--Introduction--

Hello, everyone!

I will be doing weekly development log updates for a few weeks leading up to the release of  Corrupted Oath. Follow me on itch.io to not miss out on information you may find value in  (https://cracked-walnut.itch.io/corrupted-oath), especially if you're planning on working  on a long-term project, such as myself. 

This week, I'm going to address the design choices I took when making Corrupted Oath. We'll be discussing scrapped game ideas, specifically.

--Scrapped Ideas: The Cooking System--

This mechanic was something I was very interested in executing. Planning out a concept like this, is like putting together a puzzle. I don't have much information regarding the cooking system, because I cannot locate the file which housed all of the details.
The system was going to be designed around finding food, cooking them, and eating them. Pretty simple. I know I had a "fish" as a cook-able item, so I'm assuming I was either going to implement a fishing mini-game, or just have the player purchase fish from a
shop.

Upon cooking raw fish, the raw fish would be removed from your inventory, and a cooked fish would be added. I am using a much more in-depth model of this cooking system in my next game, which is also being developed in RPG Maker MV.

The rudimentary logic of this mechanic makes it very flexible. Adding on top of what's already there is very simple to do, which is why I'm taking full advantage of that fact.

The reason cooking was scrapped from Corrupted Oath, was because the game turned out to be quite linear in nature. Designing an open world game would've taken much, much longer.

If I'm having the player follow a path from A to B, I could just reward items like healing potions, and skip out on the extra step of cooking an item to achieve the same results. The rules between an open world saga and a linear experience aren't equal, but similar in theory.

--Scrapped Ideas: Party Members--

If you've played the demo, then you're well aware there are no party members to be found in Corrupted Oath. The game was originally planned out to be a single protagonist experience. The idea of having more than one party member surfaced about 75% of the way into development.

Now, at the time, the idea looked like it could work out pretty well. All I needed to do was re-arrange the skills in Nintai III's repertoire to be equally distributed among Nintai and this new party member. Balancing out the skills  was another challenge all on its own.
Not just balancing, but now having another member meant more turns to utilize skills/items, and one extra turn on the battlefield. This would severely tip the tides of battle in the player's favor, and trying to balance this out would take so much longer than just leaving it
as a one-protagonist adventure.

So I let the idea go, and haven't revisited it since.

--Scrapped Ideas: SPARE System--

SPARE stands for Skilled demonstration of Perplexed And Really interesting Expressions. The idea behind the SPARE system, was to give one other way of approaching each battle. Very much inspired from Undertale's combat system.

Here are the contents of the document detailing what the SPARE system was (modified to remove potential spoilers):

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- If an enemy spots the player, the player is proposed with two basic choices:
- Spare the enemy
- Fight the enemy

Picking one or the other option will net certain rewards:
- Sparing will grant XP to the player
- Fighting will grant random item drops, XP, but less XP than if
the player were to spare the enemy

Later in-game enemies will not be spared so easily. They may strike up a conversation and demand to fight, or question the player's intent on sparing them. 
Their pride for Aldreith may get the better of them.

Why should the player spare the enemy? Aldreith's forces were once innocent animals, who have now turned into slimes and elemental spirits. 
Sparing them shows the kindness and devotion the player has towards these creatures.

SPARE system scenarios

If the player chooses to spare the enemy:

Spare value will increase which will have benefits later on.
Sparing the enemy will decrease your HP, meaning you'll need to use
an HP Flask or some other healing ability to recover your lost health.

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--Scrapped Ideas: New Game+--

New Game+ would offer the player a way of playing through the game's story again, this time with all of the weapons and items they obtained in their previous play-through.

Certain story critical items would not have been carried over, though.

Why didn't I include a New Game+ with the final version of Corrupted Oath? Implementing such a feature would mean double the testing, essentially. 

That sort of time I didn't have, so I found a way around this problem, but it would risk spoiling the endgame content, so I'll refrain from talking any further!

Just know that there is post-game content. :)

I'll be posting a separate devlog containing this information, and marking it as a spoiler.

--To Wrap Up...--

Next Tuesday, September 3rd (Two days from launch!), I'll be discussing the RPG Maker MV engine and my experience with it in Weekly Devlog #4: Working with RPG Maker MV.

Check out the Corrupted Oath demo here: https://cracked-walnut.itch.io/corrupted-oath (download link is at the bottom of the page)

Leave your feedback on the Corrupted Oath Discord server: https://discord.gg/eAssA8y

Thank you for reading Weekly Devlog #3!