Phantom Tactics development journal

I've wrapped up the ability view. I was going back and forth on how best to do it -- there's just not enough space in the current info box to show all of the ability information unless you remove literally everything that's in there otherwise. The end result is that switching to ability view now expands the info box(es) by two lines, and the character's name, class, HP, and level are still displayed on ability view.

I've got tomorrow off work because of the 4th. (I've got the 4th off, too, but I think my wife is monopolizing my time for the entire day.) My entirely reasonable goal is to make the game 100% complete up to the end of the first battle. If I get on a roll, I might even finish up the second.

Misc. other things that I need to do before I can finish chapter 1:
- Finish the cave tileset. This doesn't really need to be robust or anything, since there's only one cave battle in chapter 1.
- Do a castle interior tileset. It's a little aggravating to have to do this so early when there's probably only one scene that will use it in chapter 1, but what can you do.
- Get the rest of the graphics from Twinhamster. I've shrunk my request since last time (towns aren't available, therefore most of the classes can't show up in chapter 1), but I'm not sure how much this helps, since the graphics he'd already started on are mostly ones that I slashed from chapter 1. I'll probably need every generic for chapter 2, though, so it's not like it was a waste.

Yep, once I get all that graphic stuff out of the way, it's just wrapping up battles and cutscenes. (See how simple I make that sound!)

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

It's the ability view! Press Shift to switch between this and the stats view.

I think I'd get a lot more done if it weren't for Team Fortress 2. (I'm still plugging away right now, though!)

(edit) GREAT PROGRESS on the cave tiles.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Cave tileset: complete. I might go back and add some layer 2 noise, but the basic tileset is 100%.

First battle: I... have a little way to go. I'm still working on it, and it's at the top of the list now that the cave is out of the way. (Unless I decide to hop right into the castle graphics... nah.) The good news is that the map is complete; it's pretty much just the choreography that's left. The devil's in the details, though, and I'm supposed to be doing everything up to and including the first battle, which means stuff like the difficulty selection menu.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

I know this is off topic but I saw people talking about textboxs. The way we have textbox's now is great but wouldn't be cool to be able to move textbox's and shrink textbox's in all angles like we can do with menus?
It would make games more versitile with speech. I'm thinking of Final Fantasy 9 as a good example...

Isn't it posiible? This to James Paige...

It's definitely possible, but you would need to write your own textbox scripts to use custom defined rectangles and taking the strings from textboxes (unless you would rather write all of the game's dialogue in plotscripting).

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

My goal for yesterday is complete now. I don't have the after-battle cutscene, but everything up to and including the first battle is done (at least until I decide I hate it, go back, and redo it).

Here's a feature that may pleasantly surprise some of you. My wife in particular is happy about it.



It's possible that the higher difficulties will also yield more gold to offset your (presumed) higher death rate.

Chapter 1 marches onward!

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Where am I at? Let me tell you where I am at.

With the first battle out of the way, I need to develop a reasonable framework for the game. There are several things to keep in mind here:
- The player will be able to save between battles. The game needs to know what to do when it starts up from a save file.
- I'll eventually want a world map. Probably not for chapter 1. I won't worry about this too much yet, but it's good to keep in mind.
- I'll probably reuse some maps (e.g. for random encounters). Instead of statically placing all the units on the map, I'll want to do it via plotscripting (at least in some cases).
- More to the point, I need a way of letting the player decide which units to take into battle. Again, this is less of an issue in chapter 1, where the player is limited on how many units he can take into battle.

All this and more, coming soon!

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

It occurs to me that I haven't implemented the level-up system. A character can spawn at a higher level, but he'll never gain levels right now -- his XP will reset to 0 when it reaches 100 without anything happening.

So that's next on my list. The only really tricky part about this is putting together the popup window that shows your stat gains.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Big stat rebalance time! If I do release the game episodically, that means I need to have stats straightened out before the first release. I made the second-tier classes have higher base stats, and now I'm gonna go back and do it again. Now the advanced classes start out with an average of about 5 more stat-points than the basic classes. The basic classes tend to have slightly higher stat growth (with a couple of exceptions), but the advanced classes generally have a tighter stat focus. It's about what you'd expect: if you want a character with high defense, raise him as a Knight, but be prepared for his accuracy and evasion to suffer as a result.

5 bonus stat-points is roughly equal to two experience levels, so upgrading into an advanced class is like getting two levels for free.

I also rebalanced stat growths, but only slightly. I wanted to make sure that each stat had a different class that was best at it.

I'm in the middle of putting together the "Level Up" screen right now, and then it's back to figuring out how to tie the game together.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Incidentally, I found a bug in the AI code while cleaning up unused variables (which warning messages HSPEAK now suppresses by default -- what's up with that?), namely that the AI was ignoring support units' damage when deciding whom to attack. This is kind of a relief, actually, since the AI was making some frankly baffling decisions sometimes.

