Alora Fane

3 COMMENTS

LotBlind53~3Y

Merry upcoming Solstice Tobias! Us, the faithful, will be waiting on the other side.

Maniafig222~3Y

I can't help but feel like this whole thing with music is sort of pointless. It was never a thing I thought the game needed when I was testing it, anyway. It's neat, but it seems to be taking up a lot of time and like it'll continue to add more workload whenever a battle track will need a lot of variations. It seems to be the sort of feature bloat you talked about wanting to avoid before.

I guess I'll have to see how it plays out during actual gameplay. I do wonder whether the constraints it'll add on music will make the overall soundtrack better or not.

I feel the same about intensity stars, it feels like a dumbed down version of the mechanics as they already were, with individual excitement ratings for every character on the field. Did anyone's feedback ask for it? I don't think it's fixing any problem with the old system.

I've not really been commenting on these blogs lately, but I think it's in part because none of the current changes being worked on were things I thought the game really needed.

I like how the UI has been continuously refined more and more, I think that's a good thing.

I guess I'll have to see how it plays out during actual gameplay. I do wonder whether the constraints it'll add on music will make the overall soundtrack better or not.

I feel the same about intensity stars, it feels like a dumbed down version of the mechanics as they already were, with individual excitement ratings for every character on the field. Did anyone's feedback ask for it? I don't think it's fixing any problem with the old system.

I've not really been commenting on these blogs lately, but I think it's in part because none of the current changes being worked on were things I thought the game really needed.

I like how the UI has been continuously refined more and more, I think that's a good thing.

Tobias 1115~3Y

I definitely did plan to avoid feature creep as much as possible with this, and it's bothering me that I've been carried away with that recently. The main issue seems to be that things take much longer than expected; something I think I can do in a day or so ends up consuming a week or more. It's why it's so easy to fall into, because the plans seem so doable and the reality just doesn't play out that way.

The music thing got me excited because it seemed like a good solution to the musical resonars thing I'd been unsure about for ages. I can't remember whether the alpha even had those, or... I think the resonars were weapons, back then?

But then I decided on the figmon-as-skills thing, which I feel works better because it's an extension of the taming system I've had from the start. I imagine permanently keeping the figmon you tame over will feel better than just having them disappear when the encounter ends, but we'll see how it plays out during testing.

And since I wanted to stress summoning those as the primary mechanic, I did away with weapons, and changed the resonars into instruments... but struggled to find a way to represent them which didn't clash with the background music. This newest attempt at that does feel more satisfying to play around with than previous ideas, from my testing so far. But I'll need to wait and see what other people say.

The battle tracks don't have all that much variation; there are calm, normal, and intense sections, but they're all essentially variations of one another, so once one is done, the others come easily. And there are melodies on top, but those are based on the characters' motifs so they're trivial to compose.

Composing separate battle music for each area was probably a bad idea though! I thought they'd come to me easily, but inspiration for composition is obnoxiously unreliable. I think what I might do is instead just have a 'normal battle' track, maybe a separate one for the psychepelagos (kind of like how some JRPGs have a secondary battle track, eg Laguna's in FFVIII), and separate tracks for bosses, which I would have needed to compose anyway even without this system (and they'll probably be easier to make with this system due to the limitations).

The intensity thing was mostly added to simplify the arousal damage modifier - which I was frequently annoyed by during testing - and because the previous 'normal battle' track had an intense section, which I was really excited to transition to during testing. Playing around with the stars a bit, I've found it surprisingly satisfying and fun manipulating them!

I keep thinking I'm tired of fiddling around with everything, and how the mechanics are at a point where I'm happy with them and need to just move on. So I'm planning to just clean up some stuff, then hopefully - hopefully! - run another test in January or February.

Then people will tell me they hate the changes and I'll not know what to do because I spent months on them and I'll have a breakdown and and and-!

...Hopefully it'll go okay. I do feel what I have after these changes is a better game than I had before, but I really do need external voices to check that.

The music thing got me excited because it seemed like a good solution to the musical resonars thing I'd been unsure about for ages. I can't remember whether the alpha even had those, or... I think the resonars were weapons, back then?

But then I decided on the figmon-as-skills thing, which I feel works better because it's an extension of the taming system I've had from the start. I imagine permanently keeping the figmon you tame over will feel better than just having them disappear when the encounter ends, but we'll see how it plays out during testing.

And since I wanted to stress summoning those as the primary mechanic, I did away with weapons, and changed the resonars into instruments... but struggled to find a way to represent them which didn't clash with the background music. This newest attempt at that does feel more satisfying to play around with than previous ideas, from my testing so far. But I'll need to wait and see what other people say.

The battle tracks don't have all that much variation; there are calm, normal, and intense sections, but they're all essentially variations of one another, so once one is done, the others come easily. And there are melodies on top, but those are based on the characters' motifs so they're trivial to compose.

Composing separate battle music for each area was probably a bad idea though! I thought they'd come to me easily, but inspiration for composition is obnoxiously unreliable. I think what I might do is instead just have a 'normal battle' track, maybe a separate one for the psychepelagos (kind of like how some JRPGs have a secondary battle track, eg Laguna's in FFVIII), and separate tracks for bosses, which I would have needed to compose anyway even without this system (and they'll probably be easier to make with this system due to the limitations).

The intensity thing was mostly added to simplify the arousal damage modifier - which I was frequently annoyed by during testing - and because the previous 'normal battle' track had an intense section, which I was really excited to transition to during testing. Playing around with the stars a bit, I've found it surprisingly satisfying and fun manipulating them!

I keep thinking I'm tired of fiddling around with everything, and how the mechanics are at a point where I'm happy with them and need to just move on. So I'm planning to just clean up some stuff, then hopefully - /hopefully/! - run another test in January or February.

Then people will tell me they hate the changes and I'll not know what to do because I spent months on them and I'll have a breakdown and and and-!

...Hopefully it'll go okay. I do feel what I have after these changes is a better game than I had before, but I really do need external voices to check that.