Lenghty Update Report - Pretty Important. Might Want to Check This Out. I Dunno, You Do You...
Added 2021-01-28 13:24:41 +0000 UTCAlright, so-
There's a LOT to talk about this time and I will try to do this concisely and thoroughly, which will be hard. Let's go!
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Progression Rate
Things are coming along nicely, there have been no roadblocks this month, which was a nice change of pace from last year's insane scramble. However, since I did take the initial weeks of the month easy, being my break and all, the work I did is the work of three to two weeks not a full month.
But what have I been working on?
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Lyssa Content
As stated before, I am working on Lyssa because I don't think the last two months allowed for enough room to properly do her content. But I decided to take it a step further: I want to finish her entire quest chain in one go. This brought about a few things that I had to deal with:
Companion Relationship Structure
I had to take a step back and take a look at the path of Lyssa and of companions in general. I did this in two ways:
- Creating this document, that details what alters a companion's behavior.
- And this concept map kinda of thing that tracks the flow of events and their specific purpose and details. (At some point, I might actually implement this in some way in the game as a way for the player to keep track of stuff.)
With all of this in place, I managed to nail down how I want Lyssa's event chain, and future companion chains, to go. This all also helped me understand what I need to put in them in terms of choices and dialogue.
I also realized my biggest mistake here: these events are about getting to know the characters, and not about the player, which is a mistake I ended up making at first. It sounds obvious, but when the whole game spins around the player, it's difficult to realize this type of thing.
Where This Ends
With all this in mind, I got cracking on Lyssa's stuff. Right now, I have finished her last two relationship events, each companion will have five. But I still need to implement, switch and change some things around.
I am still writing her personal quest, which happens after her events, and am halfway through. There are three new areas that come along with her quest which are related to Allurgard's secondary main quest. These areas will have mini-bosses. This, inevitably, led me to having to do something that was long overdue.
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Combat Revamp
I have refactored the Combat System. Wasn't hard, really. Just took some time. Now the combat works on a Finite State Machine pattern. Basically, the UI and the flow of the combat is tied to what state (enemy or player turn, etc) the combat is in. This makes debugging easy, and the combat flow makes more sense on code.
This also allowed me to program cool things like letting skills call target selection dialogs by themselves as needed, which wasn't possible before; at least, not in an orderly fashion. I will also use the combat state to inform the enemy AI, and hopefully end the era of "combat getting stuck in enemy turn" for good. This will require a bit of a refactor of the AI too, which I am yet to do.
All this, to then program some mini-bosses and avoid the bugs and annoying shit I had to deal with when programming the Eldritch God.
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Where Are We At, Then?
The good news is: I am almost there! The bad news is that: I am not done, which means this update will bleed into next month. What is left is:
- Test the updated Combat System more.
- Refactor enemy AI.
- Finishing touches on Lyssa's relationship events.
- Finish Lyssa's personal quest. (Writing and mini-bosses)
We are close, but I won't make the mistake I always do and lowball how long this will take. To do this right, this can on either for two more weeks or for entire another month. My guess is somewhere in the middle, but no promises. This brings me to my next point.
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Updates Schedule
The bigger scope of this update got me thinking about something. I have been in some financial trouble lately, and I had to take some freelance jobs to supplement my income. This, combined with some patrons leaving, means that I can't spend as much time on development as I used to. I'm still spending more time on it than I should, if I'm being honest. But that's because I believe in this project and the support of everyone here, and outside, keeps me going.
So, maybe it's a better idea to develop an update as long as needed, instead of promising one every month. Consequently, the polls would be for every update instead every month. I more or less, do this already? Considering how many times I have missed the deadlines I set for myself here.
I haven't come to a conclusion about this. Tell me what you think, will you?
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That's it
Holy shit, that was a lot. Took a bit of time to write too. Hopefully I managed to relay to you properly the state of things. I hope I can hear some feedback on this.
That's it for now.
