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[JosephSeraph]

Hello y'all! Welcome to Records in Blue's devlog.



Records in Blue is a hybrid between DRPGs and side-scroll exploration games inspired by plenty of JRPGs, as well as our real life experiences.​

Sometimes we wonder how different life would have been, had we found ourselves stranded and forced to walk a certain path. What, cut off from our standards of normalcy for long enough, would the new normal become? Cultures that started as one and the same, through parallel evolution, become nigh unrecognizable.

Enter our protagonist, the young knight who has been tasked with investigating a mysterious island that, after disappearing for over half a century, has strangely resurfaced in plain sight.


(concept art of the Knight)

Uncover and manage a myriad of unique weapons and struggle to return alive from dangerous explorations. Get an easy grasp on the tools offered and master them to find many different strategies. Make prudent choices and customize your characters to overcome the stakes and dissipate the veil of mystery surrounding the island.


(mockup of the battle window)

Taking inspiration from themes and locations from the real world, as well as our love for creative, unique spins on turn based RPGs, we serve you a dark and harsh fantasy world, but one that is also surprisingly soothing, where people find comfort in the frail sanctuaries of peace that they manage to procure, and try to find joy in the smallest of things.


(NPC concepts and a pre-rendered background for the town, sidescroller exploration portion of the game)

On an island living on the border of erasure, meet a diverse handful of people trying to lead a relatively normal life even though every mistake could spell doom. Uncover the mysteries and strange workings of the island, and try to bring comfort and safety to those you can. Face the bizarre oddities of a place at times seemingly frozen in time, at others completely alien.


ABOUT US
We're a 2 man team composed of:

JosephSeraph (me), 24 years old, Brazilian, Art hand of the game.
Heirukichi, ?? years old, ? ? ? ?an, Code hand of the game.

We both share pretty much everything else, from narrative to gameplay mechanics. We both absolutely adore turn based RPGs and delving deep into the theory of what makes these games fun, which naturally leads to many (productive!) arguments over numbers. You know, that with being big game nerds and all, right?

We're having loads of fun working on this game, and we truly hope we can deliver a worthwhile experience to the future players!

Thank you for reading so far. We plan on releasing new posts every week on Friday - alternating who pens the post and the topics with every week. Please stay tuned to our next update!
Whew, this is officially my first devlog. Exciting. Kinda gives me the chills tho.

[JosephSeraph]

Progress Report #1:

Heirukichi's Progress:

• Created battle system to handle individual characters turns;
• Added turn prediction window class to show how the selected action affects the turn order;
• Turn prediction window class can dynamically display the new order upon moving the cursor between possible targets;
• Created a separate module to handle turn queue in battle.

Jo's Progress:

• Finished most of the HUD graphics;
• Remade the 1st boss's artwork.

So let me talk a bit about the battle system and how we're approaching things:
This game uses a queue-based turn system which uses each actor's AGI, as well as each ability's properties, to calculate turn order dynamically. The turn order display is always available to you so you know who's going to act next, and can change it depending on the actions you brought with yourself, which comes to the next point:

Each character can bring 3 Weapons to the dungeon, and every Weapon is equippable to each of our 4 characters. However, each character gets access to a different ability from using said Weapon; so while one character may deal a swift, clean cut with their Bronze Sword, another may resort to a stronger, area-based delayed attack, while another may shoot blades of wind from the sword. Said weapons vary wildly from run-of-the-mill swords to books, bells and bracelets -- and each character's way of interacting with them is both a way to create meaningful gameplay choices and to further develop the cast.

Your choice of equipment within each dungeon is limited, but since you can swap pieces of equipment between characters you get a surprisingly big amount of actions at your disposal, limited mostly by your creativity with your setups.

To finish today's post with an image, this is the work in progress mockup for the UI:

I'm looking forward to showing an actual screenshot, or better yet a video of the functional battle system as soon as possible.

