With the deadline for the Biography contest approaching, I'd thought it'd be interesting if I created a daily log for my project, Simple Man's Quest for the Playground.
( http://www.pavilionboards.com/forum/...8&postcount=36 )
I'll discuss the work I've done each day (that should give any readers some details on the game and its features), as well as share my thoughts on the project and the creation process as a whole. So let's take this journey together, as I work to beat the May 31 deadline!
May 10
Time left: 21 days
Most of my month so far was spent studying for finals, but with the semester now officially over I have a decent amount of free time to dedicate to the game. As I said before, I'll probably be working right down to the wire but am much closer to finishing this project than I've ever been. I need to be done actual work on the game by the 27th or so, because I want three solid days of testing to find any potential bugs and glitches.
Speaking of testing, I've been meaning to get a new version of the game to DK for about a month so that he can play test, but for various reasons that keeps becoming an issue. Hopefully I'll be able to shoot him something in a few days though.
Anyway, to the actual details now. I'm a little frustrated today as I've discovered a quest that I spent a good amount of time working on causes performance issues for the VX. The Pavilion is represented in the game as a typical RPG town, and as the only town in the game it's the main hub for just about everything that happens. So with that being the case there's a decent amount of events running at once when the player is in the town, but until now that hasn't been an issue.
The quest in... question requires the player to use a special device to find Crunk's clones (get it? The Real Crunk has clones? that's the kind of quality you'll find in Simple Man's etc etc, coming soon!). This needed a fair amount of invisible but constantly running events in the Pavilion that determine where the player is standing in relation to a clone and how the device should beep to convey the distance.
Apparently this quest causes there to be too many event running at once, and the game suffers some slowdown when the player is in town. This is kind of silly since VX has the graphical requirements of a Texas Instruments calculator, but whatever.
I'll have to change how the quest works and remove the excess events tomorrow. I was so annoyed that a quest I put a lot of work into (and really liked) screws up the game because of a software issue that I spent tonight working on some smaller things I had on my mind instead.
For example, I had a bit of an epiphany today that I wished I had when I first started working on the game. Simple Man's Quest doesn't have levels or experience, instead your character's strength is mostly based on equipment. There are six stats that VX uses: HP, MP, Strength, Defense, Spirit, and Agility... but you can only set equipment to affect the later four. I still wanted equipment to improve HP and MP though, so I had to set up an event to run at the start of each battle that checks to see if a character has certain items equipped, and then improve their HP/MP as needed. I use the same system with equipment that grants special abilities. The event is easy to set up, but it's tedious work. I pretty much have to set it to check if each of the five playable characters is wearing any of the HP/MP improving equipment.
At the same time I've been racking my brain to find a use for agility. At its default, the only purpose agility has in VX is to determine turn order, but I wanted it to play a bigger and more clear role. It finally hit me to kill two birds with one stone. I renamed agility to "Bonus HP" (you can rename stats even though they still play their usual role, I've also changed MP to Rep) and created a new event to increase a character's HP by their Bonus HP at the start of each battle. While I still need to the the tedious work for Rep equipment, this will cut my workload in this area in half and present less room for error.
So, I spent a good portion of today's work making this change to the necessary equipment as well as removing the old event and the few instances where agility is mentioned from the game.
I also spent some time today making changes to Fushigi, one of the four playable characters that can join Simple Man. Fushigi summons chibi pets that aid the party in different ways. There's a fighter pet, a healing pet, etc. Today I decided to add a passive ability to each pet that improves the party members. For example the fighter pet increases Max HP, while the healing pet slightly regenerates the party's Rep each turn. This will, I hope, make the choice of which pet to use in battle less black and white than just based on its direct role.
Meanwhile, I found in my play testing that Fushigi was actually kind of boring in combat. She's meant to be largely dependent on her pets and has few offensive abilities on her own, but this means there's not much variety in what ability Fushigi herself can do each turn. It's been a goal of mine that each playable character stays interesting and unique in battle, so Fushigi needed improvement. Taking a cue from my old Pavilion Adventures stories, I gave her an ability to turn into a chibi demon, which increases her strength and gives her some new attacks at the cost of a steady HP loss. This should make her more interesting in combat but I'll need to test it more to see how it balances with the pet.
I'll close her, as this entry turned out to be longer than I expected it to be. Hopefully some of you found it interesting and didn't just tl:dr, but I'll try to make sure future installments are more concise.
