10/2/18 Development Update

Hello everyone and welcome to another development update for my game Hero Soul. This has been a pretty landmark week for my game. I finished implementation of some major systems in the game. Let's get started.

Continuing from last week, much of the work this week has went into finishing up the rune forging system of the game. As a reminder, rune forging is the mechanic that allows you to add stats or additional effects to your cards. As of this week most if not all of the milestones for this system have been met. So allow me explain the system in its current state. Right now all cards have 3 rune slots. Each of these slots can house a rune, each of which modify the spell in some way. All cards start with at least 1 of these slots open, with the option of unlocking the others. The starting unlocked slots depends on the rarity with rare cards having 2 slots unlocked by default. Cards and rune effects have been segregated to types and only certain runes can be added to certain cards. Runes are obtained either through exploration or purchased in the shop. While most functionality is now implemented, I still need to do a bit more polish work on this system.

Moving on, I also had the chance of getting save and loading system to work. This was actually a long journey for me as I struggled to organize which data I wanted to store. Understandably this system is not as visually appealing as the rune forging system but this was a real big step for me towards a finished game. Additionally, I've also begun work on implementing the UI and functionality for the options menu. Hopefully this will be more finished by next week!

Finally I also began work implementing the enemy behavior for the 4th level of the game, the Tomb of Galahad. For this set of enemies I really wanted to take a step up increasing the complexity of their patterns as well as making them smarter and more reactive to the player.

That's all for this week!

9/25/18 Development Update

Hi and welcome back to another development update for the game Hero Soul!

So I'd like to start this update with a revisit to the state system of the game. I've added some more interesting states that I hope will spice up the game more. Before states were really just stat buffs or debuffs granting stats or dealing damage over time. I felt that they were kind of boring so I've added a few more that change the way you must play. Here's an example of one, blindness, which makes it so you can only see in a little circle around you for some time. I'd love to think of more interesting state moving forward.

This week I also chose to tackle something that I have been procrastinating on for quite some time now, the rune and rune forging system. But before I get into that, I also chose to update the Arcana selection UI. For some time now, I have felt that the old UI for this system was a bit difficult to use with many needless buttons and gizmos. Hopefully now it is easy to figure out how to use.

Moving on to the Rune system there is still more work that needs to be put into it however a few things that have been causing me trouble have been implemented. The first is the card statistics and how they are displayed to the player. I wanted the UI for this to be purely visual and not just a comparison of numbers. So, the right of the card you are editing you will see the statistics for the card. As of now, the cards only display damage, velocity and knockback as statistics but I plan to expand and change this based on the card type.

This leads me to my second change. One of the reason I have procrastinated on working on this system was that the idea behind runes was that any rune could be used with any spells. This led to many conflicts because some spell effects simply did not work with other. For example a rune that caused the spell to home in on targets does not work with spells that grant players buffs. Because of that problem I had to reconsider how the system would function. So now, I've subdivided runes to only work with certain spell types I have implemented in the game. Some examples of spell types include projectile spells, targeted spells and buffing spells which each have runes that will work with them.

There still needs to be more work put into the system but I can say that it feels good to get over this hump and I am excited about how awesome this system is turning out to be! That's it for this week, I'll keep you guys posted on new fun advancements!

9/19/18 Development Update

Hi and welcome back to another development update for Hero Soul!

This weeks has been a big step forward in terms of development. The first major stride was the addition of the change remnant feature of the Hero Soul. The Hero Soul, for those who do not remember, is the modular talent tree system that players have access to while they play the game. Before it was not possible to reassign a talent on a specific tier when it was already selected. I felt that this was restrictive and did not promote experimentation with the interplay of talents, so now you are able to change the specific remnant on each tier as seen below.

Next off I worked a lot on the implementation of consumable items. Before, I cut work on the Alchemy system of the game because I found it too complicated and unneeded when paired with the other systems in the game. However this left a void in potion choice, with players stuck with the default healing and mana potions in the shortcuts for potion use. With the implementation of consumables, those shortcuts have been changed to accept any type of consumable. Following that health and mana potions now fit into the consumable item category. So now, instead of receiving x amount of health potions and x amount mana potions at the start of every level, players will need to keep their inventories stocked with the necessary potions for their adventures. This was a fun transition for me since it opened the design space for items from just being potions to all sorts of fun usable items such as bombs seen below.

Finally to wrap the update up, this week also brought much work to the 2nd level out the planned 5 levels of the game. I did a lot of work on implementing enemy AI so they are more interactive and challenging as well redoing much of the level design of the level entirely. Below is an example of a changed room for the level. Moving forward I want to further polish this.

That't it for this week! I'll have another update on the development next week.

