Content Update: 9/3/22

So a lot of detail in today's blog. Both regarding Sweet Expedition than Dawn of Djinn. So I'll sum it up and let you check the sections for more detail if interested. In Sweet Expedition, spent a lot of time cleaning up partner moves and mis. map stuff. Dawn of Djinn I've put a lot of time reworking classes, to the point Mono-classes are basically done. Might mess around with them a little bit more to try to assure they're balanced. Keeping them interesting for single Djinn play while making sure they aren't so good (or at least have some drawbacks) that players have no incentive to mess around with the class system. Check out more below.

Paper Mario:

I actually made a goal in advance for once. My goal for this week was to finish adjusting moves for all the partners in Sweet Expedition and make a video showcasing them off. I made a good chunk of progress on achieving that goal. But I was just a bit short on fully achieving that goal, so probably in another week or two, if not sooner, I should have something more in depth to share.

The adjustments I wanted to make to Goombario are done, Kooper is basically done but I'm still a little conflicted on exactly how powerful I want to make the final move. (Actually I took a break and noticed a visual bug with the move as well so maybe that's further from done than I thought.) The partners are also to the point where I'm basically done with everything I originally wanted to do, but I got an idea that I want to explore a bit before fully declaring them done. Looking forward to sharing more details, as this one new move was something I wanted to implement for the Game Jam release but it was getting to a point that I had to focus on getting other things complete so I could release it in time.

Also messed around with some mis. stuff tied to the maps, not flat out drastically changing layouts and textures yet. But I've messed a little bit with enemy formations and adding new puzzles, most of these edits were directly to scripts/code and not as much messing with the map editor yet. But I think they're pretty neat.

And since I didn't get around to finishing the partner video like I wanted this week, I think I can stop holding back and share a couple of the "puzzles" I've been working on, if only to curve expectations. I want to leave the more complex ones as a surprise, but this should get the idea across that my goal with the puzzles are more so to give the partners additional mini activities to do outside of battle, often for neat prizes, rather than be the most mind boggling or revolutionary thing.

Though, I actually decided to showcase the update to one of Goombario's move over on Discord yesterday, since I ran out of time to actually finish this blog, so I guess there's no harm showing that clip here.

If you played the Game Jam release you may have noticed that Multibonk got replaced by this move. Doing a powerful single jump with explosion 'elemental' damage. I was perfectly happy with the move being just that, but I decided to explore another idea as I started making more and more powerful moves for Mario.

Nuclear Bonk 2.0 is much more powerful but comes with a major trade-off. Goombario gets hurt in the explosion, disabling your partner the follow turn. It does similar damage to doing Headbonk two turns in a row, so you'll have to decide if getting that extra damage right away is worth the trade-off.

One thing I didn't showcase in this clip is that the explosion only goes off if you get the Action Command. Otherwise, you do damage similar to a normal Headbonk. So don't fear. If you mess up the timing, it's still a huge waste of FP, but at least you won't be punished with a turn lost as well. Maybe you'll even find a niche scenario where failing the Action Command could work in your favor.

Hopefully next weekend, if not the week after, I'll at least be done with Kooper's move pool and I can actually make that video showcasing the returning partner's new move pool like I wanted.

Golden Sun:

Made a TON of progress on Dawn of Djinn this past week. I'm continuing working on classes and there were several days I got so caught up in it, I ended up spending working on it. It's paying off as I'm basically done with the new mono-classes for all party members and even made quite a few new moves for these new classes...too many new moves TBH as I took up the majority of the space for new Psynergy accessible through classes between the returning new moves from Version 1 and the new ones I made for these new classes.

We'll see how that bites me in the butt when I start working on the other classes but considering for the majority of the dual classes I'm going to following in Reloaded footsteps. Not too worried about tri-elemental classes as most of the Psynergy is already in the game. Since I was planning on basically carry them over from version 1 I put those moves into the game well before starting to work on the new classes. Might need to find the space for a couple new ones, but hopefully because I have so many new moves already, I can just work with what I have already.

Speaking of factors that may force me to squeeze a little extra space for new moves, I realized there's two easy places for me to implement additional classes without feeling as jank as the "quad-elemental" classes did. (That said quad-elemental classes may still come back. I just want to see how all the other classes pan out first before I confirm or deny that.)

Really worried all this extra stuff I'm cramming into the game is going to backfire on me somehow. Like even more visual bugs than V1. But I won't know for sure until I start playtesting so we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

But yeah the new mono-elemental classes, while I think I still need to do some balance test before confidently saying their done, but besides that they're pretty well set. Probably will be a bit before I make a video showcasing said progress, but I guess I could show a couple screens of Ivan's new class in the editor I'm using. May not make too much sense without the context of the new moves but it at least makes for a fun little teaser.

Gale Fool Class

Trickster Class

Now that I actually look at it, it may appear a bit lacking but that's because it's after 4 Jupiter Djinn where this class gets really interesting. But I'll just have to dive deeper into that in a future blog. I've spent WAY more time than I was planning to write this blog as is.

Videos/Mis

Yikes the rest of this blog has probably taken me several hours to write. I got to find a better balance between writing about my progress while not taking up time I could spend making more progress doing so. Because of that I'm going to just combine these two sections together and try to keep it short and sweet.

Keeping a similar schedule with video uploads as last month.

Monday: Dawn of Djinn

Wed: Paper Mario Randomizer

Friday: Dawn of Djinn

Saturday: Mis. stuff like stream VODs

(though not sure if I'll be able to have an upload every week like I did last month.)

Sunday: Youtube Shorts

Not sure yet if I'll have something every Saturday like I did last month. I didn't do much streaming last month outside of Dawn of Djinn. Though I do have things I could upload like Sweet Expedition previews and the highlights from the chill Legends stream I did the other day if I do put the time aside to edit them.

I did recently upload a new Game N Chill video so if you want to hear me ramble more about all that you can check that out...

...at least for the first half. I forgot the second half kind of turned into me rambling about Golden Sun Dark Dawn and the Pokemon Go Fest finale event... still, fun rambles IMO.

Okay. I'm gonna sign off now before I get too self conscious on the time I spent writing this when I could be doing any of the other things I already talked about getting done. Take care and see you all next week when I learn how to abridge things better.