”Woah, a visual novel with battle systems you say?!”
Yeah, don’t get too excited. It’s still a visual novel, but the battle system I’ve cooked up is trying its very best to simulate a real MMORPG, whilst still maintaining exciting story elements.
So what exactly does this mean? Well, when Zoe creates a party with her friends, they now appear in a HUD. There are little profile pictures and working HP/MP bars, even for the enemy as well.
So most battles will have two options in them. The first: where/when should I attack? The second: which attack should I use?. It doesn’t sound like much, but if you consider that the first choice has between 2-6 options, and then the second has 7 attacks... that could result in over 40 outcomes!
Yeah, don’t get too excited. It’s still a visual novel, but the battle system I’ve cooked up is trying its very best to simulate a real MMORPG, whilst still maintaining exciting story elements.
So what exactly does this mean? Well, when Zoe creates a party with her friends, they now appear in a HUD. There are little profile pictures and working HP/MP bars, even for the enemy as well.
So most battles will have two options in them. The first: where/when should I attack? The second: which attack should I use?. It doesn’t sound like much, but if you consider that the first choice has between 2-6 options, and then the second has 7 attacks... that could result in over 40 outcomes!
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Of course, if I was an awesome programmer, it’d probably be easier to implement a proper battle system than write all these branches, but, you know, it’s not that bad. A lot of the results have similar outcomes, so I’m only really losing out on excessive lines of code, and a bit of time.
To be honest, it’s really been tough learning how to do all this. After all, this is the first game I’ve ever programmed and I have a lot to learn. Some days, I feel like I hit a brick wall, but thank God for the Lemma Soft Forums! You guys really help me out! Anyway, when I struggle with programming, I really need to take a mental break, so a lot of backgrounds have been created in the last few weeks! Some IRL ones and some in-game ones (I’ll get to them later!).
As you may have seen above, all the HUD for the battle system has been implemented. I’ve also created animations for the attacks too, so it feels more satisfying to play. However, I’ve also been working on some of the IRL stuff...
I’m so happy to have finally nailed this text box design! I really like it and feel it matches the character sprites and background art well. I need to add the settings, save and skip buttons to this screen at some point, though (they’re on the everlasting to-do list).
Then, the main menu, preferences and save screens need to be designed, but I’m leaving those until a little later in the project, when I’ve 100% decided on the aesthetic and overall tone of the game. I’m still not there yet… after all, only half of the story has been written.
But that reminds me… I’ve been trying to find a music composer in the last few weeks. Sadly, plans have fallen through, so I went on the look-out again. I have a few people in mind but need to create a proper brief first and see how they interpret it, though it feels hard to do this when not everything’s decided yet… dilemmas!
To be honest, it’s really been tough learning how to do all this. After all, this is the first game I’ve ever programmed and I have a lot to learn. Some days, I feel like I hit a brick wall, but thank God for the Lemma Soft Forums! You guys really help me out! Anyway, when I struggle with programming, I really need to take a mental break, so a lot of backgrounds have been created in the last few weeks! Some IRL ones and some in-game ones (I’ll get to them later!).
As you may have seen above, all the HUD for the battle system has been implemented. I’ve also created animations for the attacks too, so it feels more satisfying to play. However, I’ve also been working on some of the IRL stuff...
I’m so happy to have finally nailed this text box design! I really like it and feel it matches the character sprites and background art well. I need to add the settings, save and skip buttons to this screen at some point, though (they’re on the everlasting to-do list).
Then, the main menu, preferences and save screens need to be designed, but I’m leaving those until a little later in the project, when I’ve 100% decided on the aesthetic and overall tone of the game. I’m still not there yet… after all, only half of the story has been written.
But that reminds me… I’ve been trying to find a music composer in the last few weeks. Sadly, plans have fallen through, so I went on the look-out again. I have a few people in mind but need to create a proper brief first and see how they interpret it, though it feels hard to do this when not everything’s decided yet… dilemmas!
Anyway, I’ve also made a world map for Edenscape that will show up when you travel around. It was super fun to do as I really had to consider everything about Edenscape to design it!
When Zoe travels around, dotted lines plan the course to her destination. I imagine a few more zones will get added later in development, though it all depends on time and money, as usual!
Finally (gosh, it’s been a busy blog post!), I mentioned I’d worked on some new backgrounds. I’m not going to share them all (there’s been quite a few), but I’ll leave you with my favourite. This is a special scene, which will be tricky to unlock, but worth it as you get one of the sweetest moments with one of the romantic interests. It’s one of the first scenes I’ve actually story-boarded (more on that another time) and, honestly, I really think it paid off. ‘til next time!
When Zoe travels around, dotted lines plan the course to her destination. I imagine a few more zones will get added later in development, though it all depends on time and money, as usual!
Finally (gosh, it’s been a busy blog post!), I mentioned I’d worked on some new backgrounds. I’m not going to share them all (there’s been quite a few), but I’ll leave you with my favourite. This is a special scene, which will be tricky to unlock, but worth it as you get one of the sweetest moments with one of the romantic interests. It’s one of the first scenes I’ve actually story-boarded (more on that another time) and, honestly, I really think it paid off. ‘til next time!
“Sometimes I come here… just to think, you know?”