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Weekly Update - Map, Elemental Arenas, Skill Log, Still-To-Do List, Etc!

3 years ago2,450 words

I've got several things to show this week! Mostly related to navigating dungeons. Also, a summary of the stuff I still need to do.

This was looking like it was going to be another productive week - I did a lot between Monday and Thursday - but today (Friday), annoying stuff got in the way and I've spent most of the day in a frustratingly unproductive slump. Bleh. So I thought I might as well write this today so the day's not been a complete waste!

I'll talk about what I've done this week here, but I also want to list the major things I still need to do before I can do the next playtest. It feels close, but the amount of stuff still on my To Do List is fairly daunting - especially when something I think will take half an hour ends up taking like four - so who knows! I'm game-devving as fast as I can!

Most of the stuff I've done this week has a visual aspect, so let's go through them with screenshots:



I finished the layout of the Sprouting Isle area. This only took two or three hours thanks to my custom map editor, so once all the general mechanics stuff is in order, making the later dungeons shouldn't be too time-consuming. Hopefully.

Out of curiosity about how it'd look, I just took a screenshot of each of the rooms and stitched them together into this somewhat disorienting thing (since the camera angles for each room don't line up as a whole):



You'd never see it from a distance like that in the game, just as you never would with retro-style Zelda dungeons. I'm just sharing it here for the sake of interest!

There's also this mildly interesting aerial shot in Unity's Scene view that I inadvertently got while taking the others:




It's very grid-like and artificial-looking, but I don't mind that. Many rooms also need more decoration, or there are minor tiling issues (eg the tall cliff on the left of the room with Pierce isn't continued into the room to the west); that's on my list!

While designing it, I thought about how Pierce - who you encounter in the room second from the left at the bottom - should make a beeline for the monastery directly north of that, but you have to take a more convoluted path around various obstacles he's blocked the path with. At first I imagined they'd be wooden bridges he'd have cut the ropes of, or something - or maybe even something stupid like he'd dropped an ice cream cone, and you didn't want to step over the line of tiny ants around it - but eventually I decided on something I could get use out of in future dungeons too:



I was inspired to some degree by the switches in MARDEK that toggled coloured crystals on or off. I considered replicating them in this as a callback - and because having barriers that can double as walls and platforms seemed useful - but after some experimentation I preferred the idea of these 3-tile-wide barriers of coloured magical flames, which I feel are more visually striking.

Originally the plan was to have them toggleable with switches, but there wouldn't really be any reason to turn them back on again, and I couldn't be bothered making a switch object, so that actually led to what I feel is a better solution.

A while back, I added 'maelstrom' things, swirling dark vortices that played the role of boss battles. They'd add a particle effect and different lighting to the battle arena, and each one would have several waves of foes that'd have to be fought through back to back, encouraging you to tame a team at the start to face the rest.



I made use of a revision of that idea here. Now, certain monsters are surrounded by a fiery aura tied to one of the six elements. When battling them, their arena is coloured according to that element, and wreathed in appropriately-coloured flames. This also boosts the power of skills of that element - or the element strong against it (so both Creation and Destruction are empowered in a Creation arena like this one) - while reducing the power of the element it's strong against (Sorrow, in that case).

Like I intended for maelstroms, these elemental arena battles would also have several waves, and as such would essentially serve as mini-bosses.

Clearing one of these elemental monsters would extinguish the flame barrier of that element for that dungeon. I think it works quite nicely!


I also finished off the minimap that I mentioned last week, which you can see in the corner here:




In this small form, the map would be encircled (ensquared?) by a magenta bar that represents 'the amount of evil left in the area', or something. Rooms are also filled with this colour if there are battles left to defeat or treasure left to collect. The number at the top shows the total number of battles and treasure remaining, and the encircling bar thing reduces as you clear the area.

You can also press a button to expand the map, which shows these diamond icons that show which battles or treasure are cleared:




The map is meant to look reminiscent of one of those ancient maps that I think were made out of cloth? You know what I mean, an archetypical 'treasure map' kind of thing. So it's brown and opaque. I can see people complaining about an omnipresent opaque UI element, but I arrived at this after experimenting with various levels of transparency, including this:



Black and white are widely used in modern game UIs because they're neutral, mature, cool, and work with any background colours, but I felt that my attempt here was too acrid and unpleasant, that it clashed with the rest of the game's aesthetics. I greatly prefer the brown one... for now, at least.


I revised the Lore section, which honestly I'd forgotten was even a thing in the game! Previously it had a bookshelf layout:



But I knew people would complain about the vertical text on the book spines - I didn't like them either - so I felt this would be clearer:




People and monsters are clumped together under elemental categories, which I think will work okay; there aren't going to be many human characters in the game.


