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I’ve finally finished setting everything up and the game is available to download and buy. Now we’ll just have to wait and see if people like it.

I’ve written a lot on this blog about the game but there’s so much more I haven’t said. So many subtle changes that we have made since Dawn’s Light, as well as some not so subtle changes.

We considered making a smaller, cheaper game after Dawn’s Light because I worry that with all the $7 games out there, people will be less willing to take a risk with a more expensive game.

In the end though, we decided to just make the game we wanted to make and let people make up their own mind whether it’s worth spending a little more.

Here’s some links:

More Info

Download Demo

Buy Full Version

We released Dawn’s Light: A Christmas Tale at the end of last year. It ended up being so much fun that we plan to do another free Christmas themed game this year.

Aislingyngaio played through the game recently and was kind enough to write a walkthrough. But this isn’t just a walkthrough, it also features Aislings thoughts on the events that occur. It’s very entertaining, even if she does point out things that are supposed to be a secret.

Hello Harvey.

http://houseofngaio.byethost6.com/?p=3163

The beta testers have been doing a great job so far. As soon as I finish fixing a long list of problems I just go back to the beta forum and get a new long list. It seems like it might never end!

Double Beta

This beta test is pretty rough on the testers since they’re not only testing the game content, they are also testing the new menus and battle system which each have their own share of bugs. Hopefully they won’t grow to despise the game by the time they get done.

All the testers have been very patient, even when I  put up a new version that fixes a broken door that leads to a broken room. Not all bugs are bad though, like potions not going away when you use them. That one is fixed now … take that beta testers!

A picture!

Here’s a screenshot of something I just added.

Jade posted a comment about not knowing which potion to use before choosing it and I finally came up with a solution. Now when you point at a potion, instead of saying “Heal a party member for 25hp”, the description text will go away and you’ll be able to see how much the potion will heal. Thanks Jade, I never thought about that before.

Back to beta

Next things on my list are getting the map menu working, fixing the light puzzles that broke at some point for no reason at all and fixing more bugs.

Hi guys,

The game is getting  very close to the beta phase right now, so I thought it would be a good time to start the beta tester sign up. Hopefully there are enough of you still reading this blog for us to get a nice beta testing league going.

If you have a bit of spare time in the upcoming weeks and you’d be interested in helping us out by playing the game and reporting problems, please send an e-mail to dan@johnwizard.com. I’m only accepting people who played Dawn’s Light so email me from the email you used to buy Dawn’s Light.

Keep in mind that being a beta tester may ruin the experience for some players. You may get stuck multiple times and have to wait for a new version or you might have to replay areas a few times over. You might also see some spoilers from later parts of the game. If you think this would annoy you then you should wait a few weeks for the game to be released.

I better get back to my 100 pages of bugs that I have to fix before beta.

So we’ve been working hard for this last week getting Lilly and Sasha ready for beta testing. As expected, the game is taking longer than expected.

We’re getting closer every day but in the meantime I’ve made a quick preview video. Click on the video to watch it on youtube in higher resolution.

The colored light puzzles are my favorite. I’ve always wanted to do a puzzle like that but I wasn’t sure if it would work. The one in the video is the first one so it’s pretty easy.

I never ended up doing a preview of the new text system but you can see it in the video. It’s got a cool glowing effect behind the text that you might be able to see but it’s a lot clearer in the game. It also has the big text for yelling. The text system was inspired by Twilight Princess. It has really great text.

You’ll also notice the bottom bar that I stole from Aveyond. When I first played Lord of Twilight I knew I wanted to have that in my next game so thanks for that one Amanda. It also completes my goal of making the whole game playable with only one mouse button.

So I should get back to work now. I hope you enjoy the video.

We’re going into the home stretch now. This is the part where we make lists of everything that isn’t done yet. Then after the list is complete we find more things that aren’t done. Sometimes they are really big things that we somehow forgot about. Those are the very worst.

While we’re doing this I’m not going to write any blogs. We need to try to think as little as possible and just follow the list. The more zombie like we can be, the better. Zombies don’t get bored when they develop games which makes them very efficient.

The next blog I write will be the beta announcement so stay tuned if you’re interested in doing some testing.

Finally! I’ve been writing quest descriptions all day and they are finally done! So I can tell you that there are 149 “tasks” in Lilly and Sasha. Some are long, some are short and there are other things that don’t have associated tasks.

Doing jobs like this is very boring but it does feel like I’m getting a lot done. When I’m designing puzzles for example, I might come up with something good or I might just end up with nothing. At least with boring jobs you always get a sense of accomplishment.

It feels good to be working on these kind of jobs because it means the game isn’t too far from completion. On the other hand this is when you start to get a little nervous about the release. Will people love it? Will they hate it? Will they say that we just made an easy game to get good reviews? We’ll probably get a bit of each.

Here’s a tip for anybody using RPG Maker VX.

Removing shadows without extra work

Shadows can cause a lot of problems when you’re trying to make interesting maps. There are a few scripts that just remove all auto shadows so you can put them where you want them. I found that to be far too inefficient to be useful so I wrote a quick script to be able to remove only the shadows I didn’t need.

