Progress Report: January 2025

I hope everyone is having a happy new year so far...or at least getting by the best way possible. I know there's a lot going on and I hope that I can at least provide some entertainment or distraction from the crap going on in the world. Otherwise, let's start with a reminder that I put out updates to both the Prologue and Arena demos. The latter done before MAGFest, which was a lot of fun and I even distributed more cards to spread word of this project. A friend suggested showcasing this at some indie dev event, which I know there are some for fan projects but I don't think I'm at that stage to do it. Otherwise, let's start with a relatively small thing I've been doing the last few days.

I've been organizing the skill database again. I trimmed down some excess abilities on Aki and Piper while also making more room for William's copy artes. I added a bunch of the generic intermediate and advanced varieties of elemental artes enemies will have, and leaving more room for various enemy exclusive ones. I have an idea for what can be done to obtain them outside of having to repeatedly mimic the arte before learning them, since I'll still need to decide on how many times for certain artes need to be mimicked before being learnable.

Although, with Aki and Piper, I have a general idea on what they can do. I have a sizeable amount of standard artes for both of them, and among Piper's arte set, some of them are compatible with her different forms. So depending on the form, the arte may have a different effect than normal. Of course, I just have these named and listed, but yet to be programmed in. Same thing for Aki, though I still need to think of more Altered Artes to go with her physical ones. Magic artes won't have any, though I gave her quite a few. And because of how the database organizer works, I may have to leave in the dummy spots since it's already a hassle having to fix variables for the action sequences, and fixing the enemy skill lists as well. I was able to patch the save files I have so that party members have the correct skills and artes at that point in time.

The big thing I'm going to start working on is the sleeping giant mountain trail. I already have a few maps made, and the main story events drafted. One thing I want to add is being able to walk along the left arm of the stone giant, something akin to this image. Obviously, it shouldn't look like 'this', and it was suggested I go with natural tiles; which honestly would work since the giant has been apart of the mountain for centuries and even with its unique composition it could have been affected by time and the elements. I can do that in my spare time, although for whatever dev streams I'm planning next week I'll be working on getting another story scene done since I now have a pirate ship tileset; which was needed for a scene I haven't included in the demo. Otherwise, the plan for the main story is to do the mountain trail before going to Tua'tha for Gnome's Trial.

Last thing to note is that I'm still commissioning Fuya's sprite animations for battle as I would like the demo to have an actual boss fight involving her. Once I have enough to work with, I'll start programming her artes. At this stage she's considered a guest character and can't be controlled, so there won't be much outside of her primary artes.

And that's about it. After the next review video I'll truly be devoting more time into game development. I'm looking forward to seeing more progress done this year than I did last time. Any thing to put aside any doom and gloom going on.