February 2 Update

Okay, first the substantive post, then miscellaneous TLS info including an announcement!

I want to highlight something I've put a ton of effort into: overhauling the attack animations for TLS. This is a piece of the game that has often gotten lost in development - bosses will have attacks with unique formulas and effects, but they just use the default attack animation.

Well, not anymore. I've been chipping away at this ever since the previous update, slowly reviewing every single attack and animation in the game, replacing everything that is using a generic. To try to convey the magnitude of the work...

Base VX Ace comes with 110 animations. The majority of development of the game only brought this up to about 150. I really tried my best to make the final battle and optional dungeon special, bringing the total up to 225 animations. But now, after a lot of tedious work, I have increased it all the way to 356!

On top of that I added 12 new skills that aren't actually mechanically different, they just stand in for the base attack: soldiers use a sword slash, monsters use claws or bites, etc. I did not keep track of how many enemies got their attack animations changed, but it was a lot. >_<

These don't change the balance in any way, they just change up the animations. Though along the way, I noticed a couple errors that will have a mechanical effect. There's seriously a boss whose attacks haven't worked properly since near the very beginning of the game!

It isn't an exaggeration to say I've made thousands of changes to the database. The effect of the above numbers is magnified as well: I made one "orc sword" animation, but it gets used by dozens of orc enemies throughout the entire game.

That applies to the orc allies and party members, by the way. In the past they all used the default animation, because that was the "enemy attack" animation, but that's no longer the case. So Orcent and company now get special animations, either unique or animation types that are normally used only by enemy battlers. I don't know if anyone would ever notice this, but I care!

Of all the things I've put effort into, I think this is one of the more dubious, honestly. New people coming to the game are unlikely to notice, or if they do, they'll assume these are all default RPG Maker animations. Most of the hardcore players of TLS will have animations off no matter how much effort I put them. So while I'm not sure I can justify these changes as good for promotion or "for the fans"... I don't know, I hope the game is better for it.

I considered not mentioning this and seeing if anyone ever noticed, but I decided that was a pointless test. I actually do want people to pay attention, because all this new work probably requires more polishing.

So if you play with animations on... do any of them look wonky or need tweaking? Are there any big attacks that I missed or could use more dramatic animations? I'm mostly concerned that some of the new animations need unified tags (so they don't repeat with each party member) or that I chose long animations for attacks that are frequently used. Thankfully, now that I've made all these changes to the database, future tweaks will automatically propagate across all instances.

Been working on this for a long time, but it's finally done. Barring changes or additions, but hopefully by then I will have recovered enough to open the animations tab again.

Intro: I neglected to mention it amid everything else, but one other thing that got completed recently was more improvements to the intro! Huge thanks to Decarabia for helping me with a set of world maps that will make the initial text about the Incubus Emperor's invasion more than a wall of text. Just another tweak trying to improve initial presentation. ^-^

DStP: I got a fully functional build from the programmer! This is a huge step in terms of balancing the entire game, so it gives me something to do when I'm waiting or don't have writing energy. This will hopefully keep moving forward.

TLS 0.78.0 Release Date: Valve approved the trading cards and other stuff with only one round of rejections! We can't have a Qum trading card, but otherwise they weren't too restrictive. Now that I finally have approval, there's nothing stopping me from doing a release this coming Friday.