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Weekly Update - Celestot, Bridove, Mementomes, Lore

3 years ago1,398 words

I did a lot this week! I made two new monsters, came up with an idea - mementomes - that solves some uncertainties, and improved the Lore section!

Last week was largely lost to mental illness, so I'm glad to have been productive throughout this one!

I'm still working on the intro, which involves the generic-JRPG-protagonist version of Savitr joining Collie in her psychepelago. I'd been indecisive about how exactly Savitr would be introduced, though...

New Monsters

I decided that Collie would kill the Preyloot, then face a Monstrife in a standard encounter. It'd be too powerful to defeat by herself - that is, it represents the beast within her that she can't overcome (The Beast is already meant for this purpose, so this is kind of like a lesser version of that?) - so she slumps down when her HP gets low and says something to that effect. She's then healed from offscreen, and looks up to see who's rescued her. Seems fairly standard; I think I've seen stuff like this before, though I can't remember specific examples.



I made this Celestronaut monster a while back (3 months ago??) to give Savitr a healing skill, but that was a party-wide heal - to show Savitr's legendary strength - which felt like it'd work poorly for this particular scene. More fitting would be a single monster - or I suppose I should be calling them figmon since I've ostensibly decided on that name - that casts a single-target heal.

Celestronaut was based on an old design from Miasmon, though Celestronaut was the evolved form. The unevolved form was Celestyke, which I also reused in Taming Dreams:



I decided to rework that!



Now it's got the spectral tail that a bunch of other figmon have, and since Celestronaut is undead, I continued that with the black eyes that make it look like a cartoon ghost, plus they make it look more like a grey alien. The head thing was always meant to look like angel wings; now it looks like a halo too, plus the transparent glowing green adds a sci-fi/healing feel.

The wheel in the original was based on a halo, a hula hoop, and the depiction of angels in the Bible (which could very well have been attempts at describing alien encounters), which are said to have a wheel that follows them around everywhere. The Biblical angels' wheel is covered in 'eyes', so Celestot has eyes on its wheel (they're a recurring motif in the game anyway); six, equidistant, like the aster.

I changed the name to Celestot because tyke - which I thought back when I made Miasmon meant 'small child' - adds the connotation of being mischievous when applied to children, plus it can mean a mongrel dog or crude person. Hardly appropriate for an angelic thing! Tot seems more neutral (it also means a measure of alcohol, but that feels vastly unrelated).

It turned out better than expected, and I like it more than I thought I would considering it was added as a quick, unplanned decision!

It looks like a prevolution of Celestronaut, though, which makes me wonder whether I should include evolution in some capacity. Like maybe when skills reach a certain level, they evolve? But then would they all evolve? Because that's a lot more monsters to make! I'll need to give it some thought.



I also decided not too long ago that Savitr is renowned for his ability to tame figmon, so that mechanic should be introduced in this psychepelago section. For that, he'd need a taming skill, and since skills are figmon, that means a new figmon.

I spent a few hours coming up with this:



∞ I wrote more about the design process on my Patreon ∞.

I'm unsure about it! It's based on the concept of a dove with an olive branch, an easily recognisable symbol of peace, combined with an archetypical angel, like you might get atop a Christmas tree. I wanted a name that combined something meaning 'peace' or 'to pacify' with 'dove', and I wanted to do something interesting with the olive branch in its beak...

After experimenting with names, I landed on Bridove, combining dove with bridle, as in the thing put on horses' heads to control them. I also transformed the olive branch into a bridle.

Conceptually, it makes sense since this figmon's purpose is to tame wild beasts, like bridles do for horses... but maybe it's too muddied? I asked on Patreon and Twitter what people thought it was even supposed to be, and the couple of people who replied on Twitter said it reminded them of Jesus, which it does for me too, especially what looks like a crown of thorns on its head. That'd suggest sacrifice, being a scapegoat, or maybe faith or something, though, none of which are appropriate for this design's purpose.

So I might need to change that name and tweak the design a bit!

Mementomes

Previously, I experimented with Savitr being introduced via a comic book about him, which I later changed to something more like a generic book. I thought maybe Collie could get some kind of book item from the Preyloot's chest, which would cause some monolith to open like a book, becoming a bridge to the next floating island, as a metaphor for narratives acting as portals to other worlds.

But when I recently solved movement-related issues by generating procedural collisions on edges, that meant that adding an object you could step off an edge and onto - but only if it was in a certain state - became very nontrivial. Hard to explain, I suppose!

I decided that maybe there could be big books that opened like portals, doors, which you'd step into to teleport elsewhere. That'd get around those issues, works better with the metaphor, and probably feels better to play too. So I did that!

I also thought that the Preyloot's chest could contain an actual book that comes up as a unique popup, with a 'microstory' in it about the Splendid Savitr. It means you're reading about him in books like Collie did originally, and it's a chance to write a silly 'microstory' that I hope might be fun to read.



Something a significant number of people liked about MARDEK were the... dreamstones, I think they were called? Those things where you got to hear characters' memories.

So while adding this, I had an idea: what if I extend this books-in-chest mechanic beyond this intro section by having the books generally contain characters' memories? Finding characters' thoughts in bizarrely short and scattered journals is common in games anyway (despite how stupid it is if you think about it), and it'd make sense for the psychepelagos in particular to contain characters' memories in some form. And writing little things is way easier than doing them all as animated scenes!

Collecting them all, too, might be appealing for players. Hmm, like the memory spheres - or whatever they were called - in FFX, come to think of it. Other games surely have similar things too.

I like the name 'Mementomes', combining 'memento' with 'tome'.

Lore Bookshelf

I also wondered whether the book UI I'd already made could be used to fancify the Lore section a bit.



I like the idea of a visual bookcase which fills with lore books, rather than a standard menu like I've had in all my previous projects. You can see at a glance how full your bookshelf is, and how many slots you've yet to fill.

Like real books, they have the title on the spine, rotated, though due to that and the small size they're barely legible. So that's a concern, but hopefully not a huge one?

I did this on Friday afternoon, so it still needs work. I see the element's not set properly here, whoops!



So yes! Good! I'm hoping to mostly finish the Collie's Psychepelago bit by next month, but apparently I was saying I'd have another playable version in a week over 3 months ago... Let's just see how things turn out! I'll do what I can.

I know it's nothing new, but sorry about being awful at replying to comments and things! Hopefully I'll reply to at least some soon...