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[augfuturetg]

DEVLOG 6/22/21

So today I started to be more critical of my work. I really feel like my writing and design could both be at a higher level and I am worried that using this as a portfolio piece could make my skills seem lesser than they truly are. The problem I'm seeing now, that I'm realizing now, is that when I'm making a whole game by myself, even if it's only a text game, means I have take love and attention away from my main skills - writing and design - and I have to spread all of that time and attention into everything. This means that I can't take my writing and design to their fullest level for this project without dedicating even more time to the project since I have to stretch the time out into everything else.


Maybe that wouldn't be so bad in another circumstance but given the real circumstance of having to work, this not being my main paying job, having lost a bunch of time to having to had worked months of overtime in an industry I hate, not being in a real suitable conditions i.e. living in a shared place and not being in a work office or somewhere suited to focusing directly on the work and also effing coronavirus... Well, that all leads to less and less time that I have to be able to devote to the game. Which means from now on, after this project, I think I will always try to work in a team of some sort that way I can focus on putting my full attention into doing my job with my main skills at the highest level of quality that I can.

So I hope that, using this in my portfolio, future hiring managers/team leaders will be able to see that I understand most of the process of making a game and that they won't only double down on only the writing or only the design as I have spread my skills into everything for this project.

Also, today, it feels like I've been a little more unfocused and out of it then I can usually force myself to be. I'm still putting in the full time I usually put in but something is just off today.


-Started working on fully fleshing out the final story event with the big boss fight.​

-Need to find out why the variables in battle are becoming decimals after using double shot multiple times, even without a decimal variable in the health function.

-Add a "Spider-bear" enemy.

-Make two separate trap dodging events so that when conditions apply the player can have more time to dodge as if they really noticed the traps.

[augfuturetg]

Worked on A.I. and battle algorithms for the final boss fight. Got a call about something from two jobs ago and dealt with that. Also had to deal with a spider appearing, not sure what kind it was but it looked like a recluse maybe. Overall, not the most productive day but I battled on and kept working until the end.


>Worked on some boss battle stuff.

>Designed the boss battles, designed the skills and stuff.

>Added most of the stats and skills into the game.

[augfuturetg]

Today was going to be sort of a mental rest day for me. I was going to "let the chips out." However I found myself opening up the engine again anyway. I felt more ready for this today than I did yesterday.

I had set these resets and reward algorithms like, last week and somehow, even after looking at it almost every day, I didn't notice that I forgot to put all of the reset algorithms, for stats and conditions, in the victory scripts. So I had all of the resets set to happen after losing or after running but not after winning which means that for like a week+ I just couldn't figure out why the character damage was increasing by a multiple of ten after every victory.

I mean I scrolled right past without noticing the algorithms for resetting were missing EVERY SINGLE DAY ALMOST. Nothing humbles you like some code I guess. And I use a no script system ugh.

Well, it was okay to ignore for a while since it didn't actually prevent player progress (rather, sped it up by a lot haha). So I still got so much done while that bug existed. Nice to finally catch it, though.

I also finally changed the river background color. Now it's a blue, but it's a greenish blue. I figured the water wouldn't be tooo clean and it would reflect a lot of green from the jungle around it. As well as that, I made sure to make it a little dark to give it the appearance of being under a canopy/shadowed by a lot of natural growth. Hopefully helps the player feel a little more like they are actually there.

Also i hadn't fully updated the reset algorithm yet, which is something I overlooked and didn't realized when expanding and fleshing out the combat. But it is now updated to reset everything after battle correctly.

Now I have come across another problem. I fixed the other bugs I found and it somehow broke stuff I already had working.

STUFF DONE

>The final boss story event is close to done.

>Fixed more bugs in the battle system.

>Changed river background to more of a shadowy blue-green to better represent being near the water.

>Added music for the final location.

>Fixed more bugs.

>Expanded the reset system to cover all of the perks.


WANT TO DO

>Add in background effects. Such as sounds of a crowd. Sounds of nature. Water rushing, waterfall, birds, wind rustling through leaves, rain, etc.

>Figure out what broke and how!

[augfuturetg]

DEVLOG 6/25/21


​Today I rolled my game back by two days of work, luckily these logs can tell me some of what I can do to speed up my devving time the second time around.

Battle system seems to be glitch free at the moment, woo!

I got some events cleared up, I got the beta for the final bosses implemented. It feels like I did a lot even if I don't have much to say about it. It was some busy work but had to be done regardless. Had to redo some stuff but that was quick and easy.

I managed to get the final story event working and loading, transferring everything correctly so far. As of right now the game is probably gold again. Still got a lot of flesh out, though.

>Rolled version back.

>Fixed battle system from there.

>Some fixing up of stuff.

>Redid did river color.

>Game is gold again?

