[16.5/60] CoyoteCraft

[coyotecraft]

To Finish
Animated Battlers
Been Helping out with Sillypieman's game 'Lucid Awakening 2' for 2 or more years now, I think. I've been switching between Spriter and Scripter. My main priority is to finish the different jobs sprites for each character. Everything is pretty much designed and laid out at this point. I just have to cross the finish line.

I'm also making battlers for Dies Irae: Phantatiom Elements. Well, more like one battler. I could finish what I'm working on tomorrow. Then I don't know if I'll be doing any more after that. The creator is busy raising funds, and commissioning new portraits for all the characters so I'd have to wait for the new designs.

CMS, Ability Points Script
This is where 60hours doesn't sound like a lot. Because I can spent all night trying to get a simple method to work an make next to no progress. Most of that time is spent studying ruby sites so I can figure out how to get a script to do what I want it to do. I plan to replace the basic menu windows with custom graphics but the AP is more important right now. So far, skills have an AP cost, and it shows which skills are already learned. I need to make variables for each character's total AP, and program how AP is spent. I'm pretty sure I know how to do that.

 

[coyotecraft]

Feb 1st

Pretty sure I spent more then 4 hours working on the AP system to day. But most of the time was spent studying how regexps work so I could utilize the Notebox feature in rpgmaker VX. I almost posted a thread here asking for help but I figured it out on my own. In the process I thought of a way to hide skills based on the the character's job class.

 

[coyotecraft]

Feb. 2nd
Managed to get about an hour in this morning before my Niece and Nephew came to visit. Coding the rest of the AP/skill menu was a snap. The skill mastery menu is fully functional. I'll work on the layout and navigation some other time. The important thing is it works so Sillypieman can balance the gameplay and decide AP costs for the skills.

 

[Perihelion]

Looking good, Coyote! Hope to see more progress as the month goes on.

 

[coyotecraft]

5 hours in on the AP/skill system.
Enemies give AP and can be set in the database. Since the game has a job change feature, skills are hidden/shown based on the character's current job class. And also toggled in the mastery menu depending on the job being available to the player at that point in the game.
I found a lot of kinks while I was writing the email to give sillypieman the script data. Also made a lot of stupid mistakes. Found some compatibility issues with other scripts just by chance, but easy fixes.
I think I'm done with scripting for a while, I can go back to pixel artist mode and finish sprites.

 

[coyotecraft]

About another hour messing with some bugs Pieman found in the battle system. Writing emails to a teammate counts as development time right? I also opened some old sprites I made a couple years ago, experimented with the colors a bit but didn't actually change anything yet. I might still do more tonight.

I think I might make a tutorial and demo about cutscenes and storytelling. I wrote brief thread in the tutorial section about RpgMaker playtesting cause its sad its gathering dust and no one is submitting new ideas. But I also have this anxiety of being the only one posting and having my name all over the forum.

 

[coyotecraft]

I've got a cold. First my eyes were really sore, so I couldn't stand to stare at a screen. Now I'm sneezing, blowing my nose, and drooling excessively (from breathing through my mouth I guess). So I'm mostly laying in bed thinking about what I'm going to do next and how.

 

[coyotecraft]

Under 1 hour spent cleaning up running frames and a jump-back pose for a Dies Irae character. Then over the next 3 hours I played with the battle script settings, added frames to the attack animation from 4 frames to 6. I drew a couple different stick figure attack animations to get an idea how it'll look. The process of importing and battle testing really eats up a lot of time, especially when rpgmaker take 30secs to start everytime I start the player. The first animation was too fancy for a normal attack. The 2nd one looks good on paper, but the speed of motion isn't right when it plays, and I can only increase the number of frames per pose -not the frame rate. I'm really close to finishing this sheet though.

Oh yeah, I also messed with setting to bring sprites closer together when attacking so they arn't hitting air.

 

[Xhukari]

Pixel Artist Mode, activate! :p
Sounds like you have quite the all-encompassing skills involved for your project, and it seems to be making some good progress. I was just wondering what does the other members of the team do... dialogue script? plot? Sounds? Music? Mapping? Because if I'm not wrong, it sounds like you program and do graphics for the game.
(Super Coyotecraft to the rescue!)

 

[coyotecraft]

For Dies Irae:Phantatiom Elements, I'm just making battlers. Although, I have a copy of the battle script for testing purposes. Some Poses need to be customized, and its good be be familiar with the script so I know what can and can't be done. I only know about some of the characters, and what little is shown in an old demo.

For Lucid Awakening 2, I started off as a volunteer and made custom sprites for the main characters. Some how I ended up learning ruby and worked on the job change system and the menu too. Pieman did all the writing, maps, events systems.

Spriting is really boring and I've been avoiding it. Yesterday I sat down to work on sprites and ended up washing windows and cleaning dishes instead. I spent an hour and a half on just an attack animation today. It's just blocked in colors though, so I need to clean it up and move on to the skill cast and victory poses.
It really shows my limitations. The fastest I've finished a battler is a week, and even then I made revisions to it later.

 

[Xhukari]

Aaaah yes. I can understand how you don't like spriting, it looks so awkward and time consuming. I know Flash graphics doesn't compare in tedium, but I lose interest with doing art assets too... something to do with knowing you go so much to do, I think... kinda kills the motivation.

 

[coyotecraft]

This might sound weird. But I feel like planning and thinking about doing something has a negative impact on what I actually accomplish. It seems like I get more done when I start something spontaneously.

 

[coyotecraft]

There's no way I'm going to get my hours unless I don't sleep for the next couple days.
With the LA2 sprites I've been meditating on how to proceed. It had been my goal from the start to make them as animated as possible. Originally they just ran up to the enemy and swung a weapon which was basically just rotating the weapon icon. I also didn't want the characters using the same template and have the same movements like knee bouncing in sync. But back when I started we didn't have much of the battle system planned out, not to mention pieman was still writing the story.
So now the 3 main characters have 8 job classes each, different weapons and outfits. Plus a kind of limit break transformation. And on top of that there are 16 side characters that will appear in battles. They're mostly XP RTP characters and right now just using the walking sprites. I had been hanging on to my original goal all this time, but I need to let it go and do something simpler. I think pieman is content with using the walking sprites in battle, but I think it'll be weird to have some sprites animated with unique poses, while the rest are just walking sprites standing sideways.

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

i feel the same, i really want to get to 60, but thats still 10 hours away, i doubt i can do 10 hours in the next 2 days. i like what i have seen of your projects, im mostly interested in your art and the job classes you plan on using.

 

[Resource Dragon]

This might sound weird. But I feel like planning and thinking about doing something has a negative impact on what I actually accomplish. It seems like I get more done when I start something spontaneously.

BOOM. Welcome to my life.

More on-topic, The CMS is looking great. I would recommend some sorting methods for your skills, like alphabetical, mastered, stuff like that. After you have the base work done, of course. lol.