Godsent

[Prpl_Mage]

You just keep on amazing me, keep it up!

[Felix-0]

ugh this looks so sexy.

[Meiscool]

So, I am thinking about soon putting out a small tech demo of the game. It would be a small 4-6 room demo with no plot/story that gives you access to the weapons and whatnot for testing. Would this interest people? Would you rather wait for a true game experience?

I'm doing this because I want the game tested for bugs basically. Though the coding is pretty solid and I've never encountered any game breaking bugs other than one time, that one time has me worried that there could be more.

[daoman89]

Well you've been saying you'd be bringing a demo out for many posts now (I've been saying that too ) so I suggest you just go ahead and do it lol

[Meiscool]

True, which is exactly why I feel I should release something, if anything. :/

[daoman89]

I'm close to demo, but my laptop dying put it on hold lol. Plus I stiill can't figure out a damn overworld theme.  Frustrating...  Put out what you can though!

[Meiscool]

Alrighty then.

Finished the stamina deficit system. Graphically, it is not complete, as placeholder sprites are used. Basically, if you reach max deficit, your character falls over for a few seconds (will be changed to your character standing and breathing heavily once I make the visuals).
While in the deficit, your sword attacks deal half damage, you can't throw weapons, and you cannot dodge. Dodging/lunging/throwing will not put you in a deficit; only interacting with map objects (like pushing rocks), over attacking with basic attacks, and sprinting will.
Sword swings have always had a small stamina drain when they are used, but I found it to be too insignificant to matter. I changed this up a bit: sword swings still drain VERY LITTLE stamina, but successive swings drain ~twice the previous swing if used in a tight time frame. Basically, if you keep mashing Z while at full stamina, you'll run yourself out of stamina by the 12th swing. 3-4 swings still won't drain much stamina at all, so you can still get in a good flurry of attacks. I just did this to prevent players from walking up to enemies -> spam basic swing -> profit.
Through my testing of the system, I rarely went into a deficit in combat due to most combat actions not putting you into deficit. Thanks to the deficit system, you can usually sprint through 2 or 3 rooms before you need to stop to recover stamina, so the ultimate goal of allowing players to move through areas faster was achieved, while still making them vulnerable if they decide to run past all enemies rather than fight them.

[Moosetroop11]

Cool, yeah I'm down with a tech demo too.

[Meiscool]

College finals and clinicals have been keeping me pretty busy. Feels like I haven't been on here in awhile except for the pathing request I made.

But, update:
Save room has been made. Save spots will be kinda like temporal spaces that your character goes to, and from the room you can warp to other places you have previously been. Currently, you can save and change your blessing (Element).
Enemy movement has been updated. If there is something in the way, they will search for a spot close to them that is also close to the hero and move there instead of to the hero. This isn't true pathing, but until I find a way to code what Dragonblaze suggested, it will do. They can move around large obstacles now, so at least there is that.
Tech demo progress: Zero. Wanted to do other things first.
Custom text system implemented. Nothing flashy, just something different from the normal text box.
Pause system implemented and pauses pretty much EVERYTHING. I like it, as I feel pause systems are actually pretty hard to make in rpgm. I may use it to make a sort of "time stop" ability later if I feel like it.
Challenge rooms planned. Challenge rooms will be rooms with nothing in them but enemies, and there will be a specific challenge for beating them. Kill all enemies with one boomerang throw, kill all without taking damage, etc.
Made more rooms/maps. Made building interiors, so you can explore the city in multiple ways.
Inspired by bioshock and similar games, much of the plot will be told by collecting notes throughout your exploration. Since you are traveling through a mysterious unpopulated underwater city, players will have a lot of questions. Notes/diaries/etc will explain the origin of the city, what happened, etc... they will even explain why how the hero arrived. Players who miss entries will still have things explained to them later if they wish through plot events, but they might not get the same viewpoints...
First-Mini boss completed. It is the Dark Knight seen in my second example video, just put in a different setting.
More puzzle ideas have come to mind that I plan on putting in this area. These include puzzles that you have to solve using powers, and puzzles that are solved just with the mind. Power puzzles will be to move forward in the game, mind puzzles will more than likely be used to unlock areas with treasure or notes to read.
Enemies can no longer half-move into terrain. This is because I gave them two x values and two y values now, and when moving it checks both to see if the enemy would be half inside a wall or not.

As a final note, I'm still working on editing sprite poses for my main character's new costume... But it is very time consuming. If anyone would like to help with this, let me know. Be warned; it is a large task, but you don't have to do any more poses than what you feel like. I need upwards of 80 poses changed from one costume to the other, so yeah...
Thanks for reading.

I'm sure I've done more (I worked on it alot yesterday because I made yesterday a me day) but yeah... updates woo.

[Rikushinblade]

Fantastic updates I hope your finals go well..any more screenshots of terrain?

[Meiscool]

Yeah, I can post a few later.

[Desimodontidae]

This game is really the only reason I visit the forum anymore, please keep it up.

[Meiscool]

Wow, that's quite the compliment. Thank you.

Update: College finals are done! As such, I've done quite a bit in the game. First off, screenies:


One room of one of the houses you can go into.

Save room. The doorways light up with pictures of places you have previously been (if you have been to those places), allowing you to warp between save rooms to previous locations. Also shows my lackluster text system.

One of several sort of market places that you will come across while walking around. Attempted to visually show the ice shield that your character can use, which bounces back enemies that get too close.

A bit of a grave site area before heading into a crypt. This also shows a new enemy, unnamed flower atm. It has a very long range poison mist spit attack that is spammable, but the aoe and damage is small.

Gameplay: More slight bug fixing (working on making this as foolproof as possible!). However, the more exciting stuff is that enemies now have more variety in death animations (skeleton's bones crumble rather than just exploding, etc). Second to that, enemies can now drop items. They are picked up simply by walking to them and pressing Z/enter.
I have yet to decide how items will be used. I could have them be used to upgrade weapons, solve optional puzzles, craft stuff, etc. I'm leaning towards a slight alchemy system using items to upgrade and solve puzzles atm, but we'll see.

Not much else to talk about at the moment. After I move home I expect to work on this a lot more frequently, so more updates (and bigger/beefier ones) should be coming.

[Prpl_Mage]

Still so very impressive

[Moosetroop11]

Generic  I'm still reading post

I love flower enemies.  Flowers are awesome.