Tales from The Dancing Moon News

Hello everyone, a little demo update today!

Some of these problems were brought up in a recent live playtest at the ACM university in Guildford. Thanks a lot guys!

Feel free to continue reporting any bugs via the many social media links below!

Discord: https://discord.gg/kpGVRKPn5W

Threads: https://threads.net/dancingmoongame

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DancingMoonGame


[h2]Tutorial[/h2]

• Added some environmental debris to block access to areas not significant during the "Introduce Yourself" quest. This should reduce wasted time when searching for the villagers.
  
• Changed the pathing schedule of Lyka and Dion during the tutorial so they are much easier to find.
  
• Adjusted some minor dialog to reflect the new changes above.
  

[h2]UI[/h2]

• Selected category headings in the character creation screens are now orange, making them coloured consistently with other selected states in other UIs.
  
• Added a UI hint and button to cancel any emotes being played.
  
• Revised some of the fishing mini-game UI, and added a description to help guide the player.
  
• Fixed an issue where the map was not re-centering on the player token when loading.
  

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Lamp posts will no longer have a selection highlight when using the Left-Alt hotkey.
  

Thank you so much for playing!
-DjMonkey

Hello everyone, a few updates today to make the demo experience a bit nicer!

Feel free to continue reporting any bugs via the many social media links below!

Discord: https://discord.gg/kpGVRKPn5W

Threads: https://threads.net/dancingmoongame

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DancingMoonGame


[h2]UI[/h2]

• Added a new menu access bar at the bottom right of the HUD.
  
• Player Menus (Inventory, Journal, Crafting, etc) have been promoted to a consistent variable kept in memory which should improve loading times and responsiveness of those particular menus.
  
• Various subtle animations have been added to some UIs.
  
• Changed Quest Tracker HUD to show the title of the current quest step, rather than the quest title.
  
• You can now interact with items on the HotBar but right clicking directly on them, without switching to that item.
  
• Added a new UI overlay to show available actions on the currently equipped item.
  
• Changed the fishing alert fonts to be more consistent with the games theme.
  
• Slight load optimisation on crafting screens.
  
• Updated the social media bar on the main menus with a new Threads button and Report Bug / Feature button.
  

[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Various walls in interior maps have been adjusted to provide better visibility of the environment.
  
• Foliage assets have been improved and adjusted in the Illisor Plaza region.
  
• Added interaction animation to The Dancing Moon sign.
  

[h2]Graphics[/h2]

• The Retro Mode toggle in the settings menu now has a pixilation amount slider.
  

[h2]Player[/h2]

• Changed the default character appearance on the character customisation screens.
  

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Fixed a UI text display issue on the build mode camera.
  
• Fixed an issue where custom storage labels were not getting saved.
  
• Fixed an issue where the storage text field were still listening to keypress hotkeys, causing friction with naming storages.
  
• Fixed an issue where jumping whilst in combat stances would stop the motion prematurely.
  
• Fixed a UI size setting on the craft bench UI.
  
• Fixed an issue when transitioning from the Town Hall Ground Floor to Illisor Plaza.
  
• Some minor dialog fixes.
  

Thank you so much for playing!
-DjMonkey

Greetings Travellers!

This months newsletter will be a bit different - I'm going to start with a gameplay insight, but towards the second half of the newsletter I will go into some nitty-gritty details about game development.

The reason will be come clear if you read on, (and will also explain why the banner image for this update is cracked and corrupted!).



[h2]Gameplay Insights - The Loop[/h2]

For this months newsletter I'm going to delve into the core gameplay loop of the game. I'll be touching on some story things - so let this be a warning that there may be some light SPOILERS in this newsletter!

If you have wishlisted this game and intend to play blind - then turn back now! (and thank you for wishlisting!)

Anyway - some quick context! You spend your time in the game in a village called Ïllisor - a fantasy seaside town that is recovering from an invasion of deadly shadow-beasts. You arrive to the village as a stranger, where you spend your tutorial time familiarising yourself with the area and the different gameplay systems.

One of the first things you will learn during this time is that you're not actually the first stranger that has come through the village recently. In fact - four teenagers mysteriously disappeared around the same time you arrived, and you suspect that their disappearance is the reason why you're there.


One of those teenagers is called Andrew - and during your explorations around the game world you will encounter diary pages written by him that give you gameplay clues and a "meta" story to follow alongside the many quests that drive the overall narrative.


You can think of these diaries as collectables that enhance the story-telling and your understanding of what is happening in the game.

