Hello everyone!

Today is the last Monday of the month, which means it's time for the monthly progress report. Here we're gonna talk about the progress that I made for the month of April, if I completed any of the weekly/monthly goals, what I have left to accomplish, and more. 

Full disclosure, this might be the month that went the absolute quickest for me. I have gone entire days without working on the game and as such was completely surprised when I found out the month was almost over and was time for a monthly report. To be fair I do have a few more days before it's actually May, but you'll see what I mean in my updates. Without further ado, let's jump into it.

New Toxic Trails Levels

So my first major accomplishment this month was creating the maps for the Toxic Trails level. The scenes look really cool, the lighting, the particle effects, and the sprites give off a completely different atmosphere than that of Tiro Town, and that was kinda the goal I want for each and every location to feel like it's a completely different world from each other. All of the lessons that I took from this I want to also implement it when designing maps for future levels. 

Overall, I created 10 new scenes for this level:

• Route 1
• Route 2
• Route 3
• Route 4
• Route 5
• Route 6
• Route 7
• Forest Home
• Tower of Elixir 1
• Tower of Elixir 2

NPC Naturalness

I also created scripts that helped with NPC naturalness. This means NPCs' dialogue will now change depending on how far you are in the game's story. This allows for the NPCs to feel a bit more natural and they will be able to give you more valuable information depending on what quest you're doing. I thought this would be a nice touch, and it was.

New Sprites

I have been able to create new sprites for the Toxic Trails story line. This will help with the uniqueness of the game by having characters that you can only see in my game vs the sprites that anyone can buy from GIFor Vyrell. While this was  challenging, I liked how each of the sprites I made looked, and I think I might want to continue doing this in the future for more unique characters.

Battle Simulator

I... Started working on the Battle Simulator, but really I have only created how the battles will look visually. I haven't created any of the code that will be responsible for actually making the battles for the game. Visually, though, it's already an improvement from my previous battle scenes that I've used for v1.01, and I have ideas to make the Battle Simulator even better and more unique as well.

Weekly Goals

The goal that I gave for myself this week was to create the cut scenes for Toxic Trails.... And in didn't do it lol (I'm sorry) the last few weeks I have been focusing on some other projects and responsibilities, and because I'm only one person, it kinda meant putting the cut scenes to the wayside. However, I had a general outline for how I wanted the Toxic Trails story line to go, and I have created scripts for most of the cut scenes already. All that is left is to actually make them, and then, for the most part, Toxic Trails will be completed as well. 

Once the cut scenes for all levels are done, I will be able to focus on the Battle Simulator and other quality of life changes like creating a map, adding music and sfx, and so on. So I think that will be my goal for the month of May: finish the cut scenes for Toxic Trails, and finish the Battle Simulator and if I have time some quality of life changes before June.

Summary

I am grateful to be able to work on Guardians of RPG. This game has been an idea of mine for a little over 2 years, and now it's become so much more than that.its something i can tangibly see with my eyes, something my friends and family can see and recognize as a legitimate game that streamers and other people can play. I don't know how far I can take this, but my hope is that I can be able to finish my vision for the game so that everyone will be able to see it. Thank you to the ones who have constantly been supportive with your words of encouragement and by reading my devlogs as it truly means a lot. I will see you all next week.