State of the Game - December 2022

November was another tough one. I had released v0.10 to supporters and the main goal still stands. I'm trying to work on the story blockers that are preventing players from getting to the endings, as well as unlocking blueberry content. 

I was growing frustrated with how some of these puzzles and bugs persisted in causing problems. Plus there was extra time being spent "hunting" for variables and common events. RPGMaker stores every common event, variable, and switch each in a long, fixed list. Which means that they're all in a fixed order. At the current count, there are about 500 common events, about 150 switches, and about 400 variables. So if you don't organize them, then you have to scroll through the whole list to find the one you need. Well, this game is starting to get big. This meant that I was scrolling for a distortion type feature, I was scrolling up to Common event 20 then down to 200, then back to 34, etc.

Then I had spent a lot of time looking at documentation, reading solutions on the forum boards, and watching youtube videos. I've also been playing more with image editing with GIMP, as well as audio editing with Audible. All of this gave me access to more artwork for enemies, better sound design across the whole game, and being to animate more features across the board. The only drawback to all of this added research was that it was highlighting those moments, especially in the earliest phases of the game, how much the game was lacking these new things.

It's not that there is a whole lot of story to add. Aside from the new NPC arc which will help to supplement acts 3 and 4, and some of the blueberry story, all of the main story is laid out. There are plenty of dialog already written for all of the beginning, middle, and end. The events are written, most of the items, weapons, and armor is in. A lot of new enemies are designed and I'm just trying to balance skills and write any more in that I can think of. The only thing slowing down development is going through and filling in gaps, while trying to sort through a disorganized list of game assets.

That's where I made a decision a few weeks ago. I explored what it would be like if I had created a new game, reorganized all of the events, switches, enemies, items, variables, etc., and then filled in the gaps as I went along. I've also been able to review every event and all of my code as I put it back in, allowing me to identify problem or overcomplicated code, and make it better. 

And I've continued to run with this, because better it is becoming. I'd say I've cleaned up over two hundred lines of overcomplicated code so far. I've reorganized all events, switches, and variables in a way that lets me extend any feature and keep it in order. I've been able to implement a whole new UI system for displaying some information, and a whole new quest system so players can access all elements of their progress in the main story and the side stories as well. Finally story is getting filled in, and I've been able to quickly add a few hundred lines of extra dialog to help bring the different story arcs along.

The only downside is that it has been consuming some time filling the old content back into the new game piece by piece. But every time that I simplify code, or fix broken code, or find a gap in the story content, it makes me happy I went this route. Especially since all of the content really is nearly done and now I'm focused on getting this game ready for a release level quality.

If you have read through all of that, let me answer the million dollar questions for you: When are you going to see this, and when are you going to see the new content?

I was trying to get out a release to supporters this past weekend, but there is still some essential content that hasn't made its way back in. I will release what I have so far before this upcoming weekend. I think that when you see the rework, you'll be even happier to see the finished product.