Continuing my work on LALM, today I finished up the Tyaku Forest maps, the Lake, and the Wisplight Village maps. After that, I began thinking of ways to fully implement my Co-op idea and I believe I know how to do it using camera controlling plugins and movement ones to allow separate movement and occasional camera switching between the primary character and the "evented" second party member, Fayde. This system will allow me to create things like small spaces that only the child can go through, and other unique puzzles that require both characters to coordinate their movements together in order to progress in certain areas. Since the game world will feature a lot of Steampunk influence, moving machines is where this will come into play most. I will allow the player to choose if they want to do it co-op or not by placing a setting to control it, which will flip a switch depending on whether it's single or co-op gameplay. The second player will be able to move completely separate from the primary player, but the camera can only be switched by the main player. I don't think this has been done in such a way with an MV game yet, so I'm hoping it works how I believe it will.
Besides figuring out how to do that, I've started implementing the quest tracker into the story I've got going so far. Upon finding the gadget that controls it, you will be able to track any and all quests received (something people didn't like that TOTL was missing, but the easy to use plugins for it didn't exist until I finished that game already). I've also continued the story into the first village, but the player will be able to explore the lake before even going to the village if they desire. I also created the idea for the major plot of the game, which involves power struggles between a giant alliance based nation, an old kingdom type nation that is at war with a technology based one, and a tiny nation in the center of it all that is being pushed to collapse under the pressure of the three larger nations. Being as I like freedom of choice, the player will be able to freely support any of these 4 nations throughout the game by doing various actions, completing quests, and overall just random things like communicating with their citizens or uncovering travel routes and sharing that info with their leaders. It should be interesting as a bit of side stuff to mess around with.
Fayde will be introduced after Luminia stays the night at the inn in Wisplight Village. She will have to do some work for the owner of the tavern/inn, and it involved going out and delivering supplies to others as well as collecting special herbs the owner uses to cook with. Upon her trip to the areas where the herbs are found, she will hear a gunshot in the distance. Being as it's not a sound she's ever heard, she decides to find out what caused such a loud sound. That's when she'll notice a boy and an elder man being chased by members of the Xektor Royal Guard (they hunt down magik users). Seeing a child involved, she follows them and tries to intervene. Then tragedy happens and Fayde asks her to not give him over to the Xektor members. Since Luminia would never do such a thing, it ends in a fight, which puts the player at odds with the Xektor Alliance and it goes from there.