 

9/10/18 Development Update

Hello all and welcome back to the development updates for my game Hero Soul! It has been a long time since I posted here! So what's changed since I last updated, well... a lot simply put. So, instead of getting into the nitty gritty I thought for this first update I would go over a sort of road map for development of the game.

So in its current state the game is in that delicious grey territory of the development process. Many of the systems and mechanics have been solidly established and now I am moving towards developing the narrative of that game to tie all the mechanics and systems together. Moving forward, there will be less updates on new mechanics and systems implemented and more updates about progress into the story.

So let's get down to brass tacks. There are still a few systems that need to be finished. Namely:

1. The Hero Soul Talent Tree
2. The Rune System
3. The Companion System

and of course a few additional miscellaneous systems that will need to change as development continues.

I currently have about 6/12 of the levels created and story wise, the tutorial level for the first character Cecilia is finished along with the first and second levels. Moving forward I would like work for the story to progress up to the 6th level by November.

That's pretty much it for now and I will return to the normal format for updates starting next week.

4/15/18 Development Update

Hi and welcome to another development update!

There have been quite a few changes since last week which includes the addition of many SFX assets and animations to better polish the game as well as working more on the AI behind the companion

Other than that, I also did some extensive work on the dialogue system as pictured below. The changes were mainly inspired by the dialogue system seen in Tales of Zestiria. This includes multiple characters, including your companion and highlighting the speaker. This is in hopes to introducing different dialogues when different combinations of companions are selected. And of course the most important feature, skipping dialogue. Moving forward I'd like to do some more tuning and polishing of this system.

I've also added in a new puzzle, the mosaic. Every level will have a mosaic, by playing the dungeon players will have a chance to receive a mosaic piece to add to the mosaic. When the mosaic is complete players will receive a reward!

Speaking of rewards, I also edited how treasure chests work, instead of opening a complex menu, it instead shoots all the items out on the floor, since items will now remain after leaving a room!

That's it for this week tune in next week!

4/8/18 Development Update

Hi and welcome to another weekly development update!

Let's start this update off with a bit of quality of life improvements. This week I've added somethings that hopefully make the game easier to learn. Below is a diagram I made to help new players learn the controller controls.

Moving on, I also made the minimap a bit easier to read. I changed the special rooms, bosses, and exits to now display unique icons, to hopefully make it easier to understand and overall make the map "pop".

Additionally I also added persistence of items between rooms. Before any loose items left on the ground would vanish when leaving and transitioning between rooms. Now, any unpicked up items will now remain when you return to the room.

Controller support has also been brought to the shop menus in dungeons or in town.

Finally I began converting the old alchemy menu and UI to fit the current style, but this proved to be a bit more work than I anticipated.

I also added a new puzzle to the pool for the start forest level. It is a classic order puzzle where you must light runes in the correct order to complete the puzzle. I think this puzzle, while simplistic in nature, turned out quite well when some audio queues were added.

That's it for this week!

4/1/18 Development Update

Hey guys it's been quite a while since I last update, I'm sorry for that! But now I am back on track for the weekly updates.

So let's start with what's changed so let's start with the companions. Companions will now have unique abilities and behaviors based on which companion you choose to use. For example for the current companion I'm working for, they will have shields displayed below their health. This is to keep track of the amount of block this particular companion has left. In the future I hope to give the player the choice of which companion best fits their play style.

Moving on, I've also begun work on reworking and redesigning the dialogue system. Before, the dialogue system kind of felt like it was "free floating" and hopefully the new letterbox design helps alleviate this. In addition, since companions were added, I also wanted the dialogue to reflect which companion was chosen and perhaps open new lines of dialogue based on the companion. Moving forward I'd like to keep experimenting with this system to better mold it my vision on what it should be.

Moving on to the dungeons, I've also created a trooping system. Before enemies would always be the same for each room. Now, the number, type and spawn location for enemies now change for every room meaning, no room will ever be the same! For this system, I'd like to keep tuning it to decrease the randomness a bit to increase the consistency.

Okay now like real talk, I've been talking about adding puzzles for the longest time. Here is the first puzzle you may encounter in dungeons. Puzzles were something I've been wanting to do for a long time, however devising them to be randomly generated complicated things quite a bit. This puzzle is pretty simple, its like the game Mastermind where players need to place fruit in the correct order to complete the puzzle. The correct sequence is always going to be different, so hopefully this one one get old fast... I plan on adding more puzzles, as I have all of them finished on paper and just need to implement them. Please look forward to more wacky puzzles to break of the monotony of killing enemies.

Speaking of enemies, I also spent this week tuning the Slime King boss. I've made quite of few advancements in boss fights since I made the Slime King, and he needed a little love.

That's it for this week!