Hey everyone!

So I just wanted to give you all a small update on things regarding the eventual release for BLANK, which is coming February.

Now first off, I'd just like to say I'm incredibly flattered at the comments and critiques you've all given me for this game. Come February, BLANK will have been the very first game that I've completed all the way from start to finish. I've tinkered with other video game engines, I've worked with other projects, but BLANK will hold its own special little place in my heart.

But it's all of your comments that have really been insightful to me as a video games designer. During the course of the game's development, there have been many suggestions and critiques regarding, well, everything! But none of them are unwanted in anyway (which makes me wonder if I'm sort of a masochist when it comes to dealing with criticism). Hell, I wonder what the game would've looked like if it HADN'T been criticised (I think Veta would've still had that dated, grouchy facial sprite for the rest of her adventure.).

Now I've rambled on about my gratitude to you all a little bit too much, so let's get down to some of the other things I wanted to talk about. First off, I wanted to talk more about the game's battle system. As of now, I'd say there's two big glaring problems that exist within the current build of the game. One's just a matter of sitting down and tweaking it to hell, another's more of a design choice and may take a while before it's in a comfortable position. What are these problems you ask? Well let me spell it out for you...

1. The Spell and Item Pools
2. The Battle System

Now the Spell and Item pools are the feature I'll just need to tweak to the high heavens. When I first started off with BLANK, I wanted to design the abilities so every skill that the player learnt would have some use in battle. So right from the get-go, Desolun's Haunt ability and Veta's Wonder Guard ability would have their uses in the late-game. But the problem with a vast majority of these skills is that when the player got to the late-game, some items and abilities would completely negate the preferable use of the other. One of Contasma's abilities traded a target ally's HP for some MP and that's a good ability early game when you don't have potions. But near the late-game, Desolun gains a passive MP regeneration spell that gives the player more mana than Contasma would with his ability. So eventually, Contasma's left with an ability that brings nothing but harm to his team (His battle design revolves around risk/reward, so just having risks is unacceptable).

Then we have the items, and let me tell you, some of these buggers are broken as heck (I'm looking at you, Shards). I had some complaints in the past that there was an item famine in the earlier builds of the game. So to try and compensate this, I made the Shards and Status removers. While they helped in the early, I forgot to scale them effectively in the late-game and the final result was that players could overdose themselves in Shards and become literal gods (You can see how disastrous this would be for a final boss encounter).

So to tackle these issues, I've written down a whole bunch of design changes that I'll eventually write down on this blog later this weekend or so. But now I wanted to focus on the other battle design issue, which would be the actual battle system.

Now I want to start this off by stating that I don't wish for BLANK to deviate too much from the already existing system. I think it's a nice and easy system to understand and it's very approachable for anyone who's not a huge RPG fan, which is something I wanted BLANK to be. But there's still a lot left to be desired, such as showing visual cues of status effects on enemies, animated battler sprites that react when they take damage and attack, some ability animations, etc. I want the fights between the player and enemies to feel dynamic and this sorta feels like it would be a good few first steps. But as it currently stands, these changes will have to be something that happens in the future. I've already started working on stuff from behind-the-scenes, but I'm not ready to divulge in any information like that just yet.

But yeah, hopefully that's cleared up some issues or questions people have about the game so far. Stay rest assured, I will also be cleaning up and removing any of those pesky bugs and typos that exist in the game so far when I get back from my holiday.

And as always, if there's any comments or questions you'd like to ask, just leave a reply under this blog post or the main page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Hey everyone!

I've got some fantastic news. As of this moment, the game is pretty much complete (sure there's a few tweaks I need to make, but it's nearing the stage for public testing).

So to celebrate this, I've released a trailer for the game!

You can find the Media Page link here!

http://rpgmaker.net/games/7802/media/3756/

Hey all!

So this isn't really a usual update per-say, but it's still a bit important, considering that I will be using it when I revamp this page when the game gets its final release.



