#slugdragoondevlog

[slugdragoon]

Scope creep happens to indie devs because, in the time it takes to make a game on you own, multiple new games from devs/series that directly inspire you will be released.

Signed, an dungeon crawler RPG dev who loves Atlus, currently fighting not to let Metaphor Refantazio make him reevaluate his whole life.

[slugdragoon]

Finally feel like I'm breaking my "game developer's block" after basically writing off October!

I had like 5-6 appointments in my immediate family (I'm transport for us), car repair, multiple birthdays, two Canadian Thanksgivings, Halloween (as a parent), + more stuff.

Also I played through Metaphor Refantazio, Atlus's games are very important as inspiration for Labyrinth Lesmosyne, and I also got very, very sidetracked and glued to the election (which was demotivating in it's own right) in my free time, so I hadn't done much code. I had mulled over some design issues, and practiced some art without making anything usable, but finally I'm getting back to coding and have reworked a few important things, so I feel like things can get back on track!

Could be a while before I post another devlog, but I consider my unplanned months hiatus over!

[slugdragoon]

Devlog #1

Ok, I've been working super hard on my game this week, and I have something to show off. Generally, I did not want to start doing Devlogs until I had what I considered a working prototype, and that's what this is. I think I'm at the point where a lot of basic things work, and I will be able to focus on building it out, which will make for more interesting regular updates.

So, what we're seeing in this clip is:

SPLASH SCREEN - just a test of animation and the flow of booting up the game, it will not be in there for long, I just threw random assets in.

SAVING & LOADING - The title screen is plain, the "Settings" option doesn't do anything yet, but the "New Game" and "Load Game" do! They currently go off of one filepath and save games are stored as JSON so I can edit them easily for testing, and they don't yet prompt "are you sure?", they just do it, and the functions work. I can save my game and all the party and player stats and values load in properly. [Not shown: there is a save button in the Pause menu, but that menu is very basic]

BATTLE UI - All is placeholder, and ugly, but I focused down on getting it to work. That means, while I was throwing buttons in there for testing early on, I spent major time reworking menus to work with controller instead. I may do KB&M support later, once the UIs are actually fully designed, but doing them in parallel while I'm changing things would not be nice. We can attack, you don't have to click "Confirm" anymore, just a controller button, we have spells/skill and items which can target either enemies or allies, and both single-target an multitarget skills exist and flash up corresponding selector arrows, after which you can confirm your target. Party members have an HP/MP display and the character whose turn it is will be highlighted on their turn

MESSAGE OVERLAY - As you can see, I've worked out the system to have messages give the player feedback in-battle which can also be used for dialogue out-of-battle. It works off of a queue containing both messages that auto-play and messages that you have to confirm before moving on, so I can mix-and-match as appropriate. I wanted to have this in place so I can soon implement NPCs and shops, and the battles make sense to both me and the player as I add more features to it.

When we load into this test dungeon, we see the old sprite for a demon, I redrew them, as you can see in the first random encounter. None of this is final though, these were also pretty quick I just wanted to discard the really lazy MS Paint-looking sprites If I'm going to be showing the game off more, I want it to be in a better light. I'm not even sure Demons and Bats will be common enemy types in the game, it's just for testing. Nothing that you're seeing is final, or even really fits the vibe in my, mind yet, but it's approaching something that looks like it has the potential to be a game.

After all all of this I haven't added any new enemy types, items, or skills yet, the assets aren't anywhere near what they will be like, no levels have been created yet, but I think what I have is a lot of the "structure" of a basic RPG. I ate my vegetables, the boring parts are functional, and it opens up a lot of doors for what I can develop next.

NEXT GOALS -

NPCs in the overworld (+Shops, need to have a way to acquire items, currently the inventory is hardcoded into a New Game)

Implement a method to recruit and dismiss new Party Members, they are also currently hardcoded for testing purposes

There are still lingering menu navigation bugs, but nothing that can't be fixed relatively quickly

Move the starting area to a safe-zone that can be built out as the main hub and create multiple dungeon rooms with different testing conditions

More visual feedback. Having enemies flash on taking damage and displaying damage numbers would be a good start, more complex animations can come later, including spell animations.

