FINAL "PROJECT RT" DEVBLOG FOR 2018, ONWARDS TO 2019!
December 31, 2018
Hello Everyone! As promised in my last christmas greeting, here is my last update for this year.
It’s been a while and i apologize for not being consistent with the game update. My devblog did not end up being consistent due to me setting the bar too high by trying to make all devblog update have relevant or big step in terms of showing progress. This coming year, i’ll try my best to give a consistent update regardless of how miniscule the steps i made. Alright, I’ll start the story of my update starting after the last update which is june 12.
After my update from june 12, i went to work on the system a bit more of cleaning up the code. Me, still being a fledging developer realize that i made a really spaghetti and very dependent features which will be hard to maintain and trace so i decided to write from the scratch while also migrating some fragment of codes that seems to work fine and is modular enough which are mostly NPC AI movement and Z-index filtering.
From august until september, I work on reimplementing while also improving the features while also learning the use of “dictionary”(Not the dictionary for words, but a function for a program) which i have never used nor familiar with it (I was mindblown how amazing and powerful the dictionary is after i learned about it). During this period, On the technical side, I was able to implement smooth collision, AI random movement pattern, detection+avoidance, event triggers such as door, cutscene animation system, and camera system. Sometimes I am considering moving to the 3D space (still a 2d game + 2d art, but just in 3d viewport) due to some advantage i feel that will benefit me a lot, but since this is a learning project at the same time, i am sticking with 2D for now.The same with the grid-based movement, i am using this approach for learning, but personally, i feel like i prefer the unlocked movement.
On the art side, I made some character sprite as placeholder. The character shown are in no way final but just place holders. I already have the main character design which will be in my next devblog.
I am also making tileset as an experiment. Until now i am still considering which approach to take. During this time, i keep pondering whether i will go with tile-based environment or handpainted style of environment. The color palette doesn’t look very saturated which i like, but i will see where it takes me.
Here’s the in-game menu ui. This is probably the most polished concepts i made (The design itself might make it to the final? Just some few changes and polish but we will see), Personally, i quite like it.
Planning to scrap this dialogue ui and replace it with a matching theme to the current game menu ui. This was made prior to the in game menu ui which is why it looks so different.
While working throughout these months, i eventually end up burnout, as aside from working on the game, i was also studying japanese language and music which really slowed down during september. It feels like your body and brain just went on hibernation which makes you feel w/ anxiety in terms of making progress resulting to depression, definitely not a good feeling. Even though i was burnout, i slowly worked on the game menu UI design instead, but at extremely slow pace.
At the end of september, my friend that i worked with on a game project before contacted me and i partnered w/ him to work on a new game project particulary on the art side which doesn’t mean that i have given up on my own rpg game, it will just be paced slower as the new project I’m working on requires a lot of art in it and will probably have an earlier target release date.
I have finally settled on the game title for project RT which is “Draknier Schrei“. I am excited and can’t wait to work on it more along side project C (I can’t disclose the title yet due to NDA).
So currently, I am working on 2 projects, one is a personal game project(RT) “Darknier Schreiand the other is a partnered game project which i will call project “C”.
While 2018 was a new eandevor and challenging year for me chasing my passion and had lots of ups and downs, I have learned quite a lot, made huge adjustments in lifestyle, and i plan to apply the lessons learnt from it this coming 2019. My target release for my personal project is 2019, and i plan to work hard this year!
As for my current progress and plan, for my personal project(RT), i am currently working on the UI design. I have already implement the ui menu, but has no functionality yet and is under testing considering the changing of game resolution. And after i work a bit on UI, i plan to work on the world map then i plan to revisit and revise the normal map/scene as some of the code there are still spaghetti and not modular. I am planning to also learn how utilize JSON for data storage like dialogues, item, settings and save.
And lastly, here’s a simple demonstration of how it currently looks like (I might eventually edit this post to add more screen capture/animated gif later on — had to use youtube due to gif file size).
Phew, that sure is quite a long post, thank you for staying with me.
Please look forward to my works and I thank you for your interest or support up until now. Even though I’ve been very inactive in my social and art platforms, there are still some who continue remain and show interest in my works . Whether it’s just looking/checking at my works or showing interest in what i do, it is all very meaningful to me !
Thank you again \( ºuº )/!
みあさん、ありがとうございました！！
Link to Projects
Link to Draknier Schrei
Link to Project C
