Thrall

Happy Halloween!

Time for another progress report on the development of Thrall! This month has been very productive, and I managed to add a lot to the game for the story, mechanics, and dungeon creation. To start, let's go through a brief list of what's been added this month:
- Controller configuration and accurate button prompts in-game
- Updated UI in the equip, inventory, loot and skill tree scenes
- Created a flowing water effect with a parallax mapping style for the next dungeon
- Added Gold drops to the common item loot pools
- Changed the way EXP is handled and updated battle end messaging
- Added an option to sort loot by either rarity or type
- Added an entire new weapon accessory "MULTI", which allows for two hits per attack
- Overhauled and buffed most of the skill trees
- Created a Blackjack minigame
- Added unique character-specific Overdrive skills
- Added several maps to the next new dungeon
- Started on a written story outline
- Updated the demo with all of the above listed changes

And a host of other minor changes and fixes!

So, that's a lot of work for one month. I've also added several new videos to the YouTube channel showing my work on some of these. I won't go into detail on all of these changes, but there's a few I'd like to highlight.

First, the button prompts. I already sort of mentioned this, but I figured out a way to recognize how a player has their keys and controller buttons configured from the F1 menu, then display on-screen prompts that coincide with those configurations, meaning that you'll always be given accurate prompts for in-game actions! This is something that has plagued RMVX games for over a decade, and with the help of a script from Zeriab's pastebin (and some considerable editing on my part), this issue has been pretty much completely resolved! The only issue that remains is that configurations are not updated until the game is fully closed, so if you change your settings you'll need to do a hard reset of the game before the prompts are updated. Nothing I can do about that, unfortunately, since the registry file literally does not update until the game fully closes.

Another thing I wanted to highlight is the new weapon accessory. Previously, weapons could only generate with one of three potential accessories, "FAST", "KNOCKBACK", and "CRITDMG". Now, a new accessory has been added, "MULTI". With this new weapon accessory, there are around 40 more unique weapon prefixes that can generate, and weapons can get some cool new functionality! With the "MULTI" accessory, normal attacks with these weapons will hit twice per round! But be careful, because those same weapons will generate with 40% less DMG. Elemental weapons can be very powerful with this accessory, as you get double the opportunity to proc status effects, and certain characters can abuse this mechanic to stack certain combinations faster than ever! But any ability that uses the DMG stat of the weapon will likely be negatively affected by this change, so be careful who you give these weapons to.

At any rate, those are the main changes I wanted to address in this blog, but there are a plethora of other changes! And the best part? You get to try them out! The demo has been updated as of yesterday to v0.5, and all these changes plus more have been included! I look forward to revealing more about the game as time goes on, and I look forward to hearing your feedback! This project has been a major highlight in my life, and a much-needed creative outlet, so I'm thrilled to be able to share it with you.

And with that, I hope you enjoy! Happy Halloween! See you again on November 15th!