It’s been a while since our last development update, but we’ve come prepared with quite a bit of new content to share, ranging from more technical news to more visual stuff.

Opening Cutscenes

Cutscenes can now be triggered at different times during a chapter, as well as move the camera, put emphasis on tiles, etc. This means I can finally start building actual coherent chapters to build a demo soon!

Of course, adding this feature in a way to scale it up meant that I also had to build the options settings, which you can see in-depth below.

Options

With these in place, I can build features who can use these options without having to backtrack to add every modifier from the options later on, I’ll just have to build the options menu to allow the player to edit them.

Here’s a quick rundown of what these options do, even though some of these are self-explanatory :

lang : Text language. English and French are planned.

audio : Audio language. English and French are planned.

tutorial : Will ignore tutorial boxes if you turn this option off.

warnings : Will not show effective damage warnings if you turn this option off.

anims : 1 = full anims. 0 = map anims. -1 = no anims (will move as fast as your computer can handle it)

autocursor : Will not reset cursor to your main character if you turn this option off.

autoendturn : Will not end turn when all your units have finished their turn if you turn this option off.

textspd : Will alter text speed in dialog windows.

volumebgm : Will alter volume for background music.

volumesounds : Will alter volume for menu sounds.

volumevoices : WIll alter the volume for in-game critical quotes, level up quotes, etc.

If there are any options that are missing from this list that you’d like to see, let us know!

Portrait Revamps

After cycling through various styles when drawing concept arts for characters, we finally found a style that we really like, which you already saw in the cutscene screenshot above. We updated two characters who already were showcased in Hunter and Isaac, which you can see below without any emphasis effect.

Note that we shared these on our Facebook Page last week, if you’re interested in seeing news on the project a few days earlier!

Improvements

We also worked on a bunch of smaller features who aren’t big enough to warrant a full section of a Game Dev Update, but I’ll showcase a few of them here.

The Talk function now has the potential to boost stats, give items, etc. at the end of a conversation as well as recruiting NPCs/Enemies. Some of these conversations are triggered by achieving Support Ranks or by in-game events. Note that you can always act after Talking to another unit (you just can’t move again).

The WTA has also been updated.

Swords/Light now gain an extra +10% avoid and +4 effective speed (which is just enough so that if two units have the same speed stat, but the sword/light user has WTA, he’ll double).

Axes/Dark now gain +3 damage instead of +4.

Lances/Elemental now have -3 damage taken instead of -2.

Further experimentation will tell if these changes are more balanced. We’ll see in upcoming tests!

I also fixed a funny glitch where units who were too high leveled when compared to their target actually lost experience points for killing them. There is now a minimum of 1 exp gained for any action.

What’s Next?

There are still some issues with Enemy Phase battle calculations since battle Skills were added to the game, so these are my priority. Then I’ll be able to build some tutorial chapters in line with the actual beginning of the game to showcase a playable demo for you guys.

We also finally got some help for 3D, so expect to see some actual models to replace some of these cubes by the next update!

Character Teaser

Now that a majority of the playable cast have some concept arts (50 on 66), these character teasers will start to include revamps, NPCs and enemies.

Today’s teaser is actually Quentin, who has been revealed a while ago, since he is currently undergoing a makeover to fit the new aesthetic of the game.

As per usual, thank you so much for your comments and support throughout development,

Coco