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Dreamblazers Devlog: Week of April 21, 2014

Last week’s achievements

* Primarily damage formula testing
* Simplified energy attacks concept

Current focus

Battles!

Sample stuff

Pretty glorious.

Weekly goals

* Send in art feedback for everything
* Continue ironing out damage formula balance

Comments

Thought of the week:

I’d extend it to not only projects, but components of projects. As I implemented moves in battles, one of the first steps was setting up damage formulas. No problem, thought I; I already know what my damage formulas are, so I only need to add them in.

Little fine-tuning here and there, but things were going great! I picked eleven reasonably diverse characters and matched them against their own stats to test. All the calculations seemed fine, so hey, cool! Just as a final check and to have a reference lying around in a spreadsheet, I’d match them against each other—

Uh-oh. This quickly revealed that energy attacks were too powerful. They’re meant to be powerful because they bypass defenses, not because they’re inherently four times better than physical or magical attacks. I had modeled my damage formulas after the Pokémon series because there’s no RPG I’m more familiar with, but I had gone overboard with my changes for energy attacks.

Days of testing later, you see the spreadsheet above! Even now I’m not confident that I’ve settled on a final formula, but it’s infinitely better off than before. Continuing to plug away!

Dreamblazers Devlog: Week of April 7, 2014

Last week’s achievements

* Finished layout of status menu
* Sent character profiles and color schemes for Tango and Telia; sent art profile for Kelly; sent art profile for Leaf’s princess dress
* Sent round 1 art feedback for Leaf’s princess dress, round 3 for Astrid, round 4 for Autumn, and round 1 for Telia
* Drafted character portrait requirements spreadsheet
* Slightly redid personality profile stats

Current focus

Battles!

Weekly goals

* Get at least ten attacks operational (in terms of damage dealt, timing of sound effects, etc., but not animations—those will be way, way, way, way, way later)
* Get at least five passive abilities operational
* Send in 80%+ of applicable art feedback for new rounds of stuff

Comments

Super satisfying week! I pulled off my primary goal of nailing the status menu layout, got a good chunk of my character portrait requirements finished, and sent in a flood of art feedback and requirements unlike any I’ve sent before. For next week’s post I’ll likely be able to share the designs of Astrid and Autumn here and on the Characters page.

Now to step back: why was I focusing on menus anyway? Because menus might influence the way I handle stats. Why did I care about stats? Because I can’t test battles without having them finalized. Over the course of all the menu stuff I feel that I got both menus and stats pegged, so now I can get back to what I’ve wanted do since forever: combat!

Battles are an enormous project with many moving parts, so I’m being tentative with my weekly goals for now since I don’t know what I can expect to go right or wrong. Like I’ve said before, though, a huge plus in all of this is being able to use an amazing Unity framework to help me out. No matter how much time I do spend, it would have taken either months and months longer or would have taken thousands and thousands of dollars more without it. Endless gratitude.

Dreamblazers Devlog: Week of March 17, 2014

Last week’s achievements

* Mostly set up new computer (installed programs, copied files over, etc.)
* Restructured hidden stats in a more sensible fashion
* Created numerous new stats to flesh out the fashion system further
* Redid all previous fashion effects, redid various formulas, and made other fixes stemming from tweaking the stat system

Current focus

The status menu followed by the equipment (fashion) system.

Weekly goals

* Finish setting up new computer
* Learn how to configure and tweak a status menu; if I get far enough, create the prototype layout for it

Comments

After last Monday, I’m so happy I made the call to redo the stats again. It took time, but couldn’t have been more worth it since I got not only a smoother system like I expected, but a couple new ideas in the process. The main one was fleshing out the Fashion Profile stats, which had 14 flavors before and 26 now, plus over 70 new fashion effects to go along with them.

Until now I’ve focused on internal calculations since they’re the gameplay foundation; I’ve disregarded graphics, animations, sound, music, map design, GUIs, player movement, and almost everything that isn’t calculating numbers (damage formulas, equipment bonuses, stat growth on level up), with flavor text being my only exception. But I’ve realized that understanding the ways in which I can present stats externally to the player can influence how I handle them internally, so I should tackle it sooner than later.

This is new ground for me, though! I’m hoping I can figure it out within a few days, but as an amateur programmer I usually can’t tell when something will be easy or difficult, never mind the degree of difficulty, and double never mind that I’m not even the programmer of this framework, so I really don’t have a solid basis for my expectations. Point is that I’m giving myself some leeway here and making that the single goal. =P

In other news, I’ve copied over 90 GB of stuff to my new computer over the past few days… Very few things left to move or install now. Other than that, my excellent artist Flora has finished a crazy month, so we might be getting moving a bit more on that front. : D Completion of Celty‘s design—just one or two rounds away now—will herald the opportunity to draw the title screen with her and Leaf, so that should be especially cool!

