collie then has to fight this Ignorat using her Eager Slash attack; no other skills are unlocked. Much of the UI and other options are locked and hidden too. Savitr skips his turns, and the Ignorat only targets Collie. If she drops below a certain HP%, Savitr heals her.

(I added some bars to show the current time/turn meter stat because they helped with testing, which I may or may not keep. They're not important to know and clutter up the UI, but also add some clarification to how turn mechanics work, maybe.)

When this is defeated, Pierce uses Manifest Mind on Collie, to create a monster from her mind: a Pawnite. Weirdly, I never explicitly designed that monster with her in mind, but it embodies a lot of her qualities anyway, so it makes sense for it to be born from her mind (much more than for Pierce to summon it). Collie then fights this, but only Tame is enabled here so you have to tame it to your side. The haloes and mind stats unlock on the UI.

Then, Pierce summons another Pawnite, which Collie and her Pawnite can either tame or kill. This allows the player to directly experience controlling a tamed monster to show what that mechanic is capable of.

The scene then ends as before (mostly; I've made a few tweaks to some lines).

Elements

The next battle might be against another Pawnite, against which your Pawnite has an elemental advantage. So Savitr explains elements a bit.

Arousal

The next battle might be against some Somunculimps, which use their Slap skill to affect arousal. This would produce an explanation by Savitr about arousal. The hearts would unlock on the UI (note to self: I haven't hidden them yet), and Collie might gain her Let's Go! skill (which she originally started with).

Runes

In a battle against a single Brigrrnd, Collie wants to tame it, but her Tame skill (which she might be forced to use) does nothing. Savitr explains that this is because of incompatible runes, and says that Tame also shifts its target towards Feeling, so using it multiple times will eventually show results. A brief explanation of runes, maybe with an opportunity to check somewhere else to learn more (a menu, an NPC, asking Savitr, or whatever).

Potions

A treasure chest lies in your path, and you have to open it. It contains ingredients for a specific kind of potion, which Savitr suggests you combine in the next battle. The Potions system unlocks and the UI hint for it appears.

Glitter

Another chest contains some glitter. Opening it triggers some dialogue in which Savitr explains you can use it from the menu to upgrade essences. This ability first unlocks here.

Maelstrom

Before you enter this, a scene triggers in which Savitr explains how they work, and suggests using Tame to build a team early on.

Hopefully this should address many of the concerns that testers had! I'm waiting until I've finished adding all this before adding an update so then people can experience it as a whole.

Currently I've got the Pierce scene about 90% finished, after a day and a half or so of work. It's by far the most complicated of all these scenes - I had to recode or add some functional stuff, like handling conditional dialogue triggers and the Manifest Mind skill - so the others should come along much more quickly when I get to them.

I hope to be done by the end of next week, at the latest, but I'm notoriously awful at predicting when things will be finished, so let's see how it goes!

Some other stuff:

Lore page

Straightforward enough! I spent a couple of hours adding this basic lore section, including entries for people and monsters, none of which I've actually written yet. I'll build on it over time.

Ignorat

I needed to add a new, different monster for the Pierce scene, which was born of his mind and which says something - or a lot - about him as a character.

There's a silly line I wrote ages ago, where Pierce says Savitr and Collie must pursue him 'like a game of rat and dog', in which he was the dog and they were the rat(s). Silly, because Collie's obviously the one with the dog motif, plus he keeps alternating between dog and rat metaphors to describe himself and his pursuers over time seemingly at random, which I found funny. I started planning a personal monster for Pierce months ago while writing the story, and had that bit in mind while coming up with these (from 26 Nov 2020):

I didn't get past half-hearted scribbles though; the very beginnings of a concept.

When I returned to this idea last Wednesday, I used that as a starting point for some actual concept development:

The design deviated further and further from a rat, but I found what I was moving towards intriguing due to the number of different concepts it mashed into one.

I quickly jumped into modelling, and within... 85 minutes, according to my records, I had this:

I had the gist of what I wanted, but I wasn't happy yet. So I spent the next 84 minutes (apparently) refining the details:

Some of the concepts and motifs it includes are:

- It's a rat, a type of animal widely regarded as vermin; used to represent 'pathetic', 'unimposing', and 'unappealing' here.

- It's like a floating brain (rounded body is the cerebrum, tail is a dangling spinal chord) to represent the mental, 'dreamed up' nature of monsters.

- It's ghost-like, for similar reasons.

- It being a purple two-armed thing means it's similar to the first Monsters that you battle at the start of MARDEK and Taming Dreams.

- It's wearing a blindfold, to represent the concept of being ignorant - especially having one's third eye closed - which ties into Pierce's overall character and story.

- The padlock ears represent the concept of being trapped, locked away; again, relevant to Pierce's story.

I also animated it, which took about 2 hours for 6 animations of varying complexity.

I feel I'm getting more familiar with 3D modelling with every attempt, and have a fairly smooth workflow now with little time spent trying to figure stuff out. I'd say making a whole monster from scratch to animated in less than a day isn't too bad, considering how long big studios spend on things like creature models! (There's a reason most games don't include a huge amount of different ones.)

I'm quite happy with it, as an intended-to-be-quite-ugly thing! It reminds me a lot of the Oddworld aesthetic, though that must have been subconscious.

If you google 'cartoon rat' or something (as I did while brainstorming), essentially all of them have pointy noses; that seems to be important to read as 'rat', in the same way that high ears seem to be (the padlock ears on the first image don't register as ears, but when lifted up, they kind of do). But I felt this drooping nose communicated patheticness much more effectively, plus it looks like a flaccid penis (teehee) to I suppose give feelings of something like being ineffectual.

I'm sure I've seen drooping noses on some cartoon rats somewhere, but I couldn't find anything like that when searching, and it's been really bothering me! I can picture them clearly: tall, lanky, anthropomorphic rat-people with tired eyes and drooping noses. But I can't for the life of me remember where they're from! Can you think of any cartoon rats with drooping snouts??

Another Intro?

At least one of the testers felt that the game starts too suddenly with the Pierce battle. I gave that some thought, and wondered whether I could add some kind of text-accompanying-a-mural intro like a lot of fantasy games seem to have. Undertale starts like this.

While that could help set the scene, it felt too trite. I wondered whether a scene with Savitr and Collie on the way to the island might be more personal, might be a better indicator of the where the game's focus lies. Maybe the content could be the same, but the delivery different: Collie asks Savitr to tell her about the world, so he does, or something. Maybe images of what he's talking about could appear too.

Plus it'd require me to decide on exactly how they traversed the seas, which I'd not given sufficient attention yet (though I did write about it in a post months ago).

I played around with some ideas for a kind of horse-drawn cart boat thing, with the 'horse' being a summoned monster. That makes a lot of sense! I originally wanted some kind of animal mount to be their mode of transport, but worried about leaving it alone at the beach. If they could just dismiss it back into the miasma, that solves that!

I have essentially no experience designing vehicles of any kind! Or any real interest in it, honestly. I found it particularly difficult planning anything in 2D, so I switched to Blender to make a blocky mock-up in that instead:

I didn't do any more with it after that though, since it's not crucial to figure it out before an update. I'll probably come back to it eventually, maybe with some new ideas, like how the 'sea horse' could possibly look! (Maybe Savitr would have it as an equipped essence skill?)

So yes! I should hopefully be able to finish these dialogue bits next week and have an update up next weekend or maybe sooner. We'll see! And I really should reply to some things!

Still no new album also since I've been so busy!