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[Tumetsu]

PLAY TEST RELEASED! (OLD)

For the Medicine! is my current Flash game which has been in development this summer. I aim to finish it at the beginning of September, but that may be a little optimistic.

In game player plays as a young girl from assassin/fighter family who sets on journey through world to gather medicine for her sick grandma who lives somewhere godforsaken cottage. Game's style is something along Mother series with strange enemies, storyline and items.

Gameplay
Gameplay consists a map where player sees different places represented as cards. By them player can engage in battle with monster. Player has to build deck from cards she picks from the enemies, buys from stores to fight against enemies. Battle-system is rather simple:
In player's turn, she first plays 3 cards from her hand. This is called "Increase phase". These cards increase CP bar by the amount which is marked as green to the cards. After these cards player moves into "Decrease phase" when each used card consumes CP by the amount marked in cards with red. Player's turn ends when she can't play any cards or her card picking time ends. Some cards are only usable in either phases. You can think Cp as a mana and decrease phase's cards as special attacks from other games, except in this case any card can act using this value.
After player's turn ends, enemy starts his turn. He takes attacking posture. Now player has some seconds time to pick defensive card which naturally decreases damage taken from enemy attack. This is repeated few times until enemy's turn ends. Some cards are only usable on defensive mode or attack mode.

Gist of the game is to collect different cards and build decks powerful against enemies which each is unique with their own stats, weaknesses and decks. I try to make game concentrate on deck building, not grinding of stats, though stats are along for players who might prefer grinding levels more than optimizing their deck. But if you design your deck well, you shouldn't grind other than maybe collect few cards here and there.

Finally here is some screenshots:



And here you can glimpse the first part of the world Don't care the red crosses or numbers. They are meant for my teammate so that we can discuss easily about levels

Some of the graphics are more or less temporary, like black transparent boxes

[Tumetsu]

Day 66 - 5.8.2011
This day was like day before was dedicated for coding textboxes required to show some dialogue. I ended with rather simple one, which shows text and speech-bubble "tail" to the speaker. Textbox can read it's text from XML-file which should make it easy to write dialogues. I also released version of them without speech bubble tails here for Flashpunk:
http://flashpunk.net/forums/index.php?topic=2779.msg19466#new

Textboxes are now ready except I have to polish their graphics. Right now they aren't blended in the rest of the graphics properly. They will probably got similar paper-like look like the rest of the game's menus once I got around to do it.

I also made easy rather global system which allows any entity to pause all other entitys in world. This was made for textboxes but will be usable with transitions too.

Today, I intend to start coding simple tutorial fight which shows the ropes of the game. After that I guess I'll tweak existing enemies, add some cards and then first playtesting phase is ready to be done. Anyone willing to help with that?

[Tumetsu]

Day 67 - 6.8.2011
Today I made simple fade in and fade out transitions between map and fight and other menus. I also almost finished the tutorial thing. It still needs some tweaking and couple more dialogues but it's roughly done now. I should add a feature to textboxes which let them be shown on up edge of the screen so that tutorial boxes don't cover cards in bottom of the screen. Another thing is that tutorial text got rather long even though the actual system is rather simple. Looks like I tend to write long texts I probably need to revisit it later but I think it will do it's job for now to instruct first playtesters.

[Tumetsu]

Day 68 - 7.8.2011
Today I added some features to textboxes, like ability to show them on upper edge of the screen which helps in tutorial. I also made some tweaks for tutorial. It is by no meass ready yet, too text heavy and all, but it serves it's purpose for now.

Yesterday my enemy designer noticed me that he has to withdraw from the project until September. This is slightly bad news since it means I have to share some of my personal resources to enemy line-art drawing and designing and will slow the project down. Because of that I created a new enemy line-arts today for fish enemy called "Lanternking". I think you'll get to fight against him in first playtest builds

What's next?
Right now I have 5 different enemies in my disposal which 3 is already made into game (graphically) and rest wait coloring. I think I should start polishing game for fisrt proper playtests. This means that I need to do at least:

• Create new cards and attacks for enemies and player
• Design enemy stats and build decks for them
• Start adding attack animations and sound effects for them
• add some more status effects to battle system

This build should be to test the battle system and get feedback about what players think about it. I'm slightly worried about it though, since I have developed this game long and wouldn't like to find out players think it is boring as hell. Positive thing is that I have tried to shape this game to be something I want to play so I think it can't be total disaster Problem has though been that the until now the battle system hasn't been very easy to play test, since it has required quite a lot to function as it's fullest potential, requiring many different cards, status ailments etc. Personally I like it, though I can also see some people might think it maybe a bit boring if they don't realize the strategies different cards provide (provided I can design cards well, thats it). Well, we will see how it turns out.

