ManaPost 18 - The Return!
Hi. It's Y.
...Has it been over a year since the last you've heard from us? ...Yes. If you haven't joined our discord server, that is. (Shameless plug)
I realized over that time that I really do a lot better without the pressure of making something presentable so quickly! I've been doing a lot of work on Manaport this whole time, and I'm very excited to share it all with you!
So... Enough with the serious greeting! This is the 18th ManaPost, and it's stuffed full of nerdy stuff I've been waiting to show off! I'm happy to be back! :D
Switch 2 Godot or Something
Of course, as we explained in ManaPost 14... A majority of our efforts in Manaport's development around the end of 2023 was dedicated to essentially translating Unity scripts (usually C#) to Godot (usually gdscript). This took a lot of time (especially for a rather novice programmer such as myself...) Rewriting what we had in Unity took a good few months alone. Combine this with my last year of high school and burnout... The first iteration of our port to Godot took quite a while.
"First" Implies a List...
...Let me tell you a bit about Manaport's rather turbulent development over the past... Almost 5 years.
Manaport started development on the 25th of May, smack-dab in the middle of the 2020 pandemic as an idea I had to take my mind off of the woes of staying in my room all day. I gathered a few of my friends and we started throwing ideas at each other.
This was the culmination of our efforts! I didn't even code this. I had no idea how to code. I had only done the spritework. Manaport originally started as... A Sidescrolling RPG. It was so cool to me to see an idea that I had come to life. I had spent a lot of my childhood making stuff in games like LittleBigPlanet, always wanting my next project to be my next magnum opus or whatever.
I dream big, if that wasn't obvious.
This was... after I got my hands on actual programming for the first time. Manaport was now a proper traditional Action RPG. I remember trying to sort through every little bug I found... Giving up practically hundreds of times only to remember how stubborn I am and just keep trying. We had restarted once before this video, however there is a distinct lack in media from that era, unfortunately.
This... This era felt like the start of something proper. I was proud of this title sequence alone, and there was practically no game behind it! I had coded a lot of the stuff from this era myself, and it was the subject of my high school computer science final exam, actually. I did pretty well on that.
Starting from the first ManaPost EVER is the start of Manaport's journey as a 3D RPG. Now... you may have noticed that we've definitely changed the definition of Manaport as a game over the years. Started as a Sidescrolling Turn-Based RPG, then a Top-Down Action RPG, then a 3D Action RPG...
What's another change, right?
This will hopefully solidify this era of Manaport as the last one. Development may be turbulent, but... I've learned not to set expectations. I do this for fun! It's fun to make stuff and see what sticks. Without further delay... Here's a compilation of my work on Manaport from just this month alone.
On the Manaport Github repository... you can actually see how much work I've been putting into the game in this stage. Of course... a lot of this stuff is quite technical, so here's the first major change.
Try Taking Turns; Sharing is Caring!
Manaport has returned to its roots as a Turn-Based RPG! Hopefully for the final time... We ultimately decided that Manaport would be better off doing away with all of the feature creep that unfortunately claimed us for the last couple of years... When I, Y, first came up with Manaport, when it was just a little idea in my tiny brain... I wanted it to be a fun, story rich Turn-Based RPG, something akin to Paper Mario and the like. It's been almost like some kind of nostalgia trip going through old ideas I had and applying them with this new knowledge I have about games.
I started off by playing a bunch of games that have been on my radar... Honkai: Star Rail, Persona 5, Undertale (if you can believe I haven't even finished the game yet...), heck, even a bit of the Paper Mario series. I wrote a bunch of stuff down, drew up a bunch of design documents, and got to work!
This was the first time that I felt like I was doing game development the right way. I always felt like I was sort of... mashing stuff together without any kind of method to the madness, but with 5 years of (hobby) experience behind me, I could properly see what the next step was. I've been planning everything out... Consulting friends for their input... Heck, I even built the game a few times to send it to friends for actual playtesting.
The first item on the agenda was getting a battle prototype made.
Finishing this part of development alone was a lot more satisfying than I thought it would be! I mean, these are definitely just A-Posing cats and red beans, but this is something magical! I can build off of this, but it still works so well! Not an error in sight! :D
This took about... a month start to finish! You could call this a game, I think! It's great! When it comes to combat in Manaport, you can chose your Basic Move, which will likely be a basic attack of sorts... Two Skills, or use an Item. All three of these acts will end your turn, so sometimes you might have to actually choose wisely. One thing I did see in a lot of modern Turn-Based RPGs is an auto mode... I'm still considering adding that, but for now, this is the basics of battling.
Kill the red beans... Simple as that!
Next up was the Overworld!
Admittedly, this does look quite rudimentary right now (Mainly because a lot of my work recently has been on bug fixing and refinement), but hey! This is more than impressive to me, and that's what matters!
Obviously... in turn based games, the overworld is the space between battles. Nothing major here. You can walk around... with your A-posing trio of feline friends.
Oh, and there are Party Formations, essentially defining a way for your party members to follow the leader. With Laurie, they're walkin' single file! With Mirabelle, the others take up a more protective position... And with Winsley, you can find Mirabelle and Laurie standing back.
That's it. Not the biggest update, but it gets the job done!
Then... heh. Then was making the game look a little nicer!
Manaport was foretold to look like a PS1 title... so it's gotta look the part! There's a great deal of new customization options for how crispy crunchy absolutely retro lookin' you want your game! From PS1 resolution and the funky looking affine mapping, to crisp, 1280 by 960 gameplay! Stylish. Slay. So demure, I think.
In honor of this wonderful update... I have prepared an accompanying Demonstrational Showcase video! Of course... tossing a bunch of pictures in your face is nice, but hey, who wouldn't like watching a short presentation! Pretend I am a small child... showing you a silly project on my tablet... Hanging this up on my fridge and saying I did a good job.
Aaaaaand that's it! A short Manaport retrospective... and now a Manaport prospective(?)! This month has been amazing for development, and I can't wait to see what I get done in February! I'm excited to be back sharing my progress updates with you, dear Reader! What I've learned from all this time is that I will no longer overpromise and underdeliver! Expect absolutely nothing from me!
But please, do remain support of us in the future.
Thank you very much for reading.
