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[LozzaDawg]

This is my first Devlog, and because of this I'm more than likely to make mistakes, but that's ok, because for me this is mostly a learning experience. An experience that will help me plan out my game, keep constant check on my progress, and get into the habit of regularly reviewing my game and talking about features that I have, can, might or will implement. As I said i probably wont do to well but I'm kinda banking on the fact that not to many people see this, and if people do see it, apologies in advance for the quality of the log. I've only just started coding for the game, but have a bit of concept art for the characters and UI, gameplay will be coming soon, hopefully with some story.

Characters (prototype sprites)


UI for the world (moving around not in combat) The 'text's would be replaced with the characters names

The Inventory button would bring up a list of the items you have,
The Pause button would bring up a pause menu,
The Character button would bring up a menu best explained with another image,
The Camp button would give the player the option to spend an amount of money (and perhaps some items), to replenish the characters HP and MP.

Wow I haven't even talked about the gameplay yet, anyway, it's going to be a party based RPG, along the lines of final fantasy, but the characters are elementals, creatures of either fire, earth, water, or air. The movement in the game will be a top down perspective for traversing the world, which will be comprised of small maps of different elemental areas, there areas will give some benefit to the elemental that is native to it (maybe a damage/health boost, or perhaps a boost that can be interchanged/equipped, or maybe a special ability that can be used in the native world). The combat will be from a side on view (which will be seen in future posts).


Apologies for the wall of text will do this less in the future but i felt like i needed to explain a bit more because its the first post of the game.

[Mixer]

Hello! (And welcome to tig you'll do fine haha). Nice concept stuff, looking forward to seeing in a game The font you made for the 'character' text is super nice, I think you should try and use a similar (3x4?) font throughout the game, if it suits it of course. Goodluck :D

[LozzaDawg]

Ok, so I've though a bit about the story and have done some more concept art, and by the end of this weekend i hope to have the movement and maybe basic battle screen implemented.

Story: Millennia ago, as the mass of rock known as earth started to take shape, forces of nature known as the elementals were forming. The elementals were beings pure of the one of the 4 elements, Fire, Earth, Water and Wind. These beings were shaping the earth to a state similar to what we know now. This was a simple task, as the elementals were all bound together by nature, this allowed them to sense each others thoughts, making even the creation of a planet a simple task. However, reshaping the ground, they uncovered another element, one that when discovered, all but one quickly spread across the world to form elementals. This element was life. While it seemed docile enough the surviving life elemental warned that while capable of great things, the life elemental's disability to communicate made them extremely dangerous and suggested that the elementals prepared for the worst by storing some elementals away from the surface of the world, to preserve at least one of each elemental in case of a disaster.
As time passed, the life elementals took many different forms, some of these forms could communicate within a group of their own kind, but only used this skill for killing and destroying the nature. But that wasn't all these elemantals did, they grew hungry for power, and started abusing the other elements, harnessing them and using them for their own purposes, even going as far as to enslave and segregate the elementals by element, trapping them within sectors. Once enslaved, they were bound to the life elementals to do their bidding. Without the elementals keeping the world in balance, it would soon plunge into chaos, but there was still hope, the elementals hidden underground, being taught all about the life elementals by the one that had forseen this disaster. The world didn't have long, and it needed heroes.
And so the four elemantals were released into the world, with one task, free the enslaved elementals and restore harmony to the world.


So yeah, the idea is by killing the twisted forms of the elementals, they are freed, and can return to their true form, and give blessings to the heroes to aid them on their journey (items and exp). The four sectors will need to be liberated to save the world, with a boss at the end of each sector.

Soz again for the text, but even though i might not use much of this story i think it's good to get something out there. Anyway here is some concept art for the enemies, battle, and character equipment screen.

Enemies, these are the enslaved and twisted versions of the 4 elements, i'll make more if i have time, but game play will come first

From left to right, the elements are fire, wind, water, and earth, they are changed in a way that humans have used the elements. Fire, burned to smoke, Wind and lightning, harnessed into electricity, Water polluted to become a poisonous sludge, and the Earth being used with science to genetically modify plants into predators.

