And this one didn’t take an entire month! The feature creep and feature oversights were starting to show, but with this update they’ve been firmly reined in. With everything almost finalized, the past couple weeks has seen upgrades to a lot of PMDiscord’s backend and gameplay, as well as a bunch of early playtesting to ensure there’s no huge oversights before release.
Most notably, the game’s AI has been overhauled and improved… just about everywhere. Unlike last month, some of them can actually put up a challenge now. They can Intercept attacks for teammates, engage or retreat when it best suits them, and hopefully bail out for cover whenever they’re in a tough spot. The plan is that the game’s AI will be the best source of teaching players how to play the game, and therefore they’ll need to make use of all the options players have open to them.
Squishy bug saves squishier bug from fearsome kitty.
The battle interface is also a touch cleaner, and countless bugs have been stomped out, including every major bug that was present last month. (One oversight made it so a PKMN’s stat reductions would double over the next two turns, and then cut back to normal on the third turn. Kinda weird stuff!)
A bunch of quality-of-life features are still on the way, and there’s just a few more essential ones left to fix. Among the completed ones is a ‘MoveDex’ command which quickly tells you a move’s stats and strength. Since PMDiscord changes a few moves’ rules a little, this should be helpful to most new players.
Most moves are kept as similar to the official games as possible, but some needed an overhaul to work with PMDiscord’s new mechanics.
Lastly, I’ve been busy getting the game’s tutorial guides onto the website – You’ll be seeing those listed on the page soon. Next on the list is having more varied enemy difficulties, taking advantage of the new AI that’s there. It should make sure players will have something new to explore for a long while, even in the game’s early state.
In addition to this, a few test runs are showing that the Speed stat could be unbalanced with the rest. That means one more little setback, as I have some ideas to improve the Grazing and Intercepting mechanics before the game’s demo releases. These updates should be pushing closer and closer as the game steadily comes together, so stay tuned for the next.
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