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Weekly Update - Losing Resonars? Replies re last post

3 years ago4,592 words

A long one this week! I've been thinking I should trim out some vestigial features to focus more on the monster-skills mechanic, plus some replies to things people said in comments on last week's post (since I can't reply to them all individually!).

For weeks now, I've been feeling like I'm juuuust on the edge of having the game ready for the next phase of testing. I did a lot this week - which boosted my mood, which then boosted my productivity even more - and I felt confident throughout the week that I'd be able to upload an update by the weekend... Then Friday arrived, I played what I had with the intention of just checking it's all okay... only to find a bunch of issues that made the run far from smooth and which I'd best address before getting more feedback (otherwise people would just be telling me about stuff I already know, which feels a bit pointless).

I'm frustrated by it, but I suppose we all have to understand that games development is an endeavour that happens over many months, and it requires an exhaustive amount of both effort and patience.

Here are some of the things I did this week:

Turn order change

This only took at hour or two so it doesn't really feel like a big deal, but maybe as a gameplay tweak it might be? I've revised the turn system to be the same as in Taming Dreams: that is, at the start of each 'turn' (should probably be 'round'?), all the living combatants are added to a stack, which is then sorted through based on arousal, then the stack is worked through in that order. The turn order bar shows only the remaining entries in this list. When it's empty, the list is filled and sorted again.

I like this because it feels neater, plus it means that arousal speed determination is far simpler; no wondering whether it being higher leads to additional turns or anything. Plus the turn order bar is super easy to read if you know it's only showing the current pending list.

It also allows for some interesting turn-shifting mechanics. I've altered the Slap skill so that it knocks the target one place later in the stack, for example, and other skills could either move a target's turn sooner or later.

New battle music

This ate up most of the week! ∞ I posted it on Patreon a few days ago ∞; I'm only including a static image here since the rest is long enough as it is. I also devised and coded a system for handling seamless dynamic music... which required going into Audacity and cutting the wavs into chunks with millisecond precise divisions, for stupid reasons... One of the annoying things I have to do that takes ages but which I can't be bothered talking about in detail!

Lore section

Another quick thing I'd been meaning to do, but which is more interesting to talk about than the bunch of minor bugs I fixed. I wasn't sure how to succinctly summarise characters for their lore entries, especially if stuff changes over the course of the plot (feels weird if the text is the same at the beginning and end), so I had the idea of giving each one several separate entries - basically just a title and a short bit of accompanying text - which could be unlocked over the course of the story. Kind of like unlocking a mini story for each character. Many of them could be unlocked through the optional 'P chat' bits, so it feels like you're getting something somewhat substantial for them.

I also decided to use the same system for monsters. When you first tame or kill one, it has a basic About entry unlocked, but clearing the species from an area would unlock an additional section, maybe something like 'inspiration' about the design thoughts behind it? Unsure; I didn't have the time to devote to it.

The next thing's more important:

Losing the resonars?

The game's gone through a lot of changes over the course of its development. The version I've been working on for the past few weeks stresses acquiring monster 'essences' and equipping them as skills, which I feel is a big improvement over what it was like during the last testing phase, but it also feels like there are some vestigial remnants of the old system getting in the way.

I love the concept of the resonars: lightsabre-like crystal swords which can be used as instruments of both music and destruction. But using them to cast music spells means playing a brief sound clip that clashes with the background music, which is something I've been aware of for ages and which several testers commented on unfavourably (at least one said they'd avoid using such skills so as not to interfere with the music). It'd be great to be able to sync it with the background track, and I've thought about that a few times, but the effort needed to get it working would be huge, and it'd essentially turn it into a different game. Absolutely not worth it for a couple of skills.



I also recently (either last week or this, I forget) revised Collie's previous musical 'Let's Go!' skill - it's now a howl, for plot reasons - which means even fewer skills use the music thing.

Both Savitr and Collie can physically attack with their resonars too, but each only has a single skill to do this, which I feel would go largely neglected, especially if they wouldn't grant the same bonuses from training that essence skills do so there's little incentive to ever use them.

