Bug fixes, Shop Screen, etc.

Today I fixed a bunch of bugs and gameplay issues, the ones Johnathan pointed out yesterday. Most of them were small and uninteresting; monks dialogue suggesting they have never met you when you lost to them minutes prior, people using plurals instead of singulars in encounters where you used to fight multiple enemies and now only fight one, etc. Some more interesting stuff are the additions of signs in front of shops that you can read, more hints given by Ghostie if you lose the tutorial battles, and the inability to purchase items if you don't have the ability to equip items yet.

If you beat the third tutorial segment, you gain the ability to learn and use skills. I might make a training battle that you can only win by using a skill sometime next week. Until then, the Blue Knight just tells you how to use them real fast. Still betting it won't stick in player's heads. Also, while players can open up the "Learn skill" screen, there is nothing that forces them (or asks them) to do so. It will probably also languish in obscurity until I use an NPC to specifically highlight it.

I also made the shop screen better. One major mechanic in this game is the difference between flat bonuses and percent bonuses. Flat bonuses are excellent for low level adventurers, because a +5 to attack is always a +5 to attack. Percent bonuses are better for high level adventurers, because a +10% attack is worth +1 if you have 10 attack, but +20 if you have 200 attack! The problem is, the % bonuses were not being displayed in shops.

Before:

Why is this knife so expensive again?

Now the percent increase bonuses are. It took way less time than it did when Yanfly was writing in Ruby.

After:

Oh, I see. Now THAT's a knife!

I'm still not happy with it. I wish there was a way to show more information about the weapon, such as its range, the damage type it does, etc. There was an addon that did that for me back in the old version, but no such add-on exists in MV, I'll have to either port it over to Javascript or write a new one from scratch. Either way, it won't be today.

I' going to work on "save file recruitment" next. I might put up another blog post today depending on how far I get in my two remaining hours of work today.

Onboarding testing and Guildhall.

Today I made a new map for the town called the "Heroes' Guild", which has a cutscene in it in which you learn how to use skills in combat.

I also got one of my game design friends, Johnathan Liu, to test the game, and got a lot of good feedback on my onboarding process. More on that tomorrow when I fix it.

Status Screen:

Today I spent a bunch of time making the stat screen look better. The old Yanfly status menu had a gross looking page in which all the protagonist's statistics were displayed as a bar graph, which let you see clearly what stats were higher relative to other stats. This was... of limited use, in my opinion. I co-opted the code and made it instead display your training values:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

This level 2 character can train each stat up to six times. HP has been trained three times, and MP has been trained four times in this example. The bar shows what proportion of training has been done. As the protagonist gains levels, the bars grow in length until they reach the other side of the screen.

The window in the middle helpfully gives into on whatever screen you are looking at. (It used to have a two line "Bio" of the character, which is meaningless in my game because all the characters are "self inserts" of the player.

I also removed the "Luck" stat from this screen, because my game doesn't use luck. Instead I added MapHP and MapMP as training values.

Current state of Heroes' Life:

I'm going to start this blog in situ. I've been working on the framework for about a month, and I can't really backpedal and make a blog post for every milestone I've accomplished thus far, so here's the cliff notes version:

• The game was started in RPGMaker VX Ace, but was ported to RPGMaker MV so it could have mobile support. This implies a lot of the framework is provided for me; items, skills, enemies, a basic combat system, a complex eventing system, etc, are already present.

• You can start the game, select a character sprite to represent you, and rename your character.

• There is an introductory sequence that teaches you how to move around and interact with objects, as well as the basics of combat. The sequence contains a little ghost I sprited and that I am inordinately proud of.

• There is a combat system, mostly based around Yanfly's version of RPGMaker's default combat. There are about two dozen enemies, most of which are currently inaccessible and are missing their skills.

• There used to be about 30 skills, but they died in the transition over to MV and haven't  been re-implemented yet.
• There used to be three completely functional dungeons. They are still mostly complete, but they are untested and inaccessible in the main game.
• There are a plethora of items ported over from the VX Ace version. They are mostly inaccessible until the shops are re-implemented.
• There is a system in which you report what chores you have done, and it gives you XP and Gold for doing them. It is completely functional, but kinda ugly.

• There is a system where once per day, you can complete "Daily tasks" that increase your combat statistics. If you don't do your tasks, you risk lowering these stats. It is completely functional, relying on the system clock.

That's all I can think of for now. Now future blog posts can give incremental updates to my progress as I continue.

What is this Blog?

I am a Graduate Student working on a Gamification Framework to help parents motivate children to do their chores. (Or to help parents motivate themselves to do their chores!)

I needed a place to post a development blog for two reasons. First, I've got some people who care enough to ask how my project is doing, so I figured it would be a good way to disseminate my project's status. Second, it helps me to stay motivated if I feel I have an "audience" that I am accountable to.

The idea is that every time I finish a milestone of any kind, I post about it here. If I finish a major workday without a major milestone being completed, I post about what the issue is and how I'm trying to solve it.

If you just randomly stumbled across this blog... welcome! If you have any questions, make sure to let me know.