Here's the battle menu,


The characters would have their turn to do an action in a preset order. First you would be given the option to go to your inventory to use an item, which would show the friendly character's names, and clicking that character would give that character the effect of that item.
Clicking attack would take you to the second image giving the option to select an enemy to attack, and ability would take you to a menu of ability, and once an ability is selected, it would also go to the second screen.
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And finally is the character menu,

Here you would see your character and equip items by clicking the slot, and then the items that can be put in that slot would appear in the menu beneath, and clicking that item would equip it, giving the stats and buffs, stated on that item in the inventory

[Pixel Noise]

Nice concept - don't sell yourself short. Being young and inexperienced doesn't mean you can't make something of value, or something that people will enjoy! Great start - keep it up 

[LozzaDawg]

Thanks Pixel Noise, really appreciate the encouragement, the small gesture really means a lot to me and has boosted my hype. I've starting to code the game, and now that I've got a whole bunch of ideas and plans ready, I have a clear picture of what i want to do in my head, so it's coming along really fast. I should be uploading some screenshots of the actual game by the end of the weekend!

[LozzaDawg]

Wow, time really does fly when you're having fun, was focusing on coding and completely forgot about the DevLog, oops... Anyway, I'm here now with some progress updates.
Firstly, iv'e added the maps, buttons, health bars, and walking around

And right now I'm working on the battle system and the positioning of the enemies, but here's what Iv'e got at the moment.

Right now the struggle is rendering more than one enemy, but i know what i have to do, so it should be solved soon, then, its just back to forming the battle system into something functional.

Its a bit of a shorter post which should be a nice change, and when the battle system is done ill talk a bit about the character abilities.

[Pixel Noise]

Awesome! Nice progress - glad to hear you're staying motivated

[LozzaDawg]

Beginning the second weekend of development, and its gonna be a big one, by Sunday i want to have an activity log, which will be a box with text that tells you what happens, ie. attacks, deaths. And secondly, enemy attacks and AI. Preferably id also have some abilities down but i'm happy to leave that for later. I have also established a turn system, which rotates through everyone in the battle, and attacking with basic attack works.

Anyway, here are some early ideas for abilities for the characters, mana will be spent to use these abilities, and the cost will be adjusted, but ill decide the costs later.

ST = single target damage
DA = damages all enemies
BA = buffs all allies
BS = buffs singe ally
Damage scale (rough estimate of in game damage) - 0 to 100 where 100 is very strong and 0 is no damage
20dmg would be about a basic attack, (which costs no mana)

Fire Elemental abilities:
Fire Ball - ST - 100dmg
Flamewave - DA - 40dmg
Demon Strike - Deal a percentage of your health as damage to yourelf , and deal 200 ST damage
Demon Wrath - Deal a percentage of your health as damage to yourelf, and deal 80 DA damage

Earth Elemental abilities:
Smash - ST 70dmg
Earthquake - DA 30dmg
Taunt - Increase the chance of enemies attacking him instead of alies
Boulder Armour - BS, only buffs himself, with a substancial amount of defence 40def (same scale)

Water Elemental abilities:
Healing Stream - BA heal all for 20hp (same scale)
Rejuvenating Shower - BS heal for 50hp
Hydro Blast - ST 50dmg
Ice Shield - BA 10def

Wind Elemental abilities:
Lightning Strike - ST 230, but next turn you can't use abilities, and deal half as much basic attack damage
Thunder Storm - DA 100, but next turn you can't use abilities and deal half as much basic attack damage
Charged Lightning - deal some damage to yourself, and next turn deal double damage
Whirlwind - 60dmg

Sorry this wasn't the most high quality post, its a bit late but i want to get this online before tomorrow.

ps. I'm thinking about changing the wind elemental to be more of a storm elemental, because it already kind of is, its really just the name that doesn't fit.

[LozzaDawg]

Added quite a few features over the weekend, including enemy "AI" with automated attacks and abilities, highlighting of enemies, and made a start on character abilities. I should have implemented a back button to and improved the UI by next update, but for now here's a quick GIF.

[LozzaDawg]

Have finally gotten the base down for all future character abilities, along with healing abilities, which highlight the selected target just like enemies.
I've also decide to make this my March entry for 1GAM, because the more I work on this game, the more I see that its just not enough time for it to reach it's potential, and I know that the whole point of 1GAM is to get a game out there and not fuss about the details and get caught up in adding features, but I really think this could be a great game, and I know if I put it down for a month or two I'll never get back to it. I've also started on some animations for character abilities, here is the Fireball animation.

