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Dreamblazers Devlog: Week of May 26, 2014

Last week’s achievements

* Minor menu fixes
* New “status effects”: Battle Cry, Expert Evasion, Focused Aim, Heart Rally, Hypercelerate, Light Poise, Reckless Abandon, a dozen variations of Speed modifiers, and ten more related to attacks/abilities/magic listed below with a (*)
* Minor fixes to traditional status effects
* Adjusted damage formulas
* New equipment for Tango, Evelyn, and Telia: Grand Guard, Charming Cap, Traveler’s Cloak, Black Pants (I’ll figure out a real name later), Traveler’s Boots, Brave Belt, Lilty Lute, Archer Half-Gloves, Three-Quarter T-Shirt, Sunshine Shorts, Bold Boots, Archer Core Plate, Brave Bandana, Battle Band, Lightweight Leotard, Telia’s Shirt (see Black Pants), Bruiser Gloves, Dragon Dares, Bruiser Boots
* Changed party to Tango, Telia, and Lucky
* New enemies (in terms of stats and names only): Impini, Archweaver, Gigarat, Greatwolf, Griffinaire, Harpilure, Impedi, Impega, Kobold Chief, Kobold Rogue, Kobold Warrior, Norian Raider, Ogre, Orc Mage, Orc Outcast, Slimary, Slugwall, Troll Warrior, Vivavines, Wyvern
* New attacks/abilities/magic (in terms of pure gameplay functionality only): Accelerate, Artful Combo, Battle Cry, Binding Vines(*), Body Slam, Captive Piledriver, Cling, Corkscrew Stab, Crushing Punch, Dark Force Fist, Diving Slash, Double Smash, Double Whip, Earthen Shield(*), Fireball, Fire Wall, Flame Spray, Flare Spark, Freezing Wave(*), Fury Gale(*), Giga Bite, Great Tremor, Half-Shield(*), Inferno, Javelin Throw, Light Flash(*), Mega Bite, Mega Fang, Mega Slash(*), Mighty Charge(*), Mirage Attack(*), Muck Shot, Needle Storm, Noble Hammer(*), Poison Drops

Current focus

Balancing and testing enemies and enemy groups.

Weekly goals

* Send in art feedback for everything that comes in
* Finish creating moves used by overworld enemies of Miharu (the first continent) and assign all the enemies to learn their appropriate moves
* Assign battle AI to at least 25% of all Miharu overworld enemies
* Put together enemy groups for the Miharu overworld
* Test a range of player party attacks against various early-game enemy groups and vice versa

Comments

It’s amazing how much more productive I get when I’m doing what I really care about: putting down all the groundwork to start watching numbers fly around in battles.

…or so I say, but honestly, the impressiveness of the above list compared to some of my previous weeks is mostly an illusion. It took ages to get my basic menu layout right too, but “made a menu layout” will never sound as cool as “made 35 attacks and 20 enemies” even if it took longer. Still, illusion or not, it feels so much better making gameplay than UI layouts. =)

More of the Miharu enemies’ moves are in place now than not. Once they’re all set up, the enemies just have to learn their moves, use them in balanced and appropriate patterns, and join forces to start battling my test party. Excitement ahead!

Dreamblazers Devlog: Week of May 19, 2014

Last week’s achievements

* Sent art feedback for Lash and Kelly round 1
* Minor menu fixes

Current focus

Balancing enemies and enemy groups.

Weekly goals

* Send in art feedback for everything
* Begin implementing a variety of (normal) enemy stats and enemy groups for the first continent
* Implement initial equipment for early-game characters and use those characters to test a range of attacks against various early-game groups

Comments

What time is it? Turn-spreadsheets-into-game time! I have enemy groups for the first continent drawn out on paper and about 70% of their stats penciled out, so I have enough material to enter into a test environment. Until now I’ve been testing with characters who are much stronger than the early game, though, so first up comes adding equipment for Tango, Telia, and Lucky.

Dreamblazers Devlog: Week of May 12, 2014 (Pony Detour Edition)

No devlog today!

