At this moment I’m about 80% complete with the Coliseum portion of the game. Most of the battles are complete and I’ve even tested some of them. The last remaining battles that need to be created are related to the end game stuff. Mainly the boss battles.

As I casually mentioned in some previous posts, I ignored setting up the boss battles since I wanted to set the stats manually instead of using a system like I’ve done with all of the other enemies. This was what I decided back before I started working on all of the maps. Now that I’ve completed all of the maps and tested plenty of battles using the system I set up, it makes 0-none-absolutely no sense for me to not use the same system with the bosses.

So I’ve begun setting and testing the boss battles based on the system I’m using for all the other enemies. For example, the boss below is the first boss you face at the end of the first year. It was the only boss I had prepared and it’s stats were manually set. I redid the stats using my system and made sure it matched the stats I manually wrote before. The video below is the result of my changes.

(Please ignore the weird sound distortions and text errors at the end. The former is the result of me play testing in the editor and the latter has been fixed.)

There isn’t much different from before on the outside, but on the backend, it’s much more easier for me to set up. The scaling of the base stats are tied to the weapon and armor of the player, so I don’t have to worry too much if the player will have a hard time winning the battle. Even if they do, all I have to do is adjust the damage or defense a little. I no longer have to guess if I’m adding too much or too little stats.

Regardless, I’m going to test all of the boss battles the same way as above since I need them for the post game as well.

While we’re on the subject of battles. I’d discovered I made a big booboo with a number of items. Some of the equipment and talents inflict or grant status effects when you attack or get attacked. The effects went off just fine, but it had a problem. The system couldn’t discern between attacks from/to enemies or support from/to allies/self. To put it more plainly, a negative status effect would go off regardless of what target or what skill was used. (I was burning my allies as I would try to heal them, oh noooooo)

So I ended up spending the next few hours making changes to settings and testing battles. I eventually figured out the right combination to get the system to function exactly the way I want it. Now, only attacks from enemies or towards enemies will trigger the effect. This goes both ways whether it’s the player or enemy, the items are functional regardless of who wears them. All of the items in the game should behave exactly like their description now.(bold statement, I know, but I’ll continue to test them to make sure I’m correct)

I also went back and made a few changes to the presentation of the Coliseum menu. It now tells you how far you’ve gone in the competition. Your results won’t have any bearing on the game’s story progression, but you do have to compete in order to get further into the post game.

For next week I will continue to test the boss battles and finish up the Coliseum. After that I will begin completing all of the holiday events along with any other miscellaneous tasks in preparation for a full game testing.

Some time in between now and then, I’ll create another major update talking about the game’s music. This is a video I’ve been excited about making since I love this game’s music very much. I’ve been so busy with the game’s development I haven’t been able to find the time, but I’ll make it happen sooner or later.

That’s all I have for this week, stay well everyone!