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Update - Story Mode progress, mechanics and character ability changes - May 21, 2019



It has been a good while since the last update, more than three and a half months (though the time has flown by on this end). So, what has happened during this time for development of The Demon Rush: Legends Corrupt?


For Story Mode progress - a different method for making what content and when is being done for The Demon Rush: Legends Corrupt compared to previous Dragoon projects. Rather than do up all of the content on a chapter-by-chapter or quest-by-quest basis, the content is being done up all at once on a section-of-content basis. Basically, this means that rather than doing all of the models, maps, cutscenes, etc. for one section of the game's story, then doing all of the models, maps, cutscenes, etc. for the next and so on, ALL models for the whole game are prepared at once, then ALL maps at once, etc. Doing this seems to be a more reliable and faster method of producing content (especially when it comes to keeping rhythm of work for each area of content), so this will be how work will continues on for Legends Corrupt.


So far, in the time between last update and now, all of the music and models have been done up for Legends Corrupt. Regarding the models, in order to keep close to the original The Demon Rush, both story-significant characters and villager NPCs are all planned to be generally as close as possible (some changes were made to some, such as the Force Fighter and Zombie enemies from the initial Legends Corrupt reveal). However, the original The Demon Rush (as well as Skylight Freerange and Skylight Freerange 2: Gachduine) used, or attempted to use, different NPCs for every villager/unnammed NPC in quests (enemy types such as Force Fighters, Zombies, NDC, Cult Guards from these games used the same or limited, however). This means that, alongside Legends Corrupt's expansion content, over 200 characters (story important, enemy and villager NPC) had to be put into The Demon Rush: Legends Corrupt reliably (Skylight Freerange 2: Gachduine had 500+, but it uses a character creator, while Legends Corrupt does not).


As well, when it comes to all models being done up, this also does not simply mean only the base models that handle the 200+ characters over varying significance. This means that all story effects and alterations to models are done up, all animations (for both battle and story) are done up and all Story Mode enemies (stats/abilities/AI/etc.) are all prepared. With the exception of the Story Mode non-battle animations (which will be tested when the cutscenes are tested), all of these things have been fully tested (though they will continue to still be tested over the coming months - testing the same things many many times even after they work just fine is still a requirement).


Mechanical and character changes have also been made. Blocking as a mechanic has had a new addition to it, namely that it now heals at a rate of 2 HP/second (1 HP at a time). A system for L targetting has been set up, which allows the player to use the L/L1 button to choose what enemies their AI-controlled party members target. The number of custom AI sets has been changed to 4, and the "Character Customization - Soul Triad, Weapons and AI" dev blog page has had an edit added to specify this change. The ramifications of all of these are in the "Mechanical changes - Block Heal, L targetting, 4 Custom AI sets" dev blog page that comes same date as this update.


Cherry, Knight, Alberto and Jimmy have had abilities improved upon, altered or replaced altogether, and information on this can be found on the "Changes to Cherry, Knight, Alberto and Jimmy" dev blog page. Their character pages and "Giant Reference comparing character traits and abilities" have been altered accordingly for these changes, and as Knight, Alberto and Jimmy have their Onslaught/Conquest presets changed due to this, those pages have been edited as well to more accurately state how those characters play (with mentions of how they previously were set up). The "Giant Reference comparing character traits and abilities" has also been updated due to the changes in abilities here.


As far as what's left, Story Mode still needs maps and the story content (dialogue, cutscenes, etc.) added in, as well as Tutorial Mode, a lot of general testing and balancing across all modes and administrative prep to be done. So far, progress overall is going well enough.


Time-wise, for The Demon Rush: Legends Corrupt's Q2/Q3 2019 release period, the Q2 portion of this will not be a point of release. Q3 2019, however, still has a very strong likelihood for release, due to the amount of time left that is needed to work on Legends Corrupt. Even if there were more than a few big problems that popped up to interfere with development, Q3 is still very possible (big problems do pop up often at any stage of development, but with the pace things are going, it would have to be a number of large and bad problems for Q3 to be missed). Though Q3 seems very likely, if there are any delays beyond this, this will be mentioned in upcoming dev blogs.









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