It’s been nearly a month; much too long. In that time I have been thinking about the battle system, rolling things around in my head trying to figure out how to lay things out. I’ve been trying very hard to figure out where the balance between interesting to play and easy to use falls. I’m somewhat stuck but am slowly working through it (and trying to apply my mantra of “do what’s easy and make it more complicated later if you have more time”). I know that what I really need to do is start trying things out and figure out what works and what doesn’t that way.

In terms of actual work I’ve begun to update the Character objects (basically bundles of stats and other information) to fit with the current state of the engine in preparation for using those Characters in battles. I’ve found a JSON decoder and slipped it into my general game-making library so that I can use it for data files (and, if I end up needing to, net communications). None of this stuff makes for terribly interesting new playing so I haven’t bothered with a new zip for this week.

I’ve also been very busy with work.

In any case, I have also produced a little bit more artwork and I’m afraid that will have to stand for this update’s pretty pictures.

What we have here are relatively “final” single frame sprites for each of the six playable characters in the game. In my original plans there were going to be twelve characters in total, and the story involved splitting them up at various times into groups of five or less. When I revamped everything to make it possible to finish, I cut out all but the first six characters that you meet, and you will never have more than five as an option for your party.

This simplified things a great deal but I admit that I was rather saddened to lose the rest of the characters and, sadly, some of the depth of the game along with them. That said, I am still convinced that it was for the best – a game that I can actually finish is infinitely superior to one that will never make it off of paper.