Lazy? Yes.

Today I did, as my cousins would say, diddly squat.
In other words...nothing. At least, nothing tangible.

I'm still stuck on how to go forward now that I've perfected the opening scene. Or rather, I have an idea of how to handle it, but it's hard to plan it out without a decent battle system, which I promised myself I would save for later.

That, of course, led me to start thinking about the battle system. I originally had it set up in a Pokemon-style format, of which you can see a quick preview here. I decided to use silhouettes to represent the characters because it was a waste of money to commission someone just to draw the backsides of my characters, especially since the sprite artist's style has changed so drastically since then (which you'll see when I get Ahzi and the other allies' sprites up). There's also the issues of enemies, many of whom, again, don't have sprites, and I simply can't afford to commission all of them.

But I was never really happy with the silhouettes, and a friend who tried the demo said that they were a bit off-putting. So, as I often do when I get stuck on layouts, I took a look at some of the work of my GUI hero, Aleema. She has a unique battle system in one of her games that manages to look good without needing battle sprites or a grid system or anything like that. Now, if I could go for a graphical layout somewhat similar to that, but with the battle system I currently have in place... I think that could work out well.

Even with something like that, though, there is still the issue of the angels' beast forms¹ and enemy sprites. To help rectify that, I went ahead and commissioned some lineart for their beast forms (I managed to find a bargain >D). It'll be good to have the art, anyway, so it's all good. What about the enemy sprites, though? There's no way I'm spending the money to buy 20+ sprites for stupid characters that you're just going to kill off anyway. I'll figure out something, I guess, but in the meantime, I'm open to suggestions. :)


¹ = In battle, as an angel takes damage, they accumulate "Rage." When they have enough Rage (the "enough" amount is different for each character), they transform into their "true," or beast, form, which features a new set of more powerful attacks that can save you in a pinch.