Holy Cow, Artistry
This week, the art team really went wild. Urimas completed several full sprite sheets. The only two characters remaining to be sprited for Chapter 1 are Aquillia and Claudia.
Chickenwhite decided to go berserk and complete Blythe, Nadia, and Claudia’s dialogue portraits (1 each, since they’re minor characters) and then stun me by completing Mei’s dialogue portraits for Alraune, Bee, and Slime. That’s a whopping 30 dialogue portraits in 7 days! Way to go, Chicken!
Stinkehund has been inking steadily and should be getting the coloring done for all those images within a week or two.
Rune has resumed work and will probably be finishing Mei’s Werecat shading and the Ghost enemy. He’s also going to be doing some color study work to improve his craft.
Holy Goat, Coding
Because I’m a loser, I decided I’d keep pace with Chicken on the coding front.
Major Map Overhaul: Dimensional Trap
I redid all of the maps for the Dimensional Trap’s main floor. Instead of being one map with a bunch of barely-navigable hallways, it’s now five maps with wider hallways, smarter enemy placement, and treasure. There’s also an odd building on the western edge with a locked door. If only a certain someone could pick it…
New Major Section: Dimensional Trap Dungeon
If you figure out how to get into the western building, a dungeon awaits you, complete with a boss battle against… something not of this world (or of Pandemonium, either). There’s also a puzzle:
As well as some new cutscenes, loot, and character interactions.
New Scenes: Alraune’s Well That Ends Well
Under the right circumstances, Mei can now voluntarily become an Alraune. Just ask around at Breanne’s Pit Stop!
In fact, she’s so happy that she might even transform a human she meets, with Rochea’s guidance of course.
Improved Boss Battle: Beehive Corruption Events
I redid the balance for the boss at the end of the Beehive mini-dungeon. It now presents a real challenge and encourages you to use the new stun mechanics (Mei learns Pommel Bash at level 3, and you will need it!).
A bunch of bugfixes
Because a coder’s work is never done.
Boring Changelog
Here’s the changelog differences from last week.
- Redesigned the Dimensional Trap main floor. It’s now multiple rooms with new examinables, enemy patrols, and stuff to do.
- Modified a lot of the old maps to use enemy pathing. Dodge patrols!
- Put a special present in the Salt Flats for Aaaac and Mugen Kagemaru.
- Finished up the Dimensional Trap Dungeon scenes.
- Added Real Fake Chests. Hey are you tired of real chests cluttering up your dungeon, where you open them and they actually contain something? Fill a whole room up with real fake chests! Check this out! Mm, won’t open. Mm, won’t open!
- Fixed up a lot of backend code in older dialogues, specifically with Rochea.
- Rewrote the text parser to use an autoresolver. Please be on the lookout for &&BUGS&&.
- Did a bunch of text housekeeping. Be on the lookout for ^^BUGS^^.
- Inventory UI will now work correctly when the player has more than 13 items.
- Some NPCs will now spawn at the Pit Stop. Some even have some interesting things to say…
- Added a way to get transformed into an Alraune voluntarily.
- Under the right circumstances, Mei can even turn someone else into an Alraune…
- Hey everybody. Just did some other stuff, updated the patch notes. Still here, still sellin fake chests! We have fake chests like you wouldn’t believe, what are you worried about? Come get fake chests! Don’t even hesitate, don’t even worry.
- Added modern lineart for Blythe, Nadia, and Claudia.
- Added modern lineart for Mei’s Alraune form.
- Added modern lineart for Mei’s Slime form.
- Added modern lineart for Mei’s Bee form.
- Enhanced the bee hive dungeon layout a bit.
- You can no longer retreat from plot-important battles.
- Enemies will no longer target downed party members with splash attacks.
- Party members should animate correctly when felled by a DoT.
- Enemies can now reinforce from scripts, making for some interesting miniboss mechanics! HINT FREAKIN’ HINT.
- Fixed a bug where items would sometimes consume a turn even though they really shouldn’t.
- Fixed some dialogue bugs.
Design Theorizing
In case you missed it, I wrote a post on dialogue design theory. It’s worth a read if you consider yourself a budding game designer. It’s not worth a read if you think literacy causes polio.
Prototype 3 Checklist
Prototype 3’s objective is End of August.
Here’s a list of things I want to make it into Prototype 3.
- The Quantir Mansion completed
- Nix Nedar completed
- The Dimensional Trap basement mini-dungeon completed (CHECK!)
- The Dimensional Trap upper floor mini-dungeon completed
- The Dimensional Trap main-floor redesign completed (CHECK!)
- Werecat TF and event sequence completed
- Ghost Maid TF and event sequence completed
- Breanne’s flower subquest completed
- Florentina’s past subquest completed
- Old map enemy redesign completed (CHECK!)
- Probably something else that will come up and be too good to ignore.
- All the attendant bugs…
Pandemonium Development 