What's up latelly?

Hey guys. Since the break I've given on TNR project, this blog has been quite... Quiet. Of course It has been, I haven't been writing anything here (obviously).

Since TNR project has been paused, I'll try talking about some things unrelated to the project, and also something related to the project too.

TNR Project

To begin with, I've thought about changing how the game "approach" the player on It's first contact with the game, instead of the game questioning you a lot of things, like name and second name, I thought about making so It only asks for your character nickname instead. There is no point in asking the name and second name of the character, even more since the player is... Well... You. Unless you want to expand the lore of your character or something but... Well.. Let's leave the name and second name fields for the npcs, instead. They need it more than the player.

The second thing I thought about changing, is how the game begins: Before entering the game world, a monster without form could speak with your character, asking you some basic things of your character, like nickname, age and nation. After that, the monster could ask your help to choose It's form, which is when you'll tell what monster It will be. At first, I thought that was a good idea, but actually, It is. It's like as if you were invited to the world of Tamers Network, by a creature you just met.

After that, you end up being sent to the Login Island, and so begins your adventure. You may ask yourself, "Why all characters are sent to the Login Island, independing of the nation you pick?", and the reason is simple: I'm pretty sure that a number of players will choose different nations to play as, but that doesn't means his friends will pick the same nation as his, so the login island allows you to pick where you will start the game, be it a town of your nation or not, and since I have no plans on locking quests and stuffs to a specific nation, that means you can, for example, begin the tutorial in a Spanish town, when your character is Brazillian.

I guess that's enough TNR talk for now, I will need to put that planning on practice some time later. Now, let's talk about other things, like my modding trek (liked the name?).

TerraGuardians Mod

Making the companion mod was an awesome thing, and it is, but Terraria has grown old for me, since It's mechanics are very centered into getting new equipments and tackling the next challenge. One thing I'd like to change on the mod is to make the companions more alive, since right now, the only thing you can do is ask them to follow you and help you in the combat, or leave them in the town and protect your citizens, aswell as give quests. Would be cool to see them interact with the world around them, and possibly do things I don't want to do, like alchemy.

One of the things I wanted to do, was adding a mood system for them, their mood would change depending on the environment and the recent events that happened. The problem is that I would need to split the head sprite from the body, and animate different facial expressions to the companion.

But I have to say, programming the game systems and then part time spriting the new guardians isn't an easy thing.

Java Programming

I've been playing latelly with Java, to practice what I learned on my programming classes, and boy, the things I've learned are helping me a lot to discover a lot of things related to programming itself, aswell as showing me things I can do to help on the development of programs and games. I can literally create a buffed version of a system in the game, by overriding their classes, so If I want the game to get the main player controls before the game updates the character movement, I can just override it, add a call to the base version of the method, and before that call, add the script to get the player controls. I've been playing with that on Java, and to practice, am making a little game on it. If the game gains enough progress, I will talk more about it, and even show images of it.

As of now, the only things I got working were: Characters and their animations and map drawing. Aswell as other systems like classes, monsters, player stuffs and etc. Those things doesn't configures the game as ready, but at least a small percentage of the game is completed.

Java Itself isn't really that bad, It's like... C# 0.75, because It has a number of features from C#, actually, It does look a lot like C#, but it isn't. There are a number of features from C# missing, and a number of methods in Java functions differently. I don't really say that Java is bad and lacking, but I surelly preffer a lot to program in C#. But at least Java is multiplatform, right? Beside you can extract the entire project source with any zip program...

I've been thinking for some time about moving to Java when making the TNR project, even more since It seems to have more support than XNA, but making the project in C# would probably be safer and beter than Java. If there were another engine I could use to build my project on using C#.

You may be thinking now, "Unity", and other engines. The problem with them is that they now need a 64 bits computer, and my computer right now is 32 bits, so I can't run that kind of engine anymore. Godot Engine I tried to use, I couldn't get into the programming method of it, and trying to make use of the C# port of it gave me more headache than result, since I couldn't actually make it work.

Well, better I end this wall of text before you fall asleep on the keyboard.

Until next news. Also, did you liked the news splitting? :3

I guess I overdid it on TNR Project...

So guys... I have to tell you this, and I should have told weeks ago, but I was planning to try doing something else before giving the news, but currently It isn't really possible to do.

I kind of overdid it when developing TNR Project, which caused the game to have a "mutated code", based on something a friend told me before. The mutated code happens when one does several changes on the system, keeping the old ones in the program, so not only that may cause bugs, but also causes confusion during development, aswell as many other things. That means I would need to rebuild the entire game system.

I doubt It would take too long for me to rebuild what the game has right now, and I really mean rebuild, like... Not reusing codes from the old version of it. The problem is that my hands are full right now, so I really am having a moment to work on the project.

I'm not sure wether, or if I'll manage to return to the game development anytime soon, or if It will take some time, but due to the programming classes I've been taking this year, I've got a better understanding of what happens when I code something in a project, like for example, what is the paper of the variables. That will clear some confusion in my part, aswell as break a chain on me, which were causing me to be very cautious during development, includding aswell new tricks I've learned, and am still learning.

Another problem that the project had, is that I were focusing so much on the battle system, that I ended up neglecting 90% of the game. For example, the main menu had occasional crashes because of the battle system, the maps had some artifacts, the map editor was clunky, and the quest system was bare bones, nearly non existing. Without counting that you could count on your fingers the number of items the game had.

And the last problem, is the fact that I'm still using XNA to develop the game. It's not exactly a shame that I'm using such an engine, It actually works. I can't actually use Monogame, since It requires a 64 bits computer to be able to run, aswell as does Unity, and many other game engines.

I've thought for a moment about trying in the future to develop the game in Java, since based on the classes I were taking, It's very similar to C#. The problem Is that I also know of the problems java has. One of them is that you can extract It's source by simply using a zip extracting program, allowing the game to be modded (what isn't much of a problem) or possible to be used for cheating purposes (what is a problem). Of course C# has the same problems, but isn't as easy to hack as Java in that matter.

The other problem, is that Java takes quite a good chunk of resources from the system, that wont be a problem If you have a good pc, but what about people who has less powerful pc? Like me?

Thinking about all those problems gives me quite a headache, but I still am willingly going to try making my project see the light of the day, but I don't know when.

I'm not saying "It's dead, Jim", but, I don't know when I'll get to continue it. And If I do, you'll certainly know here.

Thanks for your interest in my project.

What has happened latelly.

Hey guys, well... Well, I'll be going direct to the point.

The last weeks I haven't been messing with TNR project, I've been spending a lot of time on my tModLoader mods, trying to improve them and add new cool stuff. The fuel people give me by showing how much they liked the mods is being very motivational for me to keep going on, so that's why I'm in the kind of creek I am right now.

