Sunday, August 14, 2016

The dungeon is done!

As I mentioned before, the dungeon in my RPG Maker game was almost done, so it's no surprise I finally wrapped it up. I did some basic testing along the way, and everything seems to work as intended. This kind of game is harder to check, though, so I'll have to rely on testers (and afterward, players) in order to find all the issues (I am sure you have run into RPG Maker that have passable or impassable tiles for apparently no good reason, and that's at least partly due to how it works, it's easy to forget setting the rules for a new tileset, or to change them if you had to swap some graphics). I think I am very close to ready to show it to a few people I trust, although I want just a little bit more content and polish before I let people take an "official" look at the game.

In the meantime, I have been working on the presentation of the game, trying to figure out how certain systems work, in order to customize them. For example, I added some info to the menu, which is specific for my game, so now not only you see how much gold you have when you open the menu, but you also get day, month, year and moon phase (I have a small icon which tracks the various moon phases, so it's easy to grasp at a glance). Since time will play a reasonably important role, I feel like having it easily accessible was necessary. Another addition is a "personal info" page for the protagonist. Right now it lists some basic stuff, like breast size, tattoos and piercings (maybe I should add those to the game, since I was talking about more content XD), as well as some extra stats. I had converted agility, luck and magical defense to intelligence, willpower and inhibitions, but using stats for checks in the game is actually a bothersome thing, so I switched to using variables. This method creates other issues (now I need a parallel process to run in the background, since the game doesn't allow to set limits for variables, and I need them to stay between 0-100), but on the day to day stuff it allows for much smoother work. It also frees stats to be used in combat again, which might be needed.

Anyway, I'd say overall the systems I have in place are where I want them to be, so it's just a matter of adding content now. Combat is still underdeveloped, but so far there aren't many fights in the game anyway, so what's there should be enough.

On a side note, I would say that animations and cutscenes are as annoying as picture hunting in RAGS: they can take a lot of time, and will never be as good as you wished for.

I hope I am not forgetting anything (although there are less worries, since no game in development is currently out :p), but if I did, let me know. As always, see you next week! ^_^

3 comments:

  1. Sounds great MDQP. I'm sure the reason for no comments is because we are all breathless with anticipation or busy with the content available in TOTDC.

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    1. Or it's because we're great fans of Mdqp and we don't *want* to "bitch and moan about game engines". ;) Lol. Or y'know, it could be just what you said too. It's probably that, haha! ;D Keep up the good work, mdqp!

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    2. Well, it's a natural lull after a final release, as well as having nothing tangible for the new game, but hopefully things will change soon. :D

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