So I'm wondering whether to just scrap the idea of resonars entirely and focus exclusively on the monster summoning aspect.



To remind you of how it works - since I haven't updated the alpha with this yet and it's changed a lot since then - each character has six skill slots. When you first tame a monster, you acquire its 'essence', meaning any character can then equip a skill associated with that monster in that slot. When you use that skill, the character puts their hand to their forehead as if concentrating, the monster forms with a fancy effect in front of them, then it uses that skill, and disappears afterwards.

Any damage the skill inflicted is added as XP to that skill. The skill's level is added to the damage it deals, and when it reaches level 10 - the initial cap - a 'permanent boon' is unlocked that grants a permanent upgrade to one of the character's stats. Clearing a monster species from an area raises the level cap for its associated essence skill to 20, and when that new cap is reached, an additional boon is added to the character and the skill is fully mastered and can't grow any more.

I'd say this skill growth is similar to MARDEK's, in many ways, except you gain permanent character growth from it rather than just a skill you might never use.

Currently, some 'innate' (non-monster-essence) skills - such as the resonar slashes and music - can still gain XP, but I've been unsure what to do with them regarding bonuses. Should they have level caps and associated boons like the essence skills? Feels wrong for some reason. I also feel like they get in the way, filling slots that'd be better filled with monsters, so most players probably would change them to monster skills quickly anyway. While playtesting, I noticed that whenever I used these skills, it felt like a waste, like I should have been training a monster skill during that turn instead.

So maybe I could just remove those skills. This isn't the same as removing physical attacks. Many summoned monsters use physical attacks; the Pawnites do, for example. Perhaps in place of the resonar slashes, both Savitr and Collie could start equipped with some Seraphim-issued summoned monster that wields - or is? - a resonar, or something similar?

Some quick concept art:



Maybe all Seraphim (and Cherubim) come equipped with a basic monster just called 'Resonar', which is a winged sword thing that attacks using a basic slash? Or maybe Savitr could have a more powerful variant or something. That'd be a fairly simple model to make.


Savitr should still have a heal. Currently it's called Solemn Light, which shifts runes towards Grave, and I wondered whether he could summon up some sorrowful angel or something. Some visual brainstorming led to this - which borrows a name from an old monster design of mine - which would probably have a Bliss-Abstract heal instead, if I went with it. Or maybe I'll see if I can come up with something Grave since I'd rather stress that aspect of Savitr's character than the abstract angle (his runes are axG, after all).

Collie can also use a Tame skill, which would also need to be associated with a monster she starts with... Maybe I could use Pawnite for that? It is very in line with her traits, and it's a manifestation of loyalty, being both a knight and a pet, so it'd maybe feel more right to give it a major role like this than to just make Pawnites standard fodder monsters in an area called the Sprouting Isle...



There's this monster design - Rabbish (a radish rabbit) - which I used in a few different things around the time I worked on Taming Dreams, which I've been wanting to replace one of the current six monster species with, for this area at least. Maybe Somunculimp could be moved to the next area and replaced with Rabbish; I suspect the latter would be more appealing. I could also replace another monster species with the Fungoblin which I already have the model for, since MARDEK's first (real) dungeon had those in it so it'd be a kind of callback to that.

Back to skills, Savitr has a taunt called Guardian, and Collie has the aforementioned howl, neither of which I want to lose. But maybe instead I could change these to be 'Special' abilities, used separately from the equipped skills (and as such they're always available), with no cost but no growth potential either? I added Collie's howl because a later plot scene should have her use it, and I wasn't certain how to ensure she'd have it equipped at that point. This would address that, plus it'd give characters abilities that weren't interchangeable. Pierce's would be the Manifest Mind he already uses in the intro.

Speaking of the intro, I'd have to rewrite a few lines if I did do away with resonars and replace them with all monster skills, but it wouldn't be a huge deal.

