2019 in a nutshell

Hello there!

2019 was a pretty moving year for me, since I've left school and am now looking for an apprenticeship or a job.

Unlike past summaries of the years that I've made, I'm not going to explicitly tell about good, and the bad. I'd prefer to just talk about the year in general, since bad and good things will always happen. I have learned that it is not always black and white - it can be a shade of grey, in other words a negative can be spun into a positive or vice versa.

2019 in a nutshell

In 2018 I did want to get a job/apprenticeship but since then, I haven't been successful in getting one, its a tough world out there - tougher than I thought, even with minimum wage jobs, there are loads of people applying. And I did try a lot of things, I've tried handing out CVs, on-line applications, recruiters etc. I did get a few interviews (including places like McDonalds) but unfortunately I didn't get any offers. I don't really care though, I'm just glad I got the interviews and got to experience them. Through an organisation that a friend referred me to (since he was friends with a nice lady who worked there), I did get volunteer work at a community café on most of the Saturdays in the holiday, and that was pretty cool - I liked it and it gave me some good experiences since every time was different from the last. With that being said, despite a lot of tries, I couldn't get paid employment.

A thing that annoys me about menial jobs is that people make it look like it's for the unemployed and it's easy to get, maybe it was for those people, but I've had an interview with McDonalds, and they rejected me. I do want to make a separate post about how hard it is to get a job and what I've learned thus far about getting a job. Not going to lie though, there are definitely parts of being unemployed which I enjoy like being able to think about what I truly value in life and how to live a meaningful one (I'll get onto that later), having a lot of time, not needing to deal with the broken education system and working on this blog as well as my games.

A job isn't necessary for me at the moment since I live with my parents, and I'd rather live there than live in a shoddy apartment like some University students (though most of my secondary school friends who are at university, live with their parents), who have to rely on a government loan to pay for their accommodation.

That being said, I don't plan to stay unemployed for a long time though and end up like Satou from "Welcome to the NHK" where he is a 'hikikomori' (Japanese term for reclusive) for a straight 3 years, that wouldn't' be good.

I didn't get to travel as much as I would have liked back in 2018, though I did go to Italy for my A-level photography trip and France in the summer. Unfortunately, I couldn't go to Japan due to the cost of going there. Perhaps next October could be a good time to go there since it's cheaper, though the country wouldn't look as pretty and more cold but I guess I wouldn't mind, don't know if it's a guarantee though.

I'm not as cynical about social media as I was back last year. Although I'm still skeptical of social media, saying that it would be a cause of teenage suicides is a very dubious claim. Regardless I have no regrets of deleting my DeviantArt and still have none of deleting my Twitter. It feels like less clutter that I have to worry about in my life.

This year I started to learn a lot more about the "Effective Altruism" movement, I also read the audio book "The life you can save" by Australian philosopher Peter Singer. The cool thing about this book is that no matter what job you are in, anyone can make a difference by contributing a certain amount of wealth to the poor. Although earning to give is not the most high-impact option, it's still pretty high impact, especially to those in far poorer countries than places like the UK or the US.

Beyond the 2010s and into the 2020s

I'm hoping that next year, as well as the next decade, I can learn more about Effective Altruism and learn about ways that people can directly contribute to the well-being of others. I would also like to write more blog posts like the one I did on China, where I raise awareness to certain things which might be important in the world. I can also practice writing long-form blog content this way, it is quite enjoyable to make too.

As I've written in one of my other posts about being vegan, I would like to be vegan - or at least make more efforts to becoming vegan. I'm trying more foods that don't require any animal products let alone meat (unless it is clean meat).

I'm also thinking of travelling more locally, by that I mean around the UK. The hiking that I did with some people I know increased my confidence of going to other places in the UK rather than just London (where I live).

I would also like to finish and release Bounty Hunter III by November 2020. My development plan is to get all the locations in the game by around February/March 2020 as well as adding in a good amount of the story. During all of this, I'll have Joe create the background tiles and the animations with my assistance and guidance.  Like Bounty Hunter II, I would like the game to be fully playable around May (or earlier) of that year so I can spend a lot of time polishing, play-testing as well as putting in additional content if needed.

On the topic of game development, I would like to put more effort into marketing my games. Itch.io has a page where people can promote their games, my concern with this is that I might sound like I just want attention. But I guess that I should try it nonetheless, maybe I can learn a great deal about marketing and making my game stand out.

Getting an apprenticeship or job would also be great if I get one next year, since earning money and gaining experience would be a good step for me as well as a way to meet new people.