This beautiful poster was done by the talented deadlysupia (Ember or Karissa Yvonne Kaveney). Here's here DeviantART page if you're interested in her work.

http://deadlysupia.deviantart.com/

Hey everyone,

This is just a minor update letting you all know that currently development on BLANK's been stunted for a bit. This is because I've caught a cold that my brother had a few days ago. It's really been affecting my motivation and health to work on the game and if that wasn't bad enough, I've also been looking after my dog for the past few days and she's the kind of animal that requires 'round the clock attention.

But in lighter news, I've officially started work on BLANK's sixth level (which is the second-to-last level in the entire game). Now the sixth level will be quite short if you speed run it, for it's being designed as a level where the player can simply make their way to the boss dungeon without any interferences. The entire level itself though will have some additional elements and secrets to it to pass the explorative kind of players' time. What these will be, I can't say for that would be major spoilers.

Anyway, I'm hoping that I get better soon. Until then, I'll be slowly working on the game and hopefully releasing a new demo build of the game that will feature the new changes.

P.S. I've decided to bump the release date of the full game to December. Something tells me that I just won't be able to get all of the future content done in time. There's still a lot to add into the game.

Hey everyone,

So you may be asking yourself "Is BLANK ever going to have an update?", but I'm here now to tell you all to think about another, more important question. What is that question you may ask? Well I'm glad you... asked.

*Shot*

Anyway, the question you really should be asking yourselves is "Do I really need a facelift?" Well the answer to that question is no... Unless of course, your name's BLANK.

I've been a little bit busy these past two weeks making a few changes to BLANK, all the way from visual alterations to move-pool adjustments and additions. But stay rest assured, nothing too major has been changed (with the exception of a new quest in Finima, but I'll let you find that our for yourself. ;>). So here are some of the biggest changes to BLANK in the Facelift update.

Updated Character Faces:

One of the biggest things that bothered as I continued to develop BLANK were the character faces that appeared in the dialogue windows and menu. They were very rough, blocky and didn't look too appealing overall.



"Veta? You alright? You're looking a bit pale."

So I took the oppourtunity of adjusting the game to go back and redo all the character faces in BLANK (with some small exceptions). But don't take my word for it! Just have a look for yourself.



"Much better! :D"

But wait! That's not all! In addition to new facial sprites, I've also taken the liberty of adding extra facial sprites for different emotional faces.



"Hopefully now Veta will become a fully three-dimensional character!

Almost all of the characters and NPCs from BLANK have now got dynamic facial sprites included in their dialogue windows (Around 5-10 for each character) and the emotions they represent can range from Happy, Sad, Angry to even Quirky. It's a small change to BLANK, yes, but I personally feel that it'll add a bit more charm to the game as a whole.

Wilds Revamped:

So one of the common complaints I got regarding the first level of BLANK was the layout of the Finima Wilds. You know the big open field that you explore after living the village? Yeah, remember how huge that place was?

Was is the now the key-term here. When I first designed the Wilds, I wanted it to be this big open field that would slowly introduce the players to the scope of the game. Ultimately that didn't work, so I've gone back to square one and redesigned the Wilds from scratch.



"I don't remember the Wilds being this small..."

The main features of the Wilds (the Thomson residence, the path to Solena and the Finima Wood) are all still there for the player to go and see, but I've shortened the size of the area to make it much easier for the player to navigate through, as well as adjust the look of the Wilds so it's not necessarily just a big box.

You may also notice an alternate path to the right, but I wouldn't pay any mind to it at this time. It's purpose will come into light much later.

New Battlebacks:

Remember the old Battleback BLANK used to have? The old star on a plain colour background? Looking back at it now, I really should have made this change earlier ago. But at least the change has been made now, right? Here's some of the new Battlebacks you can expect to see in BLANK as of now.



"Common Battle Battleback"



"Corrupt Battle Battleback"



"Miniboss Battle Battleback"



"Boss Battle Battleback"

Of course, all these Battlebacks have alternate colour schemes that compliment their respective levels, so you don't have to worry about awkward colour combinations being a thing. :P

Many more features:

There are many more new additions to BLANK, but I really don't want to spoil them all for you. That would ruin the fun now wouldn't it? But I hope that this small-ish update has cleared up some questions you may or may not of had.

This is King Sangos, signing off!