Author: SaltyJustice

Three weeks to the Patron Pal Prototype for Chapter 5. Mark your calenders.

Programming

Things are going well on the coding front. I did my second balance pass, but I spent most of my time improving cutscenes, improving maps, and polishing dialogue. Chapter 5 looks pretty darn good in my opinion.

I still need to polish and balance the LRT facility, and the Equinox facility’s battles are still unbalanced. There is also a major puzzle (optional, for those of you who hate puzzles) which I have put the map in for but not completed the back-end for.

Since I have three weeks to go, I probably won’t get all the polishing work in I want. But, everything will be functional for the prototype players to give feedback on.

Art

Sprites and inking are up to date, and I’m getting Urimas to add some special sprites for a cutscene I’m planning. Hund is going to be putting together a map for Regulus. Right now he’s putting together some buildings and pieces which will be arranged into a map.

Chickenwhite is redesigning one of the bosses from Chapter 5 to be – better. That’s all I will say. After that she’s on TF-scene duty. I’m hoping all four TFs will be completed by the time the prototype goes out, but that’s a bit of a tall order. They will probably only be in sketch form.

Everything Else

There isn’t an “everything else”. Right now, this project is art and coding. I do the music and sound work myself. Damn it.

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First, a bit of free art this week. This is the Raiju, one of the monster species of Chapter 5. It’s been a while since we showed off any art to non-patrons, so I’m taking this opportunity. Happy… February…

In coding news, I’m starting balance work. I’ve already done the first balance pass for the first part of Chapter 5, but I wasn’t happy with it and have to go and edit it. And then I’ll probably redo it a few more times until I’m happy with it. We’re also doing an internal balance test later this week once I have everything in place.

Once the balance work is complete, it’s just art that needs completion and then we can ship the March prototype. Well, that and bug tests, but there’s always bugs.

In terms of art, the entire art skeleton for the first prototype is complete. There are a few character concepts left to do, but the characters in question don’t appear in the prototype so we’ll do them later. This week the artists will be starting on the TF sequences and the dialogue art.

Whether or not I’ll have time to get in any more bonus content is a big question. I have another (paid!) project I’m working on, which also has a prototype due at the end of March. I’ve been splitting my time between the two. If I’m satisfied by the balance and polish of the minigames, I’ll try to squeeze Serenity Crater Observatory in.

There will also likely be a “[X] With a Grain of Salt” post later this week. I want to discuss linguistic realism and how to do it properly. It might even not bore someone!

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Good news, comrades!

The Equinox Facility scripting is completed

The Long-range Telemetry Facility scripting is completed

The Lower Sector 15 sub-quest is completed

Amazingly, I got all of that done in a week. This includes two transformation sequences, several cutscenes, and a bunch of map layouts.

With this done, I have another project I need to work on for a while. I will try to get my first balancing pass done this week so we can start that testing. MarioneTTe has already edited one of the TF sequences to make it excellent, and the art is inked and awaiting coloring for that sequence.

Depending on how much extra time we have, I should be able to get done 1-2 of the extra content requests in the poll a few weeks back. I also have to polish up the cutscenes and get their timings down (some make extensive use of sound and music for effect) and polish up the minigames and work-credits system, which has some bugs. Otherwise, everything is going fantastically well.

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Right, not as much work got done this week due to my illness. Oh well.

I’m still closer to the prototype than I was before. I hit a brick wall during the development of a cutscene in the LRT facility and basically scrapped the whole thing. Luckily Mario and I rewrote the scene from the ground up and it’s a lot better now.

I’ve also started working on the parts of the map that lead to the Equinox facility. I’ll be finishing that up this week, hopefully, and then it’s time for balance testing.

I’m frustrated with myself for a lack of general progress due to the illness. The only cure is to work on the project, right? Rawr!

Sorry about the late update. There’s a flu going around and guess what? Turns out I’m not invincible.

The Long Range Telemetry building is now mapped out and is currently being bug tested for mapping errors. I’m not going to be balancing the chapter until much later, so right now there are no enemies. I need to write three cutscenes for this area, and then the prototype becomes playable start to finish. After that I will be working on the Equinox Facility.

Our artists are making very good progress. Chicken only has a few major designs left for Chapter 5 and the spriting and inkwork are quality as always. I am confident we will make the End of March target for Prototype 1.

Almost everything is in place for v1.04 to be released next week. I’ve fixed the bugs in question and we got some new art for some of the characters who wound up being way more important than I had originally planned out.

v1.04 will also allow you to add notes to your savefiles.

This feature is retroactive with old saves and can be done at both the main loading screen and in-game from the save menu.

This was probably the second most requested feature. The most requested one was a way to detect Catalysts. In each chapter there will be an object you can find (Usually called the Platinum Compass or a derivative name) that will play a tone when you enter a room with a Catalyst in it. For Chapter 1, it can be purchased in the far southwestern corner of the map.

In other news, there will be a Patron Pal Poll going up today to decide which optional content we should prioritize for Chapter 5’s prototype. We’re doing an internal prototype soon for testing purposes before I move on to the next major section of Chapter 5.

This week, I’ve completed about 90% of the work on Regulus City’s scripting. I need to finish putting together a few events, and then allow you to actually get on the monorail (as opposed to just looking at it longingly) and then I can move on to the Long Range Telemetry facility.

We had a team meeting and decided to set our target for Prototype 1 as End of March. I think the art should have no problem hitting the target, but scenario work I’m not as sure. There’s a lot of optional content I want in the first prototype, so we’ll see what makes it in.

There will be a Patron Poll next week to set my priorities for the optional content for Prototype 1. Everything on the poll will make it into Chapter 5, but I’d like to know what you want to see first.

We have also set our target for v1.04 as End of January. The art is most of the way done, and I just need to get around to fixing the outstanding bugs and properly integrating low-res mode.

So we are back to full production mode here at Pandemonium Headquarters (which is my basement). I’ve started writing the scripting for Regulus City and should probably have its baseline done this week, depending on how the testing goes.

Chicken has completed around 1/3rd of the concepts needed for Chapter 5, and the sprites and inkwork are up to date.

Patrons this week get to see some previews of the minigames present in Chapter 5. The rest of you will have to wait until a public prototype goes out, which is going to be quite a while. I’ve called a team meeting this week to set targets for Patron prototypes, so that will all be announced next week.

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Happy New Year, damn it.

Regular posting resumes on January 8th. I have completed the baseline for the three minigames in Chapter 5, and need to polish up their mechanics before we start making sprites for them.

The minigames will be revealed to Patrons on the 8th. You members of the public will have to wait until we announce a public prototype, so get hyped or become a patron. (PLUG PLUG PLUG).

I also am looking to schedule a meeting with the team to discuss prototype targets. I’ll announce a target date as soon as we come up with one.