Game Making Drive Feb 2014

I created a small cave map that the player enters from the bottom of a cliff side on the coast. It also contains the water system that the town's well above uses.



Secondly I did some more work on the first "boss" battle. No video yet since there's a bit to do. But basically the tree will sprout roots occasionally that will stop all melee and short ranged skills from hitting it. So you'll have to take down the roots itself or use long ranged attacks to keep pummeling it.

This project was freshly started yesterday actually after I confirmed a few things with the artist that will be helping me on this. It's going to be a visual novel-esque/choose your adventure type of game.  You will take the role of a college student, whom you will spend the first few bits "customizing" him by choosing his history and skills. Then after you've decided on your skill sets through a series of events and what not.... long story short, zombie apocalypse. However, there will be no typical battles in this game. It'll role more along "The Walking Dead" game style as you  make decisions and find clues to solve puzzles as you use your characters and his followers skills to help keep you alive during all of it.

Today I basically began databasing and bubble graphing out the first initial story decision branches.

ok, so today....has been a sloggggg. I feel like I've spent all day working on getting a nice little "change your class during battle" system working, and I'm so close ughh. so frustrating! last night, the boy & I brainstormed some stuff for the game, & the first idea (change weapons during battle) was super easy, so I thought I'd get this one done today too. uhhh, not so much??

first I had to work out how to have a skill call a common event (somehow I'd just never done that before!), which was fiine. then I needed to work out a way to make sure the common event knew who had called it. I ended up deciding that was probably impossible? and there are only four characters who can change their class, so I decided to just have four separate skills that each call a separate common event. so far: not hard!

then I had some troubles with getting the thing to actually show up, but I finally worked out there was a clash with a battle command script, sooo that was also fine!

and then.......troubles. characters start with one class, then slowly unlock three others (two at once, then a final "ultimate" class). and I only wanted characters to be able to swap to classes they'd unlocked (duh), so then I got to puzzle out how to work out which classes a character had unlocked. surprisingly hard, you guys! yanfly's class system, although having script commands for unlock & lock, doesn't have a conditional one for checking if a class is unlocked. I tracked down a line in the "job system" script addition I made that checked if a class was already unlocked. handy! but it was sort of inside the actor, so I wasn't sure how to access it from outside the actor class. I had a poke around this forum, and found the syntax for accessing an actor, aand...bingo! the two together totally worked, so now you can only change to classes you've unlocked!

everything was gravy - except for one thing. when the choice window pops up, the status window vanished. x__x still working on that one. but it's coming together! in between playing with scripts, I edited some classes from the brainstorming last night, and neatened up a few maps.

History:

            Imber, the land Forever Frozen. This province is by far one of the least inhabitable. An unforgiving frozen wasteland. The creatures that can withstand the conditions are as ruthless as the land is cold. Plagued by a perpetual winter, Imber has coined the title, 'Forever Frozen'. Consisting primarily of a thick shell of ice and snow, there's nearly no vegetation. Some can be found around the edges of hot springs. The lack of forests makes wood a somewhat rare commodity. As such, the inhabitants have long since simply used the land as their homes, creating structures of ice and snow with small portions of wood. During, 'The Burden' Imber  was  in a deadlock with Ustrina. Fighting simply for the sake of being deemed the most powerful, as well as the prospect of freezing over another portion of the continent and growing larger. It's said that the only thing more numb then the land of Imber, is the hearts of its inhabitants.

Weather:

            Being the icy tundra it is, Imber has very frequent snow storms. When the skies are clear it's fairly sunny all around. Though always bone chillingly cold.

Landmarks:

            Imber is known for a few of its landmarks. Such as the, 'Shard Wastes'. Its glacial drifts spreading out from the shore line. A manmade island of ice.  There is also a place where Ustrina breached their borders and sparked a fairly lengthy war. The area now referred to as, 'The Frostfire plains.' There are scattered ruins of migrants unable to endure the harsh environment and uprooting. There are also scattered hot springs across the land, varying in size.

Housing:

            Low Income - Snow Mounds

            Medium Income - Ice and Snow huts, Wooden huts (in Hot Spring areas)

            High Income - Elaborate Ice Homes with other materials mixed in.

Inhabitants:

            Imbers inhabitants have a very heartless reputation. Though the acts of few should never represent the whole; presumably due to the environment, they are very cold. What some see to be ruthless, others might deem realistic. The common traits on Imbers Inhabitants are: varying shades of blue hair and eyes, light skin, traditional tattoo's of which indicate their birth given roles. As a whole, they are not very sentimental at all. Their bodies are incredibly immune to cold temperatures, having been tempered to the environment over time. Also do to their relative lack of nerve endings in their skin, furthering their seemingly heartless facade. They are also capable of submerging into water for extensive periods.

I made a forest map. It's the newbie dungeon! I've also made the outside of the first town (Pograhden), and I think that's completed now. You see those doors? I think something's wrong with the DS door sprites, they don't fit, and so I'm using cave entrances for black bits temporarily until I figure out the problem. Anyway.

Once again I set out to work on my wayword cliff tile, but unlike the many, many other days I'd tried to fix it, this time I got somewhere! I'm still not sure I did what I set out do to, to make a dirt wall that looks eroded by water running down it's side, but it looks a lot more like dirt than my last few attempts. I even got it to match up with the other cliff top, how awesome is that?


Thanks to Archeia I got distracted doing something secret but relevant and spent some time working on that. It will be awesome and not secret very soon. I'll be working on it for the next few days.


After that I made a new cobble walkway. I'll have to revisit it soon, it doesn't work with the other tiles as well as I'd like.

Here's an example of what I finished today.

into:



It's supposed to have clutter, cracks and disorganized, so don't worry! Looking at it now, I think there's a few other things I could change again. I'm still not sure about it, but I'm not confident about much with the game yet. I'll get there!

Edits mostly based on tiles by PV Games and Rainbow Jello.



(Not an actual map, just a random thrown together assortment of all the edits I've done today.)