DISCLAIMER: I found these unreleased Dev Log notes in my previous ‘2020 Dev Log’ file in my Google Docs, and as much of it is ridiculously outdated, it’s still a snapshot of the development of RF. I also think it’s missing some development between this log and my next. I have a few notes at the bottom about what I believe is missing. Also, it was apparently written before I dropped development of Reel Dream! That’s, that’s old. I mean, this is also around the begining of 2020 quarantine >3> I’d like to forget that actually.

For this year’s (2023) first Dev Log, go here. (I’ll add the link when it’s posted)

PLAYING AROUND

Feb 17, 2020

As I’m planning on putting dev logs on hiatus I’ve actually been playing around with RF today, not really doing much but I played with a Mode 7 plugin just to see what it would do:

It looks like a lot of fun when playing with it, but it has too much that would need to be done to make it work right, and is out of the scope of this project.

I got this idea however, from a game that I recently got addicted to over the weekend:

Cat Quest Developed by: The Gentlebros Pte. Ltd.

Like that game legit had me addicted and I think I beat the main story line in two days. Which isn’t much time considering the mommy life. I’m still playing the after game and clearing dungeons.

So other than the map perspective used in the game, Cat Quest (GO PLAY IT. I got it on the Switch! Okay, yes I realize this game is a few years old. It takes me a bit to get around lol) also got me thinking about dungeons and dungeon crawling. Their dungeons are single level (this game is very casual play-like) and they aren’t too expansive…unless it’s supposed to be…and they have a lot of invisible paths.

So that got me thinking for RF that I should start planning the dungeon floors to be a lot smaller than what I had imagined in my head. This will help with mapping time, and for players to clear floors faster to feel like they are progressing.

I’m going to combine that with the recurring chests idea I had, and I may include different chest types, like a locked type players can go back for once they get a key further in the game that will have rarer, but optional, items; which is another idea I got from Cat Quest.

SETTING UP THE SCRIVENER FILE WITH NPC PROFILES

Something I honestly should have put together long before is profiles for each of the characters in RF. However, I just got to doing it and thankfully I had been working on a similar system for Reel Dream and already had things I could copy/paste to make the templates.

I’m honestly questioning the 10 stars friendship system. I’m thinking of breaking it down to be  stars. Maybe, maybe not. I want to make shorter games and figuring out things for 10 stars? Of course, I think I was only planning to have an actual friendship event every few stars, and I guess that means that if I have characters I want it to be harder to befriend, I could just make them have certain events happen at higher star levels, though that would also limit how many events I could have compared to others.

Okay, that was a long run on sentence but that’s my thoughts.

A MESS OF A MOUNTAIN

(Feb 19, 2020)

So I worked a good bit on Reel Dream’s plot today, scripting out the first part of the game so I felt I needed a break to do something more relaxing. So I went to RF to do some mapping of the mountain area:

Basically, from sample maps from the FSM asset pack, I glued together a few maps I liked and have been working away at making them fit, as well as making them how I imagined. Right now it’s still a mess but it’s coming together. That’s Avy’s Tower asset right there, that I plan to use for the main tower in this game. I may do a bit more searching, but this moss covered look fits with what I want for the game.

WHY DO KIDS GET US SICK

So between a rough emotional/mental week followed by a week of sick family, not much got done and now it is March 2nd. Reel Dream takes priority but I just want to note that I continued on that mountain and this is where it left off:

Still have a lot of work to do on it but it’s shaping up to be its own thing now, and not just a copy/paste from sample maps.

MARCH 5th 2020

Just did some mapping.

OH QUARANTINE OH QUARANTINE

June 15 2020

So how’s quarantine going, ya’ll?

Yeah, so between everything I normally deal with…RF has been on the bottom of the to-do list. I have been working on Reel Dream a bit lately and I continuously am trying to make my office area more productful and more childproof, which is hard now that my youngest is a full fledged toddler at age two.

What’s been on my mind lately for RF is the weapons crafting system and how I should simplify it in ways I’ve enjoyed in other games I’ve recently played such as Moonlighter. However, the idea of how it was all to work out was almost completely fledged out and ready to input into the engine so I kinda want to just go with my original idea and see how broken of a system it is. It may work out to be a fun quirk of the game!

I quit my Patreon before the corona lockdown happened, when I didn’t even know it was going to happen, and thankfully I did as I wouldn’t be able to keep up the Patreon at this rate.