[slugdragoon]

Devlog #16 - Switching party members mid-battle + more abilities

After several weeks of planning out abilities and enemies/party members, I have more implementation this time, and part of that is introducing the mechanic to Switch party members mid-battle! Normally, switching in will mean that the new party member's turn is used up (possibly using time on the Battle Clock as well), but there will be a passive ability for roguish types to enter without a penalty.

In addition, more abilities have been implemented! All have temporary names in the prototype so I'll just list some effects;

A spell to cure blindness

A spell to cure Poison

A spell which applies some Regen to the entire Party, or counteracts some Poison is they are Poisoned

A skill that acts as a Defense buff

A skill that sacrifices Speed for a larger Defense buff

A skill that sacrifices Defense for a large Strength buff

A passive ability that has a chance to summon minions when casting magic skills

Multiple summoning abilities for minions that still need to be implemented

Those are just a few I've implemented piecemeal while working on the Switch mechanic, next I'll be pushing farther into implementing skills, particularly to complete existing enemy types and their enemy AI (how they choose which skills to use as enemies)!

[slugdragoon]

Devlog #15 - Implementing more abilities/mechanics + Item Loot

Just a quick update this time, largely an extension of the last devlog, but this time going from ideas for classes and abilities to putting them into words and translating that into implementation.

I go over my approach to design more in detail, and mainly I've been knocking off some of the passive abilities, as they are both somehow easier but also force me to get certain underlying mechanics right to implement them.

In addition, enemies now drop items from a loot table, and the poison mechanic has been reworked. Also, summoned minions now provide a protective purpose by hindering enemy attacks against yourself.

Things are going slow, but steady right now I'd say! I feel as though I've been getting bogged down by distractions in my dev time lately. For me personally, the election season is a big culprit of that (and I'm not even American, but can't look away). But, I'm trying not to break the chain, and get that productivity back steadily!

[slugdragoon]

Devlog #7 - Shephard and Lumberman enemies + new Necromancer animation, summons flee, and new status effects!

Alright, I'm really excited about this one, it's a big one!

The biggest part of my week was finishing three animations for enemy types in the game. These are the third, fourth, and fifth animations I've even done (first two being the Snake and Sheep summons), and I feel myself getting better each time.

the Necromancer - I've had an idle blocked out for this guy in solid colours for a while, he's been in my other devlogs, but finally buckled down and did the shading and colouring. I'm thinking to give him a Skeleton or Zombie summon, which may be my next animation, as I have a matching status effect for them nearly worked out.

the Shepherd - Next, and this is my most recent work - the Shepherd. This idea came from the Sheep summon, who I introduced as a summon which could put you to sleep. I needed status-inflicting summons, thus the Sheep. I thought a Shepherd with the ability to summon Sheep and a passive ability to keep your summons around longer (shepherding them around) that you can inherit onto any summoning class would be perfect. And I'm happy to say, both of those abilities are implemented, making the Shepherd my most complete enemy type to date!

the Lumberman - I did this animation before the Shepherd, and I may rework it later on, because musculature is f-ing hard man, but I had an idea for physical attacks to, in contrast to magic skills, be more used for a variety of tactical targeting scenarios, each with advantages and drawbacks that make sense for the implied weapon type. I thought up a Cleave (not implemented yet) ability that's meant to evoke a Guts-like (Berserk) warrior who cuts down many enemies at once, but applies a big penalty on the user when an armoured foe is caught up in it. It works for an axe, so I made an enemy whose "thing" is that they're an axe man, so started with a lumberjack. I started with a normal human skin tone, but my animation blocking was temporarily green, and I liked copper-y armour and weapons for him, so I tried making him look like oxidized copper as well. I though the idea for a metal man who chops down trees was pretty cool, and here we are!

New status effects - I also designed three new status effect icons for inflictions I have planed. I showed the Sleep and Poison ones last time, and a version of those effect is in the game (I added green to the Poison icon).

