Lately, I've been taking the time to getting the text boxes in the demo area done in a way that they don't take up too much of the screen, as well as including an opening cutscene that likely end up in the main game. Otherwise, the main thing I'm going to talk about involves Piper and a couple of artes I've given her that are able to cause damage to multiple enemies at once.

Common Event

For starters, like with Aki, Piper's artes use the standard plugins that are needed to properly function. However, because of how her artes are animated, I thought it would be possible to make use of that and this is what I came up with. First, I have the current target afflicted with an invisible status ailment that makes them the current target. The event in question checks to see which target has it, and then from there I time it so each target that would be hit by the attack during the animation will take damage. For example, Sonic Thrust has Piper attack an enemy by thrusting her spear toward them. If she targets the front-most enemy, only that one will be hit. However, if she targets the enemy behind them (#2), they and enemy #1 will be hit. The way I have enemies set up, which is in a line, it would be possible to make this work (at least for now).

Similarly, Burning Moon is currently set up to where it hits the enemy in front and behind; although with how small the attack looks I may either have to add to the animation so it makes sense to hit two enemies, or make it a single-attack arte. Either way, I'd like to be able to give the melee characters a way to hit multiple enemies without having to rely on spells often. Of course, I need to balance some of these artes more if I do add more.

Follow-Up

As I mentioned before, the Arena Demo will be here for testing characters, enemies and (if I am able to) test plug-ins that alter the battle system more. I may end up stuck with what I have but with some creative control with the Common Events, though it will be something that will help me out and maybe tide everyone over while I work on the actual story. I plan to begin the game proper once the arena demo is up. I don't know when, I want to make it in January still, it just depends on what happens with real-life affairs. Here's hoping for more progress.