Yep. Now it's REALLY starting to feel like a game now. Sorry for the month long wait. most of the time was spent figuring stuff, and taking breaks so I don't get burned out. There's also that huge bottle neck when it comes to making art as well, and I was working on some official art for the game on the side too.

So, it's been around 7 months since development began. Already, I'm passing the time it took to make my previous two games, and for some reason, I'm not bothered by it.

Maybe it's because I grew a lot more... tolerant to the aspects of game development as a whole. If 17-18 year old me were to work on this game, probably would've gotten sick of it by month seven, and the game would be an unoptimized mess written in Python.

It's not it any different now. Sometimes I still feel like the game is held together by duct tape. The difference between then, and now is that I feel like I actually know what I'm doing. So if there's one change I've noticed when growing up, it's that at least.

This is probably the biggest game I'll ever make. Given the pace I'm going, it's probably going to take two years to complete at max, and as I said before, I don't really care about how long it would take. It's not like anyone is really fiending for this game to come out anyway.

After the seeing what little traction Skirmish was getting after it's release, I've had an epiphany. The realization that no matter what I do, nobody will care. People in the Gamedev community always say to "look for feedback whenever you can."; like that is SOOOOO easy to do. Like I won't be met with the same radio silence I've been dealing with for the past few month.

Hell, most people will not even read all this! I usually take these moments to just... put my thoughts out there, and talk about stuff. In a way, this game is made for me, and me alone, so I'll take as much time as I want. Thank you very much.

Isn't that why most of us took up game development in the first place. To make it how we wanted it to? But enough of that. Let's move on to a more interesting topic.

A Companion's general behavior can be categorized into one of 3 distinct archetypes, and I intend to make a Companion for each one. As you may have already figured it out, Erwin is of the Maverick archetype, so I'm going to explain what that is in more detail.

A Maverick's job is to "split the workload" so to speak. To essentially make sure the player doesn't get overwhelmed by trying to draw enemy aggro whenever they can. As such they tend to be a lot more self-sufficient than Companions of other archetypes, but they could still be overwhelmed if left alone for too long.

While technically all Companions are capable of drawing aggro, Mavericks are much more specialized for the job; With them having at least one Assist dedicated for such a purpose.

Erwin prefers to target the enemy you aren't currently targeting. Which is a common trait that most Mavericks share. When fighting with a Maverick companion, you're expected to be able to take care of yourself in some regard. When it comes to helping the player directly, Mavericks are rather limited.

Alright, that should be about everything I wanted to talk about about. I've been writing this for over days, and I just wanted to wrap it up already. What I'll do next is finish up the core mechanics of combat.

If you wish to keep track of the game's development, I recommend joining my discord server. I post regular progress updates there, and I'm always happy to ask question about my game.

If you've read this far, thank you. As always, feedback is always appreciated, and I'll see you guys later.