Okédoké! La Leyenda Mexicana

Working on Okédoké again--and seriously this time, I'm not going to get distracted by new contest entries or abandon it for a few months due to school (my schedule this year has plenty of days where I've got little or no school work to do, and this is my last semester of school probably ever... so yeah, lots of extra time to work on other stuff.)

The lowest basement level of the final dungeon is 100% finished now, and the map structure of the upper basement and the first main floor are pretty much done too (aside from little side-rooms you can get into.) The first of several bosses is also fightable now, and has some different dialogue depending on how some things went in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5. Next up, finishing the inner rooms of the upper basement level and first main floor.

I've also fiddled with the way stats and levels work:

* Level cap now set to 50. You won't ever need to get that high, though (I predict that people's end-game levels will probably be in the low to mid-20s on average, assuming they didn't run from every single random battle and weren't specifically aiming for a low-level game... or grinding like maniacs to get as high as possible.)
* All of El Garbanzo's stats, and both Schnee's and Señor Death's Attack/Defense, now increase (slowly) with levels. Schnee's Power also increases, somewhat less slowly than the other stats mentioned. They aren't locked in at a certain number (outside of boosts from equipment) anymore.
* Señor Rialgo gains attack, defense, and power quicker than before.
* Señor Death gains power and wisdom quicker than before.
* Señor Rialgo learns his early-game attacks a bit quicker than before (Despegue at level 6 rather than level 8, for example), so getting the fly-over-the-border scene and F-15 battle shouldn't require such a crazy amount of grinding anymore.

I mentioned earlier that I was adding in "hint guys" to the bigger chapters of the game that require a lot of searching over big city areas (Chapter 2 and Chapter 4.) Well, here's the "hint guy" in question: the "Wizdum Man," who resides in the "Place of Wizdum." Don't let the Mexico-like scenery fool you--he doesn't appear in Chapter 1; this screenshot is from Chapter 2 (go west from Wrongside in the spot that was previously inaccessible due to a guy in a cowboy hat blocking your path and you'll find this place.)

The "Wizdum Man" is basically taken directly from the Earthbound ROM hack I made years ago. He looks slightly different now, but is still an old bald guy with a beard in a wooden booth advertising "wizdum."

Should come in handy for people who are confused as to where to go in the big cities, since he basically tells you exactly where the people you need to talk with to trigger the "got to get a car and leave" part of Chapter 2. He also tells you, at least in vague terms, exactly where most of the parts for the Hippie Battle Van are located in Chapter 4.

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]

Sweeeeet

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

While testing out the earlier chapters of the game to catch any bugs I may have missed, I stumbled across an engine bug. Equip menu does weird things when you try to equip an item that would raise your stats above stat caps now...



The power of cheese is just too much for the equip screen to handle, apparently. I added a listing to Bugzilla for this but figured I'd mention it on here, too.

(...and the original Magic Cheese bug is apparently *still* not fixed as of Beelzebufo... even though I was sure I saw someone mention that it was fixed at some point. After equipping the Magic Cheese onto El Garbanzo, unequipping it still drops his SP down to 0 instead of reverting it to the 15 or so points that he had before equipping the Magic Cheese.)

EDIT: It turns out that both of these are fixed in the most recent nightly. I'll just have to remember to update to a nightly where these bugs are fixed before actually releasing finished-Okédoké, whenever it happens.

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]

Tis a shame, I love cheese.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

A few little changes made over the past few days...



First of all... between the new "Alphabetical" sorting mode and about 40 spare font character slots, I've been able to get the autosort to arrange items pretty much how I wanted them to go, and all without breaking save files or redoing the font so that I'd have to go through and fix item names in every single textbox.

The basic order now is food, drinks, drugs, orbs (so all the out-of-battle items are first), then the in-battle items, keys, and miscellaneous valuables (gold bars, Chapter 4 hippievan parts, etc.), and finally equipment.

There's also another small change from previous versions visible in this screenshot. Anybody notice it?



And here's a change to the Mayor of Beaverfoot's quiz game. Previously there was a "The Kirby Lands" section here, but in an attempt to further distance myself from that old crappy game from more than a decade ago, it's been replaced with a new section: "Canadian Stuff." A couple of the "Other Stuff" questions from previous versions have been moved into "Canadian Stuff," and there's also some new questions in both of those two sections.

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]

Neat trick!

It's good to see Okedoke getting finished.

After several days of mostly fiddling with older things to get them working differently than before, today was a "work on Chapter 6" day. And now I'm completely done with both the two basement levels AND the first floor. Just one more big floor (and two smaller sections beyond that) left to go!



Finally another use for those computer sprites from way back in Chapter 4. It's a top-secret government lab, so of course there's computers around. Most of them are not broken, unlike this one. XD



And of course, there's some suspicious stuff going on up here in Alaska... you'll find out exactly what's going on toward the end of the game, but until then you'll just have to guess.



Not every NPC in here is an item box or a boss battle. These guys (there's a little over a dozen of them in all) are also hanging around in various rooms.

