I was bored and thought I'd use it as an opportunity to update everyone on status of TMJ development...

Beastiary and Characters
The Beastiary and Character Profile pages were released last week. Only one problem: I forgot to deploy the updated menu for TMJ to DSiPaint.com, so only those who use 3DSPaint.com and WiiOperaSDK.com were actually able to see it! (oops)

Tonight, I updated the Beastiary (and actually deployed it) with the growing list of enemy stats. Some of these still have to be filled in and tweaked before the final game release. Most of these stats mean nothing for Demo 7, but they will all be involved in the calculations for damage dealt and received in battle.

Demo 7 - 1P Battles
This demo is the most complex feature of the game to be developed so far, since it is actually a good chunk of the final game battle engine. Thus, I had to delay it past the originally planned release of last weekend.

There is still so much to do that I probably should delay it a few more weeks with much more content, but it would probably be best to just get the demo out at this point so that I can receive feedback on the engine, and Arch_Enemy can receive feedback on the enemy sprites.

Yesterday, I began to integrate items from the Inventory area (a.k.a. OMS's gifts to us each day) into the battles so that things like rocks and dirt could be tossed at enemies to inflict damage. It looks like the same issue will arise that hit the Nintendo DSi Browser with exhanced messaging: There is a flaw with handling of clicks for buttons generated on-the-fly. For the DSi version of the demo, I may just remove the Items menu for the moment.

So far, it's looking like Demo 7 will contain these features for the Sunday release:

* 1 to 3 random characters at once
* 1 to 3 random enemies at once
* Players can fight enemies with a sword
* Enemies can fight players with punches
* Players can use a few preset magics
* Enemies can use a few preset magics
* Players can use items (not depleted)
* Partial animations
* Speed stat to handle combat turns
* Running from battle

These may or may not be in the demo:

* Battle damage calculations
* Falling in battle

These will not be in the demo:

* Customizable characters
* Earning experience points
* A large selection of magics
* Weapon or armor selections
* Status ailments

What's Next?
The next step will be to release a demo of the scrolling engine, which will be like the old Teaser 3 (Meet Jasper) or the new Teaser 6 (Olmer Farm). This will take place in the village Bryn, where the game's story will start. This demo will require more sprite and tile artwork. The expected release date will be the end of October.