Travel System

This weekend, I made great progress on town navigation and the travel system. You can now travel to any location on the map flawlessly, and each location is equipped with the proper facilities.

I actually put a lot of thought into what towns would have which of the facilities (because only the capital of each province has all six). All of them have at least a shop and an inn (though the shop items may vary depending on where you are), but for the rest, I had to do a bit of thinking about the provinces themselves - what makes them unique, how religious they are, etc. I might have mentioned that I'd been thinking about that before, but this is where that stuff starts to come into play.

Travel times have also been fully incorporated, which means that the further from your current location you're trying to go, the longer it will take to get there. When you choose a destination on the map, a pop-up will tell you how many days it will take to travel and ask for a confirmation, so if you decide you don't want to go there after seeing how long it'll take, you can cancel. The time component will probably be largely unimportant, but it may come into play with certain quests...none of the major plot quests, so it wouldn't ruin the entire game if you failed to make it in time, but perhaps some companion quests where it might hurt your relationship if you put it off for too long.

There will probably also be other things that will be related to the time factor, namely birthdays. If you give one of your companions a gift on or around their birthday (within a couple weeks), you'll get extra affection with them. On your birthday, if you have enough affection, they'll give you a gift. This will be how you receive the gift accessories mentioned in a previous post.

Anyway...point is, I did good stuff this weekend. If I can work out the background situation and do some writing and finish up the town navigation stuff (i.e. coding the individual locations), I may be ready to release a new, more substantial beta pretty soon. Yay. :)

P.S.: I finished the maid's sprite and named her Ange (might change to Angee later...we'll see).

Sprites

I mentioned in my last post that I decided to try to make sprites for all the minor characters who need to be represented on screen.

Well, I've been working on that some more today. I finished Lilah's sprite, and also started on a sprite for Zuleika's maid back at the castle. I haven't thought of a name for her yet (but with that red hair, I can't help but think "Molly"), but she's Zuleika's main servant - the one who prepares her clothes, cleans her room, and, most importantly, keeps her company during those long, lonely days locked in her tower. So, by that, you can already gather that they'll have more of a relationship than just a lady-servant one. She's kind of ugly, I know, but hey...not everyone can be stick-thin with perfect features like Lilah here.

So Lazy...

Seriously, I've done...like...nothing. :/

Well, okay...a couple days back, I went through and tried to flesh out the City of Jarconia arc. As I was doing so, I quickly realized that I'm going to need a lot more sprites for various characters that show up and talk...but I'm not willing to wait 2 years or whatever to get more finished lineart, nor am I willing to fork over the cash. That means either using silhouettes (which didn't work very well for me in the past), not using any sprite and just have them speaking from off-screen (which is pretty lame and boring), or *gasp* making my own sprites.

I have attempted to do just that by piecing together various things and then somehow making it look decent. Here is the first one I've done this way (flat color only, no shading yet) - a woman named Lilah who plays a pretty large part in the Jarconia arc, since the main goal is to find her before a major conflict breaks out between the human and demon factions of the city. I'm not sure if I really succeeded in making her look good, but...at least I tried. And even if she doesn't turn out that great, it's not like she's a main character, just important enough that she at least needs to be represented on-screen.

If I can make it work, then this will help a great deal in showing what demons and elves look like in this world, as opposed to the silhouette portraits I had planned to use before. Yes, it will take a lot of work, but it'll be worth it, I think.

And on an art-related note, I still haven't figured out what to do with the backgrounds. I'm leaning towards taking photos and tweaking them to make them look more "cartoon-ish" without going through and re-drawing them all. It's not an ideal solution, but it may work until I can figure out something better.

In the meantime, here is a preview of Chael's loading screen for your viewing pleasure. :)

Stuff

It's late and I'm tired, so I'll keep this short.

Today, I worked on mostly trivial things. I started out preparing to write the first major section, but then I got side-tracked...as usual. First, I got the completed art for Zuleika's loading screen, so I messed around for a while to put that together. I tried a lot of different backgrounds and effects, but I think I'll go with something simple. Anyway, here's a small preview:

Second, I spent a good chunk of time scaling my maps, and by that I mean figuring out how much distance each map represents (for example, I determined that 1cm on the empire map equals 90 miles). I did this so I could start working on coding the traveling system, because days will go by depending on where you're traveling to and where you're traveling from. I knew that I wanted it to take about a month/season to go from the Imperial City, where you start, to any one of the major quest locations (which all happen to be about the same distance from the castle), and decided that a good average traveling speed would be 30 miles a day after some research, so I just worked it out from there.

