Devlog No.042

Another couple weeks and this time I made quite a bit of progress! The first actual quest for the game is now added and functions perfectly! Of course it'll need to be tested to make sure it's actually perfect and not my sleep deprived view on it. The quest is a simple one to locate a control unit to the peace crystal. Once you find it, you'll deliver it back to the quest giver. Speaking of, here is Li'leyna, the Burgomistress of Kirizimi.



She'll be cordial to Aria, for the most part, and you'll be able to ask her quite a few questions if you like. I tried to make it somewhat non-essential to talk to her about everything. But if you want to, you can! One thing I'll likely add is a little ! mark next to the dialogue option which is the actual 'quest' so that you'll know which one is actually quest relevant.

And here is the lovely lady in the town hall where she resides.

There are indeed some transparent windows in her house, but unfortunately due to the way I have the day/night cycle programmed, I can't make the house fully lit during the day. Not yet at least. I may come back to that if I feel it's really necessary. For now, even with transparent windows homes will remain either lit by light sources or just fully lit. I think being lit by light sources looks better especially when you consider how things may look at night time. Though now you will at least be able to see weather through the windows along with bushes and plants! (Though it's not really the same thing, it just reminds me how daggerfall you can't normally see out of any of the windows, but there is a mod which adds windows to many buildings and lets you see out of them. So while my game is still in fact room based, at least you can see out of the windows now!)

Among other areas I added, now there is a transition between lower and upper Kirizimi and also the area outside of the town hall above.



Next, I also modified the park area and put in a cliff background which also leads up to the shrine.




You may notice Licorice in the first picture there though I would say to not get too excited. She's just an asset right now with no code. You'll at least be able to see her in game though! I'll be adding several of the NPCs into the game as well, but just as assets for the time being.

For the church/cathedral, I only made a couple of extra tiles here... most of these are just background tiles I carefully rotated and put down. Honestly... you can't even see it at ground level which upset me a little bit after I went to the trouble. Though... in the future there will be more mobility options and I am thinking I will add a 'charge up' upgrade for the wind inflation spell that lets you inflate yourself. The only issue being that you'll go straight to 'blimp' form so you'll have zero control. Likely will not have a very long duration either, but who doesn't want to be able to just BLIMP themselves at any time? (for an MP cost of course...)

And I also added in the church area too! It has a small climb up to it followed by the church itself. (I know I been referring to it as a shrine or church, but I just use them interchangeably honestly. I think church is the correct term for this particular location) It has a statue in it which will not require a lot of power to activate.





And that's it for map additions currently. Next up I will have a wharf area and another underwater area planned with one additional challenge shrine in the underwater area. After those two areas are complete, I will add in a couple extra side quests and then some more NPCs. I have to add guards for example as they are part of the main quest too.

Speaking of NPCs, I already designed a couple more.

Thojo

And Poi(poi)

I may skip out on giving Thojo a portrait since she's just going to be a basic dockworker NPC who you can talk to briefly, but Poi is the jewelcrafter who will give you one of the sidequests to get her a gem. So she'll definitely have a portrait and you'll be able to talk to her a bit and also do some gem exchanging. With working on Li'leyna I think I have gotten a good grasp on how to do NPC discussion menus and shop menus now so replicating them should be quite easy! I do kind of wish I had made them a bit more scalable so I may spend a bit of time modifying them, but I may also not since they are non-persistent objects. Should be fine to have one for each NPC as it will make organizing them easier.

On the list of important NPCs, I have a blacksmith I want to add and one more to give you another side quest too. But after that I may make a few of these sprites of some NPCs that don't have portraits that you just talk to. (Also just a random thought but was looking back at some of my portraits and a couple of them aren't great. After I'm done the game I would like to possibly redo a couple. Like Lilly and Sildiscia)

Also right now the only wandering NPCs in the game are talimari. I'm not going to add more just yet, but I do plan on adding more of them. Just wanted to put that out there. At least a few generics of each species and a few recolors of each of those. Just get a lot of variety into the game basically.

So as a recap on what's left to do...

A few more areas - Wharf, Underwater, challenge shrine
One, but probably two, new enemies. The simple bat enemy and a second one that will likely follow gobbo archer logic. I don't think they'll be hard to modify to fit into what I want to do with them.
Jewelcrafter NPC Poi
Blacksmith NPC
Third NPC you can talk to and get a sidequest from
A few more semi-generic NPCs you can have a brief conversation with
Update Kirizimi's map data
Update location data
And probably something else I can't think of right now...

But that's it for this devlog! And if you are wondering about Cordelia's inflation animation, it's done! I'll be uploading it shortly! It should be enough for it to be it's own standalone animation in a way too.