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[JobLeonard]

Luke-warm take: a good victory jingles is more important than many people think

This one is nice. The ability to skip is nice too (for later in the game)

[Feenicks]

Hints, boats, and...

I've largely hashed out the next dungeon/area of the game, so another post's in order, this time with a few smaller things.

1.



Missing one of the classes can be a bit of a pain, so once you get a boat you'll be able to find a hint-giver somewhere in the world. With a small payment, they'll give you a hint about where a class can be found.


2.



There's a bunch of canals you have to traverse in this city, but luckily you'll be able to catch a boat to where you need to go. Where to? Well, you'll learn that once you arrive.


3.

I could show you some screenshots of the dungeon I just finished, but honestly its design is fairly straightforward and there aren't any special gimmicks worth showing off.

...



Instead, have some cats:





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@JobLeonard: Yeah, they definitely help make the end-of-battle screen feel a lot more impactful, which helps when it's an RPG where you're fighting a lot of battles.

[Feenicks]

Pacts/Summons

I've finally all-but-finished the most substantial area of this game, with only one more town, 3 1/2 more dungeons, everything related to the endings, and a bunch of side stuff to deal with before I can wrap this game up.

Part of making this particular area involved setting up the last summon you can come across, so let's talk about those.

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Summons in False Skies act a bit differently compared to those in Final Fantasy or the Tales games, in two ways. Firstly, in lieu of a battle, you typically have to do some sort of task that reflects the summon's nature. Secondly, instead of the summoner classes having access to all of the obtained summons at once, they instead need to equip a particular summon's Pact to gain access to it.

What do you gain from this? A few things. Evokers get several skills that change based on the equipped Pact, with the added bonus that they're still usable while under the effects of Fog*. Second, there's a reasonable boost to certain stats when a Pact is equipped.


Some are more intensive than others.


Some are more intensive than others.

Evoker summons themselves act more like FF3's evoker summons, where half the time you get a buff or debuff inflicted on the opponent; I'm probably going to continue the FF3 reference with the full-fledged summoner class, which will have summons better suited in power to the endgame.

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Anyway, here's the two lategame summons:



Artur is the physical-attack-based-on-the-nonphysical-attacking-stat summon. It's the more directly powerful of the two endgame summons, with its summon skill being either 5 weaker attacks against random enemies or 1 powerful attack that befogs* the enemy.



Union, on the other hand, is is more the buff/debuff king, either granting a boost to ATK, DEF, SKL, and SDF to the ally with the least ATK buffs, or delivering a powerful attack to an enemy, then debuffing them in those same stats.

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Both are honestly a bit of a pain to get, but hopefully they're powerful enough to be worth the effort.

[JobLeonard]

I've finally all-but-finished the most substantial area of this game, with only one more town, 3 1/2 more dungeons, everything related to the endings, and a bunch of side stuff to deal with before I can wrap this game up.

That's quite the milestone, congrats!

[Feenicks]

The Tower of Flags, and the arena

I finished up some important lategame areas, and this time it didn't take two months to do so!

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The Tower of Flags is a relatively short, somewhat puzzle-focused dungeon meant as a refresher before the endgame starts for real. That doesn't mean it's not worth talking about, though:



The tower is composed of several exterior and interior portions, but the main puzzle element of it are its elevators, most of which have a switch changing which upper area they go to. It's still a refresher dungeon, mind you, so these aren't too trying, but they should work as a reprieve from the more straightforward dungeon crawling of earlier on.



The Tower of Flags kiiinda gets away from the simpler look of much of the other dungeons in the game, sure, but as it's effectively the second-to-last dungeon in the game I think I'm allowed to break away from that look for a bit.

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Also opening up at the tail end of the game is the Rotary Arena:



The arena has a three-round tournament structure, weighted such that harder encounters are more likely to show up in the second and third rounds. There's still some element of randomness to it, though; will you cruise through and get easy opponents, or will you get put against an encounter that will quickly rip apart your team? You also won't be able to heal or change equipment between fights, so go in well-prepared!



The first time you're able to win a tournament, you'll get a special reward. Subsequent victories in that tournament get you something slightly less valuable:


As for the level listed on the reward screen, and in the name of the enemy there? Unlike every other enemy in the game, the ones in the arena change their stats based on the enemy level chosen. Indeed, there's a special bestiary just for arena enemies, with their stats displayed a different way than enemies elsewhere. Enemies in higher-leveled tournaments get better skills to use, as well as counterattacks that you'll need to watch out for, but those increased stats will still be something you'll need to watch out for.

