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I make stuff when I feel like it, which is almost never.(They/them, She/her) Developing an RPGmaker 2003 game Primal Essence. Can be found at the tab below, or the following two links: https://rpgmaker.net/games/12975/ https://refolde.itch.io/primal-essence

[refolde]

2025 Progress video

It's been a year since the last one. Here's one for 2025. Featuring boring stuff and violence.

[refolde]

Crawled out of my hole to post this. New progress video probably coming out sometime in the near future.

[refolde]

I wish this was the culmination of a week's worth of work, but instead it was several months. My progress has been slow and focused on polishing the first area, populating the place, dealing with the tutorial, along with minor tasks for each party member. So still nothing I feel like is worth sharing but I have pretty much nothing else at the moment.

[refolde]

Primal Essence: the year 2024 in review

OH GOD I FORGOT IT WAS ALMOST NEXT YEAR OH FUCK I DIDN'T TYPE THIS UP AHEAD OF TIME I AM RUSHING OH GOD OH FUCK

uhhhh

OKAY LET'S SEE WHAT I DID THIS YEAR

I MADE TWO NEW PLAYABLE CHARACTERS THAT'S SOMETHING!!!!

UHHH

THE STATUS CHANGE INDICATOR MAJIGGY

I'M WORKING ON JUSTICE TOWER THE BEGINNING AND THE HUB AREA YES YES

LOTS OF ROOMS AND STUFF

CUTSCENES!? ACTUAL CUTSCENES? THE GAME HAS AN ACTUAL NON-EXCUSE STORY NOW!!!!!

PRESS SHIFT TO ADVANCE ATB BARS!!! WOW!!!

SPRITES SPRITES SPRITES!!!!!

THESE ARE THE ENEMY!!! THEY EXIST TO BE KILLED!!!!

THESE ARE GENERIC NPCS!!! THEY EXIST TO FILL SPACE!!!

OKAY THAT'S IT FOR 2024 OH GOD I'M SO SHORT ON TIME

[refolde]

Primal Essence: One Year After the Demo

Okay so this is a belated 1 year progress report because I literally forgot I published the first demo

on September 18, not October. Oops.

I would have made a devlog on RMN, but that site's still down.

I doubt anyone will be seeing this post, but I'm making it for posterity.

So it's been one year and I'm going to be honest, I have fuck all to show for it.

I mean, there's progress, but most of it is either uninteresting or invisible to the naked eye

Have some screenshots, that's all I can provide

Okay so this is a belated 1 year progress report because I literally forgot I published the first demo

on September 18, not October. Oops.

I would have made a devlog on RMN, but that site's still down.

I doubt anyone will be seeing this post, but I'm making it for posterity.

So it's been one year and I'm going to be honest, I have fuck all to show for it.

I mean, there's progress, but most of it is either uninteresting or invisible to the naked eye

Have some screenshots, that's all I can provide

And also a video "showcase"

Frankly speaking, despite the lack of feedback I got on the demo, I was already able to feel that there were a lot of problems with it, and things are in dire need of change. In fact, I'm downright embarrassed by about half the stuff that I put in the damn thing. Maybe I need to make big changes to the game page as well, but that time is far off.

I'll be back, hopefully, when/if I have an actual game to show, but for now, it's back to radio silence.

[refolde]

Not a gif this time converting things to gifs makes them bad and explode. Also that crappy portrait is a placeholder dw about it

[refolde]

Spent time just to make a single cutscene. Besides that some mapping stuff.

No refraction to be found here

Some misc. mapping stuff

[refolde]

Mapping stuff.

[refolde]

okay i literally don't know what to say now it's literally just progress on the stupid tower and it's not finished and i don't know what

[refolde]

Small new things

Battle effect displays to give more clarity in battle...

and also I made the Burn status effect spread to other party members to distinguish it from Poison

In relation to the Battle Effects: something from my testing

[refolde]

Set of the new battle animations

Here are the set of new battle animations for the two characters I was working on.

[refolde]

Skill Menu Visuals

Skill Menu Visuals for the two characters I've been working on. Just another smalllish update.

[refolde]

A thing

Here, have something

[refolde]

Skill menu for one of the next characters. Using another's visuals as a placeholder. Super work in progress, of course, but I just needed to put something up.

[refolde]

Snippets of some new animations

Not all of the ones I made yet, just some short snippets so I don't go a hundred years without posting anything again.

[refolde]

Primal Essence Version 0.03 and what's next

Well, version 0.03 has already been out for a couple weeks. Originally I wanted to make this blogpost in conjunction with Version 0.03, but there were some major bugs at the time that needed to be addressed. Anyway, it's about time to get to to work on in-engine stuff again, so Version 0.03 will be the final version of the Episode 0 demo, which will not receive anymore updates (unless there's yet another game-breaking bug or something that is insanely easy to trigger) The current plan is for the next demo to be the story demo, featuring the beginning portions of the game's actual story, and I don't plan on any more demos afterwards until the full release (very optimistic) Work has been done on the next two characters, Taffer and Dali. Their animations so far mostly just exist in the form of previews (they haven't been implemented in the game yet), with plans to get to work on the rest of the characters later. For now, here are said previews.

I will try ('try') to post minor updates once in a while here, but I kinda doubt it.

[refolde]

Primal Essence Version 0.03 update 10/14/2023

10/14/2023 Version 0.03

I originally wanted to put this off until later but there were some major bugs that needed to be addressed

Bugfixes:

-Fixed Pots n Pans using Placeholder animation

-Fixed Guard being usable at 0 AP

-Fixed Sharpen Blades using Placeholder animation

-Made it so Chapter Boss cannot be defeated before Second Phase

-Fixed Steve’s ‘Exhaustion’ skill applying Speed debuffs to target that uses a Speed debuff skill against him

-Fixed yet another animation bug for Dagger!AB Guarding that cropped up after fixing the previous animation bug (if I see another looping Guard animation I 

swear I’m gonna lose it)

-Fixed crash when viewing AB’s ‘Clarity; Skill (For Clarity’s sake it was using a removed image file)

-Fixed Quest Counter sneaking its way into screens where it doesn’t belong after Loading a game from the Save Menu

-Possibly fixed an issue where an enemy could rise from the dead to attack you before finally expiring (but I could never figure out what causes it to begin 

with and it’s difficult to replicate so who knows)

-Fixed a bug where using an area attack when one of the targets is inflicted with Fear would delay the ATB of subsequent allies

-Possibly fixed a bug where Steve’s portrait would be locked into 'Damaged’ if Dynamic portraits was turned on and he uses Cover on an ally during an area 

attack.

-After freeing the Trapped Guy, fixed his shop accidentally allowing you to sell items to him.

-Added missing flavor text to the furniture in the Side house

-Fixed one passability bug it’s too minor for me to bother mentioning

Changes:

-'About’ option in System Menu now only gives Version number. Changelog is instead found as a .txt file in game folder

-Minor adjustments to a few animations, so insignificant they aren’t even worth mentioning

Text correction:

-Combat Instructor no longer refers to a removed game mechanic (checkpoints)

-Corrected the cook’s sense of direction (now says ingredients are in the bottom-right instead of bottom-left during the cooking tutorial)