The new effects are Blindness, Charm, and Fear. Only Fear is partly implemented so far. The plan for Charm is probably typical. Have allies attack each other or heal the charmer. For Blindness, I like the idea of forcing a random target more than lowering accuracy (maybe a mix of a little lower accuracy, but also randomizing your target making it a risk to hit an enemy that could retaliate against you, I feel that could make some interesting encounters).

As for Fear, that is partly implemented. Fear causes your summoned minions to flee, and I'm toying with the idea of having it block or cancel some kinds of buffs (can't raise your Attack Power if your party member doesn't feel brave enough to attack, that sort of thing). I want to give the summoned minions a protective effect so that you need way do sift through them to land meaningful attacks.

Minions have to be able to flee, so I made it so that they can (complete with an animation). They also now flee at the end of battle, which the Shepherd's passive ability stops (it will eventually be a percentage chance to flee).

In addition, while character's with swords and arrows might go directly for the summoner, I added another new Smash ability (imagine warhammers, clubs, etc.) that hits both the enemy itself and causes some if it's minions to scatter, thinning the herd.

I have some other changes to assets and the code, but that was already a lot! This really felt like one where, at least a small number of more complete ideas fit together really well!

[slugdragoon]

I'm planning out all the classes for recruitable enemies/party members for my game, and I currently have an initial core of 41 ideas and I'm making a big spreadsheet for their stats, skills, and fusions. Then once they're really hammered down I can work on filling out the ranks with classes that conceptually fill in more interesting gaps and niches and mechanics.

I've been pretty offline for a few weeks either slowly doing that or busy with others things during the end of summer, or just catching up on some reading, and lost my flow for a couple of weeks, but hopefully I can get back into gear now!

As a teaser, here's a rough draft of just the names for classes I'm considering for Labyrinth Lesmosyne's core classes;

Alchemist, Assassin, Barbarian, Bard, Battlemage, Cavalier, Charlatan, Chronomancer, Cleric, Cultist, Dark Knight, Druid, Enchanter, General, Hunter, Illusionist, Knight, Lumberjack, Magic Knight, Martial Artist, Medium, Monk, Necromancer, Ninja, Paladin, Pirate, Psychic, Pyromancer, Raider, Rogue, Sailor, Samurai, Scholar, Shepherd, Sorceror, Thief, Valkyrie, Vampire, Viking, Warrior, Witch

While most of this list is me filling the ranks with traditional RPG classes that LL needs (names not final), others, like Lumberjack, Sailor and Shepherd, which I've shown, I've been thinking of as more job-themed proto classes that can be found in the early game, and for example the Lumberjack might be a fusion component for a Barbarian, and Sailor might be one half of a Pirate. I want to add more of these to form a first tier and have a basic set of - for lack of a better term - D&D adjacent classes serve as the second tier.

Then, others on the list already are ideas from a sort of third tier - the Raider being a product of a Hunter and a Thief, or the Valkyrie which arises from certain fusions involving Vikings, maybe Viking + Cavalier. This too is ground where I can generate many new ideas from fusions of the core, and expand the third tier, which should be mostly filled out with conceptual multiclass fusions. The tiers aren;t rigid though, and some fusions might result in an earlier tier class with the opportunity to inherit more powerful skills.

I'm probably going to have enough of the table done to talk about it in detail in a devlog this week, even if not all the details are ironed out.

[slugdragoon]

SHLEEP

[slugdragoon]

Quick Update

I passed over doing a devlog this Monday, but I'm working on visible animations for when enemies have status effects, indicators for stat buffs and debuffs, and exp/reward and level-up screens at the end of battle.

Just building out a lot of functional stuff that I can't easily show because it doesn't look nice yet. Hopefully it's enough to talk about this week for a devlog, but I've been focusing on rough mechanics and finishing actual functionality.

[slugdragoon]

Devlog #3 (+ video)

This week, I felt as though I had a bit less time (life got in the way slightly more, my car broke this week, etc.), and what I did do was a lot of code refactoring, and less visual, but after recording the devlog, I'm actually pretty happy with it for a "slower" week.

PARTY SWITCHING - You can now switch around party members in the Pause Menu, take Party Members on and off your team, and considering you have many backup slots, this is an essential mechanic to have implemented. I'm gonna keep it real though, I messed something up with the swapping code and it's leaving null slots that introduce bugs, I'll fix that soon.