If you don't want to read through my adventures on modding, scroll down until you see a red /!\.

Well, before you start pulling your hair, I'm not in trouble or anything, but I thought that would be nice to add a companion on my companion mod before halloween comes, and then I made an undead companion. The problem? Well, I didn't wanted to make it's recruitment to be that easy, so I've added a boss fight to make him recruitable. So yeah, I've spent about 5~7 nights developing the boss and It's attacks.

Currently, the boss itself is complete, beside I may have to do some more testings to see If It is working as intended (even more on Expert mode, I didn't tested it's variant), after that, I will need to add a ducking animation to it and voilá! Done.

What actually would call the attention of those who faces the boss, is the fact that I added 2 things to it:

1. I tried to make it be possible to face even on melee combat. I've made this with the idea I saw on a PC Gamer news, where they interviewed Koji Igarashi, about how his team makes bosses.
2. Based on your world progression, It's status increases, and that isn't limited to Expert Mode only. So the boss will grow stronger as you beat challenges in the game, INCLUDDING MOON LORD.

Possibly, I may end up being able to finish all that before October 20th, which is when the Halloween event starts on Terraria. But my personal goal is not to take too long to launch the update and pass the imaginary deadline of October 31th.

/!\ End of Modding talking!! /!\

As for the project, after watching closelly the recent Cube World advent (I didn't played the new version, though), It lead me to think about a few things on my project:
I shouldn't try to make the game too different from what It is on the ultra wip version, would be a terrible feel If what I sent to you guys, was not what you expected of the game, compared to the ultra wip version.

The game is playable right now, even though my leveling up programmer senses keeps telling me that I should have done systems differently, trying to rewrite the systems would take me more time, meaning that the game would take way longer to be released, and of course that isn't good. I should try focusing on actually finishing the game.
I've worked too much on the Battle system, but the rest of the game is still bare bones. Even the map system itself is still messed up on some maps, and I didn't even implemented interiors yet. The quest system is nearly non existing, as the population of npcs in the world (Beside I will need to think how they could exist in the world, be interacted without causing performance problems).

And possibly I'll launch the game earlier than intended, of course I'll have finished a good part of it's systems, but maybe with people feedback I can make the game be so freaking awesome in the end.

Well, that is it, for now. Until next news.

News about the new Skill system on TNR project

Hey guys, long time no news, eh? Sorry for that, the mod has been taking my time, both on playing and developing, hehe. Well, you probably doesn't want to know about the mod development stuff, so I'll talk about TNR project.

I've been able to partially implement the new skill system, where the time is logged when the game updates, and the drawing stuff only happens if the player is currently watching the battle. Why the partial part, you ask? I'll have to convert the skill scripts to the new system, I did part of the conversion during the last few days, I'll do the rest the other times I mess with the game.

You may think, "Wow, the game must have so many skills", but doesn't, It's because due to my messy schedules during the nights, I generally have a low amount of time to spend developing the game, part of the blame goes to a certain mod...

*Cough* Well, continuing, the new skill change also caused a change on the battle system, so there is no longer monsters with inconsistent scale fighting each other, or effects appearing on the wrong place (or just jumping around). I've moved some of the positioning and direction scripts to the drawing part of the battle, and now they look way more beautiful. When I finish those changes and converting the skills, I'll show you how the battle system look right now.

The only downside, is that due to the changes, I had to temporarily drop the physics on the battle, because that would demand from me some more work to implement, aswell as thoughts on how to make the drawing and updating part of the battle work together, so one doesn't bump into the other's turf.

Well, that is it for the news. Sorry for taking so long to bring this project up, can you even believe that Cube World is about to be launched soon, and this project isn't even on release state? Beside this project somewhat were in development for way longer than Cube World but, well, better I try recovering the whatever is the name of developing this game, so I can finish it and let you guys play.

See ya next time, and until next news. Thought I wasn't going to say?

I guess I ended up lying in the last news...

Oops, sorry for not giving any news since the beggining of the last month, I was getting so much into adding cool stuff and importing some things for my companion mod, that I even didn't had the time to work on the project.

The TNR project isn't abandoned, but I were having to spend some time on my companion mod because, since It's being built from the ground, without the help of the player or npc related codes, I'm having to import several things on it, so yeah, I'm spending time making them be as capable as the player on several things, like for example, they can now get buffs and debuffs.

But I have to say, messing with the mod is improving my programming skills, I'm also developing better methods for both scripting and spriting, and possibly I can apply that on the sprites of TNR project.

So, saying again: I'm sorry for lying and ending up not working on the tnr project.

I wont say "I will try working on the project this week" or stuff, because that didn't happened last month, so better I tell you guys when I end up messing with the project, and possibly bring in cool news about what has changed.

That's all, folks!

TNR Unrelated news, but a cool companion mod news instead.

Hello guys, today's news is unrelated to TNR project, actually is about my companion mod for Terraria.

So, wrapping things up, I've called the companions the TerraGuardians, and made them have kind of the same AI as the NPPlayers from N Terraria mod, but better. For them I had to literally create a new kind of entity on Terraria, so they're not npcs or projectiles (like the summons). Alongside that, they have a friendship level system, where rising it's relation with your character allows them to do more things for you.

I forgot to tell you, but I've released the mod about last week, and based on the initial reception of the mod, which has been kind of good in my opnion, I guess I should try to improve it more, I see good potential on it.

In case you want to check out the mod, here's It's page on Terraria Community Forums:

https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/terraguardians-terrarian-companions.81757/

As for TNR Project, I may resume the development of it on the next week, so I can work on changing the skill system.

TNR Short Break and Terraria Companion Mod news.

Hello there, I'm back and with some news, whose at least one you may not like much. Let's start talking about the TNR Project.

I'm currently giving a break on TNR project, the break might be short, but right now, I don't really want to touch it. I know that I'll have to resprite a good number of monsters, but that's not much of a challenge for me, beside, that's not the reason for the break, I've been working on it for quite some time anyway, but not as much to explain the break... Well, I'll tell later in this post the reason of the break, as for continuing the TNR news:

I've got an idea of how I could split the graphical part of the skills from the animations, but to make that work, I'll need to think about how I'll do that.
My idea is to leave the update part to handle the time of the skill (which is really light on processing), and leave the harder part, the graphical stuff and monster placement for the drawing script.

Doesn't sounds so bad, right? The problem is that I'll have to rework a lot of scripts, includding the walking system to make the skill animations work correctly, and not cause bugs on the game. The pro is that the battle will be only a bit demanding if a local player (by local player, I mean the user(s) on the pc) is currently watching or participating of it.

