azurealexis

[azurealexis]

touhou garbage I made in a 30 minute speed draw with my sister (slowly improving my art skills ^^)

~~is this slowly becoming an art blog now~~

[azurealexis]

ASBB pre-alpha 3.0.1

Changes: + Added very very important text to a very very important object + Polished up some sprites

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This is so important trust me DO NOT FORGET :p

Ok so now that I grew the game to such a bigger scale, released a public video, and started school for the first time in years (yay! ^^), it's so much harder to make any progress on this game. Right now my goal is to polish what I have to make a playable demo, at which point I'll move this from pre-alpha to alpha. So if you can wait... hm at this rate... a few thousand years... you can try whatever this is for yourself!

[azurealexis]

I'm working on my drawing skills to make my game look better, and I drew a Cirno :p

[azurealexis]

Update 3.0 (The big one)

Umm... this is awkward. I should probably have more content on this blog, but... stuff happened.

So I was planning on releasing a small demo for people to try of my game, and looked towards other games to figure out what would be best to do. But then that caused me quite the existential (ok probably not that big) crisis - my game felt exactly like every other low quality amateur indie rpg out there, which made me think:

Everyone's going to think that I suck at this, that I have no creativity and I'm pumping out generic trash

(ok that sounded really mean towards other indie rpg devs, I'm so so sorry if I sounded rude I'm not insulting other people, just myself because I have zero self esteem)

so I decided to completely remake most of the game and here's a clip from it

[azurealexis]

pre-alpha 2.1.0 (Battle test 1)

Changes: ++ Created basic map for the first real area of the game + Added new sprites ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Drawing grass is so hard pls send help

So despite pre-alpha 2 being called "battle test", not every update will be combat focused. Sometimes, you just wanna take a break from coding arguably the most complicated part of the game and put together something simple, like this. This is supposed to be one of the area's of Anima Park, the town that most of the characters live in. It's fairly small, containing a few streets, a few dozen houses, some stores, a school, and a train into the city (most of which I haven't done yet).

Next time, expect to see a new character :D

[azurealexis]

pre-alpha 2.0.0 (Battle test 0)

Changes: +++ Prototype of battle system created! + Changed font + Fixed collision bugs ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I said last post that I'd try to make stuff more frequently, but now it's been... over a week

Welp, at least I have something to show for it this time

Pre-Alpha 2 is now a thing, which I'm calling "Battle test" due to, yknow, the battle system being implemented and worked on. I'll explain it more later, but for now, all I want to say is, THIS IS A VERY EARLY WORK IN PROGRESS. The bland textboxes, lack of a real ai, the placeholder sprites, and the eb battle backgrounds are all temporary and will be worked on in the near future.

Back to my cave for now :p

[azurealexis]

pre-alpha 1.2.2 (Concept 2.2)

Changes: -Revamped text system -Fixed text windows after they broke for the 3rd time :p -Implemented choices in text ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Updates are really slowing down now, since I'm getting to actual game design rather than just creating the engine. It really sucks, since I want to have stuff to show off! So, if there's no update in a long time, I'll post something like my thoughts on development, the story, the characters, and more I probably haven't thought of

[azurealexis]

The hell of making text windows

Text windows: sounds like a pretty simple concept, right? To most people, it just looks like text being displayed on the screen, maybe with a picture behind it. That's what I thought too, when I set out to program them in my game.

After several days totaling dozens of hours of programming these damn things. god I was wrong

One of the many failed attempts to make this work

In my opinion, there's 7 steps in text window execution:

1: Stop player movement, 2: Call the textbox object, 3: Display text on the textbox, 7: Delete textbox object, 8: Re-enable player movement

5: Execute code based on choice, if there is a choice Not really problematic, just really really time consuming, since I have to create branching paths for all possible choices :c

4: Accept player input to proceed, 6: Repeat 3-5 until all text is shown The main problem I had :/. Because of how Java works, all code in a function is executed immediately, without waiting a second for the user normally. This led to many, many problems that I tried to solve many times with varying degrees of success, including:

Attempt 1: Call the text function each time manually. This worked, but any self respecting programmer doesn't write the same function 20 times in a row, so I couldn't stay with this if I wanted to keep my honor.

Attempt 2: Use a loop to call the text function repeatedly: Doing this let to all of the text being displayed at once, since the function calling the loop executes all iterations of the nested function at once.

