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Weekly Update - Potions & Glitter
3 years ago673 words
I spent this week working my way through a to-do list of tedious tasks for Atonal Dreams! Here are a couple of the more interesting additions.

It's been a mixed week! I hadn't worked on Atonal Dreams for a week or two, so getting back into it was difficult and slow. But once I did, I had some great days where I remained focused on some creative thing or another all day, even going to sleep reluctantly, eager to wake up and do more!

Not that I have a ton to show for it, really. I'm still working my way through some seemingly bottomless list of tasks remaining before the next alpha, which is hydra-like in that for every one I remove, I end up adding more. They're mostly things I've been putting off and feel reluctant to tackle, too. So it's a bit of a trudge, but I'm making progress at least!

Mostly it's bug fixes and behind-the-scenes technical stuff, or writing dialogue scenes, but I can show a couple of additions in this 7-second-long video clip:



The most obvious is a return of potions. I had these in the game ages ago, where they worked by combining pairs of elemental reagents to create a wide variety of different concoctions... but I felt that added unnecessary complexity, and removed it months ago. I decided while playtesting the other day though that there were a couple of situations where expendable items would be really useful - plus it gives something to fill treasure chests and give as rewards and stuff - so I added them back in a different form.

I wanted to keep things minimal and streamlined, to avoid cluttering up an inventory with a vast collection of variably potent or specific-case potions the player would never use. So there are only six types of potions in the game, one for each element, with different useful effects. Only one heals, but it heals 200 HP (more than most characters would ever have) and revives KO'd allies. Another can be used to add 100 points of Light for quick taming. Deciding what each of these six potions would actually do took some time! (As did effectively recoding the throwing mechanics since I'd removed what I had before, and it wasn't compatible with some recent changes anyway.)

I like the silly idea of using potions by chucking them in your allies' faces, so I'm glad to bring that back!

I also finished adding the glitter system, where you can acquire a currency by defeating figmon or using their skills while they're tamed allies, and can spend it in the menu to add XP to your own skills. It all works as intended now! At the end of that video, you can see a box at the top that shows glitter earned for defeating the Rabbish.

The next milestone - doing another alpha - feels like it's just over the horizon... as has been the case for months now. Feels like I could get there in another week or two if I really focus, but I have reason to doubt my predictions of how long things'll take, so let's just see how it goes. I'm at least making steady progress, even if it's slower than I'd like.



Neither of my parents died from COVID, and they're both testing as negative now, so that's good. I haven't done a test myself because I haven't had any symptoms, but hopefully that's not just because it's taking a while to incubate...

I've also still not set up my new PC!! I've taken it out of the box, at least. I'm planning to do that on the weekend - so I'm getting this out of the way on Friday - but I keep putting it off because it'll be a lot of effort shifting everything around - in both the physical and digital spaces - which I lack the time and energy to do. One of many things I've been avoiding/shirking, I suppose. I'll do it eventually!!

4 COMMENTS

Maniafig222~3Y
It's good to hear you're in the flow again!

I'm going to guess the effects:
-Benevolent Balm: Increase Light
-Dispel Drink: Cancel Statuses
-Brash Booze: Increase Power
-Liquid Lighting: Damage HP
-Perky Potion: Restore HP
-Barrier Brew: Increase Defense

Anyway, I agree that the old system seemed kinda unwieldy. It was similar to the system from Taming Dreams, and I know that back then people generally just ignored Potions. It was kind of a vestigial feature, and there's a meme about people never using their items in RPGs for a reason, it feels bad to consume expendables.

That said, I'm not excited about this basic kind of "consumables as treasure chest filler" thing. It's fine, it's the industry standard for a reason, but it doesn't make opening chests exciting when it's another Potion for the stack of Potions I'm never going to use.

My favourite consumable item system is from a Turn-Based Strategy RPG like FF:Tactics. In that game you start every battle with a fixed stock of consumable items, like 1 Potion and 1 Rock at the start of every battle, regardless of whether you used any during the last battle. As the game goes on you can increase the quality and quantity of items per battle.

What I really like about this approach is that it avoids the two common pitfalls of consumable items in RPGs:

1. Incentivise using items, disincentivise spamming items: When you have a fixed amount of items every battle, there's no reason to 'save them for later', and you also can't just stock up items to trivialize a boss battle. It's much easier to balance around the player having a fixed amount of consumables every battle rather than make them good enough to make them worth using but not so good that it makes the game totally trivial.

2. Meaningful progression: Going from starting the game with 1 Potion that heals 30 per battle to 4 Potions that heal 150 per battle is more satisfying than going from 5 Potions in stock to 100 Megapotions in stock. People like progression systems in RPGs, yours has a bunch of them as well! It just so happens that items can fit into this really well too

[LINK]

Yes that's my opinions about Potions in videogames!!

AFAIK the latest variant of COVID is pretty mild. It spreads very easily, but the actual symptoms are much less dangerous than the old variants, especially for people who got vaccinated. I'm glad I've avoided it thus far regardless!
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Tobias 1115~3Y
That's an interesting concept! (Which I'd completely forgotten about, despite technically playing and completing FFT at some point.)

I'm reminded of empty bottles in Zelda games, and how those always felt worthwhile because they had some permanent presence even if there was an expendable aspect.

Hmm, I wonder if I could do it so that acquiring a potion would increase a stock value that'd be restored at the start of every battle? Would people use them at all, then? Would they be too overpowered?

I wish I had a perfect solution to what to put in chests, and I've thought about and experimented with it a lot, but I'm at the point now where I'm just frustrated about how long everything's taking and I want to just decide on things so I can move on. I felt when playtesting that I had a need for some items that'd restore from KO at least, that could be used by any (non-figmon) ally, which is why I added this.

(Hmm, now I'm wondering about ideas... Potions that can be levelled up maybe, and you find some equivalent to XP for them in chests? But would they have limited uses per battle? They don't award any skill XP though, and I wouldn't want the player to JUST use potions and ignore the skills system entirely... Bleh, I should just stop worrying about it and stick with what I have!)

Oh, and your guesses about their effects are accurate!
1
ElektrikMagenta20~3Y
One option if you wanted to go with this idea is to fill chests with "potion flask shards" (or something with a better name) that if you collect enough add up to a new potion per battle. The shards could be of different colors so they could only go towards a specific type of potion, or they could be neutral and you could choose what potion to assign them to (whatever works best for balancing). You could also have it take more shards per flask as the game goes on if that helps with balancing. I think this would make people more excited about opening chests without bloating up their inventory too much.
1
Tobias 1115~3Y
This made me think it'd only discourage their use until I realised you'd said it'd unlock an additional potion per battle; in that case, I can see that maybe working! I imagined something similar except you'd just acquire whole potions rather than shards, but it got me wondering whether eventually if you were starting with, say, 3 taming potions per battle, wouldn't that make any taming skills completely obsolete? It'd be difficult balancing the difficulty of battles and number of healing potions too; too many at the start of every battle trivialises things, while too few might get frustrating in difficult encounters.

Hopefully what I've added and mentioned in the latest post should work for now, but I do like this idea and might be open to experimenting more at some point (though I should really be making a beeline for the end...).
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