As for the other news, the Terraria update is taking quite some time to come, beside possibly wont come until either the end of the year, or until next year. So I've been trying to make up with tModLoader and try making some mods. So, are you thinking that I'm working on the newest season of N Terraria on it, right? Then you're wrong. :P

Actually, what I'm working on is more related to the npplayers from the mod than with leveling and stuff. I'm working on a companion mod, which adds a giant creature that can assist you in combat. The creature has it's own equipments and items, whose It will use depending on it's situation or necessity. Also counting that I've added a friendship level system, so doing it's requests rises the friendship, and rising the friendship level may allow you to do some more actions with your creature.

You may check out a video I made of it trying to slam the Queen Bee by using a tree as a weapon.

A lot of things has changed on the companion systems since the video was released, It even is able to use ranged weapons to attack foes.

As for the mod release and stuff, It might be coming any time in the future, I really want it to be ready before I launch it for the public. Until then, well... Try getting a pet on Terraria and teach it to attack enemies.

Until next news.

Edit:. Ps:. I've been trying to post this news has about 3 days.

Discontentment on monsters. TNR News

Well guys, long weeks no see, I guess? Well, today I've got to talk about the current game monsters, but first, I'll explain why of this news, If you are lazy and don't want to read a wall of text, then skim your way to the end of the blog post, to the part where the changes actually comes.

Ever since I begun making the monsters sprites on the game, something was telling me that the sprite was quite off, and that the monsters designs themselves weren't very... Alright? At least for monsters, even more since... Beside they are actually different, they doesn't really feel very different from each other, of course they have different animations, but almost every monster in the game is literally an humanoid creature, if you gave a quick look, you'd say that they are all humanoid creatures, not unique or "Oh! What a cool and different creature."

What kind of gave me the clue that the monsters are... Lame, let's say, is the fact that when "accidentally" watching other monster taming games or cartoons, the monsters themselves are different, they look unique, and you can distinguish it from a real animal, or even tell what kind of animals and other things were fused in to make that creature.

That kind of thought has been in my mind for a long time, and even resulted into me, recreating the Cait Sith monster, whose at least on my point of view, is very different and unique, compared to the other monsters. I believe that I will have to add more unique design to the monsters, when making their sprites, but that also means a lot of monsters will have to be resprited too, and that lead me into another idea:

I'll reduce the walking animation frames, because not only not many people will mind watching a full animation of a monster walking, but also that takes potential frames for other monster animations, so some of the frames that are used for walking, could go to other monster action frames.

What's the result of this? I'll have to create new sprites to several monsters in the game, I'll have a hell of a job, but trying leads to making things right, right?

That is all for today's news, maybe with this sprite recreation idea, I can try to put into practice my idea of gender based sprite difference, so one can tell by sight if a monster is male or female, and no worry, I plan on making it so people of all ages can play the game.

Until next news.

A change of plans on TNR news.

Well, before you guys begins thinking that the project went downhill, it didn't went, just there isn't really much to say about it since I don't really have concrete things to talk or display about it's progress.

I've been thinking latelly, and I've been theorizing too much about what changed in the game, without showing any proof or images of it, so that's kind of a let down, but I do really like to talk about the changes in my project and what's planned, so I just have written away everything that came on mind.

I'll try to slowdown on the development news until I have some solid and interesting change that actually can be posted here, because minor changes like small tweaks on some systems and stuff isn't really all that exciting on the gamer side.

As for the game, It's still in development, but the development is stagnating because I barelly am being able to mess with it, because this month is being a twist in my life, even more since I'm having to look for a job to help with the house income, so yeah, busy.

That doesn't mean that the project was all abandoned, latelly I've been messing around the game systems to make some things works better, by adding some extra pointers on characters animation sprites for skill use purposes, aswell as changing how the animations will be handled, but I wont enter in detail about it until I get something worth talking about. But I have to say, at least the change in how the animations are handled made my job into creating new monsters easier, I only have to remember to create their sprite infos.

Currently I'm having some problems related to monster positioning in battle, but I believe I'll manage to figure out how to fix it, eventually.

Well, that's it for the news, I'll try bringing up something worth of progress news the next time I make a post here, If it's about TNR project, I mean.

See ya on the next news.

Animated changes in TNR

Hey there, I've once again came back to bring in news about TNR project:

The last weeks I've been quite not into programming, so I didn't do much in the project, but today I did so many changes and additions to the project.

I've changed how the game handles the monsters animations, now each frame will have it's own setups, like the points telling what is what, like eyes, mouth, and stuff. Those points will be used by certain skills that will require those.

To make it a bit more easier for me to set the points, I've created in the project an extra debug option so I could setup the points without having to mess with switches and lines of codes. I only need to beware not to do the dumbness of setting a point in another point type, even more since the new feature has a weird bug on the buttons, where I can only click them if I zoom in the monster sprite (???).

Due to the implementation of the new animation system, I've had to change a good number of things in the project, one of them is that when setting up the monster animations for the actions, I no longer need to specify the sprite size, or even the action points positions. That change made faster to create animation points, even more since each frame id will have It's own points.

Another news is that I added 2 new monsters to the game, but they currently only have the stopped animation frame. In the future I'll add more animations to them.

As for the planned things for the project, I've been thinking about adding conditionals to the skill effects, so they are triggered based on certain criteria, for example:
You use a skill where the monster attacks, but If the target has less than 50% of health left, the monster could attack again to inflict extra damage. That's just an example of what It the addition of conditions could do.

Well, for now I guess that's all. Sorry If I wrote a wall of gibberish that you can't understand, but today I didn't slept well, so stayed since about 6 am programming the game.

See you next time.

Monster Storage and high CPU Usage, TNR News

Hey guys, It's been quite some time since I last posted news on this project, I've been a bit... down... latelly, but possibly I'll feel better the next weeks.

Now let's talk about the stuff, and yes, that I mean the Tamers Network Project. I've been doing some tweaks on some parts of the game, even though looking at the codes again, I'm sure that there are way better ways of making the engine do stuff. I removed some codes related to humanoid characters (player and some npcs) from the general tamer script, so the game will be a bit lightweighter on the memory on the run time.

Another thing I've did, was implement a storage system for the game, differently from... One of the versions of TNR released, all monsters in the storage wont be loaded with the player, instead, will be loaded when you open the monster storage window.

Here a look on how it looks right now:

The greatest mystery for me is how to make it less confusing, since if you had the experience of messing with that, you would probably be lost when trying to browse it. For example, try to find the selected slot in the storage.

Maybe if I make the border of the selected slot bigger would make it easier to find the selected slot, I'll have to test that out later.