Developing a scale definitely helped to put some things into perspective. The empire looks kind of small on-screen, but it's actually quite large....which is good, because, you know, it's an empire. But it also made me realize that the provinces are kind of spread out and that they'll each have their own characteristics that make them unique, so I started working out details about each province - what they're known for, general socioeconomic status, religious beliefs (or rather, whether they go with the religion preached by the capital or not), some unique cultural things, etc. In reality, they would each have their own detailed histories...but I may or may not go that in-depth with it.

...Whatever happened to keeping this short? I think I'm rambling while nodding off... Time for bed, methinks.

About Time

I finally finished writing the damn prologue last night. Huzzah! Granted, there wasn't much left to do...just had to finish fleshing out the questions at the end. But now it's done and I can move on to the good stuff. :D

On that note, I worked on my characterization some more today. I really fleshed out Chael and his relationship with Zuleika, what draws them together in the first place, what makes them "right" for each other, etc. Some people complained that the romances were too simple before, that there was nothing that showed why they should even be interested in each other, but that will definitely be different this time around. In part, I can develop the romances much more because there will be more flexibility in the story line, plus the story will be longer so I actually have time to develop them instead of having to cram everything into a set, short time frame.
I was making great progress, but somehow my commitment to fleshing out my characters devolved into watching Nyan Cat, which led me to the eHarmony cat lady, which led me to a fake newscast report about it, which somehow led me to the Numa Numa guy, which led me to........you get the point.

In addition to all that, I implemented the updated character customization screen that will be used to "disguise" yourself and such. You can view a screenshot of it below:

You'll notice that you now have the ability to switch between wearing the "Warrior's Garb" and the "Princess' Dress," or rather, you will eventually. The princess dress will be unlocked once you've achieved a certain level of fame, to where it's no longer necessary (or useful) to hide your identity. The "Accessories" section refers to the accessories that you have unlocked through receiving gifts in other play-throughs (all of the love interests will give you a gift to wear when you have enough affection with them). So, if you pursued Chael in a past play-through and received his gift, then in the next play-through you can equip that gift from the start, plus receive another gift from a different love interest and wear that too (unless the accessory and gift are in conflict, such as the two necklaces).

With this change, I had to completely re-code all of Zuleika's sprites. I needed to do so anyway because the way I'd coded them was an inefficient, garbled mess, but...it was still tough, and took a long time. I also added Ahzi's gift while I was at it. I'm not sure if I like it, because the style kind of clashes with the sprite...which is entirely my fault, of course, because I had to draw it myself and I'm not an artist. But it's simple enough that it should be okay, I think....I hope.

Random Stuff

First off, some of you will be excited to see that I've added a new download link to the panel on the left. It's just a beta of the first 5-10 minutes of the game as it is now, which is essentially the prologue. It's almost complete except for the bit of questioning at the end with Chael; finished the first question, but not the other two. You'll notice a lot of similarities between this and the old "demo" that was up, but it has (hopefully) been improved a lot, both graphics-wise and story-wise.

There shouldn't be any bugs (since it's short enough that I've been through it many, many times), but suggestions would be greatly loved and appreciated. I know it's not really long enough to make a quality assessment, but the beginning is often one of the most important parts of a game because if it's bad, the player may be too turned off to play the rest of it. So...yeah, suggestions for how to improve it (particularly the writing) would be great.

Other than that, I haven't done much. I've been focusing on reviving my LOTRO guild instead, and making sure I don't fail this school project I'm doing based on it...

But here are some WIP sketches of that "loading screen" artwork I mentioned a while back to make you (and me) happy:

 

Approval System

Most of what I did today was add an "approve/disapprove" system. It's not really a "system" in that there's a chunk of separate complex coding, but it's just a little graphic that pops up to let you know when you've made a choice that increases affection versus one that decreases it.

So, if you're like me and stress out about making the wrong choice all the time, then you can easily rollback if he "disapproves" and choose a different option instead. Most options are pretty self-explanatory (i.e. if you "make accusations" at Chael, he's obviously not going to be very happy), though, so it shouldn't be too hard to figure out which ones are bad choices for certain characters.