Have a nice day y'all, and I'm excited to keep working on this yeyeyeee 

[MrCobble112]

Looks cool. I'm excited to try it out. Keep doing what you're doing.

[tansutumer]

As an oldtimer, this reminds me of my Might&Magic days - or sleepless nights shall I say? - have you had the chance to play anything from that series? Which other games were you inspired?? Looks very exciting, definitely following!

[LunaticDancer]

As a fan of Orcs & Elves waiting for a worthy successor, I'm waiting!

[Heirukichi]

Hello community, I am glad to see that there are already people interested in our game. It is always nice to receive encouraging words.

DISCLAIMER: this is not meant as an official post, but rather as a way for me to take part in the discussion. For the official post you have to wait until Friday.

As an oldtimer, this reminds me of my Might&Magic days

As an old-timer myself, I can see how it reminds of Might&Magic, with the way characters are displayed and how the first person dungeon exploration works. On top of it, the fact that the same character can use different attacks based on the weapon he or she is wielding also reminds of the said game. Strangely enough, Might&Magic was not even among those that inspired us, at least not among those we explicitly mentioned when brainstorming the game concepts.

As Joseph previously mentioned, the battle system is going to be turn based, which is slightly different from what you would expect from the games mentioned above. However, our goal was that of giving out the same vibe as those old-school games; if we managed to remind you of them with just a few posts, I consider it a huge success.

These days we are working on the battle system, trying to make it smooth and focusing our efforts on intuitiveness. We do want to give out the same vibe as old-school games, but we also want to create something that is easy to understand, where players are not forced to spend many hours just to learn how the game works. Hopefully, we will soon be able to show you a screenshot of how it looks like in game, rather than a mock-up image, I hope it is going to be satisfactory.

[JosephSeraph]

Thanks for the encouragement guys!
Well, about inspirations, funnily enough, while I enjoy DRPGs on a conceptual level, not a lot of them really work for me, maybe that's why I wanted to make my own. The western-styled ones feel a bit too clunky and difficult to get into (as much as that pains me; I wanted to love Wizardry, as I do love its atmosphere, art and music on some installments, but I just can't get over the clunky menus and mechanics) while the dungeon crawler JRPGs tend to err a bit too much on the fanservice and moe side of things and, well, I can confidently say Moero Chronicle isn't my cup of tea. So I'm bringing my love from games outside of DRPGs into the genre (and that varies so wildly from JRPGs to horror games to movies etc.)

Well, I hope our inspirations come through as we show more of the game because it's a pretty wild mix hahaha

I sadly had to delay today's post due to some unforeseen personal circumstances, but I'm posting tomorrow instead after I get Heirukichi's OK on the post~

[Keops]

Hello! I wanted to give you guys some good vibes and wish you the best! The mock-ups and art look interesting, as well as the premise. I just started my own devlog and I know how overwhelming it feels. So maybe we can keep tabs on each other's project and give feedback and encouragement as we progress with them.

See you around the boards.

[JosephSeraph]

Heirukichi's HUD progress
   

• Created characters status window in the HUD according to the mock-up image.
• Aligned windows on the right side of the screen to properly show them in a way similar to those on the left side.
• Created sliding animation to hide character status windows.
• Fixed a bug that caused height and width value for the said window to be reversed.
• Adjusted sliding speed to match the correct (no longer reversed) size of the said window.
• Adjusted HP and MP display position according to the new window size (no longer reversed).
• Created HP and MP bars to help the player visualize the amount of HP and MP left for each character.

Jo's Progress
   

• Polished the remaining HUD graphics.
• Finished and polished each of the first dungeon's monsters.

Hey there! And we're back with another devlog post. Due to some unforeseen circumstances,
a bit later than we'd hoped, but hopefully we're back to Fridays by next week. Thanks for the interest!

As we've just finished the first dungeon's monsters, I figured I'd share some of the process of creating their artwork. This is a rat, one of the first dungeon's foes, and a creature you're already familiar with.


