Well, a little update
First of all:

Shirley

Well, this will (for now) serve as Shirley’s portrait.
I feel this can be done better, but I’m not quite sure, how to fully do it.

A few quick pointers about Shirley. She is described as a pretty little girl with a pretty big sword. Well boys and girls, take that into the extremes. Shirley is only three years old (and might well be the youngest playable character in an RPG game ever, although I’m not challenging that), and carries around a sword that is about five meters tall and one and a half meter wide. Well, that is the current set up, as in the final cut the format may be different. Since this game is a parody, this is a pun to small game characters with (too) large weapons. She swings the sword around like it weights nothing at all (while most grown men can’t even lift it without help). Shirley might be a hard character to use. She’ll be the fastest character and when it comes to physical attacks she outranks all the others (what did you expect from her carrying a sword like that), however her defensive capabilities are rather crappy, which she’ll make up with the highest dodge rate).

Where Ryanna is rude and is not able to say one sentence without being insulting, and whenever it looks like she’s saying something positive you’ll find out it’s actually pretty foul when you realise the full context of what she said, Shirley is the complete opposite. She can get mad when she feel threatened, but otherwise, she’s always cheerful and happy (much to Ryanna’s annoyance, although when you learn to see through her, you can notice she does (secretly) like her), likes to sing (pretty childish) songs and even sees a positive interpretation in Ryanna’s foul attitude.

Current status of the game.

On the technical side I’ve just experienced a few technical setbacks. It was to be expected in a brand new engine. At a few places I had to re-invent the wheel. Things are going to take shape now. I had to replace the pathfinder, and implementing the new one, got me a lot of cockroaches (that’s how I call bugs that take ages to fix and keep on being bugged, no matter what you try). Most of them are squashed by now. Of course when this is all done, the field is ready in basis and I can start building that part out to the full functionality it should have, but THAT is the EASY part. I am still in the middle of the hard part, but things appear to get into place now.

When that part is done, I need to set up the scenario engine, which is of course in a story based game, parody or no parody, very very important. After that I’ll work on the savegame routine, allowing me to really get on the road.

Last but not least, yes, I’ve no way of escaping that, the combat engine must be largely rewritten from scratch, and the combat routines are mostly the hardest and most complex part to take care of.

Once all that works, the REAL work begins, but at least those won’t be as mindf—-g as setting the stuff I’m setting up now do.