So after another break between working on the project, formerly known as The Note Competition/The WING Competition, I got back into it! And we're currently calling it the Linkship Competition. Still another name we're not sure if it's the final, but it's closer!
To start off, I set up the Inky file for the dialogue and then threw together a quick layout for the text box so there would be something in there. This was a quick task I could do to ease back into the project.
We spent our first full development day together on this project, which meant really digging into the mechanics and how this game plays. We started with a lot of brainstorming in our Google Docs and just re-reading everything.
Then we started to figure out the different roles of the characters, using the LINK acronym (Leader, Inventor, Navigator, and Knight). So we made a Google Sheet to figure out the abilities and whether their role would be passive, attacking, etc. This way we could balance and figure out what they all did.
After we had the battles pretty figured out, we went into the actual game project to start building it. I cleared out some of the old parts we weren't going to use and started by programming the mechanic where you hold a button down to make Cipo move forward. He moves backwards if you let go of it. I had this printing to the console first, then got him to move on the screen. We're still using very placeholder art for now as we figure out mechanics and get the MVP in there.
Then my brother was working on some basic HUD and background layouts just so we could get some of the spacing figured out. I added a button mashing mechanic in there for the healing, attacking, and defending in the meantime, since that was pretty similar to what I made with Cipo.
Then I made some cooldown mechanics. A lot of our character abilities involve having cooldown mechanics, so I wanted to work on that. I was going to use plugins, but they seemed more complicated than just using events myself, so I made some basic events for the cooldowns.
Then I implemented that into our Navigator's role. Part of this gameplay is that you infiltrate the enemy's linkship, and open doors, navigate a maze, and destroy parts of their ship. You can only destroy parts of the ship when you have a weapon equipped. And that weapon must be recharged after every use. So I used a lot of events, conditional branches, variables, and cooldowns to get that working overall.
After that, I started to rework some of our battle stats in the Database to reflect our new battle system. So I updated some Common Events and how characters are set up in the Database.
Then I also put some placeholders in for the teammate icons so I could code it to change, depending on who's in your party. I just used existing art I had of the characters for this. I also added the resource spawning into the battle map.
I cleaned up a lot of our Common Events after we had a more clear plan on the battle mechanics. I had some various stats that weren't really being used anymore, so I removed those and streamlined them. I also updated our Actors to the current list of characters we have.
So overall, we really decided we want to start with the basic mechanics and making it fun and functional with basic grayboxing and rough sprites until we do any of the final art. So we revamped our schedule a bit to really focus on these core aspects before diving into some of the art tests we were going to originally start with. But overall, we've made some pretty good progress to get some of the basics working. Next, we're going to work on more of the mechanics in the battles and figure out if we need to adjust anything before getting deep into it.
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