But would characters be unarmed, then? In Taming Dreams, characters were unarmed; their weapons and shields were monsters dreamed up in the moment. I don't want to use monsters as a shield in this, so it'd make sense for the characters to wield shields since I want to retain blocking. Crystal shields, or something; I'll need to do some concept art.

I also like the thought of characters having a gemstone on their forehead - which Savitr already essentially has - which they use to channel their thoughts into monsters. I thought of also adding a wand or staff or something with a crystal at the end which they touch to this to create the effect, but maybe that's just overdoing things, and pressing their fingers to it would be enough.

I feel like I should just stick with what I've got instead of making constant changes... but I also feel like what I have currently is an improvement over how it was before, but it's kind of half complete, like a Frankenstein's monster merging two concepts, or something.

I also feel like stressing the monster-summoning concept might be a better selling point since I can compare it - however vaguely - to other monster taming games like Pokemon... even though it's not really like that. I suppose a closer comparison might be Ni No Kuni, in which you had monster allies that joined your characters in battles (though the battle mechanics were very different). Or maybe FFXIII-2 (I say after finding a screenshot of that for later in this post), though I barely remember that so I don't know.

The changes I need to make are relatively minor for the most part - not a huge overhaul or anything - though if Collie and Savitr do come with at least a couple of monsters equipped - which they'd have to otherwise they couldn't do anything (I don't want to include a basic Attack command) - I'd need to design those monsters. That'd be the biggest time-consuming thing, though I was able to design, make, and animate the Ignorat recently in about a day so it shouldn't take too long.

Tulpas?

Are you familiar with the term 'tulpa'? I think it came up in certain online communities a while back; I found out about it from someone mentioning it on this blog. Wikipedia says:



The monsters in this are essentially 'solid hallucinations'; they're literally dreamed up, manifestations of mind. So the term seems fitting considering that. But they're not exactly sentient or autonomous, plus the word might just be unnecessarily esoteric when the basic 'monsters' would do. Plus 'tulpa' might be loaded with connotations, like when I wanted to use 'owo' for female sindrels. Hmm.

I've also been wondering for a while whether to rename the miasma to mindasma. I'm not sure. I personally love novel terms, but I've been noticing more and more that a lot of people are just put off by the unfamiliar.

Re the previous post

Thanks to those of you who left long comments on the previous post! I wanted to reply to them in this one rather than individually since I don't have much time and I'd be repeating myself a lot, but this has turned out much longer than I thought it would already... I'd be saying similar things to many of the comments anyway, so what I'll do is go over them again and make a dot point list here of things I feel are worth mentioning:


- To clarify, I'm not planning to continue MARDEK any time soon, and I wasn't asking for ideas about how to do that. I'm spending a full-time-job's worth of hours on Atonal Dreams (and it's still taking forever!), and I'm not going to work two full time jobs at once because that's impossible. Divine Dreams was meant as a reimagining, however, and Atonal Dreams is a standalone prequel to that to determine whether it's worth working on.


- Many characters in the planned Divine Dreams are derived from MARDEK characters, but have been renamed to avoid implying that they are those characters, because they're not. Savitr is vaguely based on Enki, for example.


- It's also interesting hearing what people consider to be my 'new' stuff. Some people seemed to categorise things like Alora Fane Creation and Taming Dreams as 'new stuff', but those to me feel like distant memories from another era. I suppose it's not been that many years though, objectively. It's not been that long since MARDEK either, though, and that feels like a lifetime ago!

When I talk about my 'new' stuff, I mean post-Flash, post-brain-surgery, post-university. So Sindrel Song, Divine/Atonal Dreams. 3D Unity stuff. More of an intended direction than a body of released works at this point. It's the path I'm currently walking rather than the stops I've previously made, or something. I'm aware that makes it difficult for other people to have much of an opinion about any of it though!


- MARDEK was free, and it was a huge RPG with little to no direct competition. There's absolutely no way to replicate that with a Steam release, and my release process is going to have to be more like I see other indie devs on Twitter talking about. The games scene now is vastly different to the Flash scene a decade ago. Thankfully even mediocre-looking games seem able to do decently well on Kickstarter, with a sufficient enough push. I'm in the (long) process of learning how to do that.


