Happy New Year! We hope everyone stayed happy and healthy over the winter holidays! Let’s go over 2023 and our plans for 2024!

December 2023

Before getting into 2023 in review, let’s go over December quickly! As per usual, our focus was on cutscenes, interiors, and animations. We also worked on some bug fixes and updating Gamemaker! As we are now tackling larger cities, we’ll save an overview of the city and it’s interiors after they are completed. In the meantime, here’s a look at one bug we’ve fixed:

Did you know that if you happen to be in an interior with camera movement that if you entered into the main menu and returned it broke? No? Neither did we. It was a bit of a surprise when we stumbled upon this. Most interiors are made such that a camera isn’t needed, but in this case one was! A quick check in the menu for something led to… well… this. But it’s fixed now, so all’s well that ends well.

We also spent time this month upgrading our development machines (they were 10 years old) and the Gamemaker version from Feb 2023 to Nov 2023. A few important things came out from this:

1. This bug from October 2022 is now fixed. This was one of the major blockers for the demo update since we use that feature of the engine quite extensively. We didn’t want to release an update that could randomly crash.
2. Between the development machine upgrade and the Gamemaker engine upgrade, Gataela’s compile times have dropped from 10 to about 1:30 minutes. What a huge improvement!
3. We are also now able to build YYC (native) for machines because of the bug fix. This means better runtime performance on machines.

Gamemaker has a number of build-related changes coming in the future so likely things will continue to improve as we upgrade over time. This largely means that development time is spent developing instead of waiting for things to compile.

And that’s it for December!

2023 In Review

Now let’s talk about 2023! And man, 2023 was a thing. Lots of exciting things happened, but there was a lot of interruptions and difficulties. Let’s go over some of the highlights and see what we accomplished!

Maps Maps Maps

The first big thing was completing the overworld! That was back in Feburary! Wow! We’ve gone through since then and added interiors for nearly all of the cities – we are left with half of Ziacia and Olvia (those two big cities in the south of the map). Once those are done nearly all maps, and sub-maps for the game will be complete! Kinda. We will still have to add NPCs and such but, well, that can’t be done until the maps exist.

MSQ Cutscenes & Skits

Another major focus for the year was adding Main Story Quest cutscenes and skits. These are the main meat of the game. We spent a lot of time working on these and finished adding all of the skits, and most of the cutscenes! We also did some general cutscene infrastructure improvements.

Turn-based Battle Improvements

Lots and lots of time was spent on working to improve the turn-based battle system. In particular:

• We doubled the number of enemies, created their animations, and their alternate palettes & added them to the game
• We rebalanced and increased the number of skills to account for the change in enemies. We also identified balance gaps in our player skills (ex. Foresight and Triage)
• We began creating VFX and SFX for the new skills (& adding them to the game)

The Other Stuff

Other improvements and work include but aren’t limited to:

• Improving ambience effects
• Improved map/room/level loading times from 7 seconds to 0.3 seconds
• Added a splash screen & new animals and wild life
• Dungeon & puzzle design
• Various bug fixes

2024 Plans

Now lets get into what we’re cooking for 2024!

Generally speaking we’ll be doing more of the same with adding content and putting everything together. Our year will focus on cutscenes, maps, battle systems (turn-based and debate) and general bug fixes and performance.

In the short term (3-6 months), this means:

• Finish adding all of the MSQ
• Finish adding all of the city interiors
• Finish adding all of the Kickstarter backer houses
• Finish implementing dungeon puzzles/mechanics (including UI changes)
• Create & add more turn-based battle skill VFX & SFX

And looking beyond that (subject to change):

• Adding NPCs, animals, treasure, etc. to the maps
• Rebalancing Debate battles & related facts/evidence/side quests etc.
• Map visual upgrades (ex. the water shader)
• Performance and bug fixes as needed
• Demo update? Beta update? Who knows.

So with all the being said, thanks for reading and have a good start to 2024!

