Kupi's Weekly Friday Game Dev Status Report

The Nimsters content editor application can now edit rival Tamers. I did not get to the Item editor due to having to make some fixes to the Path and Place editors as I tried to use them, and also because the Item format probably needs some significant revisions of its own.

In line with other moves I've been making in the design space, I'm jettisoning some unnecessary complexity. "Nimster treats" serve a dual purpose in the game as a something like the game's Pokeball, in that you can throw them at wild Nimsters to encourage them to become tame, and the Pokepuff / bean / sandwich / whatever that raises their "friendship value", which ultimately just serves as a parallel leveling system that raises their stats by up to 20% at max value. All that I'm keeping; what I'm throwing out is the notion of "treat flavor" which controls what kinds of treats a Nimster will eat. The idea being that you need meat-flavored treats for carnivorous monsters, plant-type treats for herbivores, and so on. Henceforth Nimster treats will just work, whatever monster you're giving them to. I plan to have the item description for one of the upper-tier treat items poke fun at this. (FavorBites: Nimster Treat (Tier 4). "No matter when you reach into the box, you will always pull out your Nimster's favorite flavor. How this is accomplished is a tightly-kept trade secret subject to a vicious campaign of corporate espionage.")

Likewise, previously I had planned to separate status-curing items by the status effect they cure. While this would create much fertile ground for comical item description entries, I get the sense that it would be a pain in the ass to fill out that matrix and also to have to micro-manage your restoratives to that degree. So, like HP, Stamina, and Friendship items, there will simply be a progression of all-purpose status cures (since, unlike Pokemon, the status effects in Nimsters can be layered both among themselves and in intensity of the individual status effect).

I've gotten the new transit system working such that you can set out from one town, experience a series of randomized events, and eventually arrive at your destination. There was an amusing bug that I forgot to decrement the distance to the destination after playing each event, giving the player the sense that they were moving forward but actually they weren't getting anywhere. That's a familiar sensation, somehow, but I can't quite place from where...

If I really kick ass this week and fight off my chronic depression, I might be able to stand up the item editor, get some basic items made, do an MVP of the Nimster Livery, and put together the intro sequence, hometown, and first route, then publish it into a transmissible format. ... but having said that and looked at it, I personally wouldn't hold my breath. Hope, or don't, as you prefer.