September has been all about quality of life upgrades. I knocked out some more on our roadmap, so we’re now (presently) at 58% of the way to 1.0. Let’s get started.
One of the first big “features” I want to talk about are several of the new commands that were added — in particular the (cue Van Halen) “Jump.” This has been asked for, for quite a while. I extrapolated out the code that I had written internally via scripting and put it into one “nice” and concise command that is reusable. If you want more fine control of the mechanic (even as much as potentially making the jumping power adjust over time, etc), you’ll want to write your own, or adjust the duration, etc. For most people, though, this should (hopefully) help get you going.
I’ve also added support for changing out the graphics used by actors and entities on screen as well (and in battle!) as well. Most of this has been requested (but possible) thru other means for a while now, but I decided to make dedicated commands for them.
Previews now exist in a lot more areas of the editor than they did before — you can now see 3D model previews when selecting a sprite — and also a preview when selecting/changing Character Animations, Battle Poses, and Portrait Expressions.
Speaking of Portrait Expressions, it is now also possible to animate those and display them via text escape codes in your messages. That’ll allow you to adjust the portrait involved to change expression in the middle of text to reflect a change in their attitude and so forth.
A number of usability bugs and display issues were also fixed this month, as we move further and further towards 1.0. I had kept track of them in Discord, but started deleting them since the lists were all getting a bit long in the tooth.
On another note, we gained a number of resources from the very talented Tyler Warren. A number of folks noticed that we had a few prominent resource makers from the RPG Maker scene randomly enter the Discord. You’ll see a pack of monsters that will pair nicely with some of the Time Fantasy resources by Final Boss Blues.
October will be filled with more items from the roadmap to 1.0, as well as user requests and (most importantly) bug fixes for stability. Significant progress is being made. I could have a 1.0 by the end of the year at the current rate, but I’m not going to marry myself to it. I’d rather have a good, solid product that folks are very happy with.
As a note, following 1.0, I will likely be moving these updates to quarterly, unless something is otherwise warranted. I might make updates on significant feature milestones being completed (the long-sought Tactical Battle System). The goal is to give some information/recognition of what has been accomplished.
The code updates/cadence will likely be the same, but I’ll probably reserve big features to be built off of experimental branches and the like, while focusing on stability (which will be the “bulk” of updates). I’ll probably lean in and ask the community how they’d like updates as far as release schedule goes… do we continue with “updates” coming all the time or do we package a bunch of them all at once, once a quarter or month, then focus on fixing after? The prior feels more “early access” while the latter feels more “professional.” I’m not sure, so hopefully y’all will help me with this.
That’s it for September!
As always:
Thank you so much for your support so far. I’m looking forward to building this community further and giving you the engine you may not have known you always wanted!
