(I am not a developer, I am just posting news)
- Work is being done on deciding how we want the Tavern backroom™️ to look, with various 'concepts' and ideas as we feng shui the furniture.
- The loading screen has been darkened, so it will no longer flashbang your eyes.
- A decent number of bugs have been fixed, most of which are visual. With many more to come in a long list as we go through the game.
- A number of art assets for Cenvir have been made, and are ready for animations!
- And lastly a ton of dialogue work has been done, the Mjol/Nara questlines are nearing completion in terms of writing/dialogue!
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- Work continues to progress in modifying/improving the village, fixing various bugs, and finishing up work on a few characters yet to be added. Nara's dialogue is being transcribed into unity.
- Kuja has been tweaking certain assets around the village, such as:
- And this week I'd like to talk about compound's work in setting up game environments and collision. Collision is a fairly complex thing to work with and to go into it with a little depth:
This is a level's completed mesh deometry, forming the boxes in which the player can explore an area without falling into the endless infinite void. The white mesh forming the collision. As a bonus you can see how a lot of images are layered together to form a full scene.
Here, meshes are manipulated via various tools to fit the appropriate shape of the art, to give it a feel of 3D and presence in the world, otherwise it'd be you walking across a flat background like moving your fingers on a piece of paper. The collision was ultimately what makes the game feel like a game.
Meshes can be tweaked to match an in-game object by using the view of the game viewing window, alongside the scene viewer. Each mesh functions as its own object, which can be then used to break a scene down into various components.
By running the game to test it, we can further match the collision to the art with more detailing.
Collision proves time consuming but a necessary and interesting facet to game development, and without it, many things would seem very... flat!
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- Kuja has nearly finished the back end of the Tavern where Nara and Mjol work, have a look!
- We had a very long discussion about secondary skills, in addition to attributes. Secondary skills would function almost exclusively outside of combat. Serving as skill checks and modifiers for such things as healing amount. Each secondary skill would correspond to a main attribute which would determine the point-cap of each skill. So you can't put a ton of points into strength if you're a nerdy wizard nerd face.
(P) Intimidation - Used in dialogue to intimidate someone - Physique
(P) Strength - Used in either dialogue or mechanically to move/lift an object - Physique
(A) Sleight of Hand - Used in dialogue checks to pickpocket certain people - Agility
(A) Stealth - Used to avoid combat or generally get by. Can also be used in dialogue - Agility
(I) Seduction - Used as a way to trigger sex scenes and to get what you want in dialogue - Intelligence
(I) Persuasion - Used primarily where seduction will not work to persuade people in dialogue - Intelligence
(I) Engineering - Allows you to unlock doors/chests that are locked, used in dialogue for mechanical checks. - Intelligence
(W) Treatment - Increases healing received from items and abilities - Wisdom
(W) Perception - Used in dialogue checks to notice things otherwise hidden - Wisdom
(W) Bartering - Lowers prices and increases sell value - Wisdom
(W) Knowledge - Used in dialogue checks to determine PC's ability to comprehend things - Wisdom
(M) Arcane Acuity - Used in dialogue checks to determine PC's ability to understand magic - Attunement
(M) Power - Used in dialogue checks and some mechanical actions as a form of magical intimidation, and skill check for actions like strength. - Attunement
These would be the secondary skills so far planned, pretty much final. The way these would work is when you encounter a dialogue option that, say, asks for 'Intimidation' for an optional path that may make your life easier or harder, it would check against the number of points you have in that skill. So if your intimidation was 11, and the skill check requires 10, then you would pass. As example:
(Intimidate) Maybe if you don't tell me where you took her, I'll make you eat your own colon.
Which, having passed, would cause the opposition to respond with:
(Success) Oh... uhh... don't be too hasty, we're all friends here! Here, I'll tell you what I know! Just uh... stay over there.
and should you fail, might backfire against you:
(Failure) Yeah? How about you come over here and try. (Initiates combat).
Abilities like Sleight of Hand would determine whether you can open locked boxes that engineering could not, or pick pocket someone, Seduction might lead to exclusive sex scenes, bartering would passively lower prices, etc.
Obviously this would require us to go back and add skill checks (Which a lot of dialogues already have hidden) to older dialogues, but if we are to do this it is planned to be done when we add Kuja's new Character Dialogue Artwork, since we have to go back and do a pass anyway.
- The next half of the conversation was involved in random encounters, and how we want certain events to play out. It is believed in the team that simple still illustrations with a great deal of detail in description with skill checks would allow us to have a lot of interesting encounters, without having to, say, create an entire ass area+scene+animation+code+scripting for something like climbing in through a back window to steal the Chieftain's panties.
- Finally, it would be how we can more easily flesh out sections of gameplay, and keep monotony from taking hold in things like traveling from one point to another on the world map. So as you travel from, say, The Razorclaw village to the Sultari Empire, you could encounter these random events ranging from things like
"Your party stops on the trail, a glint in the distance catching your eyes. A possible ambush? Or perhaps treasure exposed from the earth by recent rains? Do you investigate or continue on your way.
1) Investigate the strange glint.
2) Ignore it and move along."
to
"Up ahead on the path several hooded figures of various sizes approach brandishing weapons, a quick glance behind you shows that any retreat may not be an option as they have a few behind you as well, no doubt having hidden amongst the foliage. The apparent leader of the group approaches you, revealing a grin containing an uneven number of teeth. The desert-lizard looks you up and down, as if deciding whether to eat or not. "What have we here? Lost, little girl?" he says in a snarling tone.
1) (Intimidate) Let us pass or I'll bury you out here.
2) You want a fight? You got one.
3) (Seduction) Maybe... we can work something out? Accentuate your curves with a flourish
4) I don't want to fight... Can we come to an agreement?"
Choosing to fight, or being ambushed, would teleport you to a battle arena where you fight whomever or whatever.
These should be fairly easy to make compared to fully fleshed out, animated, or colored+drawn scenes. Making a decent quantity without necessarily skimping out on quality.