I do the artwork on Paint Tool SAI. For this batch, I started with a very simple silhouette that was reworked several times as I iterated ideas for the enemies' design. The monsters are all currently in gray-scale, to be colored at a later date -- this is very convenient -- and they're in very high resolution (despite the game's retro, PS1-ish resolution) so I can play around with the designs at a later date.

I'm very excited about our battle system, which is something we cooked up together and is very fun to work with! Like I mentioned earlier, you have these Weapons the player characters can equip, with each character "interpreting" each weapon through the color of their own traits, story and personality. Each character covers a few roles and skews the items to try to achieve their roles within the item's given theme. On top of it there's the Turn Queue system which allows you to dynamically preview and affect each unit's turns.

We've pooled up a a ton of different Weapon ideas since it's something just so fun to come up with.
Before sharing them I'll briefly introduce the party members' roles:

Alma: DPS, healer. Shinta: Burst mage, debuffer.
Priest*: Healer, assassin, physical DPS. Shield*: Tank, physical DPS, healer.
*temporary names. Shield is definitely being discarded, but I rather like Priest.

This is a very simple way to summarize them but it will actually make more sense once they're introduced as characters, which I plan to do up next. So, here's some potential equipment ideas:

Blood Scepter (scales with user's Spirit stat)
Blood Mist: Damages one enemy based on how full their life is, then heals the party with that amount split among members. Sanguine Cross: Damages one enemy, costing 25% of Shinta's HP to use, and becomes much more powerful according to how low Shinta's and the target's HP is. Blood Pact: During X turns, averages the party's HP pool after every action, and restores some HP every turn. Sanguine Shield: Places a X HP magical shield on the caster which halves all damage received while it lasts, and splits the absorbed damage through the party.

Whirlwind (Scythe, scales with the user's Strength stat)
Scathing Gale: Damages all enemies, and creates a storm that damages the next 2 units to act. Wind Seal: Creates a whirling seal that damages and pushes back the next unit to act for one turn. Energy Slash: Damages one enemy. The next 3 units to act are healed (with the heal weakening consecutively). Sonic Boom: Damages a foe, and raises their aggro towards the caster much more than usual.


So these items each have a core concept (the Blood Scepter playing with HP, while Whirlwind playing with looming effects on the next units) and the concepts intersect with each of the cast's traits to produce their interpretation of these effects. We have several other weapon concepts like this Greataxe which delays the user's next turn but produces very powerful effects, especially against full health targets; other weapons that play with delaying and accelerating units' action times, etc. There's also the Limited Use Items that we will talk about in the future, these, instead of costing Skill Points, have limited uses, and once they're out of uses they're (potentially, as it just ocurred me restoring them could be a possibility) gone. They have a single effect shared between all users, and this effect is often associated to a particular NPC or questline, as well as a particular dungeon. These can range from regular Potions to more specific items like a dying kid's firefly lantern that has only so many uses left and you ought to make the best use of it.

I'm looking forward to seeing how you like these concepts, as well as any ideas you might possibly want to share! I'm just addicted to RPG systems and this setup is so much fun to work with.

To finish off this post, here's a sneak peek of the first dungeon's boss!

Thanks for stickin' around y'all!~ 

I hope this was a fun post (at least nearly as fun as it was to write haha), tbh I'm looking forward to bounce item ideas off with other devs and players. Woop!
Also, @Keops, I'm definitely checking your devlog out! :D Thanks for the interest, I'm glad you like it.
Yeah, working on the game is already a lot of work, making the devlog is a lot of effort -- but it's just so nice to have the progress noted down and whatnot. I should really interact a bit within the community but these last weeks have been WOOSH with personal issues... Still, I'll make sure to check your out. Maybe I should make a personal schedule and assign a specific hour each week to encourage myself to interact. Hmm...

