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[HyMyNameIsMatt]

Before giving the devlog a read, the game is on Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vernaledge/vernal-edge/posts/2845318

And there's a free to play demo available on Itch:
https://plusw.itch.io/vernal-edge-kickstarter-demo

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Hi, I'm Matt and I'm working on Vernal Edge. I'm a pixel animator and environment artist, and I'm learning how to code in Game Maker Studio 2 to create this project.  In the interest of transparency I'm starting a devlog and updating it on the first of every month.  If you have any questions about the game please ask, and I make more frequent posts and updates on twitter if you're into that.

The game is a platformer focused on the main character Vernal, with a focus on deep combat mechanics, and a world you can explore very freely.  You explore the fractured and floating remains of a country that was ripped apart like this years ago by a mysterious event.  The main character, Vernal, searches these lands to find their father whom they've never met, who supposedly lived in this area during the fracturing, and are not looking for a friendly reunion. The main inspirations for this game are Kingdom Hearts 2, the Devil May Cry series, and Wind Waker.  For this first post I wanna talk about my intentions behind the combat system, and how that will work, as well as my intentions for the world and how you'll be navigating it.

Combat:
The core idea of combat is to make sure the player spends minimal time in fights waiting around, carefully picking options to enable them to keep fighting while weaving between enemy attacks and replenishing their hp from kills.  Aside from their defensive abilities, (blocking, parrying, the usual) they also may stun an enemy by draining its poise with attacks.

As demonstrated above, when you hit an enemy, their poise, represented by a blue circle, drains, once all the poise has been drained the enemy is stunned.  The poise will then refill over time, and the enemy will return to normal once it has refilled.  Different actions affect how quickly the poise refills, if you leave the opponent alone they will quickly replenish their poise, but if you attack them it will refill more slowly.  More importantly, when an enemy has been stunned, you are allowed to manipulate the enemy with launches and grabs.

You can launch an enemy upwards or outwards or downwards, keeping them suspended in the air where you are safer from ground attacks, or propelling them into other enemies to cause harm.  However some enemies will attempt to punish you if you carelessly attack them when their poise has been fully refilled, they may respond with their own attack or dash away and act more defensively.  Deciding how you want to disengage from enemies like this will be important to consider.

For the tools you have to work with for actually attacking, you can use regular attacks, directional inputs, magic spells, grabs, and the Pulse.  I'll explain these all in a moment, but first I should explain the combo system.  The combo system works on a very simple idea, most attacks and abilities you use will cause your combo to progress.  In the gif above you may have noticed that at one point the player uses 2 sword slashes and then a fancy finisher, and later they use 1 sword slash, and 1 spell, and then use the fancy finisher.  The idea is that you customize your combo leading to the finisher you want, using whatever attacks you think are best to do that.  The attacks and abilities you have to work with are as follows.

Normal attacks/directional attacks: Standard affair, depending on your place in a combo these inputs change.  In the final game you will be able to reference a guide for all of the possibilities, and even then it won't be terribly hard to remember.  There is only one input for these, and there are no heavy attacks.

Magic spells: As you explore you'll collect an assortment of spells to use in combat, of which you'll pick 3 to use at check points.  These spells all cost mana, which operates similarly to Kingdom Hearts 2, where it will not refill until all mana has been drained, and you will not be able to use spells once your mana has been drained, until it has completely refilled.  However you will also be able to use a grab to refill your mana.

Grabs: This is the mechanic I'm mad at myself for committing to.  When an enemy has been stunned, you have the option of grabbing them with your off hand.  Once you successfully grab en enemy, you are given a brief moment to either tap the button again, or wait that moment for another result.  If you tap the button again you will refill your mana a certain amount, and let the enemy go, removing the enemy's stunned status.  If you choose to wait, you will be rewarded with a contextual attack that depends on the enemy you've grabbed, you might just hurt them a lot, or swing them around and hit other enemies in the area, or throw them like a projectile.

Pulse: The pulse is it's own input, and the replacement for heavy attacks.  By default, if you use the pulse input, the character will quickly emit a pulsing circle, which draws nearby money and health to your character, as well as activating contextual devices like switches and platforms.  As the player attacks enemies, a meter quickly builds up for the pulse, and when it reaches max the pulse button has a different outcome.  Now when you press the pulse button, depending on where you are in a combo and the context of the attack, you will perform a big fancy attack that also emits the same pulsing circle.  There may be encounters where doing so can cause you more harm than good depending on your position in an arena, such as by activating a device that will crush everything in it's path.  How this is used is up to you.


