Let’s get right into it!

The Good

Much more engine work completed. Event scheduling, School map completed, Team building screen completed, pretty much all the necessary features are down. There are other screens still needing to be built, like recruiting and save/load, but they’re pretty minor and can be done at a later date.

The Bad

Work has been done, but there’s still not very many events written. We’ve got a basic groundwork for the opening events, but there’s a lot of areas untouched, and now that I’m entering the stage where I need to shift from programming mode to writing mode, I find myself freezing up, lacking any good ideas for characters and events. Even trying to work out the vague images of ideas I had when we started the project is tough, and the stuff I put down doesn’t match up to the image in my head almost at all… Just gotta keep at it.

The Ugly

The team building screen was actually heartbreaking. It was going swimmingly at first, and then I tried to implement drag/drop. That’s where it went all downhill. I struggled a bit trying to figure it out, spending most of the day getting the screen half-built, only to find that it completely breaks when used with different renderers. Drag/drop had to be scrapped, and I rewrote (though much quicker) with buttons and clicks instead. It was pretty disheartening though.

The Beautiful

The additions made to the bare-bone team building screen once I compromised on the loss of drag/drop. Much was done to make the screen as efficient as possible, even though I couldn’t do anything about reducing the minimum click count of 13. But now instead of just clicking on a unit and then a placement slot, a few neater little tricks were added. Double clicking on a unit in the list now puts them in the first available slot, as well as some neat gimmicks with right clicking clearing them from the team. Little nuances that make what was a disappointing compromise into an actually decent and clever effort.

Well, that’s the debrief this week. Next week, hopefully, there’ll be actual story updates. Stay tuned!

I feel the need to show *something* off about what we’re doing for Nanoreno this year, but felt like we couldn’t because there’s no real art assets yet. It didn’t feel necessary to make a WIP thread. And then I remembered I had a blog.

So, here’s the Week One Debrief!

The Good

The battle engine for our ridiculously ambitious project has been completed per current specs. While it’ll be necessary to add on to it down the road, as more details in other arenas are worked out, it meets all of our initial needs. Everything set out in the initial design is accomplished, much to our satisfaction. But just a text update is no fun, so I’m gonna walk you through it real quick. (Let me warn you now, don’t read too much into the test names… they’re just there for testing…)

Since the project is heavily inspired by Alicesoft masterwork Sengoku Rance, our battle engine borrows the 2 column * 3 row layout. Close range attackers can only attack from the frontline and only target the enemy frontline, while ranged skills and support teammates can be placed anywhere and target anywhere. Turn order is pretty simple: the selected unit from the two teams’ frontlines attack first, and then the backlines make their move, assuming there are living units in that row with the appropriate amount of Action Points.

If a whole line falls though, the remaining line for that team enters a “berserker” state. They get to immediately act, gain access to a super attack only available in berserker state, and get another turn right after — in an effort to help turn the tide of battle. But things are pretty rough for the single line team after, when your opponents get a front and back line action per round to your single line turn.

Achieve victory by defeating all the units on the opponents team, but be wary of your own losses. Any of your teammates with no hp at the end of a battle are hospitalized, and you won’t be able to use them until they completely recover. Minimize loss and maximize damage!! That is the way of a true warrior!

The Bad

As we sit right now, absolutely no actual writing has been done. There’s a few test dialogue lines for certain scenes involving the mechanics of the game, but nothing that’ll make it into the game yet. This isn’t really the best spot to be in a whole week into Nano month. We’re gonna have to push harder.

The Ugly

The current implementation for attacks is rather primitive as it’s not even set up as a Class yet. Also, with the hovering elements and the way the screen is set up, keyboard arrow/joystick input is kinda broken. I might just remove them from the keymap to completely discourage their use… though there’s a way to revise the screen to enable it to work, that runs contrary to the aesthetics and layout I want… Decisions, decisions.

The Beautiful

Thanks to the magic that is Screen language and ATL, I can rather easily build some pretty cool attack animations if I wanted to. I think we’re trying to reduce the necessary image requirements, so it’ll probably mostly be moves and flashes and tricks involving alpha. Still, it’s better than just having a number float over a head.

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And so, debrief completed. Check in next week for another progress report. To be honest, with the scale of this project, it’ll be a miracle to actually see it completed in a month… but we’re all actively working towards that end, so this idea has some genuine momentum behind it. It’ll see completion no matter what at this state, and it’ll be done quicker than it would’ve without the Nano motivation. And that’s what matters the most.