Devlog 6/1/2021

So I thought I was going to jump in and get some of the game straightened out by playing it. Then a certain battle turned out not to be working and I had to fix ALL of the battle triggers because I didn't notice I did not have a proper "checking system" for making sure if the battle was won or lost.

After getting that straightened out, I noticed the inventory was buggy in the main menu. So I took a bit to fix the inventory back up so that it doesn't randomly jump around from function to function. Like it would jump straight into showing what items the player had without being asked, and also for some reason two items were set to be shown as had even when there were 0 of them.

I fixed that up and then I found that ambushes weren't working correctly. The monsters weren't displaying properly and it was teleporting me all the way into the jungle after an ambush at any other location. I made a specific switch to trigger for every single location that the ambushes can happen at, which is about 30 locations, because they have to be able to load back into the level. And I set up an individual battle process trigger for every location. And after all of that I realized I could just use "return to previous." 

I was planning on using "outfits" to give players some customization for their imaginations and also, outfits were going to add buffs or attributes or elements to the player. However I decided to reduce scope and eliminate the outfits from the game completely, as well as the option to only be wearing outfit or armor over outfit outside of the jungle. Since you can't actually see the outfits and it's mostly only for helping your mind make a good mental model, I decided it wasn't important enough to the core of the game to keep. If I finish the game faster than I think I will (I won't) I will consider adding in outfits again.

-Expanded battle triggers for travel events.

-Implemented all ambushes.

-fixed the inventory.

-Reduced scope by deleting outfits and choices for other locations main cities.

-Was planning to modify the story but decided I actually like the story the way it is so I will only edit it.

devlog 6/2/2021

-Tested, bugfix, polish

Today I played the game, noting what was off, what wasn't smooth, what wasn't functioning correctly, what broke the flow, etc. I fixed up some of the triggers, I fixed up some of the things that were skipping and not loading correctly. It feels like I've found more problems than I've solved but to some degree, everything is progressing.

Some of the text seems to separate itself too far apart and some of the other text seems to bring itself too close together, even though I've taken the time to smooth all the spacing out before. Which means I have to ignore this bug until basically the very end, since it keeps happening for no reason and the only thing it affects is the flow of the reading and attention but doesn't actually impede the progress of the game.

I found that there were some text mistakes in the battles, which I finally got to start loading up correctly during ambushes. Of course it's something as small as, for some reason I had the commands spaced one little space out instead of perfectly against the start of the page.

However there are other odd errors, for some reason, when battling bandit bears, the health for the enemy nor the player seems to be calculated. Since battles against human enemies like the bears are "lethal," it uses regular health instead of energy because of the implant such as in battles against the monsters or duels. However I already had health set to function the same as energy and I already swapped the variables from energy to health, so I am not sure why it is not functioning correctly yet.

I am surprised to find out that the battle system alone, which I expanded in scope and then reduced in scope turned out to take up more than half the time of making the game. It would be cool to work with a group where multiple people completed things at the same time. I bet if I worked with a group this game would probably already be finished. 

devlog 6/4/21

-Got some bugs out

-Edited some text

-fixed a couple things

-worked on getting all of the combat working properly.

My plan today was to get the economy worked out. Players don't level up through gaining experience, they buy all of their power ups. Players can buy upgrades for their weapons, armor, implant and more. Players can also buy items and food to buff their stats if they want. So I was going to get all of the currency worked out. Basically, you fight a monster, which is part of the Environment glitching and manifesting into bad data. You defeat the monster and it turns into a data packet, which you sell to the Data Clerics (or more like, you are rewarded for fixing bugs and bringing them the buggy data). They pay you for the work and collecting the data. You take that money and buy upgrades to your gear which gives you stronger software to defeat the monsters with so that you can destroy more terribly corrupted data/monsters.

Instead, I found that the game wasn't returning to the scene correctly after battles. So I had fun experimenting with different ways to trigger the battle ending and return to the previous scene. You can't just call, "return to previous scene," because for some reason if you use the hoverboard to fast travel anywhere, it replays the hoverboard sequence and then takes you to the wrong location.