Meanwhile, an old issue has returned, the high CPU usage, when debugging the game, the CPU usage went to 85%, at least on my pc. My pc is low end, so possibly the cpu usage will be lower on more powerful pcs, but still, It was kind of worrying the issue.

I've first begun testing to see what was causing the issues, until I noticed that was related to the script used on npcs and the player, disabling it seemed to have solved the issue, but If I kept it disabled, we would have no npcs or even a playable character in the game, so I've kept on the debugging. I've been commenting some codes here and there, and even saw some false alerts that the problem was solved, until a little thing that happened gave me the clue of what was the problem.

Since the beggining, the issue wasn't related to updating the actors(player and npcs), but was kind of related to drawing, actually, not even the drawing scripts was the issue causer, It instead was related to the script I use to draw text with borders, for some reason the 5 times drawing was causing issues, so I had to change the script for something more simpler, made so It draws a the text with the choosen color, and in the background has a transparent black targe.

Well, that fixed good part of the issue, I'm not even having slowdowns on the main menu after the fix, check by yourself:

Even though the abusive cpu usage was solved, I believe I can still lower the cpu usage, but I'll still do some checkings and try finding other things that might be causing an abusive CPU usage. Beside that lead me into thinking if...

Oh boy, I guess that fix opened up a new window. :D

Well, that's all for today's news. And wow! 4:50am. Not that It's a special thing, since I've used to stay up late before... I kind of have no idea why so special so... Well, whatever.

Until next news.

Dawn to Dusk, TNR News

Hey guys, the development of TNR is stagnating again, but I'm being able to bring up some things during the times of development.

I've just finished implementing this day and night system for the game, It's still imperfect, but at least one can say that there is dawn to dusk in the game.

I've also been messing with a few other things, currently I'm trying to change how the game will handle monsters that spawns in the maps, that includes normal monsters and bosses, also did a few changes to the main menu, but I may end up showing the changes later.

Well, for now, that's all. I still have a lot to mess in the project, but I need to increase the pace of the development, aswell...

See you guys on the next news.

"I guess I should take a break of battles..." TNR News

Hey guys, nothing much really happened in the gap of time since last news until now, mostly what happened were a few tweaks on the game systems and stuff.

Currently, I believe I'll give a break on working at the battle system of the project, because everytime I work on it to fix an issue, 3 pops up, and that were eventually making me stop the mod development for the day. So I'll try working on other things instead, for example, I'm spriting a new monster, and this one isn't humanoid looking.

Meet the Pixel.

The pixel is going to be a Small sized monster, and currently the attack I sprited is Biting, in the future, I plan on adding a cast animation that will use It's antenaes to cast the spells, and I may end up also adding body attacks, like Tackle or Body Slam.

I'm going to try to create some monsters that aren't actually humanoid looking, but some of them may come being humanoid. Also, a number of those monsters are planned to be Small or Extra Small sized, because that kind of monster will be more predominant in early regions of the game, so when the player just starts the game, or is about to level up a new monster, the player have the option of doing so without many problems.

If you are asking "Why leaving Small and Extra Small monsters on low level regions would make things easier?", I'll tell you why: A good number of updates ago, the creatures sizes impacts, like a LOT, in their base status, so a Large creature will be physically stronger than a Small creature.

Now you might be asking "Wait, if the Large creatures are stronger than small creatures, then what is the point of having smaller creatures in the party?", I'll tell you why: Because even though the Large monsters can be physically stronger, they wont be faster, or even be in higher number than Smaller creatures, even more since I plan allowing the player to carry more creatures in the party If the player party is composed mostly of Small creatures.

Well, that's all for today's news, see you guys, on the next news.
Actually, I wont see, since this blog page doesn't have eyes, and Blogger statistics only tell me how many people have read the post, and the statistic based on countries. But whatever.

See ya!

Why capture if you can use dialogue? TNR News.

Hey guys, I've brought good news for the Tamers Network Project, and they are:

I've added a transition effect for when entering battle, now one of the three transition effects will be played once a battle starts.

I've also extended the capture system, now the "capture" function is assigned to a skill, so if your monster uses that skill on another monster, the game will then check if you captured or not the monster, If you did capture the monster, then It will join your side in the battle, and fight as an allied party member.

For now, that's what the Capture system does, I still need to finish it, so when the battle ends and the captured monster(s) is(are) still alive, you will be asked in the result screen if you want to keep that(those) monster(s).
If you keep the monster and you have enough space in the monster rooster, It will be added to your team.
Otherwise, you can refuse, but I still need to think about what the monster should offer for the sucessfull persuasion. Maybe some special item? Or maybe a temporary battle ally? Who knows.

Of course, you wont be able to capture all monsters in the world, npc monsters, already captured monsters and other player monsters wont be captureable.

And the last news, I've been able to fix a problem with the action skill positioning, I were having problems with it's position, since depending on the direction the sprite was facing, almost everytime had a weird positioning issue, so the skill effect didn't materialized in the correct place. That also made me do some tweaks on scripts related to monster animations, one of them makes so when a monster direction changes due to an animation script, the game will log the direction change, so when the game decides to change the monster animation again, It will take in consideration the fact that the sprite direction has changed due to animation script.

Well, that's all for the good news. I still have a lot to do in the project, but my pc is starting to display the effects of a long time without maintenance, not only my mouse is giving problems, but my pc were also having hard drive related issues. I do hope that the issues doesn't cause my pc to be unuseable, or else I'll have to use my brother's pc to continue the project, and I really feel bad even when I think about that possibility.

Let's hope that my pc issues wont get more critical with the time.

Well, that's all, until next news.

Who is who, that matters. TNR Update news

I've found a solution for the issue, beside depending on the world size, and the maps loaded, that may bloat a bit the game in the future. I've made so the game gives an id to each monster in the world, and then add it with the monster reference to a temporary list that refreshes every frame, being that the list after each frame set's it's value to another list, and then resets.

Gameplay-side, that will look like there has been no change, but now, even buffs will know who is the caster and allow it's effect to happen even if the caster isn't in the same battle, so stacking debuffs isn't going to be a good idea.

I've also been able to reimplement part of the skill effect script, using the new effect function, currently it's working very well. Also includding the fact that multi target spells now works again, the only problem is that the monsters are attacking some monsters that are also being affected by a multi target attack, leading to a ridiculous looking combat event (Ex: A monster is walking to some target, until another monster comes and attacks it while in movement, then the monster slides with the hurt animation), of course I'll have to fix that.

I still have to test if those changes didn't generated any side effect that makes the game broken, so I can't tell for sure that this part of the development is over.  But, I really hope it didn't.

That's all, folks!

