What’s changed since last week:

• Trying to make new tracks (“practice versions” of some music tracks are being worked on)
• Wrapping up plans for parts of gameplay that are in development
• Writing unclear and vague development updates

I’ve been taking a break from scriptwriting and working on the main game, since nothing has been going well with it, so instead of not working on the game at all I decided to work on other aspects first. Planning music for specific parts of the game has been sort of useful to help plan the story (or in figuring out how to connect the story+music); this helps to establish a background or atmosphere, or setting a mood.

The music for the entire first “part” (for lack of a descriptive word) of the game has its “practice versions of music tracks” ready, meaning that the placeholder music is finished, but since it doesn’t sound good I’ll have to revise it.

The next “parts” of Infidemia will go into planning, but only once I’m done with the script for the first part. A focus in development this time has been to remember what I’m working on, without having to re-read my notes (and find out those were for a previous version of the game).

With the unused content that’s come up, primarily from testing a feature before planning it and deciding it wasn’t ready to use, I’m still planning to use resources I’ve made for the game, in some way, likely for other projects.

There were some issues with extra content, specifically in having made this in advance and how I didn’t make it work well with what was currently working. Instead of piling up all the extra content into Infidemia, I tested these extras in smaller projects I was working on alongside Infidemia.

Although Infidemia started out as an over-ambitious project, I think focusing on what’s reasonable to work on (and what’s reasonable to challenge myself to work on as well) has helped.

Thanks for reading the latest development update,

-ZoruaAl

This update will be a bit shorter, as there aren’t many big updates or many added small features to discuss (as of now).

• Continued planning development, taking more notes
• Making it easier to use notes/resources for the game
• Looking back at unused content for the game; since I’ve had a hard time coming up with ideas looking at these previous ideas and seeing how to improve them has been interesting
• Managing the scale (scope) of the game, finding balance
• Trying to work on original tracks for the game’s music

That’s all for this week’s development update; the goal is to find a way to keep the development process consistent (and add in missing content).

Anyway, the game is still in development.

Thanks for checking out these recent updates,

-ZoruaAl

Sorry for the late update – I intended on getting this one done earlier.

Now that I’ve been working on Infidemia a bit more to fix glitches in order to test gameplay mechanics, like with combos giving three turns instead of two, and forgetting about debug features I left in (if there was a demo… that would have broken everything), there’s more to fix than I thought.

However – I also decided to bring back some unused content, meaning that resources I made for the game a while ago but didn’t know what to do with will now be used… in some way!

This week’s updates:

• Editing a dungeon tileset, particularly for one specific floor of the game’s main dungeon
• Fixing some weird combo issues (100% Heart Gauge every turn, one extra turn, unclear who gets to use combo-specific ultimate attacks, etc.)
• Fixed an issue where Wagers and Techs wouldn’t show up in the battle commands list
• Fixed an issue where the one counterattack type of guarding would only have a 50% chance to reflect damage, thus not working as intended
• Fixed an issue where a custom enemy sprite was still at half size, although I intended to fix it earlier… …this means a resize was done so the enemy is properly scaled (maybe there will be ‘mini’ versions of this enemy, as a result of realizing the mistake…?)
• Fixed an issue where a boss enemy would stand still, take all the damage, and yet not do anything. Added an attack pattern, for debug purposes.
• Reapplied temporary fixes to issues, in a new way that should hopefully patch out any of the visual glitches
• Trying to figure out why the menu sounds are very quiet
• Keeping an eye on performance while recording gameplay

The game’s still in development, meaning anything could change about it, so these are the updates for now about the game.

I’d like to show some screenshots of gameplay, soon.

Anyway, thanks for reading this update even though it was later than intended.

-ZoruaAl

Since this update is late, I’ll be covering two weeks’ updates in one post.

I haven’t been working on the game that much, though I’ve added some more unused content to the game.

