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Progress Report

Progress Report 4/2014

First off yep I'm still working on the game. It's nearing completion so there's no way I could even dream of quitting at this point.

So knowing that I'd imagine that your next question would be "Then what the crap is taking you so long?" and the answer to that would be that in reality I lack the time due to other projects and real world stuffs to give the game the proper attention it deserves.

But I will soldier on and I'll finish it one day... I just hope the PCs of that day can actually still run Rm2k3... (I'm joking it won't be THAT long).

Actually I'll probably have a butt ton of free time in May so I'm hoping to get a good deal of work done then (that is if I don't give in to the still in the plastic copy of Dark Souls 2 that's been staring me down for weeks now...)

Ok so now that the excuses are out of the way let's get down to business shall we, the actual update:

My most recent work was actually a pretty big step towards completion, I finally finished making the proper animations for every Tech, Elemental and Combi Art(Skill) in the game (Beforehand I had just been using "templates").

The game has ALOT of Arts especially when you consider Combis (Combination Arts).
In all there's...

30 Tech Arts spread amount your party members (10 per person)
+66 Tech + Tech or Elemental Combi Arts spread amoung them as well (22 per person)
+30 Shared Elemental Arts
+56 Shared Elemental + Elemental Combi Arts
Which means that in all you're looking at something like 182 unique Arts.

So you can probably see why I put off doing all their animations for so long. It was actually more fun than I expected though. Well except for the actual finding of the sprites and the editing, don't know why but I've always hated doing sprite work. I'm definitely gonna have to team up with an artist on my next game...


Piercing Edge + Light Sphere = Shining Edge

So what else have I done recently? Well I also performed a massive overhaul on the way the world map works. Originally the 3 main continents Everlon, Nevada and Mano-Mona (which the cape in the previous Demo was a part of) were 3 separate maps as this made it easier to handle all the events related to restoring different places and changing the map itself but this gave it a very "disconnected" feel having the screen go black as you traveled.

I also felt that that this downplayed both the overall theme of Restoration Vs. Destruction and the feeling of accomplishment I want players to feel after having brought the entire world back from what was just a tiny wuttle island in the beginning.

So now instead of being in separate sectors this is how the world will look once you've restored it all...
(Hidden because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who doesn't wanna see it till they play, not to mention it's kinda huge)

I've removed some of the events for spoiler reasons. I was gonna remove them all but... you know... that's alot of events lol. Also the big grey spot with all the events on it is a city but you can't see the buildings in this mode so sorry about that.


I also finished the engine for a submarine which can be used to explore certain deep sea areas of the game.

The sub using its laser drill to break through stone blocks.

The other blocks above fall when you break through lower ones so pay attention so that you're not stuck with only unbreakable grey blocks.

The sub also uses a "mock" 1st person battle system. The graphical elements of it aren't finished enough to show yet but the engine itself is done. How it works is your sub has 4 main parts in battle that make actions: the Conning Tower, Port (Left side), Starboard (Right side) and Engine...

-The Conning Tower can be used to give orders to redirect power to weapons or shields or repair damaged parts of the ship
-Port contains the Laser Drill and a paralyzing Shock Net
-Starboard has torpedoes which you can use to attack a single enemy or use a "salvo" to attack them all at once.
-And the engine is used to recharge the other parts of the sub (basically the "MP/EN" of the sub) and ram enemies.

If the Conning Tower is destroyed it means game over, if the Engine is destroyed you have no way of getting energy to the other parts of the sub and losing Port or Starboard greatly decreases your attack potential, I'm working on balancing this but that's the current plan anyway. Ultimately my hope is that the sub makes exploring the ocean a more worthwhile/fun experience.

Oh one more thing, I haven't finished it yet but I'm also working on another feature which I'm VERY proud of, a post-game 100 floor randomly generated dungeon called the "Chaotic Zone". After every 10 floors players will have to face a unique boss and it even has its own story focusing on the origin of a certain "special" Geist.

At the current balance the main game should end with you somewhere in the Rank(Lv.) 50+ range but the Chaotic Zone is being designed to take you all the way to Rank 100. It will also have some unique loot that will probably be way too powerful for the main game but should be fun to play around with in New Game+.

Well that's about it for my recent work on Cyber Factor. The only other thing I've done recently is boring balancing related things that you probably don't wanna hear about so I guess that's it.

I also just wanted to take this time to say thank you to anyone out there still waiting on this. Over the years as I've worked on this game I've gotten more love and encouragement from many people across many sites across the web than I could have ever asked for and even though I might be the blunt instrument that's hammering this game out without you my lazy butt probably would have quit long ago. My only hope at this point is that this project will ultimately become a game that lives up to your expectations and be one that I will proudly look back on forever. From the bottom of my heart thank you for keeping me motivated.

Miscellaneous

Blog Update 1

Cyber Factor's blog...
http://cyberfactor.blogspot.com/
has been updated with info on a Pac-man-ish mini-game.

Miscellaneous

Cyber Factor Blog

I've started a blog for this game here:
http://cyberfactor.blogspot.com/
Pages: 1