> This is real promising

>

Yeah that's one of many things I keep an eye out for. My hope is to be able to implement a very basic version, where just the most overall feature works and then slowly expand it. Also trying to just implement more general version of things, so for instant when I create the skills, I will just implement one or two and make it so the rest can more or less be copy pasted based on these. But I have never worked on a project this big before, so its a bit shaky

Also found several things that I would do differently, if I was going to start over. Some of them I try to improve and some I just leave.

But my main issue is organization which is the number one thing that make it hard to code and even though I have spend a lot of time on it, its still the hardest thing to really get working. Its like something is missing, some way of keeping an overview of everything so you can easily see how things are connected in the game, not really sure how to explain it. But think anyone that have worked on big projects would know what I mean. But hopefully i can figure out a good system to do it. One way is to use lots of event sheets, but there are not really any good ways to search through them if you have a lot, but if you use to few, it quickly gets messy as well.

This is my experience and my methodology so take this with a grain of salt.

It's better to separate both logic and assets using layout and event sheets.

Basically you put your assets and group them in layouts with your own definitions.

Don't put them all in one layout or worst put them in layouts when they first see any use.

You won't remember which is where after two months working on your game since your game is big.

If it is possible, write the main code and functions regarding those assets on the event sheets tied to them.

This method allow you easy updating and maintenance on both assets and code.

Seperate both events and layouts using folders into global and game.

Global layouts and events are those that you know will be include in many of your other layouts such as player controls, transition effects, UI and others.

Game is obviously one time use such as the title screen, the intro and such.

If you have a lot of events and layouts, you can divide global and game into further subfolders.

Use functions whenever possible.

There is a lot of codes as you say. I believe you will reuse most of the code with little changes in most of your game.

Change them into functions with parameters to change them. This is allow you to code once and then fire and forget for the rest of your development.

Most importantly, if you want to change or improve on it, you need to update the function only and not copy and pasta the same codes everywhere in your event sheets.

I hope you all the best for your game

The UI is neat but those animated "snow effect" bars would annoy the crap out of me. Might be over-doing and complicating it a bit?

Hmmm, I believe I can create another version of those bars using moving and changing colors to show juice rather than the current one. For next time update then.

Thanks for your feedback.

Progress for today.

Finish coding 50% of the functions for Gang Screen. Quite a lot of code of the backend to compute what to show and how to show.

I am beginning to have a healthy dose of admiration and respect for the programmers of TO.

Teach me not to underestimate to work needed in the backend.

Gif to show progress as usual

Please don't judge James sexual identify. He had a hard life

Next on my list of things to bash about until they work are the buttons interactions in the Gang Screen, specifically to arrange the characters in there and the cycle stats mechanism.

If you are familiar with Tactics Ogre : Let's Us Cling Together, there are four sorting options, namely : Manual Sort, Sort Criteria, Change ID No. and Reassign ID No.

I don't know about you guys, but I have not and have never heard of anyone using the last two options.

Usually only the first is being used to put all the heavy hitters that you want to use for the upcoming battles to the front and kick all the rejects to the back.

Therefore, I intended to implement only first two sorting features.

There are already a lot of features I still need to do without adding the ones that no players will ever touch.

This is crazy, you should never need so many parameters. Use external data files or simply write directly to an array.

I need this amount of parameters because there are some computation involved with some of the values in the function.

The values are not constant in what I use them for.

So, I guess, scrollbar support won't be up for consideration, is it?

Well, I will just use another method to circumvent this issue then.

Progress for today and yesterday.

I finish creating the bottom part of the Battle UI. While this may seem to be just a small part, it actually involve a lot of code and assets.

Also need to insert another new font I have forgotten into my game to represent lives.

The good thing is that I had created in a way that allow me to call on this UI with a single function and with only a single parameter (Unit ID).

Hard work today for easy work in the future.

The UI in question. I changed it to be shorter so I can put another one on the right side with room to spare for a very obvious reason if you played any FFT or TO games before.

Henry is such a showoff sometimes

I also have fix some assets to look better. Also have finish most of the gang screen assets.

Will focus on coding the remaining of the gang screen.

Wouldn't it be a better idea to put all your data into an external file, and import it via ajax?

Storing data "in game" is usually thought of as a bad idea.

No offense, but when you need more than 26 parameters, you should really think about your code.

I agree that scroll-bar is a must.

However, why don't you populate array using external files?

It's more convenience for the game I am making, since I plan to create it as an offline version with easy portability.

I rather not depend too much on external files whenever possible to facilitate my design goals

This is probably just me.

But, Ashley can you implement a scrollbar for the expression box for the next update?

For a certain function to populate a large array, I require 55 parameters.

After the first 27 parameters for the function, I can't see the other 28 parameters at the bottom.

