Devlog #072: Base features are done! (Patreon)

December was a busy month!

To be completely honest, I wasn't able to complete the hydragirl in November since she has so much stuff going on in her design, so I had to take a few days to finish her in December.

After that, I switched to programming to finish the few things I wanted to do.

A rare bug can occur in the current demo where oyons will sometimes be aligned, but won't disappear as they should. Just moving them again does the trick, but I don't want that to happen in the final game. On top of that, I even had 2 blocks fuse with each other one time, and I had no idea how that happened. The fighting system was actually the very first thing I did when I began working on BEW, and that code was very dated and full of unoptimized stuff.
So instead of fixing the bugs, I remade the whole system cleanly! I can't see a reason for these bugs to occur anymore, and everything runs more smoothly than before. On top of that, it will be easier for me to add new blocks and effects in the future!

I also took advantage of this to add and change a few things. In the demo, it's possible for the puzzle grid's gravity to be cancelled. This used to be a player buff, but I've changed it to something I called a field effect. Field effects last for some time and don't count as a buff or debuff. It's possible for several field effects to be acitve at the same time, but refilling the grid will cancel them all.
In alchemy mode, field effects stay active until the puzzle is reset.
I've already added another new effect, and there might be a few more later once I begin adding new spells, monsters, relics etc.

More of a small change, but clearing oyons will now create small mana particles that will fly toward your character instead of a "+1" appearing on top of a cleared oyon, in the same way energy already works. Activating bonus blocks can now reward you with mana instead of energy as well!

A complaint I saw a few times was that there was no other way to get rid of cursed oyons other than clearing them. I also wanted a way to make super oyons that would give more mana when cleared, so I melded both ideas by introducing energized oyons! Clearing an energized oyon will give you triple the mana. If there are energized oyons on the board, new cursed oyons won't be created, and energized oyons will be de-energized instead. In the same way, if there are cursed oyons on the board, new energized oyons won't be created, and cursed oyons will be uncursed instead, turning back into normal oyons.
While I'll probably add a relic that can energize oyons, there is a way to create them! Every 10 combo, 1 oyon will be energized, +1 per 10 combo. So basically at 10 combo, 1 oyon will be energized. At 20, 2 will be energized, and so on. For this reason, building a combo is now a great way to both deal with cursed oyons, and to get even more mana through energized oyons!

I did fix a few minor thing as well, and there's a good chance I'll keep making small changes here and there until the next demo, but now that all the main features have been added, I'll be able to add new content to the game!

First of all, I've been working on the story since the next demo will contain the actual beginning of the game. I already had a bunch of things ready, so I've been improving the story and setting since then. I want to make sure everything makes sense first, but as it stands the story events that will occur in the demo are just about figured out!

Also since I'll need to add a few new NPCs (like Vam and Vanille), I've been thinking about holding some kind of small contest where the winner would be able to choose which monstergirl one of the new NPCs should be. I might also try some new types of polls at some point, like a monstergirl popularity poll with no mods, or a normal poll except the mod selection is chosen by me (thank you Otto :B) , stuff like that. I don't know when it will happen, but I thought I'd mention it anyway!

And that's it for now! I'll be drawing the Succubus and Kobold this month, and I'll focus completely on the next demo afterwards until it's out! ^^