Well, since it's the end of the year, I figure it's time to give a lengthy update for the few people who check this blog. (Sorry about that, by the way.)
First, let's sum up what I've been working on over the past few months.
MECHANICS:
A big part of what I've been working on is the general mechanics of the game. Making a turn-based RPG is a lot more complicated than I anticipated, even with the generally simple battle mechanics- especially given my commitment to quality of life features to make the game more fun to play. Making all these things play nice together can sometimes be tough. Thankfully, RPG Maker MV has tons of plugins available by a wide variety of authors to make things easier.
Here's a list of things that I've currently successfully implemented, to give you all an idea of what's going on under the hood.
-Passive buffs gained upon reaching specific levels are now fully implemented along with a detailed status screen to review them all.
-Limited inventory space is a feature present in this game, along with a storage box system to contain excess items.
-Great care has been taken to prevent softlocks or losing of items with the limited inventory. For example, if your items are full when opening a chest, you'll get the opportunity to put an item in the storage box to prevent losing items. Note that items equipped on your character do not count towards the total.
-Full keyboard remapping is now in, accessible from the options menu.
-Most enemy encounters are visible on overworld, and get knocked away from the player upon escaping battle to prevent instantly being put back into a fight. The only exceptions are scripted fights or boss battles.
-There's a Battle Retry feature on boss fights now to allow for skipping of pre-battle cutscenes.
-Animated battle backgrounds are making good progress, to add flavor.
This is a fair amount of stuff, but thankfully most of the kinks are ironed out and things should go more smoothly from here. Now, with that, I have an announcement to make!
DEMO ANNOUNCEMENT
That's right- in the near future, there WILL be a public demo of Moonchild for you all to play!
I've hesitated to make this announcement for a while, but now I think I've finished enough that I know it'll come out. I can't announce a release date yet, but in lieu of that I'll give an outline of what the demo will contain, and what's still left to do.
DEMO FEATURES
The demo will consist of Moonchild's first area- Tritown, Max's hometown. It contains the main town with many NPCs, a short introductory area to get the players into combat, and the game's first dungeon, Tritown Elementary.
Only one party member out of four will be present in the demo.
The Passive Buffs system is fully implemented, and the player will most likely get to level 6 by the end, with all of the
WHAT'S LEFT TO DO
-Cutscenes. This is a game with a fair amount of story, which means that cutscenes are somewhat frequent. These tend to take a fair amount of time, but it'll add a lot to the presentation, so please bear with me.
-Animated Battle Backgrounds. There's a couple of these left to make for the first area.
-Music. You may have noticed that I've been uploading a lot of music on the Frog In A Box YouTube channel- that's all for this first area. There are only a few tracks left to make, but they're the most important ones. These will be uploaded as they're completed.
-Enemy Balancing: This can take a while. To make sure the enemies are fun and fair to fight entails usually fighting them over and over again to make sure everything flows nicely. Most of the enemies are fully programmed, however, so all that's left is making sure the numbers work out.
-NPCs: NPCs are the lifeblood of Moonchild's areas, and Tritown is no exception. Making sure it's populated and fun to explore is the most important thing. This is the one part of development that is highly subject to change based on how many ideas I have, but typically it goes quickly.
I hope this update is informative. I'm going to be on vacation for the next couple of weeks, so updates on my Twitter will stop for that time, but expect more frequent posts pertaining to the demo on there once I get back.
Thank you all for following the development of Moonchild. Look forward to the demo's release!