Author: gataela_mftu8r

May 2021 Progress Update

Hello everyone! We hope everyone is enjoying the spring weather and continues to stay safe. Here’s what we were up to for the month of April!

Trailer Update!

Last month we mentioned that there would be a small surprise released and that was a new trailer! We spent quite a while working out the new trailer and trying to have it represent the current state of the game. While we were doing that, we looked back at all of the old trailers and – Wow! Gataela has come a long way. We hope that this new trailer gives you a better idea of Gataela as a game and how development is going!

Battle Updates

We spent another month working on battle upgrades and knocked a lot of items out of the park. To give a brief summary:

  • Added about 80-90% of the skill animations into the game with the new graphics
  • Enabled status effects
  • Items that apply status effects are now affected by chance as specified on the inventory summary page
  • Group-wide skills that apply status effects will affect each party member with chance differently
  • Started to work on new SFX for these animations

We’ll be continuing to work on battle upgrades over the next few months, but to a lesser degree as we begin to shift back into level making and cutscene adding. We do plan to hold a game development stream sometime in the future focusing on the TTBattle System and rebalancing it. If this is of interest, please make sure to follow our Twitch channel or Twitter to get notified when it goes live.

6 / 2 (1 + 2) = ?

It seems like just about everyone had an opinion on how to handle this math problem this month, so how about we ask the cast of Gataela?

What’s Next?

Starting next month we’ll be shifting to working on levels, cutscenes and battle related work inter-spaced throughout. We’ve gotten a ton of new assets from the wonderful folks at Buko Studios that we’re itching to put into use so we hope everyone will enjoy the new environments!

April 2021 Progress Update

Hello everyone! If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, we hope you’re enjoying the warmer weather!

Battle Classes

Continuing on the battle upgrades, this past month we began work on adding visuals for the different battle classes! There are a total of four different battle classes depending on the type of weapon the party members use, and each class has it’s own strengths and weaknesses.

Close Quarters Combat

Fists? Daggers? Whatever. Use what you have and take matters into your own hands. With your high speed and attack, just about any opponent can be taken down with a solid one-two!

Guns

Hey there quick-draw, if you like to move fast and wide-range damage, this is for you! Focus on taking control of the field and whittling down your enemies before they can even approach.

Swords

The noble sword of a well trained knight; focus on counters and supporting your teammates. Don’t think they’re just guarding though! Once ready to attack they will mercilessly slash through all of the enemy’s defences!

Gun-Swords

Pistol-sword, pistol-axes, bayonets, you name it. Get the countering skills of the sword, with the speed of the gun, and the added bonus of paralyzing and petrifying your enemies in their tracks.

Surprises?

We have a (very very) small surprise this month that we’ve been really working hard on. Keep an eye on the twitter to see just what it is~!

What’s Next

We’ll be continuing to work on the TTBattle system, and hoping to start on some new areas. In the meantime, we hope everyone enjoys the warm weather and remembers to stay safe!

March 2021 Progress Update

Hello everyone! It’s March again.

Battle Upgrades

Last month we spent time working on adding new Battle Animations, but we also made a few changes to the battle system to help support that! The first one was adding group-wide skills and items! The second was adding a respawn timer for enemies on the overworld.

Our original design for the overworld had enemies respawning every time a new level was loaded. The idea was that the levels were large enough that there wouldn’t be too many enemies, so having an instant respawn when re-entering a level was fine. We got some feedback that we hadn’t accounted for: if you’re changing between two different levels fairly often (ex. Wiska Forest) then it would actually feel like there were too many! So we’ve added a five minute respawn timer to all of the enemies in hopes this will help alleviate some of the problems.

What’s Next?

We’ll be continuing to focus on Battle Animations and the TTBattle system in the near future. We’ll be looking to show off new enemies, skills and areas over the next few months! In the meantime, we would like to thank everyone who takes the time to fill out our bug report form! We’ve started to address some of the issues, and are looking to address more this month. Take care!

February 2021 Progress Update

Hello everyone! We hope you all had a good start to the year. Here’s what we were up to for the month of January!

Beta Update

In case you missed it, the Beta Update went out a couple weeks ago! We added a lot of story, new debates, new skits, updated all of the existing SFX and much, much more!

Backer Rewards

We’ve started work on some of the in-game backer rewards. Below are some of the custom NPCs made by Owen!

Font Options

One of the things we’re planning to tackle this coming month is font options. We’ve been slowly adding accessibility settings to the game on an as-needed basis, and this is an option that has been requested a couple of times before. There’s a lot of work that needs to go into this, but here’s a sneak peek!

Battle Animations

Another thing we’re looking to add in this month is a bunch of new battle animations made by Owen and Louis! Look forward to seeing more gifs of these in the future!

0.4.0 Release Notes

Summary

Our Winter Beta Update is now here! This update finishes off the story in Lakure! Look forward to traveling the province, conversing with locals, and convincing Lord Katerina to help you!

This update also contains a large number of technical improvements we made over the summer which were previous released in the demo update a few months ago. Another thing of note is that all of SFX has been redone and updated, and we’ve added some new features like books and eavesdropping.

We recommend making a copy of your save files (the .sqlite files) in your game directory before continuing. There should be no issues, but we do upgrade the files in this release.

If you come across any issues, feel free to send us a Tweet or DM, message on the Discord Server, or shoot us an email. Bug reports and feature requests can also be logged here.

Release Notes

Added

  • Added a number of enemy, player, and equipment name strings to the translation file
  • Added new debate facts
  • Added new debates
  • Added new cutscenes
  • Added new skits
  • Added more SFX, and added new SFX to existing cutscenes
  • Added new item icons
  • Added new audio
  • Added NPCs and houses to Lakure, and unblocked the city
  • Added new character sprites
  • Added books
  • Added eavesdropping events
  • Added new overworld tiles

Fixed

  • Fixed UI briefly appearing after transitioning screens before an event plays
  • Fixed lists accidentally cutting off Text
  • Fixed flashing when starting a cutscene
  • Fixed flashing when changing maps during a cutscene
  • Fixed actors during cutscenes sometimes not appearing
  • Fixed Shop Confirm Button not working

Other

  • Upgraded to Gamemaker 2.3
  • Converted & consolidated all of the cutscenes to a new system
  • Converted & consolidated all of the skits to a new system
  • Refactored how quests are stored and loaded
  • Refactored how debate statements are stored and loaded
  • Redid all of the pre-existing SFX