Meeting Logs - Hexadoon/another-90s-rpg GitHub Wiki

Friday 7/24/2020 11:30-12:00

Plan to input sounds today, as well as finish and input battle animations over the weekend
Backgrounds aim to be finished early next week
Priority for backgrounds: could reuse assets as needed, especially houses and such, but the interior of Maddie's house is the only one that can't be made from reused assets
Won't have full tutorial, but start and pause menus with have the controls built into them for the player to view at any time
No dialogue boxes needed if only need dialogue for the inn
Inn could replace of the houses in the town in order to lessen work needed for MVP
Houses and inn will be on a separate layer from the background for Tabitha to be able to manipulate them easily

Wednesday 7/22/2020 11:30-12:00

Graphics - attack animations and backgrounds still needed, as well as possible pick-up items over the weekend
No other weapons need to be designed
Over weekend, Mikael might redo the first background with more houses on it, as well as create the forest path and clearing
Also need to think about the interior of Maddie's house
Tabitha is going to work on the start screen and the XP system
Mikael is going to work on the battle sprites - discussed use of 1st special attack option for all characters, no need for more than that at the moment
Discussed Madeline's healing - supposed to do damage first, but wasn't - worked out that instead of healing on Maddie's turn, it will heal on the affected player's turn instead
Decided against MGL Damage/MGL Defense for now
Need explosions for Sam's special attack and sand for Rose's Pocket Sand
Also need extra sprite for Sam's card attack, flicking and such
Hierarchy of priorities: animations, background, props
Lindsay will begin to work on the readme.me and such
Diner in the town: need sprite of the man in the diner
Need to find music and sound effects - music, sand, walking, cheers for Ted's attack...
Melee attacks - jump in, jump out - jumping easier to animate than running in and out on Tabitha's end

Monday 7/20/2020 11:30-12:00

Demo looks good for gameplay
Mikael will create background for battle scenes, battle sprites
Tabitha will input the sprites animations into battle scenes, pause screen

Friday 7/17/2020 11:30-12:00

Tabitha's plans for next week - action commands are not working so fixing those, timing-based bugs
Mikael's plans for next week - mushroom sprites, then battle scene sprites, and menu designs if need more work but not as necessary in Godot
Mushrooms look not cuddly, necessarily, but cute
do enemies have more over-world movement sprites - won't have to do movement animations, just idle ones

Wednesday 7/15/2020 11:30-12:00

Discussed ending goals for the project - what we expect to finish by the end of the month - which are listed at the end of the rough planning document
Decided on fully-body tackle when a character decides to hit one of the enemies
Characters will jump forward to attack, jump back into position and then idle in position
Mikael will work on the over-world forest design and battle animations
Tabitha will work on the combat system for Friday; will also look into text files for dialogue if she has time at the end of the project
Jackbox on Friday if everyone's free! :D See y'all Friday!

Monday 7/13/2020 11:30-12:00

Discussion between whether or not to work on character sprites of the forest path - will work on character sprites
Also decide on vertical forest path
Wednesday - walking animation, then forest path if have time
Fighting mechanics - not sure if it will be finished by Wednesday, but going to try
Character animations and attacks - basic non-flashy attacks; not that many special attacks, about one for each character
Question about files - how to actually play the game
Download files, create new project, drag new files into Godot; Project -> Project Settings -> Autoload
Can paste new script as needed into file, or delete old files and upload new ones
Mushroom guys - thick mushrooms, 2 1/2' to 3' mushrooms; will look like mushrooms when still until revealed to be alive
Mushrooms have different basic colors, with Steve and Carl as unique versions to signify their specialness

Friday 7/10/2020 11:30-12:00

Looked at Mikael's character designs - love the looks, but Sam needs to be shorter
Going for pixel-art style - concept art will focus on that, including battle field for Tabitha
Discussion about HP after battle - should be left with 1 HP afterwards so they can find an inn
For the future: working on dialogue, actually coding the fighting/attacking mechanics
Next up is to work further on character designs, and then work on the actual character sprites - need sprites for walking, battle, etc...
This weekend will be mostly brainstorming how to do the above things
Layout of the woods - start with initial corridor, which has the battle with the first couple of mushrooms, then into a clearing where Sam is, and then into a larger forest area, then into another open area where the player will find Rose
Inns only appear going into the second town because the first town has Madeline's house as a free place to heal up
AP stat for attacks rather than MP
See everyone on Monday! :D