Conclusion

Yet another decade ends. And a new year is starting as well as a new decade, it's surprising how long the 2010s felt for me. But every year for me feels faster than the last, it's a very weird feeling. Although I'm quite uncertain for what the 2020s will be like, let's just hope that despite people who claim the world is getting worse what with climate change, the UK under Boris Johnson and the such like, the world can hopefully improve and we can prove them wrong.

Farewell 2019 as well as the 2010s,
and have a happy new 2020 as well as a happy new decade!

That's all from me!

Bounty Hunter III Update #2: The game so far in 2019

Hello there!
As I've mentioned in my last post, Bounty Hunter III's development is still alive and well.

Looking back, I'm surprised I haven't made a Bounty Hunter III post since June! Time passes by quick does it not? This update will have more pictures than words because I think that a picture can explain what 1000 words can.

One thing I regret about the state of this project this year was that I wish I did something similar to what I did back in 2017 with this game's predecessor which was a public alpha. Maybe not public but still, something that has can be played like a real game - something you can loose and win.

Although the majority of Bounty Hunter II's code in the month of its release is vastly different to the 2017 public alpha, it was still something you could play and did have polish to a certain extent. If I put up Bounty Hunter III right now, it would be pretty unpolished and boring.

I've written several basic ideas of what the story will be including the driving force of the plot, the main characters and even two endings.

I did mention about an ally character the last time I posted about this game, but who is it?

It turns out it is Milbert, the main antagonist from the 2nd game! Yes, he turns good after all of that trouble he put Peast through. Not only that, he's also a playable character that helps Peast with puzzles as well as combat.

Without further ado I will show you a bunch of screenshots from BHIII so far:

Peast in a snowy forest

I don't think so...

Peast's new sprite

Nice view of black from the mountains

Near the hospital

Peast on the beach of a tropical volcanic island

A simple button puzzle

After Milbert and Peast press the switch

"Hey can someone get rid of all of these boxes?"

"Leave it to ME!"

"Thanks Milbert, but where's the rest of the map?"

"Step back now, HUUUUAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!"

That's all from me!

Redefining talking systems in RPGs

Hello there!
I've done quite a bit of thinking about incorporating talking systems into RPGs, because a lot of them involve killing others for EXP.

Preface

There was an Extra Credits video that I encountered a while ago, where they talked about making non-combat in video games as fun as combat. It was uploaded well before Undertale came out.

Undertale was the game that first intruded me to this concept, but it certainly was not the first game that had this concept, as there were games like Shin Megami Tensei which it got the idea from in the first place. I thought of making a game similar to Undertale not long after it came out, but I didn't feel like I could do anything original with the formula. I thought of putting a talking system into a game version of my book 'Evermoral' but the game never came into fruition, partly because of low experience at the time.

That was until 2017 when I came across "Jojo's Bizarre adventure" on the SNES based on a manga of the same name, where you can go through the whole game without killing a single person thanks to the 'talk' option. Admittedly the gameplay was fairly simple and bland where the talking system was not any different from killing. But it made me think that perhaps talking systems could be like combat except without violence, hence I started to think about talking systems in RPGs again.

The way talking systems functioned in the Shin Megami Tensei games (including Persona 2 and 5) was that it was used for recruiting demons and also avoiding combat which frankly I think is far more ethical, interesting and less tedious than trying to catch that particular rare legendary Pokémon by lowering its health and then wasting 100+ Ultra-balls to catch it.

With that being said, I think that the talking system in the Megaten games though important, are a small slice of the game-play pie. You can't talk your way out of a boss battle; you need to deal with them with violence. I think these games utilize the talking system far better than Undertale (or its successor Deltarune - though it is too early to say for the latter), you'll learn why in the next section.

Unrealistically talking smart

Talking systems in games like Undertale and Deltarune are rather simple. They sound innovate on paper, but in practice, in my play-through of both of these games, especially Delatarune's first chapter (in which I didn't even get a game over at all) sparing an enemy was no more complicated than killing it. It involved a lot of routine tasks like spamming 'Spare' or pressing one option that allows you to spare them a turn after.

This is one of the reasons I think these games (at least game-play wise) are pretty overrated and hyped. Not to say that these games don't have their merits, they certainly do but that's besides the point of this post.

A challenge one can get into when developing a talking system for an RPG using Undertale/Deltarune's foundation is that the 'act' options are very context-sensitive: For each enemy there is a specific set of actions you need do which gets quite easy if you know the pattern. These patterns can be mastered pretty quickly.

