Return to Dragonfaith (with Progress!)

Although this blog has been silent for the past year (since my beta release of Ascension), that does not mean that I haven't been busy. I've just been following the philosophy of working more and talking about working less. Moving on from Ascension was a perfect opportunity to return with full focus to Dragonfaith, aided by the longterm stability of my schedule during COVID lockdown (without the ever-present distraction of the outside world intruding into my life). That is now changing (for better and worse), since I have received the vaccine and am re-entering society. Which means this would be a good point to document the progress I've made in the past year.

For many years now, since I upgraded from RPG Maker VX Ace to the new version RPG Maker MV (which by now has already been replaced with RPG Maker MZ - but I'm not upgrading again), I've been locked into the process of transferring everything I'd already completed in VX Ace over to MV. Well, I'm happy to report that I am finally finished with that phase and am developing new areas of my game again. I've completed five new dungeons in the past year (I take pride in my level design, and a lot of time and effort goes into creating a dungeon from a blank page), and I spent over a month last holiday season compiling combat-related graphics, which also means that I have my full enemy roster (including bosses) pretty much picked out.

What's next? Lifting quarantine restrictions (and more trips and social visits) means I will unfortunately be more distracted and less focused, but I'm going to continue on the path I'm walking - finishing up the mapping (I'm getting towards the endgame now). I've also been drafting scenario as I go (which means writing dialogue and also choreographing cutscenes). When I'm finished with the adventure and dramatic aspects of my game, then I can turn my full focus to the action - engineering the combat and tweaking numbers until I have a functional RPG on my hands. That's the part when you'll be able to start testing it.

For the first time since I started developing this game (a sobering seven years ago), before I knew how much work went into making an RPG (especially all by one's self), I can envision a day when it's complete in a playable format, from start to finish (with the same disclaimers I gave for Ascension - it will never be perfect, but at some point you have to put the brush down). I've taken to updating a checklist to give me a [very] rough idea of how far through the development process I am, to inspire me to keep working toward that goal. And also to show that I haven't just been sitting on my hands these past seven years, since I've taken on this mammoth project (to be completed in my free time). Without spoling too many details of the game, here's a chart of my progress:

Mapping:

World Map............................................ incomplete*
Towns/Outposts....................................... 11/13 complete
Dungeons............................................. 13/17 complete

*I know where all the important stuff goes, but filling out a 256x256 tile grid is proving to be a monumental challenge.

Writing:

Scenario/Choreography................................ ~25/32 scenes drafted*
NPC Dialogue......................................... on the light side**
Menu Captions........................................ on the light side**

*This category is approximate since I may feel it necessary to add/remove (more likely add) dramatic moments to the game as I go along.

**This is largely flavor text that I can fill in once the world (and combat mechanics) are more fully realized.

Graphics:

Enemies.............................................. pretty much complete
Battle Backgrounds................................... pretty much complete
Tilesets/Characters.................................. pretty much complete
Skill Animations..................................... indeterminate*

*Animations can be a lot of work, but it depends on how much customization I opt for (which I won't know until I dive more deeply into the combat).

Combat:

Equipment (Items/Weapons/Armor)...................... partially implemented
Skills/States........................................ partially implemented
Enemies/Troops....................................... partially implemented
Math (Growth Curves/Damage Formulas)................. ???

This last category is going to take a lot of work (and may require some coding for unique effects). I've been putting it aside while working on the mapping (although I have a rough outline for much of it, and have worked on bits and pieces of it here and there), but it represents the final hurdle between me and completion. Add to that the world map, and the endgame maps/scenario (which is next on my plate), and that's mainly what I have left to do. So now I'm going to get back to work!