Exploration:
I put Metroidvania in quotation marks partly because you do in fact obtain your core navigational abilities over a period of time and learn how to best use them organically, but also partly because this process takes place very early in the game, without trying to delay how long it takes for you to gain access to your final core abilities.  There is going to be a greater focus on choice and investigation than searching for doors.  For a demo of this concept, you can play "Treasure Islands", a mod of Cave Story a friend and I created last year: http://noxid.ca/files/TreasureIslands_DDBE.zip

Your core abilities for moving around the environment will be grabbing ledges, dashing, sliding, and propelling yourself upwards by jumping off of walls and the heads of enemies.  There is no double jump to be found here


During the player's search they'll come across many points of interest, cool looking dungeons, and inaccessible location that may lead them further in their investigation, and have to search using dialogue from npcs, context clues, and explorative curiosity to absolve these points.  This means flying around, finding items, finding hidden passages, etc.  The areas accessible open up over time, so you won't need to worry about trying to keep track of an impossible amount of information at a time.


There isn't much to show in terms of audio right now as the musician and I are still working out the tone of music.  Here's his soundcloud if you wanna check him out: https://soundcloud.com/pluswplus

That's everything I want to cover for the game at the moment.  Throughout the month I'll be looking to finish a refactor for combining enemies and the player into the same parent object, which will be useful for a whole bunch of reasons, as well as develop the art more to make the game look even better.

Have a good November everybody! o/

[CDLegasse]

I love the traversal system you have in place, how quick and action oriented it seems.

[agersant]

Gorgeous animations!!
 

[Geoff Moore]

This looks like an absolute blast! I like how ballistic the movement and combat feel, and the contextual holds will be awesome, well worth the extra work. Looking forward to more updates!

[Jad]

There is no double jump to be found here 

blessed be! <3 <3

[NowSayPillow]

Watching this one for sure; what you have so far looks really good.

[HyMyNameIsMatt]

Hey everyone, it's time for the December update!

Today I wanted to talk about the refactor that's been happening, dungeons, environment art, and answer a few questions.

Refactor:
Since this is the first project I've ever worked on as the primary programmer, or as anything but an artist really, I've had  to teach myself coding in Game Maker Studio 2 without much experience to build off of.  The result was a functional prototype, which you can see in the gifs from the previous post, that wasn't going to hold up during content creation.  Previously the player and any enemies were divided into two separate objects with no inheritance, meaning all the combat code on my player and damage receiving code on my enemy were completely separate form each other.  Now the two share a parent and I am adding features back in such as sliding and ledge grabbing in a way that both the player and any enemies can make use of them.  The intent is to make it so any action I create, such as a fancy attack or movement ability can be shared between the player and an enemy with little effort, as well as laying down the groundwork to allow multiple playable characters, or the ability to play as an enemy with few adjustments needing to be made.

At the moment collision has been rewritten but is still buggy, you can jump around again and perform basic attacks.  Sliding, ledge grabbing, some nebulous functionality for controlling your character mid attack needs to be remade, as well as the code for taking damage and being launched around needs to be rewritten for the parent object.  With so much ground work established this month that should be all done by next month.

Environment Art:
I wanted to talk about some of the process for creating environments in the game, specifically about tiles and they're created/assembled into the level.

I'm ditching a concept that I used to rely on, which is the idea of making a large, all inclusive tileset for each environment in the game, and instead taking advantage of using an editor with proper layers to create more detailed environments out of more focused art assets.

This tileset for example is focused as a singular set of stone/brick tiles. This tileset also has a few transitional pieces to allow me to overlay it onto another tileset.  Essentially each environment will be made of a collection of small tilesets like this overlayed on top of each other.  Then a selection of props are also placed over the scene to break the monotony of the tiles.  This is one of the benefits of working with an art style where the environment fades to black.


Dungeon Design:
Last time I mentioned dungeons briefly and figured I should talk about the plan for how those are going to play out.

I feel like most would expect dungeons to play out similarly to a Zelda game, with it's predictable structures, escalating puzzles and deliberate pacing, however I was looking more to rpgs and rogue-likes for my dungeon design.  Since dungeons are going to be a secondary feature of the world, it didn't seem appropriate to cast them all as a predictable cookie cutter experience.  Instead dungeons are going to be large isolated spaces you can explore non-linearly, that are covered in thematic mechanisms and threats.  I love the idea of exploring a dungeon with mechanics that exist throughout the entire location, such as power redirecting or sets of familiar traps (Final Fantasy 12 has few dungeons like this).  So while you explore and map out a dungeon, instead of looking for certain familiar tropes to help navigate, you'll be trying to piece together how to progress to the object you came to the dungeon to find yourself, while also searching for whatever treasures you can find.  I plan on releasing the first demo of the game with one of these dungeons, more on that when that's further developed.

