Cope Island is a game that has gone through many shades of development. I have improved vastly over the past few years and this is a game I really want to get right. I'm finally at that point of settling and progress has been skyrocketing.

Cope Island: Adrift is actually my third attempt at developing this game. It is also the version I deem definite. The IGMC version holds a dear place in my heart, yet I had to settle for stuff I'd rather not have left and right in that one. The concept started from almost nothing, yet as I went my vision grew. Cope Island: Adrift will by my vision realized.

In this blog I'm going to talk about where I actually am in development. With the help of a progress bar... (I know some folks have text to indicate milestones. I have that too, but I kept said text out of the public images because I'd rather keep this one a bit vague haha)



The bar is for the actual game content. Such as how much is done you can actually play. The progress may seem small, but this game needed a LOT of dev time for database and planning before I could even touch the main game. Even as little as last week I doubled the red in that bar. Development is in a stage where it's going fast.







The soundtrack is complete. 21 songs. Probably around 80 made over the years for this game but most will be unused. The soundtrack is something I worked VERY hard on and it's finally to a place that I am just happy with.

The vast majority of the tileset is done. I do often have to add/fix stuff here and there, but it's pretty much done. Not much work there left to do besides polish stuff.

Hub That Records Weapons found/monsters defeated/trials completed. How to do the hub was the last piece of the puzzle I needed to get ready to complete this game finally. As this game is meant to be replayable with many different paths you can take, I think this hub added a lot to the overall experience.

Weapon data and various other mechanics are done as well. I won't go into too much detail about that stuff as it is boring.







Maps and Events This one is obvious, as my progress bar already indicated where I am on this.

Enemy sprites and battle data I have a lot more of those to do, but I'm doing that as I make the maps and events. I have a good amount of those complete, but still a lot of work to be done there.

Battlebacks Still need to make plenty of these!

Quick Save Mechanic I do have a nice script for quick saving as it is, but I haven't yet figured out how to be flexable with it as I'd rather not have to press f5 key or whatever for it even during events. I don't want any hard saving allowed within the main game to avoid save scumming, but I do want the player to be able to quit whenever they want without losing any progress.

To explain quick saving a bit more. You have three chances to lose battles before you are sent back to the hub and have to try again. That way you can lose while actually keeping progress. The game does have light rogue elements so I don't want things to be too easy in it. Just to make this extra clear, you can of course hard save in hub. However, returning to hub means you have to have a new run on Cope Island.




I definitely plan on keeping a stable workflow. I will post a new screenshot at least once a week and I hope to have a progress update like this around every one or two weeks depending on how much I get done. Hope ya enjoyed the read!