Ascension (Beta Release)

So, technically, I did quietly release the first beta version of Ascension back on the 8th of May. I didn't make an official announcement because I wanted to give my first tester a chance to play through the game, since she's the only one I'll get to actually watch (and witness her reactions) while playing, and I wanted at least one other person to play my game, to reassure me that there weren't any glaring problems that I've overlooked, before I put the word out to friends, family, and complete strangers. I've already made a few changes based on her feedback (nothing world-shattering, but some worthwhile tweaks), so that's why it might look to you like I'm starting with version 1.1. Aside from that, I'm pretty happy with what I've got. (So far, I haven't encountered that one game-crashing bug since I eliminated the one plugin, which is promising). So it's time to release it to the world! Here's a little statement I've prepared:

Ascension is now a complete game that can be played from start to finish. It's not perfect, and I may choose to continue making changes and releasing updates into the future, especially if and when anyone gets a chance to play it and gives me some feedback. But even if I never make another change to it, I can rest assured that it is a game that is, at the very least, out there for people to play. There may be some things you don't like about it. Hopefully, there will be some things that you do. And on the bottom line, I've put in a lot of work to make it fun, and ensure that it is indeed playable. But I'm not a professional game designer - I'm just an amateur, working alone. But how many amateurs can say that they've completed one of their projects in RPG Maker? And as far as completed RPG Maker projects go (which, admittedly, isn't a super high bar in the world of game development), I hope that the quality of this project speaks for itself, however flawed and imperfect it may turn out to be. Because I've poured a lot of my heart and soul into this game; it's not merely something I did for the hell of it, or just to pass the time.

And now, without further ado, go, download the game, play it, and have fun. And let me know what you think of it after you're done. In the meantime, I've got an even bigger project to get back to working on...

Progress Report

I keep telling myself, "you don't need to post another progress report, you'll have the next release ready in a few more days." But then, every few days, it ends up taking another few days, until almost a month has passed since my last update. Every time I run the game, I find something new to change or tweak or fix...

I've finished the cleaning process, and am now doing final testing, to make sure everything is in place, and there are no glaring errors before I release the game to the semi-public. It's pretty much the first time I've played the game start to finish, as I've been testing stages one at a time so far. I was curious to see how long it would take to complete the game. I've beaten it on a speedrun in twenty minutes, but obviously you'll want to take longer than that to savor the story and the atmosphere. On a normal run, taking my time to explore and test everything, I beat it in two hours and forty minutes. Then again, as the developer, I know this game inside and out, so I'd be curious to find out how long it takes others to beat it. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to rate the amount of content in this game in terms of gameplay hours, if it takes different people different amounts of time to complete...

At the moment, I'm going through and taking screenshots of all the levels, to accompany the impending official release. There's just this one annoying bug (Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'width' of null) that I would love to fix, but I can't pin it down. It happens whenever the map is being reset after the player loses a "life". But it's occurred on several different maps, and it only happens once in a blue moon. As such, I can't pinpoint what's causing it, or how to fix it. And even if I did have some idea (and I've had a few), it's hard to test a solution because the bug only pops up every so often. Unfortunately, it's a game crashing bug, and although the automatic progress retainment system in my game (which eschews passwords or save files) would normally render it at most an inconvenience - just restart the game from the level you were at - there is one exception that causes me to be hesitant to release the game as is. I want to make accessing the secret level a challenge, so you have to collect the fragments all in a single playthrough. If the game crashes while you're in the middle of doing that, well...that's a considerable source of frustration that is both completely out of the player's control, and also something the player would justifiably be inclined to curse the developer for not taking care of. So, we'll see...

Update: I believe I know where and when the bug is occurring, but I still don't know why (my best guess is something to do with a timing discrepancy, calling on an object before it's defined), nor can I force it to happen, in order to test a solution. However, there is evidence that a plugin I'm using (a Bind Pictures To Map plugin) may be involved. So, in lieu of being able to fix the presumably problematic portion of code, I'm looking into a workaround that will allow me to ditch the plugin altogether. It's a pain in the ass, but luckily I only needed that plugin in a few places. I have no idea if this will even solve the problem, but if I do it, and I never encounter the bug again, then I'll consider it a victory.

Progress Report

I am still hard at work preparing Ascension for beta release. I've completed an inventory of the resources used, now I am trimming and organizing and cutting out the fat. Other than the reduction in file size (which, 230 MB isn't all that big to start with), most of this work is more for my benefit than the player's, and would be unwieldy for a larger project besides. But I really want to take the opportunity to clean up the project file, because I may not have the chance on my next project. It will take some more time, though.

