IGMC and November Goals and Progress Thread

I just love how lively this thread is this month. <3

My progress this week:

• Ned has been getting way too many breaks since my time management and ability to focus have been abysmal this week. Today, I tried a few exploration sketches (expressions, mostly), but I didn't manage to get any face to look like him. Seems like I need another portrait drawing phase before I'm good at drawing faces again Dx

Next week gets a special goal: Get my brain together and draw some heads.

Small update here:

-Been continuing work on The Book of Shadows. Added mouse support to the game. Found a bug with that script and fullscreen++ though that may require me to choose one or the other in the end. And with my resolution choice fullscreen++ gives me almost no benefit I can tell you which one will be axed if it comes to it, and it's not the mouse support.
-Updated loot tables to about the 25% point of Chapter 9.
-Started adding a Story Recap option. Right now its an option in the main menu, though it doesn't do much. The hope is to set it up to sum up the story in 3 minutes or less for those who haven't played in a while.
-Started work on maps for the player to have in game so as to avoid the whole "I'm lost in this big town". Currently got a functioning one for Elmwood. However, in the process to make it work well I had to bind the map image as a parallax, which means all map images are going to have to be the resolution size. Looks like due to that I'll be stuck with the 4:3 resolution as there's no way I can stretch the town maps to 16:9 without them looking terribly stretched in the width, especially as some of them have to be stretched 25% already just to fit in the first place.

Map in spoilers if you wish to see the first draft of it for Elmwood. Green dot is the player, white sparkle is your objective if it applies:


Main focus is still on the loot tables though, so the rest is moving slowly as I work on it when I get tired of looking at tables all day. May have fixes to the rest with time, we'll see.

As for the IGMC I'm probably sitting it out. Works already slowing me down badly and I think the last thing I need is another project in progress right now, especially with another textbook to try to release soon too if possible. I might do AcWrMo instead though (it's NaNoWriMo for academic work, same idea but you work on a textbook, paper for publication, or anything academic instead).

Update 7

Week 1 complete! And I think I’ve done very well.

The entire first dungeon is complete, play-tested, databased and everything. The only thing I have left to do is mess about with lighting overlays, but those will be saved for last, I want to get the rest of the game done and working first! Unfortunately it only takes about 15-20 mins to complete! Lol. But that’s ok, the rest of the story should beef it out a bit.

I don’t have a lot to tell you today, most of my day was spent playtesting, and trying to figure out where I was going wrong that my enemies weren’t doing any damage! But that’s all sorted now.



My goals for next week are to get the Kings Castle done and dusted to the same level as the Witchfinders Keep.

Third week will be spent deciding if I’m going to add a different starting area, or some additional maps. We’ll see how that goes. But if the two maps I’m doing now will take me up to an hour gameplay I’ll leave it at that, but we’ll see.

Me and @P_Kun are working together for this year's game jam :)
Working on the first maps! We're making a project with hand drawn maps this year :)


Walking cycle of a character for the game:

I'm almost done with the opening cutscene. Also more sprite editing. I have some enemies now. Whoo. (Like, 3 with very minor differences, and no battle sprites yet, but still.)

Today was a day of hard work and disappointment... :kaosigh:

Created today:

• Basic walls and roof tiles
• MC's house decorative tiles
• Windowskin
• MC's bust expressions
• SP's bust and bust expressions
• Balloon Icons
• Finish of opening cutscene scene 1

Basically the assets and dialogue that I added didn't meet up to the standards of the previous assets. The art had more issues with color and dialogue was boring and cut off from the rest of the conversation. I did complete a lot more than the other days and so I've decided to move on and fix the issues (at least with the art) some later time so I can focus on getting a playable demo as soon as possible.
I know I haven't shown any art or screenshots yet, but I am planning to as soon as I have all the assets to get the game looking more as planned first! :kaoblush:

Our main November goal is to plan for our next coming project and address any bugs and issues from our first game Stitched. Still have yet to start on either :aswt:

Today, me and @Creative Ed are testing our hand-drawn maps!
Hope you guys like it as much as we do!

