Progress Report: Vera Event and Other Things

We're about two months away from the end of the year, and I'm hoping to at least finish up all the Cambio story events by that point. I'm still a long while away from being able to extend the Prologue Demo with what I have, but I am going to brush up on it to ensure things work with what I've added gameplay-wise. That includes Sorcerer's Ring functions, possibly changing out the Magic Lens in favor of being able to check party/enemy status, and so on. I even found a workaround for the lag in that one map by not only reducing enemy events, but also consolidating warp events not tied to objects by having a single event automatically trigger a warp if you step onto certain tiles. I might be able to do this for most maps for now on, though I would like to find a way to add more enemies again without causing an issue. 

Now, last month I went and got the story boss done. There are things to work out, but the general setup is there and I can get back to that for future builds. I then started working on the maps for Vera and Corrine's in-ground home; which part of me thought I should have it feel like an actual cave but decided against it after looking through like Golden Sun and Lord of the Rings (which had in-ground homes with normal walls and such). Within limitations, I can only do so much and I lament not being able to do more complex sprite work for tilesets. What I have done was make it so one parallel event checks to see if you're standing on certain coordinates, which the three chairs facing upward are in this picture. I made it so that you can't walk through them, but as soon as you start going through the sides, they will appear as if they're above them for like a sitting effect. Initially I tried doing this through having the tileset change but that caused a noticeable short pause.

As for what happens here, this is where the pilgrimage group is officially formed. Vera is given the Pact Rings, her motives for this journey are told, and even William is offered to come along in order to receive tutoring from her. Another time I will be making new frames and animations to make this more lively, but for now it's just the bare minimal for what is to happen during this scene. What's left is getting them back to the village, setting up a night-time scene or two, and then wrapping it all up with one final scene to serve as a departure moment. If I can get that done this month, that will at least be one goal done.

In general, I want next year to be the beginning of where more focus is done on the game instead of the other projects I've done over the years. Even if it's more like this where I'm just setting things up, for what's already one big draft, I would like to have even more towns and dungeons done once 2025 starts. I hope you look forward to what's to come.