#voicelcessjrpg

[bkbgames]

SquareEnix Collective Update

Life has been busy for the two of us over here at Fourends. I’m dealing with a recent second baby and both of us have hands full with a two-year-old (and other projects). But work on Voiceless continues on!

Most recently we’ve built a “bobbing” system---check out the gif below. Any event can have its own X and Y offsets at any time, which means our demonic monsters now float menacingly, our lilly pads gently bob in the water, terrified NPCs cower in fright, and so on and so on. This graphical addition is the same kind of subtle detail we seek out in the primary parts of the game, the writing and mechanics.

And sometimes it breaks...

But always looks awesome.

Our SquareEnix Collective campaign drawing to an end, may we turn your attention to  the best sources of new information on Voiceless: the social media accounts---our Facebook, Twitter, and itch.io (demo) pages. Or simply join the mailing list and we will update you on anything Voiceless related. Go! Follow one (or all) of them!

Combat - We want battles to feature the nail-biting difficulty of old school JRPGs, where each dungeon is a task of endurance and the player will be perpetually challenged---and immensely satisfied at the moment of victory. We also want to eschew the tediousness and RNG-ness (and, one could say, poor design) of some of those old games that usually created the tension.

Our goal is three types of combat: 1) a new encounter--in which you play it safe to learn the enemy’s moveset; 2) known encounters (the majority)--in which you must balance your limited resources (HP, MP, items, etc.) to not only defeat foes, but stay well stocked for the rest of the dungeon; 3) and the JRPG staple--enemies that are so below your skill and level that you just mash Attack until defeated. Putting enemies on the map will let you choose your encounters more strategically--we don’t want crazy fights to constantly interrupt your exploration unless you want them to, and the rewards for victory will be all the sweeter.

Our six voiceless party members start off in typical roles for the player to mix and match their own party of four--we have your typical tank, DPS, healer, and a few that are in-between. Over a few short levels of choosing particular progression paths and seeing the range that’s possible, they can be molded to fit roles of your choice, so you can play them how you want them. While some combinations are more viable from the start--we want your strategic choices and skill to be what opens the door to all (sane) combinations being viable at the end. Your more “typical” tank may start as a tank, but by endgame he could be a master of inflicting damage and nasty statuses. Or maybe you’ve doubled down on the tank role and added a retribution aura and some potent healing abilities. Or heck, he may end up a mix of both if that’s how you like it.

The enemies you’ll encounter will cycle through their attacks (a la FF1), permitting the player to exploit their patterns--once you know them. However, while balancing each encounter is not too hard a process at low levels, as your custom party of four very customized heroes grows, our job gets harder; in fact, making bosses the right amount of tougher-than-you (yet winnable) becomes a logistical nightmare as we try to account for all the possibilities. That aspect of the game design will take up more of our time than any other. So give us some time (or your own excel sheet of balanced changes and we will think about merging it in--seriously).

Besides that, we continue to play with our stealth mechanics and provide you a 5th party member: Foxe himself. He may not be under your direct control, or on the front lines of battle, but where else should a master thief be than stealing items from enemies so you don’t have to waste a turn. And should those enemies run out of items--or if you equip Foxe differently--our mouth-running master thief is also capable of dealing out some extra damage (and not just he verbal kind) or applying potions in tight situations.

Other Platforms - One of the most intriguing responses we’ve been getting from you guys is the desire to play this game on the Nintendo Switch. We want that, too! In fact we REALLY want it. Heck, we’d love to see it on the PS4 and Xbox and 3DS. And it’s highly plausible given our understanding of Unity. The unfortunate problem: it would take a lot of dev-time (a year?) to move the engine over to Unity and then an additional eternity of troubleshooting and console-debugging. While it’s certainly not out of the cards, we do want to get Voiceless out to the public as soon as possible, and a PC release first is the best way to do that (key word being “first,” not only).

But if that’s really what you fellas want---and we want it too---we will let you tell us exactly that with our upcoming Kickstarter campaign. If that campaign proves successful enough, you decide the stretch goals: 1) upgrading to 16-bit art, 2) expanding our library of music tailored specifically for this game, and 3) getting this game on the Switch. Oh, and virtual hats, always more virtual hats.

Since this is my dev blog - I do really really (triple really) want to see this game on the Switch. It might be the perfect JRPG/casual/handheld console. However, working in software development with a multi-platform product... it is terrifying how differently (and sometimes terribly) different platforms work. We could see a bug free Voiceless release to PC by early next year - and in a perfect world port to unity and release to all platforms within the next year... but the requirements for consoles are so different than PC. PCs (usualy) have lots of RAM, beefy CPUs, and error eating that let games get by easy. Consoles... you have to have it run crash free for DAYS while someone tries to break it.... I don’t want crashes, but I don’t have the time to find and fix a bug that isnt reproducable that sometimes only ever happens on a device that is 12 years old and only 3 people have... not a fun bug/witch hunt.

To explain - no, there is no time - to sum up (best movie ever): I would love to spend the time to build a legit JRPG system on top of unity and see Voiceless ported to the world of consoles - but it would take a non-zero amount of time and monies... so.. I guess we let the people decide in the most democratic way ever - put your cash where your voice is with our kickstarter (coming soon to an internet near you).

[bkbgames]

80-20 rule...

There is the fun quip with programming to cover 80% of your needs with 20% of the work (yeah, the math does not add up here). Using the same numbers, I have more often heard that “I’ve finished the first 80% of the work, now for the second 80%.” I believe the second adage much more - for unexpecteds pop up - but the first has some basic truth in it: focus your time where it matters most. Both are very true for game dev work.

Today, I would propose another variation of the 80-20 made up numbers rules: Of all your efforts, 80% will never be noticed/seen by players unless you really screw it up. A great menu UI simply gets used. Deep combat often turns into one of the few top tier strategies. The electrical outlets in that perfectly modeled house in your game - completely ignored, but something is so very off if they are missing.

So, to all you game devs out there (programmers, art, design, whatever) remember that it is the little things that matter, and it is true that few if any will notice what you spend most of your time doing (curse you elusive game crashing bugs) your users WILL notice if you didn’t do it.

So, what has been happening with Voiceless these past weeks? Programming has been doing tons of essential things... that you wont notice (like being able to sneak, and then loot an enemy without holding both buttons yet not being caught) but without them... well, the game would not be that great. So thanks for reading and following. Our super beta demo went well - there might be a public one within the coming month(s?). And here, since I can’t give tasty cookies online (just those darn tracking ones) have a gif of one of the few things I got to work on that IS presentable and not hidden user expectations.

I have a feeling winter is coming to voiceless... and scope creep.