Regarding the Previous Update

Guardians of RPG v1.01 has officially been released a little over a week ago and while I am proud of what I was able to accomplish over the last 6 months, I recognize that there were a lot of shortcomings not just story-wise but game design wise that I want to fix in the upcoming update:

1.) Save feature

This admittedly should have been  one of the first things that I should've implemented in a game, and yet embarrassingly enough it was the last thing I thought about (such is the result of a novice game developer I suppose). Regardless, we learn from that kind of screw up here, and so in version 1.02, there will be a save feature in the game to save your game progress. At least this way if the game crashes you won't have to start all over. Speaking of which:

2.) Bugs

There were a lot of bugs in this game (like a lot) such is to be expected in the beta, but there were also just a lot that I had not anticipated while developing the game and testing it myself, which is why I am grateful that I had people willing to give this a shot. That being said, here are a list of the known bugs that I will working to fix in the next version update:

• Sprite Cropping (some sprites are not cropped well and can be slightly visible)
• Interact-able objects like signs and NPCs crash the game if you attempt to talk to them
• Battle scenes will run in an infinite loop if your character dies but your allies are still alive in battle
• Player can clip side of stairs and other objects with scene transitions in them and still be transported to new scenes
• Music is not looped correctly.
• And much... much more lol

3.) UI designs

Through the survey I had received word that the UI was fine but could be improved, and I firmly believe that to be the case as well. That's why in the new update, I will be upgrading the previous UI for a better one in the Unity Assets shop. I believe spending less time trying to make and search for free assets and trying to incorporate them into the game can instead be used to use Unity Assets that are designed to work in unity. So far I see great improvements to the overall UI and UX just by incorporating these assets from Honeti Games into the new version.

4.) Map Designs

The game's sprites look pretty good (definitely better than anything I could've done on my own, so well done to all of the artists who worked on the sprites) However, my game's map is a pretty good example of what it's like to have all of the art supplies at your fingertips but still not know how to draw. Essentially what I'm trying to say is the map designs could use some work, which are one of the things that I am going to updating with the new version. The outside maps will be getting a revamp, becoming less spaced out and look less like a barren grass town, and certain interiors will be redesigned with those same principles in mind.

5.) Balancing Issues

The game suffered from another challenge that often plagues game developers/designers, and that is balancing issues. I struggled with making the game challenging but fun to play for all archetypes. Instead, the game would be rather easy for some archetypes, and really difficult for others. On top of that, with each subsequent set back, the player was put further and further behind than they would otherwise be if they had chose another archetype, and that is not a fun experience. I would want the game to be enjoyed by people who love a variety of archetypes, which means making it so that the following is changed:

• stats for players do not balloon after each level increase
• Stat Changing Moves can only reduce/boost a character's stat by 1/2 of the character's total. (a character with base speed 5 can only go down to 3 or only go up to 7)
• energy points (EPs) will be introduced in the game to limit the amount of times you can use a certain move before needing to restore it.
• xp needed for next level will now be level * 3 points
• amount of xp will be boosted by level * 2.5 points for major quests, and level * 1.75 for minor quests

6.) New Chapter

For those who have played Guardians of RPG v1.01, you could kinda discern that there is an over arching narrative in the game already and you were only ever gotten to experience just a tiny portion of it: Chapter One - Tiro Town. Well in this update, I will be releasing another chapter of the game: Chapter Two - Toxic Trails, which will take place immediately after the events of chapter one, and further introduce the plot of the game, while expanding on certain stories that were left unfinished.

Concluding Statements

I don't have any other issues at the moment besides these that I want to implement in the next update (I kinda think these are a lot already) but I would also want to work on not only writing better code, but organizing my game's design/archetype in a way so that all I really need to do is expand on the current iteration of the game, instead of having to redo everything all over again as a result of poor planning. All of this is gonna require more learning on my part, and while I want to be able to finish all of this as soon as possible, I have decided to give myself another 6 months for this project (just because I still work a normal 9 to 5 and have other responsibilities outside of this). But once the architecture of the game is done, I would hope to be able to roll out more updates at a faster rate.