TBH initially, I wasn't planning on making any more public updates on Dawn of Djinn until after second Mix was released and keeping them exclusive to Discord. But I've had a bit of a change of heart. ('Cause for one, it turns out that Discord isn't really much less safe from the people you don't want finding out you're making a mod, than more public servers. For sake of hype, I think I'm still going to refrain on making any major Youtube videos on it until after release, but this might not be the last blog post on the matter.)
I've made little updates here and there the past month as I worked through Dawn of Djinn, but I figured this would be a good time to bring them all together. Currently I've started playtesting the final portion of Venus Lighthouse. Granted that'll take longer than it sounds since I've been testing to assure it feels good both with and without Grand Djinn. I've went back to certain portions of the game to mess with dialogue, if only to see if I can abridge it a bit. I'm iffy if I want to commit to these text changes, but I figured I should at least try and see how it feels. Just the other day, I was working how to handle one of the puzzles I changed for Venus Lighthouse in version 1, now that mind-reading exists. I don't think I had enough space to do it exactly the way it was in version 1, but that resulted with me coming up with this for version 2. Have fun seeing if you can figure out the new riddle before the mod releases.
Though working in the Venus Lighthouse, it's finally hit me how much everything has come together. Though I don't want to hype up things too much yet, as there's still plenty of work to be done. Here's a list of things currently on my mind I need to do before releasing Dawn of Djinn Second Mix. There might be something I don't realize until after the fact though:
- Finish up Venus Lighthouse, including play-test going through the dungeon with and without Grand Djinn
- Play test and finish tweaking the final floor of the newly named optional dungeon.
- Go back to scenes that go on for a real long time (like any cut scene Babi is featured in) and see if there's any way for me to trim the fat without it coming off as botched English.
- While I'm at it there's one NPC I think I'll need to change their dialogue after the final boss fight, but that'll likely take hardly any time.
- Rework any cutscenes I overlooked to better fit into the context of Dawn of Djinn's lore, if needed. (Stuff like how I change dialogue in Imil to reflect Divine Rain replacing Ply.)
- "Fix" Avoid's dialogue boxes. I'm saving this for the very end because the bug changes any time I change dialogue. TBH I'm real worried about this one in particular. With dialogue actually being a part of this release, there's gonna be a huge problem if this lands on a plot critical piece of dialogue.
- Rebalance the entire mod for casual mode, so that version can be released along side veteran mode (my currently pending name for the default mod)
This one could go by really fast or really slow, it depends how much extra work needs to be done after lowering all the numbers to something closer to base Golden Sun.
- Sit down and actually make some dang videos to show-case all the new features of Dawn of Djinn so that'll be ready to around the time of Dawn of Djinn's release.
- Check and assure moves and abilities are balanced to the best of my abilities. Though I think I'll probably make at least one minor balancing patch after release once I get to see others playing the game. At that point though, balance changes should be minor and only matter to those really pushing the challenge of the mod.
- Make brutal mode, though this will likely be a post-release project.
And I think that's it. Once Dawn of Djinn Second Mix is out, we can talk more about my future with modding after words. Because while I am still interested in Golden Sun work, I've also been trying to build up skills with software like Godot so that I can make actual games. I'm still unclear about how I'm going to spread time between my hobbies at the moment, but hopefully by the time this project is done I'll be able to talk more about the future.
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