USING SKILLS IN THE OVERWORLD - Wanna heal up out of battle? now we can! The Pause Menu has a submenu for each caharacter's skills, if they have any that can be used out of battle.

IN-BATTLE TURN ORDER REVAMP - Now it's possible to choose any Party Member in battle, and have them use an action. The game keeps track of who has gone, and one condition for the turn ending is that they're already all done an action. Once I fix swapping from the Pause Menu, I'll add it to battle, too, and swapping in a Party Member will probably mark them as used for the turn.

TURN ORDER REVAMP PART 2 - I introduced a battle clock that's meant to control the flow of battle and be one of the unique mechanics that gives my battle system it's crunch. The turn ends when the battle clock passes over to the opponent's side of the clock, and vice-versa. There's push and pull where you do certain more powerful actions that spend more time, and that makes the enemies' turn longer. Right now they just do basic attacks, but in future, their AI will spend more "time" on big attacks if they have the initiative to do so, putting you in a dangerous spot. I also imagine ritual casting longer spells in the overworld will cost time out-of-battle that can mean you start a battle at a disadvantage. Faster characters like (eg. rogues and time mage types) may have abilities to set the clock back or allow other characters additional actions.

NEW ASSETS - I've done a quick asset pass just to take a look at the general look of the game, and experimented with what I'm able to make just by recolouring and reshaping the assets I've made. This is just a start, but I wanted to get a sense of what I need to make to build up the town and dungeon interiors.

That isn't such bad progress considering how tangled I thought I had been this week in sub-menu code. I'm sure there are better practices but trying to get sub-menus to have exactly the behaviour I want is the most difficult thing I've done for the game so far, and it's so important.

This week I may focus on some more fun things like more skills/abilities. Can't really test the battle clock without a more robust set of skills, and it forces me to implement some enemy AI as well.

[slugdragoon]

Devlog #6 - New Bed, Torch, and Table assets + status indicators

This week, I wanted to work on more visual assets, so I took a full break from code and just did models. However, I also had like 3 appointments to keep and babysat a toddler for a family friend to attend a wedding over the weekend (then I watched all the summer gaming conferences), so I was just a bit too busy all week to get much done.

Initially my plan after getting the bed done was to get the furnishings for a whole bedroom done, to sort of have one small environment complete, but that didn't fully pan out this time. Might work on it some more this week, or go back to code more features for a bit.

I finished the bed from my last post , where I explained the concept behind it and how it fits in with the game overall.

The second piece of furniture is a small round stone (granite?) table, I figure this one may go in the bedroom used by the player, but I could just as easily use it somewhere else or retexture it.

Besided the furniture, I also have a new wallpaper texture for the bedroom, and wooden beams to break up the corner areas of rooms, which I will make a few different versions of.

We also now have animated torches, which we can see on the sides of my test battle screen.

Finally, I made up some new sprites for indicating status effects, but I'll have to tweak them when the overall battle UI is designed to make sure they "pop", right now I'm not certain.

[slugdragoon]

Okay, super proud of what I'm working on! I'm partway finished with texturing a bed for my dungeon crawler, and I initially had a very generic shape for a bed, but found after googling "medieval beds", I found this box-bed (third pic) that I liked for being ornate, but claustrophobic, so I started modelling one based on that. Then for the painting, I wanted something that's suggestive of healing, because that's what the bed does, but I'm trying to inject a sort of sinister vibe into the art where I can, so I looked around for medieval medicine paintings, which are often creepy.

I put a pixelart mural on the bed inspired by The Extraction of the Stone of Madness by Hieronymous Bosch (second pic), and I think it turned out pretty well! The bed is going to look so good when I finish! I really wanted this prop to be memorable if the player returns to it often to heal up, and I believe this is the bed in the room given to the player as a "home base".

It also turns out that The Extraction of the Stone of Madness is VERY suggestive of the themes I have in mind for the plot of the game. The stone of madness was a hypothetical stone thought to be the cause of madness or dementia, and memory plays a very strong role in this game. The game's dungeon has been inflicting a curse on those who delve into it which inhibits their ability to learn or retain new information or skills.