Devlog 6/7/21

-Got battle transitions to and from the battle scene working properly.

-Fixed up all of the text in battles (I hope) except for some weird damage representations that claim twice the actual damage is being dealt for some reason.

-Made sure that the implant can be safely depleted and juiced, and the switches are set to turn it on and off properly.

-Made some notes on Hoverboard use.

Next is to:

-Spend time implementing all of the upgrades into the game. Will take some work to complete but will create the progression system.

-Find a suave way to let the players know that they need to buy upgrades in order to "level up."

Devlog 6/9/21

-Finished stitching all of the upgrades in to the game, made the events and implemented them. This includes:

      - The upgrade progressions.

      - All of the labels and text transitions, event transitions, choice buttons, organizational placement in the script, etc.

      -The conditionals for checking for gigabytes (money) and reducing the amount in the players inventory.

      -designy stuff

Next I should:

- Test all of the progressions to make sure they work smoothly.

-Test all of the progressions and see how long it takes to level up, then edit it however it needs to be best.   

-Change the introduction to a more interactive, exciting experience. 

-test play, test play, test play, test play.

Devlog 6/11/21

Worked on story progression. I took the game out of "gold status" as I expanded one of the story events and then I also put it back to "gold status" as I strung the fleshed out event back together.

-Lethal battles now have to be unlocked by story progression (which was the plan in the first place)

-story battles prepared

-text fixed

-new text added

-quest log fixed

-added bold and shadow effects to make the main quest button look more like a button

-Did some detail work on the travel events to keep the "flow" going.

-Changed the start of the player's control to transition them into knowing what the quest is from the get go.

-Did a lot of little edits to make sure everything flows and looks smooth and professional.

Work on next

-Economy, play test

-Add all of the lethal conditions so they dont activate too early

-Add the Hoverboard to be taken from the Jungle Bear Bandit hideout after unlocking lethal battles

-etc

-Play test

Today was a weird day for my development. There were some bugs that pushed me off course. There were things I hadn't noticed while implementing the events that I had to go back and fix. A lot of little things that are easy to miss but take a long time to adjust.

-Checked sales

-Added Gigabyte display in U.I. all the time.

-Played around with ways to get information to refresh but couldnt find a solution yet.

-Fixed some battle issues where multiple enemies had to be fought in a row outside of story events/quests etc. 

-Switched everything to run inline where necessary.

-Found out there was a problem with levels updating and there still seems to be even though I fixed a handful of problems relating to that already.

-Started adding long range communication into the game.

-Finished getting the story event together, reworded the text and some transitions, added obtaining the hoverboard.

-Started writing the outline to the new introduction, currently caught between two possible ways to do it but wont get to test it until later.

Today I was a bit lost at first. I had to do other stuff for the past couple of days so I was a little late on working on the game. However I managed to fix up a lot of battle stuff, get certain things right, test out a bunch of stuff, etc. Finding one bug took me over an hour, though. But once I found that bug and fixed it, the flow of development sped up pretty quickly as I was free to put together other pieces of the game more quickly without anything blocking the way.

>Fixed some battle transitions.

>Fixed some battle text.

>Got the common events for weapons to be called properly.

>Fixed a bug where the "body only" target switch wasn't turning off.

>Fixed a bug where the game was skipping from choosing a lethal weapon to shooting the nonlethal version of the gun "snapshot" automatically without letting players choose what skill on other weapons.

>Spent a little bit of time finding some basic sound effects online.

>Added temporary battle music for the battles.

>Added a little introduction to the nonlethal battles against data monster packets.

>Added a back option for the hoverboard that should have already existed.

>fixed some stuff I already thought was fixed with a story event.