- MARDEK wasn't a financial hit, partly due to meekness on my part (I accepted the first offer and felt bad about taking anything), but largely because essentially no Flash games made serious money. The whole sponsorship model - where essentially the entirety of a game's income came from a sponsor paying you to put their branding in the game - was ridiculous. I often wished I'd got just $1 for everyone who'd played MARDEK. I'd be a multimillionaire.


- I'm hoping that the revised monster essence training/collection aspect from Atonal Dreams will scratch many of the same itches that MARDEK's skill learning system did.


- Atonal Dreams is still quite silly; I wouldn't find something entirely serious interesting.


- Atonal Dreams no longer requires a controller to play! That was the first thing I addressed post-alpha-test.


- Obviously no sensible comparison can be made between something intimately familiar, steeped in years of memories, and something new. All I hope is that people approach the new with an open mind.


- I can understand the draw of familiarity, though it seems so strange to me how... rigid this seems to be for some people. Personally I get irritated by generic Fantasy or Sci-Fi settings that have been done many times before. When I see something that puts a new spin on things, I'm way more likely to be gripped. I found world in the Elder Scrolls games generally dull, for example, forgettable despite delving deeply into their tiresome lore, whereas the novel spectacle of "THE WORLD IS A BIG GIANT" from Xenoblade Chronicles quickly made that one of my favourite games. I can't stand the look of games like Genshin Impact because they're so generic (in an anime way).

Seems some people particularly like the generic settings because they're generic - or rather they're 'relatable' - though? It's so at odds with how I think and feel about created worlds...

I groan when I see the generic elements (fire, water, air, earth) used over and over, and it irritates me when their relationships aren't even consistent (does earth beat air or is it weak to it? Depends on the game). I love what I've done with the psychological elements in my Alora Fane world because they really make sense with the fundamental lore; they're not just something tacked on just because. But I suppose it's difficult for me to understand how someone could react to that with anything other than fascination, like how you might not truly ∞ grok ∞ - even if you could 'understand' - how someone could dislike your favourite piece of music.

I'm aware that it's important to strike a balance between familiarity and novelty though; I've written about that a bit in several posts so I won't go over it again in this already long one. One thing I've mentioned is that a lot of indie devs advertise their games purely as a list of games you might remember that they're ostensibly similar to. See ∞ this successful Kickstarter, for a particularly stark example ∞ ("A Metroidvania inspired by new & old classics like Hollow Knight, Super Metroid, Super Castlevania IV & Megaman X"... yes, but what sets it apart??).

I consider the Alora Fane setting to be Fantasy, just not generic fantasy, and I wonder what about it would make it register otherwise to people.



- I've always just taken it for granted that every new RPG I play will have its own convoluted battle system to learn, like the paradigm shift mechanic from Final Fantasy XIII and its sequel. I couldn't begin to explain to you how this worked, years after playing it, and I'd say I barely understood it while playing it, but I was just used to gritting my teeth and pushing through the mechanics in any game I played, so I put up with it, even found interest in it.

People expecting to be masters from the get-go - or for everything to be known to them before they begin - seems so strange to me, and I wonder if it's a recent development. I saw a post somewhere recently (Reddit maybe; can't find it) where someone said they handed an old game they loved to a younger sibling to try, and they hated it because it didn't hold their hand with explicit tutorials and omnipresent button prompts right from the start. But aren't a lot of people who'd like a MARDEK continuation of an older generation than that?

(I remember FFXIII and -2 looking so sleek and modern and impressive when I first played them, but this screenshot just looks offensively busy and hard to parse to me now!)


- You may or may not have seen this comic/meme around:




I've made stuff, loved it, released it into the world, and seen it stamped on. Since I invest myself in what I make, that wounds me. Anyone would share less if they had past experience of sharing things that went badly for them. I suppose - frustratingly - it's just part of growing up. What a world. I keep a lot of stuff I make to myself because I enjoy it deeply, but can't if someone else tells me they hate it, or even that they don't love it like I do (and how could they?). All I can focus on after that is what they found fault with.


- I miss the days when I'd just make stuff without worrying too much about whether it was 'correct' in some technical sense. I've been honing all my creative skills a lot over the past decade though, and I'd like to think I can produce 'better' stuff now. Though I suppose there's always the risk of it seeming like a slick product. I am at least still trying to be driven by my heart, to do what feels best to me, but what, then, am I supposed to do when people comment that Collie's depiction is offensive in some way, or whatever? Do I stick with what felt right to me? Or change course, bending to the crowd? I'm still trying to figure this out.


- I also don't really get how some people apparently prefer pixel art over 3D. I remember playing the old Pokemon games and longing for the day when they'd make the jump to full 3D. It's all progress as far as I'm concerned, opportunities for greater expression and vitality. I didn't use 3D originally because Flash had no support for it. I see a ton of other indie games that use pixel art, and always wonder whether it's due to perceived accessibility (it's easier to draw a sprite than to make a model), or some kind of nostalgic or nouveau-retro aesthetic choice. Makes me wonder how people perceive visuals when they see Atonal Dreams' 3D as inferior to MARDEK's pixels, for example.


- Something some people dislike about my new direction is the focus on 'emotions', presumably - though I can only guess - because it registers as, I don't know, 'sissy' or off-putting to minds more attuned to mechanical things than to airy-fairy feelings, which most 'gamers' would fit into. Maybe I need to start describing it the skills as being 'psychic' in origin, which is no less accurate but has very different connotations.


- snipo101 asked me "What do you think your fans think the core identity of the original MARDEK games is? And do you agree with that?". Seems it's extremely subjective what any game means to anyone! My own focus is primarily in immersion, lore, aesthetics; a lot of people cared about the gameplay aspects of MARDEK way more than I ever did. I love Pokemon, but I have zero interest in competitive play. I'm just hoping to make something that'd appeal to many different facets of interest in the way MARDEK apparently did.


- I have a Discord! Technically, though it's private currently because I don't want to have to deal with the stress of potential drama on top of everything. I absolutely don't miss waking up every morning about what terrible state my community is in. I'll sort out a solution some day.


- Memody: Sindrel Song is not a rhythm game. It's a memory game that uses melody as a stimulus (rather than, say, pictures or words). But the fact that so many people continued thinking of it as a rhythm game despite my many attempts to explain that was an important lesson to learn. Games need to fit their perceived categories. I just hope Atonal Dreams registers as an RPG!


- It also had essentially no marketing because I didn't know anything about how selling indie games worked back then; I was working under the same mentality I had when I released Flash games. Over the last year, I've learned an enormous amount about how I should be approaching games now.


- I made MSS because I'd literally just had brain surgery, and believed a memory game would help with my recovery. That's not really comparable to a game created under any other circumstances. I'm making Atonal Dreams with similar motivations that drove the creation of MARDEK.


- I'm hoping the "you can tame your enemies for the duration of the battle, and can equip tamed monsters as trainable skills" would help Atonal Dreams feel familiarish but also interestingly new. I've stressed this more in the changed version, which I feel is dramatically different to the alpha some people have already played.


- I really hope that Atonal Dreams will find an audience who can appreciate the depth and cleverness I've tried to inject into everything. I'm glad that at least some people already do.


- It's a shame that I didn't finish Taming Dreams, but life got in the way. I released it stupidly anyway though (developed in the dying Flash, released on mobiles exclusively... silly).


- I frequently think of replaying the Final Fantasies that inspired MARDEK, but I haven't found the time yet!




Also, I wrote ∞ a post about Bob Lazar ∞ the other day, which I assumed only a couple of people might read. Currently it's got way more views than most posts get? Someone must have linked to it from somewhere, or something. I write about stuff like that because I find it enjoyable to wallow in wondering "what if??", and dismissals from the clearly-less-gullible-than-me doesn't exactly fill me with joy... is all I'll say about that for now.