Well, people may have already questioned themselves a few things about my project, because things seems really... Unconventional, at least for the standards of "game market" now adays, and since doing a complete rework on the battle hud will take some time to do, I will try doing a little Q&A about the project, and most probably also explain why it's taking so long.
Q: Why the changes to the project is taking so long?
A: That is because I work on it when I'm alone, generally I'm alone during the morning, beside sometimes I have the bad luck of having something to make me go sleep later than should, taking away the time I spend working on the game. I also sometimes don't work on the project to not get tired of it, since as experienced on N Terraria mod, that may cause serious problems, that could impact not only the project, but also my social life, somewhat.
Q: Why are you working on the project alone?
A: My project isn't attracting much interest of the people, so there isn't even the chance of getting a new team member to help on it, so I'm pretty much doing all parts of the project all alone.
Q: Why did you decide to sprite the monsters of the game in isometric way, but the map tiles and human characters in 3 direction sprites?
A: Due to being a monster taming oriented game, the game will need quite a number of monsters in it, even more to add diversity, I found out that making them in isometric way speeds up the process of spriting them, aswell as allow me to do some work on their animations, since I will only need a front and back sprite for each animation, differently from 3 direction sprites, that needs front, side and back sprites.
Q: Why most monsters are duped mammals?
A: Spriting a different kind of monster is not that easy, since I'll have to change the method to make it, but I have some ideas of monsters that are up coming, one of them will be a Bee related monster, which will be a flying monster, another one related to a Dog with excessive fur, which is a quadruped monster, a Wolf, aswell as the Werewolf, those are some of the planned monsters I will need to sprite, not only that but also finish the sprite of the currently existing monsters in the game.
Q: The monster sprites are really different compared to the player sprites, why is that?
A: Kind of the same reason as above, the player also needed a chance on the spriting method, beside It still may pass through changes, since I feel like the sprite isn't really that fine.
Q: What is your plan for the game release?
A: I'm not sure, initially, I were planning on making it a $10 game, but I don't know anymore, I may end up following the initial plan, or maybe not, my idea would be to make the game accessible for everyone, but If I directly did that, how would I earn money from the project? That is the problem, even more since part of it would be invested on the project, since things like music, I can't make by myself.
Q: Do you plan on releasing the game on Steam?
A: That is also part of my initial plans, maybe even make use of what It's API offers to make some extra functions to the game, so not only gives the players more interactions, but also make them more unique, somewhat (That would possibly be a thing for multiplayer). But I believe I'll have to launch the game on other online stores too, due to how the pc gaming market is changing.
Q: Do you plan on releasing the game on Consoles?
A: I? Myself? No. Not only they have a lot of b******* with game launching and updating, but I probably would need a publisher to launch the games for them, and with the number of consoles existing, would be one hell of a job to keep them updated with the official version of the game, would be ignorance of my part not to think about what the publishers would have to pass to port this game.
Q: What OS will the game be released for?
A: Certainly for Windows only, the reason I'll say bellow.
Q: What kind of development programs are you using to make the game?
A: Visual Studio C# 2010 to do the coding and debugging, XNA 4.0 as the game engine, and Aseprite to make the game sprites.
Q: Why are you using such a dated engine and program to develop the game?
A: Because my pc haven't seen an upgrade has some years, the last serious upgrade it got was around 2013, some of the upgrades since then were minor pieces replacement or some others. I kind of work on a "Comodore 64", as a friend says, because currently there is no way I can upgrade my pc hardware, so I can't upgrade my development kit.
Q: You could use free engines like Unity to develop the game.
A: Actually I can't, one of the things that not upgrading the pc is causing, is the fact that several programs are starting to ditch Windows 32 Bits, meaning that even to use Unity, I need a 64 bits computer. Also, I believe Unity will limit me on what I can do on the project, beside I kind of can't stand how it deals with 2D sprites.
Q: Why you didn't made any campaign to raise funds for the project?
