DevLog 06/27/25: Micro, Macro, & Meta Changes

It's been about 3 months and a lot has happened, but not with the game.

I've been dealing with a lot of personal changes that have pulled me away from dev work, particularly the coding aspect. Until recently I didn't have access to my project files altogether so the only thing I could do was work on updated portraits for The Four. 

Now that I'm back in the groove a bit I figured tonight would be as good as any to catch you all up to what's been worked on in the last 85 days.

Visual Updates

The first big update is to the Actors themselves. I love each of the kid's original artwork, but with the heavier lean into the manga/cartoony/anime feel with the Battle UI and Main Menu, they felt over stylized. I decided to work in a slightly different direction and here's where I landed.

Party Portraits

Adelaide, Harper, Lucien, and Penelope have all been updated to this new style. This shift was the extra push I needed to finish the Main Menu overhaul

Finalized Scene_Menu

Before:

After:

Each window element has been stylized. And with the feedback from my crew and caspergaming's discord, I moved away from the metal plaques and leaned more into cloth/tapestry. This provides a more grounded look while still keeping with the quest board aesthetic I was going for. 

Battle/Skill Mastery Adjustments

Last update covered tuning I did to the battle UI to include new mechanics. While I am confident anyone that gets into my game will be able to figure everything out, even I had to admit that certain things were becoming a chore.  Skill Mastery is the foundation of Grimoire's battle system.

I have adjusted Talent skills to be less tedious. Originally most of the Talent weapons (Puppet, Mask, Paintbrush, Instrument) required a set up/install skill of sorts to even begin training that weapon in battle. And it needed to be done, every, fricken, battle. They're gone now, no more "summoning the puppet" thats already equipped. If Lucien brought a Mage Doll into battle, that bad boy's ready to go Turn 0. 

This change may seem minor. That's because it is. Artificially padding the length of battle doesn't serve anyone. This small change will go a long way into make battles about battles. 

Visually everything else works as it did in battle, but for the sake of the update look how nice the new portraits came out in battle too!

Backend/Scripting Updates

QoL updates sometimes serve the dev more than the player. I made some updates to how a major function I built out works. Now every skill that is temporarily equipped (be them skill Pages, talent skills, or mastered weapon skills) are aggregated into a single array. 

The Battle UI uses that array to more efficiently display what skills can be used, as well as the training progress for the player. This also allows me to focus on a single point of failure if I have any issues displaying skills in battle, rather than continue to check 5 separate functions. 

Next Steps

I will be out of town for part of July, spending time with the kids for another part, and moving August 1st! I will be getting dev done whenever I can but my priorities are obviously otherwise set.

With the Main Menu complete, I will likely shift my focus back skill building/balancing and fine tunning the Chapter 1 mission(s). If all goes as planned (don't hold your breath) we could be looking at an August demo! Separate once I'm in my new space I'll likely start streaming again, some gaming, but will mainly be doing dev work live when I don't have the kids. 

Thank you all for your continued patience, feedback, and support. We've almost got something playable ^_^

See You Online,

- Puppet

P.S.

In between devlogs I share micro updates on my Discord server! Come hang! 

https://discord.gg/n8EX8KjCzf