Since these 'act' moves do not use any kind of stats, it makes the RPG aspect of these games moot. Undertale might as well as be a visual novel with some RPG elements and a Touhou-style dodging system. There also isn't really any reward if you spare the enemy other than some money which can't be used to buy anything useful (given that you are going on a no-damage run).

Neither is killing an enemy, there is very little point to leveling up in Undertale, the late bosses can't even 1 hit kill you - even if you are level 1. I presume that this is to make the game possible for pacifist players but I can imagine ways to make leveling up important for pacifist game-play regardless, more on that later.

That's enough of me critiquing Undertale/Deltarune. I'll move on to Persona 2 and 5.

You can also spare enemies in Persona 5 and 2, with the former involving you putting the enemies down in order to get a "Hold up!" where you can either do an all-out attack where every active party member attacks the enemy or you can negotiate with them in traditional Megaten fashion, where you have dialogue choices and you need to choose the right one to have them join you, give money or items.

In Persona 2 you don't need to put enemies down, there is an option called "Contact" where you can negotiate with them. The interesting thing about Persona 2's system is that you can make the enemy happy, eager, scared or angry depending on your actions. If you anger them they will go fully hostile on you and you have no other choice but to deal with them the traditional way. Another interesting aspect is that you can use any party member you like to do the talking or use multiple at a time. Each party member will have their own actions which will stay the same regardless of specific enemy, but each enemy reacts differently to them.

This is easier to implement in the game than if one were to cater every single character's actions to each individual enemy. The gameplay would feel more organic and not feel like it is scripted. If you fully entice or make them happy, they can give you money or other cool things.

This kind of negotiation system is quite interesting as it offers a good amount of challenge. But this gameplay alone would not make use of the other character's stats let alone be a good way of making the game challenging. Fortunately, looking at the Jojo I mentioned in the beginning there is a way to make the talking system as fun as the combat without compromising stats.

What I will suggest would also make sense even from a combat perspective.

Unorthodox way of beating bosses

When I was trying to beat the Hell Biker boss from 'Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's call/ Nocturne', I constantly got my head handed to me. The boss had moves like "Hell Exhaust" which not only damages the entire party, but also cancels any buffs that my party had. If that wasn't enough, the biker would use "Hell throttle" which would increase the number of times he can attack per turn - easily obliterating my party within a turn, the biker would also cancel out any stat de-buffs that my party inflicted on him with "Dekunda".

At that point I looked up the Hell Biker's stats on the Megaten wiki and found out exactly how much MP he had (stuff used for moves). So I decided to do something ingenious and have the main character and another party member that knows a skill that can drain the bosses' MP and use the other characters to pass to give the MP draining characters more turns.

So I kept draining the biker's MP until it was 0. At that point, he still used those moves but there was a key difference: He did not have sufficient MP to execute them. He was almost helpless, he could not use the hell throttle, exhaust or dekunda.

Although, his melee attacks were still pretty strong, but I could easily offset those with some agility buffs to make it so that the biker misses more. With ease my party defeated him, that was it.

What I can draw from this is that if an enemy's MP, SP or whatever variable is used for stronger skills is depleted, they are pretty much useless. They can barely do anything other than the moves that consume HP or melee attacks - essentially snapping the whole battle in half.

I thought that perhaps this can be a good way of stopping an enemy in battle because if they have no MP, they are almost useless. Using the inspiration from Jojo, I thought of a smart way of how a talking system could be created.

War of words

As I said with my criticisms of Undertale/Deltarune's deconstruction of leveling up, even if you don't plan on killing any enemies, leveling up is still important. Talking and negotiation is a skill, not just consisted of simple patterns to impress someone and then the battle is over.

It involves a lot of failure and practicing, much like in real life. This is why I think that talking systems in RPGs should be something more than just picking a bunch of choices.

My idea of putting talking systems in RPGs is a rather simple one - make it like using elemental moves except with talking instead of fighting.

Since MP (or equivalent) is important to executing strong attacks, perhaps the talking system could lower MP. The enemy, once their MP is exhausted, could eventually be so 'tired' that they give up and you gain the opportunity to spare them. But you may argue, "This is no different than killing them" - and you might be right. Fortunately I have another trick inspired from Lucifer's call.

If there are large sums of enemies, they will reprimand you if you talk to a fellow member, in LC you would need to kill most of the opposing party in order to talk to the demon you would like to.

With my system however, you would need to lower all the enemies' MP or kill them if you want them to not block your sparing. These allies would also be covering a member with 0 MP by restoring it, so you would need to be careful if you are locking on to one enemy and trying to spare them right away.