I’ve been totally occupied for the past week, and by “occupied” I mean “I somehow forgot last Monday that the season 4 finale of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was only five days away, so in celebration of the only TV show I’ve enjoyed in the last five years, I spent a ton of time in the last week revisiting episodes from earlier in the season and getting hyped up for the finale. I was so excited I almost literally couldn’t sleep for most of the week, as I kept waking up just three or four hours after going to bed and then trying to go back to sleep.”

There was also the new 3DS release on Thursday of an old-school-styled 2D RPG, Grinsia, which is the kind of thing I’m obligated to check out. Most of my time went to MLP, though. I’m going to take some time out to post reviews of all the season 4 episodes for the next little while, but once we’re past that I’ll be all set, refocused, and back on top of Dreamblazers. (Incidentally, I’m still going to finish the Tales of Symphonia breakdown as well. That’s just far more time-consuming than the pony reviews, so I scaled back on the update frequency.)

I feel like most people would just pretend they were doing stuff and make up things to claim that they did—that or just skip the weekly post and come back next time with a real progress update. I intend to continue being upfront here and not giving any false impressions, though. Didn’t really do a thing for my own game. Flat out: that’s what happened. (Considering all the Honesty here, you’d think Applejack would rank higher than my thirtieth or so favorite pony, but nah. =P)

Dreamblazers Devlog: Week of May 5, 2014

Last week’s achievements

* Various fixes to menus
* Various fixes to equipment
* Corrected Style stat formula
* I now know how to put in any of the following types of abilities: single-hit multi-target, multi-hit single-target, multi status effect, multi-hit plus single status effect, and multi-hit plus multi status effect

Current focus

Balancing enemies.

Weekly goals

* Send in art feedback for everything
* Begin implementing a variety of (normal) enemy stats and test a range of different attacks against them for balance

Comments

It didn’t occur to me until this week, but so far I’ve been conducting all my damage formula testing with playable characters and bosses. While boss fights will be Dreamblazers‘ centerpieces, I’m also aiming for interesting normal enemies. With only a few exceptions like Pokémon and Final Fantasy VI, I can almost always accurately judge how much I’ll enjoy an RPG by how much I enjoy its normal encounters.

So normal encounters are the focus this week! This is what I’ve been aiming for since the beginning, in fact. I underestimated how many things I’d need or want to do as foundations leading up to it, but now we’re here and a fun week lies ahead.

Dreamblazers Devlog: Week of April 28, 2014

Last week’s achievements

* Wrote ~9,700 words of story
* Sent art feedback for Telia and the Team Jig outfit; finished art feedback for Princess Leaf

Current focus

Battles!

Weekly goals

* Send in art feedback for everything
* Get five distinct attacks functional and balanced (e.g. until now I’ve just been testing single-hit single-target, but start with multi-hit single-target, single-hit multi-target, multi-hit multi-target, etc.)

Comments

This past week took an unexpected turn: I was in the mood to write dialogue, so that’s exactly what I did to the exclusion of all other possibilities. “What’s so unexpected about that?” one might ask. “After all, Dreamblazers is an RPG.” And I took creative writing courses in college and you might even say I studied under a Harvard professor—I could elaborate, but who cares? This is a video game, yo. More in a moment.

I very rarely watch movies or TV. However, I’ve constantly heard from movie and TV buffs, through cultural osmosis, that Hollywood is “cynical” in how producers follow market statistics. They include love interests to serve sales, not the story, and the same goes for the placement of action scenes.

I guess I’m “cynical” too, though. If I believed I could sell an RPG without a story, that’s what I’d make. I don’t sink 4000 hours into Pokémon and 1500 hours into Monster Hunter and 400 hours into Advance Wars and 200 hours into Kirby because of their stories, but because each one is fundamentally the same kaleidoscope: throw me a wide array of abilities and enemies and I’ll go wild trying endless combinations of the two.

Truth be told, I’ve been writing dialogue all along in these devlogs in a more minor way—200 words here, 300 words there—but haven’t mentioned it because it’s unimportant to me. I play games for gameplay. Shocking! Writing is not my focus; in fact, the main joy I get out of stories in games is usually sifting through all the ways in which they don’t make sense.

…yet… I’m writing a story. And if I am, then it gets my full attention and my best efforts. May others dig it more than I. =)