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There's a bunch of side stuff I'd like to dabble with, as well as one last system I need to implement, before starting on the final dungeon, but hopefully those won't take too long to wrap up.

[wolfsden]

This is beautiful. And even though you are inspired by a specific era, it still manages to look pretty unique.

[Feenicks]

Imgur said a lot of my images didn't exist on my /all page for a bit, hope that isn't a sign of things to come... and also some endgame/not-endgame stuff

Christmastime, and also getting a bunch of commission work, has slowed me down a bit, but I've been able to get a good few things done in spite of that.
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It's not a proper final dungeon without a few bosses, optional or otherwise, to find.




The first of the lot is Danse, a test of how well you can deal with enemy summons, poison damage, and deathblows. It's 'straightforward', and you can mitigate one of those last two a bit if you find the right equipment, but it's still a final dungeon boss.

I mention this one in particular because they grant you a Tier 5 class upon their defeat, and getting to use those yourself is a slightly different process to getting other classes:



You see, you can only carry four classes on you, and in order to take on that Tier 5 class, one of them - your Tier 1 class that you started out the character with - has to go. You lose all the skills you learned with that class, along with all the levels you gained within that class, but in return you start learning the most powerful skills in the game. Some Tier 1 classes are okay to say goodbye to, while others let you learn skills critical through the entire game - so make sure you know what you're doing before making the leap.

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I've also made some graphical changes to two earlier areas of the game:




I changed the damage tiles in Brann Myr Cave to be a bit less eye-searing.



The Silver Fens now have a unique battle background, where before they were using the same one as the swamp/marshlands on the overworld.

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wolfden: Thanks. I feel I'm helped a bit by there not being very many GBC-looking games out there, but regardless that's always nice to hear.

[JobLeonard]

The new lava looks so much better!

[fishtaco567]

Woah! I'm trying to limit how much I read as I wanna discover it myself when it's released  but this looks absolutely beautiful. Absolutely nails the classic RPG vibe. Keep it up!

[Feenicks]

I changed several hundred entries in a database and that counts as an update

So until a few days ago FS had a bit of a problem with readability in battles. Specifically, it wasn't clear at all what enemies were doing what attacks in most instances.

Well, no longer. After doing a whole bunch of backend stuff and making a whole lot of enemy-only copies of abilities...



Enemies now move a little bit when attacking. It's not much, but between what the engine can do and my desire to keep battles pretty fast, it hopefully should be good enough.

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Elsewhere, I'm slowly crawling towards things being finished, so here's a few miscellaneous things from around the endgame:



Some new updates in the engine I'm using make guest characters much more reasonable to do, so there's now two of them that pop up while doing sidequests. One only appears for a single battle, but the other is around for an entire optional dungeon, showing off the battle plan of the class you'll get after beating the dungeon.



The final dungeon is closing in on being done, and since I have no sense of restraint I'm putting in a few things here and there. I'm hesitant to call them puzzles [that implies a degree of depth that isn't here], but they're more things on and off the main path to help spice things up.



They were really starting to bug me, so I went and redrew some boss sprites I had done way back at the start of this project. [Old sprites]



Lastly, this guy.

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I've also made some stabs at putting up a steam page. Still need to get everything for it together, but I'll try and work on that sooner rather than later.

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JobLeonard: Thanks. There's another area where it's a lot more prominent, so I felt it was time to make it look like actual heated ground.

fishtaco567: Good to hear. I hope to be done in a month or two [ignoring how I thought that at the start of the year], so hopefully this'll be in a place to be played through soon enough.

[05josephsmi]

This is beautiful, dropped a follow on Twitter. I know you have a demo but I'll wait for the full game since you're so close to finishing. Looking forwards to playing it.

[Gibberish]

This is looping really great!

[Feenicks]

End of the road

I'm done!

Or, rather, I've completed things up to a point at which I'd be happy to release the game in. There's always more you can add in or change around, but at a certain point you just have to call yourself done.

Anyway, screenshots:

I replaced the old picture that was in the intro with a different one, and set up a wavy effect on it as well.


You now see the [abbreviated] classes of your current party when choosing a save. Should help when you have a bunch of saves and need to remember which is which.