Well I am starting my second week of production hectically.
I work between my big computer and my almost 10 year old laptop. I was stupid and left my software running, went to work for 4 hours and then came home to a blue screened message. I got to say some serious panic was setting in for a few minutes while I waited for my laptop to reboot. O_O However, everything seems to be ok for right now. (p.s. Clip Studio Pro is amazing. Despite rebooting all my files I was working on still up when I go to open software! I think its because it does some sort of cloud saving. This is quickly becoming my favorite drawing software I've ever bought!!! Used to only have it on my big computer, but I put it on my laptop at the start of the contest to make it easier for me to work)

Over the weekend spent some time doing art and I now have a much clearier vision of my game. Now that I got a good feel for my story and direction, so I can kick things into high gear. May try to make an in development thread for my game.
My game is going to be called "Mischief Mischief", its starting to become less of a horror game and more of a puzzle adventure with a spooky/ comical theme.
I am having trouble working between computers right now because they're color setting are so different from each other its hard for me to tell what stuff looks like to other people. Everything on my laptop really dull.

This is all I can show right now. This is my Michievous Kiosk (uses shop procssing) and my bird (acts as saving)
I don't have a name for the bird yet. He is based off a love bird (non talking bird), but he can talk, it will be pointed out. You will see these two items all through out the game. Right now trying to figure out a way to spice up the shop menu, I need to find a good plugin.

I used the ATM as a base for my Kiosk and a stool as the base of my bird stand.

@P_Kun and @Creative Ed Those look so nice! Are those in a RPG Maker? The floor's texture is lovely, feels very natural.
@Paladin-Cleric of Awesome It's looking really good.
Everyone's stuff is coming along so nicely ^-^

@animesock52 Thanks! :) Yep, with some parallax mapping we got it working :)
that pixel art is looking slick!

@animesock52 Thanks!
@Creative Ed your map looks awesome, wish I was so creative!
@Jesse - PVGames your maps look so awesome! so jealous! lol. nice work!

Update 8
My update today is very small, and severly lacking in any progress. But I restarted work after two months off because of my knee and I am completely knackered! Up from 6.30am, and finally home at 5.30. So tired! I aso realised that if the game is going to work I'm going to have to add in further maps to get from the Witchfinders Keep to the castle.

So I'm trying to decide what maps to do t link the two locations. So the Castle has been pushed to next week. dang it!

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be less tired and able to giv you all a proper update!

Not really much today but I did manage to line and flat color Sorcha's image. Also decided to make the twins brunettes as opposed to blondes. And now it's an early bed time for me I think.

Remember how I said I was almost done with the opening cutscene? I decided to make it loger. Now I'm almost done with it... Also I made a forest map. The FSM Cave and Forest like, background trees with the shadows are really hard to map with so this took ages.
(the map is 4 times the size of the screenshot. so... lot's of trees. and in fact I can see an error in the shadows right now... i don't think i can fix it either. MV has too few layers.)

Finished drawing the character busts now I have to work on making different faces and a title screen. Then I'll work on making the sprites for the characters. Interesting to see how much I've grown over a year.

These were my characters a year ago

Characters I drew now.

I took out the character fog mainly because I do not think I will even reach his appearance in the game within the time limit. So for now I guess I will keep him out and be more realistic. I still have to work on the creatures and sprites accompanying them. Sad news is that I won't have a full day to work on this anymore. My 2 days off due to my sickness is over so now its only 1 hour a day. :kaodes:

Update # 1 for November:

I took the weekend off to play some Civilization VI, as I honestly haven't taken much time to play any games recently. But I still managed to put some time into creating my improved Dungeon & Field map Templates for various monsters & rebalancing them to correspond with how I rebalanced the character's parameters.

So for this week I am just going to keep working along those lines, so that with any luck by the end of the month I'll have all of my monster & demi humans rebalanced, improved specs, with improved templates to deploy to field maps. As well as improved tactical events for the troops to hopefully make them smarter.

Obviously, I also need to do the same for NPC races like Humans & Elves, but I haven't come to an ultimate decision about the severity of potential inter-faction conflicts, since I decided to replace my planned "Thieves guild" faction with something more akin to a "Bounty Hunter" faction. Largely, because I decided to put developing the "crime system" off until the sequel.

