Hey everyone! It's been a bit since the last devlog and I've been trying to make a lot more progress on the game since I last shared anything. Let's get into it!

STORY PROGRESSION

Most of these start with how when I was starting the game, I never planned on [insert whatever here] and that's still the case for the story and a lot of other things. As I've mentioned it before (or maybe not), the game has gotten to be a lot more than what I originally intended it to be, which is a good thing. Either way!

With the story, the game is split into four acts. Each act has it's own set of story beats with a boss at the end. Right now, I have all of act 1 planned out. I won't give much away as I don't want to spoil anything, but this does include all the details from the start of each story beat to their respective ends. I will use the first quest in the game as the example to show how I've progressed with it from notes / planning to implementation.

STORY BEAT no. 1: The Part With The Suspicious Package

The original idea for this quest / story beat stayed the same from the concept to now. It starts with the first shopkeeper and after your introduction, he tells you he has a package he needs you to deliver. This then would start the quest. After this point is where things changed as the ideas I originally had were pretty much unreasonable.

In the original concept, you would have to take the package to a nuclear power plant out in the middle of nowhere (yes, I'm being serious). I thought it would be a cool idea purely from the standpoint of it maybe pushing me to come up with new ideas on how to make maps for the game. However, it fell apart quickly after this. I ran into issues when I tried to find information on the layout of a NPP. It was pretty hard to come by and when I did find anything, it proved incredibly difficult to translate into RPG Maker MV maps with what I can do right now. It also just didn't sit right with me because I was / am trying to lean away from random = funny humour and that's exactly what this was.

The other point that I didn't like was how you'd get the package there and who you'd end up giving to. I wanted to implement some puzzles in place that would stop you from B-lining it straight to the objective. The puzzles just didn't make much sense and with the problems I was having with trying to make maps out of this concept, it was another reason why it wasn't working. Once you got to whoever you would deliver it to, the eventual punchline would just be

- Heavy package = drug reference and whoever you delivered it to would snort it and that'd be the end of it.

It just wasn't working for me at all. Even for my stupid sense of humour, it wasn't funny and wasn't fun to implement. So I decided to rework it.

The first thing to change was the setting. Instead of some NPP that randomly exists in your area, you'd find a sort-of rundown house. This made way more sense to me and fit better. I don't want to ever have ideas that don't feel like they couldn't actually happen. I like the unexpected and I like confusing the player a bit but when I shared the idea of the NPP to my friends and others, they all kind of saw it as weird. They liked it (most likely because they wanted to see what I'd do with it) but it didn't make much sense to them. This also helped to connect it with the areas I've already created.

Once I settled on this, I also settled on the idea of a mini-boss being here. I wasn't planning on mini-bosses originally, but it fit and seemed like a good challenge rather than mid puzzles that added nothing. I won't say who is the mini-boss but this idea really works and it made me happy.

With the change in setting, I also changed who would be receiving the package. When the idea was to have it be a NPP, the receiver was a technician because it fit the setting. Doesn't make much sense now and it made no sense then. I changed it to a lunatic of sorts (and you'll see why) because it fit better and also made the character fit more in line with the others that I've created up to this point.

The biggest thing I wanted to change was the contents of the package. You'll never see the insides but I really just didn't like the idea of another drug-related joke. Eventually, I settled on the idea of it being some form of explosives. When you give them to the receiver, he just blows up a side of his house for no reason and then tells you he feels whole again before throwing you out. I know this feels like random = funny humour, but it makes more sense to me and the joke itself sits better in my mind.

These changes will always happen and the story outline I'm writing is not permanent. And that's a good thing. I want the story to be funny for everyone, not just me. I also don't want it to feel like you're hearing / seeing the same three jokes over and over and over and over again. I haven't finished acts 2 - 4 yet, but I have ideas for what could go in each act and I'll make my way through it as I get through the remainder of act 1.

My goal with the story is to implement all of an act into the game once I feel it's ready before working on the next act. Again, this has everything to do with how every story beat can change depending on how well they work and fit with everything else.

BALANCING CHANGES

I've never made an RPG before and it kind of shows because learning how to balance enemies, weapons, armour, etc., is really hard. I'm learning every step of the way however.

This is the very first enemy you'll encounter. The name is just "person." They've been the testing grounds for learning what are the best ways to balance when considering multiple things. Some of those are:

• What level(s) the player will be at when encountering them?

• What weapons and armours the player may have?

• How much damage they do compared to the player?

...and more, of course. What I've done recently is make a version of the game with one map. This map includes healing items and the random encounters based around this enemy. I then sent it to some of my friends and asked them to play until they got to around level 3. After this, I had a series of questions that I wanted their answers on to see what they thought as a regular player of the current balancing and what changes they thought should be added. I'm still getting results, but it has been very helpful so far. And all of this information applies to every enemy in the game.

There are, of course, some things you can't really change in RPG Maker MV without plugins that effectively do complete rewrites of the code and I don't want to change things that much. It doesn't mean I'm not using plugins to change things how I need them to be, but when it comes to balancing an enemy, I am trying to keep it based around the default RPG Maker systems. Regardless, I know I've got a long road ahead of me but it'll be worth it in the end. For a game as stupid as this, I want it to be fair enough. My goal is to make a stupid, but funny game, of course. Not an unfair experience.

A NEW SYSTEM

Along with testing and refining balancing of the enemies, I quickly realized I wanted to put a system in place to change random encounters somewhat. With base RPG Maker MV, any random encounters have to stick to what the engine allows with no real changes. This didn't work for what I wanted and I had to seek some form of help from the forums as an answer to the question I had wasn't really there.

The system I eventually got implemented is in regards to higher-leveled enemies that occur in random encounters. From the start, I didn't just want to throw insane-leveled enemies at the player from the very beginning of the game. I wanted it to be somewhat gradual and to make more sense than just:

Hope you can swim! See you!

and then throwing them into the water head first with no help.

What I eventually got help with was putting a system in place where as you level up, higher-leveled enemies start appearing in random encounters. This way, the challenge would increase as you got better without unfairly modifying enemy stats. As much as I didn't want to throw every enemy at the player at once, I also didn't want to have a single enemy (or a select few) that just leveled up with you. That's boring and it wouldn't really be much fun (imo). I've also gotten pretty good feedback to the idea, which is important to me as well.

WHAT'S COMING NEXT

As I've stated before, my goal is to get an alpha build of the game out. And right now, my focus is evenly split between the story and the basic gameplay. I'm always changing things as I know a lot of testing needs to be done to make sure it's as fair as possible for other players. I don't want to just develop this with the rose-colored glasses on and then call it done just cause it seems that way to me when it's not.

I have the first two story beats / quests implemented roughly into the game and I'm working on more enemies / balancing the mini-boss (which is the final stop for the first quest). I hope you guys are still excited for the game. I promise I'm working towards getting something out that's playable for all of you. I just do not want to rush it and end up giving something out that's broken, unpolished, and unplayable.

Either way, thank you for reading! I'll be back soon with another devlog once more progress has been made!

See ya later! :)