I’m also planning how development will continue in the future, since some plans changed about how I’m making the game (writing the script apart from working in the engine now, though it’ll eventually make it to the game…). Technically, it’s been in development for 1 year and a little bit longer, though in reality the game has only been worked on for maybe 1 hour (with a slight amount of variability by a few minutes or seconds, this estimate may be a bit off).

I’ll probably work on a different game, since Infidemia isn’t going well, though there might be references to it in a later game, so it’s not like Infidemia is never going to be worked on or mentioned again.

I haven’t done anything about the battle user interface or dialogue boxes, which is why I decided not to post any screenshots of gameplay. Map design, character design, everything isn’t done yet and I think that it’s not good enough to be shown in its current status.

I noticed that I’ve also been starting over development (because this is a really terrible game, and each time it starts over it gets worse) so I decided to make a planning document for the entire game, which will hopefully keep me on track, and if I start over, I can choose where to start over from.

The focus of the recent updates for Infidemia has been to combine the notes I have about the game so far and to attempt to have every music track ready in the game, though I will be redoing the soundtrack because it’s not good enough.

I don’t think Infidemia will ever be “good enough”, but, going forward, for my next projects, I’ll definitely spend more time thinking about feedback and how it is to play the game, not to talk about it.

I’ll still be working on the game, though I think finishing up the planning process and then planning (and testing) a main gameplay loop will be the next steps.

Most of the details for the later parts of Infidemia have been thought out more than the beginning, so I might change how I’ve been working on the game, starting with the final boss fight and some other story events, going to the introduction. Playing the game will be in chronological order, though.

Infidemia still has performance issues on some of the platforms I tested, so I’ll be trying to fix those when I get to things like the custom battle UI and any eventing that might drain performance.

Thanks for showing interest in this game.

-ZoruaAl

This update is a bit late, though I’ve been working on the game.

While my previous development process involved work only inside the game engine, I decided to change things up and write a story draft in a digital writing tool, which will be easier for me to read the entire script and storyboard without having to replay everything I have so far (I’ll still do playtesting in the game engine, but this should help get the necessary dialogue and script content added to the game).

As a disclaimer, this update’s mostly meant for last week.

Although this means I’ve technically “started over” again, it’s not like I’m deleting the entire game contents and rebuilding it; I have some resources (the map design has used the same base maps so far, but I’ve added edits over time) and there are things like sidequests that will mostly have the same gameplay content, which means I’ll do things like edit dialogue and (attempt to) balance how repetitive versus rewarding a sidequest is.

I’ve noticed that sometimes I start working on the game again and things are going well, then I forget about what happened in the story, and the game feels inconsistent. That’s one of the reasons why I decided a storyboard would be necessary.

Throughout development (which has mostly been a planning process), I’ve come up with a few ideas on how the story might work, what mechanics the player might see in plot and battles, and how decision-based gameplay influences the story (as well as how to account for this). A lot of the game’s dialogue has been written on-the-spot, then sometimes rewritten once or twice, though for now I’ll focus on the planning process of Infidemia.

The idea for the game started maybe about two years ago by now, and I started working on it about three months after that or two and a half months (actual engine work began three months after I got the idea for the game, meaning I didn’t start planning characters or map design until then).

I had a few planning documents I made for the game, some of them outlining specific mechanics in combat (each type of ability, how points are accumulated, etc.) though these were scattered and referencing them when I worked on the game was challenging.

I took notes in a lot of different places, though eventually tried to compile these into one collection to see what I could use when working on the game (this is after working on it with some of those ideas relevant in my head).

The largest issue I’ve had working on Infidemia would probably be managing the scope of the project; how large will the game be?

I’ve went from a project that involved 21 playable characters (partially planned, but only about 10 or so characters were fully planned), at least 1 game world with at least 4 areas as large as the main part of the game, and a battle system where characters can take up to 8 actions per turn…

…to a project that involves 7 main characters, the same game world with a focus on one area of the game world being playable (multiple parts of the game world are involved and mentioned in the story, but since the gameplay was designed for mostly one part of this game world, I’ve decided to limit the scope to that part), and a battle system that will likely reduce how many actions can be taken.