Attempt 3: Limit the max text on screen at once (queuing all other text to be displayed) and manually adding line breaks: Time consuming, AND breaks choices :(((

Attempt 4: Call the text function once, and await player input before calling it again: How the hell did it take me hours to think of this one? It works, but I feel pretty stupid for it taking me this long to figure out

[azurealexis]

pre-alpha 1.2.1 (Concept 2.1)

Changes: + Jumping! (NYOOOOOOOM) + Added some floor sprites + Significantly improved collision

To-Do: Same as last time ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ (THIS SHALL HENCEFORTH BE KNOWN AS THE BOING UPDATE)

I don't think I mentioned this before, but I have a github! I post all of my code and sprites there, so check it out if you want! (don't try to steal it, 2 people who are reading, I already copyrighted it :p)

[azurealexis]

pre-alpha 1.2.0 (Concept 2)

Changes: ++ Implemented text system and script! + Fixed collision bug

To-Do: - Same as last post ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Last post, I said I implemented all of the basic engine features, but apparently those were blatant lies. I forgot to add the text system and the collision was completely broken, so I fixed those. Now, onto level design! (for real this time)

[azurealexis]

pre-alpha 1.1.0 (Concept 1)

Changes: ++ Fully implemented animation system! + Fixed resolution (now 480pp) + Slightly adjusted player sprite

To-Do: - Fix menu sprite bug - Draw floor tiles - Create "Proof of concept" area

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Animation is implemented, and with that, I'd say all of the most basic fe

[azurealexis]

pre-alpha 1.0.1 (Concept 1.1)

Changes: + Redesigned player sprite + Partially created movement animations + Framework for item system created

To-Do - Add missing animation frames - Finish menu functionality - Fix resolution/zoom ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you have a keen eye, you might've noticed this sprite in the previous update! This is the player character, Esper, and my first attempt at animation. Quite frankly, I'm a programmer, not an artist. I've been coding ever since I was 6 years old, but my practice in drawing goes as far as a couple random scribbles in random notebooks when I'm bored. And since this is a passion project ran by 1 person (me!), it isn't like I have artists to help me out, soooooo

Expect more mediocre sprites and animations like this in the future :p

[azurealexis]

pre-alpha 1.0.0 (Concept 1)

Changes: + Implemented player control and physics + Created a basic version of the menu

To-Do: - Fix resolution/zoom - Finish menu functionality - Make the menu more ✧stylish✧ - Add player animations ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ My first update! Nothing really fun yet, I'm still creating the engine and mechanics. So hmmm... what should I talk about here... oh well, how about I explain the update cycle!

Pre-Alpha: The earliest stage of development. In this stage, I'm constructing the engine and adding the most basic features. Alongside this, I'm getting the story and style completely into place. Nowhere close to a playable state! Alpha: The heart of the game is now in place, and I'm adding things to make the game actually look decent (animations, art, music, etc). Non-essential things that are still core features are programmed, and behind the scenes, the story is finalized. The game is in a testable state here, but will probably look nothing like the final product. Beta: Finally, something that looks like an actual game! All the graphic and sound design gets finished up, bugs are squashed, and maybe a few more non-essential features are added to make the game more fun.

x.x.0 -> x.x.1: The update number increasing by this amount is just a very small amount. All these kinds of updates do is patch bugs, polish some stuff, and maybe add a tiny thing or two. x.0.x -> x.1.0: Usually a small to moderate content update. New stuff, yay! ^^ 0.x.x -> 1.0.0: Big stuff! This kind of update adds a lot of stuff, like a new area, a big new feature, etc

I'll try my best to update this blog every day! I probably won't have an update every day, but on days I don't, I'll share stuff like sketches, sprites, story bits, and more! I don't think I have much more to talk about, sooo have a nice day! :D

[azurealexis]

Update 0

I have no idea how you found this, but since you're already here - Welcome! I plan to use this page to post updates on games I'm programming, my current one being an unnamed RPG (going by the testname of First Session) where some kids play a game and maybe end up learning a bit more about each other.

If for some reason you decide to follow this page, expect little bits of development such as devlogs, screenshots, videos, sketches, and all kinds of other notes. Occasionally, you might even get a chance to affect how the game goes! But then again, this is far from complete, so expect progress to be slow if you do decide to stick along for the ride.