The Home Stretch
So, pretty much everything on the “Need” list for Prototype 3 is done. I’m trying to get the artists to put out as much stuff as possible for Prototype 3. Anything not in Prototype 3 will be finished for Chapter 1’s full release (and the release delayed as necessary).
IMPORTANT: READ THIS FOR INFORMATION ON ACCESSING PROTOTYPE 3
So, when Prototype 3 is released next week, I will be sending a Patreon message with a link to every patron who has a completed pledge for the months of July and August. After the pledges go through for September, any patron with a pledge for September will likewise receive a copy.
I’m doing this because it’s fairly well known that Patreon has an issue: You get immediate access to the patron feed even if the pledge hasn’t been processed. This encourages people to pledge and then cancel their pledge once they have what they want. This breaks my heart. It actually hurts personally to see people game the system like this. We’re indie developers, not giant corporations. We really do get just as much of a boost from a kindly written note as we do from 5 bucks, so if you’re poor (I SURE AM) then you can send me a kindly written note instead. I’m not joking about that.
If you miss out on the September pledge deadline, I’ll also have a Paypal set up. You’ll be able to send a donation through that to get a link to Prototype 3 and any patches I have to issue for it. Paypal pledges will be counted on September’s budget statement if any are received.
The Art Front
The remainder of the transformation sketches will need to be completed this week. I won’t include them in Prototype 3 unless they’re inked, and Hund is currently trying to get Bee Mei’s dialogue portraits colored. Alraune Mei might not get colored in time and Werecat Mei probably won’t, it depends on a lot of factors.
The only sprites remaining are those of Sister Claudia, whose color scheme hasn’t been finalized yet.
The Coding Front
What’s Done
Because I had a little more time than expected, I decided to overhaul the level system yet again. Previously, leveling up was intentionally a minor part of the game. I didn’t want the player’s solution to every problem to be “grind and then level up”. By enforcing a hard level cap, I remove that issue.
This raised a different problem, and that was not rewarding the player for combat. I decided to go off the fixed XP system and instead enforce the level cap on a per-chapter basis. The game hard caps you at level 10 for Chapter 1 and soft-caps at around 7 (feel free to grind but it’s not necessary at all).
This will also make a bigger difference between a level 5 Mei and a level 1 Mei. In the previous versions she gained around 40 HP between the two, but now she also gains attack power, dodge, speed, and accuracy as she levels up. You will need to get better equipment though, since the level cap means you won’t be able to take down bosses just by leveling up.
In other extra-stuff news, I added a stamina bar to the game. This bar reduces the amount of running you can do by holding down shift, so you can’t just run circles around every enemy. You have to be strategic about it, adding a new dimension to the game’s pacing.
What Remains
I need to test out the level work I did and re-calibrate the enemies accordingly. After that, I need to go back through the chapter and add handling cases to all the possible routes the player can take through it. For example, it’s quite possible to complete the chapter without ever meeting Florentina, so I need to add a case where the player decides to meet Florentina right before completing the chapter (which Florentina is all for: there’s loot to be had!). This is the sort of thing I get for designing things non-linearly.
After that, it’s balance testing in any spare time I have. There’s also an outstanding bug in 3D mode on some graphics cards that I’d love to fix if I could just figure out what’s causing it…
Prototype 3 Status
The target for Prototype 3 is End of August. Here’s the checklist:
- The Quantir Mansion completed (Check!)
- Nix Nedar completed (Check!)
- The Dimensional Trap basement mini-dungeon completed (CHECK!)
- The Dimensional Trap upper floor mini-dungeon completed (Check!)
- The Dimensional Trap main-floor redesign completed (CHECK!)
- Werecat TF and event sequence completed (Check!)
- Ghost Maid TF and event sequence completed (Check!)
- Breanne’s flower subquest completed (Check!)
- Florentina’s past subquest completed (Moved to Chapter 6!)
- Old map enemy redesign completed (CHECK!)
- Probably something else that will come up and be too good to ignore. (Check?)
- All the attendant bugs…
As you can see, that’s everything. I moved the Florentina’s Past quest to Chapter 6 for dramatic reasons. If you make really good friends with her, she might drop a few hints, though…
Boring Changelog
- Re-did how items/retreat operate and added the “Surrender” command to the player’s listing.
- Added corgi statue to the trading post. This is vital to the game’s development. Finally, the game is complete.
- Put in examinables for the trap main floor and upper floor.
- Put in enemies for the trap upper floor.
- Added enemies and patrol paths to the Quantir mansion.
- Added drunk slimes.
- Added Pepper Pie quest to Breanne. Added all the stuff needed to complete the quest, as well.
- Fixed the timing with health bars in combat to improve the pacing.
- Fixed a few bugs in the Ghost TF.
- Updated ghost sprites and portraits.
- Updated a bunch of scripts to remove redundancy. Also reduced redundancy by updating some scripts.
- Normalized the retreat code. Retreats will now take you back to the last-used save point instead of the (rather inconsistent) last-used map edge.
- Added Florentina’s end-of-chapter dialogue.
- Added Stamina bar to the game. You can run until you’re out of stamina, and it recharges faster if you’re standing still.
- Added new stats (Offense, Deftness) to the level-up balance and reworked the level system to use fixed XP gains.
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Pandemonium Development 