Not all choices will affect only one person. Some choices may lead to one character approving while another character disapproves, depending on the character, so it's all about what's most important to you.

You can see it in action here:

...Wait, who's the guy with the glasses? The vague answer is that he's a character you'll meet in the demo, which has been titled "Memoirs of an Angel: Before the Storm." If I end up making a stay-in-the-castle path (I'm not sure if I will), then he'll be a romanceable character there.

The slightly more specific answer is that he's Duren's former mentor and Zuleika's current tutor (current at the time of the demo, anyway...obviously, by the time the game starts, his employer is dead so his job is over).

If you can guess who he really is, I'll give you a cookie. ;)

...And ugh, I really need to fix my backgrounds. -________-

Game Menus

I finally got my game menus designed and implemented today. This is something I've been meaning to do for a while (see "Current Goal" in the progress panel to the right), but was avoiding due to fears about how it would turn out.

I'm proud to say that after roughly ten hours of hard work and frustration, the game menus are fully functional, and they even look half-way decent! Good-bye, ugly default menus; hello, pretty not-so-blocky menus.

I still don't have Character Status, Inventory, and Journal (quest) screens made, but those will probably feature a similar design. Since they're not absolutely crucial to basic gameplay, I'm not in a rush to make them; it's probably more important at this point to focus on creating some actual substance...you know...so there's actually a game to play. Unfortunately, writing is my least favorite part, so I have a bad tendency to keep putting it off and do everything else I possibly can first...and then re-doing it, causing the writing portion to be pushed back even further...and then scrapping everything and starting over with a whole new theme, which means rewriting anything I might have done by that point. *kicks self*

As a final note, I would like to thank everyone who reads this or past blogs, whether you're a visitor or a subscriber. It really does help to keep me going when I know that there are people interested in the project and I'm not just pouring all this time and money into nothing. Of course, I'm making the game mostly for myself, but the part I enjoy is the process...so, then, who will enjoy the fruits of my labor? If not me, then it must be the ones who will eventually play my game. So, when I know that it will, in fact, be enjoyed by someone, it helps inspire me to work harder to make an even better finished product....even if it means spending ten hours working on some stupid code for menu screens that could have much more easily been left in the plain, default style.

It's Friday...Again

I got all sorts of good things done today, thanks to the awesome feeling of having finished with all my tests and papers for this week (too bad I have even more next week...). :D

The most important thing I did today was that I got the calendar system working. When you travel to different places, days pass. Every 30 days, the season and "month" changes. Thus, what you get is an overlay like this, where "Ortus" is the "month" name and "6" is the day of the month. The rose changes colors according to the season. The bit below it is the time of day, which will be important because when you go to a town, you can only do one action per time of day, and only during the Morning, Afternoon, and Late Afternoon portions of the day.

You'll notice also that the textbox has changed a bit again, reflecting some of the changes I mentioned before. Roses more red to stand out, plus the click-to-continue indicator. I'm actually satisfied with the quality of the textbox and layout now, but the free resource backgrounds are bugging the heck out of me. :/ I wish I could afford to commission custom ones, but I'm already "over budget" with the CGs and such that I'm buying. But I'll experiment and play around with them a bit. If nothing else, I may at least be able to re-color them in such a way that they're consistent.....but it will take a looooooong time to do.

On the topic of backgrounds, the next thing I did was to add little flourishes to the backgrounds, so every few seconds, you'll see some flowers, leaves, or snowflakes (depending on what season it is) being blown around, assuming you're somewhere outside. It's not a big deal or anything, but like the little sprite animations, it just helps to make an otherwise boring static screen a little more exciting. It also increases the overall file size, though, so I may take that feature out for the special download for slow connections.

Finally, I mostly rewrote my "morning after" scene to make it more serious and to show a bit more of Zuleika's frustration by that point (though it still isn't enough, I don't think, but the point of this scene is to introduce choices, so substantial dialogue is a bit lacking on purpose). Before, like in the original, it was a fairly light-hearted scene that showed the sort of antagonistic relationship Zuleika and Chael start out with, but...let's face it: she's been running for her life in the rain all night long, and that's after finding the man who was practically her father lying dead in a pool of blood, so she's not going to be a happy camper. But then again, she's also the kind of person who won't let anyone else see her sad or upset, so don't expect to see her outwardly mourning for her master.

