I have finally managed to get my productivity back to where I want it to be. Some things are a little different from what I laid out in my last post, but the important thing is that the core gameplay of the necessary database work is done, the demo's core gameplay is working, and the skill system is working and fully implemented. I still have some assets to make/fix and the companionship system to get working, but I'm now confident enough in my progress to say I'll have a working test build up on Patreon for VIPs on Friday, and the demo should be ready for release to all Patrons on the following Friday, June 28. That does mean the demo is going to be my monthly release, which puts me a bit behind schedule, but things are the closest to normal than they've been this year. It's a good feeling.
Anyway, on to changes from last week. The big thing is the core gameplay. I can now actually test how everything works in a live game environment, which was my biggest hurdle before now. I'm still working on equipment switching, but for now, changing equipment is a free action, but can only be done before movement. I kinda want it to take your turn, but I haven't figured out how to make that happen yet, so I might just seal everything except your weapon so you can't change literally everything every turn and still act normally. For the sake of balancing things out (and stopping combat from taking way longer than it should), I dropped the baseline for max HP down to 10 so it's in line with all the other stats. Other stats haven't changed, and the formulas haven't changed, and testing so far has been pretty good. Enemy max HP came down along with player unit max HP, so you're still only needing to hit these early enemies 1-3 times to down one. Combat should feel reasonably quick and both dealing and taking damage should feel meaningful. Balance is definitely going to be a concern, but it always is, so that's not particularly new. Overall, I'm pretty happy with where everything ended up, even if I still want to tweak a few things here and there.
That also means that - aside from making new enemy types - all the math is basically done. I'll be eagerly awaiting feedback when it comes to how fast skills are learned, because I'm impatient and have a lot of things to test so I've been manually setting these variables for myself, but I'm also really happy with how the system worked out.
The main thing that I'm really excited about but only barely mentioned last week is the weapon skill system. The basics are that each weapon has a skill associated with it, and "mastering" that weapon will permanently teach you the skill. Each character has their own set of variables that track both their affinity for each type of weapon as well as each individual weapon. I couldn't find a clean way to have that affect damage, but high weapon category affinity will affect how quickly a unit learns skills. For example, once a unit swings any sword 20 times, that unit now learns all sword skills twice as fast. If the character has a negative preference (e.g., the knight has trouble learning magic), it stops there, but if there's no preference, it can go up to 30 and they'll learn sword skills three times as fast. If they have a positive preference, they can learn sword skills up to 4 times as fast. The same applies to spells and spell books, with the exception that spell books have four spells you can learn from them instead of a single skill.
I've even figured out some other modifiers to further make characters feel more unique, in that - on average - you'll need to get 30 affinity with a weapon to learn its skill. If a character should learn a particular skill particularly quickly or slowly, that number might go as low as 20 or as high as 40. The unit's weapon affinity can drastically change the number of times a weapon needs to be swung in order to learn the skill in question. In some cases, a weapon category might have a negative preference except with a specific weapon, so that unit using a certain sword might lead to a better understanding of all swords.
To use the earlier knight example, her book affinity caps at 20 because she has a hard time learning magic. That also means she learns spells slowly, so even at maximum affinity, you'll need to use the spell book 15 times to learn the first spell, and a total of 60 times to master that magic. Conversely, she learns weapon skills much more quickly, taking roughly 8 attacks at maximum affinity to learn a new spear skill.
Where this gets really fun is hidden skills. For a completely different example, each character has an "unarmed" skill that you can only raise by unequipping your weapon and punching things. Once you do that enough, rather than learning one specific "super punch" skill, each character has a unique skill they can learn. Aside from an unarmed skill, I can do this in any number of ways on top of having it be character-specific. The knight might learn a skill that no one else gets once she's mastered all the polearms, the mage might learn a spell no one else learns once she's learned certain spells from two or more elements, the paladin might learn a new skill once the knight knows a certain skill and the mage knows a certain spell and he gets the idea to combine the two, so if he learns both, he gets a new hidden skill. I can even hide unlocks within unlocks, so unlocking certain hidden skills on two characters might unlock a companion scene back at camp that leads to both characters learning a combination skill - it's a fun system to play with from a design standpoint.
I want every unit to be able to equip everything, so the major differences between units will be in base stats and how quickly units learn certain skills. That does present it's own problems (because what's stopping you from giving everyone bows and books and super heavy armor and trading movement for defense?), so that might change in the future (or if I get extra spicy, maybe make equipping different weapon and armor types unlock as part of the skill system), but I don't have enough of the game built to know whether those changes are a good idea yet. Same goes for the speed of learning skills and spells; I don't have enough game to know if it happens too quickly or if where it's set is just right.
Right now my main focus is testing all these skills and spells to make sure they function as intended and getting this proximity-based companionship system working (if you've played Fire Emblem games, you know what this is about) and seeing if I can find a plugin that'll let me display all these extra stats so you're not lost on how a unit is progressing with their skills (and where their relationships with the other units stand). That's probably what next week's post will be about, and then you'll be able to get your hands on the demo to see it all for yourself (as long as you're a Patron).
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