DevLog 4: Is this Even the same game?

Happy Summer! 

It has been so so SO long since I've taken the time to do a dev log. Not because there aren't updates but probably cause there are actually so many.  

A couple of months back I decided to somewhat restart the project. I didn't like how some of the mechanics were panning out for the skill system and I was still very much in "discovery mode" when it came to deciding what plugins I wanted to use and why.

The skill mastery system itself remains relatively unchanged:

Train and Track Skill System:

Actors equip both a Weapon and an Armor item to gain access to and master skills via battle.

What's New :

Previously Grimoires themselves were responsible for tracking skill use (leading to mastery)

While this system worked fine, I wanted a way to make Grimoires more strategic for battle.  

Skill tracking was moved to the weapons, now referred to as "Armoire". There may be some Grimoire that also track skills. But we'll get to those later. 

Skill enablement (equip and now you can use "X" skill) has been moved to a new equipment type called "Memoire". Think of Memoire like Materia from final fantasy, but slightly less flexible as they will generally only provide one Skill per item.  

As mentioned in DevLog 3, the Class system is directly tied to what Main and Offhand weapons are equipped. Classes will be referred to as Ranks in this project going forward. 

Main Weapon: Grimoire
Offhand: Armoire

This allows for Different Types of Grimoire to be accounted for, and some nifty color coding visual cues for the book covers to make the player aware as to what sort of Grimoire they're about to equip to an Actor. There will be roughly 5 different Grimoire Types that directly correlate to Ranks. Each with its own nuances that we'll explore below.

Armoire maintains the same role weapons did before. Equipping a Thunder Sword? That Actor's Armoire Rank is now Blade. These acts as the Actors' subclasses. I'm still ironing out how many types of Armoire will be available. 

Grimoires, our project's name sake,  primarily play a different role now.

Enter the Grimoire Page System:

Each Actor will need to have a Grimoire equipped in order to use skills in battle.  What types of skills and how many of each of those types they can equip for battle will depend on a few factors. 

Grimoire Size and Rank:  Certain Grimoire ranks specialize in specific "Pishogue", the name of magic/skills in the game. Mastering a Spellblade pishogue is  useful, but if you aren't using the correct Grimoire to equip it for battle, its a decoration at best.

Grimoire Pages: Each Pishogue requires a certain number of pages based on how strong it may be. The type of that pishogue determines if it can be equipped at all to your current Grimoire.

This updated skill system will be known going forward as the "Grimoire Train and Track System"

Graphic updates:

Our four protagonists now support updated Portraits customized hair to match for their Sideview Battlers and Map sprites

Getting the hair right was a very very big deal for me. The Party of this project is based on my own 4 children, so afros, curly hair and wild poofs were a must. That's easy enough for portraits but did require me doing a lot of editing to get the hair to match properly for their sprites. Otherwise using RTP resources would've been really disconnected from their portraits. 

The main menu scheme has also been cleaned up a bit to be slightly more minimalist with pops of color using the purple. 

Map Updates:

Being that I overhauled the project I more or less started with pretty bare maps and opted to fill them with parallax layering. This allowed me to have items the sizes they actually should be and create clutter in areas that make sense. I've also incorporated a great lighting plugin to increase the ambiance of the areas. The lighting system will also play a pivotal role to the immersion once the Day/Night cycle kicks in after the story's prologue ^_^

Story Progress:

I have been hard at work eventing, map building, eventing, and map building some more to complete the 3 Prologues of Grimoire.  There is A LOT of lore and story beats I want to inject early on to drive the plot before fully handing the reins over to the player for the remainder of the game. 2 of the 3 prologues are all but completed and in testing. The final one ideally will be done by next week (because what is a solo dev without unreasonable, self-imposed deadlines?).  Once the prologues are complete I'll tackle the first Major questline (it'll be a rework of the existing demo quests). At that point an updated Demo (and lets manifest this!) without bugs will be released and replace the current one. 

That was a BIG update and rightfully so, a lot has changed and been added into the project over the last 5 months. 

I'll leave you all with a sneak peek at the Main Menu Screen you'll experience once the Party is a full 4. 

Hopefully, see you soon!

- Puppet