So all of my player joinable factions are now for lack of a better "upstanding", but that doesn't necessarily mean they can't come into conflict with each other. However, I need to think carefully about how to implement the consequences of those potential conflicts, & just how severe those consequences are.


Item 1) Ignore IGMC.:troll: COMPLETED.

Item 2) Continue with rebalance of Enemy parameter curves in accordance with new player character parameter growth system. W.I.P.

Item 3) Create more enemy specific skills to add greater tactical variety between enemy types. W.I.P.

Item 4) Creation of skill integrated & Troop based AI common events, for enhanced tactical operations by enemy warbands.

Item 5) Create both Field Map & Dungeon variants of improved visual encounter templates. W.I.P.

Item 6) Assign corresponding battlebacks via region ID to all field maps.

Item 7) Assign Field & battle BGMs to all field maps.

Item 8) Further develop IP lore pages, on various topics.

Finally got the titlescreen looking the way I want (for the most part; I'd like to have a credit option, but I'm thinking of having a video for that so I'd have to look into how to code that) I also decided to change the opening. It might make the whole thing a little longer (and it's certainly more complicated than what I originally planned) but it makes a bit more sense with the characters.
It's been a bit slow going at the moment (mostly due to still somewhat messing around to get certain things working) but once I get a bit more of the story in it'll probably go much faster.

Didn't get to sit down and add anything to the game today, but did get some ideas and planning going.

Added overall goals:

• Do practice dialogue between characters to get to know them better
• Plan a script more specifically (including important dialogue points and gameplay)
• Start work on basic battle system (on map enemies, in battle mechanics)
• Write down important pillars and themes

Hopefully I'll have time to add more to the project tomorrow!

@animesock52 Thank you! Love your pixelart man! :)

Starting with a bit of feedback:
@Elissiaro I really like your sprites and busts and the maps look very nice too.
@Paladin-Cleric of Awesome It's tough to combine work with this contest, but you have a considerable headstart already. As long as you plan, you'll be able to make it, I'm sure :)
@animesocks52 The tiles look great and your concept sounds like a lot of fun. I'll definitely try it out, when you're done.
@Guardinthena I might be a bit late, but regarding your art dilemma, I suggest you go with the RTP for now, until the prototype is done. If you happen to have enough time over, you can still draw them in your own style.

So I was too tired after my weekend trip to post my progress and I was too drained to do it the next day, so I’m only posting now. The following is my progress from last Friday to Monday.

Daily goals I did (Friday to Monday):

• Decide on the plot & theme/setting
  • Plot’s pretty simple: If you survive five days of work, you’re permanently hired.
  • The theme is Sleeping beauty’s Anniversary/Festival. So the customers you’ll see will have a connection to that.

• Work on personalities/background MCs
• Work on types of customers

• Design all 5 levels (who comes when, etc.)
• Come up with all the scenes (intro, in-between levels and ending(s))
• Decide on what goals to meet each level
• Change the balloon image for cab
  • It’s the XP RTP fairy now.
• Make sprites for the MCs

Goals I missed/scrapped:

• Write all the dialogue – MISSED/POSTPONED
  • We were home a lot later from our weekend trip than I had anticipated. I didn’t feel like writing the next day and since I know the general gist of what happens in every scene, I’ve decided to postpone it and wing it when I start eventing the cutscenes.
• Make faces for the MCs – SCRAPPED/OPTIONAL
  • I’m not a big fan of the way the generator faces look. (I might try to frankenedit some of the default faces, but only if I have enough time.) Instead, I’ll go for a comic-book style windows, so you know who’s talking.
• Finish the Day 1/tutorial level – POSTPONED
  • I was too drained to do this yesterday. So hoping to get this done tonight when I get home from work.

So...

First of all, I achieved my real life goals! I got an internship i needed for university, it is an amazing company, it is paid, it s interesting and if nothing changes it will stay amazing! Downside is of course, that I am barely at home and will have trouble with the advent calendar timing (either I post before wórk or after... I don't know yet) and will have to make smaller content that year.

For the advent calendar, I am now at
7 finished days
and
3 started days.

There is still plenty of time, but I am worried I can't finish in time because of rl :/ Actually I wanted the calendar to be finished at the end of November so I just need to post daily. Well... I'll see what I can do.