Wednesday 7/8/2020 11:30-12:00

Tabitha's computer is broken! :( Should be fixed by tonight, but only have tomorrow to complete any tasks, so probably no coding today
Mikael and Tabitha posted updates in the Discord for their work from Monday and Tuesday
Mikael drew up concepts for the battle scenes - decided that sideways was a little too clunky, but 45-degrees could become too much, so Mikael will concept something that's in-between the two
Discussed way to signal to player when to properly dodge/block attacks - monster moves into path of their target, then goes in for the attack so player knows who is being targeted
Ranged will line up with their target in the same way, but from farther away
Mikael will work on character concepts - but needs to know more about the characters in order to do that - as well as temp battle screens, and if possible, concept the inn a little bit more
Tabitha to begin to work on the combat scenes, as well as rewards system
Sam and Rose will likely not be in the tutorial - only Madeline and Ted
Mushroom enemies for tutorial are biped, but have just learned to walk so not too great at it
Tabitha will look into JSON stuff for dialogue in the future

Monday 7/6/2020 11:30-12:00

Created tasks on GitHub for graphics
Plan to test damage and health systems by adding static temp assets and running into them, to focus on combat design
No effort needed to be put into the temp designs since mostly going to be used to test
Useful for Tabitha to know where things are going to go - designing combat isn't the immediate next plan since need to work on the movement system
Idea to complete HP, money, walking systems, and then the combat systems to finish off
Questions about mechanics - is the 45-degree angle the best angle for combat?
Mario RPG has the entire game at that angle - maybe could do an isometric or close up version for the battle scenes
Mikael will make some mock-up concept arts for how the battle scenes may look - possibly look into 90-degree or 0-degree angles
45-degree allows for a better perspective of enemies as opposed to top-down, and better image of movement; also a little harder to draw, just not sure if it's the right path to go
Darkest Dungeon, full sideways, too much - need to feel the depth of the battlefield
Overworld in background - static vs RPG background - tile sets or images?
Can be image with inns and buildings as sprites so can be replicated easier, as well as placed so that the player can walk behind them
Create background and foreground as a result, with trees and buildings
In terms of visuals, start the game with 90s style, then progressively become more fantasy as they become used to the RPG elements
10 HP to start, 200 starting money
Madeline is 21, Ted is 15-16, Sam is 10-11, and Rose is 12-13
Keys vs. WASD - keys easier to use on Tabitha's end, so decided on keypad
Goals for Tabitha - work on health and money systems, as well as walking around, and possibly work on the inn systems and TPK system
Goals for Mikael - any temps Tabitha needs, overworld background, concepts for battle scene

Friday 7/3/2020 3:30-4:30

Everyone introduced themselves, and contact information was changed for the wiki.
Focus of the project will be on combat: most important part of the game is the combat system
Decided that characters on the over-world would follow one central character, Earthbound-style
Visual inspiration - Earthbound, other 1990s style RPGS, set in America
Over-world map will NOT be at a 45-degree angle; battle maps will be tilted, though
Different over-world and battle spirits needed for the changes in angles
Meetings were set for Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 11:30 AM, and estimated to last between 30 minutes and 45 minutes
Debated between art styles (pixel or more illustrated look)
Possibility to implement defense system in the future? Might be a future development if the rest of the combat, reward, and healing systems are finished on time
Actual combat mechanics will be implemented a little later - plan is to originally start with a combat interface, and basics of a rewards system
Tabitha plans on checking out one of the Paper Mario games to get a feel for how the RPG combat should feel
The project will be made with Godot
Decided that if the entire team is wiped out, the player will be reset to their last healing point; not want to have to implement a saving system as well in only one month (which is totally understandable)
No work over the weekend! See everyone on Monday :)