SeasonI/ideas

8 Sep 2022 - 8 Jan 2023


4 Months of Development Time
120 Days of Development Time
15+ Hours of Gameplay

4 Different Games (4 Seasons)

January of 2024 The Last Game of the Series will be completed.


1st Game:
-Full featured Turn-based RPG Engine

Takeaways from Seasons of Loneliness:
 + Cutscene / Game State Management
    + On-the-fly cutscene control flags, temporary cutscene object creation, timers
 + Object Management
 + Message Display Systems
 + Turn-based Combat Control Systems
 + One-button input style
 + Music & Sound
 + Personalized Touch
 + Growth System
 + Strategic Elements
 + No "Needless" Encounters
 - Map System
 - Event/Timeline System
 - Player Drawing being tied to the camera


Season I: Winters of Loneliness
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We will name important characters at the beginning of the game.

Game starts in Eagleland. Ness and Paula are out late at night and left Anna at home.

When they don't show up and it's past 1AM, Anna attempts to communicate to them using psikokinetic powers.
When the call does not yield any response, Anna heads out to investigate...

After exploring for awhile, she stumbles upon a strange weather field. Upon curiously touching it it drains all her PP and she is left unable to use abilities and helpless.

An encounter begins against a Starman Deluxe, and a surprise visit from Buzz Buzz Mk II helps Anna out. Until Buzz Buzz Mk II eventually gets swatted by Starman Deluxe leaving her at the brink of getting kidnapped. However, something happens...

Miraculously, a space satellite (?) falls out of the sky, crashes at the site of the battle and
a character pops out to join Anna and protect her using weather powers.

These new powers are alien to the world, and while defenses have been developed for psykokinetic powers, there are no such defenses against weather itself. The character is able to leverage this to their advantage to win the fight.

Afterwards, Anna thanks PLAYER and heads on her merry way, but the PLAYER stops her, asking her what she is doing and what if she gets in trouble again...

Essentially as a bodyguard, the PLAYER decides to stick around and help Anna find both Ness and Paula. And so their journey begins...

(You will have to help Buzz Buzz Mk II to learn about their "destiny".)


Weather power uses are no longer bound by finding nodes, but by using magic points (which regenerates over time).

Discovering new nodes now unlocks that power, and potentially certain nodes will unlock powers for other characters.


"Climate System"
Wet - Determines how wet the area is. While wet, seeds can grow and healing is enhanced.
Dry - During dry climates, healing is reduced.

Heat - Increases the power of fire/hot weather powers while causing trees to burn, causing raging fires and explosion damage. 
Cold - Causes enemies to be slowed, prioritizing PC characters to go first. Prevents seed growth.

"Town Climate"
Does not get affected as quickly by weather affects during battles, but field effects will dramatically affect them as it will be concentrated. Changing the weather in areas may trigger new paths or close off certain ones.

Characters have ATB bars which fill based on speed. When ATB is full, character can perform an action. During the time you are picking an action, the game action will almost come to a full stop (1 frame every 1 second) giving you plenty of time to plan out the next move. Once you selected an action a "queue" starts for the move selected. When the queue/cast time ends the move is performed and the ATB resets to 0 and begins filling again.

Positioning: Players can adjust their positions while in a battle. Certain spells have certain ranges and players may need to get in range to target something with certain abilities. They may also need to move out of the way of attacks as some abilities (particularly hard-hitting ones) will have pre-casts.

Anytime an enemy pre-casts an ability you will see a giant targeting marker appear. This is used in the first tutorial to teach you how to dodge attacks.

(There's a hint man in the game if you ever get stuck).

Your first stop will be the library where you find a map among the bookshelves and a Pizza Pass.

The map helps reveal names of different landmarks throughout the game for the player to use.

When you exit the building and go outside you see three gang members who decide to pick a fight with you.

This is the first real tutorial battle of the game, and you're taught how to position to avoid the "Trickster" (the main leader's) attacks as they are all big channels. You are also taught about how to use positioning to make sure you are in the right places when fighting.

You are also taught to use the Defend command.

You start off with some Cookies in your inventory, which are used to lightly heal the player.

Starting abilities:
Main Character
- Hailstorm
- Hurricane
- Meteor Rain

Anna
- PK Freeze a
- PK Shield

Battle Commands:
Power   Item   Move
Attack  Defend  Run

The Defend command will provide 80% damage reduction.


========================

Cutscenes 
Create and Move Objects
Pan the Camera
Fade the game In/Out
Start Dialog
Set Game Flags

Moveset Selection:
There will be a couple of AI sets that enemies can use:
-> Random - As the name implies, every move will be picked at random.
-> Ordered - Orderered just goes down the list in order.
-> Weighted - There is a 50% chance to do the top move, and everytime it's not picked,
      there's a 50% chance for the next move to be picked, and this continues down and down.
      If the end is reached, that move is picked.
      Example scenario: There are 5 moves.
      50% Move 1
      25% Move 2
      12.5% Move 3
      6.25% Move 4
      6.25% Move 5

There will be a smart flag toggle. If smart is turned on, the AI will sometimes
try to use debuffs and healing moves when appropriate: Debuffs are attempted more
often in smart mode when players doesn't have said debuff yet and will try to avoid
the move if there's something better.  Likewise, with smart mode if the enemy has a 
healing move and is dying, it will attempt to use that.

There is also a dumb flag. The dumb flag will make the enemy try to use PP draining moves
even if they don't have enough PP for that move. This will mean they will waste turns after
they run out of PP.

====================

Rolling Hit point counter

If you take damage, you will lose health at a tick rate of 2 per frame. (It takes 13 frames per number, so you are losing 9.23HP/sec). 60/13 = 4.62 HPsec

If your health falls below zero, you start bleeding health at a rate of +1 for every 20 health missing from your current health.

If your health falls below your negative max health, you start bleeding health at a rate of +1 for every 10 health missing from your current health.

====================

Target Selection

When a move is selected, we'll visually display the tiles that are in range. If units are in range, you can toggle between them.
If no units are in range, you can perform the move, but no one will get hurt. Once a target is selected, if the move does not have a 
channel time, it will be immediately performed. Otherwise the channel will begin for that player.

Channels will be displayed in lieu of the ATB meter while channeling is happening.

====================

Items in Battle

Equipment:
      Weapons - Will use it instead for an attack (on that turn temporarily).
      Armor - Equips the piece of armor.

All Other Items:
      If there is a Battle Move attached, performs that battle move.

      If the item has any restorative properties, they will be used at that time.