"Who are you in the battle?" TNR Talk

Well, the skills and status system are currently passing through a revamp, which I've talked about a few weeks ago, now the greatest thing I'm trying to think about right now, is finding who is the target of the battle. Now, where does that impact? You'll see a branching about that.

If I limit the system to only be functional during battles, that means buffs and debuffs wouldn't be under effect outside of battles, and possibly be removed after battle. That is not cool, not even at all.
Wonder if you have a creature that is a buffer, you would need to cast again all the buffs everytime you start a new battle, summing with the fact that the buffs takes away your monster resources, like mana or maybe even stamina. The gameplay would be a chore, join battle, make the buffer creature do the buffing while the others attacks.

If I don't limit the system to only be functional during battles, buffs and debuffs can remain outside battle, but for a number of buffs, I would need to know who is the caster, so the status calculation be done correctly. Why is that necessary? Because, let's say: For status changing buffs, like STR+ or VIT- buffs, the calculation of status change is based on the caster, so if the caster has a good chunk of STR status, STR increasing buffs will increase that status even more on the target monster.

Not only that, but I could also make use of the skills and status system in other ways, but that may be a thing for the future.

The problem currently, Is that I'm trying to think: How I'll find out who is the caster? What can I use to find out the monster that used the skill?

I'm going to need to do some thinking before I take some more action, I've thought about making something to log the tamer and the monster position, but what if the monster has been created by an script? Because of a certain event in the game (Ex:. The old quest of the Mäuse under the bed on the weapon shop)?

The talking would end here, but first, I'll try to recapitulate what is the goal of the project, or at least what I want to achieve:

• No evolution
• Monsters are as good by themselves, no evolution or ultimate form, so the combat is more based on the monster itself.
•  No absurd status
• I want to avoid making the game has absurd status on higher levels, so if the monsters health or even the damage inflicted is over 10000, then there is something wrong.
• Unique creatures
• I want each creature to feel unique, and have a distinctive personality, but since they are basically "IA", also demonstrate some intelligence, beside that doesn't exactly means that they can talk.
•  Open World
• Go almost anywhere, no linearity or things locking your way.
• I said almost because there may be some special cases where you need to unlock the map to have access.
•  No grindy progression.
• I want to avoid focusing the game on grindy quests, like kill x monster, or collect x items.
• Instead, I want to create a quest system where it's more focused on the story and events, so npcs be more alive, and you be more immerse in the game.
• Grindy quests may be available in the game, but I want them to be a kind of side quest. There are people who likes that kind of quest, and they may be helpful if you want to train a group of monsters, or even your character.
•  The tamer matters
• I want the tamer to be more than just a vehicle that the player controls, the tamer would have unique builds, that gives it's own personality.
• That should also involve profession classes, each having it's own roles.
•  MMO like world
• I'm trying to build the game with the thought of an mmo game, even though there will be singleplayer gameplay in the game, I also am thinking on the fact that people may play it on multiplayer, or even there be dedicated servers to the game, so I'm trying to adapt the game for both cases of gameplay.
• Player interactions are also in the planning, the professions could also play a major role on that too.
• Smart Npcs
•  I want the npcs to do more than just be there and do what they are programmed to do, I want them to be able to evolve with the world.
• Shop npcs, for example, could learn or even attempt to make new things they could sell depending on the materials the players sells to them, along the fact that the npc could also buy from a general store the materials necessary to create their products.
• Npcs having necessities, so the economy is movemented on the world, and be more livelly.
• Npcs that can be followers, you be able to recruit them, they could capture or swap their party member as time passes.
•  No elemental focus
• Elemental system is a cheap excuse for turning the game into a rock, paper and scissor in gameplay, so each monster wont come naturally with elemental advantage or weakness, but some things in the game may cause the monster to be vulnerable or stronger against them.
• No weapons or armors
• It's an stupid and bad idea, why I thought that would be cool on the previous version of the game? I may end up changing that idea, or just focus heavily on the accessories, instead.
• Beside that may be changed in the future, even more since I thought about the possibility of attack animation for weapons, but possibly, only certain monsters would be able to equip weapons, maybe even the weapons could be accessories, that can be seen only when equipped by certain monsters, with armed attack animation? I still need to think about that...
• No devaluation of any area of the game
•  I want you to explore the world, even if that means you'll be visiting a low level area, I want you to be able to collect rewards from exploring it, and still have challenge.
• Quest objectives also be able to send you to low level areas. 
• No system over system progression
• System over system, is when gradually during your progression, starts appearing new systems for powering up your character, and turning your progression harder and harder as the new systems unlocks. I don't want that either.
• No guilds
• I really believe that guilds actually splits the comunity into small circles, so if the game manages to get a dedicated server, guilds wont be coming.

 I... Can't really think of anything else.
At least those are my goals with the project, I'm not sure if I'll be able to do everything, but I'll try. :)

Anyway, if I'm missing something, or want to discuss about one of those goals, tell me. Has been a long time since I last said the project goals, I just don't remember where.

Latest changes on TNR project

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The "don't look at me!" update, aggro system and capture on TNR project.

Hey guys, I'm back with some TNR news.

I've been reworking a few things on the project, alongside implementing new things, like the fact that depending on the map you are at, monsters will now have aggro on you, depending on how near to them you are, so if you stay close to a monster for too long, you'll be in troubles.

Currently the game gives you a signal for when the monster is about to try attacking you, It will first start staring at you, even will change the direction look depending on where you are compared to the monster, after a few time has passed, it will begin to chase you. The same may also be valid for npcs, so if npcs are in the view range of a monster, it will try to attack. Now I guess you get why I called it the "don't look at me!" update.

A way of avoiding being chased by the monster, is by getting away from it's view range, It will eventually forget about you and return to it's wandering state.

The video also shows a few monsters that were added in the game, as time has passed.

Currently, it's also even more dangerous if more than one monster aggros you, because they will not mind if you are in battle or not, they will join the battle and try to attack you too, even if you are out numbered. I will need to think what I will add to make so the monsters either respect or not if you will be outnumbered in battle, that may also include a system to make so sometimes monsters may come to aid you in combat, too. Maybe that will be related to the monster personal behavior and map setting?

I've also implemented a Capture system to the game (Beside by the way it works, looks more like a Persuasion or something system), the percentage of success on the capture is related to the level and the size of the monsters in the team, so if for example you have a team of 3 medium sized monsters at level 1, you will have difficulty trying to convince an extra large level 1 monster, but It's possible, even if you level up your team for a better rate.

The capture system is planned to pass through changes, since currently, It doesn't care about the turn, so It's instantaneous the attempt of capture. I will attempt to change that so It's controlled by a monster skill, so there could be different capture methods you could acquire, or even monsters that are more into the socialization part of battle.

