Mana Conquest: Vengeance

I missed a few weeks in the middle there, but it's time for the weekly-ish update!

I've spent most of the last two nightshifts doing a bug seeking playthrough. Mostly a balance test, making sure the battles aren't too difficult now that the battle engine speed has been adjusted. Also checking to make sure that the skill leveling system is balanced, now that the skills are ranked up based on usage rather than number of battles fought.

I also had an interesting battle with fullscreen mode in windows 8. I submitted an article on it, perhaps it'll show up on the site sometime soon.

Also during this playthrough I'm streamlining the in game text. There are times where I previously used ***asterisks*** for emphasis in spoken dialogue, and other time when I used CAPSLOCK to the same effect. Also, inner dialogue has times where it's in (brackets), or in dark grey text. Mention of key items, or important places have set text colors in use. Overall the plan is to have everything look streamlined throughout the whole game.

The main thing I'm finding is that a lot of scripted events in which I moved the caterpillar events are messed up now, because I changed the caterpillar event structure.

The battle with the Mysterious Man in the Meridian Cavern has been modified, in an attempt to make the battle seem more urgent. If Hanna is KO'd by his attack, she is removed from the battle. If enough turns pass without Hanna or Eidan being KO'd from his attack, he will "enrage", Eidan will tell Hanna to get back, removing her from the battle. The end result is the same, but the individual dialogue is different depending on which of these two things happen.

The Worker ants in the cavern have had their 'Psycho Buzz' attack modified so that it only affects one ally, otherwise it was too much like the Cave Bat's Hypersonic attack.

Cave Rats have had their double attack replaced with a more fitting skill.

The first bug in the new encounter system was found and fixed - monsters that had to travel an exceptionally long distance before reaching where the hero was last seen would make their "give up" sounds long before they reached the destination. They would then immediately stop searching for the hero once they reached their destination. This has been repaired.

Fixed a bug where the music did not cut out as intended inside Meagan's house during her recruitment.

Fixed a bug where a box that used to be in Ruiga still had event code that could be ran if you inspected the tile where the box used to be, prior to the revamping of those interior maps.

Fixed a bug where leaving a map onto the world map, from a teleport in which an enemy had already seen, or would have seen you if it had respawned would cause the caterpillar system on the world map to be wonky, as well as cause the "danger" heartbeat sound to continue onto the world map.

I'm considering working the particle effects plugin into the game, though at this point it'd only see use in chimney smoke and other similar background things.

Also still working in the text plugin. A lot of early areas (read: Meridia) have some floating text in use to add to the immersion. When it's fully realized, it will add a lot to npc interaction in the game.

Removed the menu background images from the game clock plugin. The game menu now has a solid black background. There was a bug in it where it would always revert to the default image when the game was loaded, meaning that it wasn't saving what background should be in use at a given time. I wasn't making very good use of it (most of my backgrounds were just the battle backdrop of the area) anyway, so I switched it out.

The skills tutorial given by the sleepy soldier in Meridia Castle has been updated to reflect that skills get stronger by using them.

The options menu is outdated, and needs to be updated. The banter dialogue on/off option has no effect, and the world map minimap off/on option is probably unnecessary - if a semi transparent image on the world map is given your computer difficulty, the rest of the game is probably not faring any better.

I will be reducing the number of monsters inside the Jabar temple. I haven't play tested through the temple on my currently playthrough yet, however. The intention is to reduce the level you fight the boss at (making him harder), and also to ensure that you're not pushing level 25 by the end of the Temple events. There's a lot more game to go after this point, and that many levels is preposterous.

I may also revamp the experience curve a bit. Leveling up is a lot faster than I originally envisioned. Most of the stat increases in the game will come from "training" and equipment upgrades, leveling up should only account for a gain in hit points.

Speaking of hit points, on this last playthrough Hanna got completely trucked by Hui-Zhi in the forest - even after 3-4 Defensive Harmonies. I believe she was one level lower than my other playthroughs, as I skipped a couple of trash mob fights to make it harder. I can see why a lot of people complain about the difficulty of that fight now. I can't stress it enough - fight as many mobs as you can!

At this point, there is no specific date that I'll be done with this revamping. As a result, I can't put a solid date on the new demo release. I'll try to update here some more as I go along.

That's all for now folks,


~Ramza