Music:
Work on establishing a musical style for some of the various areas with different tones has been on and off.  Alex has created a lot of samples and I'm getting happier with each one.  Here is a sample of a theme meant for exploring a misty island:



And here is Alex's Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/pluswplus

Questions:
Q: What have been some of the biggest hurdles (expected or unexpected) up to now?
A: Other than naming the project, writing has been a struggle for me.  It's difficult to dedicate to plot points and characters without a lot of experience with it in the first place.  I've spent several nights just laying about and writing down potential plot points then crossing them out.  Luckily the basic premise has remained mostly untouched and has been stable ground to stand on while writing.

Q: Do you prefer familiar flora and fauna in your levels or new, fantastical ones?
A: Generally when it comes to prop design and decoration as a whole, I'm more concerned with implementation than the origin of what I draw.  However when I'm struggling to design a prop I'll either refer to my own documentation on world lore to see if something is appropriate, or research and see if there is something symbolically relevant already out there.  Flowers for instance all have different symbolic meanings and I'd definitely prefer to choose one that matches the meaning of the scene they're in if practical.

Q: How do you plan to distribute?
A: Steam and itch.io so far look like my go to platforms for a pc release, I'd like to publish to the Switch and PS4 as well but I don't own either console right now and I can't really begin setting up for that until the game is ready for content creation.

Q: What do you want the reason people get your game to be?
A: I want people to get the game for it's wholistic value.  The exploration, plot and combat should be fleshed out well enough that anyone interested in just one or two of those elements can be satisfied.  I'm definitely not trying to conform to a specific genre so I'm hoping people get invested in this weird but highly polished game.

That should wrap up the December update.  If you have any questions or want clarification on how something works feel free to leave a reply or message me on twitter or email me.

[Beyond]

I love the art, the music is great and combat system seems very appealing. This is a game I might actually play when it's done. Keep it up!

[KeinZantezuken]

The core idea of combat is to make sure the player spends minimal time in fights

Any plans to have a animation cancel feature a-la Valdis Story to make combat more responsive and give player greater and finer control over it?

[HyMyNameIsMatt]

The core idea of combat is to make sure the player spends minimal time in fights

Any plans to have a animation cancel feature a-la Valdis Story to make combat more responsive and give player greater and finer control over it?

No.  Player control and combat agency is not going to play out in that fashion.

[Ninety]

Art looks nice, will be following

[Thomas Finch]

Looks really cool! Love the movement and art!

[HyMyNameIsMatt]

Happy New Years everyone!

Today I want to talk about what's been done this month and my goals for this year, along with answering a few questions again.

Before starting I want to give a shoutout to Robin who has been helping me with programming this month and been a lifesaver with their knowledge of surfaces.

Goals for 2019:
This year I want to start a crowdfunding campaign, hopefully around the end of first quarter but we'll see how things go.  Since all core functionality should be done sometime this month, content creation should become possible starting February which means I can begin working on a vertical slice to act as a demo.  I won't launch a crowdfunding campaign without this since it's my promise to anyone who would be interested in funding of what they'd receive in return.  I have a fair amount of goals already in mind for the campaign, but I'll discuss those more in depth when the time comes.

During this time I also plan to flesh out the core elements of the game's story, which I know I've been rather quiet about.  I'm still creating the major characters and deciding their role in the sequence of events, as well as designing story segments while considering how they contribute to the themes of the story and how they'll play out as a game.  I do want to emphasize that, while the story will push the game forward through it's arcs, you will have the freedom to explore the game at you're leisure and the story will rarely if ever lock you into a long set of scripted events.

Of course I'm aware that crowdfunding has a very real chance of not coming through, and in the event that is true I'll have to slow down production and stabilize before I can continue development.

Gameplay Updates:
Thanks to Robin's help, a lot got done this month.  Several core features are done and few remain to complete, which means there will be a significant amount of gifs to show off this month!  It's mostly gameplay updates this month, so there isn't much new art to show off.