Framework: mostly worked out. I also started on the unit selection menu, but I doubt I'll work any more on that during chapter 1 (during which time it won't be used anyway).

Units gain stats when they level up, but the menu is still not displayed.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

That was my idea. In my own scripts, I always have half a dozen unused variables floating around "to use later", so I got in the habit of compiling with -w 100% of the time, and missing a lot of useful non-variable-related warnings.

So I split out unused variable warnings, and they are now enabled by the -u switch.

The only other language I know that warns of unused variables by default is Euphoria, and although I liked it just long enough to imitate it, it slowly started to drive me insane in that language too :)

Progress: Yes.

It would take some luck (and some graphics from TwinHamster *cough cough*), but I could potentially finish Chapter 1 this weekend.

Here is what's left to do:
- Maps for every battle past the first
- Castle tileset (ouch!)
- Six cutscenes of varying complexity
- Animations for the graphics I'm still missing (three sets to do)
- Retouch Garland's left-facing animation -- it's a little off

Sounds like a lot, maybe, but it's nothing compared to what I'll need to do for chapter 2 (even if chapter 2 ended up being as short as chapter 1). The point is, though, it's coming together. The engine is 90% complete, lacking only world map and town/shop support (ignoring the nasty Pirate bug, but that's only a problem once I have an enemy Pirate).

So while chapter 1 is looking a little meager content-wise at the moment, most of what's left to do is what you might consider "the fun part." (I hate doing cutscenes, though.)

Twins! Where are you?

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Battle #2 finished, I think. Needs to be tested. There's some manmade structure in the second map that can be recycled into the castle set if I'm feeling lazy efficient enough. This remains to be seen.

I haven't done the post-battle cutscene yet. It's not complicated, so I'll knock that out before I give the battle a runthrough.

After that, more cutscene! Chapter 1 is just full of cutsceney goodness. Later: another battle.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

I spent today attending and traveling to and from my in-laws' family reunion. It was about as fun as it sounds, but it did provide an excellent opportunity for many hours of uninterrputed work on Phantom Tactics, especially given my lack of oh-so-distracting internet access. Here's the progress checklist for today. Note that "1-2" refers to the second battle in chapter 1, and so on.
- Finished the 1-2 post-battle cutscene.
- Tested 1-2 start-to-finish and fixed cutscene bugs.
- Fixed level-up bug. Reworked the internal representation of stats along with this.
- Fixed the save screen so that it displays your correct level as well as your difficulty level.
- Minor tweaks to the starting party configuration (for example, Janus now starts at level 1 instead of 2).
- Gave Superhuman difficulty a test run. Very pleased with how it worked out. No, the first battle still isn't hard, but nor should it be. (It might be slightly tricky on Nightmare, though. I make no promises that Nightmare mode is actually possible.)
- Finished castle tileset, pretty no-frills. It's fine for chapter 1, but if I ever stage a battle inside a castle, I'll probably want to expand it.
- Wrote the cutscene that takes place between 1-2 and 1-3. It's not choreographed yet. My flimsy excuse is that I don't have the walkabout for the king, but he really doesn't do much walking, so it's a bad excuse.
- Finished the maps for 1-3 and 1-4. Decided to split 1-4 into two battles, pushing what was going to be 1-4 to 1-5. Finished 1-3, maybe? I won't test it until I'm finished with the aforementioned cutscene.
- Passed the 5000-line mark. Only ~300 of that is cutscene-related.
- Added the Cleric class ability. (He heals his dudes!) This needs some testin'.
- Added the (spoilers!). This will be largely invisible to the player, and in chapter 1, there's pretty much nothing you can do about it, but the end of the chapter will hint at it and the rest of the game will be influenced by it. Cryptic? I hope so! (TH might be able to guess what this is about, since it was part of the original story concept.)

The immediate to-do list:
- Choreograph cutscene 1-2.5
- Test through 1-3
- Implement Gold (incl. the Bandit class ability). There's no way to spend it in chapter 1, but it'll be, uh, nice to have when you finally *can* use it.

The long-term to-do list:
- Make cutscene 1-3.5
- Make battle 1-5 (forunately(?), there is no cutscene 1-4.5)
- Make cutscene 1-5.5
- Make battle 1-6
- Make cutscene 1-6.5
- Test all of the above
- Release chapter 1???

The rest of the cutscenes are pretty minor. I think 1-2.5 is the longest in chapter 1. 1-3.5 will need some graphics, but nothing as extensive as the castle.

I, um, don't think I'll finish chapter 1 this weekend. But it won't be for lack of effort.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

More stuff you won't notice, because I care.

- Misc. AI improvements. Dislike attacking from squares that are surrounded by multiple enemies. Never attempt an attack that has zero chance of dealing any damage.
- Prevent crafty players from screwing up the storyline. (Details suppressed for spoilers.)
- Prevent craftier players from abusing the end result of the previous change (hopefully).

And some stuff you will:
- Give gold after battles.
- Bandits steal gold.
- Get around to showing the "Level Up" display.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks