Hey there! It's been a while! A lot of personal real life problems came about during these few months...

Anyway, the main points are describes in the latest post on the website: check here. But down here is a quick summary of the last few changes to the core gameplay. I am actively developing content now.

Newer Timeline System: In battle, your action now comes in when the character reaches the end of the timeline. Your speed determines how fast you zoom across the timeline. Faster characters can sometimes go in front of other characters, and even perform two actions before a slower one can act! Also, since the speed stat can be modified by titles, you can also improve your speed or cripple the speed of your foes.

Additive Titles, Additive Flowers, Small Stat Numbers: It helps improve balancing. Now titles aren't giving % boosts, but rather, + boosts. Since the stats are way smaller, each extra point matters more now than ever.

Faster & Free Hegemone Pass Action: The power to switch leaders in battle has been improved for your team, as you can switch leaders at any time you act, without it wasting the turn! (Animation would need to be improved, btw, to use the old attack version of the HP).

I'm back on track. So far, I have the level design prototypes of about 9 missions (about 1/3rd of the main missions).
Now that the game is more content work, I can't wait to showcase more interesting things. I'm working hard to get the game to have enough usable footage to make a nice announcement trailer. I'll probably need to contract a composer for a single track for the trailer, though...

Wow, it's been a really long time since I last posted on the devlog! I even forgot to post the last update that was in June!

Mastery System

I've introduced the mastery system to titles, and I did a bit of UI changes in battle.
So what's mastery? Basically, it's a sort of EXP for titles. After every battle, your team gains not only EXP, but mastery points as well.

A title has three levels of mastery, with level 1 being a freshly obtained title:
LEVEL 2 Mastery: Improves the buffs/debuffs for the title.
LEVEL 3 Mastery: Immediately restores 1 SP when the owner of this title becomes the current leader.
FULL Mastery: Exclusive technique usable when the owner of the title has it equipped.

When a title is fully mastered, the owner of the title now gets a rank up!

Rank System

Each party member now has a rank. You improve their rank by mastering titles for each character.
Getting ranks unlocks permanent upgrades for that character, such as...
A technique
1 Point of SP Refresh, the amount of SP restored every time the character's turn comes up in battle.
Drop rate increase, etc...

Turn Order Update

Previously, the game was a very traditional turn based rpg, where you could select each party member's moves before the turn began, and every actor on the field would act based on their speed.

Now, it's been changed to something more like Persona, where you only decide their action when it's their turn. It's more useful for the leader switching mechanic, both for the player and the AI, also it let's the AI be more reactive to changing situations with relatively little changes to the AI code.

All the stuff mentioned on top is a quick summary of the website's post, here.

The New Flower System

This is the subject of yesterday's post on the website.

I wanted to make the flower equipments a bit more interesting, and easier to make content wise. The old system of creating each flower, with each one having unique stats and a technique, was rather tedious.

The new system has several characteristics for each flower:
A Colour
A Brightness Rating
And a technique

Essentially, there is a synergy system between the three flowers you can equip for each character, and the way they synergize is based on their colour. Synergizing improves the power of the equipped flowers, but their power is based on their brightness. A bright flower has great power, but poorly improves the other flowers, while a dark flower has poor power, but greatly improves the other flowers.

I go into a bit more detail on the flowers and synergy here.

Tiled! :D

Some good news, and recent news too! I've changed the level editor from OGMO to Tiled, and it is going to make my life much easier making maps! The amount of lag there was in OGMO for any map larger than a house was horrendous! Tiled has it's minor problems, but definately much more usable than OGMO.

The biggest thing I miss from ogmo is the enum variable, absent from tiled, but I just preformat my entities with defined strings as "value1|value2|value3...", and modify the property when I place one in the map.

I'm still working on the game, I just had some personal problems. See you soon!

Hello! Another post has just been posted to the main blog!

--> BLOG POST <--

To summarize...

Challenge Battles have been implemented! Find a Challenge Gate, enter it and fight a battle with special conditions to earn special prizes that will be useful for your journey! Losing a challenge does not result in a game over, and can be instantly retried if failed.

There are locked doors and the key system that was in the game as a mission objective has now been changed to act like normal keys! Keys only exist within a mission, and don't take any inventory space.

Lastly, new animation for obtaining a Persephone power.

Hello!

Yesterday, I wrote a post on the main website about enemy spawners, more specifically, the different iterations it went through. You can check that out here:

--> BLOG POST <--

To summarize, the game went from a Paper Mario style of spawning enemy encounters, into a more traditional random enemies on the field mechanic, inspired by Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. It's the first time I write this kind of article, focusing on the game design and so on, rather than just keeping people up to date. I might try writing other posts in this vein...

The enemy radar was recently introduced to warn players in advance when enemies are going to spawn. Also recently introduced, the Lightshine item! Used on field, it closes all portals and scares away all foes for a few steps, resetting the radar along the way!

(Sorry, the menu UI is still a bit broken after bitmaptext conversions)

I also created button icons for keyboard and joypad buttons, fixing the keybind screen along the way, and making it so that changes are only applied if you select the apply button.

The last change I wanted to point out was that the game now shows when selecting a target if they are weak against the selected attack during battle! It will be very useful for battle where the enemy can switch between multiple leaders carrying team or leader titles that grant resistances or weaknesses.

I do post a lot more often (sometimes minor things) on Twitter, but I just wanted to post a few things that I pushed on twitter lately. If a lot of small minor updates occur on twitter, I'll probably do small compilation posts here from time to time.

Thanks for reading!

Long time no see! I've posted a new blog post today! To summarize, the game is now entering content development.

Check out the blog post for more details on the changes, I'm a bit too lazy to copy and paste all the images into imgur...

