The Daemos Chronicles: Graduation Day Reports

I would have an image like usual, but I’m currently stress testing my laptop and transferring a lot of files, so I won’t be touching them at the moment.

Flashback to July 2022, my laptop locked up 100% and it was a sad time.

I thankfully got a loaner and have been working on new maps, quests. enemies, and the narrative, With a little more story, another cave, maybe a dungeon, and a village map, I’ll have the second chapter done. It’s a big one, but it will finally come to a rest after I’m  through. Need to switch gears and do a little writing on my novel. Still needs music…

What’s New:

– The Warrior Class can equip various weapons; equipping a weapon changes the class and Battler Art

– A Magick system has been added

– States have timing and animations, thanks to Yanfly plugins: Buff States Core and Visual State FX.

– Skills to learn have been added for weapon and magick classes

– A party has now been introduced. How this will affect the skill tree system is currently in configuration.

– The player can now add two NPCs to the party to complement their class. Up to four characters can be in a party at any given time.

– The East excursion is complete. Here, the player will explore a new village and a cave, with a new species of characters to interact with. The player will be able to collect new herbs and plants.

– The East excursion gives players the chance to enter a tournament and face new foes.

– The West excursion is underway, with another village and new species to discover. New wild plants can be found out here; some with bonus effects,  others that affect a character’s state. A new enemy is introduced.

– A new cave, possibly the last in the design phase

Once the above is done, that concludes 1.2.

A little breather before things get weird in 1.3, a festival and more narrative and more NPC interaction before 1.4.

Depending on how long 1.3 takes, I might work on that too. Regardless, I will be uploading the most recent version and hopefully can get a well-known reviewer to take a look.

I’ll try to get better at updates, I promise.

After another month of playtesting and tweaks, I think we’re ready to go live. Hosted on Dropbox, but also found on itch.o. Available for Windows and Mac OS.

Dropbox link

Itch.o Project Page

Nothing like a highlights demo reel to get the hype going!

Wow, only a month or so between updates this time. I’m getting better at this.

I’ve been doing a lot of playtesting, and each class has a bug of course, but this is how we get things done. Every class has a set of actions that teach them a little more about the in-game universe and how the player can excel in each class. Then side quests become available. Then main quests.

Oh, the amount of bugs someone can run into during a playtest…I shouldn’t be able to walk through that wall…or when a friend playtests on a big screen TV, “Are you stuck in that room?… you’re stuck in this room, aren’t you? I regret turning on the auto save.”

Stuff like that.

I’ve fixed most things. My latest conquests have been getting a class status picture working for every end value for the character creator, regardless of gender or class, so that’s good.

I also made friends with a very talented programmer who designed a skill tree for me and fixed my main menu. I was very glad to meet him, and am currently playtesting the skill tree he programmed and making additional content for it. It’s like a real game with little movie clips to watch to see what the skill does and everything. So, that’s pretty great.

Once I’m done with all the playtesting, fixing what I can – why is this tree so persistent to be in front of this door?! – I think I’m ready to put together a demo video. I also reeeeeeally need to fix the main Daemos Chronicles website. It’s trash on mobile, and I have to be realistic. Most people might visit the website on their phone, not a tablet/laptop/desktop. Unless I can get a mobile version, I’ll have to make it into another WordPress website (blegh).

It’s because I just go and go and go until I hit a wall.

A lot of work got done. I’ve been playtesting a lot. My newest project is renaming 1920 images so I can do this!

Beautiful.

So after my first preview of the demo to a few people, I realized I forgot to customize the technical pieces a bit, and that was definitely what people noticed. Over the weekend, I did some research, grabbed some great references, made edits that fit my theme, and so far I’m really liking things.

I made a window skin that resembles the robes of the village Elder, and the background is reminiscent of parchment used for writing scrolls. Not only this, but I made a custom menu. It looks like a page from a journal with each sub menu scribbled out until the player clicks on it, but is legible non the least. At the end, I test a skill tree I built after learning how button events work. This will give me greater freedom with building out the skill tree, amongst other things.

You can check out the test here.

Been busy and put together the first set of “quests” for the Monk and Warrior class. They’re more like tutorials to get the player prepared for combat and learning about how the world works. You know, usual gameplay stuff.

Yeah, there are still some bugs in there to fix, but hey, this is some real progress!

I’ve been busy…in many senses of the word. But here are some old videos. Expect a gameplay update soon.

Character Creator

Battle Test

That’s all I gotta say. It’s been busy – so busy I forgot about updating the website. But a lot has been going into the development over the last few weeks and I got a lot to share.