FuriousGamer87

It has been a while since I posted an update. There are a lot of things changed and improved since the last update. You can experience it yourself by downloading the updated demo from the first post. Chapter 1 still haven't finished yet due to previous development efforts were shifted to the changes shown in this update. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

I planned to do a update a bit later than this but finally the trailer has been completed. So, without further delay, since the game have past the alpha stage a while back, I have put the game on Steam Greenlight. If you like what you seen so far, please take the time to vote for it. Thanks in advance. Steam Greenlight Page: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=580179398 To celebrate the completion of the trailer, I have also pushed forward an updated demo, which features: Instead of just skin color selection during randomization of generic characters, I have implemented hair color selection too, instead of just everyone having brown hair. During character creation, the player options are increased by a great deal in selecting appearance due to me unloading every character assets that I have created so far into the demo. Game load instantly instead of having a loading bar during the start of the game. That was because I am preloading the audio assets beforehand. That is stupid and unneeded since the audio assets are right there with the game, not half a world with high ping away. Changed the setup to streaming, as it should originally be. Some small fixes and improvements. Currently, the game development will be on hold for a short while so I can make an effort for my game to clear Steam Greenlight. This is will be hard since turn based tactics game is pretty niche and the pixel art graphics is not improving my game chances either.

Alright, time for the Mid December Update. New Dialogue FontChanged the old dialogue font, which is 04b03 to PF Tempesta Seven Compressed. Should make the long ass dialogues in the game more readable. Changed the dimension of all dialogue boxes to compensate for the increased size of the font. Dialogue Choices Get Scrolling FunctionalityDialogue choices now use the same scrolling functionality that all lists in the game used. About time. This also enable me to use give, theoretically unlimited choices as there is no limit in space. New classesFinished the creation of Dealer and Merchant classes. Dealers are extremely strong when they are packed with items that they can exploit and most of their techniques revolved around item usage. Merchants are very proficient buffers and debuffers that use the power of greed to influence both enemies and allies in amusing ways. New districtsFinished three new districts, Maple Tree, Oaksville Central and Truman Hill. Each of these district have their own unique locations and things to offer to the player. Oaksville Central - The decaying heart of the city. Chapter 1 still being worked onFinished characterization of the several early important NPCs. Finished creating the early antagonist and his rag-tag gang. Still working on finishing the chapter 1 storyline and resolving the mission paths. Trailer progressThe audio is still being worked on. Again, for the top two features, an updated demo is already uploaded with those two features in place for demonstration. You can download the demo through the link in the first post of this thread. Enjoy yourself.

Thanks. I will try to work on those as soon as I can. Currently a bit busy with some other stuff.

Thanks. Enjoy yourself. Finished some stuff. Here are the highlights: Upgraded the AI schematics to allow AI to take account of elemental advantages and affinity. In this new setup, the AI will compute all possible flow of actions of a single turn while taking account of its personality, AI type, movement focus, action type favoritism, target priority, tag team and elemental knowledge to calculate the final value of each flow. After all is calculated within nanoseconds, thanks to all the necessary variables are already inside data tables beforehand, the AI will always choose the flow of actions with the highest value and enact it. Change the existing initiative system which is "roll every character's initiative at the start of each battle" to a new one which is "roll every character's initiative at the start of each round in battle". This make agility boosting and lowering techniques significantly useful in battle for adjusting turns, since initiative is calculated based on agility + initiative dices. Game trailer is being worked on by audiobro. The visuals for it are done. Removed unsupported Linux and Mac build of the demo after being unable to troubleshoot some issue that people have with them because I simply don't have machines running those OS. New demo uploaded with the top two features added to it. Working on making chapter 1 visual assets. Finished the design for a new character class called Outcast. Specialized in attacks with nasty special effects attached, specially the type that screws both enemies and allies. An unhinged person that nobody want to be caught associating with. The strong BO doesn't help either.

Damn, I don't have a Mac to troubleshoot this. I apologize for making you waste your bandwidth and time on this. Sorry.

The demo is finally completed. You can download it through the link here below or on the OP. Please give feedback, especially the Apple guy.

