ATttMaN Devlog 11-10-2024

Hello everyone. It has been a really long time since I've given a full development update. A year and a half to be specific. In all likelihood, this update might be the first time you've heard about this game, but it has been in development the entire time. Every day since like, Summer of 2022 I've been chipping away at this thing. Realistically I shouldn't have announced it in such an early phase of development. I had no idea what I was starting when I decided to begin this project. I thought it would be done in like 3 months, but that's not how anything works. So allow me to maybe, reannounce my game A Trip to the Mall at Night.

So what is this game? It's a story-focused adventure RPG set within a mysterious mega-mall in a world of eternal night. It follows a group of people who stumble into the eponymous mall and find themselves trapped within its neon-drenched walls. They aren't alone inside the mall either. Hundreds of people are stuck inside and in the thirteen years that people have been trapped inside the mall, not a single person has managed to escape. Our group of friends wishes to go home and free everyone inside, but to do that they'll have to take on the security force, directed by the enigmatic Seymour Bangks, the richest man in the universe and owner of the mall. Along the way, they'll find out more about the mall, the world, and themselves and make some great new friends.

In the past two and a half years I've made a lot of progress on development. As a solo dev, I've had to learn to do a lot of stuff in order to make this work the way I want it to. Here's the rundown of what I've done and what still needs to be done.

The Story. A pretty important part of a story-focused RPG. It has gone through loads of revisions, about 5 or 6. I lost count. There may be slight tweaks or changes to some scenes, but overall it is done and I think it's pretty solid. My biggest hope is that it resonates with some people who need it to. I love these characters and this world that I've created and I can't wait for other people to experience them. Every cutscene has also been implemented into the game so theoretically if someone wanted to play through the main story in its entirety without a majority of the gameplay they could.

Maps. Every area that a player would need to traverse through for the main story has been made. There are over 350 rooms. There is one dungeon that I think needs a bit of work and certain sidequests will have dedicated areas, so there will very likely be more to explore in the finished game. Exploring the strange areas in the mall is a huge focus of the game. Since the game is confined to one singular location I want that location to have a good amount of places to see and things to do.

Character sprite animations. ATttMaN's combat is turn-based and plays out in a similar fashion to older JRPGs like Final Fantasy 6 or Persona 2 with player characters on one side of the screen and enemies on the other. During these battles characters will perform a variety of actions and each character has a unique set of animations for those actions. I've animated the sprite sheets of around 90 characters including bosses, standard enemies, and the player characters. I'll probably make a couple more, but the total probably won’t exceed 100. My main priority with animation now is making the visual effects for every attack to give them more weight and impact so battles feel more exciting than taking turns walking up and punching each other.

Music. The entire soundtrack is done and it's a pretty good one if I do say so myself. There are 131 songs in total. All original compositions by me of course. The songs cover a variety of sounds. There are fast-paced battle themes, some R&B-influenced tracks, some ambient stuff, some dungeon synth, some shoegazeish songs, and a lot of other fun stuff. I'm sure there's a song in there for everyone. If you want to check out some of the songs for yourself, head to the music section of the site.

Battle System. This is the part that I'm currently focused on the most. ATttMaN uses the RPG Maker VX ace engine, which admittedly is far from the greatest game engine in the world. I decided to use it at the start of the project because I thought it would make things easier for me as someone who doesn't have a ton of coding experience, and it has in many areas. The standard RPG Maker battle system is pretty bad though. With the help of decade-old forum threads and scripts, I've put the skeleton of something together that feels like it would be actually fun to play, which is good. I'm currently working on designing all of the skills and magic that will be used throughout the game and making them balanced while still interesting to use. There will be a decent level of customization for the player character's abilities and stats which should hopefully allow players to experiment with different playstyles. I'll probably do a full combat devlog at some point in the future when its more put together, but for now, I'm working on it.

Side Quests and NPCs. This is the least fleshed-out part of the game and it's a very important part. My previously stated goal during the maps section of this log was to make the single location where the game is contained feel interesting to explore. Side Quests and NPCs are a big part of that. It doesn't matter how cool a room looks if there's no one to talk to there. There probably won't be a ton of side quests. I want to focus on quality over quantity, and I want the game to come out at some point. Essentially my plan is the finish all the main content and then add as much side stuff as I can before I reach my internal deadline. Certain side stuff will be prioritized as well. I'll go more into detail on this at a later date.

So overall development is going pretty well. I'm working on the game nearly every day for whatever free time I can while still trying to talk to friends and do school work and stuff. Honestly, if it weren't for my friends I probably would have given up on this project or gone insane. So thank you, friends, if you're reading this. I mentioned earlier that I have an internal deadline. Essentially what that means is that after a certain point, I will force myself to stop the development and release the game. I'm not going to say when that is because I think that would stress me out, but hopefully, I'll have it in a state I'm proud of by then. I'm already getting decently close, so we shall see. Anyway, until next time, have a good night.