The VG Resource

NPCs now have indicators to yell you if you're able to speak to them. This is more or less apart of a step I want to do, which is provide more non-verbal player feedback on interaction (Verbal feedback on anything easy to understand, such as the game pausing and telling you "Walk up to an NPC, and press the action button to speak to them" is just going to get on the player's nerves), so it's easier to understand what does what.

For non speaking NPC's that have interaction such as signs, the sign will appear on the player's head with a question mark instead of "..."

I was thinking of making a way of having save points that relate to a more proper, immersive method, as the current way of saving is a tad stiff.

My ideas were these:

-Some sort of saving object. A typewriter, a notebook, a freaking pencil.

-Autosaves on every map load?

-Some sort of book memory like thing? Dunno.

I'll experiment more on tonight, as I want something to fit with the theme I have, rather than pausing, going to the save option with no feedback that the game did indeed save properly. I may go with the book idea, as books are common things in households, and it makes sense to write in them as a method of preserving memories.

Quick edit: I also wanted to say expect some more undocumented progress. As revealing too much on a game can ruin any interest on a final product due to everything being shown.

Possibly concept for a method of more gameplay orientated saving. Yes or No options do not exist, yet.

This also brings up another feature that I've never really documented. The options menu allows the text box GUI placement, it has 3 settings on where it can go. Top, bottom, and auto. Top and bottom are as expected, but auto tries to make sure the text box isn't in the way of NPCs via choosing top or bottom based off NPC location.

Added yes/no options, though, the trigger system used to activate these is not finished, yet. Also, minor re-write of the saving text to sound a tad better. Added some post-ingame filters on the book to make it look more old-fashioned and dusty.

Rough save menu. This menu will probably be overhauled by quite a bit, as it's not up to scratch for me.

Major update.

This thread is sorta not gonna be updated anymore, as I've decided that I'll move it away into the hip new blog fad the kids these days are into. This'll allow some more traffic depending on how it goes.

So I spent an hour (or maybe half) making a cheap Tumblr blog for it. If there's people here who don't like Tumblr, I am sorry to offend anyone who does not like their website.

Anyways the blog can be found here

Tumblr is fine. Although, for those who don't like it, you can copy and paste text here right? If you want advice and crits and stuff.

What do you use to record gif files of your game? I can't find one that doesn't horribly destroy the view or cut the colour to like 4 or 5.

I will. Not getting much attention there, anyways.

I use OBS classic with the lossless video setup. It does not work right on uncommon screen sizes. (Like 360x240) so I upscale the game to 720x480.

Afterwards, I use the GIMP GAP plugin to split the .FLV video into frames. I go to Image > Mode > Index and set the video to 255 colours, as a gif is rendered in 8-bit colour format. I then downscale each frame to proper size without anti-aliasing at this point before export.

I then export, and set the frame delay on all frames to 16 (which is actually 50 FPS due to GIF limitations I've been told)

OBS setup here (I'd advise to close any programs you don't use if you run recording like this, as it's very demanding) I also tend to set audio recording to pretty much none, as I don't record audio when doing gifs.

The saving so far is going good. The menus are not finalized yet, but they're readable for now.

Related update on the game's blog.

Added some more text. Pretty sure it looks better, now.

OCD moment: I think those windows would look better if each side shared the same design. The red and then solid black line is somewhat distracting.

I actually originally had it symmetric on all 4 sides, but I felt like it was causing the menus to look a tad bland, so I changed it up a bit.

I may revert back if some people don't like it, though.

Updated my to-do list a bit. As I need to focus on it somewhat.

Options menu:

⦁ Add some more options.
⦁ Add a GUI position feature (Top, down, dynamic)
⦁ Move gamepad setup it's own menu
⦁ Add an option to restart the controls to it's default settings
⦁ Add keybinds

Animation:

To be added later

Text:

⦁ Allow text to be customize able when a NPC is talked to multiple times.
⦁ Allow custom NPC text speeds.

NPCs:
⦁ Allow NPCs to walk in the same manner as enemies
⦁ Customize able NPC animations

Status Menu:

⦁ Allow swapping to other party members.
⦁ Finalize the menu so it doesn't look messy.

Item Menu:

⦁ Make the use, and hold features do something
⦁ Allow multiple amounts of items to be tossed.
⦁ Get equipment, and key items shown off right.

Save menu:

⦁ Loading menu needs to be started.

Enemies:

⦁ Add customizeable enemy quirks to different enemies.

Game logic:

⦁ Get other characters and stats done up.

Changes since last revision:

⦁ Saving menu is pretty much almost finished.

Mockup of a redo of the status menu, as the original looked real bad. Reused the save menu for this, as it works pretty fine.

Development progress is also going to be a bit a slower, as my laptop dying out basically became a morale killer for me.

Cute Sprites