Amethyst Liddell and Chasing Selene

[Monthly] Full Roadmap to Demo + March Streams in like a lion (Patreon)

Published:

2020-03-06 21:36:45

Imported:

2026-06

Content

firstly and as always: for patrons who pledged during february--

thank you for being here! your hair looks great today. probably.
everyone's been added to the credit list but if you want to not be added to the credit list or want to be added under a certain name please let me know!
accounts have been hooked up to supporter status where possible, but if yours was not, please let me know! there were some accounts i couldn't place by email
messages have been sent out for level 10-25 folks
if you're level 50+ up and want to call in the sprite request or something similar please let me know!

okay, now for the meaty part. february was busy! i love it!

on reborn's front, we finished another legendary quest and made some difficulty modes. we're gonna keep working on those modes because there's a fucktonne of trainers in this game for some reason, and the legendary quests will speed up after starlight's demo but a trickle for now is fine!

on starlight's part we:

and, frankly, more. those are just the big things. and those are some damn big things tbh.
wow that makes me feel better about my life tbh. i still feel like i'm doing nothing but this is like, gosh, i can't wait to see where we're at by next month.

but where will we be at next month, ame?

truly nobody knows, but since we finished our roadmap of major implementations for the battle system, i'd say it's time we figured that out.

luckily, i already have.

i've got a brand new roadmap for you, and instead of just finishing out the core of the battle system, this time we're going straight to the end of the demo. that said, this isn't a short list. i've broken it up into three loose parts, so buckle up and we'll talk about everything.

[Part 1- Assets and Functionality]

Combat Models
Message Models
Overworld Sprites
Maps/Tiles
System Finishing
Title/Accessories

[Part 2- Core Content ]

Facial Expressions
Combat Animations
Backgrounds
Battle
Story

[Part 3- Bells and Whistles]

Music
Battle Animations
System Polish
World Map

Wow! If that looks like a lot, it's because: firstly, it is. but secondly this is a little more specific than the scoreboard for reborn usually is. and thirdly, some of this jank is still a process of getting the thing going as opposed to a typical overhead development time.

still, let's break it down now y'all.

Part 1- Assets and Functionality

Combat Models

Frankly these are going to be the biggest contributor to overhead development time, and that's why I've got two people besides myself working on them (and frankly, looking for another). They have to be lined, colored, shaded, and split into enough layers to animate them fluidly. For the demo, we need 13 in total. 3 are done, 2 are in progress. This is a hurdle.

Message Models

Message models are higher quality VN style art for cutscenes and such. Fortunately, not every battler needs one-- unfortunately, some character who aren't battlers do. For the demo, need 13 (but a different 13 than above?) message models and 7 are done.

Overworld Sprites

These are self explanitory, and you've seen me make one on stream already. We'll do another this weekend. It only takes an evening, so it's not bad at all. We need 16 for the demo and 2 are done.

Maps/Tilesets

Gotta make them. Defining the tiles' style is the hardest part of this; making and collecting a bunch of starting tiles is likely to be mainly tedious. Also included here is parralax mapping but I am so looking forward to that. For the demo, we shouldn't need more than 3 maps.

System Finishing

This is a vague, catch-all category for basic features on the programming side. It includes things like, expanding the AI framework to do everything I need for the demo, and making the rest of the passive skills and combat arts... It also includes adding peripheral systems like Reinforcements, Elemental effectiveness, Mortal Combat, and so on... That said, it's much less work than our major implementations, naturally.

Title/Accessories

This one is strictly a start-up issue. Basically, I gotta make the title screen, but I also gotta stylize things like the save screen, the options screen, the keyboard config, etc, to match the rest of the game. Those are probably gonna be a pain in the ass, but I only gotta do it once. I also may decide to push some of those back from the demo and save them for later for Reborn's sake.
On the plus, I actually already did the title screen. We interrupt this text wall to bring you it.

The particles in the back are animated using our fancy new generator too! I was gonna take a gif but this screenshot has enough color shades in it to single-handedly decimate any gif into looking like it was made in microsoft paint, while also still somehow being 30+ MB. so. nope.

that said, this is the title screen for the demo only. full version will change.

anyway, that's part 1. despite being split in three, the parts are not created equal and most of the work is definitely front-loaded. i'll talk about the other parts somewhat more briefly.

Part 2- Core Content

Facial Expressions

Not only do we need message models, but we need them to reflect their current emotions! At least a little bit. This step depends on those being done, which is why it's in Part 2, but really it's significantly less work anyway.

Combat Animations

Not only do we need combat models, but we need them to reflect their current disposition to kill or be killed! Actually, these animations aren't really a big deal? They take some effort for sure, but not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things, which is nice. Like these are much harder than the above facial expressions, but I wouldn't be surprised if they took less overall time.

Backgrounds

Hopefully we don't need more than two or three of these either! These are in this section because they depend on the map being done. Fortunately we can reuse these for both cutscenes and combat.

Battle

This is the main work of actually setting up the demo's chapter so that units exist and move like I want them to, triggers happen properly and so on. Thanks to me being the one who's made the rest of the system, this should be cinchy. But it's gotta be done, and doing it depends on basically everything before this point, whoops lol.

Story

see exactly the above but instead of the battle it's the story and cutscenes. cray.

Part 3- Bells and Whistles

Music

Music is important, but no other part of development depends on it, so it can basically be saved to last and augment what's done. I am planning on making six songs for the demo.

Battle Animations

Not only do we need combat animations to exist, but we also need them to have like, sound effects and visuals and stuff. This is that step. It might be slightly tedious, or it might be okay? Hopefully it'll be okay? I tried doing one already and it wasn't so bad. It's mostly for sounds.

System Polish

Another big catch-all programming category. This one includes stuff like, making transitional animations in the UI, making the UX as intuitive as possible, sound design where it's lacking, quality of life features, so on.... there's a lot we can do here and I'll probably have to eventually draw a line where I say the demo is good enough. But this will likely be among the last steps.

World Map

Finally, this. This is sort of a stretch goal, and if the demo is taking way too long-- well, it is... if the demo is taking way, way too long, I may drop it from the plan until the actual release. But if possible, I'd like to make Starlight's world map and include it in the demo pre-emptively as sort of a teaser, especially since Reborn started with the region map, and I feel like that was very effective for showing people what all is to come. We'll see how this one works out. It's also something I could possibly do during the testing phase.

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whew. a lot. but it is finite, and we'll get there. nothing to it but to do it!

speaking of doing it, how do you kids feel about some streams?! most of the work on our plate is art/graphics/mapping related, so we are still gonna be doing weekly streams for a while, and will probably continue to alternate reborn and starlight on them. same as month, here's our streaming schedule!

Saturday 3p 3/7 (that's tomorrow!)-- Starlight OW Sprite Stream
Saturday 3p 3/14 -- Legendary Mapping Stream
Saturday 3p 3/21 -- ???????? Starlight Stream

Those times are in MST-- please click here to compare your timezone !

Once again, we won't be streaming the last Saturday of the month because our site staff meetings are then.

Anyway, that's it for this long post. Hope to see y'all on tomorrow! We'll be doing Glasya's overworld sprite... ah... oh dear, spriting a person with vitiligo in that small resolution will be... an adventure...
/.... no! we can do it~!! ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ give me your energy ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