We are back again…
A lot of time has passed!
Don’t worry, we from team FervorCraft were just very busy working on the game.
Well, and during February and March we also had conventions to attend in Dresden (DeDeCo) and Leipzig (MCC 2024), thus needing to invest some of our time into creating new prints for our booth as well.
But apart from that we have continued working on it and managed to make a lot of progress.
A Semi-Linear Story Section
When we weren’t busy attending conventions, we took care of the first sections of Chapter 3 in which the players will have to take action themselves: the entire Southwest of Zhetan will be available to you!
What does that mean? Here, the plot will continue semi-linear. While the main quest will give you a final destination, numerous optional locations are open to visit - even if some might prove to still pose a sizeable challenge.
But an extensive trip has never failed yet to make you more familiar with the final companion.
Here are a few impressions of the areas we have finished or are currently still working on.
The Plot Must Go On!
But how about the plot for the whole game? How far along are we?
As mentioned, we focussed on the first section of Chapter 3. For a good reason: we divided the contents of the chapter into thirds - to serve as milestones during development - and we have finished all the texts of important scenes for the first third of it; what’s missing now is their implementation.
Sidequests and NPCs are in the works as well but will probably get implemented when the main quest for this segment is also fully playable.
In short: regarding the story we finished all the groundworks and will add in the rest one by one before proceeding to the next segment.
Art Assets
We made a lot of new graphic assets or edited or finalized existing ones over the past few months. Apart from pixelart and effects for the different areas, there have also been new NPCs added which will become more important in Chapter 3.
RPG MAKER XP evolves into… MKXP-Z
One of the two most substantial changes we made was changing the engine Charon - Zhetan Chronicles will run in when finalized. Development continues in RPG MAKER XP which is still more than suitable for that job but is showing more and more issues when it comes to actually running the game. Thus, we’ve decided to go for the MKXP-Z framework!
“What is that?”, you might ask.
Well, it’s a C++-based framework specifically intended for the Maker generations XP, VX and VX-Ace that allows games to be played fitting more contemporary standards (It is often used as a base for fan projects in the Pokémon community as well). Which in our case means:
- a much more stable performance
- the possibility to use updated Ruby code (the standard in RPG Maker is rather outdated)
- freely adjustable window resolutions*
- fonts loading automatically
- the ability to connect it to the Steam-API for achievements etc.
- portability onto other operating systems**
* We have to admit: technically, there were a lot of other options in that regard but we opted for a 4:3 resolution to keep the necessary overhaul work to a minimum - the main focus were debugging and the adjustment of font sizes. Thanks to the variable window sizing, every player should be able to find a resolution fitting their needs and preferences.
** This point is still in an experimental phase but in theory it is possible to also build the framework for Linux and MacOS. Linux for now takes priority since it would also make the game compatible with SteamDeck.
This whole restructuring has taken quite a few weeks of our time but by now, we got everything in working order. All that is left to do are the details, for example the consistent implementation of Steam achievements.
Overhauling the Damage Formula and Rebalancing
The other big change we made showed itself during the implementation of new skills for both heroes and enemies: we completely overhauled the damage calculation - and with that the balancing of status effects.
Before, we used a heavily edited version of the Maker’s standard which was serviceable but neither clearly laid out nor easy to operate.
That’s why we did it all new and kicked out the old code. We used this chance to eradicate some issues with balancing during fights. In detail, this involves:
- damage done by heroes and enemies is not strictly capped anymore, making buffs and debuffs more noticeable
- character level now got a bit more impact on the damage calculations; equipment and action levels remain very important but forgetting to take care of them for a hot second shouldn’t result in a frustrating bottleneck anymore
- the heroes’s LPs have been increased and adjusted to the enemies’s damage so players should not get not challenged enough nor immediately destroyed either - except when trying to go for a boss way above their level.
- the reconstruction also allows for an easier implementation of future enemies, since status effects are now much easier to calculate and adjust
The end goal, though, was for the existing combat strategies to still work the same and impressions from recent testing confirm that! Especially the standard encounters are distinctly less sluggish now - especially when taking advantage of enemy weaknesses! The majority of these last months went into this aspect, in fact, and it did pay off.
A Little Sneak-Peak
By the way, we have an additional update in the works which should enhance the combat system even more - but more on that once it’s ready.
Future Prospects
As we said before, next up is the realization of the first third of Chapter 3 and further fixing more issues on the side. The realization of open skill sets and talents will come up and our list of needed art assets will slowly but surely shrink down. I don’t want to make any predictions right now, but over this summer we should be able to make good progress.
That’s all for now. Thank you very much for reading and see you next time!
Kind regards, Schilderich
Team Fervorcraft