From a gameplay perspective, party members other than the protagonist cannot level up or learn new skills past a certain point. Instead, their memories must be fused together to create a stronger party member with inherited skills from both of the others in order to delve deeper into the dungeon.

But what happens to the original party members, exactly? Well, I'm still working out the plot myself, but stay tuned! I'm really tempted to drop the name I've come up with for my game, but it's more responsible to sit with it to see if I still like it as much in a week.

[slugdragoon]

Devlog #8 - Druid enemy, Skeleton summon, Spike trap + loose ends

Back to devlogs! Last week I posted some really long pixel art animation videos instead, but I'm back to working on my game itself more this week!

Finished an animation for a summonable Skeleton (check out my animation walkthrough PART 1, PART 2)

Necromancer now summons the Skeleton - this makes the Fear status effect more functional, as it did work before - made minions flee battle, but now we have something that can actually incluct the status effect (Skeletons)

Completed an animation for the Druid - a new enemy type and recruitable party member - currently just coded in as a copy of another enemy as a placeholder, but they're in the game, and one idea I have for them is to have an ability that summons multiple animal summons at once - though I need another good one or two besides the Sheep and Snake

Spike trap hazard for dungeon floors - hurts you and have a firing and retraction animation - might put some of them on a switch, maybe make a puzzle with them or something

new ability, Cleave - hits all enemies, one-by-one. Eventually once I work out how the mechanic works for applying armour to battle entities, Cleave will have a downside of losing time off the battle clock when you catch an armoured enemy in your Cleave, but for now it simply attacks multiple enemies

Added a simple door transition for loading a new area, still needs to be refined

Upgraded my audio/video setup for further devlogs, actually put some passable settings in OBS for my mic, and I got Davinci Resolve because I was sick of iMovie - so much better!

Ko-Fi (commission some animations, maybe?)

[slugdragoon]

Well, this version is passable, I think! More fixes will probably come when I add the attack animation, but I'll leave the idle for the time being. This is the first animation I've "finished" that's intended for my game, so I felt like sharing the version earlier while I was blocking out shapes, and now that I've got something decent to show the process I'm going with for animations. I did other stuff today, but that took much of my day!

[slugdragoon]

Devlog #2 (+ video)

Another great week this week! I'm planning to do devlogs once a week from now on, aiming for Monday, but later in the week if I can't.

A lot of progress has been made again:

ART - Decided on a colour palette for the game - this was a prerequesite for some of the assets I want to start making more of- needed to have it decided so assets don't need to be replaced later. I made brick, wood, and dirt textures, currently just blocks, but I plan on adapting them into tilesets based on them.

HEIGHT CHANGE - I noticed that the verticality I have with the stairs made the stairs look massive from the old perspective, so I raised the camera. This led me to add a crouching mechanic, which I think can help design for more hidden crawlspaces in dungeons. Changing the scale also forced me to finally add continuous movement when you hold the button, as without it moving a cell at a time feels slower.

INTERACTABLE PROPS - Added a working treasure chest that stores it's open/closed state and gives items to your inventory. Added a working door. Added a basic NPC that just says queued messages when you interact with them, still need to add UIs for shops and choices in dialogues, NPC movement, all that. Also, added out and inner-corner stair types to make various shapes of raised platforms/elevation possible.

PARTY RECRUITMENT - Party Members now have a spot on the pause menu to see their stats, and enemies can be recruited to add to the party, but the system is very basic and incomplete. Still going to add the choice to recruit/reject a new party member, so randomness to recruitment, as well as party member swapping and deeper stat examination menus, and accessing field-usable skills like healing.

[slugdragoon]

I figure the minion Summons were worth some polish now, as they can be smaller and have fewer animations than regular enemies.

The Snake was a good proof of concept to implement the mechanic + status effects, but animating a snake first was maybe a more questionable choice -_-

Though I can do some, I'm not super experienced with sprite art, so this is about 3 hours of work for me. I'm somewhat happy with this in terms of the vague body shapes/motions I've blocked out, and I could colour/detail/and shade each frame after a few more tweaks.