A lot of plans have changed during development, but by repeatedly changing my approach to the game early on, it’s been more like making prototypes of Infidemia than trying to make the entire game in one go. (Prototyping different styles of gameplay, experimenting with the combat system, and finding a way to tell the story so it flows together are the goals, though.)
Although the latest version of the game will probably feel more consistent compared to where I started, I don’t think that it’s an instant change from what it was before, and I’d prefer to see this as a result of gradually working on the game.

It’s also been a really buggy game, but I found out the bugs in the game were caused by unfinished eventing sequences and half-implemented battle commands, meaning that putting in some time to fix these issues has helped make the game more playable, and to figure out what features to fully implement, or just to test – addressing the scope of Infidemia.

I’ve been playing different games to get inspiration on how to arrange the story structure and how to make a battle system, with the goal of figuring out how to combine preexisting [gameplay] mechanics into something new, and finding a way to include interactive elements in the story.

For this update, I also want to note that most of the game’s music will likely end up being redone, as I’ve started to do that and noticed improvements with figuring out a different approach to the music. Working on Infidemia’s music in chronological order (based on the story), meaning from start to finish, but also based on when the music for story events plays, I’ve tried to add little melodies to some tracks that play in others, as a reference to themes that play throughout the game, and to link together music tracks. This has resulted in a slightly more consistent style, but that’s not what I’m going for with this project, so I’ll work on addressing that.

Most of the game’s planning process feels complete; it’s like I’m familiar with the game world as I’ve tried different ways to come up with details about it.

There were some things early on I planned, maybe discussed here (which would be unlikely), though I didn’t add these features. I’m considering experimenting more with gameplay and testing out features I didn’t finish making.

The goal of having “development updates” is for me to reference what I’ve worked on, but also to keep me on track.

I’m not sure how successful I’ve found it to be to write development updates about Infidemia (and only writing about it… …no screenshots of gameplay) though the purpose of this update is to describe what’s happening with Infidemia.

What’s next for Infidemia?

• Development plans right now have changed to a different style, although to build upon preexisting content for the game.
• Looking back on the game early on and seeing what planned features that I didn’t use might be interesting to test.
• Balancing the battle system.
• Putting together some ideas for the game and testing how these will impact development.
• Experimenting with how the music should work (now that a few prototypes have been made).

Thanks for showing interest in Infidemia,

-ZoruaAl

This week’s updates focused on getting the game to run on more platforms. I won’t specify which platforms these are, though, here’s a list of updates to the game that have come as a result of deploying and running Infidemia on two more platforms:

• Fixed a bug where I mixed up the previous and current versions of a player sprite; this caused the game to freeze being unable to load an unused sprite (in an effort to organize the game’s used and unused contents, this happened). The temporary fix for Infidemia to run on platforms facing this glitch (along with running it in the main editor) was to add the unused sprite, but the fix for the latest version of the game (which will be tested on those platforms again) was to temporarily add an unused spritesheet back to the game.
• Found out that I’ll have to optimize Infidemia for more platforms – some devices will not recognize keyboard or controller input. Additionally, I’ll have to account for touchscreen devices when redesigning the UI.
• As part of this optimization, eventing some areas to run more efficiently (like the core time system) will be important to reduce lag. This also applies to scripts. I haven’t started on this yet, but I will work on this.
• The debug room can load a battle scene with more options.
• Other modifications to player input (on things like a controller/keyboard/mouse or touchscreen) may be necessary.
• Noticed that the Heart Gauge icon matches the emoji for a heart on which platform Infidemia is running on (regardless of running on mobile devices or not).
• The dialogue typing/speaking sound effect has the potential to add a lot of lag.