Dreamblazers Devlog: Week of March 10, 2014

Last week’s achievements

* Added new fashion effects
* Implemented ~60 more of them and wrote flavor text for all of those
* Ordered a new computer

Current focus

The equipment system followed by battles.

Sample stuff

Flavor text for “Enchanting Evening Warrior”:

“She’s the dapper girl who wouldn’t feel right without her katana hiding under her spiffy attire. If she disappears from the gala floor for a moment, expect that she’s cut down an assassin in a single elegant strike and returned just as swiftly, leaving no one the wiser.”

Flavor text for “Doubly Dolled-Up”:

“Even small highlights can help create flow from head to midsection and then on to toe. Earrings up top for a smiling face, fingernails painted for hands near the waist, and toenails done likewise for feet down below.”

Weekly goals

* Rethink various hidden stats
* Finish off implementation of the remaining fashion effects and test all of them
* Write flavor text for at least 60% of the fashion effects
* Begin testing battles: damage formulas, battle text, etc.
* Set up new computer (if it arrives this week)

Comments

Mostly the same weekly goals as last time, I realize! I missed two main things last week: I underestimated how long it would take to order a computer (over ten hours of research) and I figured there’d be a linear time scale for testing new fashion effects. Not the case! The more I add, the longer it takes to save changes, among other things.

I back a lot of Kickstarter video game projects and I’ve repeatedly seen developers start giving weekly updates and eventually move to monthly or bimonthly because not enough is happening on a weekly basis to report on. Now I understand why. It’s the sane thing to do.

…but I’m an indie developer. I don’t need no stinking sanity! …at least not yet. Weekly updates will continue because I’m pushing myself.

As part of the fashion system, I have various hidden stats like Shoes, Fashion Theme, and Femininity Confidence that I might need to redo following a recent discussion with the awesome developer of the framework I’m using. Changing them would mean redoing all fashion effects, among other things, but if I’m ever going to redo them, it would only be tougher in the future. If penciling out a new hidden stat system tells me this is the way to go, then it’s best to rip that Band-Aid off now.

In much better news, my new laptop is coming, so it’s onward and upward in a matter of days! My current 2007 laptop is a 2.27 GHz dual-core with 4GB memory while my new one is a 2.7 GHz quad-core with 8GB memory and a solid state hybrid drive, so it’ll be a huge performance upgrade all around.

Dreamblazers Devlog: Week of March 3, 2014

Last week’s achievements

* Restructured some hidden stats in a more logical manner
* Set up various aspects of the equipment system
* Preliminarily finalized stats for 201 (yes, 201) fashion-based “status effects”
* Implemented ~40 of those status effects

Current focus

The equipment system followed by battles.

Weekly goals

* Finish off implementation of the remaining fashion effects and test all of them
* Write flavor text for at least 60% of the fashion effects
* Begin testing battles: damage formulas, battle text, etc.
* Order new computer

Comments

Even though—no, because it’s fully optional for the player, my fashion system ranks high as one of my favorite ideas. At best guess I’d say I thought of it in late 2012 or early 2013, but in any case, it’s certainly my newest large-scale idea.

One uncommon element of Dreamblazers that I’ve had in mind since at least 2010 is that equipment never becomes irrelevant; even starting equipment can be used until the end of the game. Like so many of my ideas, this was inspired by Pokémon (with a huge hat tip to The World Ends With You). The average player simply blasts through the game with their favorites, but a competitive player like me will reset twenty times until that Bulbasaur from Professor Sycamore has the right nature.

I aimed to appeal to both. A casual player never needs to look at a character’s outfit—and yes, I’m calling my equipment screen the “Outfit” screen to stress this point. The serious player, though, might look at Astrid, see that all of her stats are great but none are exceptional, and give away her Trailblazer Tunic, Agility Anklet, and Enchanted Earrings to, respectively, Power-centered, Speed-centered, and Magic Power-centered characters.

Could I do more, though? Could I create a middle ground between ignoring outfits and having the most intense optimization experience since Monster Hunter? Could an equipment screen be… fun? Maybe so! Each piece of clothing has at least one theme, like Cool or Playful, and piling on similar clothing gives the character a theme and boosts her Style stat. If you give her two or more themes, some have natural synergy, such as Sporty + Swimmer or Girly Girl + Princess, while others oppose each other, like Innocent + Military or Everyday + Formal, increasing or decreasing her Style.

In the end I sifted through 433 theme combos and wound up with 201 ways for players to change their Style. My hope is that seeing status effect names like “Disco Knight” or “Ribbons, Lace, Angry Face” or “Sparkles and Swag” pop up as you change clothes will be as fun as opening the menu in Dragon Quest IX and seeing what myriad of new titles Stella would shower on you.