Game Making Drive Feb 2014

First dungeon is complete for good and now I'm moving onto doing the next little part of the plot. It's not a big update when I write it down but it did take me several hours of trying to use switches and variables tomake it all work out.

Did a whole lot of event fixing, and tweaking so I wanted to treat myself to some fun.

The 30 hour storm is still on it's way to me going strong for Sunday.  I'll continue working, till I loose power.  I'm headed back to portraits after I get this town square together, and that intro I am avoiding. ><

IT'S THE END OF DAYS!!

The end of the ones in February at any rate XD.

Today was spent scripting, scripting, and more scripting ^^. I got a couple of requests done, and somehow found time to write up another review :) .

Next month I'll do something with graphics... next month >:

That's it for me for the month! Congratulations to everyone who participated~!

Go, Blue Team!

Day 26



Today I did some more database working. Just fiddling with numbers and getting some ideas down for monsters, really. I also went looking for sound effects. They're a bit thin on the ground. I've said it once, and I'll say it again, it'd be great to get another pack of just sound effects. It's a resource that is sadly lacking (especially for horror genre!) but yeah... might be hard to do them without professional quality equipment, I guess. >.<;

Also worked on the map again. The trees still annoy the hell out of me but whatcha gonna do? I could do some edits, I guess, but I'm not big on leaf edits - I'm just no good at them. I might try though.

Friday, 2/28/2014

Successfully implemented dynamic leveling using Yanfly's Level scripts.  With a combination of custom events and scripts, I was able to make it so that depending on the difficulty level chosen, the enemy's levels change.  Also, with the appropriate formula, all I have to do is set a level on an enemy, and the system calculates the rest.  This will make things a lot easier, and also cut the enemies/troops by 2/3rds.

Yesterday

Well yesterday was a bloody nightmare of a day. Stupid Taxi's never showed up to take us to very important meetings made my day of commisisons, not work as planned :x I spoke to one of my commissioners but that was really about it :x



Today:

Currently working on a victory Music Event for Clord, and also gonna do a bit of work on an ambience track shortly :D also just finished all tracks relating to VXAN's ReStaff which I'm just about to release :D  

Day 26
 
Found someone making what they call "weirdbient" music and he's going to allow me to use his music + create a couple of tracks solely for the game. It's going to have a really surreal feel to it, so I hope people will be interested in it. Note: this is for the secret project, so shh don't tell anyone.
 
Refined a few pixels and stuff. I am compiling a more mainstream palette for tiles so my characters don't get sucked into them for my main project. It was either the tiles or the characters, and I figure it's better if the characters pop out not the other way around.
What I learned today: I'm becoming more confident in pixel art. It's seriously been more than a year since I've worked on it last, so I was afraid I'd have to start over, but muscle memory kicked in.
 

 
PS: Are we going up to day 30? I think somewhere in this topic people said it'd end on the 5th? Because once the 4th rolls around I plan on having a nonsensical RPG romp for a few days:

I'm still remapping, and I'll need to do some adjustments on the previous work today to fix a few things.  Still I am hopeful I can get it all together.

Made a custom window, which will need a new texture, and a custom font that seems to be acceptable.  Size will fluctuate a bit as I test it out.  

Added in the transfers for the town's edge along with the slums which are awaiting it's custom tiles.  I accidentally dozed off after the 5th hour or so mapping.

I spent so much time on remapping I neglected my fun work again, so no portraits tonight.  I am working to fix that though.

Oh Nidale, how right you are.  Although it's a lot not alot. >< 

I really need to make a custom hat and armor fragment.  Human portrait sketches tonight, and maybe I can get back to coloring in those other beast men.

I have just updated the scoresheet with the week 2 and 3 totals. I do apologize for dropping the ball on this - going back to full time work and trying to do everything I've done at home beforehand just is not happening, for some reason ...

GMD IS NOT OVER YET!!! The event ends on March 3 - a full 4 weeks. Just because February is over, doesn't mean GMD is :)

However, some AMAZING progress has been made on games this month! We've had a total of OVER 600 GAME UPDATES and I hope you're all seeing, and are proud of the results!

Who wants to do it again in March? Do you want to get straight into it asap, or have a few days off then start again on the weekend?

I'm off all next week due to furlough, so I'll have chance to rest regardless of what people decide. I'm willing to go along with what everyone wants.  Personally I am a bit burnt out, and need some down time.  I've talked with several other here about that behind the scenes.

This was great btw, I did a lot of progress, but the best thing was watching others update to encourage me and make new acquaintances.  Very fun =3

WELP. Here I was thinking that it was done :S. Luckily, I still did RM-related work today haha ><;

I'll post my update in a little bit. 

I've made significant progress on tiles, compiling what I want to use and trying to make it all mesh together. I've gotten it down to mostly one set. I may need another sheet or two to make a second exterior set, but we'll see. I emptied almost all of the resources from my project, including all RTP, and imported these newly arranged sets. I'm excited about this, as I feel I've made some definitive decisions and can move forward more quickly now.

