F&TMT version 1.3.6: Frictionless Gameplay + Devlog on the sequel

Hello everyone,

I have issued a small update that fixes some bugs. I'd like to go over those changes first, then later I will discuss a little bit about what is going on with Fidel & The Pauper's Paradox (the upcoming sequel). Let's get to the patch notes first:

• Squashed 2 bugs brought to my attention by user Ischenderun: 1) Stopped a rogue boulder from spawning. 2) Fixed a missing enemy-aggro timer on one of the first enemy groups the player encounters.
• While I was fixing that borked aggro timer, I made a minor adjustment to the aggro timer behavior which results in enemies being in their cool down state ever so slightly longer to give just a bit more breathing room after battle.
• Players (including myself) would sometimes forget to equip or use new items after opening a chest. Now whenever the player acquires certain items that should be used right away, the appropriate menu will open up right after acquiring them to encourage players to use/equip those items, providing a frictionless experience.
• While I was adjusting these item/equipment interactions, I also added missing text descriptions for the starting sword & armor.
• I also changed the icon for the "Confidence Booster" item to be more appropriate.
• Fixed the "Barrage" attack animation playing improperly. Since the 1.3 update, the barrage attack only animated a single hit. It now correctly displays 3 hits on the enemy.
• Before entering the final boss's chamber, a message prompt will now appear telling you that you have reached a point of no return and ask if you wish to proceed.
• I reduced the number of encounters in the epilogue chapter of the game.
• Fixed a minor spelling error and did some copy editing on a few lines of text so that they read easier.
• I adjusted some puzzles' logic for more optimized performance.
• I did minor optimizations to various logic operators to give a minor performance boosts.
• I implemented a graphics fix plugin to prevent crashes for those playing the game on high refresh rate monitors.
• I implemented a fix to correct the play time counter so it correctly and accurately counts your play time.

I believe that covers everything, so let's move on to Fidel & The Pauper's Paradox!

Devlog on Fidel & The Pauper's Paradox:

Since last time, there has been a lot of progress, though admittedly (as usual) I am not as far along as I hoped I would be.

When Fidel & The Pauper's Paradox was first conceived, it was intended to only be a short tech demo not much longer than this game, Fidel & The Maker's Trial. I just wanted to test a few game ideas and see how they work in motion so that in the future those concepts could be tweaked in a much larger game.
As a result of this original intention, some of the earliest parts of Fidel & The Pauper's Paradox's development was not taken so seriously and therefore parts were not 1) carefully considered, nor 2) well polished.

As more and more time and more and more money became invested in the project, I began to take the project much more seriously. This just so happen to coincide with the completion of one level and the start of another level, creating a weird imbalance of mediocre quality in one level, and then superb quality in another. While I am still wrapping up and putting on the final touches to that second level (it's been a really long road), I've taken a little bit of time to "remaster" the first level I had implemented into the game. Technically, this remastering process has been happening slowly over the course of the development of the second level, since the game has an open-ended structure, things need to be accounted for should the player decide to change mid-way through one level and go to a different one. The result in making sure there is parity between the levels which necessitated some changes to the first level.
However, it is fair to say that even those necessary changes to create parity were only 20% of the work that needed to be done to bring the level up to an acceptable bar of quality, thus something I have been working on extensively the past few weeks is improving the level design of the first level.

While I was working on that first level, I also realized there were a lot of flaws with the enemy AI (this is a global problem with the game, not just the first level) so I also began working on improving enemy behaviors and patterns to make more compelling and interesting fights.

Looking Forward:

There are 2 things I am really excited for coming up soon in my game's development. First, with the first level nearly completely overhauled, the enemy AI overhauled, and the second level nearing it's completion (the level is about 95% complete), this would put my game at around 2/3's of the way complete. Once the first level overhaul is complete and the second level is complete, I am really excited to do a playtest from start to the end of the first level and watch how the whole symphony comes together (thus far). The second thing I am excited about is the third level. The idea for the third level has morphed through different ideas and concepts for what would be interesting, memorable, and fun to play (and also possible to implement within the scope of the game and my technical abilities). However, my most recent concept I think is the best form the level can take. I'm excited to implement it and I am excited to play it.
In the future, more details will be provided (the functions haven't even been sandboxed yet, so there's still tons and tons of room for changes), but the core concept was inspired by my own options menu. I mentioned in the past the number of options to control the game's mechanics and difficulty is somewhat similar to the various types of rule sets that can be adjusted in skirmish-styled games such as RTS games and 4x games. I wondered what a "Skirmish-based, 4x-style JRPG" might be like, and the more I thought about it, the more these fun ideas began to flow. I can't wait to begin working on it and have something to show off!

Anyways, that's enough rambling here. I'll see you in the next update!