To start lets talk about stuns and how they function.  There have been some updates to this system so I'll be going over the basics too.  To begin, every enemy has a "poise" stat, this state is their resistance to being stunned.  Likewise every attack deals a different amount of poise damage.  Some attacks will focus more on poise damage, some more on regular damage.  This is important because of what happens once you've successfully stunned an enemy.

Once stunned, a visual display (work in progress) will show you just how long it will take for the enemy to exit the stunned state.  If left alone an enemy will recover at a fixed rate, however attacking the enemy causes their natural recovery to stop, while eating away at a chunk of their remaining time by itself.  The poise damage of your attacks becomes relevant here, as poise damage will directly contribute to ending their stunned state.  This means the same attacks you would use to stun an enemy in the first place, will also wake them up faster.  It's important to experiment and consider your combos carefully if you want to make the most of this time.  And of course you can still only do fun things like launch and juggle and grab enemies while they are stunned.

Also completed this month is the system for iframes and how they work with combat.  I'm going to withhold information on combos until next month when I have more to show for it's functionality, but for now I'll say there are methods of protecting yourself in combat that won't interrupt a combo string.

The general rule is that a safer and easier defensive tool, such as blocking or an iframe dodge, would cause you to lose your combo string and have to start over, while a riskier tool, such as back flipping or a pulse attack, will allow you to keep your combo string going.  Naturally there will still be incentives to block or dodge at high levels of play but those features are still being fleshed out.

This month also saw the reimplementation of sliding, while the exact values are still being tweaked, I'm happy with how much smoother it is than before.  I definitely plan to add some additional animations, along with redoing the old ones, so at the moment I'll have to ask your patience on any character motions that seem bland or generally off.

Sliding still begins with a dive, and you can still end a slide by losing all your momentum, pressing back, or running into a wall.  You may also regain your momentum by finding a downwards slope to regain speed.  What's new is what you can do while sliding on an upwards slope.  While sliding on an upwards slope you can jump off and choose between a jump that pushes you up higher than your standard jump allows, or a jump that pushes you out farther and faster.

And lastly for this month, work has been done on the HUD during normal gameplay.  There are visual displays to help you track your Health, Mana, Pulse Points, as well as your place in a combo.

Questions:
Q: What are you hoping people who play the game will take away from the experience?
A: I want people who play my game to have a frantic and deep experience.  Sliding around and fighting enemies while gaining a mastery over the game more deep than just memorizing animations and testing their reaction times.  And for the story and exploration to be an equally appealing part of the experience.

Q: What are some motifs you like to use in art, gameplay, or music?
A: Well for character design I try to balance out a character's color distribution and shape so the character is easier to read at any angle.

Any areas that share the same color I try to give a different shape, such as the gloves and belt, so if the two parts of the character ever intersect visually it will be easier to distinguish them.  This is especially helpful when the character has to be displayed at crazy angles and orientations.


Q: Do you have any central themes and/or big inspirations from other games that you're designing your game off of?
A: Well aside form what I've already mentioned, being Devil May Cry and Kingdom Hearts 2; Dust Force inspired sliding, Metroid Prime 2 has inspired some big level design plans, and indie games like Frogatto, Owlboy, and CrossCode have been huge inspirations in terms of quality.  I've got a lot of respect for those developers.

Q: What's the name of the game?
A: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

And that's that for this month, if you have any questions you can shoot em over to me here, on twitter, in an email or wherever you like.  Everyone go have a great year and defy expectations!

[Thomas Finch]

Great progress! Movement is looking even better! Looks really fun.

[Frnce]

So gorgeous, look how fast and flashy the movements are. really love to play a metroidvania like this

[HyMyNameIsMatt]

Hey everyone, time for the monthly update.

There isn't a whole lot of new art to show off again, but there's a lot of updates for the core mechanics which are pretty much done!  Today I'll be talking about what mechanics were added and changed this month and explain more on how combat should play out.

Before that I want to mention that there is a public discord channel available for the game that you can join now:
https://discord.gg/TgdZcyY

What's been done:
This month all the core mechanics of the game have been brought into a beta state.  The systems are all mostly functional, the player character just needs their moveset animated and fleshed out.  In terms of mechanics actually added, all the basic defensive moves have been added, the platforming abilities are implemented mostly without any bugs, work has been done getting the user interface built, the main characters primary combo has been (finally) reanimated, and some code has been cleaned up.









Combos and Defense:
So this is the point where the game starts to become more distinct from other action titles.  Already poise presents some challenges in that you have to do more than find openings in an enemy's attacks to stun them, but as an even further separation from the norm combos aren't quite the same as you might be used to in other games.