I used to have these 'skill log entry' things, which you could summon up by holding a button down to get an idea about why your skill dealt the damage that it did:




Those were broken by some recent code changes, so repairing them was on my To Do List at a relatively low priority. I got around to it this week, thinking it'd take half an hour or less... only to realise there were some weird inaccuracies or inconsistencies in the damage calculation code - plus the code estimating damage was stupidly detached from the code actually determining it on skill use - so I ended up rewriting a lot of that code to unifying it all. Damage predictions and logs are much more accurate now to what's actually going on.

Here's what the log looks like now (you can show this by holding a button while selecting a turn):



Only damaging skills are logged. The old version used a lot of icons, and only showed percentages, but I felt that just using plain text for each effect was the clearest way to convey the information that this is meant to. At least a couple of people commented during the first alpha test about how it'd make more sense to show a number that changes according to each multiplier, so that's what's going on here. Each step is also coloured in a way that makes it clear at a glance where bonus effects or resistances are happening. Much clearer than what I had before, for sure!

I also slightly revised this predictor that shows while you're selecting a target as part of this process:





So what's left now before I can do another test run?


Writing
I need to review and iron out all the dialogue scenes that I already have, and in some cases completely rewrite - or write from scratch - some tutorial scenes. None of them are long or in-depth, but it'll take some time.

I also need to add descriptive lore text for figmon, skills, items, etc. That takes time too.

Maybe most importantly, I need to decide how this section of the story - which I'll likely release as a demo - ends. What I have from before - Pierce attacking with three wolf monster companions born of his impotent rage - no longer really makes sense. I have ideas how to tie it to the rest of what I have planned, but, again, I'll need to devote some time to it.


Particle and sound effects
I need to add these for most skills, and to menus for things like cursor movements. The game feels very unpolished and relatively lifeless without them, but it made no sense to add them before deciding on how everything works.


Blocking
Currently you can hold and release a button while executing skills to get the Rhythm bonus, but you can't react to incoming damage. I'll need to handle this differently, as damage is calculated at the moment the attack lands so I couldn't allow input that was slightly too late. I've had some vague ideas, but haven't sat down and really thought about it yet.


Items
I've added basic functionality for equippable items, but haven't added any yet. So I'll need to think of some and draw icons for them. I've also added a few chests that I'll need to fill with something that'd be worth collecting, but I'm not sure what. It seems like I should bring back some kind of basic expendable items system - not the potion-crafting thing I had a while back, but just like MARDEK or most JRPGs where you have a stock of basic healing potions etc - but only human characters could use them so I don't know whether they'd even be worth including at all. Hmm, I don't know. Another thing I'll need to devote some time to.


Some music
I need to add music for battles against Pierce. I already have a Pierce Battle track I'm really proud of, but it wouldn't work with the interactive 'Dynamusic' system that I have because it's too melodic. I tried to adapt it, without success, so I'll need to try again.

I also tried to compose music for the world map - not a huge thing, but having a track that plays as Collie wakes up after the nightmare intro feels important, and having it double up as the world map music seems practical - but I wasn't happy with it, so I either need to tweak or recompose that.

I'd like the elemental battles to have their own music too - a boss track, essentially - but that's not a high priority and I can postpone it for now.


Various miscellaneous bugs and tweaks
There are a bunch of these, most of which are things I've been putting off because I find them gruellingly unfun to trudge through. So I'm not looking forward to them, but they need to be done! Many should only take a few minutes, but some - like the ocean shader issue that randomly started last week - are just baffling and impossible to predict how long they'll take to complete.



Every week I feel closer than ever - and I'm certainly doing a lot every (week) day - but making a game alone is a monumental task, so, as always, patience is required.

There are a handful of non-game-dev tasks I've been putting off for ages, as I think I said last week, which are getting heavier on my mind the more I put them off. My parents are going away on yet another of their holidays next week, so maybe I'll take a day or two off myself to try to finally get some of those things out of the way. Things like deciding on what PC to get, finally! Ugh!! I'd love for that to be a thing I've done rather than something I know I need to do at some point. There are a bunch of messages and emails that I'd like to reply to as well, and I've still not built that Lego Harry Potter phoenix!! All of those things are surely equally important!!!

I don't want to take the whole week off though. Let's see how it goes.

Oh, I've also completed a few games I've been meaning to write about over the past few weeks: I replayed Memody: Sindrel Song, I finished Pokemon Brilliant Diamond (feels like ages ago), and I also replayed Vagrant Story, an old PS1 game from my childhood that hugely influenced my own work, on a whim. I'd like to write at least brief blog posts about them, but I never get around to it because I'm always too busy or mentally exhausted and it's hard to justify spending time on something only a couple of people will skim through. I do enjoy it for personal reasons though, so maybe I'll find the time. We'll see.

Speaking of Pokemon, Legends of Arceus was released today, right? I preordered it, and was planning to start that this evening. It's been frustrating being on Reddit and seeing critical comments about it over the past few months. Honestly I don't care what other people think of it and want to just experience it in isolation. I'll enjoy it for what it is rather than judging it for what it's not, just as I'd want people to approach my games.