[Tumetsu]

Day 69 - 8.8.2011
Today was rather productive day I think. I drew two new cards, one dark type attack and one light attack and animated attack effects for them. I already integrated them to the game. I noticed that I probably have to extend the animation Entitys and make an option for them to show constant attack type defined particle burst to give more visual candy to the attacks, since animating nice attacks is rather time and space consuming.

I also started to color the new enemy "Lanternking" which you can see up there. I'll finish his frames tomorrow. Defense and damage frames are still just line-arts.

What's next?
I think that next I'll add those particle effects to the elemental attacks. Then I should probably search and probably make some sound effects for the attacks. I have some already in my disposal but haven't put them in use yet. After that I'll Lanternking to game. When that is done I need to start thinking enemy decks more carefully and craft enemies until they feel like I want. This probably will require some new cards introduced too.

[Tumetsu]

Day 70 - 9.8.2011
Today I finished Lanternking's colors and added him to the game. Again, stats and card deck were just thrown in and wait later editing. Next I started adding in default particle effects for attacks. I added all except light effect yet, since I noticed FP doesn't support particles which are oriented to their moving direction. I'm not sure if I'll integrate some more advanced particle system into game or just make this effect with entities.
Third I added some sound effects to game. Now healing gives little sound and Flickering flame fire attack has burning sound.

I think I would have lot of use for good sound designer, since my mouth and public domain effects can only go so far...

Finally I just made some Excel-tables of the enemies' stats and types and similar table of the cards player can collect. These should help me in my venture to the great balancing and design process which I should start soon now.

What's next?
My musician has agreed to help me with various things. First and foremost he will make music but he may also partake in enemy design and backgrounds. He also has some nice ideas which I may incorporate into game. This is very welcome news to me since one man can do only that much in limited time and every little task of my shoulders will benefit game greatly.

I think that tomorrow I'll finish default particle effects. I may also search or make some sound effects for new attacks Soul lamp and Dark wave. Not really sure what kind of sounds they voice :D

After that I may add some more status ailments and attack effects to engine, like "Drain", "Regen" and "Fever" which lowers Decrease values making longer combos possible. They aren't really high on my priorities though. Most important thing I will have to soon start working on is already mentioned designing and balancing of the cards and enemies. I have to see if I can start it tomorrow or will it move to day after tomorrow.

After these are done I may do some more polishing until it's time for those wider playtests. I have already done some individual tests which have seemed promising. Anyone interested in playing test build? If so PM me or write here

[QOG]

Looks very nice thus far, although the main character looks like she's smirking.

[Tumetsu]

Thanks for comment! It feels nice to see that some people are interested in and the whole topic sin't my monologue. Though I understand that some people may find commenting devlogs weird.

Yes, she may look smirking a bit. I intended her be confident but I might tone down expression a bit later.

Day 71 - 10.8.2011
Not as productive as I had hoped. I spent most of the developing time messing around with Excel tables of card and enemy stats. I boosted enemies' stats pretty much so they pose greater danger now. I also made some initiative balancing of the cards but as of now both enemies and cards' stats are still in constant flux. I think I try to write some written descriptions of the enemies and how I want them to feel and from that base start designing their stats and decks. Might need to add some new cards and status ailments in process.

I have also worked with my musician to create music fitting for the game's style and atmosphere. He did pretty good world theme. Now we try to figure out how the battle theme should sound but he already has some good sounding starts to continue from

What's next?
Tomorrow my priority 1 job is to fix one serious bug from battle system. Turned out that elemental of defensive card didn't interact with attacking card's elemental. This meant that every defensive card had pretty much either defense or sp.defense, not dark defense, fire defense and so on.
I intend to also finalize default particle effects for the attacks tomorrow since I finally decided how I'll go with light particle's implementation.
After those I think I'll continue with designing stats of the cards and enemies and try to rationalize them as far as possible before playtesting in hopes to be able to mainly tweak things after gotten some feedback.