Pay attention to the gauge at the top left!



That is your combo gauge.  A handy tool to help you experiment and see what does/doesn't break your combos.  This gauge tells your your place in a combo visually, which is important because what attack you perform depends on the action button you press, the direction held while doing so, and where the combo gauge is currently at.  The simplest example being that hitting the light attack button 3 times in a row produces different results every time.  Paying attention to what moves cut off your combo early and which don't is going to be important for optimal play.  For instance, the quick and more difficult to use back flip will allow you to maintain your combo progress, but the safer and longer lasting dash will not.



While this might seem pretty tame, spells and special attacks also progress your combo forward.  You will obtain both different special attacks to round out your moveset, and many different spells that you can choose to equip.  These are important to memorize because the maximum amount of hits you can bring your combo to is 5, with 5th combo hits being extremely powerful finishers focused on different strengths and weaknesses.  The important thing to know here is that basic attacks only progress your combo up to 3.  Meaning if you want to reach those 5th hit finishers you have to figure out how you wanna bridge the gap between the 3rd and 5th hits in a combo with spells and special attacks.  Choosing whether to use an attack for it's utility, or damage, or to gain meter for special attacks, or just to progress your combo further are all things to be considered mid fight.



Knowing that, your defensive tools are important not just for staying aggressive mid combat against enemy attacks, but also trying to maintain your combo.

Back flips and Dashes:
The simplest of the defense options, these both move the player a set distance and provide iframes.  The back flip allows you to maintain your combo, while the dash does not, but that doesn't mean you can just spam back flip against every attack.  Both moves have a small amount of ending lag, making their usage against multi hit attacks less viable.  In those situations it may be better to block.

Blocking:
Blocking locks you in place temporarily and doesn't keep you safe during its few startup frames, but it's a very effective tool against physical damage.  Blocking singular hits will break your combo, but blocking multiple hits will allow you to perform a counter attack that will actually progress your combo further!  Beware that trying to block guard break attacks will instantly stun you, which tend to be singular big attacks, back flipping is definitely more suited to dealing with those.  Of course these only work against physical damage, for magical damage the magic barrier will work just fine.

Magic Barrier:
A somewhat familiar looking tool, the magic barrier will protect you against magic attacks, with a bit of a twist.  This move is always available, but has a mana cost.  When you run out of mana you can't use abilities until your mana bar has recharged, but the magic barrier not only protects you from magic damage, but allows you to potentially gain mana back or restore your bar more quickly.  magic damage that you protect yourself from is stored in the barrier, and you can choose to let that magic damage be converted into mana once the barrier goes down, or use it to counter attack with a magical explosion.  Both effects increase the more damage is absorbed, meaning trying to guard big scary magical attacks is very rewarding.

Mobility and Platforming:
This month the last of the mobility tools were finally reimplemented, meaning you can slide around and jump off of walls again.
These abilities themselves won't all be available form the beginning of the game, but will be acquired soon enough after you've had time to play and adjust to the core movement.  There is ledge climbing, dashing, sliding, and airstepping.

Ledge climbing: This is kind of self explanatory, it'll be available at the beginning of the game (because earning the ledge grab ability is always lame).  What is note worthy is that you can choose to skip the ledge climb animation by simply jumping while holding onto a ledge to reach the area you're trying to reach, but you will miss out on the iframes provided by the animation, so choose carefully when the situation calls for it.

Dashing: While its usage mid combat is limited (at least without accessories equipped) the dash is an excellent mobility tool, helping you cross gaps and make big horizontal movements at the top of your jump arc.

Sliding:  Performing a dive attack in the air (down + jump) will send you to the ground faster, landing on a slope allows you to slide down that slope.  Sliding is an important tool for navigating the environment quickly, and jumping mid slide can produce different results depending on the terrain and your inputs.

Air Stepping: The game's replacement for double jumping, air stepping allows you to perform a second jump in the air by utilizing walls and the tops of enemy heads!  While you can only jump off of a wall once before hitting the ground, bouncing off of an enemy head will reset this, meaning you can use aerial enemies to get really high up.  Beware though that certain enemies might not care to be stepped on unless you've made sure to stun them first...





Music:

This month I have another song sample available from Alex, the theme that will play in the demo's dungeon!  This part of the world wasn't always separated into floating chunks of land, and some areas were completely abandoned after the separation due to inconvenience, cultural shifts, and the appearance of strange creatures.  The old mountain monastery is one of these places, being covered in constant rain showers, maybe some items of value were left behind?



