development thread

[jack1974]

today FINALLY the temperature is "normal" (25°C!) so I could resume working on this game. Here's the first encounter with Larik the Nomad Chief (recruitable too).

[jack1974]

OK, finished the nomads storyline! I need to tweak/check a few things, but then I could even do a public "alpha" (which would be a beta but the story is not finished yet).
I want to wait and add a few more items first. Probably before end of month I'll have the demo though
Of course, unless 40°C are back, but I really hope not!!!!

[BobTheMob]

Shaman--she's a healer, then?

[jack1974]

Yes, though she has some powerful damage over time spells. To use an excerpt from the game story:

protagonist "You're a shaman, aren't you? I thought shamen were healers, not killers. How is it that you're also an accomplished hunter?"
nuala "I am good at waiting. Some people chase their prey and fight it. I am one for stalking prey and outlasting it. My shamanic powers ensure that I am always the last one standing."

[jack1974]

Well, had another break of a few days because of heat (and mosquitoes!! grr) but today finally resumed working, albeit slowly. I added two new icons for the inventory/vendor screen:

on the left you see the gold icon with a red cross, meaning that you don't have enough money to buy it (before you couldn't know the price unless you clicked on it, and it was bad because adds more unneeded clicks).
on the right, I added a small (i) white item when you have new items that you didn't examine yet (like when you loot an enemy, or some NPC gives you a reward item). It's useful to identify new items in your inventory.
After you click on them once to examine the item, the icon goes away. Another common feature in many RPGs but that was still missing in mine

[jack1974]

coded the "fail main quest" scene today haha the look on Karen's face: never disappoint an amazon queen!!
It will be SUPER HARD to fail the quest. In my playthrough I had to skip 15 days!! basically click "next day" for 15 times doing nothing to fail the quest. So people worried about a deadline... don't need to be (and I was playing in Nightmare mode).
Of course, there are plenty of other ways to die/get a game over, but the deadline shouldn't really be one of them. I think I'll make an achievement for this event since it's so hard to get, like "too late" or "you're always late"

[jack1974]

a scene that triggers when you reach 6 party members (a "full party"). Leena is OK, she is only late because brings an important message from Karen
Those were the characters I choose to save/recruit. As posted already, except some cases like Nuala who always joins first, you can choose who to recruit, but you'll be able to come back later and save/recruit the other one if you want.

[BobTheMob]

a scene that triggers when you reach 6 party members (a "full party"). Leena is OK, she is only late because brings an important message from Karen

*Why, Jack? Why? Why do you insist on just barely hinting at things and leavin us hangin?

Those were the characters I choose to save/recruit.

Save? I'm afraid I don't understand...

*(Semi)jokingly saying this

[jack1974]

In some of the recruitment missions, the fate of the "discarded" hero is uncertain. Well, not for people reading these forums though

[jack1974]

Today got the last batch of weapon icons from artist:


around 40 new ones. Of course I'm NOT going to use them all in this game, would go nuts to make 300+ items since I commissioned them, I also thought about future RPGs. Anyway the good news is that you won't see anymore the "old Loren's icon art" so often

This week I'm going to code the pirates/Jasper recruitment, and maybe another path/side-quest, then I think for sure (unless heat is back, but seems unlikely) I could do an alpha version to test a bit the combat and in particular if I distributed the items evenly between the various party members: my goal would be to let players equip well ALL the party members if they want (not that it's required of course).
But since there are 11 x 6 slots = 66 slots, I might have missed something. Note that I don't mean 66 unique items in total (so each character having a unique set) that would be too much, some items will be more common (still powerful, but common so that 2+ party members could use them).

Just to get an idea of the madness/all the work behind it, this is my openoffice spreadsheet containing SOME weapons (there are separate pages for armor, jewelry, usable, etc). It's all hand-crafted. I'm starting to think that maybe SOTW system with randomly generated item wasn't too bad...