Here's an example of how the game is coming along.

current update for battle

DEVLOG 6/19/21

The bugs were really persistent today. I had to go in to every location and manually put in something to trigger text refreshing on the spot which ended up not even working even though it works in battles, which it didn't use to and I'm not sure why it started too. Secondary upgrades were going into main upgrades so instead of having like 3 levels in sword and 3 levels in bow I had 6 levels in sword and 1 level in bow, which isn't even the right output. I got all of the battle variables presented to the player to come out nicely, though, so that's good.

I might need to add some little side quests to help players get upgrades at first until they understand how to manage the system themselves, at which point they should be able to take on better quests that are more for being interesting and supplementing the world rather than tutorializing the game. Rank 2 monsters are a little tougher than I thought but are as tough as I was hoping which makes me more hopeful for adding in party members (all they do are automatic attacks after you choose your attacks to start, if more time can be spent on it after everything else then I will maybe expand it).

>Bugs

>More bugs

>Glitches

>Problems

>Battle system coming together better

>Upgrade system coming together better

I want too...

>Add a debt tracker

>Add juicer packs to purchase from the rez cleric to re amp implants on the fly

>Give the NPC's more active standby's

>Add intrusive advertisements into the U.I. while wandering/traveling to give it that hint of cyberpunk

>Add in contact with the priest to ask general tutorial questions about the systems from anywhere through the implant

DEV LOG 6/20/21

So one thing I noticed today was that, all the time I originally spent at the start, adding the script/dialogue I wrote for all of the characters and NPC's? That was all done at the wrong time. I mean, it wasn't a "waste of time" exactly, but it didn't push the game towards a "completed" state because technically, I could have made the game without most of that dialogue. What I'm saying is, even though the dialogue adds information and deepens the world, making it more vibrant with knowledge and lore, making it more real and believable, it isn't necessary for the game to actually be completed. Some of the dialogue could be cut out from the npc's and the game's story and essential plot could still be written from start to end. 

I'm not saying it's wrong to have these things. Absolutely not, as that kind of experience is exactly what rpg gamers love, myself included. The reading and the learning is part of the fun, taking in all of this interesting lore about a new but somewhat familiar world. However, I should have waited until I had the rest of the game - at least most of the rest of the game - finished before I added most of that npc dialogue in. Being able to ask a shopkeeper about themselves and their shop isn't exactly necessary... yet it's interesting!

However when testing the game to get it all completed and figure out what prevents progress and how all of the variables need to be adjusted for proper playtime, most of this dialogue gets skipped over or not triggered at all because it's unessential to the core of the main plot. Again, all that means is I should have waited before adding that stuff - I only wrote out all of the dialogue and figured out all of this side information about the world because I was waiting for the VN maker to go on sale for christmas anyway, or else I might not have even written all of it yet and I know for sure that next time, at least if I work alone again anytime soon after this, that stuff should be held for later.

So I mostly bug tested the combat today (like 4+ hours of this). I added a debt tracker underneath the giga tracker. What today has shown me is that I need to add sidequests. So far I think the rate of progress is okay, such as leveling up and stuff. However I might want to make it happen twice as fast once I add the physical upgrades for health and stuff and armor upgrades for defense. Which only means doubling the amount that a data packet sells for.

I've also fixed the reward system so that it properly compensates the player for the difficulty of the match based on the level of evil of the enemy, their difficulty rank. I only had it set so that all monsters rewarded the lowest value reward for initial testing but found it time to expand to what the intended version is.

>added debt tracker

>bug test

>test bug

>punchy kicky buggy

>built the full and proper reward system for monster fights

DEVLOG 6/22/21

So today I started to be more critical of my work. I really feel like my writing and design could both be at a higher level and I am worried that using this as a portfolio piece could make my skills seem lesser than they truly are. The problem I'm seeing now, that I'm realizing now, is that when I'm making a whole game by myself, even if it's only a text game, means I have take love and attention away from my main skills - writing and design - and I have to spread all of that time and attention into everything. This means that I can't take my writing and design to their fullest level for this project without dedicating even more time to the project since I have to stretch the time out into everything else.

