After a break from blogging I’m back. Game’s core systems are eating up a ton of time but they’re important and the sooner they’re completed the better. Lots of work to do still, but the foundation of the game is starting to take form.

Well, that was quite the break but I’m back now. Fortunately in the time I haven’t been blogging I’ve been busy programming. The game’s making steady progress but it’s much slower than I had hoped. I’m still focusing on getting the core systems working and spending as much time as I can on making sure that everything under the hood is working right as opposed to charging ahead on content.

But man it is going slower than I had hoped. I’ve spent about 4 months working on a basic tech test of the game and that’s still missing some big parts. I still need to develop a system for generalizing NPC characters so they can share sprite sheets, the UI needs to be overhauled to use a new UI scheme, proper audio support needs to go in, much of the test art still isn’t in game, player movement has some funky animation issues I’m still addressing.

I’m working through these issues one by one and I don’t want to start content development until these are taken care of since we need to address them down the road anyways.

One of the major points of pain with the game is that the setting and gameplay don’t lean towards some of the easy gameplay systems I thought we could depend on. One of the reason’s I based the game on old JRGs is that much of the mechanics design for those was a known quantity. But what looked good on paper isn’t working on screen. But I am making progress and the heart of the game is starting to come into focus.

Progress Summary:

Implemented Gossip System

Redid Game’s UI scheme to a ‘panel’ based UI as opposed to a menu based UI

Executive is now active during meetings

Implemented NPC color scheming across the game.

Added a title screen

First audio tracks from our musician Charlie has gone in game

Optimization work

Several UI and menu fixes

NPCs now take proper turns during meeting sequences

Implemented ‘event’ loading (When the game detects a certain date/time it’ll force logic to load)

Started work on Microsoft developer registration

New Screenshots:

Title Screen New UI Iteration Test