Hi dudes so quick update on the changes and tweaks for January.

You can just watch the video if you prefer.  But here's the details.

Porting of levels and design to MZ

First up I've updated the city which also gets a name change, with the move away from a real Celtic world Tara is now known as Nyrefall.  Visually its dirtier, gruffer and kind of scummy.  The big challenge here as always was isometric z-index in a square tile based engine.  Not fun by any stretch, the solution instead of sorting the player behind the layers was to sort the layers based off the player, so basically the the player is behind something, the entire graphical layer of the map moves up and down.

Secondly was the DeadWood change, its now DeadWood not DeadWoods (an homage to another rpg maker game?)  The challenge here was simple, just make it look better than the old MV version, so I changed up the trees from the dead broken ones of the MV game to something no so bland looking.  I also replaced the white /purple flowers marking map exits with a brighter easier to see yellow.  This works better because these trees are more cluttered.

World Map/Fast Travel Map

This has been completely updated and rebuilt from scratch.  Focusing heavily on giving the player a smoother experience.  I'm not sure on whether the Secret of Mana style huge interconnected map will return but fast travel is now there for those who want it.  The challenge here was the lack of a decent overworld plugin so I went about eventing the entire thing using Visustella's picture choices and choice common events.

2nd Playable Character - The Wolf (Monk Class)

So joining our roster is none other than The Wolf, joining pretty early he is a strong defensive style monk to do you tanky duties.  What else can I say dudes a mf'ing Werewolf.

Battle Tweaks

With regards to battle I've been tweaking the environment system so when a player casts a weather effect it last for only one turn.  The reason for this was to prevent the player being repeatedly hit with the same status effect every turn.  This provides a much more balanced affair and moves us farer away from games that inspired the battle system.

Other than that I've been polishing some animations and other minor details to make things flow.

Talent Tweaks

So big changes here, from here on out only Undying will have access to perception, charisma and talents.  The reason for this is he's party locked and I want to make these hidden traits and talents.  Not a lot to do to show this, just believe me when I say it works.

So thats about it, a busy month with lots of progress, hopefully leading to a demo release as early as next month.

Wishing you guys all the best for 2022.