Last month I talked about how life hit a snag and that development on PotF will be slow. This month, I have yet to escape from the snag, and therefore development on PotF remains slow. On the bright side, I've made myself a little home in the area around the snag, so life is a little more stable. I'm still bleeding profusely, but at least I'll be comfortable while trying to get unstuck! As of this writing, there are a few prospective chances to get out of the snag within the next few days. Hopefully, I'll be able to get out of it soon!

Anyway, onto progress of the game. That's why we're all here, isn't it? As fun as it is to whine, that's not what you're all here for. So, without further ado...

Like I said last month, most of my effort will be getting the game playable, rather than polished. I won't be testing anything until I implement the final boss. So far, here is my progress:



Keep in mind that all this meter shows is the state of PLAYABLE content, and the testing color only shows what has been proven to work, not necessarily balanced. It does not take into account non-critical aspects, such as skits, new gear, etc, balancing, etc. I'll still need to do all sorts of balance testing and other boring stuff like that before I can truly call it complete. Once the meter is completely green, I'll be ready to send it off to testers.



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On the gameplay side of things, I've made a tweak to how armor is going to work. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen me talk about how I wanted to change how armor affects SP. Right now, all armor lowers more max SP depending on the weight. Now, armor increases the cost of all your abilities instead. Here is the most extreme example of Aeyr's Drives before and after maxing out his gear slots on heavy armor:



Again, this is after equipping two pieces of heavy armor on Aeyr, one of only two party members that can even wear it. You can lessen the SP cost penalty by equipping lighter armor, or go completely unarmored and play more conservatively.

To balance this, three changes have been made:

1: Armor's defensive bonuses will be increased to balance out the lack of mobility.
2: Armor will no longer reduce max SP.
3: All enemies will gain an extra bonus to damage to punish those who let their SP run out while wearing little to no armor.

So why make this change at all?

Well, the change to SP damage reduction from a hard amount to a % amount didn't compliment the bonuses given to armor. I wanted the decision to equip armor be one of managing mobility vs. defense. If you wanted to go unarmored, the thought should be "I'm going to keep my SP from running out to maximize my defense."

This didn't work well with SP damage reduction being % based. You could just equip heavy armor, then play the same way as if you were unarmored. There was no drawback. Therefore, the change was made. I'm very happy with the result.

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Moving forward, I'll be beginning work on Chapter 5. The first draft of all the cutscenes have been written, so I'll be focusing on editing them and designing the final dungeon before I'm ready to put it all together. Unity has completed all of the monsters, and Eric Ramos has completed all of the music. So that means all blame for the game's delays can be rested solely at my feet! Isn't that grand?

As always, thanks for reading! Seeing any kind of interest in the game after so long means the world to me.