Chibi NPC reveal + Devlog #102 + poll results (Patreon)

NPC chibis!
Oh!
You might recognize the 2 Sheep girls to the left, who were recently revealed. They now have a name, too! The tall one is Nina, and the short one is Noni.
The other 2 Sheep girls don't have a name, they're random NPCs you'll see around in a new town, similar to most of the Voleians in Sablee.
And then, there's a new Voleian! In case you haven't recognized her outfit yet, it's the same as Vuu ^^
This is what all Voleian knights wear. There are actually only a few Voleian knights and I wanted each one to have their own sprite but there was no time for that, so in the next demo at least, all Voleian knights will look like this.
I'm very happy with how these turned out. I actually learned a bunch of new things in the process too!
There are a few more chibis I drew, but I'm keeping the rest for the next devlog :B

Once again, I was very very busy.
Some of what I'll be talking about might not make total sense if you've missed previous devlogs where I mentioned new mechanics/changes, but given how close the demo is I won't bother reexplaining this time. Sorry :'(
I'd just begun working on implementing new monstergirls at the end of last month (the poll ones you know of, and some unrevealed ones too). As is often the case it was a bit more work than expected, but it still went great!
To clarify the process, each monstergirl needs a set of spells that fit her traits/appearance/personality and several sets of shapes to be summoned during the fight. I also need to keep in mind what types of oyons and other blocks will appear in the area where you'll fight her, so I can adjust her weaknesses and resistances.
Then, they also need an AI! In the previous demo, they would chose spells completely randomly. Each spell was part of a category (attack, heal, buff, debuff or other). A category would be chosen randomly, and if several spells were part of that category one of these would then be picked randomly as well. And that was SHIT! >:(
I made an AI system a while back to fix this, but it turned out not to be enough for my needs, so I spent some time improving it. I also removed that category based selection. Each spell now has its own probabilities of being chosen depending on the situation. Spells can now have several categories as well (which I guess is more like tags) in case they have multiple effects (attack + debuff, for example). This is reflected by the little icon that appear above the enemy spell's name while it's being cast.
So! Once I've figured out the strategy I want a monstergirl to use, I of course need to test it and adjust it if necessary. I did my best to ensure each fight would feel different, not only through the shapes and strategy used, but also through the spells themselves. There were some surprises in the previous demo with things such as the zero grav spell or Nightmare's Dream Wave, but you can expect a lot of new interesting effects now, many of which will also be usable by the player. Two birds with one stone!
The final task is to balance the stats (HP, defense, casting speed, summoning speed, drops), but I also need to know how strong on average the player will be when they encounter each monster, and what spell they'll have available. This is the only part that's not finished but I need more pieces to be in place for that, so I've set it aside for now.

I actually made a lot of other much needed changes and fixes related to fights!
For example, I added new block types! I won't go into details about these, but these should be fun surprises ^^
The way defense works has been updated too. If you had 10 defense, an attack of 15 damage would instead inflict 5 damage. Pretty uninteresting. Now, defense can only negate up to 70% of the damage received. There are ways to influence that percentage during fight, which increases its strategic potential!
What else... Energized oyons used to be spawn every multiple of 10 combos, in an amount of comboNumber/10 (so 10 combos spawn 1, 20 spawn 2, etc...), but that felt like too much of an advantage so I reduced it to simply 1 every 10 combos.
The heart weapons have been improved and balanced in various ways too.
Several monstergirl battle sprites had details I wasn't pleased with, so I fixed all of that. You might notice minor differences here and there compared to the revealed art! For example, the Goblin now has a little nose in game.
There is more but I'd never end if I listed all of it, so I'll stop there ^^

As I mentioned earlier, I also drew more NPC chibis! And not just more, but all of them! There are no chibis left to draw for the next demo! ^^

My next step is to draw new items and implement them, add monstergirls as playable characters, and then balance everything. There is more of course if you look at the TODO list below, but I'm getting there!

In fact, I have a final release date for the Patreon demo: September 30th!
As late as possible within the time frame I set before. If my calculations are correct I should be done a bit before that, but I'm going to play it safe and put as much time as I can on my side. If that lets me finish some of the optional TODO list, even better!

Until then, the NPC polls will resume like before.
And, speaking of, the winner of the latest alt costume poll was Succubus! It was a pretty close call, with Nightmare and Fairy in second and third place respectively. There might be more alt costume polls eventually!

And that's all I've got for now! The next devlog will be the last before the demo ^^

TODO list (non optional):

̶-̶ ̶N̶e̶w̶ ̶M̶e̶n̶u̶ ̶N̶P̶C̶s

 ̶-̶ ̶A̶d̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶u̶p̶d̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶s̶t̶e̶r̶g̶i̶r̶l̶ ̶f̶i̶g̶h̶t̶s̶

- Balance stats

 ̶-̶ ̶D̶r̶a̶w̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶o̶n̶d̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶c̶h̶i̶b̶i̶s̶ ̶(̶a̶k̶a̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶o̶r̶t̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶N̶P̶C̶ ̶c̶h̶i̶b̶i̶s̶)̶

 ̶-̶ ̶D̶r̶a̶w̶ ̶t̶e̶r̶t̶i̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶c̶h̶i̶b̶i̶s̶

- Draw & implement new items (ingredients, spells, relics, trinkets and more)

̶-̶ ̶D̶r̶a̶w̶ ̶&̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶l̶e̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶p̶e̶s

̶-̶ ̶I̶m̶p̶l̶e̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶p̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶v̶e̶s

̶-̶ ̶C̶r̶e̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶l̶o̶r̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶r̶o̶o̶m̶s

̶-̶ ̶I̶m̶p̶l̶e̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶c̶u̶t̶s̶c̶e̶n̶e̶s

- Fully finish rooms (chests, puzzles, cutscene triggers)

- NPC dialogue

- Party interaction system

- Party interactions (some)

- Random NPC encounters (some)

- Music

- SFX

- Various other changes (a bunch of minor stuff that's not really worth getting into here, like block types per area, item prices, etc)

TODO list (optional):

- Chibi BE

- Party interactions (some)

- Random NPC encounters (some)

- Quests

- New Alchemy puzzles

- Almanach descriptions