Another way to separate lowering MP from lowering HP is that the character with the lowered MP can get below 0. They can still fight or talk but they can't use any skill moves. Furthermore, the character with SP below 0 sometimes waste turns, similar to the mother series when enemies or non-playable party members waste turns, trying to pay off  'Stamina debt' (a bit like anaerobic respiration when the muscles aren't getting enough oxygen).

If players choose to defeat the enemy, lowered MP can be very advantageous to defeating the enemies much like what I mentioned with the Hell Biker boss. Perhaps to counter this, the AI could be more defensive, relying on their friends to restore the MP, as I have mentioned before, use talk moves on the players to make it harder for them to use any powerful moves on them, or a melee attack.

Conclusion

Since I don't see talking systems like this in a lot of RPGs (or at all!), I thought it would be a good idea to propose my own idea of what a good talking system would be composed of without trying to sacrifice what makes the depth of combat so interesting in the first place.

In other news I'll make a blog post about Bounty Hutner III, since I haven't posted about that game in ages. Don't worry! It's still in development, I haven't canceled it. It's going to compose of screenshots rather than a lot of text, because I believe pictures can explain what thousands of words can.

That's all from me!

Prownie's art #6: Othermind Concept art

Hello there!

This is art I drew back in 11th November for my friend Joe to translate into the ending sprites in my recently released game "Othermind". I drew these after I drew the sprites for the game - I prefer this because it's much easier to draw them as pixel sprites, then hand-draw the art using said sprites as references rather than vice versa.

I've got a nice novel for only 1 gem!

Its name is not scales by the way.

That's all from me!

Announcing the release of "Othermind: Pipe Dreamer II"

Hello there!

Today is 10 days before Christmas and also the release of the game I've been working on all year which is "Othermind: Pipe Dreamer II". I was meant to put a pre-release blog but I had difficulty finishing it so I will put its contents into this release post as well as providing links to the game to play for yourself.

Credits to Joe for providing the animations, helping me with the tiles and transcribing my concept art (which will get a blog of its own after this one) into the ending sprites.

There are a lot of things I regret when doing this project, like getting an artist pretty late into development. Although I am thankful to them for allowing me to save mental effort in doing the animations, sometimes the artist would be distracted by something else and not work on the artwork or would not be on the same page as I am and sometimes cause me a bit of frustration in having to explain to him things. Don't worry, it's nothing too serious as it hasn't negatively affected our friendship. I feel like for any future projects he would be involved in, I should ask them to do artwork earlier so that when these things happen, there is still some buffer time.

Since I also spent the majority of Othermind's development working on magnum foundation and fixing bugs with it I had to remove some features to avoid burn-out like some of the mini-games. I'm hoping for future projects that use Magnum foundation, I don't have to spend as much time going back-and-fourth trying to implement features and fix bugs to make Magnum foundation cater for almost any game I can make.

Othermind's coding is also pretty messy since that ridiculous mistake I made by splitting one game into two - don't do it! It has some files that contain the same code as Magnum foundation, so I'll have to clear that up before uploading it to GitHub. Since I have a lot of time to work on Bounty Hunter III and already have made a good amount of progress on putting the maps into the game, I will also try to refactor the source code, much like what I did with Bounty Hunter 2 at the beginning of 2018. That will get its own post though.

I'm glad now that I can be more at ease with the fact that I don't have to think about this project anymore and work on Bounty Hunter III, Arm Strong's final episode, and other projects I may announce later on.

If you want to play this game head over here.

Announcing the release of "Arm strong - Episode 2"

Hello there!

Today, in this cold December month is when I release a hot new second episode to "Arm Strong". It contains 12 new levels featuring the newly added in portals which teleport the player from one portal to another. Admittedly the portals were a little bit hard to add in since I had to prevent the player from getting into an endless teleportation loop whenever they touched a portal.

At first I was going to resolve this issue by having the player teleport next to the target portal, but I had a better idea which was to put on a delay of when the portals can teleport the player. They go translucent once the player travels though them to signify the delay.

I'm pleasantly surprised at how I managed to release episode 2 without cancelling it or not bothering to finish it. Other than a few bug fixes, the portal block type and incorporating the levels into the game, there really was not a lot I had to do code-wise which is always great if I want to make something like this.

What's even greater is that I don't plan to add anything in episode 3, therefore I can just focus on designing and testing the levels and not have to worry about trying modify the existing code-base of the game, save for the level select menu, actually including the levels and the ending.

Here is the release if you want to play it for yourself.

That's all from me!

P.S. This is the first time I release 2 games in a month, because in 5 days or so I'll be releasing "Othermind".