yui

Dev Update #7: The Prologue(s) (Again), Getting to Know Your Party, and Also the Tutorial

Very productive week means big post!

In the days since my last post, I've done a lot of work on the very beginning of the game. More specifically, I've...

1. Created a playable tutorial that gives you varying amounts of guidance depending on your familiarity with this type of game, which explains things like the ATB system and boss phases
2. Gave everyone some flavor text you'll be able to see in the Status menu
3. Confirmed that everybody's intro isn't going to drop them into the middle of the ocean where they'll be trapped for eternity
4. Rewritten the story blurbs for each character's intro (compare Avend's bit in this pic to Dev Update #5 from about this time last month) since some info got changed and quite frankly the old blurbs weren't that great anyway
5. Given all four islands placeholder names
6. Gotten rid of the day/night cycle since it was proving to be too much of a pain to deal with this early in development (and temporarily disabled the lighting plugin that was running it too, for good measure)
7. Made treasure chests a bit cooler using a neat little plugin I found in MV's dlc folder
8. Created the lobby for the Clock Tower (name pending), as well as the common room you can see in the bottom-right of the above pic

I'd like to talk about the tutorial and tower lobby in particular for this post, since the latter is also something of a proof of concept I want to do in other spots in the game.

Starting with the tutorial for pacing's sake, what I've done is basically boil a proper dungeon in this game down to its simplest form. One puzzle that you'd have to REALLY try to not do right, one locked door with a nearby key that leads to one easy encounter, and a very simple boss fight, all the while the game will give you various amounts of info based on how familiar you said you are with these kinds of games. This way, RPG veterans can blaze through the tutorial and only be notified of system things like ATB and the way the Boss Key works, while somebody who's never played an RPG before can be given more guidance on what's going to be expected of them in the future. I've also included an option to exit the tutorial at the start if you opted into it by accident.

As for the tower lobby and the common room, this is a bit more complex.

The tower has 100 floors in total, and you're obviously not expected to do them all in one go. Instead, you do them in sets of 5. Currently, the plan for gameplay is like this: For each set of 5 floors, the first 4 are standard dungeon-delving fare, while the 5th is a boss fight. After beating the boss, you're returned to the lobby, and the game starts to evolve based on how many floors you've done. Ironically, the first five floors might end up being the hardest ones for certain characters (namely Mavie), since I plan for you to be unable to recruit new party members until clearing Floor 5. As you climb up to higher floors, other changes like new items in shops and the ability to gain new quests will unlock, which is all kept track of with a single variable.

Let's go back to the database!

Or, in this case, the variables window, which isn't part of the database for some reason?

These first two variables are what matters for the sake of this post. When you clear a set of floors, Variable 2 "Progression Tier" will go up by 1. This will basically be like a little counter that tells the game things like what things shopkeeps will keep in stock or who will have quests for you. The Clock Tower itself will also gain new features and functionalities as you progress, maybe, if it's not a pain to implement. One feature I considered for example, is a boss rematch system that lets you fight previously-defeated tower bosses again for... something, dunno what yet. Maybe just for fun?

That "Main Character" variable, however, is the most most important variable, which is why it's #1. Basically, when you pick a character at the start of the game, that character's Actor ID gets put into that variable for the rest of the game. This lets me do a lot of clever things with conditional branches. For example, Merudy is revered by beastmen as a sort of legend-to-be, so if she's your main character, beastmen might be nicer to you, perhaps even giving you discounts at shops or handing you quests you could only get if she's the main character! On the flipside, Pupa is a one-of-a-kind living puppet, so various NPCs might react differently to it than they would a human (or beastman) adventurer.

This variable also comes into play in the common room, which I can finally talk about. Everything I'm about to say also will apply to inn rooms unless otherwise specified, but I haven't made any inns yet.

So basically, as you recruit new party members, they'll start to appear in this common room. Here, you can interact with the party, see what they think of each other, you, your quest, this swanky room in the Clock Tower, all that jazz. But more importantly, this is how you'll unlock and turn in quests related to each character. Each character has their own story, after all, and while there can only be one MAIN character per save file, you can still choose to do everyone else's stories too, possibly with some modifications I don't know yet I'm not thinking about character quests just yet. Plus, completing someone's questline just might grant them a shiny new ultimate skill!

