Devlog #40: Skill Trees

The trailer reveal in the Mother Direct is two weeks away now and I'm making steady progress on the demo. And hey,  I've made it to 40 devlogs, neat! Nothing special to mark the occassion though, just a regular devlog-

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Goals from last week

-Fully add Yusuke (Fully playable, but haven't done his events yet)
-Overworld Big Cob NPC (done!)
-Finish school front area (done!)
-Rework Hood boss (half done)
-Rework Highway Falls area (nope)
-Add 2 new ghost enemies (did one!)
-Escape menu working during cutscenes/battles( done! But needs playtesting)
-Full controller support (done? But really needs playtesting)
-Add more emotion profiles for all characters (Mostly done, have to add them to existing cutscenes still)

These were goals for two weeks, so not bad right? Well, inevitably I remembered a bunch of other things that need to be done and the list is longer than when I started...

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Skill trees revamped

I'm just now realising that this wasn't even on my to-do list, but it's needed to be redone properly for a while now: Skill trees! Otherwise known as stardom paths in-game.

I first introduced the system way back in devlog 5 and functionally it's the same it is today. But the layout of the skill trees has always been placeholder and I've finally got around to doing a (hopefully) final version.

Here are the planned skill trees for the four characters in the demo. Instead of just random placement they are now character relevant patterns, either referencing their weapon or POW:

As a novice developer, I have no idea where to start when it comes to balancing skill trees and stat growth/assignment as players level up, so instead I've opted to just start with something visually interesting and hope that I can fill in the gaps in a satisfying way.

Rina's is the only one I've fully implemented yet. In the demo, I'll have these skill trees locked after a certain point, but I doubt players will hit the level cap for the demo unless they really try to.

One thing I haven't decided on yet is whether to let players see all the upgrades from the beginning, or to only let them see neighbouring upgrade description (the way it is at the moment). If anyone has a strong opinion either way, I'd be interested to hear it because I personally have no preference either way.

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Rina SPIN

If you've played the demo you'll notice that Rina's SPIN ability is different in the image above, and that's because I recently decided to change it. Now instead of temporarily healing a teammate, she can raise the defense of a teammate by 1 for this battle. The reason for the change is because I was thinking about the core values of my combat, and one of them is very limited healing. Giving one of the protagonists a healing ability, even if it's limited, doesn't really match what I'm going for, and I realised I should be saving any healing ability for way later in the game.

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Goals for next week

Lots of stuff finished, but the list grows ever longer and will probably continue to. Here's what I'd like to get done before next week :

-Rework Hooded Boss
-Rework Highway Falls
-Add new ghost
-Yusuke heart scene
-Finalise skill trees
-Add profile variations to cutscenes
-Rework indoors
-Redo steam page

I've got another list of not super important 'if I have time' too...

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That's all! Thanks for reading. Mother direct on July 27th!