Revision to Latest Release

So, I nixed the program update, and went back and restructured a portion of the secret level, as explained. I'm sad to lose the portion I lost - due to an inability to perform instantaneous map transfers - but I took the opportunity to add another little flourish, and honestly, I think it's even better this way. I don't want to say too much, because I don't want to spoil the surprise, but I'm super excited about the secret level. I know there's a high bar for access, and many players may never reach it, but I wanted to have something special for those who are willing to go the extra mile.

So I'm releasing a revision to the latest update, with the secret level now implemented and accessible. As far as its feasibility in terms of the difficulty of reaching it - I'm planning to test that myself, but I want to wait until the beta release, because that will give me a good chance to go back through every stage in the game, and make sure everything works the way I want it to. And that will be ready once I perform the "cleaning" functions I alluded to in my last post. But the reason I want to put out this revision first is because I've learned never to trust in the future. In case something happens - e.g., we all die from this global pandemic, or my progress stalls out again, or my files get corrupted in another computer crash - I want what I've accomplished up to this point to be out there, until such time that I have an improved version ready to replace it.

Ascension (MV) Alpha 10.2 (all stages, including ending and secret level)
Download (~230 MB): Windows | Mac [see sidebar for latest release]

Update on the Update

So, I updated RPG Maker MV (to version 1.6.1), and - I suppose this shouldn't be surprising, but - I'm not impressed. It doesn't fix any of the bugs I'd hoped it would fix (no idea what "freeze when changing screen" is supposed to refer to, but it is most decidedly not the map transfer lurch that I hate), and introduces some new bugs (like a weird text glitch on the title screen when I playtest), while threatening to break plugins (I've already had to fix one so far, in a game that uses very few of them). So, it looks like I'm going back to version 1.5.0. God, this is so frustrating. I envy authors who can scribble runes on paper and communicate across eons, while each version of the software I take time to learn works on only a handful of machines, and becomes obsolete before I have the time to finish a single project...

So I'll be going back, making a significant change to the layout of my secret level, and then still polishing up my project and slimming the download file. That might take some time, but when I'm finished, I'm going beta and finally putting this game into the hands of my testers. If I have any.

Ascension (MV) Alpha 10.0 [Purgatory]

This update took a little longer. The official reason is that I had more to do - not just the final stage (Purgatory), but also the ending, and the secret level. But I could have released just Purgatory, and followed that up later with the completed ending. The truth is, Purgatory involves a lot of dialogue, so that was actually the part that took the longest to polish. And working on those other things served as a nice distraction when I got fed up with tweaking the dialogue.

So, this release almost represents the complete game. But I'm not quite ready to go beta yet - there are a few things I want to polish up, but I wanted to put out a release with everything I've worked on since finishing up Erebus before I go mucking around, in case I screw something up. The only thing missing from this release is the secret level, which is actually mostly finished - but I have it disabled. And here's why:

There's a bit of nonlinear topography involved, that gets screwed up with MV's inability to perform instantaneous map transfers (which I've worked around throughout the rest of the game). I could restructure that bit of the level, but before I go to that trouble, I want to update RPG Maker because the latest update mentions fixing "the freeze when changing screen in-game". I don't know if this means that instantaneous transfers will work or not, but it sounds promising, and it's worth a try.

I've just been delaying updating the program while I work on this game, because there's no telling what problems it might cause, by changing up the way the program does certain things (particularly with plugin functionality - although luckily this game doesn't use a lot of plugins). So I wanted to put out a nearly finished product before I took that gamble, and that's what this is. I'd also like to go through and polish up the innards of my game now that it's pretty much finished (including stripping unused files to reduce the download size), and this seems like a good time to do that.

But in the meantime, here's my latest release, with all stages playable, from beginning to end. Just don't waste time collecting the secrets on Hard Mode yet, because you can't get the reward. Other modifications I've made in this release include an even more streamlined (and, importantly, more intuitive) pause screen. I also reduced the number of picture files required to display the story completion percentage, but you won't notice any difference on your end. I hope to be back with an official beta release in the near future!

Ascension (MV) Alpha 10.0 (including all stages up to Chapter 12 - Purgatory)
Download (~230 MB): Windows | Mac [see sidebar for latest release]