Chapter 3 weekly devlog 4

Hi everyone! It's been a month since I started doing these weekly Devlogs, and it's nice to see how far things have come in this time. A lot of it is kind of "behind the scenes" things that are making my life easier, which hopefully means that maintaining a good pace of progress will be easier than it's been in the past (chapter 2 was a slog at times). It should also make the game more interesting in the long run!

The new combat system is now fully implemented, and it cuts a lot of fiddling around for me by consolidating everything into a single place. For those who know a bit of python, every enemy is now finally into a class, which allows for very easy editing and drastically cuts on code repetition. Like I was saying last week, it's my noob-ness coming back to bite me in the behind, but it also shows that I'm learning along te way! The main character now has a spell to use as well, and enemies have elemental weaknesses or strength (an idea that was already there in one instance: when Tyria fight the fire elemental in the library, her fire spell actually heals it!).

So what's new this week? Well, besides finishing up the fighting system, mostly writing, and we are now past 8,600 words of dialogue (so about 45% done). In about 1,200 more, the game will be officially over 60,000! Woohoo! I love stupid milestones like this. Unfortunately, writing is not something that is very easy to show in a devlog, but it is the core of a visual novel, after all. I find that writing for a VN is a very different experience to writing most kinds of prose, as it is nearly all dialogue (in my case, anyway). Hopefully, the characters and backgrounds provide enough additional interest. It does mean that developing character "voices" becomes quite important. As such, one of the new characters that we will meet along the way is a Bard, and that was the perfect occasion to have some more bad poetry and rhymes. Always a favourite! She has a certain quirk or two to how she speaks, as you'll see when you meet her. Hopefully, that'll help make the character memorable in some way. here is how she looks:

Other characters have a slightly older slant to their vocabulary, or a propensity to use flowery language. Dwarves, as is tradition, have more of a Northern English/Scottish slant to them (although I'm not leaning very far into it, and yes, I know these are completely different dialects ^^).

Like I've said in previous devlogs, some past characters are coming back in this chapter. Spoilers ahead, so skip to the next bit if you don't want to know! You've been warned. Of course, Maera is the biggest one, and I'm very happy to have her back at our side, She's a little more mature than in the prologue, but still full of childish wonder and tantrums, hehe. Dúah makes an appearance along the way, and so does Tyria. I haven't written Ly'dell in as of now, but she is also on the cards! I've chosen to focus on the female classmates for now, and will devote some scenes to the boys in the future (if it all goes to plan). There are more scenes to check with Lightbringer Yuna and Sinn the barmaid back in Stonehold. The bullies from the Academy will also return, although in a more surprising way perhaps! All in all, it's quite a cast that's been assembled so far, an I know that different people will have different favourites, so I'm sorry if I haven't gotten to yours quite yet! Hopefully, there will be plenty to entertain you.

In other news, the art for the cards is also coming along nicely. here is a sample of the mages so far:

The card duels are a nice excuse to have some one-off characters that don't need much elaboration as adversaries. It adds variety without needing too much work, and that's a win in my book! I have already added one in the prologue, and one in Stonehold. I'm not sure what I'll do in the Academy yet. Should a teacher challenge the MC to a game of cards? There are some that people want to see more. Let me know!

And there you have it! Not the most exciting devlog, I know, but rest assured that things are progressing well. Hopefully you are as excited as I am for things to come. As always, I'm very open to ideas and suggestions, so don't hesitate to comment or send me a message.

Stay safe and see you next week!