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7/12/12-
What I'm working on for the next release:
Second Floor of the Initial Complex - This will feature new enemy types, and will provide some more plot progress. I'm aware there is hardly any plot revealed in the demo version, even less if you skip the e-mails. Initially, the starter area was supposed to be larger and paced entirely differently. There would have been more discovery about what was going on prior to returning to the cells and releasing your first party member. There was even a scene where some human guards chased Lucas. You would have had to lock yourself into a room, and listen as something (Kasha) killed the guards. This was originally how you were supposed to get the first keycard, from guard remains. The only problem was that, as written, it made just as much sense to go forward and keep exploring as it did to go back and get your friend out.
I condensed things a great deal, and used force fields to hem the player in at the start, for demo purposes and ended up liking the flow much better for the beginning of the game.
There may be some slight redesigning of the initial area for future releases, but nothing that will invalidate existing save files for those who have played it before. I'm not going to change the starting content, I just might try to improve the layout a bit. Or not. Undecided on that as Floor 2 is the goal right now.
Edit - The floor plan for the second area is finished. It will require the addition of a couple things to my display events, and will introduce the concept of your demon's area skills.
Proper Implementation of the Absorb Function -
Right now, absorb serves only its secondary function, giving you a way to restore some hp and mp to your demons on the fly. Its intended primary function is to allow your demons to absorb skills from other demons.
The idea is that when a demon absorbs an enemy, it gains a number of skill exp points equal to the target's current MP. What would really happen is I would increase a variable corresponding to the skill line in question by this amount. When the variable reaches a pre-set threshold, the demon would learn a new skill based on the type of energy absorbed.
The main purpose of this was to provide an option to improve your demons skills outside of just leveling them up in their own talents. At this time, I do not want to include Fusion and make this an exact copy of SMT.
I still have a good bit of work from a design and balance point of view in regard to absorbed abilities. At first I was leaning toward straight transfer. If the enemy uses Fire attack spells, you absorb their energy and learn fire attack spells. Now I'm thinking that the demons would gain appropriate skills along their own track. If a support demon type absorbs enough fire energy, instead of being a flame caster, they get the ability to thaw frozen allies or to cast Heat Shield.
With 80+ current demons, and 9 skill types (fire, ice, wind, shock, etc), that makes for a lot of variables to deal with, to say nothing of the fact I'll need to do a lot of testing to keep the skill gains balanced. This one may take a while.
Edit- After some initial testing, my original plan for the absorb function is entirely too grind-happy. I like giving the player freedom to set their team up the way the want, but letting any demon learn any skill if they eat enough enemies kind of defeats the strategy angle I was going for. I want good party composition to be important, instead of simply rewarding people for grinding enough to make every demon an interchangeable swiss army knife.
The new plan is to allow demons to transform based on how much energy they have absorbed. I could condense the number of demons I have already, making duplicates of elemental types into simple "class changes" for the base demons. That means a Jackolantern can be leveled to 99 and stay a Jackolantern, or it could consume enough energy to allow a more powerful manifestation, like an Ifreeti (absorb a lot of energy from Physically strong demons) or Floating Fireball (absorb a lot of energy from Magically strong demons).
I like the idea of condensing my current demon list by storing some as Classes. That would allow me to have more demons available while taking up less battle-event pages (theoretically).
This is still up in the air.
Overhauls to the Guardian System -
The starting demon is not the only prospective Guardian Lucas can bond with. The plan is for each demon to gain affinity for Lucas while in the team. Affinity gains are affected by the type of demons the unit is paired with, how encounters with enemies of their own type are carried out, and how well the player's battles go.
The eventual plan is for Lucas to gain stat bonuses based on what Guardian he is bonded with when the Guardian levels up. This is another way to allow the player to tailor Lucas' stats and play style. I see him as spanning the entire gamut from fast physical attacker to magical artillery striker, provided he is built properly.
By the way, the initial Guardian can stay in Lucas' summon pool even if he is not acting as the Guardian, but since non-Guardian summons are removed/destroyed when they fall in battle, and the initial partner is unique in the game, a player who isn't careful enough may find themselves without their long time mentor.