Without the patreon however, it has allowed me to put game dev on the back burner as I have needed to, without feeling like I was ripping off those who were giving to me.

-Some Time Later-

Okay so yeah, the internet is distracting and I’m fighting laziness and depression right now but…

Game dev wise I think I may have tossed some dev notes in an office purge I did the other week, though I still have a lot of digital notes too so maybe what I want is there…

BLUB

BLUUUUUB

BLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUB

If any of ya’ll get that reference than….ya’ll are a parent.

Okay, so I had been working on the spreadsheet for figuring out the crafting system and I reduced the number of crafting materials I use in each setting:

I even renamed some stuff and decided on how some items were going to be used. Somehow, I just couldn’t reduce the med craft ingredients by much. Most things in that list made sense to me so I kept them.

Why this change? Well mostly I was inspired by Animal Crossing: New Horizions on how their main ingredients are just 3 types of wood, rock, clay and iron. Sure the game adds some special pieces too but those are what you are collecting on a daily basis.

Rapunzel’s Flower isn’t meant to be an overly large game, so I really shoudn’t have a boat ton of items and complicated crafting. I still want to make my additive ingredient method of crafting instead of something more linear (like Moonlighter) because I think how the additive properties will act in game will be painfully hilarious as I try and balance it all.

Yeah, I pretty much said I want to have a dev crisis trying to balance this game.

However, having done that I’ve gotten thinking about something else I had wanted to do originally in the game: On screen encounters. Originally I said I couldn’t do it because I don’t have sprites for the majority of Aekashics battlers I will be using, but thinking about it, the spawn monster doesnt have to look exactly as the monsters in the troop. I mean, hey, you don’t even see a troop you see one monster and SURPRISE it’s a troop…

So I DO have directional sprites for cute little elemental slimes for Aekashics that fit with the elements in my game. I’m thinking I could go back to the on screen encounters and use these elemental hinting slimes in the different areas to create on screen encounters. I even have plugins to make on screen encounters interactive.

More work? Potentially, well, yeah, but it will be in line with the original vision of the game.

THE NEXT DAY

Le gasp! I’m here typing the next day! So, last night I did a lot of work planning the crafting system and this is only part of my spreadsheet for that:

So I guess the next stage is…I don’t know…guess I have to make sure each item at least has an icon and then start putting these base recipes into the plugin.

As much as I love the crafting plugin I have, I also hate putting recipes in it. That’s actually why I have this spreadsheet is so that I can reference the item numbers and ingredients for input into the plugin. The plugin asks for item database numbers so I can’t just go back and forth trying to get and remember numbers. Thus, this spreadsheet.

Google Sheets really has become a go-to tool for me. I’ve even created scheduling, chore and grocery spreadsheets for daily life!…only the grocery one has gotten real use. Haha…that’s my fault. I keep trying to find a good planner system for myself because it’s easy for me to get off track and lazy.

Anywho, into the engine to go work on those recipes!

RECIPE WOES

Okay, so the recipes can only have one craft item category used and you can’t have two in one recipe so I’m going to have to plug in a LOT of recipe variations. Lots…man I’m glad I toned down how many weapons and junk were in the game.

So Okay, to tone that down why don’t we just require the Augment to be a chip that you have to craft? Yeah, yeah I think that makes sense. Then the recipe only calls for a Chip and that Chip, using the Additive Traits of the crafting system will add it’s traits to the weapon you are crafting. BINGO! I think that will save me some recipe making…I hope.

Wait, nope. That runs into the same exact issue. Unless….we use the Chip to create a Drive which creates a Core and all adds onto each other!

2023 Comments: Um, I’m not sure what all was going on at this point and I feel like there were a lot of decisions and developments I never ended up documenting. I’m not even sure if I recorded the decision to go with Randomly Generated Maps to create dungeons, or that I went back to a simpler crafting system with Yanfly’s Item Synthesis and have pretty much dropped augmenting items for weapon enhancement mechanic. Going to stick to simpler item and weapon creation. Sorry I didn’t document that, so there’s a bit of a gap between 2020 and 2023 that’s more than just time.

Anywho, from now on Dev Logs will be written for this year’s development, and I’ll try to keep in mind to give ya’ll a refresher when I talk about certain mechanics and developments.

Thanks for reading and God bless,
Kima Prince