The status system is also passing through another rework, I'm trying to make it use less big numbers as level increases, following the original idea, so a level 100 character compared to a level 1 character wont have, for example, thousands of health, that could be game breaking.

Well, that's all for today's news, I kind of wonder what you guys think of the new monsters in the game, that were leaked in the videos, If you leave a comment telling your thoughts about them, I'd be happy.

Also, I've had to retry recording the videos quite a number of times, because I kept forgetting to turn off the media player when recording, so yeah, I've had to restart the video recording several times, but at least I were able to do and release them! Yay!!

Until next news.

The progression on Beat 'em up adventure games, are the developers doing it wrong?

I've been wondering some times about how the progression in terms of leveling works in beat 'em up adventure games, like the ones seen in Dungeon and Fighters Online and Elsword, and I believe the fact that the player progresses in level as the stages unlocks and quests are completed is a mistake.

You may think I'm being quite radical on saying that, but the sense of personal progression isn't just about being by the level of the stage, but instead related on how you play with your character in any situation, even if you are underleveled. On the time I played Lunia Online, after it first launched it's brazillian server, the game didn't had quests for leveling, so if you kept following the stages one by one, you would end up underleveled for it, that's the part where you'll think "that is the problem", and I say no. I'll tell you why: Because that incentivated me either to improve my skills playing with that character, or party up with other people, being that the last one, several people were doing the same, too.

Partying up with other people that were also underleveled, made the stages more challenging and harder, on the stage 3-10, was such a joy for the entire party when we defeated the, at that time, final boss of the game. Even though everyone was underleveled, were able to do it.

That sense of joy has died when Lunia Z came, and the game added a lot of things to ease the gameplay, like adding quests on each stage to give the extra exp to level up, or allowing you to skip stages because one for your level unlocked. Those changes made the game way more soloable, not even the before used for grinding stages were being played by people, only a few final episode bosses were actually having some people looking for group, but... The necessity of partying up to play the stages has went downhill, and so went Lunia.

That lead me into thinking if making the player progress at the same pace as the stages unlocks isn't good for those kinds of games, due to the fact that a beat 'em up game, isn't just about the level, your progression, but also how you play with your character, if you play well, even underleveled, you can defeat a tough challenge.

The second thing that lead me into this thought, was when Grand Chase was about to close it's brazillian server, too. As a thank you gift, the host made the cash shop cheaper, and rewarded everyone with some cash points. Due to the fact that the server were going to close soon, a lot of people has quit the game, so I've had to solo it, but with the help of a few cash items like revive items and stuff. With around level 58, I've beaten the final boss, counting also the fact that I've had to burn some revive items during that but... It's doable, If I were playing with other people of course would be easier, but just by the fact that is possible for a lower level character to beat something like the final boss, already proves that there is something wrong with the progression of the game, and not related to the level comparission.

I guess that to make a game like that incentivate more the coop, would be better if the developers not give the players some hand holdings, making them progress as stages goes, not only that but also the creatures in the stage the players face against, shouldn't really follow the map level range, if the monster is though, It could gain 5 more levels compared to the normal map monsters, that not only would be an extra challenge to the players, but also more rewarding too, since the rewards for defeating that creature would be higher than the normal creatures in the stage.

So, that's my thought on this matter, maybe those kinds of games should award exp to the players through doing stages, than through quests acquired outside stages. At least would incentivate more the coop play, and certainly meeting new people, since I met more people during Lunia time, than during Lunia Z time.

Time to fix what is broken

Well, the only problem of getting yourself better at something, is that when you look back, you actually may notice that you have been doing some things wrong, and that is valid for TNR project.

A number of things on TNR project are built in a way that is actually more troublesome to implement or modify than actually worth of the result, and that kind of thing is valid for the attributes of Skills and Status Effects (buffs and debuffs).

Differently from almost any other system in the project, the attributes of skills and status makes use of three types that determines what the effect will do and how the status is calculated, the problem with that is that debugging and implementing new status effects are actually really annoying currently, generally leading me to getting lost on the code files, and that isn't nice.

I will have to create a new system to handle the attributes of the skills and status, whose will also handle the effect calculation and do the changes.

The above changes actually will actually influence in more than just making my life easier to add new effects, they also will allow me to add more complex scripted skills and buffs, like buffs that trigger effects when the afflicted attacks/is attacked, for example.


Well, that's all for today's talking about the project. I should release a teaser in the future, once I get some solid progress on it. Latelly I've been messing with some monsters animations, since a number of them had missing animations.

Well, until next news.

Critical Hits. The consequence of the defense formula.

So, after giving some thoughts, came to my attention that the Critical Hits in some games are also kind of affected by the Defense formula, I've talked about in a post I've made some time ago, but the diference between the defense formula for normal damage and critical damage is very perceptible, and sometimes fatal, on the gameplay.

The formula of critical hits generally uses:

Damage * CriticalRate - Defense

Ps:. Do notice that I didn't made use of parenthesis between Damage * CriticalRate, because since It's a multiplication before the subtraction of Defense, the multiplication should be done first, so would be redundant to add it.

The problem with such formula is that the Defense status may be useless depending on how high the Damage value is, meaning that if a game uses high numbers for Damage value, the Critical hit can be very deadly.

Let's say for an example: My character have 1000 of Damage, the creature it is attacking have 250 Defense, the damage dealt to health will be:

1000 - 250 = 750

Everything normal here, now let's try with the critical rate of 2 times.

1000 * 2 - 250 = 1750

Do you see the problem? You actually is dealing more damage than the defense can handle, and that could be fatal during gameplay, even more if the player is actually the one who receives the critical hit, It could lead to an instant defeat.

The way of solving that, would be if did kind of the same thing from Defense calculation on the Attack VS Dps thread:

(Damage - Defense) * CriticalRate

Ps:. In this case, the Parenthesis was necessary, because I want the subtractions to happen first, and then the multiplication happen. If you're actually bad at math, take note of this fact when building a formula or solving problems.

That way, the Critical rate is actually the resulting damage after the defense has been calculated, but wait!
The critical rate actually makes the user deal higher damage value, right? So that means the first formula is actually correct? Well, Yes. But actually, you decide which one you're going to use, either use the ideal, Damage * CriticalRate - Defense, or the forgiving one, (Damage - Defense) * CriticalRate.

Just beware of the fact that as stated above, depending on how high the numbers are in your project, the Critical Hit may mean insta defeat to the one inflicted with it, so beware when implementing the system on your project, and try not to do like a certain mmo I've met which relied on Critical Hits to actually inflict damage to creatures, that was very deplorable.

Well, that's all, folks!
Today's post wasn't related to the project, but I hope this help in case someone of you guys decides to build a game someday.

