Hello Monster Girl Lovers,
It has been a couple of weeks since I announced the engine change and remaking of Monster Girl Descent.
I thought I'd post a little devlog with some screenshots to show the progress I've made since then. Whilst there's been some roadbumps and a bit of a learning curve along the way, things have still been going far better than I could have hoped.
The dialogue or "event" system is now fully functional and not only displays dialogue, busts and effects but it also allows me to affect the world based on choices, almost like the RPG Maker event system but far more powerful.
I've moved away from the chibi style graphics for the dungeon crawling portion of the game. NPC Characters and encounters are now shown by billboard style 2d busts in the 3d space. These busts are affected by the surrounding lighting and shadows, which hopefully makes them fit into the world without too much of a jarring contrast. They are far more versatile than the sprite sets I was using before. Plus they have been commissioned from a proper artist, so they aren't simply RTP graphics. Gobbo has a funny new look as do some of your fellow explorers and town inhabitants. (some of these will still be changed to more "saucy" designs later on, I have some small plans for making the town a little more stimulating.)
Since I'm now using unity, I can improve the fidelity of the dungeon itself massively. No longer limited by 3d plugins and rpg maker mapping, the dungeon floors can be truly unique, hand crafted and filled with little objects, details and spawn points for the more randomised aspects. Boss rooms should especially have a lot more flair from now on. Things like particles, shaders and other neat little effects will be a breeze.
I've been slowly but surely building and improving upon the battle system to make things easy to understand and feeling nice to play. The battle log displays a breakdown of all actions taken each turn plus the source of the damage/healing/effect. Hovering on it shows the card that caused the effect to remove any ambiguity.
There's now some nice little animations when you play cards, they fly out of your hand as the effects are cast, little bits of screen shake and other effects as damage is dealt/taken. The opponent's sprite will move around a little too.
My main focus is to get a playable vertical slice finished which contains most of the main gameplay loop up until the first boss. You'll be able to play up to the 10th floor, fight the boss and play around with the town features too. It will be a great testbed for feedback and to see what does/doesn't work with the full remake before I proceed any further.
It also means more regular updates and a little more excitement for you guys as the game develops!
There has been SO much more going on under the hood that I can't really fit into this devlog, but I'll be back with another shortly to update on the latest progress.
Can't wait to show off more!
Much Love,
MGGEDev