Today’s Music Choice: “Wonders We Have Lost”

Yes, it’s a repeat, but it’s a good one. I’ll have something new next time. Probably.

Progress Report

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last report, and I’ve had more than my share of interruptions (distracting mini games, car troubles, internet outages) that have made it difficult for me to keep a grip on my typical work schedule. Here’s what I did manage to get done, though.

First, I spent most of last week finishing up the Quad Pro Quo 2.0 standalone game, which you can play by following that there link. I may publish it on the Google Play store as a free app soon, too. You don’t need to wait for that to happen, though: there is an APK download link at the main game page already. Most of the gameplay ported over easily enough, and the elemental rule change was very easy to implement, as I had the foresight to section off the “elemental comparison” functions when I originally wrote the code 4 years ago, so I only needed to tweak a few lines. Most of the time spent was adding more refined mouse controls (much of which I’ve learned while developing Eden’s Last Sunrise), and writing dialog for every character. I am very, very glad that’s all over and done with.

Changing gears back to the main Eden’s Last Sunrise project: I’ve started implementing actual game content instead of secondary/prototype stuff, at last. Specifically, a new player is treated to a brief narration about the setting and history of the game world, and prepares them for an in medias res opening to the game.

After the initial narration, you get to pick your starting faction: either the surface-dwellers or the spacefarers. It’s appropriately dramatic as well.

After you make your choice, you get to design your commander character, as I’ve shown before, and then you’re dropped right into the opening scenes. If you chose to be a dweller, you start off eagerly awaiting the arrival of the spacefarers at their landing point. If you chose the spacefarers side, you are part of that landing party, and your introduction involves a quick overview of the coming calamity, and how you plan to explain it to the less scientifically-minded dweller ambassadors. It’s a tense situation from the get-go, and things become worse in a hurry. But, I’ll leave the details of that for another time.

Now that I’ve got the front end and initial branching choice created, I can start developing the main meat of the game, even with only a limited number of assets on-hand at the moment. I can always come back and plug in artwork/animations later, so my current plan is to focus on the last pieces of the game that I can “template” and then start using all these tools to begin creating an actual gameplay experience.

The last secondary piece I need to incorporate is the “non-battle” mission handling. This means away missions and social encounters, mostly. The social one was pretty easy: when a character wants to hang out, a mission will show up in your orders list, and you are whisked away to a private scene with them. In these scenes, you interact with them, hear out their problems, and offer responses that can bump up your “trust” rating with them. When their trust is high enough, you’ll get a special scene that advances their personal story, and you’ll often get a little bonus or gift out of it. Completely earning someone’s trust will grant you the choice of spending the (literal) last day on earth together with them. But, you can only pick one character to spend this time with, so choose wisely. Or, wait until your next playthrough to spend it with someone else. It’s all good.

The more tricky piece of this is the “dispatch” mission handler. Basically, these missions will come and go as days pass like any other event. When you choose one of these, you get a brief rundown of the event, the types of skills or parameters needed for success, and the rewards you’ll receive. So, you may come upon a mining mission that requires characters who have a high “power” rating, and success rewards you with ore and minerals that can be used for weapon upgrading. Or, a mission may require a certain class or archetype (like, classes that can heal), or even specific stats like heat resistance.

These requirements come into play in the second screen, where you can assign your characters to participate on the away mission. I don’t have a picture of this one yet, because I’m still working on it! The gist is: you can assign characters from your available roster to take on the mission. You will usually assign one “leader” who will add a majority of the talent needed for success, and optionally, a few support characters who can contribute and also reap the skill/mastery rewards. You’ll see the success rate of the mission with the characters you’ve selected to dispatch, as well as a general indicator of how effective each character will be on that mission. There is usually a limit of how many characters you can dispatch on one mission, but you can throw more characters at a mission to get its success rate closer to 100% if you need to. The downside is, these characters will be unavailable for socializing and side battles until they return from their assignment, which is usually a few in-game days. The calendar is set up so that major “story” battles never overlap with these away missions, so your whole party will be available for major operations. Since you’re on a limited calendar, there is more care involved in whom to send and when, to make sure you get the most out of your characters’ growth and social opportunities.

Anyway, that’s about 75% working now. Really, all I need to do is finish building the dispatch UI screen where you send your allies away, and handle the trigger event for when they return. They’ll give a little speech about how the operation went, and you’ll either get a reward, a failure notice (with a decreased reward), or a “bonus” reward that’s possible if your success rate was well more than 100%. And, no, you can’t savescum these missions by attempting them over and over, so don’t worry about trying.

The other thing I worked on this week was a silly decorative touch. Basically, if you advance a day on the calendar, you get a little visual representation of time passing on the screen, so I wrote a little routine to handle that. Do note that, as you draw closer to doomsday, the atmosphere may start to change ever so slightly…

I just realized I’ve never shown the “world map” UI or presentation before now! Basically, the map itself is a very simple, low-textured/low-poly PS1-style map, deliberately lo-fi looking. I will dress it up more in the final version, but I want it to remain simple and classic-feeling regardless. Your little spaceship will jump around from point to point (that icon is an obvious placeholder), or occasionally blast off into orbit when taking part in off-world missions.

The UI itself is pretty simple. You always have access to a few basic functions – creating custom recruits, crafting weapons (when Mahk is recruited), playing cards with your friends, setting game options, saving the game (this icon will blink after you finish a battle to alert you to save your progress), and quitting out to the title screen. The “roster” section lets you dive into your allies and set their classes, equipment, and whatnot. Lastly, the “orders” panel shows all of the missions available for today, and lets you take part in them if desired. On the top right is your calendar (again with placeholder), showing the current day and how many days until the next major operation, which you should be prepared for.

And, I reckon that’s it for secondary systems. This week, I will finish up the dispatch UI and make sure that’s working. Then, I will create a little “week” of events to test out the day-to-day flow. Events are basically encoded by hand, since there will be hundreds over the course of the 180-day in-game calendar, times 10 for the 10 different possible story paths.

Woof. I have my work cut out for me.

Hopefully, coding these events and keeping them balanced and interesting will be easy enough, while the battle system will carry the main “gameplay” to go along with all the planning. Ironically, writing the social and story cutscenes and mapping out all the character actions and animations will be the most time-consuming part by far. I think I’m ready, though.

But, I’ve got something else to announce soon. That’s coming up. Maybe next week, too? We’ll see.