As for my work schedule artwise, I think I'll be moving back to the town for the time being. We've got plenty of the art for our current stage covered, dungeon-wise (through new art I made, old art I scavenged from old projects, and assets and free stuff I have collected) but the town. BOY the town that's gonna be a lot of work.

[Heirukichi]

Hello community,
this time around I am the one writing the official post. There are various reasons for this, but, if I have to pick one, I'd say that the main reason would be something very strange that happened during this week.

It is summer and I spent a long time traveling from one place to another to go on vacation. Since the trip was very long, I decided to invest my time doing something productive rather than just listening to music. First of all, I started fixing a few things and polishing what I had already written, but at some point I started writing more and more lines of code and noting down the changes I made along the way.

I was just doing it to distract myself - I never planned to stick to a schedule or anything. You can imagine how shocked I was when, after reaching my destination, I took a look at the list I wrote and found out that it was the longest list I had ever written in a single week.

When I mentioned this to Jo, he commented in a very amusing way:
"And here I thought that traveling would lead to being less productive. It seems that you never stop learning."

Well, after this premise, it is time to share the real list with you all, so that you can see what I mean.

HUD Progress

• Changed how HUD windows are handled
• Removed unnecessary lines from the source code handling HUD in order to make it easier to read and maintain
• Added checks to ensure that files are loaded properly
• Improved modularization for HUD classes
• Created a separate configuration module to handle weapon boxes
• Modified HUD windows size so that weapon boxes fit in it
• Changed static window classes to be initialized in a more automatic way
• Found a bug with the Cache and started working on a fix
• Modified window handling to leave enough space for a cursor later on
• Modified windows position accordingly
• Fixed a bug that caused windows on the right side to appear slightly shifted to the left
• Changed how characters faces are displayed
• Changed how static window classes calculate their horizontal position
• Changed how the HUD slides when disappearing
• Changed how characters information are obtained
• Created a window class to show weapon boxes according to the new configuration module
• Adjusted boxes position to match the mock-up

And here is a screenshot to give you a taste of Jo's progress. He is currently working on the interior of the blacksmith shop for the first town of our game. In my opinion it really looks like one, I hope you like it as much as I do.



Hopefully, we will be able to show you a real screenshot of the HUD - or even better a GIF or a video - in our next post. Until then, stay tuned for more updates.

[Keops]

This looks really good I love how its shaping. I'm not too knowledgeable on Dungeon Crawlers, probably Grimrock and Etrian Odyssey are the only ones I've played for longer than a few minutes, but its a genre that I like mechanically. Going to keep an eye on this project.

Wishing you the best on this game!

[Heirukichi]

DISCLAIMER: this is not meant as an official post; for the official post you have to wait until Friday.

I'm not too knowledgeable on Dungeon Crawlers

Thank you for your encouraging words. Anyway, as Jo mentioned in the first official post, the game does not entirely belong to the Dungeon Crawler genre; we have elements of  Side-Scroll Exploration games mixed in.

Hopefully, mixing the two genres together can lead to a mixed genre where combat is necessary (as in all kind of Dungeon Crawler games), but other aspects of game design are not completely overshadowed by it. Our goal is that of creating a game where the player has to feel the pressure of living in a forgotten land, where dangers are everywhere, but, at the same time, where people found a way to survive, a way to shelter themselves from all those dangers. Those NPCs should not be extra sprites that fill the background, interactions with them are meant to be meaningful.

We do not want the game to feel like an endless stream of enemies to farm. Of course, fights still play an important role (probably the most important), but they are not the final goal, they should be just a simple mean to grow stronger and achieve the player's goal. I can guarantee that we are putting a lot of effort on that hand.

Things are being planned carefully, especially combat mechanics, to allow players who long for games where strategy is relevant to have fun by investigating all the possible strategies that the game has to offer, while still leaving plenty of room for standard tactics. To achieve something like this, we are trying to calculate breakpoints and possible combination as accurately as possible. Hopefully we will be able to tell you all more about this soon, once these mechanics will be leaving the planning phase.

