"Midnight Dreary" - dev log #3

Hey, everyone! Here's some more progress I made in Midnight Dreary's prototype.

RPG Maker already comes with a save feature, where you can save at any moment (and, believe me, this is very useful when you're developing a game), but I've implemented the save feature that's actually going to be in the final game: the player is going to collect music records throughout the game and put them in a record player in Edgar's apartment to save their progress. The more known inspiration for this mechanic being Resident Evil's ink ribbon/typewriter save feature.

After I implemented the mechanic itself, I made two versions of the record's sprite: the smaller one that will appear around the level so the player can get the item, and the more detailed one, that is going to appear whenever the player gets the item, or when they examine the item in the inventory. I'm still using a placeholder sprite for the record player, though.

After that, I adjusted the game's black and white filter a bit, because I wasn't satisfied yet with how it looked. There was still a bit of color peeking through and it was making the game look weird, so I fixed it and I hope it looks better.

Before After

I also made the first part of another area of the game (as you can see above), which is where the real game begins. It's an alleyway outside Edgar's building where he'll have to do some climbing and jumping to advance. And with a lot of testing, I was able to actually make Edgar jump when pressing a key (Page Down, in this prototype), which is something I didn't think was possible in RPG Maker. You live, you learn, right?

Using some tricks I knew beforehand, I also made Edgar be able to climb high places by pressing the action key. For those interested, I taught those tricks in an article on Davide Pesce's blog. It's an amazing place to learn more about game development.

And last, but not least, Edgar finally has an HP bar! Except it's not really a "bar", that would look very boring next to the guitar meter on the other side of the screen, right? So the HP meter has the shape of a skull! I thought it would fit.

After I made the design, I coded the HP recovery/loss system and it seems to be working fine! The game has no enemies yet, so I had to make a random object that would do damage to Edgar's health, so I could test it.

And, of course, I implemented the first healing item, which is the soda can. Just like the record, it has a very simple sprite and a detailed sprite.

And that's what I have, for now. I'm glad that my pixel art is looking decent, so far, and I intend to keep it simple for this project, since it's the first time I'm doing something like this. See you guys later!