Let’s start this new week with some friendly faces! As memory orb progress is coming along, it’s time for a whole bunch of expressions for the main trio featured in one or a few of them, who so far only have one portrait expression.
First up, Charlotte, aka ‘mom’, who has expressions in three different skin tones depending on how you designed your character (her hair color will be changed by putting another sprite with just the hair on top of this one):
Next, we have Dad, for whom I made a couple of expressions I’m not even sure will be used, but it’s kind of hard to stop once you’re in the flow of making weird faces:
And finally, Ivy, who is somewhat more reserved and doesn’t have as many expressions as the others:
Now, out of nowhere, a new NPC for the desert appears! A long time ago, Fred secretly made an animation for a Merchant Isle NPC working in the docks, and now that I found it it’s of course time to make a portrait for him!
Since this NPC already has a sprite, he will likely appear in the stable patch when it goes live; I’m uncertain whether the priest and acolyte will make it since they haven’t gotten any Fred-made sprites yet. I guess we’ll see! :)
Next, the second to last card! This time a Solem, making a little sand castle in the dunes. Such a peaceful sight! Maybe he’s just angry you’re stepping all over the sand he uses for his castles?
WIP video:
And now, time for some combined bug testing with story developing and writing! Today I’ve taken some time to play through the entirety of the desert as well as Port Monnaie, finding areas to add flavor text through the magnifying glass-mechanic used here and there throughout the game.
As I’ve mentioned before, we’re keen on making the world of Grindea seem a vast and lively place, and one part of doing so is adding optional things to examine that might give you a tiny bit of flavor in terms of added information or simple commentary on what you see in the world.
In order to do this, I’ve played through each of the areas as we’ve finished them, writing down snippets here and there for things you can examine. Because it’s such a low priority thing, it hasn’t really been added to the game yet, though – at first it was something we neglected, and then as things progressed we thought it would be weird to suddenly start adding a ton of ‘inspectable’ (is that a word? haha!) things in the middle of the game without having added the previous ones, but adding all of the previous ones would take so long it simply isn’t a high enough priority at the moment (we want to finish the game, after all).
For now, it seems unlikely we’ll add these until the game is more or less done, when they will be one of the final things we add before the proper release (along with the bonus side quests and stuff we want to add in a true polish stage). Even so, it’s a nice opportunity to play through an area after completion and look at the world in a different light, where you try to imagine yourself in the role of someone exploring the game for the first time, trying to see what items might be interesting enough for closer examination.
Speaking of the future polish stage, I thought it’s time to take a look at what’s ahead of us. We’re actually very close to the end, believe it or not (though “very close” in this case likely means dev time for quite a while yet).
In terms of what we have left story wise, we’re talking one more regular dungeon (the ghost ship, which you’ve already seen a bit of), and then a special dungeon to tie it all together: a dungeon that will be a combination of all the previous dungeons made into one.
Our ideas for the final dungeon are varied, but one of the key parts is that we will be reusing previous enemies, but add a twist: they will be improved versions, not only stronger but likely also having one or more new attacks. There will also be mixed enemies from various parts of the game.
Our goal with this final dungeon is to bring all the parts of the game together, so there will be a little bit of everything, both in terms of enemies and areas, but also characters you’ve met and interacted with throughout the game. Because we’ll in part reuse enemies and area graphics, we hope it won’t take as crazily long to make compared to the other dungeons – but on the other hand a final dungeon needs a certain level of epicness, so, well…
But what about after this final dungeon, what then? As you know if you’ve been following this blog, we’ve talked a lot about adding things to each part of the game before we actually call it a day and release it as 1.0. That of course entrails more sidequests and the added story scenes I’ve been talking about before, but our “wishlist” for what we’d love to add is huge and it will probably be impossible to add everything – but one can hope.
Here’s a few things from our list (note that these are some things we wish to add; it doesn’t necessarily mean we will add them – it kind of depends on how long we think it’ll take and how we feel about these things at the end – and there are plenty more, as well):
We’d like to have more dialogues and other such things about the ‘gaming’ aspect of the world. In certain areas there’s already parts where scientists have investigated things such as card drops and the science behind some things in the game, but we’d like to add even more. We’re talking things such as people talking about them having leveled up or unlocked new skills, someone talking about a rare drop they found, people commenting on how OP some combos are, and so on.
