Hello, and welcome to the postmortem of The Emerald World: Aries' Fate is in Motion (or whatever I typed, still working on that subtitle). This was meant to be the first push of Aries' journey after a prologue that featured both my main characters, Aries and Alicia Jadeite. They are fraternal twins who get separated as they are escaping their home, the House of Emeralds. I was originally going to tack the prologue on the beginning of this entry, but it ran over 30 minutes on its own without exploration, so 30 minutes of scenes... The prologue will be published on its own, hopefully by August. (I say hopefully, because of my health and such is a barrier I am trying to overcome.) For now, I'm calling it Project Dawn (the prologue). It will be closer to a visual novel than a game, because nothing carries over.

This passage is about Project Aries (what I have been calling this game) and the game jam, RPG Maker Themed Jam #10: Heir to the Throne. I felt that Aries and Alicia's stories fit right in with this theme, and I really wanted to release a main storyline game. There are two separate games series, Aries' Side and Alicia's Side. Used to having each other, they are fated to take their life changing journeys on their own. I want to make the games with different people and places. Kind of like the beginning of Wild Arms or Tales of Xillia where you saw the world from two or three different protagonists, but, in my games, never traveling together. I chose Aries' Side for this jam, because he is way more irresponsible than his sister.

Besides the holes left behind from ditching the prologue 2/3rds into this jam, I thought my story was one of my better ones. I had to keep the art minimal and I didn't even have time to program in all I did draw. My settings and music are also just thrown together... Honestly, I thought I was more prepared, but as I was working I realized that remaking my game database, plugins, maps, etc for each new Regalis game I make is getting way too time consuming. In this game, there are so many problems with combat and scaling, because I did not adjust my plugins properly. Copying a database is one thing, but setting up a lot of different plugin parameters is nuts. A lot of my coding didn't mean anything, because the plugin wasn't set right.  This has got to be one of the messier games I have ever made.

Okay, so the good... I nailed the theme in my opinion, I think my story is a little more thought out (though there are probably holes and such, but I think its at least an improvement), and that might be it... The bad... oh boy... it's messy, so no good on presentation. While I tried to show some creativity with how I'm structuring my games, I think I missed the mark on execution. Then, there's the gameplay... oh boy that's bad. Aries may be irresponsible, but I never intended to make him absolutely useless in combat. There is a system where the player can choose to teach Aries some magick, but I haven't quite got there yet... I wanted him to be a blank slate. Alicia isn't, but she'll get her own special stuff later. 

Anyway, there was also supposed to be a notice in the status screen that some branches of magick are unlearnable for most humans, but my parameters were not set properly. I also did not have time to program any new spells, so some spaces stayed empty, or needed to be hidden for later. I did not scale the spell learning to the right level range, like things getting unlocked at levels you would have to really grind to get, but you don't really need... Zelda's MP! >_< The scale is way off there. The poor girl runs out of juice really quick. Also, I didn't have anyone weak to white magick, and my magick doesn't count toward MATK, or some bonuses didn't work... I don't even know what I did there! Honestly, I just brought over what I had in my database and didn't realize the plugin parameters were not matching up until the end, or if I retyped anything... Well, let's just say it took an hour of tweaking before I realized I didn't spell 'potion' right in some code, ugh. I'm sure there are countless other issues with the combat and spell craft, but I have been staring at this thing way too long.

Overall, I'm still weirdly happy with the game. Sure, I could have done better, but I made it and it's not just in my head anymore. It exists. Also, I know I will be going back to some of this someday, not too mention Aries just started and we haven't seen how Alicia survived yet. I still have a lot of story to tell. I have plans for how I'm going to try to do better going forward, and if that fails, I'll just see what's next. I've been working on this idea for nearly 30 years, so I will not quit now.

 While it will be disqualified for a lot of jams, in the future I plan to use my original, Project Emerald as a base. I will build the database, plugins, etc in Project Emerald and just copy it (the whole project) and put my events on top of that. It's the best way to start building a consistent series without losing my mind about the status screen being on the plugin's default settings, which only slows me down. I will probably still do jams to experiment or give small characters a cute story (these I would build from scratch following jam rules).

The exception will be project Dawn. I have already programmed most of it and I don't want to start over.

Honestly, I feel like I'm just spewing excuses, but when time is up, I would rather send it in even if it stinks, than not submit it. Game jams are for learning and without this jam, I would have found this out on my own maybe 2 years or so later, so I'm glad I did it now. For news concerning Project Emerald, I keep a devlog there, so this maybe the only post for this, save for bug fixes and the like. I am also on Blue Sky and I am working on a lore database using World Anvil. That's going to be a long way out still, but I'll talk about that at Project Emerald too. 

I hope you try out the game, and please let me know what you think. While I know a lot of its shortcomings, you may see something I missed, like an opportunity for a situation I missed, or maybe something I thought I could not do, but it's possible with some research. Also if judging is still open, please rate my game by using the link that pops out on the top right of the page. Thank you so much for reading, and if you have comments of questions, please post in my comments. I will usually respond, thanks again!