Possible Slight tweaks to the Capture system -
I'm going to add an extra requirement to the capture formula: Lucas' current Will stat (Intelligence) must be greater or equal to that of his target. Since the whole idea is him bending the demons to his will, it doesn't make much sense to open up the status screen and see the demons have higher Will stats than their summoner! I'm thinking of removing the level requirement, although the difference between Lucas and his target would still factor into the capture "price", and just going with Will checks.
This brings up a lot of issues though. What if a summon's will stat gets higher than Lucas' through normal leveling up? Does that mean one of your trusted demons would simply refuse to assist you when called until you got your will stat up? Instead of something that drastic, would they just start losing affinity for Lucas? Affinity is planned to tie into a number of things, such as automatic bonus exp for teams that all like each other, so this might be a way to throttle back the growth of those more stubborn demons in Lucas' collection.
If it is possible to modify Lucas' stat growth based on his current Guardian, would it be possible for a player to pump their Will stat up early and carry a ton of extra demons, as well as being able to contain much tougher enemies before they should? (Instantly reminded of a William S. Burroughs comment about how there is no such thing as "should," unless you're building a bridge or something. Show me a picture of should.)
If it turns out to be more trouble (and less fun for the player) than it is worth, I might just make an end run around this idea by giving Lucas the best Will growth curve in the game, meaning any summon he qualifies to call will always gain Will at a slower rate, thus remaining loyal.
-------
Other Notes:
I'm treating Releases and Patches/Updates as two separate things. I will be releasing another minor update in the near future to address a number of recent bug discoveries.
Bugs/Additions to Address in Next Update:
Transfer Enemy Encounter and Current Area calculations to individual maps to free up common events. Transfer field of vision calculations into common event to streamline the addition of new rooms. - Halfway there!
Optimize field of view event to remove any geometry values that are blocked by opaque surfaces. This may improve performance some on older machines.
Implement a "Level of Detail" slider to allow users to turn off transparency for force fields, water, and glass.
Add atmospheric sound effects (footsteps, to begin with), and an option to toggle them off if they get annoying!
A chronology check to keep Fenris from talking during battle when he isn't in the party. Finished!
A forced bypass to prevent issues caused by starting combat immediately upon opening a door. - This appears to be working now!
Inclusion of a Control Sensitivity Selector. Two additional settings, one of which is stable. Will keybind shortly.
New values for Ghost's EXP and Sek rewards. Finished!
Fix problem with Kobold's enemy all slash Finished!
Get the Console Color Change warning to work for boss rooms.Finished/Mostly
Show a message when the number of Demons Lucas can contain increases. Finished!
Cause items like Note#1 to trigger automatically when picked up. Finished!
Fix EXP & HP/MP Restore Bank option. I keep forgetting to mess with this one!
What I'm working on for the next release:
Second Floor of the Initial Complex - This will feature new enemy types, and will provide some more plot progress. I'm aware there is hardly any plot revealed in the demo version, even less if you skip the e-mails. Initially, the starter area was supposed to be larger and paced entirely differently. There would have been more discovery about what was going on prior to returning to the cells and releasing your first party member. There was even a scene where some human guards chased Lucas. You would have had to lock yourself into a room, and listen as something (Kasha) killed the guards. This was originally how you were supposed to get the first keycard, from guard remains. The only problem was that, as written, it made just as much sense to go forward and keep exploring as it did to go back and get your friend out.
I condensed things a great deal, and used force fields to hem the player in at the start, for demo purposes and ended up liking the flow much better for the beginning of the game.
There may be some slight redesigning of the initial area for future releases, but nothing that will invalidate existing save files for those who have played it before. I'm not going to change the starting content, I just might try to improve the layout a bit. Or not. Undecided on that as Floor 2 is the goal right now.
Edit - The floor plan for the second area is finished. It will require the addition of a couple things to my display events, and will introduce the concept of your demon's area skills.
Right now, absorb serves only its secondary function, giving you a way to restore some hp and mp to your demons on the fly. Its intended primary function is to allow your demons to absorb skills from other demons.
The idea is that when a demon absorbs an enemy, it gains a number of skill exp points equal to the target's current MP. What would really happen is I would increase a variable corresponding to the skill line in question by this amount. When the variable reaches a pre-set threshold, the demon would learn a new skill based on the type of energy absorbed.
The main purpose of this was to provide an option to improve your demons skills outside of just leveling them up in their own talents. At this time, I do not want to include Fusion and make this an exact copy of SMT.