Once again, you can find the musician here: https://soundcloud.com/pluswplus

Goals for this month:
With the main mechanics of the game in a mostly functional state, the game could use some competent enemies to fight.  So alongside drafting the content for the game's first demo, I'll be dedicating this month to developing enemy AI and fleshing out the player's move set a bit more to more accurately simulate real combat.  Expect the yellow knight to show up more this month as they are used to test out enemy AI.  Also coming this month are some visual concepts for the dungeon in which the demo will take place.

Questions:
Q: Is the game best optimized for controller or keyboard?
A: I test for both input types back and forth, so both will be functional, you'll also be able to change your inputs to suit your needs.

Q: Is there a character that you're particularly excited to design, besides what's already introduced?
A: You know I feel sad I can't talk more about Vernal as it is, but some of the other main characters are really exciting me.  I'm not rushing to introduce them in the first 10 minutes of the game so I don't know how much I should be saying about them right now, but Alstroemeria is gonna be fun once you get to meet her.

Q: How was the sword designed?  IS there any significance behind its shape?
A: The sword is something the main character has inherited, as for it's design, rings are the primary shape used in this world for channeling magical energy, Sort of like a spout.  The ring on the sword is what allows you to gain meter when attacking enemies and perform special attacks in the first place.  The output of a spell is not only determined by the intentions of the caster, but the material and exact shape of the tool as well, making this sword a unique item in what it can do.

That's it for this month, It's been real exciting to see things come together.  As always feel free to ask any questions you may have and don't forget about the public Discord group that has opened up for the project!
https://discord.gg/TgdZcyY

[Xonatron]

Looking good. I like the swift, fast movements! Following...

[rav10li]

OMG that slide... looks so good!

[Thomas Finch]

Gameplay just keeps getting smoother and the music is great!

[HyMyNameIsMatt]

Hey guys, it's time for a sad update.



This month I have some bad news, so I'd like to go over that before going over what changes were made this month.

To put it bluntly, I've decided to shelve the game for about half a year.  Looking at the time cost to get this game ready for funding and to fully showcase my vision for it, is going to take a lot longer than anticipated.  The time might not be a huge issue, the issue is developing a game non-stop for several months on what would ultimately end up as a gamble for funding.  Some of you may know that my computer suffered some critical problems this month, leaving me unable to properly develop the game, I want to let you know that this isn't the cause of this decision.  I should have access to a new computer before the month is halfway over, and want to thank anyone who has commissioned me or is waiting for me to finish a commission.

This does NOT mean I will be doing nothing.  I've been talking with Robin and a few other people, and we've decided to complete a much smaller in scope project in that time.  I don't want to give out details for that just yet, just know that the scope is much less ambitious and makes good use of my current skill sets (animating), so if you're interested in my current work at all you won't be disappointed.  Expect an announcement on that later this month.

If anyone is disappointed to see the project be forced to sit down for awhile I'm extremely sorry, but I want to create some more good faith with a finished project before I take the plunge with this one with everyone.  I can assure you that you will get to play as Vernal at some point, it's just going to have to wait.

A massive thank you to anyone whose donated to my Kofi page or commissioned me.  If you made a donation and feel upset by this announcement after that please private message me here or on twitter, or email me at [email protected]

Alright now that that's out of the way, since development will continue in the future I'd like to briefly sum up what was accomplished this month.  I couldn't really do much this month so I have to thank Robin for their help this month.

- Work was done to get enemy AI up and running.  The system needs to accommodate for behavior changes (both in and out of combat) and some basic path finding rules.  On top of ai to fight in combat encounters, there will be some work done to make some enemies wander between maps to make exploration more dynamic.  This is going to be a long endeavor.
- Design work was finished on an aspect of the game I've been quiet about.  When I begin development again I promise I'll come back with a name and the details on this system.
- The framework for consumable items was established.  I haven't really talked much about consumable items here, just know they exist to add an element of resource management to the game, as well as provide a tool for inexperienced players to go through the game more easily/let experienced players better abuse certain systems.

- The framework was put down for top down segments of the game, where you explore between maps.  Some design is still going into the gameplay up here, but it won't be anything to mechanically involving.


So yeah, If you want to know more about what's going on in the future I'll be making announcements on my twitter account, otherwise I'm really sorry to have to put this down for awhile, I promise the game will be up and in development again later this year.