I would post pics of my pretty compiled set, but it contains some pieces from purchased sets. I just need to get a good map up. ;)

@Shaz - I would love to do it again, it's been a great help at keeping me on a schedule and making consistent progress.  And I waffle back and forth because while I think yes, some are a little worn out from it, there are probably others who didn't get in on this round and would like to do it again soon. Also, there are so many new members that they may appreciate one soon as well. So my vote is start again in a week or two.

I could probably continue but I would appreciate a little break in between, am a little burnt out. Even though my schedule was three days a week, I probably worked everyday on my own time and ran my creativity dry at points. Today I stared at the screen in the game maker and am at a loss on what to do next, haha. One more update on Monday for me. If there was another drive, I'd need some time to scrape together a schedule and whatnot.

DAY 11 ~

I am late on posting this a bit, mostly because I didn't realize GMD wasn't over... haha, good thing though that I had nothing better to do so I was working anyway.

So today I was working on assigning Monsters onto Battle Cards working on the Colors and etc. I am going to work out a system but currently it is looking like.

Blue Cards are Rank 1

Green Cards are Rank 2

Yellow Cards are Rank 3

Purple Cards are Rank 4

Red Cards are Rank 5 (Ultimate/Legendary Creatures)

Black Cards are Rank Θ (Hero/Captain Cards)

I gotta work out the stats and find or somehow create a script but its looking like the game will act as a chessboard of sorts which will be 5x6, each player will be able to place 5 cards one of which being the Hero card, and they will be located on their respective sides. Each card will have an attack stat, and a Defense Stat, also abilities depending on the card. They will only be able to attack them horizontally and Vertically and only if they are next to the attacking card. (Otherwise an Ability is required.) The way to kill a creature is if the attack stat is greater than the defense stat. The hero will also have an attack stat and a defense stat, the goal is to destroy the other player's hero. The hero cannot move unless it is the only creature card left on that player's side.

So that was just an idea I was bouncing around for awhile not 100% on it, and in the event of a standstill where a creature and another creature are only left and they are even, I will need to implement a sort of quit feature where you will immediately leave (there will be a penalty for this however, even though it wouldn't be the player's fault, it would act as a sort of surrender option).

So yeah that is what I was working on today, tomorrow I should be able to finish some more cards, not sure if I will get to mapping but we'll see.

ALSO! I was thinking of having some sort of upgrade system where you could trade in old cards for a card of a higher rank like 4 cards of Rank 1 will give you Rank 2.

As to doing this again in March, I am afraid I don't feel up to doing this immediately, I do hope this will be here in April because by then I should be up to it again.

Okay, so we're thinking the next GMD will run from March 15 through to April 11.  We'll post a new thread where people can sign up as we get closer.

That might give us a couple of weeks' break then, and we can run another in May.

Didn't get much time today because I was working on Artoris for the last 7 hours straight or so hahaha





Day 26


* Lined and flatted a battler - that I can't show you.


My fingers hurt so much lately. egah


Also, I don't intend to slow down. I want to work a little bit each day until this is done. So I'm game for another one in March!

More scripting today!

...and that's pretty much it because I thought GMD was over >///<;

I finished up/polished a couple of script requests, and was able to get a lot done on some new functionality for a project I've been working on!

Go, Blue Team!

Day 27



Did more mapping again. Yay~

Yeah, the Coast is starting to look a bit better - more details = looking better. I think some tints will also help a lot too. ^.^;

I also did some general play-testing. Also found an issue with the menu script I'm using - it's supposed to depend on how many people are in the party but I forgot to take into account that you don't start with a full party, so instead of the typical 5-member menu, instead it showed the 1-person menu, which meant it started looking for a portrait... that didn't exist. It had me confused for a little while until I added in a fake portrait, then checked the menu and realised that it had changed. >.<; I'll have to report that to the script creator.

I'll possibly hop back in on the 15th if I can get enough results out my animating skills, otherwise it'd just be full of days "worked on getting decent at animation so I can articulate myself better" over and over. I'd be too embarrassed to share it after all xD.

Day 27

Finished one walk cycle (left/right) of both bases and decided to make them four unique frames of movement, luckily there are scripts to accommodate that. Decided for sure that the run cycle will have six so it looks fluid enough to compare with the walk. Will probably show it off sometime in the near future once I'm completely satisfied with it + finish the walk base.

Made a few Augments that will be able to be bought and/or made near the beginning of the game to help finalize for when I test out the game's battles. Still a ways to go for that, but it's cool inching ever closer even when I can't spend all day on it like I could a couple months ago with my last project.

What I learned today: A few more damage calculation tricks. They are going to be much more involved this time around, and it is the reason I picked Ace over the other makers after all!

For the first part of my double day I spent the day working on resources for exterior tiles on the town.  Particularly this waterwheel I am trying to get properly set up.  Now the town can have bread!

I also spent the time I had setting up the tile sets giving feedback to Candacius about her restaff materials. I cannot post the edit here without her permission, but we discussed a few things on my tiles as well to help one another out.

I'm currently engrossed with the INN map redo, and setting to work on a wishing well/covered well to match the INN. 

I needed to post early, since 11pm here may be the cut off for me a the storm is nearly here.  It may pass us yet.