November Update

It's only been a few weeks since the last update, but I've got quite a bit to report!

I went and gave myself some mental butt-kicks (to over-simplify) to get back into gear, and it seems to have worked a bit. The last couple weeks have been highly productive!

On the backend of things, I did some more code cleanup and improvements, as well as adding new functionality. The biggest thing I added is turn counters to status effects in combat. So now you'll have an idea of how long buffs/debuffs will remain in effect (although they were already viewable in the status window). Admittedly, they were previously already in place when I was using Yanfly's UI elements, but after switching to Mog's Battle HUD, that feature disappeared, so I had to add it back in. And it surprisingly took far more steps than I would have figured, but eventually I got it. Hooray for more useful information!

Aside from that, I also fixed some bugs where the third and fourth battlers' character art was appearing above their HP/SP/OD bars, as well as fixed some alignment issues for when you have less than four people in your active party (such as during the tutorial quest). Furthermore, I streamlined the item discard window's appearance to better fit the menu (instead of simply hovering in the middle of the screen obscuring random elements). Some other minor tasks were knocked out as well, such as fixing alignment issues in the battle status window and removing the redundant "Remove" option in the formation menu. Finally, I implemented a code adjustment to save myself a fair bit of work with notetags regarding item pictures in the inventory and shop menus (it'll automatically load a high-res version of the picture if one exists, or default to an enlarged icon if it doesn't, all without crashing like before). Now I don't need to write notetags for hundreds of items, weapons, and armors (Plus, if I change the icon of an item/weapon/armor, it automatically updates which high-res picture it grabs too).

Now, onto the infographics!

As for the content side of things, I'm super happy to report I finally finished the main Doramor City map! After about another 20-something hours of mapping, sprite editing, doodad placement, and eventing, I'm declaring it finished and functional! As far as Doramor City overall goes, this just leaves the Palace and the second floor of the Guild hall, and then it's completely finished. The second floor is where you can get some additional training/tutorials on game mechanics, so it's going to take some extra work. The Palace shouldn't be too rough, just a matter of filling in all the spaces. The biggest part will probably be writing the NPC dialogue. The plot-critical scenes are done, so technically everything else is just filler, but no reason it can't be entertaining/informative, too!

Once Doramor City is wrapped up, I'll resume work on the Overworld and dungeon maps. My first priority will be completing the story-critical sequences, although I may save some of what's planned towards the end for much later, because it's going to be...complex, heh. I'd say more, but I don't want to spoil anything.

On the plus side, my overall tasks list continues to shrink as more things get done. Probably my favorite part is that, although some new bugs arose, I was able to fix them quickly, so the overall list of bugs actually went down this month! Huzzah!

Oh, right! I forgot about the skill mastery help text! I was able to add a process that dynamically updates the help text base damage/healing amount based on your mastery level. So, say you've got a skill that starts out at 150 base damage, once you get to level 1 mastery with it, the help text will update to say the base damage is 165. Currently it only re-evaluates the number after a usage, so the first time you use a skill after leveling it up (the calculation of which is done after the skill use sequence completes), it'll still have the old base amount. I haven't figured out how to force an update after leveling yet, but I will. It is...inevitable.

Alright, that should wrap it up for now. As we enter into the holiday season, having some extra days off work (plus a lot of PTO I have to use up or lose before the end of the year), should hopefully mean some additional time I can put into working on Unto the Breach. It is sadly obvious at this point Episode One won't be done by the end of the year like I had previously hoped, but I've at least still made tremendous progress on it over the last ten months. Believe me, I'm frustrated at how long it's taking, but that frustration isn't overriding my desire to see this completed the right way. There's still a long road ahead on finishing this adventure, but I think the end product will be well worth the wait.

See you next month!