My helper tiles

I dedicate the bottom two rows of my TileE to helper tiles. I started doing this in with the bottom row in Dawn’s Light but in Lilly and Sasha I’m using two rows. When the game is released I clear the bottom two rows of TileE so all of my sneaky solutions are hidden from view.

From top left you have black and white which are above character and good for hiding things. The star is the shadow remover. The Red lines are one way blockers so you can have a tile that you can enter from the left but not from the right. I didn’t think I would need bottom ones but now I wish I had them. I’ll probably add them for our next game.

The bottom row is the most useful. The green and red are to enable or disable walking on any square. The other colors are mostly for puzzles but help with other things too. Each color represents a certain ground type that I can check from events. More on those later, this blog is about the shadow remover.

What is the point

Each tile has an id that you can check from a script. This is how these tiles become useful. Here’s the ids of my helper tiles.

So you can see that the shadow remover is id 1010. Knowing that I can check if the tile 1010 is used anywhere on the map and if it is, remove the shadow in that spot. So here’s the script.

This script does break grass so you can’t use it to remove those pesky under grass shadows. It’s also takes up the second tile so you can’t put a chair on the same tile but we just use events if we really need something at the same place.

The age of efficiency

The shadow remover is just a simple thing but it makes my life easier. Well Andrew’s life really since he does most of the maps. =)

It’s hard to keep coming up with a new blog every day but I don’t care! I’m doing it! Plus it helps with our google ranking. =)

So for today’s exciting blog I’m going to tell you what I’m doing. I’m just starting work for the day which is usually when I write blogs. Mostly because it’s easier than working on the game. But on the plus side, after I finish I’ve already done something so it’s easier to transition into work.

Each night before I stop working I write a list of jobs for the next day. If I start the day without a list I get a lot less done than if I have a nice list. I’ve also noticed a link between the prettyness of the list and how much I get done.

So here’s my list for today:

Put real data in the menus

If you’ve seen the menu screens you may have noticed the placeholder text. Now I get to go through each menu and put in the final text. I also need to use real party data so when you open the party menu it will show your real party members and their hp and so on.

Finish last menu screens

There’s a few menu screens that still need some work. The biggest ones are the equip screen and the party swapping screen. The equip screen has been put off because I couldn’t decide on a layout. The party swapping has been delayed because it needs to work with keyboard or mouse but I’ve figured it out now.

Skill and state data

The battle system is pretty close to finished. There’s nothing big left to do, mostly just small fixes and improvements. So now I need to fill in all the data for skills and states. We still have a couple of special moves and team moves to figure out so I’ll probably make Andrew help me with that later.

So I should probably get started now

Now that I have my list of jobs for the day I have no reason to not get started but don’t worry, I’ll think of something! If I do get all of these jobs done I’ll be quite pleased but it’s more likely that I’ll hit a roadblock and spend ages on one small thing. But at least that small thing will end up being awesome!

Armor Slots

Each character in Lilly and Sasha will have 6 slots to equip items.

Weapon – Gives strength and dexterity

Armor – Gives defense and agility

Charm – Gives spirit and luck

Trinket – Something interesting

Quick Rune – Changes your quick move

Strong Rune – Changes your strong move

Stats

So as you can see we have 6 stats spread over 3 slots. Here’s what the stats do:

Strength – Damage increase, all damage is the same now

Dexterity – Increases your chance of getting a critical hit. The difference is that there are now various levels of critical hits. So you might get a 20% bonus or a 50% bonus depending on your dexterity.

Defense – Same as ever, reduces damage taken

Agility – Changes turn order which is much more important now than in Dawn’s Light

Spirit – Changes stamina and health regen rates, increases team power gain rate. (I might rename this one)

Luck – More chance for trinkets and runes that have a chance to do something. Get more money and xp from quests and more chance to get items.

What’s Stamina

In another attempt to streamline battles, we’re removing mana. Mana is pretty annoying, if you want to use your best moves and end battles quickly you’ll run out of mana and have to use potions. On the other hand if you have no limits on what moves you can use why would you ever use quick move? You wouldn’t. That’s why we have stamina.

Stamina is only used in battle. You will start each battle with full stamina no matter what you ended the last battle with. Each move will use a different amount of stamina and you gain stamina back after each turn. Quick move uses only a little bit of stamina so you will get more back than you use.

But I’m not even tired

If you use up all of your stamina you will be ‘exhausted’ and miss one turn. You will gain stamina back on that turn which means you’ll be ready to go again. Even if you only have 1 stamina left you’ll be able to use a move that costs 30 stamina. I think it makes for a more interesting decision. If you can finish the enemy off in one strong hit it won’t matter that you’ll become exhausted.

The plan is for stamina to get rid of the annoyance of mana but at the same time remove boring strategies like using one move over and over because it does the most damage. Will it work? That remains to be seen.

Next time I’ll talk about the visuals of the battle system.