HELLO I just wanted to share some progress I've been making on my Gamemaker game I've been chipping away at in my free time :) For those unfamiliar, I've been working on a pirate RPG with a grid-based battle system for almost 1 year (!!!) and it's been a real treat to kind of teach myself coding and do a gamedev thing completely solo! As an artist, I've been trying my best to hold off on doing *too* much art and polish up front. This last year has been mostly me building under-the-hood systems so that I can get to a point where I will be 90% focused on content and 10% focused on functionality. I know that when I get to the art, I can handle it, it's all the other stuff that's new to me! SO since last time we spoke, I've checked off a lot of boxes on my monolithic whiteboard of things I need to make a playable demo. (monolithic whiteboard pictured below)

Also I perfectly understood everything about the Menu system I created except one line:

After all that math I was surprised to find that it was fairly straightforward to rough out an inventory system and pause screen that allows me to collect and use items (as well as look at player stats!)

Looking at everything I'd done so far it was becoming obvious that my key input handler was not working 100% of the time and was getting pretty messy. I came acrossJuju Adams Input Library and was able to not only fix my keyboard inputs but also integrate controller support in like 5 minutes. I LOVE when someone else does the work for me :'^) Huge shoutouts to juju for making what felt like a monumental task into something simple. Another unglamorous progression: save files!

ME? CREATING JSONS? I never would have thought. The greatest part is they are completely unencrypted so excuse me while I edit my jsons to give me 99999 HP. AND FINALLY something actually fun to look at: I penciled out Davy's walk animation so I can soon stop using duplicates of Trixie's sprites for him.

I am very excited to be getting close to the point where all I have to do is make content and art and not make a bunch of systems. I'm looking forward to using the Finish Your Game Jam that PIGSquad is hosting on itch in November to polish up the combat system and make a few enemy variations. After that, I think I'll be working on a lot of fun, showy stuff that I can share >:)

Watch this space! -Marlowe