So what do these diaries have to do with the gameplay loop, I might hear you ask?

As I've mentioned in previous newsletters - one of the themes of the game is discovery. You may be following a series of quests with a simple goal, but eventually there will be points in the game where it won't "hand-hold" you into solving a particular task.

I'm calling these moments "knowledge walls" - for the lack of a better term.

This is where you'll need to rely on your own intuition to figure out what to do next, but many of the answers here can be figured out by reading the diaries or remembering things like recipes (just an example) that you've discovered previously in the game.

To recap - the main gameplay loop consists of...

1. Interact with NPCs and pursue quests.
   
2. Collect diaries and other bits of lore.
   
3. Reach a "knowledge wall".
   
4. Figure out how to proceed based on your knowledge.
   
5. Get past the "knowledge wall".
   
6. Go back to step 1 and repeat!
   

Progressing through a knowledge wall essentially passes you onto the next "act" of the game, this will unlock further quests from NPC's and new locations to explore via the procedural generation zones! All of which is supported by the many gameplay mechanics like combat, crafting, cooking, building and fishing!


I hope that gives a little insight into what you'll be doing in the game. If you've played the demo then you may already have an idea of what the first "knowledge wall" is in the game.

The first thing you'll be figuring out is how to get past the blocked cave in the Ïllisor Steppes region.

Oooo mysterious!





[h2]Hardware Failures[/h2]

So the unthinkable happened - I had a failure with one of my hard drives that resulted in some lost work. It’s incredible to think that after all the years I’ve had a computer in some form or another that this is the first time this has ever happened - and so close to getting this damn game finished! Ironic right!?

The good news is - it’s not as bad as it sounds. I already have mechanisms and extra back up drives for the really important game dev files. But the particular drive that broke kept some of my quest stories that were version controlled on GitHub, and unfortunately I didn’t check-in most of the work I had done over the last month or so.

Regardless, it was a bit of a wake up call to put in place more failsafe measures in case this happens again in the future.

For anyone interested, I’ve drawn up a diagram of how things looked before, compared to how things look now with the extra backup measures I now have in place after the incident.


I highly suggest for anyone working in game-dev or (any large project) to think about your backup processes. I was already leveraging tools like Perforce and GitHub, but the key difference is that there is now an additional drive specifically for holding image backups for ALL source files and content.

Anyway, all good success stories come from these sort of hardships right? … right!?



[h2]Notion Templates[/h2]



During the downtime this month whilst I figured out how to recover from the above hard-drive failures - I was trying to think of other ways I could be productive. Short-term goals for long term gains.

I came up with the idea of "open-sourcing" my project workflow.

I've tried many project-planning tools in the past, and towards the start of this project I settled on using Notion as the 'be-all-end-all' tool for managing Tales from The Dancing Moon.

It's difficult to talk about this without coming across like I'm being sponsored by them - but Notion is great because you can package things together and provide it as a template that other people can leverage for their own projects - and I did just exactly that!

It's a first pass which I intend to adapt and evolve over time, but the first version includes template for writing this very newsletter, things like change-logs for game builds, card-based task management (think Trello), and more!

If you're a developer who struggles on focusing on your tasks, then you might find it useful. Click here to check them out!



That's all for the June edition of my developer newsletter! I apologize for the lack of game content in this one, due to the hardware issues, but hopefully I'll have lots of exciting updates in July, including more information about testing and Early Access!

- DjMonkey

Enjoy reading my dev diary newsletters? Then please consider giving me a Wishlist & Follow! I'd greatly appreciate it! You can do so from the the Steam page.

If you’d like to join the community and discuss the content of this post, please visit the Discord or make a comment on social media!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1782420/Tales_from_The_Dancing_Moon/

Guess what? My birthday was last week - Happy Birthday me! 🥳

Let's tuck into May's updates shall we?



[h2]Community and Beta Versions[/h2]

To kick things off I just want to remind readers that you can sign up to play the BETA version of the game. This includes a near-complete version of the game which takes you close to the finale. If you're interested then please reach out via the Discord channel or over on Twitter!

I'm also reaching out to various content creators who've shown interest in the game so far! One of which is ThePillowFortG over on Twitter. I could tell straight away that they were a perfect fit to try out the game and I've already received valuable feedback from their initial plays. I look forward to hearing more about what they think! If you want to see more indie game reviews and streams from an up-and-coming creator - then go check them out!

I'm always happy to chat to content creators and gamers about BETA access, so if you like the idea of working closely with a passionate developer and can help steer the squashing of bugs and feature improvement - then feel free to get in touch by joining the Discord or following over on Twitter.


