Saturday, October 2, 2021

Clear plans and direction

Veins here.

September was a tough but interesting month. Not only me and Titan made a ton of progress on the game (more on that later), but we also managed to solve a big internal problem we had. I hinted about it in my last post, but I needed some time before I felt ready to share it. Titan is no longer a part of Team Erogi, but he will continue working on the game, part time, until the game is completed.

So yeah, without getting into details, me and Titan made a new deal that doesn't hurt the game. The most important thing for me was always the release of MoGi Origins and that's my end goal. The current plan is that Titan will work for me, full time for 20 days during November and maybe even January. In the main time I have to do everything else: finish up all the art that I can, find bugs, re-edit and link most levels, add sfx and music and so on. Scary, but there was no other way. From now on, I am responsible for pretty much everything.


General progress:
Here's a video of the various tests we made for the game.
This video shows many things that I have presented in the past few entries (such as Voms' Swing, Succogi, Ucogi's animations, the Physics labs and the Toxic area) during the development. Most of it is work in progress, recorded for testing purposes. The video doesn't show the final results, but you can get a glimpse of the things we were working on. And most of them are finalized in the game's files. For example, Ucogi's many jumps and Voms' Swing look weird at first, but they improve greatly by the end of the video.



September's progress:
I was aiming to finish Voms' playthrough but that was unrealistic. Many issues and bugs came up, and many fixes caused even more bugs. We had to try over and over to solve many of these problems, but it was a very productive month! Here's a list of the things we accomplished:

• Survival and Time Attack are merged with the main game.
• New SFX for Bloostone, Mushrooms, Ucogi, Alice, Rudy, Chibi, Gold, Neko and more.
• New SFX for many hazards and objects.
• Bloodstone can now transform to 6 different MoGi.
• Lots of new art added, including new pushable carts for puzzles.
• Cutscenes for Rudy, Ucogi, Chibi and Alice.
• We completed Ucogi's moves and controls (very challenging).
• We completed Voms Swing move (took a while to make it feel good, see video)
• Floating water objects detect the character's weight (except Chibi's)
• Each Daisy can have her own stats (helping Elf reach different heights).
• Succogi boss redesign and Ai.
• Bug fixes (Blue falling on platforms, lifts, crouch animations, Rudy kicks boxes, hanging)
• Many details like SlimeGirls Black's bar and Amanita projectile frequency.
• New save system
• Completed all VS portraits.
• New objects, such as hazardous servers and falling platforms.
• Hazards: water, fire and electric floor, kill. Acid hits everyone except Gold. Flames, particle
beams, electricity and explosions hit everyone.


What remains to be done:
In order to finish Voms' timeline, we need to finish the art of Ucogi, Alice and Ninja, program Succalice and Stheno and deal with many other details (cutscenes, unforeseeable bugs, new SFX, dialogue, polishing etc). Also I do want to revisit Red's bossfight and a few other things.

The full release may need at least 5 more months of hard work. If the project takes longer than my calculations, I may try to release a decent Beta around December. I'm not fluent with GameMaker, and there's a lot to deal with, but I know what is required of me and I'm trying to do the best I can.


Thank you all for your support!


7 comments:

  1. really liking the progress well done =)

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  2. Hazards: water, fire, beams and electric floor, kill... Hmm, obviously the Game is getting more violent... Not good.

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    1. It is just as violent as Super Mario dying by enemies, or by falling in a gap. There is no blood, just a game over screen. Sometimes it's hard to avoid videogame tropes.

      Dont worry though, these hazards are rare and near savepoints. Even in the current Beta, the fires in the Farms and the City can't kill you because of their placement. You only die if you fall in a fire from above.

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  3. Almost there! You've made it this far, I'm glad you two were able to compromise, but don't do if it doesn't actually work out.

    Hope things continue well! One last beta would be nice though knowing it might be a bit...

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    1. So far, our new deal does work out well. For the past few years many things around this game were shaky (from white screens due to code, to slow progress), but we always tried to find solutions. The way we work now, is the most productive way we had in a while... ever since Titan visited me twice and worked in the same space as me.

      Thank you for the good words. I try to stay positive and I have a lot of work ahead of me, and this helps me a lot.

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  4. you're learning as you're going, a realistic release month is probably in the next year and thats fine.

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    1. I have a lot of things to consider. If I should release just Voms first and the other characters later on. If I should spend time on a final Beta. What music to order next. When to deal with Steam. And what to have ready for Titan at the end of the month. It's hard for one person to balance all that.

      So, right now the best I can do is work as much as I can, one thing at a time. For the past 8 days I was working on dressing up Ucogi (I have managed to animate only her skirt in 130 frames out of 205), I started reworking on Alice's main pose and I made some great additions to the story and dialogues. But even if I didn't leave my house, it feels like I haven't made much progress. Animating Ucogi is super challenging.

      Thank you for your encouragement.

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