[Keops]

DISCLAIMER: this is not meant as an official post; for the official post you have to wait until Friday.

I'm not too knowledgeable on Dungeon Crawlers

Thank you for your encouraging words. Anyway, as Jo mentioned in the first official post, the game does not entirely belong to the Dungeon Crawler genre; we have elements of  Side-Scroll Exploration games mixed in.

Hopefully, mixing the two genres together can lead to a mixed genre where combat is necessary (as in all kind of Dungeon Crawler games), but other aspects of game design are not completely overshadowed by it. Our goal is that of creating a game where the player has to feel the pressure of living in a forgotten land, where dangers are everywhere, but, at the same time, where people found a way to survive, a way to shelter themselves from all those dangers. Those NPCs should not be extra sprites that fill the background, interactions with them are meant to be meaningful.

We do not want the game to feel like an endless stream of enemies to farm. Of course, fights still play an important role (probably the most important), but they are not the final goal, they should be just a simple mean to grow stronger and achieve the player's goal. I can guarantee that we are putting a lot of effort on that hand.

Things are being planned carefully, especially combat mechanics, to allow players who long for games where strategy is relevant to have fun by investigating all the possible strategies that the game has to offer, while still leaving plenty of room for standard tactics. To achieve something like this, we are trying to calculate breakpoints and possible combination as accurately as possible. Hopefully we will be able to tell you all more about this soon, once these mechanics will be leaving the planning phase.

Well, I'll be here. Sounds very ambitious and interesting, wish you guys the best!

[tansutumer]

Hello community, I am glad to see that there are already people interested in our game. It is always nice to receive encouraging words.

DISCLAIMER: this is not meant as an official post, but rather as a way for me to take part in the discussion. For the official post you have to wait until Friday.

As an oldtimer, this reminds me of my Might&Magic days

As an old-timer myself, I can see how it reminds of Might&Magic, with the way characters are displayed and how the first person dungeon exploration works. On top of it, the fact that the same character can use different attacks based on the weapon he or she is wielding also reminds of the said game. Strangely enough, Might&Magic was not even among those that inspired us, at least not among those we explicitly mentioned when brainstorming the game concepts.

As Joseph previously mentioned, the battle system is going to be turn based, which is slightly different from what you would expect from the games mentioned above. However, our goal was that of giving out the same vibe as those old-school games; if we managed to remind you of them with just a few posts, I consider it a huge success.

These days we are working on the battle system, trying to make it smooth and focusing our efforts on intuitiveness. We do want to give out the same vibe as old-school games, but we also want to create something that is easy to understand, where players are not forced to spend many hours just to learn how the game works. Hopefully, we will soon be able to show you a screenshot of how it looks like in game, rather than a mock-up image, I hope it is going to be satisfactory.

I couldn't agree with you more on spending many hours just to learn the basics of the old games back in the day Sounds great, can't wait to see some screenshots! That first boss looks sick though 

[JosephSeraph]

Thanks a lot for the encouraging words, guys! We're enjoying making this so much, and I hope you get to enjoy the playing the game as much as we do making it!
This week was rather slow on my end, as I dedicated most of it to finishing an asset pack that had been in production since last year. With that out of the way, I worked on refining the character designs and exploring their personalities a bit further.

Today's devlog post brings a lot of exciting new stuff!



And the first I'm going to talk about is the party. Through the game you'll be in the shoes of four warriors as they investigate the mysteries of the island, whom I'll present below:


One of the Queen's most trustworthy knights, despite her young age she has displayed immense aptitude and loyalty. She was dispatched to the island along with another knight and a scholar.

Alma is someone who can reliably keep the fight moving to the player's tune. Well versed in offensive magic in particular, she specializes in dealing high  burst damage, although she's also a great secondary healer and a fantastic wielder of swords. She's quite agile also, which is a great thing -- you'll want to balance her support and offensive aspects to keep the party at the right pace.



