Progress Report: March 2025

A bit of a short month of progress. Part of it was because of work, another was other projects, and then there was getting assets for events or features. Still waiting on the picnic basket art before I can work out the basic functions and then apply it to all the food tags I have. And I'm slowly getting more of Fuya's battle animations done so I can finally have her debut fight ready.

I did start on some battle mechanics for her. The main one involving her team's banner. Depending on what banner she has equipped as her sub-item, it will have a passive effect to nearby allies while also applying a negative effect to the nearest enemies. For her debut fight, it will last the whole fight, but when she does properly join it will be temporary until activated again. Like Vera, she'll have this effect separate from whatever I decide to make her Over Limit Gauge ability. At the rate I'm going, I may end up giving everyone a secondary ability based on holding Down and Enter. But part of game design is experimentation and finding balance.

One other thing I did was make another map for the mountain trail that I decided will be where the boss encounter with the Gentleman will be held. The idea is that to impede the party from reaching the summit, based on orders given to them, the area just before the top will have rocks and other objects that will need to be moved around to get through; and sensing something in the room it came from, the party will go and confront a pack of them.

Of course, I will need to get back to that point since I don't have a save file for after the Vera stuff. But I'm literally just before Cambio and can easily advance. At the same time, I needed to ensure that the player can progress like normal under the ATB system, and I already had to change some artes and story events to account for the changes. There's at least one more event I need to make sure works.

To conclude this post, this month will see me getting the mountain trail events done. Even if I don't get the picnic basket done, I can just come back to that through a save file. I'll be refining some elements to the ATB system; and once the trail is complete, it's onto Tua'tha where the first spirit trial will take place.