[PaulWv2.017]

I'm glad you got rid of the weird differently-sized text for your buttons. It looks better.

Keep at it!

[LozzaDawg]

Whew, big weekend, picked up this game for the first time in about a week after making Head Soccer,(link here: https://lozzadawg.itch.io/head-soccer) Anyway, I've made the run button work so you can escape battles, I've added a new enemy for the starting/tutorial map, a Wolf! This was quite the achievement, as I did it quite fast, and that showed how easy it was to add a new character, however it was in its own world, adding enemies to the same world would be a bit harder, but its very doable, and I may do so in the future. And probably the biggest thing, Battle Scenes, where the battles take place.

I have plans to make these somewhat animated in the future, hopefully through code, but some maybe through animation frames.

Here is the Starting World Battle Scene.


Here is the Fire World Battle Scene.


Here is the Earth World Battle Scene.


Here is the Water World Battle Scene.


Here is the Wind World Battle Scene.


 I still haven't added descriptions for abilities, and I also haven't made all the character abilities yet, but I should be able to do that whenever I have small amounts of free time, because the large chunks of time are being allocated to the larger more time consuming tasks. I've also fixed a few bugs with abilities. I also plan to add the enemy and character levels show above their respective health bars.

I'm also trying to make more ability animations, I hope to have all character ability animations done by the 15th of March.
Congratulations for making it this far in this post! Have another Fireball animation! (Technically the ability is called Demon Fire)

[Pixel Noise]

Nice start to the battle-scene backgrounds. Though I'm a little uncertain what's going on in the Earth world one

[LozzaDawg]

Yeah, the battle maps need a bit of refining, the earth one is supposed to be littered with crystals growing around the place.


Alright. A bit of a slow week , but I knocked out a few things that seemed small but spawned a bunch of problems I never thought would be an issue. By this I mean I completed and refined the abilities, which revealed a bunch of issues regarding multiple dudes dying at once. Fortunately those issues were all fixed and abilities now work nice and smooth which is a large part of the game, so that's nice. (There is still probably room for ability balancing, but it's pretty minor)


The next semi major objective was death, (like, when all the characters die) so when you die, you get two options.

You can resurrect where you stand, with characters at full health but at a small cost. Or if you cant afford to resurrect, you can die, and wait to reincarnate, which spawns you at the last spawn point (which changes as you progress) and leaves your characters at half health. (UI is still a Work In Progress)


I plan to make 3 more ability animations by next week, and at the very least get started on an Inventory system, and at the most, also make a basic NPC system, with sprites, and some dialog.

[LozzaDawg]

Big week, and long weekend, first of all, big UI update, with the buttons, TextBox, and background+corners for the whole bottom part of the UI. Also, Inventory, fully functioning with equipping, un-equipping, and if you equip an item to a character already holding the item, it will automatically un-equip the current item, and equip the new one.
Now I've implemented three item types, weapons (to increase damage), armour (to increase defense), and tokens (to increase healthy). At the moment there are 4 items for each type, 1 for each world (not including the starting map)

Aaaaand, you can now view the characters, their stats, their items, and there EXP progress with the character menu!

You can also use potions to restore health.




The next big thing I added was bosses, which appear on the map, and when collided with, trigger a battle with that boss. Right now I have two boss sprites, and their stats probably need a bit of balancing, but the core part is there (there is also a strange problem with rendering the boss sprites, but that only occurred in the past hour and I should be able to fix that relatively shortly)




Alright, so I slaked off a little with the animations, I only got one done, but that's nearly a whole character done. I'm confident I can get 4 animations for all for characters by the end of the month.



Oh, I nearly forgot, I've also added NPCs, which are little help drones that only provide information about the map and give slight guidance, if i have time I might try and make some kind of dialog options available, but that's only if I'm doing really well for time.
I also made sprites for the walls of the maps that need different sprites for different wall sides.




Probably want fully functioning boss battles and boss sprites by next week, along with guiding, and story telling text on the NPCs. I don't think I'll be adding the option to access inventory mid battle, but once again, I will if there's time. Also need to add death when you walk out of bounds.