[h2]May Demo Update[/h2]

There is another update to the demo - I'm so happy to be pushing out regular builds again!

However I wouldn't expect any new features for this patch, as this is mostly a bunch of bug fixes that I'm porting back into demo experience after going through many play-tests of the full game.

Click here or the GIF below to visit the full changelog for this update. Now's a better time than ever to play the most stable version of the Demo and get a sense of what this game has to offer!




[h2]Steam Store & Logo Update[/h2]

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed two visual changes to the Store front. One of which is a revised logo for the game itself!

Here's a before and after image to show the difference.



What I find amusing is that after I finished the new logo, I realised why the old logo had been annoying me so much - and that's because the "The" was placed incorrectly for all that time!

The new logo makes more sense because "The Dancing Moon" is the name of the inn that you find yourself in within the game, not "Dancing Moon". It's so simple but explains why after all this time why the old logo didn't sit well with me.

The other change is a complete revamp of the Steam's store page. Now that the game is nearing the end of it's development, I've realised I can rely on a bunch of new and updated assets to really make things pop. I hope you like it!





[h2]Making a Village More Alive[/h2]

One of the challenges I've faced is how to make the world I'm building feel a bit more alive.

There's a total of five hand-crafted zones with a handful of important NPCs that you can interact and follow quest-lines with, but around that things have always felt a little bit... empty.

This critique is valid, as that has also come up as a point of player feedback from the Demo.

The intention here is that most of the more empty spaces in the game is available for the player to sandbox in. This means placing objects down, crafting, and eventually putting large buildings in place too (more details below!), but as these things unlock later in the game, those areas are essentially unused until that time.

However, to help with the steady growth of the village and to enhance the feeling of being more "alive". I've started experimenting with a "passive" feature that occurs as you progress in the game.

I'm calling this feature "Visitors". These are additional non-important NPC's who fill in empty spaces in the game that provide "eavesdrop" style dialog as you wonder around. These NPC's could be chatting in a group, fishing by the water, sitting at a table at The Dancing Moon, and more.

As you walk by them, they have the opportunity to provide snippets of conversations which change depending on where you are in the story or what quests you've done. These sorts of things are simple to expand upon, and hopefully make the village feel a bit more alive as you progress throughout the game!




[h2]Story Insights - Village Building[/h2]

In last months newsletter I delved into the museum and artefact gameplay. Following this trend, in this months newsletter I'd like to demonstrate village building.

In the earlier portions of the game you may notice that the regions you explore are either scattered by burning debris or empty plots of land. As you help the village rebuild these areas will become available for you to craft and construct.

There are two main mechanics for construction within the game - the first is a build mode for object placement, and the second is a construction mode for larger things like buildings. Each of these things are driven by the crafting system which require you to gather various resources.

Both of these options are provided by Lucas - the local handyman who's staying in Illisor! After completing the relevant quests, talking to Lucas will display these options for you.


To support your endeavours in construction, Lucas has also provided a Construction Storage Box to assist your need to harvest materials. Instead of using your inventory, placing any materials in the Construction Storage Box will go towards the buildings you wish to construct.


After you satisfy the requirements for a building, Lucas will take you to a birds-eye view of the village, where you can place your new building. This mode also allows you to move existing buildings, so you don't have to be perfect straight away!



So far this covers the construction mode gameplay, but to allow for even finer customisation we can talk about the build mode.

A feature which can already be used in the demo, build mode allows you to craft an assortment of items and place them freely within the world (within some limitations)!

So with both construction mode and the build mode features, the game allows for broad stroke customisation as well as finer detailing. This is perfect for when you eventually get the opportunity to build and furnish your own home!





That's all for the May edition of my developer newsletter - have a good one and see you in June!

- DjMonkey

Enjoy reading my dev diary newsletters? Then please consider giving me a Wishlist & Follow! I'd greatly appreciate it! You can do so from the the Steam page.

If you’d like to join the community and discuss the content of this post, please visit the Discord or make a comment on social media!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1782420/Tales_from_The_Dancing_Moon/

Hello everyone, just a couple of small fixes in this patch!

Feel free to continue reporting any bugs via our Discord bugs channel or through Twitter.

Discord: https://discord.gg/kpGVRKPn5W

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DancingMoonGame


[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• The farm plot tooltip will successfully remove itself if the player removes the farm plot itself.
  
• Fixed an issue with season progression.
  
• Fixes to player hotkeys.
  

Thank you so much for playing!
-DjMonkey