Magnum Foundation: The foundation of a plan

Hello there!
Since exams are over, I will discuss what has been happening on the game development end. I've been working on two projects in little chunks at a time. One of them is a small JavaScript game which I plan to release (hopefully) in February of next year; the other one is a far bigger project which I have been working on since April, shortly after Red-Blue Adventures was released. This project has the codename - Magnum Foundation.

The (very tentative) plan

I intended to have this project's development started right after Bounty Hunter II, but I thought it would be a better idea to work on it whilst Bounty Hunter II was being developed. With hindsight, I feel like I may have been putting too much on my plate as BHII was mentally taxing enough (as well as a cancelled project I worked on at the time as well). Development also was not too smooth as I would encounter quite a lot of road blocks due to me overestimating my skills. However, I think I was better off doing this than having to experience all these roadblocks at a later point. Plus most of the basic gameplay features are there in a very infant state.

Anyhow, about the plan of this project: I plan to have this project create the foundation for 2 new games (hence the name 'Magnum Foundation'), one which I'm estimating a Q4 2019 release (December to nicely conclude the year as well as the 2010s) and another which I'm estimating a release in Q4 2020. I do plan both games to be sequels to previous games I have made.

Level editor

This project also contains a custom-built level editor which I try to make easier to use than something like Bounty Hunter II's fiddly one. The design of this editor looks more intuitive, as it has a save button, a brush, eraser and a object selector. The least functional of all these features is the eraser since it's quite a time consuming process to add in a way to erase tiles on a certain layer or even switch layers.
Although I do hope to fix these problems at some point in the future, I still think this level editor is functional. The best thing by far about the level editor neatly ties in to the next section.

POUCH 2.0

If you do not remember from my previous blog posts what this stands for, it stands for "Prownie's Amazingly Ultimate Cutscene Handler" (pretentions I know). I remade it with what I learned from Bounty Hunter II's cutscene handler and another open source game called "Pokémon Unity" which has a really cool looking cutscene editor which helped me make this one. It is far easier to dabble around with than Bounty Hunter II's editor as you can just move the cutscene elements around by clicking arrows rather than having to do complicated procedures and dealing with messy UI which I could not blame anyone but myself for adding in. Here is a visual explanation of what I'm talking about (along with the level editor):

I have also implemented a number of new features to POUCH like checking certain event flags (which are basically numbers) and checking items, enhanced the dialogue system to include pictures of characters. These features are essential if you want to work on a story-oriented game since things change around the player depending on what they do.

I have also created Utility events which can be activated by POUCH which I will discuss in the next section.

Utility events

These events are basically events that seem far too complicated to create in POUCH, examples can include a shop or a way to check if enemies are defeated. These are triggered by POUCH which pauses its execution to poll this event. For example if you activate a shop the cutscene will pause and bring up the shop menu.

The build I fully implemented the shop was on the 2nd Year anniversary of 'Evermoral'

 You can use the arrow keys to navigate through the menu and buy the items you want. I might talk about inventories at some point in the future (although I don't know if it will persist in the final game).

Conclusion

I do expect to talk more about this project in the future and I do plan to reveal one of the projects, in maybe March 2019 and the other one later in the year. Admittedly, I'm not sure if half of the features in Magnum foundation will make it into either one of these projects but that's the nature of creativity and knowledge work. Despite the fact that I've recently released Bounty Hunter II, I still get worried that development of these projects may wain down or get cancelled completely since these are more ambitious than most projects I embark on. But still, completing Bounty Hunter has somewhat given me confidence that I am capable of finishing such things and I may be more intermediate with the processes of creating such projects. It's also not just the workload of finishing these projects that worries me, there is also the need of balancing things like a day-job (something I honestly want to get for the experience and a bit of cash too) and also living a life, because I don't want to just spend all my time developing games and looking like some shut-in, I would also love to travel.

However, I am hopeful that I will balance all these activities, after all Einstein managed to publish a bountiful amount of thesis's whilst working as a patent clerk. This may sound cliché, but if he can do it, I could do it. 

That's all from me!

p.s.
On an entirely unrelated note, since early 2018, I've been following a blogger by the name of Cal Newport who is a Computer Science professor at Georgetown University who writes blogs about topics that are full of things that bash on conventional wisdom like. He is infamous for having no social media, yet living a happy and successful life. He is publishing a book called "digital minimalism" which centres around using less technology which I defiantly suggest you check out. Or you can read a decades worth of his blogs which will may motivate you as much as it did me. http://calnewport.com/blog/2018/12/04/my-new-book-digital-minimalism/