Artemis

Updates:

• Shops close at night.
• Characters join. Instead of a traditional RPG guild where you select all of your characters at once, I’ve decided to make characters join you one at a time. You’ll talk to them like normal non-playable characters, except they ask to join you. You still get to name them and choose their classes.
• Cut scenes! These aren’t finished yet, but they’re pretty good. I have about 20 different commands in my little script language. Characters can walk around and talk to each other. I can change music, change backgrounds (which can be .bmp or a map), and make things fade in and out.
• New night..
• Some new sprites. We’re still working on this.
• There is now a setup program. It’s not for installing – rather, it is for toggling some basic settings. I decided to make this a separate program, rather than within the game. This way, if music always crashes the game on your system for some unknown reason, you can turn off the music without having to run the game (which you can’t run, in this hypothetical situation). The settings are just basic things that most people will never have to touch.
• The rest of your party now follows you around. I’m still perfecting this.

To do:

• Players and enemies will be able to get poisoned during battle.
• Night and rain sounds.
• Battle log text doesn’t always fit in the window.
• Party following you around is a little buggy at startup. I might also be able to layer them better.
• Sky / battle backgrounds / etc.
• Lightning?
• Tweak night a little bit. Maybe it’s too dark, or maybe just the players should be brighter.
• Bosses. These will be a little different than random enemy attacks, because they will block your path.
• Need more NPC’s and doors per map. Well, maybe just doors.
• Cutscenes: music should loop, sounds should play, optional weather, night
• Abilities menu will show what your characters have with a brief description of what each ability does.

So here’s the new blog.  I’ve never done one of these development logs before, but I think it’ll be a useful way to brainstorm.

The game is almost ready for a playable demo to go public, but I’m going to wait until Rhonda finishes the rest of the character sprites.  I had a previous version with all of the sprites working, but those graphics were borrowed from another game.  That’s not what Artemis is about.  Everything has to be original.

Some screenies coming soon.

Updates:

• Added environment sounds. They get louder as you get closer. Right now, I can only have one playing at a time. I’m not sure if I’m going to need more or not. Afterall, there’s already background music which could have “outdoorsy” sounds within it.
• Changed “defend” to “pass.” The defending just wasn’t working, and I don’t think it’s very important anyway. You can just use attack turns to recover health with heal potions and such. I might make some magic shield artifact or something later on, but it’s not a top priority.
• Now you are never attacked by more enemies the number of characters you have in your group. This way, the game can start out with just one character, and you’ll always be attacked by one enemy. Once you get more characters, you get attacked by larger groups of enemies.
• Fixed bug that had players attacking enemies that were already killed.
• Fixed bug with showing player list when there are less than 4 players in the group.
• Fixed snippet at the end of a successful battle.
• Fixed snippet when you start game, exit, choose load from title screen, and then cancel load (this one was very specific!).
• Fixed snippet after viewing map.
• Fixed trying to load an empty save slot from the title screen.

To do:

• Add night sounds (crickets) and rain sounds. Both should be gradual.
• Make characters who join your group when you talk to them.
• Shops should close at night.
• Clean up the code. I have a feeling this one will always be on the to do list.
• Start on cut scenes! I’m very excited about this one.
• Planning, planning, planning. I shouldn’t start the actual worlds until I know exactly what I’m doing.