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!