Devlog No.039

Not a lot to say this time around. I finished polishing up the map system, got all the map data entered, and even added a few sfx for it. I've basically just gone back to making tiles, objects, and areas. I believe I had said it before, but this next area will be a port town and the player's energy won't drain passively here. It will be a small hub area with the front gate blocked. You'll need to solve a problem to get the gates to open and then you can be on your merry way.

Though there will be a few other things to do than just that one objective. As well that main objective actually won't take long to do. Instead this is more of a small hub area with a few little side quests to do and several NPCs to talk to. I would like to have a few new shops, though I am not 100% sure yet which ones I will put in. I am thinking that I will have one that has an upgrade item or two in it and one which sells the NPC tf catalyst. Then I think I will have a gem exchange vendor who you can buy/sell gems at a loss, but not 100% on that. And I may have someone who sells information.

As far as quests go, I'm going to start simple on those. You'll likely have a fetch quest, a kill quest, a gather quest, and one where you have to find the hidden item. Stuff that likely won't stand out too much, but we'll get to see how it works out. I'll try to give out some kind of satisfying reward for doing them too. An example idea that I have is the gem exchange vendor giving you a quest to get them a type of gem from the local mine. You go and get it and come back. Then they will give you a 'prospecting lens' which will make it so anytime you break dirt/stone that doesn't have gems, there is a very small chance you will get a gem from it. Not really necessary to play the game, but it will make life easier if you need to get more gems and also make it so you might just get them randomly while playing as normal.

The main quest to unlock the front gate though will likely be the kill quest. Just go to X area and defeat a special enemy type. And once that is done, you can leave if you like. I'll have to have a warning though that once you leave out the front gates, you can't come back in until you get to another checkpoint.

Also on that subject, I believe there is demand for the ability to backtrack. While there are some spots that it would be quite hard to do that at, I will likely add the ability to do so later in the game. There will also be more traversal abilities, but I am trying to keep cautious about this because I don't want the pace of the game to become too fast or mobile. I would like to have some extra things though that make it fun, but I will almost always limit mobility increases such as double jumps. (Though there will be a 'method' to double jump at some point in the future, but it will be limited to a spell)

I should note that if it's not obvious, I want to keep the speed of the game to a medium speed. A nice steady pace. Not too fast, not too slow. I don't want the game to be a precision platformer. Not that I have anything wrong with them mind you! It's just that I prefer less emphasis on the precision part of it is all!

And that's all I really have to report now. I'm just working on things and programming the quests will take me a while to do. Once I release this next build I would like to get feedback on the quests and this hub design. I would like to know how everyone feels about it. Here is a quick little preview of one of the shop interiors that I'm working on.