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Weekly Update: Belief Battles (or whatever)

2 years ago1,463 words

Gasp! I did a whole lot of work on this thing! And felt good about games dev for the first time in ages!!

I HAVE BEEN MENTALLY ILL THIS WEEK AND-

Well, I mean, I have, and I lost much of the first half of the week due to it... but I managed to spend the second half of the week and the weekend working on this side project with more enthusiasm than I've worked on anything in ages! Feels like the joy I used to have for games dev has come back after a long absence.

It's the sort of feeling where I jump out of bed eager to work, then I do that work pretty much all day, punctuated by relatively short breaks I'm eager to end to get back to work, and go to bed reluctantly because I still want to do more.

It's probably going to take its toll on me if I keep it up (not that I'd be able to anyway)... but it's a welcome change after the frustrating slump of the last few months (ugh).

I've been so focused on it that I haven't done much else; I didn't check this site, for example, so I see there are a handful of comments I hadn't seen. I should probably read them before writing this, but I've already left it later than I'd like and I want to get it out of the way before the day is done so...



I don't have a finalised title yet; the project file is just called 'Belief Battles' (I did some brainstorming for something cleverer, but nothing stood out to me). It's less about making something from scratch, and more about assembling bits and pieces taken from other projects I've worked on over the last couple of years.

I have some thoughts for it that I'm quite excited about! But I won't just blurt them all out now. I was going to post something on my Patreon, but got too distracted actually working on stuff! Maybe soon?

I was hoping to get to a point where I could have a video preview thing ready to show, like I did with Belief... 3 years ago?? Gods. This thing:



I'm not at that point yet, but I almost am! I've been working on the basic gameplay loop, and most of the pieces are in place. I feel I could get there for next week, so I'm setting myself that goal.

...I just rewatched that, and I'd say what I've made is pretty much the same general idea as that - I always loved the concept, and keep coming back to it for a reason - though with mechanics refined as a result of years of experimentation with Atonal Dreams. The 'HP' and 'damage' values in that video lead to things really dragging out; in this thing I've been working on, those values are much more reasonable and the battles are less tedious as a result (though watching a battle and playing it yourself are vastly different experiences anyway).

(Also, apparently I made that about a year after major brain surgery, and composed both pieces of music in it in one morning? I don't know about you, but I'm impressed!)

One big difference with this this compared to that is that you can create your own character using the pixel face drawing thing, which I hope will inspire some silliness (or you can select from premade faces). I've yet to implement that properly though.

But I'll include some screenshots of some of the many features that I have added:



I've got the field setup, which currently looks like this. The areas are built using a map editor I made to be used by players back when the aim was to make something like AFC, where you can draw tilesets using a pixel art canvas thing, which I hope gives a ~distinct style~ rather than just looking off-putting to people. I suppose it'll take more fiddling around to figure out its full potential. The ocean shader needs some work.

(I don't intend to make the map editor available for players with this, but that idea - and the Pokemon clone one - could be other projects I could work on after this using similar mechanics/art directions if it does okay?)



You can open a menu...



...and change equipment items. This as all implemented, so I can place items in treasure chests, then as the player I can acquire them and equip them and they show on the character's model.



The areas are divided into rooms (as in Atonal Dreams etc), and each room contains several people. Talking to one of them has them say a single one-liner (using this dialogue box)...



...then a battle begins, which causes all characters in that room to run to the centre and get into position as the camera zooms in. No transition to a separate battle arena.

You battle using skills of Alora Fane's six psychological elements. Each character has a yellow and purple bar showing their allegiance to 'light' (your side) or 'dark' (their side), and skills deal 'damage' - or 'influence' - to this. Damage and taming aren't separate.



When you tame people, they join your party. If all slots are full, it works like Pokemon, where you're given the option to send either them or one of your current allies into storage (the PC box there; 'the temple' here).



After battle, the camera zooms out, and your allies follow you around until the next battle.

I don't know how other players would feel about it, but I definitely find what I have so far very satisfying, and like the sort of thing I could easily just dive into.

I still need to finalise the mechanics - which is coming along rapidly - and then I'll have to make the content, but I've set everything up so that that should be very quick and easy. All characters will be humans (or mostly; I've been wondering whether to add dogs or something similar, or some Alora Fane cute mascot creature that I'd have to invent; stoats?), meaning I only really need to make an additional male model. Clothing items only take a few minutes to make, and I can add palette swaps trivially. I can create new skills from the editor in seconds. I should also add more interesting animations for using them, which will probably take some time, but not much.

Currently I'm intending for there to be a hub, the temple, from which you can access six other areas based on the six elements. I wondered whether there could be portals that take you to Alora Fane's petal worlds so you can recruit other races... but that's something I could do in a sequel if people like this one. These will probably just be little islands in Bronzeal, home of the Bold, which is an archipelago, after all.

I'm also imagining that while some battles could happen outside, some rooms might contain buildings, which you could enter to trigger separate battles. Perhaps even chains of battles, like Atonal Dreams' maelstroms, depending on the size/type of the building.

Some people, when they play RPGs, like to talk to every NPC in any town. I do this. I suppose this would be making that the core part of the gameplay, kind of!

The aim would be to tame a certain number of people to grow your religion, which I have some thoughts about that I'll save for another time.



I'm really excited about this, though I know it's because it's the beginning stages where every task I need to do feels like a significant step towards getting everything working (unlike when the overall game does work, but there are a million details to tediously address, each barely noticeable but all important).

I'll spend next week on it - I really want to! - and hopefully by the end of it I'll have a video like the other one to show of the gameplay.

If all goes well, I could even share it somehow for testing, and I should probably start mentioning it on Reddit sooner rather than later...

One thing at a time!!



(Oh, and I got an email back from the counselling service... at like 9pm on Friday, which made me wonder about the lives of the people behind it. HMM. They said they'd call me next Friday. So... progress there, finally?)