[AndrewFM]

I actually love the main character's expression. I especially adore the last screenshot. She looks like fighting these monsters is just a regular part of her daily routine.

The art style is great. It reminds me of the Roald Dahl illustrations; not quite as messy, but I get similar vibes.

[Inanimate]

Wow, I like the battle system idea. I'm interested to see more of this style, too!

[Igor Hardy]

Wow, I really love the art style, especially the character designs. Best of luck finishing soon, Tumetsu!

[Cheezmeister]

Man, everyone's beat me to it. Feh, I'll say it anyway.

Love the art style!

[xerus]

Oh dude!  I've been pining to make an RPG where the characters use decks of cards for battle... but you're already DOING IT.  You better hit this out of the PARK my friend.   

Good luck with development!  Looking forward to seeing this finished 

[Tumetsu]

I actually love the main character's expression. I especially adore the last screenshot. She looks like fighting these monsters is just a regular part of her daily routine.

Actually this is what I tried to accomplish so good thing it looks somehwta like that

About the art-style, graphics are so far mostly mine except screenshots' enemies are designed and drawn by my friend. Originally he was supposed to help me with designs but unfortunately he had to quit project until September. Luckily my musician turned out pretty good artist too, and he will make some designs and backgrounds which I then probably edit to integrate them into rest of the art style There is slight danger of "too many chefs" but I think I can handle and direct it to rather cohesive style.

About the battle system, I intend to create maybe 40 different cards to use plus some exclusive cards for monsters. Some cards may also unlock new areas when used in certain battles. Right now battle system is in it's core ready, but I think I need to somehow smooth it a bit since right now it feels very much some weird rhythm of "select-select-attack-select-attack..." without fluid transition from action to another. Not sure how to do that though.

Oh dude!  I've been pining to make an RPG where the characters use decks of cards for battle... but you're already DOING IT.  You better hit this out of the PARK my friend.   

Good luck with development!  Looking forward to seeing this finished 

Haha, card based RPG has been my dream sometime now since Baten Kaitos series which is one of my favorite RPG series had card battle system.

[Tumetsu]

]Day 72 - 11.8.2011
Didn't have time yesterday to write this so here it is.

It was rather productive day. I did some minor graphical updating removing old sprites and replacing them with new ones. One of them was map screen's card button which in screenshot above contains only card's back. Now it has image of book with pen since you can opne your adventure journal from it

I also create simple system of entity particles to battle system and with it created default particle effect for light based attacks. This took more time than I had expected but resulted rather flexible (I hope) base to be used and extended to create particle effects which have properties which FP's native particle system doesn't offer.

I also added little effect to for enemies to show when their HP is getting low. Now after they have under defined HP percentage they start to slowly flash red. The lower HP gets, the faster they flash. I'm not sure if this will stay since I had thought using color effects to represent some status ailments. Another choice would be to scale characters' yscale and make them look like panting. I should try that too. Of course I could just add new frame of panting, but right now I think it would needlessly add the workload too much. We will see what happens here.

Finally I fixed the bug I had found related to element defenses. I also messed up with enemy deck designs and edited some stats. I wrote some literal descriptions of battles with enemies to help design their stats and how they should feel in combat. Rest of the day I spent creating little syncing network for my project. Now I should be able to make game with my main computer and netbook and at least view files with my iPod Touch I'm having some trouble of syncing my excel documents with Google Docs though, have to see what I'll do with it. Either I just use Google and leave Excel but I like Excel better. Thing is I'd like to edit spreadsheets with my Ipod too so Google Docs is pretty much must.

What's next?
Right now I need to add one new card, which for now is enemy only card, add some sound effects for attacks, dabble with mist-creature enemy design. Biggest jobs are to think element system, since I think I need to add some more elements to make system more interesting. Another important and vague thing is how to make battle system more "fluid". Then there is lots of minor tasks still need to be done before beta