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]

I'm still looking forward to the conclusion of this game. I may decide to start from the beginning just to catch all of the small things you've added into the earlier chapters. I think it would be good to play from beginning to end.

I hope that Chapter 5 has a bit more to it now. I remember that being the one chapter that was kind of blah, but that was due to the lack of secret discoveries and hideaways that the other chapters seemed to have plenty of.

It's too bad you're finishing this long after the end of HamsterSpeak. I would like to have finished my review series on this one.

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Place Obligatory Signature Here

I'll play the game when it's finished.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

Minor update... well, actually major update, I just don't have that many new screenshots to post this time. XD



Just this one.

Anyway... the second floor of the final dungeon (as partially seen above?) It's done now. Well, all except for the pre-battle introduction scripts for the boss(es) at the end of it, anyway. And yeah, it's basically two bosses in a row--one that probably shouldn't give anyone much trouble, and then another one immediately afterward that's probably going to be pretty tough. Not like Bridget-level difficulty or anything (since this one isn't optional), but tougher than an ordinary required-to-go-further boss for sure.

Random fact about Secret Lab 2F: I actually mapped this one out on a Subway napkin before mapping it out in the game, to make sure I kept track of where all the door-links should go. There are upwards of 60 doors on this map (some are just destination points rather than normal two-way doors, but still.)

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]

Just a brief update on where I'm at with Okédoké, since I've gotten a bunch more done since my last post here.

All map work for the second and third floors of the final dungeon is now done. Since the place only has three floors (plus two basements that I finished a while back), that means all mapping that I will ever do for Okédoké is done (...not counting any "technically this is a map" sorts of things for use in the credits or ending scenes, of course.)

The last two required bosses (and also one last optional one) before the final boss are all completely done and tested out. One of them comes with a pretty elaborate scripted introduction scene, which makes the Border Rangers' little transformation sequences and pre-battle dance poses way back at the beginning of the game look like nothing special in comparison.

All scripted scenes, NPCs, etc. for the upper floors are now done, with the exception of the one I've been working on today--the scene leading into the final boss battle.

Yep... I'm currently working on the final boss of Okédoké. Which is why I'm not posting any screenshots this time; I want to keep the final boss (and, to a lesser extent, any of the big events of 3F and 2F, including their bosses) kind of secret until the final version of Okédoké actually gets released.

Any guesses as to who or what the game's last few bosses might end up being? Not going to reveal them just yet, but I think it'd be kinda neat to see if anyone's guesses will actually match up closely with what I'm putting in the game.

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]

School kind of got in the way for a while there, and lack of motivation kept me away from working on Okédoké for a while longer, but... I'm back again! And it's looking like a finished version of Okédoké before the end of 2014 is going to be a very real possibility now. Probably not before the end of the summer (as I will have a summer job through half of June and all of July), but before the end of Fall 2014? Will definitely be possible if I can keep up at the same rate for a while.

The final dungeon is done.

The final boss is done. I may make it a "strong version if your level is above this point, weak version if it's below" sort of thing (like how the Border Rangers have a strong version if you have three characters in your party and a weak version if there's only two) so that people who want to beat the game with a level in the low tens rather than the low-to-mid 20s won't have too much difficulty there (though, as I found when testing just now, it is definitely beatable with levels as low as 14... at least for me! it seems that other people have a whole lot more difficulty with my games than I do, sometimes to such an extent that it makes it hard for me to account for that difference.) But aside from that possibility, the final boss battle (including the scenes preceding and following) is done.

The post-final-boss scenes leading up to the ending are also pretty much done. I need to fix one minor graphical oddity before I can say it's completely done, but aside from that... yeah.

All that's left is to go back and finish the Chapter 4 "Wizdum Guy's" script stuff, come up with alternate stats/moves for a weaker version of the final boss if you manage to get there while still being at level 12 or something, and then do the various ending scenes (the initial ending, then credits, and finally some scenes of what happened to various characters afterward.) A version that's at least mostly finished will be sent out for "somebody else's eyes" testing before the actual final release; any lingering bugs will be fixed, stuff may be adjusted slightly, and then finally at some point in the (hopefully less than a year away) future Final Okédoké will actually get released!

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]

This is exciting. I've played a bit of this and really enjoyed the writing, but I wanted to wait for the final release before I played through the whole thing.

The ending credits are now completely done. That leaves pretty much only one thing left to do: a few short "post-ending" scenes showing what various characters ended up doing after the game's story was done.

I've already started on about half of those; most (if not all) of those should be done before the day's over. Some may take a bit longer than others (since new graphics are required for some), but they're all pretty short and not a lot of work, so... final version Okédoké should be effectively done within the next week or so.

When I do finish all the ending stuff and run a few things through one last test playthrough, I'll probably send the completed game out to a few people for "someone else's eyes" testing just to make sure I've caught as many bugs and other mistakes as possible before publicly posting the completed game. I'll be out of town working a summer job between mid-June and early August, which will give those testers a couple months to get around to playing through the game and combing it thoroughly for bugs before I'm back home and not-busy again.

But yeah... Okédoké will (finally) be done before the end of summer 2014.

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]

Then it will the king of this year's HotOHR

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x