[augfuturetg]

DEV LOG 6/26/21

Convinced myself not to take the day off. I told myself, oh, I will just work on some of the easy, mindless stuff. You know, change the decimal variables to round up so that the engine doesn't accidentally return decimals in game. Well, 2 hours later I'm done with that and I'm like, "Interesting, this combat situation returns 50 less damage than it should." So an hour later I've fixed that and I'm now adding all of the cooldown conditionals because I noticed that skills aren't being locked for their cooldowns and I had overlooked this part when putting all of the stuff together. Well, over 4 hours have gone by and I've basically worked a shift at a part time job, nearing 5 hours, and my usual stopping time comes around. Look at that, I said I will just do one little thing and ended up working the full usual time.

Although, two days ago was supposed to be my day to relax and let the chips out, so today I did take it a little easier on myself than usual. I worked the full time but allowed myself to write other things down for other stuff, chat with some people, etc but overall I still put in a good amount of time and effort between when I started and when I stopped. Tomorrow I should really take the day off, though.

>Fixed decimal returns

>Fixed some text issues

>Fixed some variable issues

>Fixed some damage issues

>Fixed some cooldown issues

[augfuturetg]

​dev log 6/28/21


>Fixed more battle system issues

>Fixed an issue where one location was not loading enemies but was still giving out victory rewards

>Added some more music in

>Got the final boss battles implemented

>Finished implementing the new cooldown times

>Implemented cooldown text to let players know something is in cooldown

>Had an issue where disabling skills that are cooling down from being chosen wasn't working by looping the label jump back to the start of the skill selection

>Etc

[augfuturetg]

Dev Log 6/29/21


Felt like I was getting dulled by the monotony of working on the same general parts of the game over and over again soooo I decided to jump ahead and make the new introduction today. I got most of it already implemented. I also added in a tutorial, which I'm still working on, but it's brief and is mostly just a watered down battle without time pressure to let the player get familiar with the controls.


>Switched some music

>Implemented new introduction

>Started making a tutorial system

>Other stuff​

[augfuturetg]

​DevLog 6/30/21


>Implemented new, more exciting introduction.

>New introduction is functional and working but needs polish.

>Fixed some more battle issues. These never seem to end! Yay!

>Added one more song at the tavern, feels nice to have multiple tracks to switch between to keep things fresh.

>Starting to work on balancing the combat better, starting to fine tune the chances of effects of attacking different body parts to make better effects more risky to try and less powerful effects more reliable to count on.

>Introducing a plain and simple side quest chain to add a little more excitement to the grind for leveling up between main story events.

>Got one chain in the new side quest implemented.

>Mostly implemented contact with the tutorial guy whom players can contact through their interface's communication application at any time to ask for basic advice about the game.

[augfuturetg]

Dev Log 7/1/21

Sometimes it becomes really apparent that, when making your own project like this, there is no frame work or quest guide to move you along. You figure everything out yourself, you organize all the work yourself, you set your own task list yourself. It can be easy to feel somewhat lost in the sauce, even with a smaller scope project. If you finish one task you can sometimes find yourself floating in the soup of the game's development screens, trying to pick out the pieces of work that you need to do next from the heavy broth of the code and the tools. You know you need to fix a couple glitches and improve some of the balance but there is so much to sift through that even when you have a seed of understanding of what to do next, even when you have a task list outlining what's next on the agenda, it can still feel like swimming in an ocean searching for a small island to anchor your mind to.

However I feel like this experience gives me a lot of strength as a developer and that going forward it gives me a foot up on any competition, because I know what it's like to have been lost in the ocean of development and I know what it's like and how to navigate through something that seems to stretch on forever in all directions. I feel like I'm becoming someone that others can rely on and turn to if they feel lost in the cycle of creation.


That being said, I actually got more done than usual today. Today was considerably productive.


>Implemented a side quest chain.

>Communication with the Priest implemented.

>Always working on bugs. Always.

[augfuturetg]

Dev Log 7.5.21.

Realized part of the early main quest chain was to get signed up for an apartment at the inn. The point of this was to create a sense of actually living in an augmented future sci fi fantasy world. However, the scope of this game, working on it myself, simply will not allow for me to add a day/night cycle. Therefore there is no real reason to have an apartment that the players pay for. The Inn still exists and it's not really an Inn, it just takes that aesthetic because the future augmented world is sort of a low key roleplay mixed in to real life. People go to Javelin Mountainside to feel like they are living in a different time zone, enhanced by the augmented reality system, while still living a normal futuristic life. So although it's called an "inn" it's actually an apartment complex.


Without a time function in the game, which would take a solid effort to implement, I won't really be able to have players have to  worry about paying for the apartment every amount of days. Therefore, I will just remove that altogether. However, while writing this, I realized I could still keep the apartment accessible to the player as a place to fully heal both health and energy for free. Usually free healing spots do exist in rpgs so it still makes sense to have. However there was going to be a big debt system that played an important purpose in construing a certain fable for the futuristic world. However, the I under-calculated the amount of work that the game was going to take working on by myself and the game still has plenty of valuable information contained within it so I am not too worried about losing one or two of the points I was hoping to make.



Tasks finished

> Make sure to change music from story event 5 to the Health Clinic.

> Come up with new name for clinic (came up with health clinic).

> Try making the money and debt trackers more glowy and neonish like the hoverboard, but do it in a way that doesn't make it seem like a button and or make the hoverboard look more like a button.

