Sacraments Development Log
This is my development log that I wrote while I was working on this game. It's boring reading to most, but might be of some interest to some people who make RPG's. At some later date, I'll do a proper postmortem which should be a more interesting read.
Overview
Macromedia Director is the development environment. We'll see if she is up to the task. Currently, I only have a vague notion of plot, and some various code libraries and tilesets that I have doodled with in the past to draw upon.
I'm going to be stealing time at night to work on this. I'll have one, maybe two hours a night plus some more time on the weekends. As a result, there's probably a good chance I won't complete. But, I figured I'd sign up and make an attempt at it, if only to boost participation and interest in the competition. At this point, I'll be happy if I complete the game and even one person gives it a positive review. Tall order.
The plan is to get the engine complete by around April 10th-12th, and spend the rest of the time doing graphics and story.
April 1st
Resurrected an aborted engine I had started on for another project, and worked with it to get it up to speed. The current status has the following things all working to at least a rudimentary level: Map editor, walkaround demo, scripting engine for cutscenes/map changing/whatever, combat system basics (physical attack/defend), combat spell system (four spells so far: Heal, Bladesharp, Burn, and Drain), saving and loading of game progress. Things not working: equipment to change combat stats, items like potions and scrolls to use during combat, use of spells or items outside of combat, experience from combat to improve character.
I also did a survey of graphics. I've got a fair amount of springtime-ish stuff, but I'll likely need more. Tiles are 32x32. I'm liking the retro feel of the graphics, especially when in combat. Feels like an old Final Fantasy / Breath of Fire type game...
April 2nd
Added experience awards window, character advancement window, meta menu. Started on inventory structure.
April 3rd
Continued working on inventory structure. Upgraded spell structure.
April 4th
Continued working on inventory structure. Generic item object pretty much done, as well as generic way to store and access item objects, whether they are potions, equipped weapons and armor, or memorized spells. Added ability for equipped items to affect combat, although there is no mechanism yet with which to view and equip such items. You can now use expendables like potions and scrolls inside and outside combat. Added status window. Added some character stats. Made graphics for a new foe type (because I was bored with always testing with the zombie - heh). Added creature capabilities that affect certain types of damage, so that, say, an ice monster can be affected more by a fire spell, while a fire elemental could actually be healed by such a spell.
April 5th
Added a new foe type. Added the ability to equip and unequip weapons and armor. Added some items to test the equipping and unequipping stuff with.
April 6th
Added a new foe type. Added the ability to call up information about items while in the menu system. Added stores. Added inns. Exposed all this drek to the scripting system.
April 11th
I've been away on a trip for the last several days, but now I'm back. I didn't get as much done over the weekend as I had hoped, thanks to a near-catastrophic glitch when my map editor saved over my game code. Thankfully, I had some backups, and was able to spend an evening regaining my earlier position. Still, that's basically two days of development time lost.
Still, I've managed to push forward. There are now several foe types, and support for "bosses" is in place, although I have no graphics for them as yet. I'm now focusing on the tileset and graphics - working on plants and trees and grass and flowers for the compo theme, although we'll depart that scene for the darker parts of the game. Engine-level fixes include "Game Over" handling, poison, new spells, new items, the ability for monsters to cast spells and perform special abilities, large changes to the maps (such as unblacking a newly discovered area), automatically wrapping text (very handy), and other minor tweaks. The game engine is eminently playable now, although no real scenario maps are in place. The testbed has 8 maps, and the map editor is such that I will be able to quickly generate them. I'd say the engine is about done. All that is left, really, is the opening screen and menu.
April 13th
Been working on graphics. In the last few days, I got most of the graphics for two major areas done, plus the bases of three maps for these areas. Added an ally sprite sheet, some items, and some equipment. Added code to allow swapping allies in and out based on the storyline.
April 14th
Mainly worked on some maps today. Posted a screenshot of the main character wandering through one of them, in case you're interested in checking it out.
April 15th
Developed the second quest area by quite a bit. It includes a nice little puzzle (not too hard) and a simple maze with some interesting features that should make for some fun. Worked on some more graphics for these areas - I'm fairly pleased with how they're turning out. Not exactly spectacular graphics, but certainly better than I thought they would look. When you get a critical mass of tile graphics, you can really start to put together stuff that looks good. I doubt I am going to use all of my tiles (especially since I am probably not going to use the 'geographic-map' level tiles), but the ones I am using are looking pretty good together.
April 16th
Today was the first 100% content day, as opposed to engine stuff. Today's progress includes the completion of one of the quest areas, graphics for the first "boss" villain, and a major fleshing-out of the town, which now has several separate merchants such as armorers, weaponsmiths, innkeepers, and apothecaries. Stock is still a little low, since I haven't made a lot of the weapons and armor items yet, but it will be a simple matter to drop them in.
April 17th
(Shameless plug: tonight was the premiere party for a documentary series I've been working on - see http://www.rootsandmedicine.com for more info.) After the party, I managed to come home and do some tileset graphics and work on the cutscene engine to bring it up to snuff. I got two more sprite sheets done, and the cutscene engine is now a little easier to work with than before. The main new features for the cutscene engine are that it can now create and destroy actors as part of the script (previously, you had to define the actors in code first before you could run a sequence), and the fact that props can now define their own poses and behaviors without having to do it in code (for instance, I can just spawn an actor from a sprite sheet, and it will automatically know which frames to use to, say, show the character's walking-to-the-left walk cycle - previously, frame information would have to be inserted when the prop was created).