Maybe that wouldn't be so bad in another circumstance but given the real circumstance of having to work, this not being my main paying job, having lost a bunch of time to having to had worked months of overtime in an industry I hate, not being in a real suitable conditions i.e. living in a shared place and not being in a work office or somewhere suited to focusing directly on the work and also effing coronavirus... Well, that all leads to less and less time that I have to be able to devote to the game. Which means from now on, after this project, I think I will always try to work in a team of some sort that way I can focus on putting my full attention into doing my job with my main skills at the highest level of quality that I can.

So I hope that, using this in my portfolio, future hiring managers/team leaders will be able to see that I understand most of the process of making a game and that they won't only double down on only the writing or only the design as I have spread my skills into everything for this project.

Also, today, it feels like I've been a little more unfocused and out of it then I can usually force myself to be. I'm still putting in the full time I usually put in but something is just off today.

-Started working on fully fleshing out the final story event with the big boss fight.

-Need to find out why the variables in battle are becoming decimals after using double shot multiple times, even without a decimal variable in the health function.

-Add a "Spider-bear" enemy.

-Make two separate trap dodging events so that when conditions apply the player can have more time to dodge as if they really noticed the traps.

Worked on A.I. and battle algorithms for the final boss fight. Got a call about something from two jobs ago and dealt with that. Also had to deal with a spider appearing, not sure what kind it was but it looked like a recluse maybe. Overall, not the most productive day but I battled on and kept working until the end. 

>Worked on some boss battle stuff.

>Designed the boss battles, designed the skills and stuff.

>Added most of the stats and skills into the game.

Today was going to be sort of a mental rest day for me. I was going to "let the chips out." However I found myself opening up the engine again anyway. I felt more ready for this today than I did yesterday.

I had set these resets and reward algorithms like, last week and somehow, even after looking at it almost every day, I didn't notice that I forgot to put all of the reset algorithms, for stats and conditions, in the victory scripts. So I had all of the resets set to happen after losing or after running but not after winning which means that for like a week+ I just couldn't figure out why the character damage was increasing by a multiple of ten after every victory. 

I mean I scrolled right past without noticing the algorithms for resetting were missing EVERY SINGLE DAY ALMOST. Nothing humbles you like some code I guess. And I use a no script system ugh.

Well, it was okay to ignore for a while since it didn't actually prevent player progress (rather, sped it up by a lot haha). So I still got so much done while that bug existed. Nice to finally catch it, though.

I also finally changed the river background color. Now it's a blue, but it's a greenish blue. I figured the water wouldn't be tooo clean and it would reflect a lot of green from the jungle around it. As well as that, I made sure to make it a little dark to give it the appearance of being under a canopy/shadowed by a lot of natural growth. Hopefully helps the player feel a little more like they are actually there.

Also i hadn't fully updated the reset algorithm yet, which is something I overlooked and didn't realized when expanding and fleshing out the combat. But it is now updated to reset everything after battle correctly.

Now I have come across another problem. I fixed the other bugs I found and it somehow broke stuff I already had working.

STUFF DONE

>The final boss story event is close to done.

>Fixed more bugs in the battle system.

>Changed river background to more of a shadowy blue-green to better represent being near the water.

>Added music for the final location.

>Fixed more bugs.

>Expanded the reset system to cover all of the perks.

WANT TO DO

>Add in background effects. Such as sounds of a crowd. Sounds of nature. Water rushing, waterfall, birds, wind rustling through leaves, rain, etc.

>Figure out what broke and how!

DEVLOG 6/25/21

Today I rolled my game back by two days of work, luckily these logs can tell me some of what I can do to speed up my devving time the second time around.

Battle system seems to be glitch free at the moment, woo!

I got some events cleared up, I got the beta for the final bosses implemented. It feels like I did a lot even if I don't have much to say about it. It was some busy work but had to be done regardless. Had to redo some stuff but that was quick and easy.

I managed to get the final story event working and loading, transferring everything correctly so far. As of right now the game is probably gold again. Still got a lot of flesh out, though.