I didn’t plan on working on the core game as much, though I think there were some edits I ended up doing anyway, to the main game, like for bugfixing and performance improvements. Although it took a while to build the game and get it to load (and for it to be playable), I think this has been interesting. A lot of this probably doesn’t impact the player right now, but I hope that the potential of more platforms to play the game on will make it easier for more people to play the game (if people are interested).

There are still some more tests with this kind of stuff that I’d like to get done, though for now, that’s all for this week’s development update.

-ZoruaAl

This week, I’ve had a goal of taking a break from working on Infidemia, but, I ended up working on the game more than I thought.

The recent updates have been about improving the game’s database and skill list, though the previous version of it had many unused skills, so after using that to get an idea on how to make the battle system and to start developing ideas on mechanics, I’m working on a revised skills list that has some new features, like an organized layout and leveled-up versions of skills.

New features:

• Fixed an issue where level 1 magic attacks would deal 0 damage (this came up during development this week)
• Every (usable) element now has a level 1 magic attack associated with it
• Every level 2 magic attack has been implemented (although balance updates will be necessary)
• Testing a new sub-mechanic based on another already present in the game
• Started working on skills lists for classes (testing, not working…)
• Balancing stats (sort of)
• Trying to remember where the story left off
• Improving the settings menu

Maybe I made it sound like there’s more work done than there really was?

The core focus here is on making it easier for me to work on the game and edit actions and stuff like that.

Anyway, thanks for reading this development update, there’s not really that much that’s changed in the game.

-ZoruaAl

Sorry for the late post(s).

Last week’s updates: (technically 2 weeks ago)

• Not much is new, but…
• Continuing to work on music, map design, testing a few features
• Still prototyping the battle user interface, adding animations and testing how to program that
• Got the game to run on another platform
• Probably addressed these updates last week
• These are probably updates from 2 weeks ago…

This week’s updates: (technically last week)

• Again, not much is new, but…
• Will test on more platforms (hopefully!)
• Trying to fix this website.
• A big change to the battle system (at least, how progression systems work, on terms of leveling up and that kind of thing)

Why the Late Updates?

The answer I would give to asking about why updates have been late recently is that I have been busy with other things I’m doing and working on posts isn’t something that I prioritize too much. However, I still have a goal to give weekly updates, even if I can’t get to it on-time.

Fixing the Website:

• General updates
• I might change the design or layout, I started messing around with this a bit

Thanks for reading these posts.

Sorry this one was a bit late…

…This week’s development update will still be written this week, though this is an update meant for last week.

I don’t think there’s much I’ve been doing with Infidemia lately besides planning out the battle system’s GUI (There is a working battle system, but I would prefer to customize the user interface) and rewriting attack descriptions to be more… informative.

On terms of gameplay, there aren’t many updates, though I do have something I’ve been working on this week that I may be able to announce tomorrow (since this post is for last week’s updates).

Oh, actually, there was kind of a big update to the game. The progression system in the game is planned out (though it is subject to change, and how it works isn’t finalized yet). Because there are different approaches to “grinding” that you can take in Infidemia, I’ve been trying to work on every aspect, but, it would be better for me to focus on getting one thing working at a time.

So, the new progression system isn’t finalized at all, but it’s specifically for how the player manages four stats – hopefully this will offer some customization, while also being a reward for getting through the filler content.

I’d like to plan out every redesigned user interface at once, though apparently it’s only possible to do one thing at a time, so I’ll be working on the battle system’s user interface for a while. (Since I meant to post this last week, this is still something I’m working on this week too).

Some other additions to make later: (As of this current week, none of these 3 things have been completed, alike the same in last week)

• Clock
• Action Menus
• Easier-to-access features (Custom Menus)

Yeah, there aren’t too many things that I was working on last week… …since this update is all about what I was going to post but ended up not doing because of some issues with website certificates.

For this website’s own updates, I asked about the certificates being updated though will wait to see when things can be fixed.