The nothing happened week, not

Hey guys, I came here to say that nothing happened. That's all, nothing at all.
I'm slacking... So bad....

Well, before you guys starts saying "Bad Raccoon, Bad" or something, the development of
TNR project is in the middle of a little... How could I call that... Complication, maybe?

 


I'm having currently a little problem related to skills, well, not exactly having, but it will be an issue in the future, at least if there are multiple fights happening on the same world.

Currently, what handles the skill effect duration is the skill effect script, so what tells if a skill is under effect or not, is the skill update script, which also handles effect drawing, characters positioning on the scene and other things. The problem is, If there are npcs fighting somewhere in the world, or in the multiplayer have multiple players participating of a battle, unnecessary informations like effect positioning, movement and even drawing will be handled when It will not be used, because:

1. The server will not handle drawing the battle, so having it calculate and handle where will be drawn effect and stuff wont help on anything for the clients participating of the battle.
2. If the npc isn't in a battle with the player participating of it, there is no need for the game to setup drawing effect for skills.

Leaving such information being handled by the game when not necessary could lead to severe problems to the game itself, like for example: Your game could slow down, because with all the battles being handled and skills having their position and effect scripts calculated, will cause the game/server to have less fps. And of course, that isn't nice.

I'm having to think how I'll make the server handle those kinds of things when the player isn't currently present in battle, or if the battle is being handled by the server.

On other news, my mouse seems to be behaving a bit latelly, for some reason. It's double click and miss click rate has lowered drastically, I have no idea of what happened, but It's good that the problem is solved, that means I can sprite again, I guess, aswell as play some games again.

And this last week I've been thinking about the fact of ditching Adf.ly and instead placing a donate button on my mod thread and this blog, for those who want to support my projects. Adf.ly isn't the most trustworthy ad redirector in the world, beside it allowed me to earn some money from what I did, beside most of it went to my games library on Steam.
Beside I really enjoy more the support I receive from the people who played my project, and I'm not talking in the financial side, but on the fan base side, because at least with people saying that they love what I do or even giving suggestions/critics to my project, doesn't have the eyes of a third person wanting profit of it, and recieving feedback from people makes me feel like I'm going at the right direction, because It's really good to see that there are people who cares about my project.
Now you may be wondering, why I didn't placed the Donation buttons on the blog or the forum threads, and I'll tell you why:

Since Patreon surged, I felt like the content creators are more like "Donate until a certain goal to see a new content" than "Donate to support my projects", and I don't want to give the impression that either or both are true in my case, with or without donation, I'll still keep trying to work on my projects, because I love it, and I love to see people being happy playing my projects. The donation is like an extra for what I do, If you want another way of expressing your thanks, you have.
So, why there isn't still a Donate button here? Well.. The only real project I've had released was N Terraria mod, and as you guys know, I discontinued the project, placing a Donate button on the forum thread would sound like as if I were butchering the project for money, and that kind of actitude I've had enough from several developers around the world.
As for my TNR project, It's still in development, and I feel like placing the button here would indirectly be used by people to donate for the project, whose I still don't know if will eventually be released or not, so if it ends up not being released, people will feel cheated, and if I manage to release it, I don't know if it will be a free game or not, if isn't, people might feel cheated too, because donated for something that isn't free, so that's why I don't feel right about placing the button here.

Well, that's actually my thoughts, and took longer than I thought. Sorry for talking so much about donation and monetary stuff, but I really doesn't feel well about thinking of the donations, for example, let's say: PC Gamer featured my mod last week, I talk about that to a parent of mine, the person didn't cared at all about the fact that my mod was featured as one of the best mods of Terraria, instead wanted to know if I could get lucre out of it. So yeah, that is the problem, all my effort down the drain due to a capitalist vision. At least that person can't blame me for spending the entire night doing what I want.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I really needed to take that out of my chest.
Until next news.

The Mod, the Project and the Real Life.

Well, If you were checking Terraria forums on my mod thread, you probably knows about this, if you didn't, check this post I made, first: https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/n-terraria-mod-rpg-races-classes-quests-and-other-things.542/page-422#post-1710571

Now you may be either thinking "might be a good idea" or "why would he do that?", and I'll tell you:
As stated on the topic, while modding Terraria, I had to do the changes while keeping what makes Terraria itself, which is why even though you have leveling, classes, races and etc on the mod, the progression is still like Terraria progression. But keeping that part of the game demi intact were causing me problems to add new stuff, or even modify, without counting the fact that the source I'm using for the mod is old, doesn't even support the new font style.

The problem actually get critical the more I continue, though. Because of the changes done to Terraria over the past years, Terraria has been turning harder and harder to mod on, because the decompilation bugs were getting harder and harder to fix, and the latest patch decompiling bugs were way too much for me to bear, I simply can't fix them, so If I were to launch the season 7 of the mod, I would need to use the current source I have.

The problem were up, until a few days ago I were talking to a friend about rpgs, and then came the idea of instead of modding Terraria, I could try making a new, different game, instead. That new different game I could place any kind of thing that comes in my creativity, and also try to make it any way I want. And that's where the next problem rises.

I don't really have the time to work on another project, the Tamers Network Project I'm already working on it in sluggish steps (even more since I should be working on the other parts of the game, but instead keep doing changes to the combat and battle systems), with two game projects to handle, both games will take longer to be finished, and since I work alone on those games, well, It would be like dividing 1 by 2, each project would get half of me, literally.

That's the problem I've been facing latelly, the idea of building a completelly new game using what I made on N Terraria is very tempting, but I'm talking about creating a new game, so compared to modding, will taking waaaaaaaaaaaay longer to see some result for it. And that's why I've tried to learn how to use Unity.

If you didn't knew yet, I have a low end rig, for both gameplay and development, so my pc is literally a Comodore 64, like a friend says. It's still 32 bits, so I can't install the latest version of Unity, but for luck's sake, when I tried to install Visual Studio 2017, It came with a 32 bits copy of it, and so I was happy, even looked at tutorials to learn how to mess with it, until I were having problems with the animator.... A friend said that could help me on the learning process of building a game on it, that looked great, until at some moment, he asked what version of Unity I were using, I told it, and he said that it was a very old version of it, from 2016... I literally felt really down when I read that, but not entirelly down since I still could make use it of... Beside not updated... And possibly unfinished...

Now I'm questioning myself if I should even try to make a game on it, since I can't even stand the way the character animations work on it. And even wonder what would be of the game project I had on mind. So currently, I wont be trying to put into practice the game project idea, I'll focus on TNR project, and keep going until I be able to take it out of it's tunnel.

On other news, TNR project is still alright, I've done some changes to the Defense system of it, instead of using a solid number that wouldn't give you a clue of how much defense you have, It will instead show a Percentage, that will give you a clue of how much damage will be reduced when your creature is attacked.

