Late monthlies & V3 plans

I am finally completing the extremely late monthlies starting with meant for last July and August. I will be posting the pictures in batches of 2-3 with weekly blog updates, beginning with this one.

July

Pink pleasures

August

Blue tongue

High resolution
Pink pleasures
Blue tongue

V3 Plans

V3 will contain a lot of code, game systems and UI improvements and less written content. However there will be new story content with focus on combat encounters. Some of these code features are already mostly done and are just waiting for finalization. This list covers the main features of the update. There will be other blog posts where I explain some of these features in-depth.

Map editor

• Fairly self explanatory but this feature also comes with the functionality to change the maps during the game so the areas can include sub maps or the default overmap can be changed to a new one. This also means the map data is now readily accessible outside the game as a .txt file.

Revamped combat

• The combat will be completely remade into a more flexible system with arbitrary damage and resistance types, card graphics (actual cards with pictures), sound and visual effects. The idea is to make the combat less drab and confusing than it currently is while giving it more complexity by adding missing features. The closest comparison to the planned overhaul would probably be the deck building game called "Slay the spire"
• The combat UI is completely remade.
• There will be scripting functions that can hurt or heal the characters outside of combat and other pre-combat options that modify the battles.

UI improvements

• The inventory is overhauled to include more information about the items (and possibly show a graphical representation of the item). The inventory is also graphically overhauled.
• The graphical look of the menus is overhauled.
• The game will support more resolutions to take advantage of the high resolution game assets (1280x720, 1920x1080, 2560x1440).
• Sound volume controls and an options screen.
• The town/hub screens will have a graphical blip selection interface that shows the available actions on the hub map as buttons and removes the normal dialogue list. The normal map UI is also enabled while on the hub screen so saving there is now possible.

Improved player character

• The player attributes will be contracted to a 1-4 range, this is mechanically same as the current range in V2 but just simplified.
• Player character feats will be added to the game. These are used to represent specialized skills or other features the player character might gain during the game.
• The player character will have randomized clothing configurations at the start of the game. This will become player controlled in later updates.
• There might be other player character features, but some of them are things that the V3 might not need as the content requiring them is not there, so they may be omitted.

Improved scripting functions

• The scripting functions library will be greatly expanded to allow scripting of more complex interactions. A lot of these functions are already present in V2.4 but the documentation for these is still lacking (the most up to date documentation is on the Teraurge wiki that's being updated as I talk about the new functions on the picarto chat).

Improved debug functions

• There will be additional debugging features for writers to use so they can more easily preview the scripting inside the game, one of the more important ones being the ability to jump to a specific index at will.

Improved environment graphics

• The scene system allows the environments be graphically modified permanently so any visual change player might cause to the environment (burning a house, breaking a bridge, etc) can be made permanent without complex scripting requirements.
• The scene system will have features to allow automatic changes between night and day versions of the same environment, if they exist.

New story content

• New characters.
• Fleshed out combat encounters.
• New content for existing characters.