A vagrant knight that hails from the lands of the Northeast, her heart is brimming with an intense passion, which led her to a life of traveling. Despite so, she is very much an ally who always lends a hand in times of need, since she first made her way into the Kingdom years ago.
She was requested to accompany Alma on her mission to uncover the island's mysterious return.

Gameplay-wise, she is the party's main tank. She can divert damage from the party, provoke enemies into targeting her and create protective barriers; all essential to surviving the deadly dungeons and mutated creatures the player will come to face. She is also proficient with heavy weapons, being able to cause serious amounts of damage when given the opportunity.



A figure the party meets in the island.

Priest is very proficient with deadly knives, having the ability to quickly assassinate troublesome foes with a myriad of dispatching skills. He is also very proficient with curative magic, being a surprisingly powerful healer that will no doubt save the party countless times.



A scholarly, talented and introverted young man. From a family of eccentric, famed magicians, he is quite the fish out of water, being extremely serious and down-to-earth. He offers to accompany Alma to the island, seeing this as an opportunity to learn what has long eluded much of society and uncover some of the secrets behind the Cataclysm.

Shinta is a highly skilled magician, being able to draw magic from weapons to produce a myriad of versatile and powerful secondary effects, such as channeling Greatswords into magnetic barriers. He is also very efficient at using alchemics, with his consumable actions recovering his next turn much faster.


----
And that's it for the cast! Now, I'm very happy to be able to show the first actual in-game screenshot after Heirukichi's hard programming work through this project.

The font, icons and H/S bars are placeholders. (Placeholder colors, in the case of the latter)

I can't help but feel really happy looking at this baby shaping up like this to be honest... Hey, Heirukichi! Thanks for your hard workkk!!!!!

As these characters have very defined battle roles, I hope their personalities and stories can shine through their skill sets, as well as provide a fun and challenging environment.



screenshot of a scrapped location, an iteration of the game's first town.

And that's it for today! I look forward to talking about all the sorts of NPCs you'll find throughout the island, as they all have their own stories to tell. Now, I need to go and rest because my BACK IS BURNING!!!!!! Guys, remember: If you dev a lot on your computer, stretch and buy a good chair! LIKE I NEVER DO!!

Jo signing out, have a nice day teehee!

[tansutumer]

Looks great, with a lot of soul! The town has so much atmosphere Congrats on the great work!

[Heirukichi]

Hello again everybody,
I am glad to read that you appreciate the atmosphere of the town. Atmosphere has been considered, since the beginning of this project, a very important aspect of our game. Seeing how such a rudimentary town can already give out the intended vibe is heartwarming. Thank you again for the encouraging words.

As you can see, Jo is not the one writing this post. This time, I purposely asked him to let me do it in his stead because I wanted to talk about our side-scroll movement system and how we decided to animate the character sprite, which is something I am really proud of.

"Oh, come on, how can a side-scroll movement system be unique an even worth mentioning?"

Did such a thought cross your mind while reading the previous paragraph? If it did not, good, it means that you are giving our movement system a chance. If it did, I am going to explain why I am so excited and why I want to spend a few words talking about this, hoping that.

However, before doing that, let me announce that Jo has officially completed the blacksmith shop the we showed you two weeks ago. Now, let us celebrate with a GIF of the said environment.



What are the contents of the book that the blacksmith is reading? Is he checking which materials he has left in stock or is he reading a romantic novel to escape reality? Maybe interacting with him might unveil this mystery. Anyway, I would like to express my thanks to Jo for his hard work.

The time is due to talk about our side-scroll movement system. First things first: it is a side-scroll movement system (I know, you were not expecting this, right?). But let us talk about what makes it different from the usual ones. As we already mentioned in a previous post, our goal is that of creating a game that is old-school, but that also takes into account the evolution that took place in the game industry.

