What's New - 1/25/2017

*Made a few more slight alterations to the Overworld map, but nothing especially noteworthy.

*As of now, the game has no music, on account of I'm still not sure what I want or where I want it from (the default music that comes with the software vs. either self-composed or 3rd party). I've been experimenting with the default music and had an idea: In town, the music plays at normal volume, but when the player enters a building, the volume is lowered. If, for example, the standard volume is 90, then walking into a house or store would cause it to drop to about 50 (give or take). Upon leaving, the volume would return to its normal setting.

*I'm happy to report that an "upgrade" system is now in effect.



This system was created so that if a player needs better gear, but can't afford to buy all-new equipment, they can have their current weapon upgraded instead.



The cost of upgrading will depend on the weapon. I used a Broad Sword for the above example, which can be upgraded for about 250 coins. Compare that to the Long Sword, Ami's next step on the weapon ladder. The Long Sword costs 2,200 coins and adds +18 to her ATK, while upgrading only adds +2 to ATK but is almost 2000 coins cheaper.

Upgraded weapons will have a + added to show that the upgrade has been obtained. Each weapon can be upgraded once, and only for an increase in its ATK.

Note that a characters starting weapon and final weapon cannot be upgraded.

**Edit: Except for Tysessor, whose starting weapon is a Broad Sword.**

Self-sabotage and non-death Game Over's.

Have you ever played an RPG and thought something along the lines of "I wonder what would happen if I got rid of this super-important item?" or maybe were faced with making a vital decision and wanted to know if anything would happen if you chose an answer that was the total opposite of the 'correct' answer?

LifeWeaveR will now give you the chance to find out. Early into this blog I talked about how making certain choices wouldn't affect the games ending, only what happens BEFORE the ending. This is discussed in the post titled "Features".

These types of decisions are still present, but now so are ones that actually WILL affect it. I'd rather not go into detail about it but a good example is the part of the story where Ami is on the verge of saying "Screw this" and abandoning the quest. If you want to, you can make the decision to do just that. If you do so, the party will attempt to continue the journey without Ami but the members will all perish as a direct result, leading to a very un-satisfing Game Over.

There are other ways that you can prompt a Game Over besides that. If an item is absolutely critical to finishing the game and you decide to do something completely retarded like sell it, guess what? Game Over. You got rid of the item vital to the quest, and since you can't complete the game without it, that means you have royally screwed yourself and will receive a very un-satisfing Game Over.

If it's an item that is not game-breaking but still very important, and you decide to sell or toss it somewhere, then while you may not get a Game Over, you will certainly have made the game much more difficult than it had to be.

Edit: In reference to the above paragraph, here's a good example of what I'm talking about.

To reach the second FGM fragment, the party is required to go to the Alistine Ice Cavern. There, they discover that the entrance is buried in snow and must be excavated with a snow shovel. The mayor gives them his for free and remarks about how expensive it is to buy one.

If you so desire, you can actually go sell it for 5 coins. If you do, however, it's going to come back to bite you in the ass because the only other way to get one is buying one from the item shop at a price of 3000C.

What's New - 1/16/2017

*Finally quit dragging ass and finished the event where Pria joins the party. I.still can't believe that something that important to the story took so long to complete.

*I'm having to devote a large part of the development time to proofreading the dialogue between party members (not just to each other but to NPCs also). If anyone reading this ever decides to make their own game, heres a word of advice: Make sure that all of your proofreading and margin alignment and all that good shit is done AS YOU GO, don't wait until the games 90% finished before you decide to do it.

*I had an interesting idea regarding the point in the game where Amis party must obtain a Key Item called the Submersion Stone (which is needed to get inside one of the mandatory dungeons). The party locates the stones owner but learns it was tossed into a farmer's field in an attempt to hide it.

The stone has a fixed location in the field, but I was trying to get it to spawn in a random location instead. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work properly so I had to leave it as-is.

*Added new accessories and armor, plus a couple of new items.

*Also added a new cut-scene that shows the aftermath of Elyssius' party being ambushed. In case I never mentioned it, Elyssius is Pria's older sister.

What's New - 1/11/2017

*As of this update, players are given a hint as to where they need to go next. This comes in the form of blue-colored text, as shown below:



*The small village of Yeth has been created and is directly South of Odimus Farm. Players can obtain the female-only "Shiny Barrett" from the Inn if they splurge for a stay in an "Actual room" instead of just a "Bed".

Someone's getting ripped-off here.

*A slight alteration has been made to the World Map concerning the entrance of the Great Ocean Cavern.

What's New (and What's Next?) 1/1/2017

If I had to guess, I'd say LifeWeaveR is about 90℅.complete at this time. Instead of only posting about what Ive done, I wanted this update to also include what I'm doing next.

*I've finally gotten the "Outside"
 spell working. Now the player isn't completely screwed if they get their ass handed to them in a dungeon that doesn't have a Magic Crystal. Related to this, the name was changed from Outside to Evacuate. Since there's already a spell named Evacuate that gets you out of battle, that spells name has been changed to Escape.

Simply put: Escape gets you out of non-boss battles, Evacuate gets you out of dungeons. Note that, for obvious reasons, Evacuate will not work in the games final dungeon.

*The events at Cordova Castle (after finding all of the mirror fragments) have been slightly. To advance the story, the player is required to speak to Tysessor, then Cecelia (who doesn't appear until triggered via talking to Tysessor). After the player talks to her the Kings scout arrived and the story progresses.

*I think what I'll do next is proofread the 17,000 or so text boxes of dialogue and attempt to correct any typos or alignment issues.

*After that, there are several houses that do not have an interior map connected to them.

*I'm also looking into having a way to skip cutscenes if the player so chooses to.
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