Ryner
( http://www.pavilionboards.com/forum/...8&postcount=36 )
I'll discuss the work I've done each day (that should give any readers some details on the game and its features), as well as share my thoughts on the project and the creation process as a whole. So let's take this journey together, as I work to beat the May 31 deadline!
May 10
Time left: 21 days
Most of my month so far was spent studying for finals, but with the semester now officially over I have a decent amount of free time to dedicate to the game. As I said before, I'll probably be working right down to the wire but am much closer to finishing this project than I've ever been. I need to be done actual work on the game by the 27th or so, because I want three solid days of testing to find any potential bugs and glitches.
Speaking of testing, I've been meaning to get a new version of the game to DK for about a month so that he can play test, but for various reasons that keeps becoming an issue. Hopefully I'll be able to shoot him something in a few days though.
Anyway, to the actual details now. I'm a little frustrated today as I've discovered a quest that I spent a good amount of time working on causes performance issues for the VX. The Pavilion is represented in the game as a typical RPG town, and as the only town in the game it's the main hub for just about everything that happens. So with that being the case there's a decent amount of events running at once when the player is in the town, but until now that hasn't been an issue.
The quest in... question requires the player to use a special device to find Crunk's clones (get it? The Real Crunk has clones? that's the kind of quality you'll find in Simple Man's etc etc, coming soon!). This needed a fair amount of invisible but constantly running events in the Pavilion that determine where the player is standing in relation to a clone and how the device should beep to convey the distance.
Apparently this quest causes there to be too many event running at once, and the game suffers some slowdown when the player is in town. This is kind of silly since VX has the graphical requirements of a Texas Instruments calculator, but whatever.
I'll have to change how the quest works and remove the excess events tomorrow. I was so annoyed that a quest I put a lot of work into (and really liked) screws up the game because of a software issue that I spent tonight working on some smaller things I had on my mind instead.
For example, I had a bit of an epiphany today that I wished I had when I first started working on the game. Simple Man's Quest doesn't have levels or experience, instead your character's strength is mostly based on equipment. There are six stats that VX uses: HP, MP, Strength, Defense, Spirit, and Agility... but you can only set equipment to affect the later four. I still wanted equipment to improve HP and MP though, so I had to set up an event to run at the start of each battle that checks to see if a character has certain items equipped, and then improve their HP/MP as needed. I use the same system with equipment that grants special abilities. The event is easy to set up, but it's tedious work. I pretty much have to set it to check if each of the five playable characters is wearing any of the HP/MP improving equipment.
At the same time I've been racking my brain to find a use for agility. At its default, the only purpose agility has in VX is to determine turn order, but I wanted it to play a bigger and more clear role. It finally hit me to kill two birds with one stone. I renamed agility to "Bonus HP" (you can rename stats even though they still play their usual role, I've also changed MP to Rep) and created a new event to increase a character's HP by their Bonus HP at the start of each battle. While I still need to the the tedious work for Rep equipment, this will cut my workload in this area in half and present less room for error.
So, I spent a good portion of today's work making this change to the necessary equipment as well as removing the old event and the few instances where agility is mentioned from the game.
I also spent some time today making changes to Fushigi, one of the four playable characters that can join Simple Man. Fushigi summons chibi pets that aid the party in different ways. There's a fighter pet, a healing pet, etc. Today I decided to add a passive ability to each pet that improves the party members. For example the fighter pet increases Max HP, while the healing pet slightly regenerates the party's Rep each turn. This will, I hope, make the choice of which pet to use in battle less black and white than just based on its direct role.
Meanwhile, I found in my play testing that Fushigi was actually kind of boring in combat. She's meant to be largely dependent on her pets and has few offensive abilities on her own, but this means there's not much variety in what ability Fushigi herself can do each turn. It's been a goal of mine that each playable character stays interesting and unique in battle, so Fushigi needed improvement. Taking a cue from my old Pavilion Adventures stories, I gave her an ability to turn into a chibi demon, which increases her strength and gives her some new attacks at the cost of a steady HP loss. This should make her more interesting in combat but I'll need to test it more to see how it balances with the pet.
I'll close her, as this entry turned out to be longer than I expected it to be. Hopefully some of you found it interesting and didn't just tl:dr, but I'll try to make sure future installments are more concise.
Ryner
Comment