As for where the "Main Character" variable plays into this, it's got to do with needing to put everyone in one room. Basically, how this works is while you're in the common room, the sprites of party members following you around in classic RPG fashion get disabled, and each playable character has an interactable event in the common room that represents them. You can see all eight of them here.

Now, it would be weird if you walked in here and there were seven strangers you haven't even recruited yet. Luckily, RPG Maker MV lets us set having a certain character in the party as a condition for the event to even go active. You won't see Avend in this room until you've recruited him, for example. Now, let's say you're playing with Sakura as your main character. You get to the tower, go to check out the common room, and...

There's two Sakuras! That's not right.

This is where the variable comes into play. RPG Maker lets us give events multiple "pages" that can have various conditions for being active, and it will always have an event operate on the last page that currently meets its requirements. So if I put a blank event page in with its requirement being that the "Main Character" variable is the actor ID of your main character, there won't be an event, only one Sakura will exist, and we avoid a horrible time paradox situation! That said, there's one little problem that I didn't actually notice until I was typing this very paragraph.

Rather than just getting to say "If variable equals this, load this page," RPG Maker is hard-coded that the variable condition for event pages must be "greater than or equal to". I didn't notice this problem at first because I was spawning myself directly into the tower lobby, so character creation never adjusted my Main Character variable, and when I adjusted it myself in the debug menu to test my initial fix to the Sakura Paradox, I only set it to 1 since I had Carol in my first party slot so it was the fastest and easiest way to test the concept. Basically, this is a problem for one simple yet hilarious reason.

The way this all works together, anyone who has a lower actor ID than your main character just won't appear with the current system. The worst-case scenario would be you're playing as Mavie, who has the highest actor ID (8), now nobody is there except you.

This isn't a particularly difficult thing to fix - I could easily put things back in order with just a few minutes' time tomorrow in a couple different ways - but it is a funny situation and a good example of how easily things can get weird in game development.

Dev Update #6: The Prologue(s)

It is nearly four in the morning as I type this and I just want to go to bed but...

All eight character intros are complete and most of them are in a state that I'm either pleased with or content enough that I'm willing to leave it be for now (Avend's needs some patching up). This was not an easy first step, thanks in no small part to trying to get Aran's power level in line with the other characters, Xun's and Avend's intro bosses being nothing but development nightmares from the word "go", and having to redo the world map halfway in as detailed in the previous post. I still haven't ensured everyone's being dropped off where they're supposed to after their respective intros. With this difficult first step tackled, I'm going to do something that should IN THEORY be easy before tackling the writing nightmare that is finding a way to get everyone their own means of reaching the floating island in the middle of the map to access the tower. Some - namely Sakura and Aran - are pretty easy to work out, but characters like Mavie, Carol, and especially Pupa might be a bit of a headache here.

Before worrying about that, however, I want to knock out the tutorial. This should be a one-size-fits-all tutorial that covers the basic mechanics of the game. Namely...

• The controls, at the risk of seeming obnoxious
• General playstyle tips for each of the eight playable characters (you'll only get the tips for whoever you pick at character select)
• The basics of the ATB battle system, and the way this affects things like buffs and the action economy
• The knowledge that different elements behave differently in combat
• Dungeons - more specifically getting keys to progress & reach the boss - and chests
• Boss fights usually having multiple phases and some scripted actions that trigger independant of the action bar
• Some boss battles having special actions exclusive to that fight

Ironically, the tutorial boss will probably be more complex than the intro dungeon bosses as a result of those last two.

Once the tutorial is settled, I'll need to get everyone their own methods of getting up to the tower (not a programming nightmare, at least), add in whatever towns and villages are necessary to that task, then do the first few floors of the tower. Once these tasks are all complete, I'll be satisfied enough to post something playable. For now, I can breathe something of a sigh of relief that, in theory, I'm making good progress toward a 0.1 version.