Happy Winter! Here’s what we were up to during November!

Vescha

Vescha is the largest city in the region, sporting a healthy forestry industry as well as the southern military headquarters. It is on the edge of Viche forest – a large forest along the border that divides Gataela and Aerand.

One of the nearby residents has renovated their living room to be a small classroom. Whether the owner is just well off in general or has expensive tastes – no one really knows. However, they are an excellent teacher and know quite a lot of various things.

It seems we’ve stumbled upon someone in the middle of moving in! Located in a prime location in the city, they managed to get this place for cheap because the wallpaper in the house was pretty terrible – at least as far as they are concerned. One of the first things they’ll be replacing for sure.

A home-grown florist. They spend a lot of time on the first floor growing and taking care of plants – specifically plants for the local general store. It’s said that ever purple plant in the town originated from this one place.

Triage

This month’s new skill is Triage – a party wide heal! Our dear friend Zack here is demonstrating what it’ll look like when it plays over a single member.

This skill comes from our recent review – did you know that we had plenty of party-wide damaging skills but no healing skills? Whoops.

Besides the obvious gap this presents, it also is a big problem for gameplay and general turn-based battle enjoyment. When you have one party member and a single heal everything is fine. Throw in another and you might have some turns where you only heal, but most of the time you’ll be spending it doing damage or supports. When you have more than two party members then… well… you have one party member dedicated to healing.

This wouldn’t be a problem if there was a dedicated healing class – but we don’t have one. So you end up with a damage dealer that’s healing instead of doing damage and battles drag on. You may even have the whole team healing themselves with items or skills instead of attacking for whole turns very often as enemies also have party-wide damaging skills. Not very fun.

So with that said – the addition of the Triage skill is super important.

Now why “Triage” as the name? Fun fact: a lot of the skill names come from real life things, such as fencing terms, or animal behaviours. Triage is “a medical process by professionals with first aid knowledge”. Know what the singular heal skill is called? First Aid. A natural evolution.

And there’s your hint for how to eventually unlock this beauty.

What’s Next?

Goodness! The year is almost already over? We’ll be focusing on wrapping up work we started during the year, and doing our 2024 planning. We’ll also be doing:

• Cutscenes
• Ziacia Interiors
• Misc Bugs

Happy Early Holidays!

Happy Belated Halloween! We hope you all had a tricky treaty time. Here’s what we were up to during October!

Elzarde

A small abandoned town just across the river from Klatchez. It used to be a popular in-between town for people looking to travel to the Ovion Empire, but it became ruined during the civil war. Many bandits and others thrown away by society have taken up residence here.

Despite the state of the town, a lot of effort has gone into making the inn presentable… even if there’s only one good floor. They’ve patched up the holes, moved the best furniture in there, and may or may not serve a warm breakfast. If any merchants or visitors pass through they’re sure to get a decent stay in the hopes of providing some wares or at least some cash.

Most homes have holes in their walls and broken furniture, but this house-turned-warehouse is the worse of them. Everything here is free to use for repairs or kindling. It’s also a really fun “secret” hideout.

This makes the last small town to have their interiors done. Next? The big cities: Vescha, Olvia and Ziacia! (These might take a while 🤫)

Foresight

This month we’re going to highlight one new skill: Foresight. Our dear skill user focuses their energy and they are just so smart they can see your punches coming before you even throw them.

This skill is similar to the Block and Dodge skills in that by triggering this skill you will be able to avoid/minimize the first skill to damage you for the turn. In the same vein it will also raise your crit for the rest of the turn as well.

