Picking up from last week, I have decided to focus on completing the first year before I tackle any other part of the game. The main reason being I want to properly balance the game before I create any more data assets. Also, I want to eventually show off sections of the game and the first year would be ideal. Lastly, I still need to build a debug menu that allows me to jump around the game without ruining continuity. I will tackle balance and build the debug as I fill in all the events from the first year.

But first, the balance of the game is pretty bad, and I don’t just mean the battling. The commerce portion of the game is pretty important. You gain money from jobs each week, you also gain money from quest and selling items. You use this money to buy items that the daughter will use each week, you also buy battle/exploration related items periodically. Sadly, I haven’t done any real balance of any of that up to this point. As it stands, I think the player will end up with too much money over time. This leaves me worried I may have to go back and make sweeping changes. 😭

To switch gears a bit, in the past week I’ve mostly been fixing bugs and odd inconsistencies. I’m pretty sure there are still some bugs I’ve missed just waiting to rear their ugly head at the least suspecting moment, but the game has never been more polished.

There was one particular problem I wanted to address but wasn’t sure there was an effective solution. I wanted real time input display, specifically for the exploration buttons. It was annoying having to remember what key did key all the time when I could just display it at all times. But since the game supports not only mouse, but keyboard and controller, I needed a method to auto change based on the input. Thank goodness I fount a tool for it.

Behold!

These number values represent the number lock and number row keys. If you prefer to use different keys you’re free to change them to whatever you like. Next, this is what happens as soon as you switch to controller.

Not only is the keys for xbox supported, but playstation and switch as well. This is a feature I’ve always adored in games so I’m very happy I was able to support it in this project.

I’m hoping the balancing and world building won’t take too long. 90% of the game assets are complete, it’s actually closer to 99% if I’m just accounting the first year. Once I’m complete with the first year I want to make a major update showing off what I have. After that I’m considering turning all my updates into video form. There will still be text updates but it will mostly be a transcript of the video. Doing this will help spread the word about this project better since video is the preferred method of content delivery nowadays.

That’s all for now, I’ll talk to you guys in the next update. Laterz!