> Add shadow effects to most of the U.I. text to make it seem like they are actually popping out of the screen to some degree.

> Add a separate event roulette for entering and exiting buildings.

> Changed the time pressure on enemy ranks. Rank 1 enemies give the player ample time (4 seconds) to make decisions while rank 3 and 4 enemies expect players to know what they're doing, only giving them (2 seconds) to make a decision. Previously, it was all set to 3 seconds, which is what rank 2 enemies are set as.

[augfuturetg]

​Dev Log 7 - 9 - 21


>Implemented Health and Energy U.I. displays.

>Opening variables from the battle system and now that all of that stuff is working, I am testing getting certain variables to work fluidly outside of battle and to still be used in battle.

>Rearranged the user interface to make space for the status effect displays. Moved the money and debt tracker lower down because your health is more important than money.

>Added Status Effect Displays to the User interface for the three current overworld statuses that the player can be afflicted with.

>Implemented the status effects' actual effects to work outside of combat.

>Added some Hoverboard travel events.

>Removed the skeletal, unmade remains of the tavern kitchen from the project. If reasonable, will re add and flesh out kitchen at the end of the project.

>Fixed some button placement and sizes.

>Added more of a uniform structure to some of the text, will finish next time.

[augfuturetg]

​Dev Log 7 - 11 - 21

Grinded out a lot of work today. This specific task (getting ALL of the dialogue into better, more professional and presentable shape) feels somewhat overwhelming. I am not at a point in it where I can declare it any kind of a progress update towards the completed game even though a lot of time and effort has went in to it.

Also I need to change this one name Ranulf which is really kind of not stylish especially when compared to other NPC's like Requiem or Bandwidth...

[augfuturetg]

Dev Log 7/12/21

>Implemented apartment with sleep function and levitation bed

>Deleted some unnecessary stuff

>Implemented skill review section

[augfuturetg]

​Dev Log 7.13.21.


> Changed the weapon shop. Changed from buying 3 levels of each weapon to simply being able to buy the weapons. It was not fully implemented before but with the change, I added all the weapons to be purchase-able and fully implemented it. Now all I have to do is figure out the prices.

> Changed the armor shop. Same as the weapon shop.

> Added trainers for the 3 armor types. Mostly implemented. Only need to add the dialogue for the upgrades.

> Fixed poisoned food event buttons.

>Started working on the Cleric's basic identity at the clinic.

[augfuturetg]

Dev Log 7.14.21


>Armor and defense now properly implemented into the game.


>All armor can now be properly swapped out from player menu.

        >All variables now properly  adjusted with the swapping of armor.


>All weapon chips can now be properly swapped out from player menu.   

        >All variables now properly  adjusted with the swapping of weapon chips.


>All lethal weapons can now be properly swapped out from player menu.   

        >All variables now properly  adjusted with the swapping of lethal weapons.

[augfuturetg]

​Dev Log 7.15.21.


>Renamed Ranulf to Thunder so now it's [Mage Thunder] the Priest instead of [Mage Ranulf] the Priest. Had to go change his name in all instances of it's appearance.

>Fixed some buttons and some label transitions.

>Fixed some text.

>Added in rez packs known as "Juice Packs" with three levels of energy healing.

>Implemented the buying system for them.

>Split the resurrection cleric's interaction choices into "implant stuff" and "socialization."

>Fixed up the spell buying system which was set to buy spells for free during testing and figuring out economy balance.

[augfuturetg]

​Dev Log 7.17.21


I have been editing combat today. While going through the battle algorithms and changing the chances of certain attacks to land their effects I find myself wishing I could expedite the process with some kind of common event or prefabs but no matter how much I think about it, it seems like there are too many independent factors at play. There is no common denominator to place the multiple, very similar functions into one prefab to call on for every attack sequence. Which means I have to meticulously edit every single individual line of combat which is time consuming and annoying. Perhaps a real programmer would have been able to find a common denominator that I did not?


> Adjusted combat balance, changed chances for arm and leg focused attacks to activate special effects.

> Busy work, editing buttons to make them easier for the mind to separate and process.

[augfuturetg]

>For some reason Travel Event buttons were off place. Fixed.

>Did the same for Hoverboard Travel Events.

> All merc functions are now in the game.

> Half of today's session was about finding a way to stop the skip button from freezing the text display if used too quickly upon the loading of a scene. I did not find a solution after experimenting with multiple things the engine doesn't have a way to prevent that apparently.

[augfuturetg]

Still working on this. Mostly implementing some items and getting them implemented for use in battle as well. However there is some family stuff, work and some medical stuff all happening at once. Since this is not my source of income, I have to slow down on this while I do other things. I still work on it a little bit every day, just not as much as before, for now.

[augfuturetg]

Dev Log 7/27/21

> Trying to test out the implemented items to make sure they all work correctly. That's right, I'm doing all my own testing. And I only cry a little bit about it.

> Refresh variables weren't working, think I fixed it though.

>Took all the numbers back out of the buttons because it just looked dumb.

>Some busy work - still need to test the items because some of the else if conditionals definitely need to be fixed but I'm really, really hoping they don't.