Another focus of development has been working on the music (also known as noise, because the tracks I’ve been working on sound terrible) yet, noise) for Infidemia, though it’s not going very well because I’m unhappy with how it’s turning out. For future games, I will likely not do any of the sound design, because this is something that I should not work on. For Infidemia, my plan changed from working on the battle theme to remaking the old version of the battle theme to see if it is possible to fix it. If it’s not possible, I’ll find another track I made from a while ago to remake into the battle theme or just start over on that.

I’ve also been planning how many playable characters there should be, and whether beating the game with any or all party members should be possible. Currently, there are 6 fully-playable characters, with the original goal of 7 characters, that means I’ll add them once the story gets to the point where the 7th character is introduced, though for now there are other characters who can join the party besides the 7 protagonists.

Balancing battles has been a big focus and playtesting the game still feels boring, though now I kind of know what I want to do with the game’s combat system, which is a new update, to know what to do.

Overall, don’t expect to hear anything useful about this game. I will not show any screenshots of gameplay, the battle GUI, or planned menus yet, as I do not intend on releasing a demo.

I have also changed some plans and do not intend on releasing the game, however, as stated last time, I’ll still write updates about it.

Until the next update,

-ZoruaAl

Sorry this update was posted a bit later than usual.

Some new changes:

• Every playable protagonist has a casual outfit now (these outfits are likely subject to change as development progresses).
• New potential track to use as the battle theme
• Map design – one area way later in the game that I planned out early on now has a temporary placeholder – one area early on in the game that ended up being added later is now… in the game
• Soundtrack – this has not been going well. Every track sounds too similar and feels too repetitive. I’ll listen to more genres of music and learn about different styles, but, for now, I’m not using my custom soundtrack. The game’s title theme has now been changed… 5 times since the initial version? The game’s main battle theme (not counting the 2 other areas with a different battle theme) has changed at least three times… …new themes that play during the game are being worked on but are facing the same issues. There’s probably enough content to have different “main themes” (theme of conflict, theme of peace, etc.) that play in a combined “final track”, but, I don’t think it’s good. I started the soundtrack in the late second half of 2019 and have been revising it since, but the goal for now is to get the core music (battle theme, boss themes, major area themes, a few plot themes, etc.) ready and then fix it later.
• Story – planned out a protagonist’s story who didn’t have much content before. Characters still need more depth, but this is a turning point (for the other characters to follow a similar development of getting more depth added to them). Filler content in the introduction has been added. Plot elements I considered adding but didn’t add are now being added (somewhat) – the story’s changed a lot since I initially planned how the game would work, but, for the most part, it still feels like “Infidemia” to some extent.
• Gameplay Balance – keeping the intro on the easy side, or what I consider to be “easy”. Boss fights are meant to be hard, but there are also frequent challenging encounters… …since the player’s healed after every battle, the focus of the challenge is on individual battles.
• Mechanics – I added way too many unused things at the start of development, so I’m building the battle system without the extra stuff, but for the most part, battles feel the same… …The total number of elemental attributes will likely decrease (but the core elements will stay, meaning that all battle abilities should be fine…) though the modifications to the core battle system have been beneficial. (There’s a bug where the player can make any actions while being knocked out, as long as another party member has HP… I’ll fix this)
• Instruction Booklet – I don’t know if I mentioned this. There’s a side project for the game I’m doing that involves making a visual + text based instruction guide. This is also to help me check if the battle system becomes too hard to explain.
• Random Stuff – Adding this later, but I’ll write it down for now (remember to add it later, but focus on the core first). This includes things like references to mention or goofy item description ideas.
• Changes to Core Gameplay – This will definitely change how the game is played… …how the player progresses in the game has been changed, but it’s meant to work with the other aspects of gameplay.
  

Some updates this week took longer to add than others, but everything’s subject to change. I’ll be focusing on the core gameplay/story content for now, as I think I have some ideas on what to do next.

Thanks for reading this,

-ZoruaAl