Amber development

[jack1974]

Well as you probably saw I ported all the games to mobile
Back to topic, I'm reading Bernard's route right now (about halfway). Very good job. I like how the topic of racism (agains the poor Dark Elf Amber ;_;) and compromise are written.
With this route finished, all the otome romances are ready. There's only Lynn and Cosmina left!
Definitely will be working on this game next (if before I had any doubt, now I haven't).

[Rebly82]

Yes, I think I posted them both already in forums, but maybe the images expired (some site after a while delete the images). I am going to make a blog post probably at end of month about it, with updated "romance chart" and everything

Please do an updated romance chart sometime! I would love to check out more of the game's details.

[jack1974]

Yes will do it when have a moment of time

[jack1974]

voilà, the crafting system is working already!
Anima sent me a prototype with obvious placeholder art/GUI, but I tested and seems to work. I'm sure once I'll add 100 recipes and 5000 ingredients will be the real test though

[Anima_]

Hm, I kinda like how my check marks turned out.

[jack1974]

Updating the main development thread: as you might have noticed from screenshots in other threads, the crafting system is up and working. Some features are still missing like the one requested by players "recipe discovery". The poor Anima was a bit shocked when I added it to the TODO list
Anyway current dev plan is:
1) design a lot of recipes/ingredients/final items.
2) finish the main "gameplay loop", adding stuff like the vendors, places to gather items and to buy recipes
3) code the shop and requests/commissions
4) add seasonal / random events which will change item costs (to make the game more fun and less predictable)
5) start beta

Between those 5 stages, in the "free time" finish coding/scripting the scenes, endings, CGs making sure all works properly, and do the VN mode. That's easy stuff but still takes long time.
If all goes well I can see the game being out Q1 next year for sure, or at least the beta.

[jack1974]

Haha looks like I spoke too early Go to bottom for the short version!

Today made a big decision, after trying to use the framework for a while. Asked Anima to revert back to using python classes instead of XML, for various technical reasons.
I won't go in details since most of you won't understand, but basically need to think about the future games and possibility for myself to do changes independently (often last minute changes like ALWAYS happens in game development! ask Sid Meier ) and/or be able to edit the items/skills/whatever quickly and easily (nothing faster and easier than the integrated Renpy editor).
The current system was overkill (and also the reason why PSCD is not yet out on iOS! XML library problems) and was taking me ages to make just a few recipes. I definitely can't imagine myself using it to do an insanely big game like Loren 2 or Roger Steel or others. Would take me 2 years just for the design

Anyway the short version is: asked the coder a big change to the framework, and I'm not sure how long this will take. I will finish Amber VN part while I wait, and depending how long it takes, I might work on Love Bites and release that one first. But definitely I think I made the right decision, to avoid having serious problems in future RPG games.

[DarkWolf]

So basically you decided to change a programing language you program the game in half the way in making a game never heard of that happening before.

Well I can't say I really understand what you gain by doing that but you seem confidant in your decision so...... Good luck

[jack1974]

No not the language, the "system". Language is still renpy, but instead of reading the "data" from XML files (like happened in PSCD) the data is in the python code itself. But I wasn't half way, I was let's say at 1/4 of crafting stuff.
The change was also needed because this system was integrated with the new RPG framework, so it could have an impact also on the future RPG. So better fix this sooner than later
Anyway, maybe Anima will be finished before I have finished doing the VN part, so no time will be lost !

[Anima_]

Already changed the item definitions, the recipe definitions will be changed in a few days. Shouldn't take long. The tricky part was getting the classes loaded into the framework.