Everything was going more or less to whatever semblance of a plan Abby had. The lance armor had turned its attention to Abby, and was getting ready to thrust at her. To be honest, she hadn't figured out what to do once she was impaled, but she knew it was better her than Marshall. So, prepared to face the attack head-on, Abby braced herself for impact...

Only for Marshall to do something incredibly stupid!

"Are you stupid!?" Abby barked as her partner charged into the now-spearless armor, receiving a pugilistic pummeling for her efforts. Marshall was soon after rendered down for good. Either she was dead, or she probably wished she was. This sort of thing was something Abby had prepared to be met with even in her previous life - she did want to be a doctor, after all - but she wasn't expecting it to happen quite like this. Least of all by someone recklessly charging in time and again against a singular foe. But unless Abby wanted to join her in the afterlife (after-afterlife?), she didn't have time to freak out over that. It was now 1-on-1 against a foe meant for two, and the armor demanded Abby's full attention.

As did the spear. While she had to admit she hadn't expected it to be thrown at her in such a manner, the how and why of it didn't matter. The spear was there, and Abby needed it to not be inside her body. And so, as the spear approached, she brought from the side her hammer to meet it mid-flight, swinging at the projectile weapon. And the attempt to deflect it did work, somewhat. The force behind the spear was a bit more than Abby had suspected, and while she wasn't able to fully rid herself of it, she was able to send it off-course enough that the spear found itself lodged in her waist rather than piercing through her heart. That was definitely a preferable outcome, though the electricity surging through her body did briefly cause her muscles to seize up. Marshall's sacrifice was something of a blessing in this moment, since the armor being occupied killing her meant it didn't have time to move in on the briefly-stunned Abby. And she was certain this time that "killed" was the right word, for Marshall's spear even disappeared from the field of battle. This mortal distraction gave Abby a brief moment to cast a quick Cure on herself, but at what cost?

The other spear, meanwhile, turned back into water, rushing back to its owner's side. So that's your game.

If the armor was smart, it would turn this into a war of attrition. Keep throwing the spear until Abby is worn out, then finish her off from there. Abby couldn't have that. Even if "run at the opponent" wasn't the best strategy by any measure, it was what she'd have to do in this moment. She could play the rest by ear, with one particular endgoal in mind. As she began her approach, the armor threw its spear once more, though without the additional windup and crackling electricity this time. Perhaps this time a good swing would deflect the spear in its entirety? Much to her relief, it was! As the hammer and spear collided, the latter was sent off to the side, clattering uselessly against the floor.

Well now!

it's new guilty gear character day and you know what that means

Dev Update #5.5: Some Early Polish (and a new world map)

An update significant enough to warrant a post, but not enough so to count as a dev update #6. In the week or so since the last post, I've finished the intros for Carol, Aran, and Merudy, and am currently working on Sakura's. Additionally, while working on that and trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing with Xun's intro, I've taken care of a few loose ends that I wanted to get out of the way and addressed a few things that were starting to bug me.

Little things first, I've been adjusting some numbers like EXP gained in the intro dungeons, fixing enemy stats in said intro dungeons, tweaking MP costs (everything costs more MP now), buffing Avend's speed because he was too slow, and adding a cooldown system to some skills for the sole purpose of nerfing Aran because he was too powerful (his signature Low Sweep is currently the only skill with a cooldown). And then there's some bigger stuff that happened.

We've got lighting! (in this specific intro; i still need to implement it into the others)

This is not a yanfly plugin (for once) but rather the Community Lighting plugin made by a handful of people. This plugin also implements a day-night cycle in the overworld, which I do plan to do things with. Thing is... the world map I showed off a couple posts back uses a parallax background, which tl/dr means there's a nice jpeg filling up what would otherwise be a black void. Now, MV has no satisfying method - be it in-engine or through plugins - to smoothly transition between parallaxes, meaning I can't fade out the nice blue sky for a starry night sky during the night hours, meaning things just look weird. So, between that, some worldbuilding I didn't expect, and realizing the desert island really is kinda shit, I had to basically redo the entire world map.