As a side note, I've decided that the demo will be kind of separate from the game, but will still tie in and fit within the overall game (like a DLC, hehe). Specifically, it will take place the day before/day of Osirus' death, so you'll kind of get to see how she got to where she is at the start of the actual game. I'm not sure how long it will be, but it'll help to set up the game and will showcase some of its features...mainly the exploration system that I have yet to develop, haha.

Anyway, I expect that tomorrow will also be very productive. :) Sunday...probably not so much, since I have a bunch of schoolwork I need to work on instead. But we'll see.

School Sucks

There isn't much to say today, really. In the back of my mind, I'm freaking out about the major exams I have coming up over the next few days, so that makes it difficult to get any real work done without feeling guilty about not studying.

What I did do today was make some very, very small edits to my textbox. I ended up not changing it radically like I had thought about doing, and going back to what I had before...then making small tweaks. As part of that, I added a cute journal-writing click-to-continue indicator in the corner. I may or may not end up keeping it.

More importantly, I commissioned the "loading screen" art I mentioned before. Trying to organize over 50 references in a coherent manner that the artist could understand was one hell of a job...and was probably one of the longest commission notes I've ever written. It should be worth it, though. This artist hasn't let me down yet, so I'm confident that the art will be amazing.
I can't wait to see what she comes up with~

Due to night class tomorrow, and the paper I have due and the test on Friday, I probably won't make any progress tomorrow...but if I can just make it to 3pm Friday, then I'll be free to write as much as I want during the weekend. :) ...Until Sunday night, and then I'll need to study more and write more papers. School sucks.

Back in the Writing Spirit

Just in time for mid-terms, I finally got back into the writing spirit...but with no time to write. Such is life, I suppose...

I did do a bit today, though. Specifically, I got through the first major choice you get to make: which major plot quest you do first out of the three. Originally, this was going to be a fairly trivial decision...but I think it would be cool to have it mean something and to have consequences happen as a result. For example, if you choose not to go to the Port of Sileas first, then you'll see (or hear about) the empire's main import/export center shutting down due to plague and what that's doing to the economy, somewhat similar to the rumor system in some Bioware games. Nothing would be so severe as to be game-ending (or even game-ruining), but just little reminders that the world is still moving along, with or without you. :)

I also thought about what I'm going to do about when you're traveling from place to place. When going to a new province, you'll get a scene usually (at least the first time), but what about when you're just going to a different town? Showing up there instantly as soon as you click on it would be pretty lame, especially since it would be a few days later according to the "calendar." So I thought of putting "loading" screens in between...but they would have to be interesting or it would just be annoying, right?

Thus, I came up with the idea of showcasing the characters for the loading screens, with a random selection of the characters you currently know, kind of like how they showcase a character before a commercial break in anime. Loading screen art will be done by the same artist who is doing the new CGs, so they're bound to turn out well. Now the hard part is deciding the pose!

More Coloring

...and I've still got a long ways to go.

But as promised, I finished tracing and flat coloring the last couple of animal forms.

Despite the fact that Chael is supposed to be a frightening, ferocious wolf spirit...he looks more cute and cuddly than anything in the picture above. Seriously, while I was working on him, I just wanted to cuddle him and pet his pretty, soft fur. I attribute that to the fact that he looks more like a dog than a wolf...but he also acts more like a dog than a wolf, so maybe it's okay in the end. His isn't the only animal sprite that isn't accurate; Zuleika's is patterned wrong, for example.

Ah well...the point is that I have them and they look pretty good.

Yay for progress. :)

Progress, finally!

As the title implies, I actually got stuff done today. No, I didn't get actual story stuff done, but I did make quite a bit of progress on my sprites.

First, I finished shading Honhelm and Ustyz. So now that I've got all the new people sprites fully colored, resized, and functional, I need to work on the finishing touches: expressions and blinking animations. Anyway, take a look at my handy work:

Second, I started working on the angels' animal form sprites. You may recall that the lineart I posted before was done traditionally, with pen on paper. That makes it near impossible to resize and color properly, because no matter what, it would be too difficult to clean out the fuzzy white background and leave decent-looking lines. So, in order to get them the way I want, I have to first trace over the lineart in GIMP, then color. It's a long process, but the end result looks much better than if I had tried to simply clean out the background.

So far, I've traced and flat-colored Kirile and Zuleika. I'll do Chael and Duren tomorrow, most likely.

I'll be so glad when I'm done with all this coloring!