Some random UI improvements:
* An indicator for when someone is typing in the chat (such as a speech bubble with a pen or something, simply to show people why you’re standing still but aren’t in the menu)
* Add an indicator on players with low health (such as a red circle beneath a character beneath a certain hp %)
* A progress bar for Trophies
We’d like to add Collector NPCs out in the fields as well – it can feel kind of empty right now, and it’d be cool to see Collectors out there doing what they do best: collecting things!
Lots of more arena challenges , including PVP.
More mini-games and other optional content, such as a quiz-like thing in the library (which also needs to get implemented, of course), a tower of block puzzles near Mount Bloom (you’ve probably already seen the exterior of the building).
Some kind of mechanic that gives you a Collector rank based on how many items you have, or something similar – basically give collecting some meaning! Right now the whole Collector thing isn’t really used much mechanics wise (or even story wise), and we’d like to improve on that.
Are there any such things you’d like to see in the game before the 1.0 release? Let us know and who knows what might make it into the game! :)
I would like some more reasons to grind in the game. Maybe some really challenging ones. They don’t necessarily have to be gameplay altering, maybe some really nice furniture or cosmetics for going above and beyond in the grinding aspect of the game. Maybe player trails? more hair options? etc. Anything to reward the player for grinding more since it is the name of the game and all…
Also, I know that mechanically, the game is nearing finish, but I think a reputation/relationship mechanic would be really cool. Maybe similar to the one in stardew valley, where there are a couple NPCs that have relationships and could assist you or give you rewards for building your relationships. This could also be another place to add more optional grind into the game.
I don’t know if it’s any good of an idea, but I had a thought about if there was a way to create a customizable weapon or shield… have it start out as a weak weapon, but after fusing a ton of grindable items into it, you could rank up the weapon or shield… And perhaps the rarer the item that you fuse into the weapon/shield, the more it ranks up? I don’t know, I’m not holding my breath, lol I love this game all the same…
Hello, this is my firts time writing here, and before we start I want to say that I am from Brazil so sorry if I type something wrong. I have 300 hours of gameplay and i created 5 character’s and 3 are 100%, and since from the start I wanted to play some cards with the old man in town in the left of Hat Store, then i wish to have some kind of mini game there. Other thing that I would like to see more ways of been important to the community of the world, like making some quest’s lines that upgrade the smith and unlock some cool new thing or like the arcade that we buy new buildings to the city, in other words, I wish to see we doing more impact than just been rewarded with some EXP and a new dialoge line. This is just my opinion, I love this game more than other INDIES, and sorry again for the English errors.
Theodore (administrator) wrote at 09/11/2018 11:53:Thanks for your insight and input guys! It’s very interesting and helpful to know what you feel about things like this :)
There’s two things I’d like in the game to help it pop out a little bit more.
1. More optional dialogue choices. There’s only been one instance of having a dialogue option box that doesn’t resort to “Yes” or “No”, and that was with Luke at the Toy Factory. Unfortunately, both of those dialogue options lead to the same line. It’d be nice for it to be expanded here and there. The dialogue options don’t have to really CHANGE anything other than just the dialogue itself, but it helps make the dialogue more engaging and would help me feel in immersed in my character more than just feeling as if I were a silent protagonist just being along for the train ride. Even the most silent protagonists in gaming get some dialogue options that aren’t just “Yes” or “No”s. Being able to get more than one topic out of an NPC would be nice, too. Maybe NPCs could have more than just one thing to say or talk about?
2. Give the player character some idle animations. In comparison to so many NPCs now, they feel almost freakishly stiff when standing still, again, especially when it comes to conversations with other NPCs. Even a simple thing like having the PCs blink now and then, or re-adjust their scarf around their neck, etc, would help them feel a bit more alive and not just a completely mindless drone 100% controlled by the player.
Perhaps you could even have certain idle animations play depending on the type of character. I.E., a magic character who has most of their skill points in the fire magic school, could have a idle animation play where they hold out their hand, with a small flame at their finger tips, and then snuff it out seconds later. Little flavor things like that would help build “personality” into that player’s character, as well as show other players in multiplayer where that character specializes, meaning different players would have a different assortment of idle animations from each other, rather than strictly always copying the same animations if they all stood around together. Basically, just simple little animations that won’t require the adding of 294729 extra sprites due to how the hat and weapon sprite layers on the characters work, but helps bring the player character to life a little more.
Obviously these two things aren’t terribly important and might not even be worthy of happening until after 1.0 even, but I feel like they would help bring life to the game quite a bit more.