I really wanted my floating islands world, but I was effectively forced to choose between that and the day/night cycle, and given how time is starting to become a recurring theme in this game, between the MacGuffin in the tower and the pseudo-realtime combat provided by the ATB system, I elected to keep the latter. Did I mention that the new world map means I need to re-check every character intro (so far) and fix not only where it spawns them into the overworld, but also how the screen scrolls to show the tower at the start? Because it does. I don't even know if some characters (Mavie and Merudy especially) will be able to be on-screen at the same time as the tower for these intros anymore. All this because I insisted on a proper day/night cycle instead of my original plan which was to have the day switch between day/sunset/night after certain actions like clearing a dungeon or turning in a significant quest.

Luckily, the checklist of things I want to do before considering this playable enough to share with people is getting more and more complete. Presently, the goals are...

1. Finish all character intros (6/8)
2. Implement the first 5 floors of the tower (0/5)
3. Add at least one playable town to each island (though realistically it'll have to be at least two each) (0/4)

The start of the fight had gone about as well as Abby could realistically hope for. In an unrealistic super-perfect scenario, Marshall would get a good stab in at the suit of armor without sustaining any injuries herself, but this was reality, even if Abby was still getting used to the fact. Marshall did indeed get a very good stab in, but in the process, the armor was able to retaliate with an attack of its own. At the very least, it seemed Marshall wasn't dead, so there was relief to be found there.

“...I’m going to try and keep it focused on me. Strike when you see an opening. Objections?”

"None. Don't be afraid to fall back for a bit if you need some quick healing, but keep in mind I'm not a miracle worker."

“...I know. Just stay behind me until we clash.”

What followed was a tension Abby would have likened to a standoff in a cowboy film, if she were more of a spectator and less an active participant in this fight. Once the construct started forward, so did Marshall, in another trade of stabs. This time, however, Marshall had physical backup, in the form of a small woman with a big hammer closing in on the lance-wielders as fast as her legs would carry her, hammer at the ready. Once Abby was in swinging range, she did exactly that, taking a big swing right at the big hunk of steel and water in front of her.

As she did so, however, Abby soon realized that this thing may have been a bit faster than she gave credit for. Fast enough to react to the follow-up, at least, removing its lance from Marshall and falling back in a bid to escape the tiny juggernaut. While it was able to avoid the brunt of the attack, thankfully it wasn't so fast as to escape the situation entirely, being met with a swing of the hammer into its side. And so, Abby turned her attention back to Marshall for a moment. Still standing, but stabbed twice. This was far from ideal.

"Maybe let me take one?" she suggested. "So you don't get yourself killed or something?"

I've been meaning to post this update for a few days. As you can see, I did not until just now.

Dev Update #5: Let's Start At The Beginning

Because this game features eight playable characters, each with their own motivations and backstories, it makes sense that each one should have a different intro in the game. Currently, the progress on these is as follows:

Carol: Near completion, but I'm not certain if I like the current angle I went with yet. Will probably use this intro for a "0.1" release and see what people think of it.
Sakura: Not started
Avend: Complete
Xun: Not started
Aran: The concept is set, but I haven't done any work on it
Merudy: Currently in ideation
Pupa: Tentatively complete, might make tweaks later on
Mavie: Complete

I'd say that puts me at about... 47% completion for the intros. With each character getting their own unique mini-dungeon for their intros, and a short blurb of story before that, I should have been at least halfway done by now, but getting these right will be one of the greatest hurdles in development. After that point, everybody's trying to climb up the same tower, so I can do one dungeon for eight characters instead of eight dungeons for one character each.

I've also done some system work, namely in the form of your main character of choice changing the color of the system windows. I've also traded out the general descriptions in character select as seen in the previous update for a more direct assessment of strengths & weaknesses, as seen with Carol in this one. Currently, the plan is to finish the intros then figure out how many floors of the tower I want players to tackle at a time. Once all the intros and the first set of floors is done, I'll consider that enough content to finally show off something that people can actually play.

