DEVELOPMENT

3

1,838

Weekly Update - Rabbish, Anguist, Renaming Arousal?

3 years ago1,022 words

I made two new figmon this week! I also wonder whether to rename a gameplay mechanic people took issues with the name of...



The two new figmon I added were Rabbish, based on a concept I came up with a few years ago and included in Taming Dreams, but which I drastically redesigned here, and Anguist, which I came up with a few years ago for some game project I dabbled in while at uni, and which I liked enough to keep the design mostly unchanged.

I added Rabbish because I wanted something that was easy to understand, not too abstract or high-concept, for the starting island, plus I already had some data for 'Rabbish' in the game's files from the very start when I added some placeholders based on old monster designs (not that I used that data, but there's a sense of satisfaction in bringing an old idea to life). And I added Anguist because I wanted a Fear elemental figmon for the elements tutorial, because Collie's Courage has an advantage over Fear while Savitr's Bliss is at a disadvantage.

I wrote more about them in a couple of posts on ∞ my Patreon ∞ earlier in the week. I never know how many people actually see anything on there, especially when it's marked as patrons only, but I like having somewhere I can write about stuff mid-week, and I feel I should give people something for their financial support!

Making and animating both of these took up much of the week (one of them took slightly longer than the other). I gave Rabbish a hopping attack, which I like the animation for:



I wasn't sure whether to call it 'Vegump', 'Veggie Force', 'Veg G Force', though I've not really given all that much focus to skills yet. This is using an inappropriate particle effect from an old stone spell, for example. I'll need to find some time to go through all the skills and figmon and tweak stats, effects, etc, though I suspect I'll continue altering them all as the game develops and as I get more feedback from players.



Other than those figmon, I've also been working on fixing up the bits of tutorial dialogue I wrote a few months ago. I think it was after the first alpha test? There are a bunch of them, and it means there are a lot more short dialogue exchanges during the middle of the island section than there were in that test.

Some have needed considerable rewrites because it's now Savitr rather than Collie who has the ability to tame. Originally runes were introduced in a bit where Collie tried but failed to tame a Brigrrnd, which I liked because it was representative of Collie's greater struggle to tame the beast within herself... But now I've replaced that with a battle against Rabbishes which might be more accessibly comical. We'll see!

One of the tutorials was for the arousal mechanic, which a number of people have expressed issues with the name of because of a kind of presumably cultural prudishness that always surprises me (but violence is fine, so there are a bunch of things that show graphic gore, but a bare female nipple would be going too far... grumble). I had a thought earlier today while fixing up the tutorial scene:

Maybe I could rename it to wakefulness? It'd certainly fit the dreams theme! Perhaps there could be also be effects from reaching 0% or 100% wakefulness, too? At 0%, a character would enter a Sleep state where they'd skip turns, while at 100% they'd be afflicted with Mania ("(psychiatry) The state of abnormally elevated or irritable mood, arousal, and/or energy levels"), which could be like Berserk or something?

Interestingly, since figmon are manifested dreams anyway - kind of - a human affected by Sleep could maybe have a chance to either skip their turn, or use a random figmon from their arsenal, or maybe upon falling asleep they conjure one up on the enemy side, with some criteria used to determine which form spawns??

There are a bunch of ideas I could explore! I only came up with this a few hours ago though, so I'll need to give it more thought.


I found myself getting quite eager and excited to play with the basic gameplay loop - the new figmon-taming-and-training bits in particular - so that's a good sign, I hope! It's still taking a while to actually get to that point though because of all the little chores I need to sort out along the way. But I am getting there!

Next, I need to refine the remaining dialogue scenes and battles on the Sprouting Isle. After that, I'll need to do a full run through what I have, making a likely long list of various things that need fixing or adding before I can run the next alpha test. A part of my mind thinks "that won't take more than a couple of weeks", while another - jaded from experience - knows better. So perhaps I should aim to have the next alpha test some time in January (when everyone's too busy with other games anyway probably...), but we'll see!



I meant to divide my days between working on Atonal Dreams, and the AFC Remake/Mentales/whatever thing I recently started... but I've done absolutely zero work on that since my last post. Frustrating. Stuff kept coming up and getting in the way - mostly my own fatigue and mental exhaustion - so I wasn't able to find the time or focus. Many of the distractions were situational, though, so I hope to get back to that next week.



I still need to decide on a new PC to get, and ∞ wrote another post about that ∞. Hopefully I'll be able to decide on something soon - I'm sick of putting it off - but... ehhh.

I've also continued to be terrible at replying to people and comments and things! But what's new!

(Now to go and play Pokemon...)