With that mindset, we asked ourselves a few questions.
"Why should somebody be able to let the character slide without showing any animation (or just a part of it) by simply repeatedly pressing the movement button fast enough (this is something that often happens in side-scroll games)? Have you ever seen anybody walking like that?"

"Why should we use a system where the character can instantly stop her movement even if she is completely off-balance? Is that not completely unrealistic?"

Questions like these were popping up one after another. In the end, we decided that, since we are in the 21st century, we could do better than that, and came up with a system that features both side-scroll movement and a certain extent of realism. We tried to apply concepts that are already being used in 3D games animations to a side-scroll movement system, while, at the same time, not being bound to a specific grid.

When I tried to explain what I had in mind to Jo, I used a handmade sketch. My value as an artist goes down in the negative values so I am not going to show you what I drew (I value your eyes health). Let me say that what I made was unsightly, which does not express how bad it was, but since to do it I would have to resort to a more vulgar language, we can leave it at that.

Instead of hurting your sight with my handmade sketch I prepared a special image, that looks much better, just for this occasion (which should also give you an idea of how bad the original was).



The image shows how we are going to handle a full-step. It starts moving a leg and ends when you finish moving the other leg. Each full-step can be divided in two different half-steps, and every part of the half-step reacts differently to the player input. The number of frames per step is not necessarily going to be the one shown in the picture, but one thing is sure: if your character is off-balance, she cannot stop her movement.

This system also gives us the freedom to split each half-step into separate blocks and configure each of them to react differently depending on whether the player is still pressing the movement button, no longer pressing it, or suddenly pressing the opposite direction button to make a faster turn.

All this should make our movement system more realistic and, hopefully, act as a bridge between old-school and modern games.


I think that this is enough to explain what makes our movement system different from other side-scroll movement systems, and I hope that my enthusiasm did not bore you to death and that you will be looking forward to see this movement system working.

It would be great if we could show you tangible results on that end in a few weeks. Until then, I give you my thanks for your attention and I invite you to stay tuned for our weekly update.

[JosephSeraph]

Heirukichi's Progress

• Created side-scroll movement
  
• Created methods to handle transferring between locations in a  very automatic way

• Added methods to handle slopes

• Adjusted interaction box when on slopes

• Adjusted sprite origin to achieve better results when on a slope

• Created behavioral blocks to handle dynamic animations

• Adjusted animation speed to avoid the "moon walk" effect and achieve realistic animations

• Fixed a bug causing a few frames in the animation to be skipped

• Fixed a big that caused the sprite to disappear at the end of the animation cycle

• Fixed a bug resulting in a weird behavior when changing direction during movement

• Started working on battle system mechanics

Jo's Progress

• Reformatted and improved Alma's walking and running animations.
• Created files to note down character lore and relationships.
• Rewritten and expanded lore on 1st town NPCs

Hey there! So it's a new Friday, and with it comes a new devlog progress report!
Heirukichi's been a steamroller lately, pulling off a lot of bug-crushing and optimization.

This week I'd like to talk a bit about the denizens of the small town Alma and the crew comes across briefly after getting to the island.



The small pockets of civilization in the island are very isolated, as the shifts brought by the Cataclysm caused the wilderness to turn into a very dangerous place, forcing people to remain within the same small community, hardly ever stepping outside -- the main, if not at times the only, link between different settlements being the network of mercenaries that trade supplies around.

This village is one of the smallest of such. We'll get to know a dozen or so characters in it, although today I'm introducing three.

Frei is the village's sole innkeeper -- she provides clean beds and a place to stay for the weary mercenaries that bring the village supplies.
She is a kind, yet brash and quick to strike woman. Having lost her sister in an expedition a few years prior, who was the only family she had remaining, she got into a state of deep grief. Cook's mother also died the same day, eventually leading to Frei taking him in.

Shea is somewhat of a newcomer in town. She took many duties to herself, her main duty being the front of the Pub and dealing directly with the mercenaries. A skilled fighter herself, she is always wary of potential disturbances to the village's safety. She's good friends with Frei, who acts as a motherly figure to both her and Cook.