A: Because that would force me into investing even more on the project, instead of being a passion project, would be a pression project, since I know that the people who invested their money to see the project reach the end of the tunnel, will want to see the result in the future, and not only I don't know If I'll manage to finish the project, but also I fear that I may end up not giving to the players what they wanted, or expected of the project. Would be as worse as a betrayal, and even more if the project got cancelled while people invested their money and hopes on it. Can you see how awful that is?
Q: Then... What is the plan?
A: I'll keep working on the project, trying to make it see somewhat the light, probably I wont be able to launch the game 100% finished, there will still be things missing, but It's better than never being launched. But I'll try aswell to make the launch less disasterful than the older version of the game, aswell as make the game cool to play, and with lots of things for you guys to play with. At least that is my plan.
Q: Why you only work on the project while being alone?
A: It does not limits my creativity, I can debug and do stuff on the project without "judgemental eyes", also, I distract myself very easily, programming, as you may know, is not a really "fun" activity to do, If my brother, for example, plays a game on the pc that conveniently is right to the left of me, I may end up getting distracted watching the gameplay, and end up not doing any progress on the project.
Q: Do you have any testers or anything to check if the game content is good?
A: Not really, I sometimes asks my friends what they think of some photos I send them from my project, and gather their feedback, but on the older version of the game, I sent them a test version of the game to see what they think about it (thing I eventually did during the N Terraria mod development), and then collect feedbacks. Their reception is the reason why the project is still running today.
Q: What is the point of having a SP and Stamina bar?
A: The Stamina bar will be used for physical moves, each move uses a percentage of the bar, for example, basic attack uses 10% of Stamina, medium attacks uses 25% Stamina, and so goes on.
The Stamina bar were added to avoid simple tactics of spamming the toughest attacks to win the battle, so if you spam the toughest attacks through the battle, your monster will get tired easier, making so eventually your monster will have to use Wait command for 1 or 2 turns to charge the Stamina bar so you can use the skill again.
The SP (Special Power) bar is more oriented to magic, the magic in the game is planned to be a powerful thing to use, but not recommended to spam, so that bar will probably deplete faster than Stamina bar, but the use of Magic will be worth it.
Q: Do you plan on adding multiplayer to the game?
A: Of course, this project would be incomplete if there weren't multiplayer, even more since not only this game is playable solo, but also there may be parts you will need a party to go, and if you don't want to party up with npcs to venture through those lands, why not go with a group of friends instead?
Q: Since we're doing a Q&A, mind if I talk about the N Terraria mod? Do you plan on returning to developing it?
A: I'm not sure, modding Terraria was one of the best things I ever did, was even fun to see the result of the new mechanics I added into the game, I really wished that the current modders of it added some more mechanics to diversificate the gameplay, in my case, I would remain on Stand alone development, because with it the sky is the limit.
The problem is that at every update Terraria recieves, It gets harder to decompile and fix it's bugs to begin working on the new version of the mod, so at the time I finish decompiling and fixing it, I'm already kind of burned out, so I barelly work on porting the old features the mod has, and the new features comes unfinished.
For example, I've promissed that when 1.3.5 update came out, I'd launch N Terraria 7 on it, I couldn't fix all decompiling bugs of it because the errors were so much complex that made me stop trying.
So, possibly, If I decide to return to modding Terraria, either will have passed quite a good time, or I'll have enough knowledge to deal with those issues and begin modding it right away.
Q: Is Tamers Network Reborn your current active project?
A: Somewhat yes, there are a number of other projects I have made too, one for a desktop agent, one for an auto rpg maker, and some other projects aswell, but those two mentioned are more visitted than the others. The bad is that the progress on them is really bad, even more since I'll possibly have to rescript some part of them, due to the fact that since I gained some good knowledge on programming with the years passing, the old techniques I used turned to obsolete. But those projects aren't actually impacting the TNR project, since I work them in moments I'm not working on TNR project, they are kind of side projects that takes my head off the main projects, so I don't get burned out.
I guess that's all for my made up Questions and Answers. If you manage to have any question about the project and how it is being developed, feel free to ask.
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