April 18th
Worked on the cutscene engine some more, and started writing some cutscenes for important plot points. It's working rather well. Added graphics for a new character for cutscenes, finished up the finale of the first quest area, along with some boss graphics for it. Fleshed out the town some more.
The plot is finally starting to gel. Basically, it's a less ambitious version of my "Children of Sidhe" project with a rather different ending. I hope it isn't too big for me to complete in the time alotted for the compo, but since it's about 2/3rds of the way through the month, I think I can complete it...
There's also the issue of the web site for this project. I'm all out of space on my personal mac dot com account, but I get some web space with my ISP, so I should be able to have a web site up soon.
April 19th
Revamped the inventory system. There are now two ways to do your day-to-day item management in the game. You can either select items from a "Use Item" or "Equip Items" menu, or you can see all your inventory at once and work with them there. I personally like the latter, since it's a nice, compact, text-only view. I've uploaded a screenshot of it in action. You'll see that compared to the other menu style, it doesn't have the pretty icons for all the items, and it doesn't filter out the stuff that's not relevant (i.e., since it shows you everything, you see potions when you go in to wield a sword, and you see daggers when you go in to drink an elixir), but being able to see all the items at once gives a better feel for what you have. Other than that, not much done tonight. The only content work was a few lingering bugs in the quest areas.
April 20th
Not much time to work tonight. Started on tileset for a quest area.
April 21st
Got most of the tileset for the new quest area done. Did three new foe types for the area and their corresponding walk-around-on-the-map graphics, one of which is a unique named character baddie. Started work on fleshing out the inventory selection (adding swords, spears, axes, helms, shields, etc.).
April 22nd
Started fleshing out the story with some cutscenes. Started building the maps for the new quest area. Added graphics for a new NPC (a deacon at the local church - see new screenshot for a shot of him in a cutscene). Added the introductory cutscene for the game.
April 23rd
Added two new maps for a new quest area, and redid another one that sucked. Made a new sprite sheet for another NPC. Made a cutscene for the finale of the new quest area.
April 24th
Quite a bit of progress today. Added some spells, more items, more graphics for the new quest area, two new large maps, connected some plot elements with cutscenes. Fixed some glaring cosmetic issues with some of the tiles because I was sick of looking at them. Added some features to the cutscene engine and fixed some lingering bugs in the walkaround engine and the combat engine. Did some playtesting. Started investigating what it will take to publish on the PC as well as on Mac. (The first PC I tried was apparently incapable of doing anything but crash - I never even got to the point of trying to compile my code - so I'll be trying on a different PC later.)
April 25th
Got "Sacraments" working on a PC today! Yay. It's now officially cross-platform. To my absolute amazement, the Mac code I wrote went over seamlessly to the PC - it ran on the first try! That's the first time that's ever happened to me - usually, when I port Director code to another platform, there are some glitches and gotchas, but it ran pretty well (knock on wood!).
Spent today fleshing out the game interface. You now have an 'options' menu where you can set the game difficulty, configure control keys, and change combat speed. Added the start game menu.
Also, fleshed out the game world, fixed bugs, and playtested so that the game is completely playable to the moral equivalent of Act three. Added a handful of cutscenes, added some areas, and updated some graphics. This thing is really rolling now...
April 26th
Jinxed myself saying that it is really rolling now. Did some work on a tileset that looked like crap when I went to put it together, and had to pretty much go back to square one. I am more happy with it now, but it's not what I had hoped.
April 27th
Started on another area. Did some major plot-element cutscene work. Added two new foe types for the new area. It's getting down to the wire. Can I get the story done in time? It's going to be close.
April 28th
Added some of the big plot cutscenes, and fleshed out the areas I added last night. Added some combat skills for the main character. Did a fair amount of graphic work.
April 29th
Added new foe type, with a new attack type. Made several maps and some cutscenes. Added some objects. Found a place to upload my game to, and made a web site for it. The extension is welcome, since I can make the finale less lame now.
April 30th
Added some new graphics, some new cutscenes, some new map stuff. Added some special effect code to the cutscene engine. Working on the final act action. This game starts out slow, but gets a lot of plot development the deeper into the game you get.
May 1st
Didn't get much done today. Cleaned up some cutscenes, wrote some other ones. Fleshed out a major plot element.
May 2nd
Spent most of today cleaning up the game. Fixed a lot of little bugs and cosmetic glitches, and a few humdingers that would have made the game unplayable. Spent a lot of time just playing the game to make sure the entire storyline can be completed. Fleshed out the penultimate plot parts - still have the finale to program, but it shouldn't be too bad. Started tweaking game balance. Added some graphics, new monster types. There are about 18 or so monster types to fight currently.
May 3rd
Made the finale.
May 4th
Cleaned up lingering issues. Made the credits screens. Did some last-minute testing to ensure that it is playable all the way through (pretty sure now, but you never know). Made first beta release for people to try out (visit the web page!).
May 5th
Took a day off to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Haven't heard any bug reports over the course of today, so that's a good sign, although it could just as easily be that no one has downloaded it to check it out...
May 6th
Cleaned up some bugs that were found by Warspawn, Chofritz, and Mokona (thanks!). Specifically, fixed a walk-through guard, keymap loading, the Copper scroll, the Tanis Leaf, and a few other things. Made it so that it can rain in places other than the western forest - basically everywhere outdoors now. Uploaded new version to the web site, and updated web site.
May 7th
Thanks to the generous feedback from people playing the beta (Gustave and Chofritz), I was able to upload another version with a handful of other bug fixes. I now have confirmation that the game is playable from beginning to end (even before these bug fixes), so it looks like there aren't any major game-stopping bugs left (knock on wood!).