The Threshold. Aptly named, for it was a sort of barrier separating formidable foes from the rest of the world. A threshold, even, that meant you'd have to fight a powerful enemy once you crossed it. As the group crossed this one in particular, they were met with two enemies, as promised. Two armored figures, identical save for the weapons in their hands. One wielded an axe, the other a spear. The plan more or less lined up with Abby's suggestion from earlier; the party splits up, with two fighting each enemy. It seemed the axe-wielder would be dealt with by Gene and Sabrina, which left the lance-user for Abby and Marshall.

As much as she wanted to keep an eye on the other pair as well, this was supposed to be a powerful enemy, which meant giving the lancer her undivided attention. Abby made her way over to Marshall's side, joining in the slow and deliberate approach toward their shared target. "You got a plan for this guy or are we playing it by ear?" she asked.

"Well," Marshall murmured, eyes briefly drifting towards Sabrina's antics, before returning to their own foe. "If you trust me to do so, I was going to try and keep him focused on me using my speed and relatively equivalent range; so that you could get in and..." she'd trail off, not feeling as if she needed to voice the idea of 'smash-a him with a hammer'.

"Sounds good to me. I'm right behind you." Abby reached her swinging arm out to the side, calling upon her trusty smashing hammer. Meanwhile, her other hand tensed up, preparing to do that overcharge thing she'd learned about in the previous trial. "Once you start running, I'm going to try pulling him toward us, so be ready for that."

"Roger," she'd reply briefly; moving from her leisurely pace, to a full sprint towards the enemy. She focused herself, for a moment, as she tightened her grip on her lance and felt the telltale feeling of energy falling under her command as she ran; lowering the spear in front of her as she overcharged 'Full-Steam-Ahead' with a heavy thrust of the lance; doing her best to try and get the maximum amount of power and value out of it and Abby's pull both; and to try and catch her opponent at least a little off guard, if she couldn't wait to see what they were capable of before engaging.

As soon as Marshall made her move, Abby took it as her cue to do the same. As Marshall charged forward, Abby pulled back, calling upon an inward blast of wind that pulled on the armored foe. Not enough to bring it all the way over, but certainly enough to get it off-balance and a bit closer to the girls, giving Marshall a perfect opening to land a direct hit on the enemy. With a solid opening hit, Abby took the moment to close some more distance on foot while the getting was good.

1. Takumi
2. Hector
3. Gatekeeper
4. Female Byleth
5. Robin
6. Roy
7. Tharja
8. Mustafa

With the two levers pulled, the Exalted had - by River's acocut - completed the test and proven themselves worthy of the combat trial.

"Do you think....coming here made us smarter too?"

"M-Maybe..."

"I think it's less that and more we have more heads on the puzzle," Abby suggested.

Whatever the reason for their success may have been, it was regardless time to go check out that combat trial. As the team went back the way they came, and through the door that was now open to them, there were more murals on the walls. More history, it seemed. It was never Abby's strongest subject, even with modern learning resources, let alone picture murals and oral tradition. She'd be lying if she said a lot of this wasn't just going over her head, but by the sound of it, the people of this world used to be regular humans too?

If the people back home heard of this, they'd surely feel ripped off. She could already hear some degenerate bemoaning the very mundane state of that world, saying something like "Why couldn't our world be blessed with catgirls?"

Abby, for one, didn't really care for that kind of sentiment. Cat-ear headbands existed, and she'd even worn one before; it was important to settle for what was possible with this sort of thing.

Speaking of what was possible, while she didn't doubt her chances in this combat trial to come, it would definitely be beneficial to know more about it.

"So, is it just one big enemy in there, or are we dealing with a bunch of smaller guys, or... what's the deal? If you're allowed to tell."

"Oh, why yes, I am able to speak about it. Though, the specifics of your opponents' capabilities are unknown to me, I am aware that there are two be two of them. As for their strength I believe them to be about the height of Gene, though they are certainly more fearsome then any of the Drengr you have fought thus far."

"Hear that, folks? Two on four. I say we try to keep them split up."