Cook is a reclusive, skilled young man. Since his mother's passing away he has retreated quite heavily; the town's secluded tension doesn't help him much. As a result, he spends most of his time locked in his own house, painting, or cooking for the Pub, which Shea helps to run.
Despite that, the whole town adores his food, no one cooks quite like him.
A troubled man who's out of touch with his own feelings, his relationship with Shea is complicated; both care much for each-other, but his sensitive, yet barricaded personality clashes heavily with Shea's practicality and constant tension; as a result both end hurting each-other quite often.


I'm hoping to create a world where every npc has a story to tell, and that your interactions with them will be meaningful in watching the storylines unfold. The existence of LUIs is heavily tied to NPCs also, with most NPCs eventually offering their own equipment, whose effects and lore broaden the players's knowledge of the world.

That's it for NPC talk! Hopefully now that I have a more organized platform to write in (I created individual .gal, which is the proprietary GraphicsGale file, to write the characters) the game's world will be able to organically grow
Though in reality what I really wanted was a good, simple to use wiki like Wikia. But most stuff I saw was quite complex to set up and wasn't really worth the trouble. (Really, editing Wikia is so easy! Too bad they don't allow private wikis.)

We're working on optimizing the walk/run animations in town as well, and the result of Heirukichi's code work is amazing! We're looking forward to showing it next week.

Thanks once again, and have a nice weekend! 

[Heirukichi]

DISCLAIMER
This is not an official post. For official updates you have to wait until Friday.
I am honestly very surprised to see that our DevLog reached more than 1300 views in slightly more than a month and I wanted to thank everyone who took interest in our game. Watching the numbers going up is like watching your own character grow stronger in a game, something that we, as game designer, know for being something very rewarding. Thanks a lot, really.

Since I am writing this post, I take this chance to say that I have finished coding the movement system and the behavior for the walking animation. I can say for sure that we will be able to show you a GIF of the said system working inside our game in our next official post.

Once again, tank you all, and stay tuned for more updates!

[JosephSeraph]

Heirukichi's Progress

• Created side-scroll movement
• Created methods to handle transferring between locations in a very automatic way
• Added methods to handle slopes
• Adjusted interaction box when on slopes
• Adjusted sprite origin to achieve better results when on a slope
• Created behavioral blocks to handle dynamic animations
• Adjusted animation speed to avoid the "moon walk" effect and achieve realistic animations
• Fixed a bug causing a few frames in the animation to be skipped
• Fixed a big that caused the sprite to disappear at the end of the animation cycle
• Fixed a bug resulting in a weird behavior when changing direction during movement
• Started working on battle system mechanics

Jo's Progress

• Finalized Alma's running sprite

And so another week has past, apologies for the 2 day delay on the progress report, blame's on me!
We're changing up our format a bit and we'll go lighter on content here in the devlog, only really talking about our progress reports. This way we can move the more in depth gameplay, artwork, etc. topics to a platform where we can explore them in detail. (And not bore you to death with walls of text,also.)

But yeah, this week was neat, being able to see Alma finally walking around was very nice, and we're both very pleased with the results of Heirukichi's movement system.

Here's the running and walking animations for Alma!

At the moment we're working on brainstorming dungeon mechanic ideas, since we're starting design on the game's first proper dungeon very soon. We want all dungeons to have a unique mechanic that makes navigating them more fun, memorable and challenging. Ideas are welcome! Speaking of which, what are some dungeon mechanics that you've enjoyed, or you've always wanted to see? I personally would love to see the typical survival horror mechanic of running away from this hulking, impenetrable threat make its way into what would otherwise be a typical RPG dungeon. Something about avoiding this threatening predator which is always one step behind you. But I think implementing real time moving events within the 3D labyrinth will be a bit difficult so this won't likely get into the game in this form.

Well, enjoy the rest of the Sunday y'all, and have a nice week!