Year-end Dev Report

Hello everyone! kReig here and here's the stats of what's going on with Divine Arms' development and future goals.

But first, 4 things I want to clear out that I frequently notice / get asked.

• One, my dev name is kReig and not Viper.
  ViperV means Very Important Perv. The snake part is just something I patterned with the double v that looked like snake fangs. ViperV Good as a studio logo idea but technically, ViperV is you. Because you guys and your support is the most important part of the development.

  And y'all pervs.
  

• Second is I am asked if I'll post the current version to the public. Honestly I am inclined to say NO, not because I do not want the public to play it, but because it is not ready. If I get a dollar whenever someone asks if its just a room of mushrooms...  ( ._.) anyway! It is in a very incomplete state and I don't want to give false expectations. But if people would want to still try it out despite in its incomplete state, then maybe I can send it off with another READ disclaimer puzzle everyone hated.
  

• Third is the Gallery mode. Yes there will be one, but not anytime soon. Once I finish more sets, then we will add a gallery system. It is not advisable to do that now when we only have 3 working spicy scenes at the moment. Though we already have more finished loops, it is not as easy to set them up as we need to sync the audio and camera with them. I only added the initial 3 because I wanted to get it to at least work first. This is the point of doing one slice system at a time.
  

• It does not work, It loads til x% and crashes. Honestly, I have no concrete solution as some folks just exclude the exe from their Antiviruses or Firewall or Windows Defender or all of the above. This is the first export of the version in Godot 4.3 and just like in Godot 4.2's false positive virus claims, it is either a Godot persisting windows signing problem or a player pc system config conflict. So if you have 3rd party apps that work like AV's, do exclude the exe in them as well as I further investigate why this problem occurs.

Now that's out of the way, here's the current functioning component slices for the whole pizza:

- Player
- Player Attacks for all elements
- Divine as sub-element
- Sacred Sphere System
- Player Dash / Evasion and Elemental versions
- Player Hurt and Gameover
- Player Armor system and Divine Aura armor system
- Player Spell casting for all elements.
- 2 alternative spell casts
- Water freezing mechanic

- Enemy Base
- Enemy AI
- Enemy Attack
- Enemy Ailments

- Basic Elemental Synergy

- All Current GUI
- All Sound Effects and BGM Transitions

- Coin and Card system
- Mini Game and its bonuses

- Spicy system tests and integration

- Dialogue system integration

- A basic working but in progress map with basic destructible and interactive doodads

- Many other stuff completed but can't remember to add here (visual fx, etc)

I can not stress out how difficult but fulfilling it is to get those done specially when they fcking work. Not to mention surviving these on Godot 3.5, 4.1, 4.2 and the dreaded port to 4.3

(Also being able to accomplish these while being constantly bombarded by storms and threatened by a volcano adds to the said difficulty.)

Now, with the year ending, my 1440p 60hz monitor (lol the minigame bug) said goodbye to me. And I am currently using a spare 1080p old monitor and lo and behold, I found bugs on the current build, so this is my plan for the whole of December:

Refactor some of the code and fix these monitor size problems or any other problems I find.

Do a few commissions so I can get a new 1440p monitor because I tried and can't get work done on 1080p.

Take a 2 week break because doctor said need it.
(hypertension. no more working late. adjusting lifestyle for 2025)

Pre-plan the stuff below for a speedy and snappy start next year.

And with that, these are the things left to be done:

- Tiles.
Aside from the water freezing mechanic, the current tiles needs an overhaul for Godot 4.3, though it was already successfully done, the change will speed up map making by reducing the needed tiles from 47 to 15, so I'll need to redraw the current tile-set for this. I already have this working in the game with placeholder tiles btw. [Here is an external link explaining how it works]

- Trees, walls, encapsulation.
We will need rooms and walls, just like back in the old flash version. And with that we will also need:

- Transitions.
When transitioning, basically the world RESETS. And we will need to carry over data to the next scene / room including Siggy's hearts, gold, position etc. This seem simple, but one error can possibly break the game, so I'm gonna thread this one slowly because the amount of data I see transferring is very bug prone.

- More enemies.
Yes I am also sick of the mushroom. But with the BASE ENEMY component done and functioning, it will be just replacing some animations and sprites and unique ai. Not to mention an extra one or more move-sets. Currently, the spicy trigger is just the same regular move, but the animation and triggers to that is supposed to be different and will see the light of day in the coming updates.

- Boss Enemy. 
We need one per biome.

- Inventory System.
Enemies will not just drop gold and cards, but some items you will need for unlocks and upgrades. If you've played the prototype Origins, we have a complex inventory system there and I will not be fully using that. It will be a much simpler system.

- Upgrades.
As mentioned above, we need to have progression and ways to spend gold on, so elemental upgrades, player upgrades, powerups etc.

- Traps and puzzles.
They will be back. Should be simpler to do compared to flash.

- Dialogue Portraits.
Sister Faux is the only one we have now and she's also a placeholder. We need a lot of these for Siggy and Lai for different expressions. But I got this covered and already planned out in my head.

- Day and Night Cycles.
Nothing too fancy here, but we will have a simple tint the screen one as some enemies like the Ganker and Male slime will only spawn at night time.

- Super Special Spells.
We will also have one for each element and like the spell casts, we will add the rest step by step. The kicker here is the game will do a system pause and Siggy will have a fan-service animation for these spells. (Imagine fighting game special attacks.) That's the endgame plan and may actually "hire" an animator for just these scenes.

- More Spicy Scenes.
Since we only have the mushroom atm, the spicy scenes are not final. I will run a final style for the next enemy and you guys will vote which style we stick to. The said style chosen will also be the one used for the Dialogue, the title screen and basically everywhere in the game, like a standard style.

Anyway, this is the goal for 2025!
Once we have everything in the list above functioning, we enter alpha phase. Meaning, the pizza is now whole and we just continuously add the rest of the missing toppings for it to be finally complete. (each of the same. art, enemy, sound, spells, spicy scenes, etc.)

I know this looks like a long list but implementation of these are in the very easy to very hard spectrum, so its balanced to hopefully to a point where I can still keep most of my hair. But I say it is very doable. Some of it will drive me mad and calling it now, not meet some self imposed deadlines, but very doable.

And yes, I'll be doing all of these alone, so I apologize in advance if I do end up late a week or two in delivering. So anyway, thank you all for the support and I hope you are as excited as I am to get these done next year!

-kReig out!