When reviewing the basic skills (Attack, Dodge and Block) and their relevant stats (Attack, Speed and Defence) we realized that the Crit stat was missing something. As a recap:

• Attack – how much damage you do
• Defence – how much damage does not affect you & how likely you are to block
• Speed – how quickly your turn executes in battle & how likely you are to dodge
• Crit – how likely you are do a direct hit avoiding defence

🤔 Seems like Crit doesn’t have as many benefits 🤔

To help balance that there’s two things we’ve changed:

• Added a foresight skill
• Crit – how likely you are do a direct hit avoiding defence & how likely you are to foresee an attack

As a side note – we consider attack to be a primary stat attribute, while defence, speed and crit are all sub stats. Attack doesn’t need help. Everyone picks it. Every time.

What’s Next?

Now with all that said, here’s what we’re focusing on for the next month:

• Cutscenes cutscenes cutscenes
• Vescha Interiors
• Finishing Dungeon Puzzle Assets
• More skills

Happy Spooky Season everyone! Here’s what we were up to during September!

Niande

Ninade’s a village located just outside of the capital – Ziacia – and south of Wiska Forest. It’s a nice quiet stopping point between Ziacia and Olvia, and certainly much cheaper than staying in either of those cities! They mainly focus on forestry, and farming flowers and herbs. Here are some of the houses found here:

A small simple house – it seems like the owner is in the middle of making some pickles. I wonder how they’ll taste?

A family of four live here with the newest appliance: an oven. Amazing.

The Inn is on the smaller size but has a nice and relaxing library on the first floor. The owner is pretty laid back about whether you’re staying the night or taking a book out so take it easy. Just don’t bother anyone.

What’s Next?

That’s about it for this month. We’re busy working on cutscenes so there’s not a whole lot we can share for now. In the meantime this is where we are currently focusing for the next month:

• Elzarde Interiors
• Adding MSQ Cutscenes
• Dungeon Puzzle Assets

Have a spoopy time!

Hello everyone! It’s September…. can you believe it….?

Falaz

Falaz is a small town located directly on the border with Aerand in the middle of the marshlands of Vescha. Despite being a border town, they are known as being something of a sleepy town of retirees and children – a nice place to visit for peace and quiet. Not many people pass through despite the crossing because the marshlands and Viche forest are so annoying to travel through. Here are some of the homes you can find here:

Most homes are pretty cozy – made of brick and wood. Since they happen to live in a marsh zone surrounded by forest, many homes have fireplaces in them to help with the chill. The smoke helps keep the bugs away too! Sewing is also a common past time.

Since many people don’t come through very often, the general store and the inn share the same building. There’s not a whole lot of space for sleeping, and then general store is even smaller. There aren’t even any employees – just write down what you’re buying or if you’re staying the night and leave the payment at the books. Honesty is key.

Splash Screens, Animals and More

We worked on a variety of improvements this past month so here’s a few of them below!

One improvement we made was adding a splash screen when the game starts up. We made changes to the loading speed the other month but it meant that when the game booted up everything was preloaded. When that happens, the main menu screen would appear but it would be “frozen” and so you couldn’t interact with the game. It was very confusing and annoying 🙁

So we’ve inserted this handy splash screen which will deal with the preloading. So when the buttons appear on the main menu screen you can click them immediately 🙂

We also focused on adding various animals and bugs and giving them some AI. So for example, if you run through fireflies they’ll scatter and disappear.

For others, they’ll wander around a predefined area and do little actions like bouncing or eating nuts, grass, etc. We still have a few more to implement, like cats, but here’s a good showing of most of them. Once we’re all done, we’ll be adding these fellows to the existing maps and it should make things feel more alive.

Admin Updates

A couple other misc admin updates that don’t really fit in anywhere:

• Thank you to everyone who sent kind messages about the news last month. It’s always awkward to reply “thank you” to these kind of messages individually – so please just know we read them all and appreciate them very much. Once again, thank you for your understanding.
• Our twitch is no longer. If you’re interested in Tuesday 8pm EST Gataela streams you can find them here.
• We now have a bluesky!

What’s Next?

As per usual we’re continuing to focus on interiors and MSQ and if we’re lucky some more misc improvements.

• Niande Interiors
• Adding MSQ Cutscenes

Have a good start to fall!