Upgraded the saving functionality to allow for custom slot names. It is surprising the amount of work needed to code and polish some features that we taken for granted in AAA games. In case you are wondering, it's a hell lot. On the side note, also finished yet another class. Chemist A sadistic f++ker who use his knowledge of chemistry to screw with others. Role: Special Striker Major, Debuffer Minor

The audio still haven't finished so we still have to wait for quite a while. Still left a few BGMs and SFXs to do, according to my audiobro. On the side note, I finished several classes and the sprites to represent them. Fullback This heavily armored fella finally bring his formidable skills to the streets. Role: Defender Major, Physical Striker Minor Technician Handy to have when your appliances are broken yet again. Role: Debuffer Major, Defender Minor

Just finished the last two of shop functions, buying and selling items. In this game, buying and selling work differently from most other games in that the price of each item is not fixed nor is it the same in every shop. Some shops may sell cheaper potions but be more expensive in other items such as grenades or guns. Some shops will refuse to buy any potions from you while willing to pay above market price for your guns. Moreover, certain characters and "limited time" shops have only a number of a rare item for sale, making you unable to purchase a huge number of the said item. As said before, relationship with different groups in Oaksville will also alter the behaviors of certain shops. The same also goes for recruiting and training, of course. The intent is to make every shop and district unique and memorable. Perhaps, in the industrial district, you will find cheaper industrial products and related services while in the commercial district, fashionable items are vastly more cheaply than in other districts. And there are always wandering dealers and street traders willing to make a trade for the right price... [spoiler=Buying] [spoiler=Selling] On the side note, I change the colors of the general UI for the game to invoke a fresher and lively look. I think it does the job well. For comparison, a before and after image are in the spoiler below: Going to work on improving the look and feel of info boxes in the game next.

I prefer to spend most of my time on a game playing and enjoying it, not searching through the Internet on how to fix the bugs in it. This is even more ridiculous once you considered the fact that JRPGs usually have better and deeper game mechanics than WRPGs simplistic ones. For me, it have nothing to do with their setting or atmosphere and more to do with the quality of their release. I do admit that WRPGs have some games with good narrative design and themes and I enjoyed them, bugs and all. So, yes I prefer JRPGs more than WRPGs

Finished about half of the shop functionalities for the game. Let's talk about the finished portions. First part is training. Certain places in Oaksville offer training either in techniques or traits in exchange for money. As said before, access to those locations with sometime be decided by your relationship with different factions in the game. I think the functionality is pretty much done. If a character learn more techniques than he could hold, he have to drop one of his existing techniques. You can see this through the gif below. [spoiler=Images] [spoiler=Gif] Second part is recruiting. Unlike most games, there is no one place in Oaksville where you can simply recruit any classes. The availability of classes in shops will be determined by the type of shop, the wealth of the district, whose turf is it and others. In this example, since the place is a gym, you can only recruit brutes from there. The level which the recruit have is also determined by location. [spoiler=Images] [spoiler=Gif] I will work on the buying and selling of goods after this.

Actually that is the actual and only plan, considering the amount of human resource I have. And there is a story and a few branching paths depending on the decisions you make and don't do in the game (ala Chaos Frame in Ogre Battle Series). Basically, some posse will be either your enemies, your allies or uninterested in you and that will affect what classes, items, traits and techniques you have access to in the game since some are specific only to certain posse and they only grant access to people not looking to bash their skulls in.

No idea, I haven't tested it on that platform yet since I don't have any OSX devices lying around. So far, I only tested it in the Windows platform. The game engine I used to develop this game is supposedly to be able to handle the porting to Mac or Linux quite easily so if you want to test it out for me, I have no problem creating a OSX 32-bit version of the demo. Do tell if you encounter any problems when you play through the demo. That said, you still have to wait until my audiobro finish the audio portion of the demo. ;)

Thank you for taking the time to give thoughts on how I could improve it further. I really appreciate the effort. I have to admit though that I use the word "character" for the thematic reason to emphasis that the people in the posse are well, characters with their own personalities and quirks. And I use the male pronouns in singular terms because I thought that they and them should only be used in plural terms. Correct me if I am wrong in this. You are right in that I should revise some of the text and avoid redundancy since brevity is the soul of wit and games should be games, not long-winded books. Parsing the text to create icons is within my capability but not creating links since the game controls are based on gamepad/keyboard. Basically, mouse and touch control aren't supported. Thanks again.