after adding to my snow town, i started adding onto my swamp. since it's a drained river, you have to climb up the canyon by riding in bubbles of swamp gas.

Speaking of towns, I found myself struggling to make 'em more than just rest stops.

Road trip RPG! Interesting things happen if you play to your strengths.

It looks like I'll be tearing out the battle simulation I wrote. It was a good idea in theory but there are lot of edge cases that make it fragile. The more I think about it, the more I realize I don't need it.

Still working dilligently on menu-like systems. This time I worked out the quest/journal system and how to set the background images that are rendered based on the player's chosen race. I also made it easy on myself in how to code the quests. I set up separate pages for each 'page' that is shown. For example, all fighter guild quests are kept in one SCRIPT page... Wizard quests are in another... master quests in a third... and so on.

Still working on my game, but taking a break from it for a few weeks while I plan out the beginnig phases of my other project.

I'm thinking of creating a new sprite template of HKCP-tall characters, pre-rendered with everything from clothes and accesories, as well as animations.

And... that is all right now..

Needed some alternative enemy concepts since switching BOTB to sideview ATB. The enemies are; Bateye, Basilisk, Ghost, Hellhound, Hellrazer.



Focusing on getting all the animation frames done before the actual details are applied. Afraid this could be a long, tedious process that could take weeks or even months, but gonna try my best to pull through.

In the end they should all be as detailed as...



And I made a new track: Into The Void

My hell...pup? I'm thinking of shooting it in the head so it'll resurrect as the demon dog it's supposed to be, but maybe not. He's already kinda cute, some people dig cuteness.



EDIT: Added the running frames too, as unglamorous as they are at the moment. It should get better.

Hopefully I can gain the momentum of animating battlers to the point where people start thinking I'm a 30 deep child labor camp (I'm really just a man and not a sweat shop ;_; ) For now, slow start, whatever lol. If I keep on it for 6 months, I should be churning out some bad ass works (in theory anyway.)

I think I ran into some kind of glitch after I decided to start my game's bestiary and troop configuration from scratch. I tested the scrub baddies I created in a battle and for some odd reason a couple of them die in one hit regardless of HP while others are basicaly invinsible.

Any hypothesis about what could be happening?

@SteelBeast6Beets: It sounds like you might've accidentally set one battler to Invincible in the Troop tab when you went to test battle. Also, perhaps you have the Death state unintentionally attached to one of your weapons. Just a couple of theories, you might need to open a support thread if you keep running into this issue.

BTW, I like your avatar, who is the artist? I'm looking for all kinds of study and inspiration, would like to see more of their work :D

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The past two days have been spent rigidly planning out the first quarter of 2014. There is just so much to do, I'm barely even allowing myself to sleep this coming year! It almost feels like I've ran out of easy tasks, everything else is a giant mountain of challenges and I really have to give it my all to soldier through it.

I gotta do it. I gotta do it! There is nothing else to it...

January's objectives

• Create 10 animated battler sheets, cycle 1 : initial conception. Each sheet must have cells for each appropriate action, but for now the focus is shape and motion, further refinement and pretty details will come in a later cycle.
  
• Planning and preparation for new battle system changes, both visual and mechanical. While most of this is for my current RM project, consideration will be taken into future ReGaL implementation as well.
• A couple different styles of music composition is needed; namely some romantic music, bow chicka wow wow!
  
• Some Java/Ruby study, at least 30 minutes a day if possible. Will be needed not only for future ReGaL development but other future projects as well.
  

The plan is on the table that I might resort to writing my own animated battle system eventually, based on lessons learned from the past. Some key goals of this is to reduce the redundancy of setting up each battler, whether they be a static or animated, and also to simplify certain key settings such as approach style and whatnot.

Also, it seems I'm going to be organizing assets this way...

Graphics\Battlers\Hellhound.png # The battler preview sprite, as displayed in the database.
Graphics\Battlers\Hellhound\ # The battler's folder for animation cells. (Not needed if just a static sprite.)

This will make it easier to set positions in the Troop tab, as trying to position a whole sprite sheet is a headache. The cells themselves will be individual files, like so...

Graphics\Battlers\Hellhound\Ready.png
Graphics\Battlers\Hellhound\LowHP.png
Graphics\Battlers\Hellhound\Hurt.png
Graphics\Battlers\Hellhound\Guard.png
Graphics\Battlers\Hellhound\Approach.png

...etc.

Each action can have as many cells as needed, allowing for more flexibility since it's not all confined to one mega sheet. This should, in theory, reduce the graphical weight as there are no 'blank frames' as the dynamic mega-sheet might have. Finally, there should be no more need to look up the index for the frame set you need, just point to the name such as "Attack 2" if you have an alternate attack or whatever, and there ya go!

Enough rambling, I suppose. Off to enjoy the rest of December, happy holidays everybody <3