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Looking Forward

  • Scourge
  • 01/11/2018 12:41 AM
  • 3210 views
Before I dive into the meat of this progress report, I'm curious about what classes folks have been using in the current release. As RMN doesn't appear to support polls in blogs, I'd love it if people were to post their parties in the comments below.

With Chapter One's initial release, I thought it might be a good time to talk about the future of the game and what's been done and what needs to be done.

Chapter One represents a relatively small chunk of gameplay, but a staggering amount of completed systems. My thought process while developing the first chapter was to look at it like a stand-alone game and ignore the fact that it represents about a fifth or a sixth of the real project's final gameplay (I know there are seven chapters; the last one is very short). This means that I went in-depth with creating systems and making them work instead of doing the bare minimum necessary to push out a release.

As a result, there are really only three items to check off the systems/gameplay list:

1. Adding handling to transition from chapter to chapter until all the different parties come together in Chapter Five. I know how to do it and I've successfully pulled it off with items and gold, but finishing it off requires a lot of very dull clicking and data entry so it's something I won't finish until I absolutely have to.

2. Hashing out the multi-party system. (This is something I haven't drawn much attention to yet, but the latter half of the game will have multi-party dungeons and battles, a la Kefka's Tower or, you know, Hero's Realm) Some of you who own VX Ace might have decided to sneak a peek at the editor - and I wouldn't blame you if you did - and might have noticed that the framework for this is in place and the system for switching parties in and out of battle exists (and works!). It just needs to be fine-tuned.

3. A Parchisi-style minigame a la Dragon Quest. It's a silly thing to make a priority, and it is something I'd really love to include in some fashion. Honestly, of the three items, this is the one that would require the most work to get running, so check back in with me in nine months and see if I still have the energy to create it.

Of course, these are very long-term goals and I'd like to take the same approach with Chapters 2-4 that I did with Chapter 1 in that I want to focus just on that chapter and not spend time fretting about late-game elements. If I get the first four chapters out, I can come back and make changes to them if need be instead of worrying about later chapters and trying to develop everything all at once.

But let's talk about Chapter Two. If you've been keeping your eye on your notices, you've probably seen a lot of wintry scenes showing up in images for this game. The next chapter will take place in the Russia/Scandinavian-esque country of Finlon, which is briefly discussed in Chapter One, and feature a hero who provides a counterpoint to Marcia both in terms of 'personality' and skills.

The next couple weeks are going to be exceedingly busy for me because I'm moving into a new apartment and there's a lot of tasks that go along with that, so I'm hesitant to assign a release date for Chapter Two. In my head, I'm aiming for the end of February/start of March, but I can't be certain. Theoretically, it should take less time than Chapter One because I don't have to build a game from scratch. However, there's still plenty of work to be done and I have a couple cool ideas for boss fights that will take some effort to create. In the meantime, I'll continue tweaking and updating Chapter One as need be, though you won't see a major update for quite a while.

If you made it this far, thanks for caring about the development of The Seven Seals and my musings about the game's progress. Once again, please post the classes you're using in the comments below. I'd love to get an idea of what parties folks have used and how they're shaping up.

Posts

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Super safe traditional team: Warlord (because I thought it sounded cool), Cleric (because even I'm not that reckless), Black Mage (for anything that resists physical moves) and of course the main character, who is OP as all get out.

I've given the entire party decent physical weapons, including a club for the Black Mage. They've been wailing on everything with physical attacks, though I haven't bothered using the Warlord's buffs, they seem more useful against bosses. Nothing has given me trouble so far, though all I've been facing are normal encounters. Been grinding up money for better gear before I head back to the thieves' hideout, because I enjoy being stupidly overpowered. Currently level 7 with not too much to go before I hit 8.
Scourge
I used to make games. I still do, but I used to too.
1605
author=WheelmanZero
Super safe traditional team: Warlord (because I thought it sounded cool), Cleric (because even I'm not that reckless), Black Mage (for anything that resists physical moves) and of course the main character, who is OP as all get out.

I've given the entire party decent physical weapons, including a club for the Black Mage. They've been wailing on everything with physical attacks, though I haven't bothered using the Warlord's buffs, they seem more useful against bosses. Nothing has given me trouble so far, though all I've been facing are normal encounters. Been grinding up money for better gear before I head back to the thieves' hideout, because I enjoy being stupidly overpowered. Currently level 7 with not too much to go before I hit 8.


