First Steps

A full month has already passed since I first announced that I'd be working on LOTUS this year. Since then, a lot of progress has been made but there is still clearly a long way to go. Please allow me to share in this post some of the steps that have been made since the last update.

Art Assets
Wow this was a lot harder than I initially thought that it was going to be. I shared a bit of fanart that I had completed in the previous blog post but since then I haven't been able to create anything that I feel super proud of. Perhaps this will change later down the line but I think that I need to review the idea of creating so many character portraits from scratch with so little experience in digital art. I have made a couple of initial drafts of selecting portraits for one of the classes but like I mentioned before I am not super happy with them. This is going to be something I will have to make a solid decision on sooner or later. 

This was one of the initial designs I came up with for one of portraits for the Brawler class - a high-powered front row attacking class. The design is extremely simple as you might expect, and it's the closest I've had so far to creating a portrait I'm happy with. There are still quite a few things to improve on obviously. This is just going to have to be an aspect to consider.

Music

I have made a lot of progress on musical tracks however! I've got four done so far and am working on the main battle theme at the moment but it's hitting a few roadblocks. I have decided not to share all of the completed tracks straight away, so as to leave some things to be discovered when the game releases in December (probably???). That's not to say I won't share anything though! Here is the area theme for the first floor of the tower, called the Castle Grounds.

Gameplay

The majority of the gameplay systems are in, including the battle system. It's a very basic affair but works well enough. I've not put on any major bells or whistles to the regular RPG Maker battle system - it works very much like Etrian Odyssey. All party members input their commands at the start of a turn, and then battlers' AGI stat is used to determine their turn order. There are as of yet no meter mechanics in the game. I've not fully decided whether I want a burst or limit break-style system yet, that will probably come later down the line.

Every class has access to ten skills and each skill can be levelled up to level 3, granting them additional properties such as extra damage, higher ailment infliction rate, longer-lasting buffs and debuffs, or cheapening the cost of utility skills. I have been thinking a lot about buffs recently. A game design question I keep coming back to is how strong does a buff have to be for a player to consider using it? Buffs are quite expensive in the turn economy - so how strong does a buff need to be for a player to be insentivised to spend a turn on one. I've been experiementing a lot with this - particularly with the Brawler class which has access to two buffs: Battle Soul which sacrifices the Brawler's HP for a percentage boost to their STR stat for 3 turns, and Flash Charge which is a one-turn buff that doubles the damage of the attack that the Brawler uses on the following turn. The use case for Flash Charge is obvious and seems very strong, but the use case for Battle Soul isn't quite as clear. So I've been tinkering with the percentages until I've hit a balance that I think feels right, but this is one of those things I'll really need to ask playtesters about once we reach that phase of development.

The first floor has been fully designed (except the visual aspect, which I am as of yet unsure which direction to go). It has the standard traversal mazes one would come to expect of a dungeon crawler.

One of the rooms of the Castle Grounds. The visual aspects are all placeholder.

One of Etrian Odyssey's staple gameplay elements is the turn-based overworld movement, leading to traversal puzzles created by F.O.Es. I wanted to include these in the game as well, and in fact the game introduces to player to these extremely early. 

This F.O.E will lead the player to encounter the Flame Catterpillar. On the overworld, the FOE aligns with the player's horizontal co-ordinates whilst they are in sight, but does not move vertically. They also do not return to their original positon once the player has exited their line of sight, allowing the player to indirectly move them and open new paths.

The game also has a gathering and materials system. Gather spots can be found throughout the various floors of the tower, and the player can either Gather, Chop, or Mine for resources. Each spot has its own particular rarity distribution for materials, with spots that are easier to access containing fewer rare materials

Materials can be taken to the Iron Scale Smith.

All graphical elements are placeholder.

Materials can be Traded in to create items. The Slate picked up in one of the previous screenshots can be used to create a Razor Jar - a single use attacking item that deals single-target Slash damage based on the user's STR stat. 

This is made possible using the amazing CGMZ plug-ins.

Once an item has been synthesised through trading, it is still possible to attain through the Trade system, but it also becomes available for general purchase in the main shop. 

This shop screen comes from the core set of VisuStella MZ plug-ins.

This system will seem relatively familiar to Etrian Odyssey players, although in those games you have to sell materials to gain new shop items rather than use the trade option. Selling is still possible, but it only provides money and no other shop benefits.

There are other areas in the town seen in one of the above screenshots, called the Hanged Man and the Archlord's Manor. These contain a variety of different systems, the majority of which are fully functioning and ready to go. In particular, I have spent a lot of time this month developing the character creation and party management systems, which can be accessed in the Archlord's Manor. 

In this area, characters can be Registered which allows you to create a new character from scratch.

Visual aspects are placeholder blah blah blah

There is a functioning front line and back line system in the game, just as in the Etrian Odyssey series. Some classes like the Brawler are better suited to the front lines, whereas classes like the Warlock and the Enchanter are more suited to the back lines. There are also classes like the Cleric that can work well on either line, making them a useful addition to a team. 

The organise option allows the player to customise which characters are in their active party. The player can have up to twenty registered with the Archlord at any one time. Parties can be formed of 1-4 members.

I have been trying to implement a system whereby reserve party members (i.e. members that can be selected from the Archlord's Manor but are not in the active battling party) receive 50% of all quest and mission EXP but there appears to be a bug with the code I have written for that, so I'm still working on getting that in the game. All of the menus you have seen above have been created without the use of plugins, just the default events and pictures commands that come installed with the RPG Maker MZ software. It's quite a powerful little tool once you know what to do with it.

There are quests and missions in the game. Missions can be accepted from the Archlord's Manor and are closely tied to the main story of the game, whereas quests contain side content and are accessible from the Hanged Man. I haven't implemented many quests into the game yet, but I want them to be developed and engaging just as I hope the main content of the story will be!

Overall

I feel like I've only scratched the surface in this post about what has been done and what yet remains to be completed, but I am feeling quite optimistic. My goals before the next blog post are:

- Create the Boss Enemy for the Castle Grounds

- Begin designing the second floor of the tower

- Implement more quests for the quest system

- Complete some more music tracks for the game

- Make some decisions as towards the direction of the characters and story

Thank you for reading this post!

I will be back towards the end of February with a new update on development. Hopefully meeting some of these targets!