--> BLOG POST <--

Quick summary

First of all, I am terribly sorry for not having posted anything formal on the devlog. I had a two month period where I had a lot of real-life work to do, and the rest of the time during this silence was doing a lot of backend, such as bug fixing, and optimization here and there. Most importantly, I've also completed during that time both an attack choreography editor (battle animations) and a cut-scene editor, to speed up their creation.

Amongst the new changes, I've redone how intermissions works: they now act like a mini hub stage! You can talk with your allies here and access all the features of the intermission.

You also get to play as Persephone, not within one of your party members, during Intermission.

A few services in Intermission also got a bit of a rework, such as the Mission Select!

Other things were added, like a stat/buff/debuff viewer during battle.

And a few field gimmicks, like the Gravity Minotaur Beam.

Again, sorry for the silence. The other changes are listed on the blog, but now I'm on track to create the contents of the game.

Been a while!

Currently, I've been working on a lot of different things, but all towards one goal: to get a trailer/press release done. One good thing is that the Database Editor is useable, and I can create content much easier than before. There are still a few things to iron out, but the game takes the data correctly now.

There are other things I did, but a lot of it is mostly backend. A few things, like field damage counters, are shown in my latest post on the website.

Hopefully, I'm expecting to get the all this done near end November. Hopefully. I also need to decide on a composer, as the trailer will require music.

Woah there! Great news! (and priority changes)

There was an unexpected Siliconera article that popped up! I did not send any Press Release, FYI.

Check it out here: http://www.siliconera.com/2016/10/01/hegemone-pass-turn-based-rpg-cute-knights-underworld-power/

It's nice that an article has been written! However, I must work on a Press Release ASAP, alongside a trailer, so that journalists have a clear idea about what the game is about and help them write about the game more easily. The game appearing in a larger space other than game dev forums / twitter does require me to take more caution with what I release (I don't want unfinished material passing off as finished, for example)... The Press Release will be an attempt to showcase the gameplay and the special properties of the leader switching and titles mechanic through the trailer, with the text being reviewed to make sure I can get the message accross clearly. One idea is a Super Smash Bros % Ejection Comparaison shot-like scene in the trailer for showcasing the effects of the different titles.

This means I got to work on my writing, making sure I can convey the necessary information clearly.

The website will also be updated with the new PR. Certain small details have changed, and certain screenshots have outdated tiles or UI elements.

This is a very sudden update. This whole week I'm working full time at work (not much rest), but from next week I'll be able to resume regular work on the game. Updates are going to slow down: the press release material is going to take the highest priority (it was already high enough, but the article does push the urgency of doing it).

This is also going to force me to decide on the music composer, and if possible, the promotional artist.

TL;DR: Siliconera posted about our game! Since I did not send a Press Release, but it's out there on a big site, the top priority is to get a Press Release and trailer written, to clear any confusion and help out the writters when writing about the game.

Whoops! I completely forgot the past two weeks to update the devlog on here!

I'm too exhausted from the past few days of work outside, so I'll be giving a quick summary of both updates, both which can be found on the main website.

MEMO, THE GOD OF MEMORY

Link: http://hegemonepass.com/memo-memory-god/

In this post, I write about a new friendly, non-playable character, Memo. He's the god of memory, and can help you with a shop, a save feature and more!

LEADER LOCK ZONES

Link: http://hegemonepass.com/new-obstacle-leader-lock-zones/

The more recent post, talking about a new obstacle, the Leader Lock Zone! It forces your leader to switch to the color of the designated leader lock zone, and prevents you from switching your leader while inside!

Hopefully, I'll remember next time to post it here.

It's a very small update this week, as most of the week went into doing content planning for the game's first chapter. Not much visually was done, except for updating and optimizing the title equip screen in the pause menu.

The screen highlights who gets affected by the selected title when equipped by the party member when they are the leader. The update to this screen was done because it was poorly optimized.

And a little debug screenshot, since I'm a bit short of stuff to show this week: rising water!

Each character has special tweaks when under water. When Ethan is under water, his bunny glide will lose altitude much, much slower than usual, allowing you to cross very large gaps. With rising water, there can be puzzles where the player would need to wait for the water to be sufficiently high to cross a large distance, being impossible to perform outside of the water.

There's going to be more stuff hopefully next week. There was so little stuff to show off I didn't update the blog this week! :o

UPDATE #3

Level Design Update: Chapter 1

Original Post: http://hegemonepass.com/working-chapter-1-level-design/

Today's update is not going to be major. I have been hard at work on making the first chapter of the game, but it is nowhere near close to being done. So, today I'm going to just showcase what exactly I have done this past week. This week, I was mostly making the level design of the first chapter, but I did significant updates to the tile sets of both areas used inside of chapter 1.

First of all, we updated the background for the city levels. The lava has been simplified, and the city in the background has much more red than before, making the city reflect more it's status as a capital city of the Underworld. It's a lively place to be in. In contrast to the background, the ground and walls are blue and cold, as it's just outside of the city. It's still part of the city, but it's merely the suburbs.

Posters of Demeter are all over the walls, as well as Wanted Posters for Persephone. There are different posters in the city too!

Here's a showcase of a new entity in the game! A breakable rock! Yvonne can break these rocks using her Ribbon Axe.

During the later parts of the Chapter 1, you'll be venturing farther outside from the city. It's what most people think of when they think of the Underworld! The uninteresting areas of the Underworld look like this. It's kind of like the countryside, but a lot more sour. By the way, those spikes will deal great damage to the current leader. Luckily, you cannot be KO'ed on the field!

I haven't shown it here, but the majority of the Underworld's "countryside" has lava, and I did update the design of the lava.

And that's all for this week! I'll be working hard to make as much progress on Chapter 1 as possible. It's going to be the main area I use to create the announcement trailer.