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!
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!
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
Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a safe and relaxing holiday season. Here’s what we were up to during December and what our plans are for the new year!
December 2020
During December we primarily focused on developing the next beta update. We wanted to get it finished for the end of December before New Years, but between holiday breaks and spending time with immediate family it didn’t end up getting finished and tested. We have about one thing left for the release before testing, so look forward to seeing it later this month.
2020 Review
Before going into our plans for 2021, we want to give a brief roundup on and celebrate what we’ve gotten done in the past year.
Released 2 Beta Updates, 1 Demo Update
Upgraded to Gamemaker 2.3.x+
Revamped all of the SFX and added a few more
Completed the graphical update – all of the battle animations and all of the characters for the game have had their sprites updated
Added in a quarter of Gataela’s world
Restructured the skit and cutscene systems
Added some extra polish to the UI
Improved the TTBattles by adding criticals, dodge, escape and updating visual effects among other bug fixes
Added our first pass of fullscreen mode
Started work on adding new overworld tiles and new animations
Plus a ton of bug fixes and misc improvements
2021 Plans
Last year was a big year for structural changes and preparation for Gataela as we worked to put in more content for beta testers. We tried to do quarterly beta updates and they were more-or-less successful. We can’t say that the pandemic has not impacted our ability to complete them. As we expect more of the same as last year, here’s some of the big changes and things we’ll be attempting to get done:
No quarterly beta updates, they’ll be released when ready
Finishing all of the debate portraits & adding a few more
Adding more SFX and making new SFX
Creating new overworld tiles for new areas & to add more visual interest
Adding in more music and expanding the soundtrack
Creating new enemies, more battle animations, more VFX, and more creatures to make the world feel alive
Backer In-Game Reward Fulfillment
Adding more cutscenes & content
Most items are to be expected, but to briefly note on the quarterly beta updates, we’re largely making this change due to COVID and the on-going pandemic.
In 2019 while we were preparing for the updated demo we had internal milestones each month where we had a dedicated tester run through the content and note issues for us to fix. Our thought was that for 2020 we would be able to keep this up, and releasing quarterly would be absolutely possible. However the pandemic has greatly affected how we work, and when we work. In order to release quarterly the team needs to work in a very structured linear way, which isn’t possible anymore. So for those reasons we can’t guarantee when future updates will be. Thanks for everyone’s understanding, and we’ll be sure to let everyone know when they become available or when we feel one will be coming!
In the meantime, look forward to January’s update and have a good new year!
Hello everyone! We hope everyone has had a good November. As we enter into the holiday season, we hope everyone continues to stay safe!
A New Challenger Approaches
Last month we mentioned that we’d be updating all of the old SFX and adding a few new ones. What we didn’t mention was just who would be doing that! We’d like to introduce Christoph who recently joined the team and will be making sure all of the SFX are sounding great!
Beta Update
Last month we spent a LOT of time working on writing out the cutscenes for the next update, which is why there’s not a whole lot of imagery we can show. We ended up adding a few more cutscenes more than we expected, and even an extra quest or two. We’ll be working on implementing them in the next couple of weeks, so look forward to some Twitch streams.
The next update in general will focus on the Lakure province, so that means the Main Story Quest, the NPCs and even the debates and other battles will all take place here.
We’re currently looking to release the update before New Years, but likely after Christmas.
Other News
In other noteworthy news, we’re starting to work on fulfilling everyone’s Kickstarter in-game rewards: custom NPCs and house interiors. Also to that end, we’ve begun to make a few more tiles for both landscapes and interiors. This should help bring some more visual interest to the world. We look forward to showing off all this work in the near future!