Following TNR news, I'm trying to figure out how I could make the status system do some intervention in combat, like for example in the following case:
MonsterA casts a skill on MonsterB that makes so 20% of the life stolen by it be passed to the caster.
MonsterB uses a life steal skill on MonsterC, 20% of the stolen life value goes to MonsterA.

That's the kind of thing I'm trying to figure out how I'll do, without making the code clunky, off course.


Another thing I've been thinking, is if the maps of the game should have their size increased by 5 times, currently the maps have a size of 80 width and height, If I increase the size by 5 times, each map will have a size of 400 width and height instead, making some maps less cramped, and bigger.
Maps like Towns will benefit from this, now field and dungeon maps I would need to think about what to do to them. Beside instead of changing the map size, maybe I could try instead to create a virtual map placement in the world, so the size doesn't really matter, as long as it's well placed in the world, but that could lead to causing a confusion on the placement, and having maps overlap one on another... Too much thing to think...

Also, the Quest system is getting a reformulation, but I will need to think on how it will work, how I'll make the quest events happen and how the trail will work...

As for monster spriting, I'm giving a hiatus to it, since my mouse is having problems on the left clicking, so trying to do pixel art with a mouse that clicks whenever it wants, or double clicks when you don't want is a test of patience. The last time I tried to sprite with it, I nearly used it as a whip to hit it on the wall repeatedly. Good thing I have hold on my patience a bit, since If it broke, I would only have the keyboard to use on the pc.

Well, sorry for the testament, and that's all for today's news. Sorry for not bringing any spoiler or anything again.

Tamers Network Reborn has now 10 monsters!!

Hurray! Tamers Network Reborn project has managed to achieve 10 monsters, that is quite a lot of monsters for the game, but I still need to add more.

The game also got some core changes to add a few physics to the battle, aswell as changes to how skills behaves, aswell as the animations of launching spells.

That's about all for the news, I'd like to talk about each monster in the game right now, aswell as show them, but I really am not feeling like it... Maybe I'll do that in a future oportunity.

I still have to take on at programming the quest system, but I still haven't a solid idea on how I could make the quests, aswell as make them accessible from the dialogues, or even interconnected with the world. I surelly have some thoughts to do, and since I haven't a chalk board, I'll have to improvise...

Until then, see ya on the next news.

What have I been doing with my time? [TNR News]

Well'p, for a break of schedule of weekly news, I guess not even the weekly news are being able to be done, even more since I've been having problems to find time to work on the project.

Anyway, once I got into working on the project, the first thing I did was this monster animation :/.

 It's kind of a over long animation, but at least serves to the purpose, that animation also made me implement on some skills a system to find the time of the next trigger of the animation (generally used for when damage is to be inflicted, but also can be used to change phase or something), that allowed the monster to only toss the bomb when the animation of tossing were near the end. Even when I'm fooling around doing over framed animations, something new for TNR system has been implemented because of.

Well, I guess I should talk about some extra parts of the video.
The monster on the lower left is the Bombermaus, beside on the source it's still named Maus Bomber... It's name tells his role, it tosses bombs at foes. In the future it will gain more skills that aren't just ranged, maybe it can be good for melee combat, too.

For the news, that's about all, I'm working at my own pace on the project when I get moments of peace, and good music to listen, beside thanks to that "good music", I had to record the video three times, because I forgot to turn off the media player while recording, beside Bandicam weren't also recording videos because I also forgot to set it to game recording, haha.

Anyway, That's all, folks!

Edit:. Ops, after checking the video, I forgot about a little fact. The Cait Sith still uses the old skills from the old... Cait Sith, so It's using "Scratch" attack, explaining why the sound of paper ripping is playing when it attacks.

Another revamp on the status system, and visible changes on TNR Project

Hey guys, today I've been doing a second look at the status system of the game, and also redid the entire status system.

Now three things will define the monster initial status: their base status, which is the status that are actually their own, in other words, if the game had a monster database, the status shown on that list; and their extra status and level; Now the third thing is of course their size, their size will have also impact on their behavior, but I may talk about it on the future.

The base status causes most of the impact on the monster health, defining literally what the monster is, If the monster have high VIT, It will have good boost on both Max Health and Physical Defense, if the monster have high STR, It will have a good boost on Melee Damage.

Just to compare, I'll show some of the monster status.

That's the Kangaroo Monster you know very well, his size is M, but as you can see, it has good Physical damage, compared to Ranged and Magic damage. The Physical Defense is also higher than Magic Defense, since VIT is higher than INT.

 The Dog Mage has a good change on the status, you can notice by sight that his HP and SP are different from the Kangaroo Mob.
His size is S, so some of his status are lower, and others higher.
Due to having a high INT status, It's Magic damage is better than both Physical and Ranged damage, not only that, but his Magic Defense is also higher than the Physical Defense.
The VIT status is causing it to have a lower HP and Physical defense, too, while the INT is causing him to have high SP and Magic Defense.

Ps:. That guy is a deadly caster.

And the Big Foot, whose size is L, his highest status is STR, and as you can see, his Melee Damage is higher than the one from Kangaroo Mob. The Size also did changes to his status, being that just by checking above, It's better for Physical Combat than Magic Combat.

I'm still testing those changes, since the status are partially not making me happy, even more on the part of the damage, since the combat with some monsters is like facing a sponge, even if you have a monster of the same size of the other monster.

Anyway, that's all for today's news.
Until next time.

Edit:. I forgot, I also revamped the defense rate system of the game, but I wont talk about it now.

A Demi open game? Good or bad idea?

I've been wondering for some time about the possibility of allowing the graphics of TNR game be editable, so you aren't bound to the original game graphics, and can add or create your own to enhance your game experience, the idea is still in a draft, but I kind of wonder how it would work.

I dunno if XNA would allow me to do that, or even if the idea would be welcome, beside, I don't have anything to hide graphically related. Now about the game codes, of course I can't, or else in case I get multiplayer to work in the game, It would be a hack heaven. So It's not a good idea to have the game codes open aswell, beside If could, I wonder how I would do that...

Beside there is a feature that I still am wondering if will need player script or not, but not only I wont discuss about it now, but I wont also work on it now, or at least until some time after the game release, which is also unknown.

On other news, I've been working on improving the new cait sith attack animation, the old attack animation was bad, I tried making the new one better.

The first frame is also the new standing animation, and I didn't placed basic shading on the rest of the animations, the animation still doesn't look great, but at least look better than the old animation, the old animation would look nice if the game were metroidvania, but It's a monster training/adventure game.

Well, that's all for today news. Until next time.