I still have a good bit of work from a design and balance point of view in regard to absorbed abilities. At first I was leaning toward straight transfer. If the enemy uses Fire attack spells, you absorb their energy and learn fire attack spells. Now I'm thinking that the demons would gain appropriate skills along their own track. If a support demon type absorbs enough fire energy, instead of being a flame caster, they get the ability to thaw frozen allies or to cast Heat Shield.
With 80+ current demons, and 9 skill types (fire, ice, wind, shock, etc), that makes for a lot of variables to deal with, to say nothing of the fact I'll need to do a lot of testing to keep the skill gains balanced. This one may take a while.
Edit- After some initial testing, my original plan for the absorb function is entirely too grind-happy. I like giving the player freedom to set their team up the way the want, but letting any demon learn any skill if they eat enough enemies kind of defeats the strategy angle I was going for. I want good party composition to be important, instead of simply rewarding people for grinding enough to make every demon an interchangeable swiss army knife.
The new plan is to allow demons to transform based on how much energy they have absorbed. I could condense the number of demons I have already, making duplicates of elemental types into simple "class changes" for the base demons. That means a Jackolantern can be leveled to 99 and stay a Jackolantern, or it could consume enough energy to allow a more powerful manifestation, like an Ifreeti (absorb a lot of energy from Physically strong demons) or Floating Fireball (absorb a lot of energy from Magically strong demons).
I like the idea of condensing my current demon list by storing some as Classes. That would allow me to have more demons available while taking up less battle-event pages (theoretically).
This is still up in the air.
Overhauls to the Guardian System -
The starting demon is not the only prospective Guardian Lucas can bond with. The plan is for each demon to gain affinity for Lucas while in the team. Affinity gains are affected by the type of demons the unit is paired with, how encounters with enemies of their own type are carried out, and how well the player's battles go.
The eventual plan is for Lucas to gain stat bonuses based on what Guardian he is bonded with when the Guardian levels up. This is another way to allow the player to tailor Lucas' stats and play style. I see him as spanning the entire gamut from fast physical attacker to magical artillery striker, provided he is built properly.
By the way, the initial Guardian can stay in Lucas' summon pool even if he is not acting as the Guardian, but since non-Guardian summons are removed/destroyed when they fall in battle, and the initial partner is unique in the game, a player who isn't careful enough may find themselves without their long time mentor.
Possible Slight tweaks to the Capture system -
I'm going to add an extra requirement to the capture formula: Lucas' current Will stat (Intelligence) must be greater or equal to that of his target. Since the whole idea is him bending the demons to his will, it doesn't make much sense to open up the status screen and see the demons have higher Will stats than their summoner! I'm thinking of removing the level requirement, although the difference between Lucas and his target would still factor into the capture "price", and just going with Will checks.
This brings up a lot of issues though. What if a summon's will stat gets higher than Lucas' through normal leveling up? Does that mean one of your trusted demons would simply refuse to assist you when called until you got your will stat up? Instead of something that drastic, would they just start losing affinity for Lucas? Affinity is planned to tie into a number of things, such as automatic bonus exp for teams that all like each other, so this might be a way to throttle back the growth of those more stubborn demons in Lucas' collection.
If it is possible to modify Lucas' stat growth based on his current Guardian, would it be possible for a player to pump their Will stat up early and carry a ton of extra demons, as well as being able to contain much tougher enemies before they should? (Instantly reminded of a William S. Burroughs comment about how there is no such thing as "should," unless you're building a bridge or something. Show me a picture of should.)
If it turns out to be more trouble (and less fun for the player) than it is worth, I might just make an end run around this idea by giving Lucas the best Will growth curve in the game, meaning any summon he qualifies to call will always gain Will at a slower rate, thus remaining loyal.
-------
Other Notes:
I'm treating Releases and Patches/Updates as two separate things. I will be releasing another minor update in the near future to address a number of recent bug discoveries.
Bugs/Additions to Address in Next Update:
Optimize field of view event to remove any geometry values that are blocked by opaque surfaces. This may improve performance some on older machines.
Implement a "Level of Detail" slider to allow users to turn off transparency for force fields, water, and glass.
Add atmospheric sound effects (footsteps, to begin with), and an option to toggle them off if they get annoying!
Fix EXP & HP/MP Restore Bank option. I keep forgetting to mess with this one!