>Rolled version back.

>Fixed battle system from there.

>Some fixing up of stuff.

>Redid did river color.

>Game is gold again?

DEV LOG 6/26/21

Convinced myself not to take the day off. I told myself, oh, I will just work on some of the easy, mindless stuff. You know, change the decimal variables to round up so that the engine doesn't accidentally return decimals in game. Well, 2 hours later I'm done with that and I'm like, "Interesting, this combat situation returns 50 less damage than it should." So an hour later I've fixed that and I'm now adding all of the cooldown conditionals because I noticed that skills aren't being locked for their cooldowns and I had overlooked this part when putting all of the stuff together. Well, over 4 hours have gone by and I've basically worked a shift at a part time job, nearing 5 hours, and my usual stopping time comes around. Look at that, I said I will just do one little thing and ended up working the full usual time.

Although, two days ago was supposed to be my day to relax and let the chips out, so today I did take it a little easier on myself than usual. I worked the full time but allowed myself to write other things down for other stuff, chat with some people, etc but overall I still put in a good amount of time and effort between when I started and when I stopped. Tomorrow I should really take the day off, though.

>Fixed decimal returns

>Fixed some text issues

>Fixed some variable issues

>Fixed some damage issues

>Fixed some cooldown issues

dev log 6/28/21

>Fixed more battle system issues

>Fixed an issue where one location was not loading enemies but was still giving out victory rewards

>Added some more music in

>Got the final boss battles implemented

>Finished implementing the new cooldown times

>Implemented cooldown text to let players know something is in cooldown

>Had an issue where disabling skills that are cooling down from being chosen wasn't working by looping the label jump back to the start of the skill selection

>Etc

Dev Log 6/29/21

Felt like I was getting dulled by the monotony of working on the same general parts of the game over and over again soooo I decided to jump ahead and make the new introduction today. I got most of it already implemented. I also added in a tutorial, which I'm still working on, but it's brief and is mostly just a watered down battle without time pressure to let the player get familiar with the controls. 

>Switched some music

>Implemented new introduction

>Started making a tutorial system

>Other stuff

DevLog 6/30/21

>Implemented new, more exciting introduction.

>New introduction is functional and working but needs polish.

>Fixed some more battle issues. These never seem to end! Yay! 

>Added one more song at the tavern, feels nice to have multiple tracks to switch between to keep things fresh.

>Starting to work on balancing the combat better, starting to fine tune the chances of effects of attacking different body parts to make better effects more risky to try and less powerful effects more reliable to count on.

>Introducing a plain and simple side quest chain to add a little more excitement to the grind for leveling up between main story events.

>Got one chain in the new side quest implemented. 

>Mostly implemented contact with the tutorial guy whom players can contact through their interface's communication application at any time to ask for basic advice about the game.

Dev Log 7/1/21

Sometimes it becomes really apparent that, when making your own project like this, there is no frame work or quest guide to move you along. You figure everything out yourself, you organize all the work yourself, you set your own task list yourself. It can be easy to feel somewhat lost in the sauce, even with a smaller scope project. If you finish one task you can sometimes find yourself floating in the soup of the game's development screens, trying to pick out the pieces of work that you need to do next from the heavy broth of the code and the tools. You know you need to fix a couple glitches and improve some of the balance but there is so much to sift through that even when you have a seed of understanding of what to do next, even when you have a task list outlining what's next on the agenda, it can still feel like swimming in an ocean searching for a small island to anchor your mind to.

However I feel like this experience gives me a lot of strength as a developer and that going forward it gives me a foot up on any competition, because I know what it's like to have been lost in the ocean of development and I know what it's like and how to navigate through something that seems to stretch on forever in all directions. I feel like I'm becoming someone that others can rely on and turn to if they feel lost in the cycle of creation.

That being said, I actually got more done than usual today. Today was considerably productive.

>Implemented a side quest chain.

>Communication with the Priest implemented.

>Always working on bugs. Always.