Bytebeasts: November 2023 DevBlog (Part Two)

Continuing Work Completed...

Hello again! I think for the second part I will do a "lightning round" of work completed up until the 2nd playtest build was released:

• March 2023: Completed shop system for purchasing and selling items. Completed kiosk system to switch/release Bytebeasts from storage. Completed Inn/Healing Station system for player to recover injured or deleted Bytebeasts.
• April 2023: Added several more character sprites with movement animations. Created an Emote system for character dialog. Created indoor tilesets and updated indoor buildings to have interior walls to create rooms.
• May 2023: Created/designed interior rooms for larger buildings such as the Hacker Academy building, Hacker Arena, Cyber Police Station, etc.
• June-July 2023: Took a small break due to life/work events.
• August 2023: Began implementation of the quest system. Some features behind the quest system includes preventing the player from battling an enemy hacker more than once, preventing items to be collected from chests more than once, allowing quests to have different states (inactive, start, active, completed), and showing/hiding objects in a scene for necessary events. Implemented Bytebeast evolution event sequences. Added dialog to NPCs for different rooms/areas/scenes. Implemented tutorial menus for understanding the combat system. Implemented player menus for viewing player info, quests, unlocked tutorials, and unlocked hacker skills. Updated DialogManager to activate events and consider NPC/Player movement.
• September 2023: Created scenes for Riverlands Zone, BIOS Town, and Binary Forest (dungeon area). Created puzzle scenes for Binary Forest. Created puzzle doors for Binary Forest. Updated menu UI for better readability/information. Created field backgrounds for Riverlands Zone and Binary Forest. Added option for player to choose body type/gender and their friend NPC to be the opposite. Created battle animations for bytebeast skills. Created the "Circuit Storm" particle system. Updated enemy team logic to have different types of difficulty and gameplans. Updated skill data to have a Close, Mid, and Far range attack.
• October 2023: Updated the battle UI to display more information to the player. Update data for Bytebeast skills and traits to learn at various levels. At this point, I had a lot of the systems working, but needed to have them work together, crush any bugs, and polish.
• November 2023: Implemented new game scene and a LOT of testing for game difficulty or bugs before release.

I'm sure if I didn't take a break, I would've reached releasing the prototype earlier this summer. The synopsis I wrote only details a fraction of all the work I put into this. I hope more people will get a chance to check out the game soon!

Prototype Build Two Impressions

I was honestly glad that returning testers was impressed with the changes made from the first one. However, I'm still missing some polish, and bugs are still very apparent. The first bug I think is hilarious since it's just NPCs sliding for movement instead of animating. I like to call it "moon-walking" whenever I see it happen. I tested the game both in the editor and build on my computer with NPC animation working just fine, but learned that results can be different on another's computer.

Slide to the left!

Movement animation working as intended on another's PC

Thankfully it's not a game breaking bug, but it can create some funny moments for events. I received a lot of good feedback about my game art/world. Testers were already writing down good impressions once they were able to explore the first town and zone. A lot of areas have their own expressions of life, but my personal favorite is the Riverlands Zone, which to my surprise, many testers missed during their first round of testing. 

Calming music with vibrant colors!

Many testers was also in for a big surprise upon visiting the second city! While my game may remind you the nostalgia of Pokemon, it is NOT Pokemon in more ways than one. If you didn't prepare a team or level up before making it to BIOS Town, you were greeted with your first difficult/challenging wall: a hacker battle against your friend! Additionally, if you lose, it is a game over. One tester did a recording of this battle and won with careful strategy despite not knowing a battle would occur. I was genuinely excited and surprised to see their win because one of their Bytebeasts also took a brutal KO. I was certain they were going to lose as one member was deleted.

Underleveled, a buffed enemy, and supereffective damage!

Gameplay difficulty would continue to become more diverse and interesting in the playtest as you fight the dungeon bosses and enter the hacker tournament. The music for each of these encounters made the fights especially exciting and teased players to want more as playtest ended.

There's several other bugs that people discovered, or QoL suggestions regarding the game and UI for improvement. One suggestion is allowing the player to use attacks at a different range, thus allowing the player to move and attack as long as they didn't move earlier in the turn (more power to the player). 

Implemented this new feature pretty quickly!

Goals for December

My plans are to continue polishing the game features currently implemented. Movement isn't super smooth for a top-down RPG, combat could tell the player more information, and fix the various bugs players found. I'll release another build to test these changes. If things are much better, I can start working towards developing more of the game and slowly start to market an audience. Thank you all for reading this month's blog post. Until next time!