New Quest Started

It's been a while since I've uploaded anything, but the day has finally come! There's definitely a few things to talk about though and that's what I'll be using this devlog for. 

Firstly, considering my last two games were horror games I feel most if not everyone that follows what I do expected a horror game, myself included. I still plan on making horror games, but I guess I just had to get this game out of my system first. My personal ultimate goal as of now is to make a full adventure RPG game in the style of this prototype. I'll talk more details about that later in this devlog, but the reason I bring that up is because I couldn't make another (nightmare (sorry)) horror game without this game in the back of my mind. The main reason I struggled between the two was because, although this game is at the top priority of games I want to make, the scope of it means it would take several months to maybe have something close to what I want to achieve. Horror games on the other hand can be pretty low scope and still accomplish at least something decent in just a few months. So after battling between the two for quite a while, it was in December 2022 that I fully committed to attempting a prototype of my RPG game. I still plan on making horror games in the future, most likely my next one will be since I've reached my first milestone for this one.

Before I talk about the game itself, I'd like to talk about some inspirations and a bit about myself. I actually finished my first full playthrough of Skyrim around the same time I started working on this project. A little bit about my Skyrim playthrough, I got through all DLCs and the main game in literally 200 hours (final playtime was 199 hours but 200 sounds better lol). I've tried getting through the game multiple times in the past but actually got bored after certain points. The reason I was able to stick with it this time was because of my better sense of appreciation in games as a whole. What I mean by that is, I get bored easily. Even now there were points in my latest Skyrim playthrough that I felt bored or just wanted to get over with. But even then, I've been making conscious efforts to listen to every piece of dialogue and immerse myself in any way I can into the story/world (no way I'm reading all the books though lol). That's the difference between how I play now and before. Before, I'd rush through dialogue, do quests without understanding why, and just rush through the game in general. I'd say in 2019 is when I really started to try to take my time and immerse myself in the content of the game. This made me complete games that I couldn't before like Witcher 3 and now Skyrim. At the same time, I can now enjoy games better than I did before, so replays of past games I've played were even more enjoyable the second time (such as Resident Evil 4 and Bloodborne).

Enough about me though, now I'd like to talk about the game itself and some inspirations behind it (despite the fact I said I'd do that in the last paragraph lol). So obviously, Skyrim comes to mind based off my last paragraph and even when you play the prototype. I really like what Bethesda does with their recent games in how dynamic they are. Someone is saying something important to the story? You can just kill them lmao. Everyone has their own personal tasks and routines that you can dynamically interrupt and it's those kind of things that they implement in their games that really inspire me. There's literally NONE of that in my prototype lol, but that is something I want to achieve in the end. Other than that, the high fantasy style and world Skyrim has is something I want to imitate. I'll have to learn a lot about 3D modeling, animation, and other skills that aren't what I'm primarily focused on, which is programming, so basically, it's gonna be a while lol. There's a lot more that Skyrim inspires me with but I'll move on to other inspirations for now. Another big one is actually anime, specifically Mushoku Tensei (Jobless Reincarnation). So now that you've clicked off this devlog, I'll be assuming the use of cultured-speak from here on out. I don't watch a lot of anime, but according to my MAL stats, I've seen 70+ so far. I watch a lot of comedy/whatever is popular and seems interesting to me. Some big ones I've seen are Attack on Titan, RE:Zero, Vinland Saga, and Demon Slayer. I'd like to talk more about my anime experience, but moving on to the inspiration Mushoku Tensei, it's basically the general vibe I want to have in the game. By that I mean, the show itself is focused solely on it's characters and the adventure Rudeus goes on. That show gave me such a great sense of adventure and companionship, that by the end of the last episode of season 1 part 2, I actually felt a moment of emptiness in me, as cheesy as that sounds. I actually missed the characters that I wouldn't see again (but season 2 coming lets gooo). So much so that I actually read the manga and it was the first time ever that I've read a manga at all. So basically, I want to try to achieve that same sense of adventure and companionship that I felt while watching that show.

I guess I should talk about the game itself now. It sucks lmao.

On a serious note, I'm pretty proud of what I was able to get done. I'm horrified at some code that I made in order to get some things to work, but other than that it all turned out not as bad as I thought it would. I'm definitely gonna have to re-work some of that code though lol. As you can tell, I submitted this to the RPG Mania III game jam. The deadline for it was 2 months and that felt like a great deadline for me to follow through with, which is part of why I'm actually uploading something for the first time in decades. I'll be assuming you've played the prototype from this point so I can talk about what I'd like to do with it in the future. First of all, I'm probably gonna start from scratch and rebuild from the ground up. There's no chance I can build off of this project with how some of my systems are. However, that doesn't mean it'll take a long time to get started. I just have to copy and paste parts from my code to the new project and re-organize from there. I actually did that with this project. I took code from unfinished projects and re-worked them to do what they were meant to do in a more expandable way. I guess I'll start with what I would've liked to have in the prototype, but wasn't able to due to my lack of abilities + procrastination + deadline + more excuses. I would've liked more UI sounds. It's hard to find fitting UI sounds and I just couldn't find any that didn't sound annoying. Even my button click sound isn't good but I at least wanted something there. Another is more enemy types. Spoiler alert in case you haven't played yet, there's only two types right now. Spiders and rats. Having at least one more would've been great, but I wasn't able to fit one in that would make sense in time. Maybe in a small update I'll add a few more enemies. Even then, a big change I would've liked is to make combat better. It's super basic, which is actually fine, but there's no variety. Plus, blocking doesn't apply to the shield's collider, rather it just toggles isBlocking to on or off, so you basically block enemies attacking from all directions. I'm probably missing a few more wanted features, but for now I'll move on to what I want to add in the future. Going back to combat, I'm definitely adding more variety. Magic especially. That will take time of course, but is very necessary. I also just remembered, the player stats actually mean nothing right now. The numbers get changed, but they're not applied at all right now. So possibly adding more different types of stats is something I'd like to do. Abilities such as special attacks. Combos when attacking. Crafting of some sort. Other than that, just creating a good number of quests and characters to really make the game feel like an adventure.

If you've made it this far, firstly you're actually insane, but more importantly thank you for just hearing my ramblings. There's a lot I wanted to say about this project and my future plans and I feel I pretty much covered everything. I might do updates to this game in the coming week or two, but won't really finish the game like this exactly. I'll probably use a lot of the same things, but don't expect the exact same way it's shown off here. Again, let me know of any thoughts/opinions/advice or if you find any bugs/glitches (probably a few hundred) and I'll be open to it all. We'll see what updates I have in the future, but until then, thanks for checking this out!