Proof of Life #115: Progress Report #3

Heya guys and gals, N_taii's here with a new PoL Monday post, the third episode of the progress report series!

HC3's Story: Still not a whole lot to say. Not all of the sprites are ready, and the map still needs quite a bit of work, so I won't start with the story quite yet. But I keep thinking about it as I progress with other stuff, so technically, I'm constantly working on it in my mind : )

HC3's Map: Still in the works. I've added a few screenshots above. Hopefully, you can understand why this thing is taking hundreds of hours of work. 

I'm trying my best to make it as appealing as the RPG Maker engine allows me to, because it is going to be the main stage for a most of the story. There's a few things you aren't seeing here too, such as animated assets in the water, water sounds as the MC approaches the fountains, buildings being transparent once you walk behind them, making sure you could walk on some parts of the city walls, etc... (as well as all the trials and errors, like spending hours on a certain part of the map just to scrap it altogether because it doesn't look good).

PS: All the characters are placeholders for now. I've used the sister model simply  to test height, collision, and other things.

HC3's Art: I'm receiving new batches of pixel sprites as I go, as well as new map assets. All the sex animations of HC2 have been modified with the new character models. They still need a few tweaks, like varying breasts sizes and bodytypes (especially for the smaller red-head character). I've also decided on a concept for the banner. I'm currently gathering references to make sure the instructions for the artist are as clear as possible.

HC3's Gameplay: A bit more on the Triple Trident card game. the original FF8 and FF14 would limit the rarity and strength of the cards the player could use in one match in order to always keep them balanced and not have players throw all their strongest cards to simply steamroll their opponent. However, the card game plugin used in HC3 has no such function, so I had to restrict the order of the matches as well as the reward cards received after each victory to avoid the player getting too strong and only facing weak and boring opponents.

It means that after each match won, the player will receive a pre-determined card of a certain strength from its opponent's deck, and will then be able to move on to the next, a bit stronger opponent. That way, I know exactly the strength of the cards in the player's deck, and can make it so the fight is always fair and balanced. I know, it's not as fun as finding several random opponents on the map at all times, but I had to make-do with...hum...the cards I've been dealt with.

That's it for this PoL!

As always, thank you for reading, and have a wonderful week!

N_Taii