They are still there and I can change their values via tabbing without any issues other than the obvious difficulty.

Of course, it would be vastly better if I could see what I am doing when I adjust the values of the bottom 28 parameters.

This is the function in question.

Thanks in advance.

Looking brilliant!

Thanks for your compliment.

Progress from yesterday.

Changed the gang screen button to something better. Also created a lot of buttons for the gang screen.

Finish drawing the stereotype (class) icons for the characters in the player's gang.

From the left to right: Brute, Social Activist, Smarty Pants, Punk, Provocateur

Also their favorite graffiti to paint over walls

Suggestions are welcomed.

very nice, the system of the game are awesome and pixel art is wonderful!

Looking forward to play this game. Best.

Both of you. Thanks for your compliments. I will try my best not to disappoint.

Yesterday progress report.

Finish the walking animations for the all the classes available for the player in the demo based on the new methodology.

What I am showing is based on the latinos, however based on the answers you give in the character creation section of the demo, you will get different racial versions.

From the left to right; Brute, Social Activist, Smarty Pants, Punk, Provocateur

FINALLY their useless gang leader decide to splurge on clothing and haircuts. Now they don't need the nametags to tell who is who anymore.

Now progressing on finishing the gang screen.

Have you considered headwear or earrings/necklaces etc to increase differentiation between the classes? Atm a few of them look very close and cannot be quickly distinguished. Especially your Civ, Brute, Provo.

Those are from the previous methodology that I am ditching also partly due to the reason you mentioned.

Using the new methodology, I will ensure that different stereotypes use different clothing , accessories, hairstyles and color.

I just finished Brute and Social Activist for the new character design. The others will come as quickly as I can finished them.

Thanks for your feedback.

Progress report for yesterday work.

I finish slicing parts of the character sprites to make it easier to animate and to transfer animations to each different character after just one is done.

This is pretty much based on the techniques used by expert animators for square enix to lessen their workload.

What works for the goose, works for the gander.

Moreover, after some consideration, I decided to changed the way I design characters in the game.

At first, I want the each races in my game to look differently in term of color,clothing and hairstyle despite mostly sharing the same stereotypes.

However, after spending quite some time just animating different characters, I decided that is way too much workload for me to handle.

I am the only developer for this game, with Sam Jones providing the soundtracks.

If I continue with this methodology, I can only finish this game after around 5 years of just animating pixels.

So, I come out with new method, I will try to make each stereotype look different from each other in term of hairstyle and clothing.

However, the difference for each race for the same stereotype is just skin and hair color instead of overall color haul also in clothing and different hairstyles.

With just this and the earlier slicing , I reduce my workload by a huge margin with a dip in variety, which I hope you guys will forgive me.

After all, if possible, I plan to finish this game within a year time frame with the demo coming out hopefully in another two months or so, give or take a few weeks.

The Latino Squad practicing their moves for the dance off

Do not worry, special NPCs and bosses will still have their own character animation and design, separated from mooks (both yours and theirs).

Moreover, racial stereotype unique to each race is still in.

Yet another progress report (Seriously though, I have no idea how else to start my progress report)

I finish up the player's gang array.

It take helluva lot of time to finish the functions require to populate the array because the array contains 54 columns aside from the first indexing column.

The columns hold vital information from the stats to the current alignment of the character inside the gang.

I also finish up the random name arrays necessary to give names to the characters (aside from the player character, boss and special NPCs)

This is important as player's hired goons need names as do the enemies' mooks.

This also take a fair amount of time as I need to separate the names according to gender and race.

After all, an Irish male named Lakasha is not going to help much in trying to engage the player, isn't it ?

All in all, there are over 1000 plus names in those arrays so that will ensure very rarely any members of yours or the enemies will ever have the same name.

(P.S. Thank you popular baby naming sites that I won't named. You guys are a great help in this!)

To populate the gang screen, i finish creating a portion of the characters that will be in the demo. Basically the Latinos since I have just be only showing off the Irish and the Africans previously.

To show that, I present to you:

From the left to right; Civilian, Brute, Punk, Social Activist, Smarty Pants, Provocateurs

This is definitely not the main cast for a latino pixel version of Glee, I swear

And of course, the female editions, because of equal opportunity

And these are not their love interests, seriously not.

Will finish up the gang screen in the near future.

Also I will be deleting the current progress on the opening post since it is tiring for me to keep updating it.

Finish coding my mission UI screen.

On the way, I also finish the buttons features and the bottom GUI functionality.

With most of the stuff I have done are using functions, I can call and change each elements easily.

Oh shit! Better go back to my post before Harry noticed I am missing.

Now I will be focusing on the gang screen and the codes to store the player's gang's members.