Level 8 is just about perfect for there. You're going to have to try harder if you want to be stupidly overpowered!
Curse you Scourge! Curse you and your balancing!
Scourge
I used to make games. I still do, but I used to too.
1605
It’s both a blessing and a curse
i used paladin, pirate and bard; so far have not had trouble with anything, but that may be because i abused the pirates money making abilities as much as possible so i could get the very best gear on everyone (i didnt grind much though, i merely delayed every battle untill i had mugged every enemy), all of my characters have strong phisical attack because i gave the bard a whip and an attack ring, so i only ever need to use spells against monsters that dont take damage from attacks, and then i just use the main characters spells, other then that undead will die pretty easily to the bards burial song plus the paladins bless, so its pretty much smooth sailing, the only time a party member died was when i got cocky against the mamba leader and used berzerk and it backfired, i am at the grimm tower right now, maybe here my party will find trouble, its funny because i just picked the classes i liked without worring about if they would be good, but they ende up way too strong :P
Scourge
I used to make games. I still do, but I used to too.
1605
author=SoulAuron
i used paladin, pirate and bard; so far have not had trouble with anything, but that may be because i abused the pirates money making abilities as much as possible so i could get the very best gear on everyone (i didnt grind much though, i merely delayed every battle untill i had mugged every enemy), all of my characters have strong phisical attack because i gave the bard a whip and an attack ring, so i only ever need to use spells against monsters that dont take damage from attacks, and then i just use the main characters spells, other then that undead will die pretty easily to the bards burial song plus the paladins bless, so its pretty much smooth sailing, the only time a party member died was when i got cocky against the mamba leader and used berzerk and it backfired, i am at the grimm tower right now, maybe here my party will find trouble, its funny because i just picked the classes i liked without worring about if they would be good, but they ende up way too strong :P


The Bard and the Pirate are shaping up to be two of the strongest classes! The Grim Tower is definitely more challenging and I’ve heard good things about the difficulty of the boss, so I think things will pick up. Having both a Paladin and a Bard with Burial Song definitely makes undead enemies a breeze. Thanks for commenting and playing the game!
author=Scourge
The Bard and the Pirate are shaping up to be two of the strongest classes! The Grim Tower is definitely more challenging and I’ve heard good things about the difficulty of the boss, so I think things will pick up. Having both a Paladin and a Bard with Burial Song definitely makes undead enemies a breeze. Thanks for commenting and playing the game!

if i may say something, i think the bard is as strong as it was because of the pirate, those songs are very expensive, and geting them from drops is very hard, so without them the class is basically an ok attacker with extra utility and a strongish heal, the first thing i would sugest would be to limit the pirates steal ability, i love the class, but it has so much it can do wich i didnt do because i was too preocupied stealing gold, so if that ability had some sort of cool down of 1 or 2 turns that would be perfect, as it would not stop people who absolutely NEED to grind gold (maybe because their party was terrible and got wiped and they are now broke and have bad items), but it makes grinding gold enough of a bother that people wont do a lot of it usually.
Scourge
I used to make games. I still do, but I used to too.
1605
author=SoulAuron
if i may say something, i think the bard is as strong as it was because of the pirate, those songs are very expensive, and geting them from drops is very hard, so without them the class is basically an ok attacker with extra utility and a strongish heal, the first thing i would sugest would be to limit the pirates steal ability, i love the class, but it has so much it can do wich i didnt do because i was too preocupied stealing gold, so if that ability had some sort of cool down of 1 or 2 turns that would be perfect, as it would not stop people who absolutely NEED to grind gold (maybe because their party was terrible and got wiped and they are now broke and have bad items), but it makes grinding gold enough of a bother that people wont do a lot of it usually.


I've been considering lowering the amount of money gained from Mug and the Plunder ability for a while, so I will definitely keep that in mind. I think 200% after battle is a bit much and 150% or 175% might work better. We'll see!
Dyluck
For thousands of years, I laid dormant. Who has disturbed my slumber?
5184
I actually never knew the pirate gave double money, because I don't think it's mentioned in the actual skill menu. I also didn't know what Traverse was. I'd suggest adding a dummy skill for these kinds of things to describe their effects.
Scourge
I used to make games. I still do, but I used to too.
1605
author=Dyluck
I actually never knew the pirate gave double money, because I don't think it's mentioned in the actual skill menu. I also didn't know what Traverse was. I'd suggest adding a dummy skill for these kinds of things to describe their effects.


Good point. The Classes page on the gamepage notes this, but I shouldn't expect people to read that before playing. I'll add dummy skills to classes that need them in the next release.
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