Saying there's more battles in the arena when I haven't released a demo with the arena accessible seems a bit weird... but I've put more battles in the arena.


The furthest-along battle in the game that I'm willing to show off.




I've also made a new post in my playtesting thread.
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Gibberish, 05josephsmi: Thanks. Stuff like that's always good to hear.

[ThemsAllTook]

Wow, congratulations! That's a big accomplishment. I'd be interested in playtesting, except I'm thinking I might want to Let's Play this game, which works better if I don't know too much ahead of time. Good luck on getting it the rest of the way across the finish line!

[Alain]

Great to hear you did it, congratulations!

[Feenicks]

It has been two months since I said I was done

Between going through the game and rebalancing things, setting up a steam page, and dealing with the bonus dungeon, things have been taking a bit more time than originally expected. That's fine, though.

First things first, [Steam page link]


There's been a few things I've been working on in the meantime, though:



The bonus dungeon is half revisits of earlier themes, half new ones. Here's some tests of two of those new areas.




One of the complaints from a playtester was that they didn't really feel connected to the setting all that much, so in a brute-force method I went and added in a question time segment with your chaperone in the first dungeon.



Treasure chests now show you the item description if you didn't have that item in your inventory prior to picking it up.


I also went and redrew two early-game enemy sprites that were bothering me a bunch. Old ones on the left, new ones on the right.

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Non-screenshottable changes being made:
- The cost of hot springs, and also the cost of being dragged back to the last save point you were at, have been cut a fair bit. Nothing fun about having to grind just to heal up.
- More importantly, the encounter rate formula's been changed to generally be much lower, with enemy stats and rewards being adjusted to compensate somewhat. There's still some dungeons with encounter rates similar to how they were before, but in general you shouldn't be running into a fight before crossing a screen anymore.

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ThemsAllTook, Alain: Thanks; it's nice to hear you interested in this. It seems I'm not quite across the finish line as I thought I was, but I can definitely see it.

[JobLeonard]

Lots of nice improvements!

Also, wishlisted the game obv

[Feenicks]

Two more months, huh

Somehow things keep on taking time. I only have a handful of things to do before it's time to send out a more-or-less complete version to people who want to test things out.

Some of the stuff I've done since the last post:



- There's now a sandstorm in the battles of one certain lategame area, dealing a bit of chip damage each turn. It's not a massive amount, but it helps give the area a bit more flavor.







- I've got the gimmicks for the side areas of the bonus dungeon set up. They're all of the 'could theoretically be enough for a whole area' variety, which given the conceit of the place feels appropriate.




- I drew this guy.

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Other non-screenshottable things done:

- Some classes got attacks added or equipment proficiencies changed around, partly to make multiple potential endgame class combos appealing and partially because I'm selfish and want to make the classes I chose work well.
- A dungeon you go to in the middle of the game got a whole bunch of changes made to it, albeit ones that you won't necessarily see on your first time through.
- All the regular enemies in the bonus dungeon have been set up, as well as three of the four extra bosses. A lot of them are doing cool and/or mean things, which I feel is appropriate for something that's past the point you can see an ending.

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I'm hoping to be done by the time November rolls around, so here's hoping all goes well.

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@JobLeonard: Thanks. I don't have that many wishlists still probably because I haven't advertised substantially anywhere, so every one counts.

[Feenicks]

Extra dungeon done, and the second end of the road



So False Skies is a game with multiple endings. When I said I was done back at the end of May, I'd squared away three of them. The last one would involve one or two more dungeons, one of which would be reusing assets.

Of course, now it's October. So, as to tell myself that I haven't been slacking off for 5 months, here's a few numbers for things I've added since that first end was reached:

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- 7 tilesets
- 95 enemy definitions [that aren't just being used to properly set up the bestiary]
- At least 200 attack definitions
- At least 150 battle formations
- 51 maps, and more if you include the ones I was using for testing out tilesets
- 300+ textboxes
- 1200+ lines of script in the one file I have for the extra areas alone, and probably a bunch more
- 5 animated backgrounds, and 4 other, non-animated ones
- And probably a bunch of other stuff that's not important here

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Anyway, that's all done, and while there's one or two other systems I want to get in at some point, the game is pretty much done, and most of what remains to be done before release are bugfixes and the inevitable rebalancing of things.

[Link to playtesting thread]

[JobLeonard]

I wish I still had time to playtest games, let alone the time sink that is RPGs. This sounds like a nice update though!