Enemies Done
The baseline forms of my enemy list are complete! Slow and steady wins the race. 44 enemies squared away. I may end up adding more as development progresses but for now I have what I need to start building my enemy encounters. I've written a list of all the combat areas in the game and provided the level range of each area. I will be going through each area one by one, selecting the types of enemies you will face there and then create a version of that enemy at the appropriate level. I have a spreadsheet of stat ranges according to level and ability (ranging from low, medium, high to very high) that work off to assign the appropriate stats. It is going to be a process!
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| Woohoo! Spreadsheet!! And my notepads I use to keep track of stuff. |
I've been doing a tiny bit of play testing as I've created these enemies, just to make sure they use their abilities the way I want them to. This would all occur at LV1 settings. Now that I've started creating encounters with different levels, it's been interesting to see how the party stacks up against these enemies. The results I'm seeing are making me realise that I will still have a lot of tweaking to do as I go. I have to consider where the player will be at and what abilities and equipment they will have. Already at the start of the game in the 2nd area I've had to nerf an enemy because they were proving to be too strong! This happening even though they only had medium level stats and are meant to be one of the weakest enemies in the game. I will try not to tweak too much at first though, I want to just get all the encounters out and then have my play testers tell me how atrocious the balance is.
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| The window for creating combat encounters. Thrilling stuff. |
So one of the main reasons this game is going to be free on release is that I am only using the RTP (default) assets that RPG maker MV comes with. But the more I think about it and the more I see the work of others, I really do want more customized art. This would be a huge undertaking and is outside of the scope I have put in place to make sure I actually complete this thing. What I will probably end up doing is just modifying the assets just a little bit to reflect the characters a little better. But that will be at the bottom of the list of things to do.
I'm trying to get more inspiration for my game from different sources. I look at other game devs' projects on X (there is so much talent out there). I've been posting some polls on Reddit to see how people feel about NPCs, displaying levels on enemies and mechanics on how to tell your player to progress to the next area. I've also been trying to play more JRPGs. I recently played some RPG maker MV games: Harold and the Ice Queen, Relics of Aurelia and Exile's Journey. The first was for a game jam so it was short and sweet, the second is just a demo and the third is a full game that has been out since 2020. They each are very different yet all come from RPG Maker! It is quite inspiring to see what is possible. I am now trying to play a classic: Final Fantasy III (VI in Japan). The problem is finding the time! Between work, the family, studies and Cow Knight it's hard to fit it all in! I want to play this game the way I've never played JRPGs, which is to focus on the main story. Normally I like to grind a lot and be over-leveled, which in the process usually causes burnout or I become less invested in the story because of how long I take between story beats. Hopefully that will make the game more fun as fights will be the challenge they were designed to be. Which will in turn help me understand how to tweak my own combat encounters. We'll see.
I'm happy with the progress I am making, not just with the game but with my life in general. 2024 is off to a great start! Hopefully things can keep on this track.
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| An NPC I came across in FFXII Zodiac Age on Switch. |
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