The Enkindler is one of the 9 patrons who, according to the people living in the violin's world, created their world of Vylna (name pending). Each patron is linked to one of the nine elements: Flame, Water, Wood, Dark, Time, Light, Stone, Ice and Sky. Some go by titles, some go by names.

The path leading to the Everdistant Sylvan is the Enkindler's Path, belonging to the Patron of Flame: the Enkindler. However, things get a little muddy with religion, and the Path has been taken over by worshippers of Aurora: the battle goddess and Patron of Light.

On this path, Viola meets the knight-captain, Soleil, and her Solar Knights. They've built a church at the end of the Enkindler's Path in worship of Aurora.

Originally, the third level in the game was going to be the Everdistant Sylvan: the place where Viola meets Momo, the tribe of harpies, and learns the Sky Song to travel the overworld with. But the Wishfire's song is important enough for Viola's character development that I held it off, and put another level in front of it so she can learn that song first.

As for the level itself: it's rather straight-forward, being linear up until the halfway point and then branching out a bit, just like the previous level. Part of this is to railroad the character a bit: there are still some tutorials left in this level. Also, it introduces the launching cannons, made in a previous week.

Next week I'm going to work on more artwork for the level, as well as making the Wishfire change dynamically based on who is in the party.

Unity has a feature called "Timeline", which allows you to create timed animations involving multiple objects, sounds, animations, etc. The plugin I use to create dialogue, RPGTalk, has built-in Timeline functionality, but I've decided not to use it in favor of my own solution. Partly because the RPGTalk Timeline functionality has a few user issues I don't like (having to go per line instead of a block of text being the primary issue), but also because I didn't want to create giant, unclear timelines. I favor having  a few smaller timelines connected together to create one cutscene.

Connecting these together is a simple ordeal. Play something on RPGTalk, which triggers the next timeline afterwards, as well as invoking the next RPGTalk by using the duration of that timeline.

This component also has options for changing text speed, adding a delay at the start, zooming in the camera or spawning one or more characters (and returning them to the player afterward).

I managed to write four scenes, as well as several tutorials, draw all the necessary backgrounds and sprites/animations, then implemented them all in five days. That gives me a solid idea for how much time is necessary to make stories for each level. If I can design and create art for a level in one week as well, it'd be two weeks for each level: faster than the original three I had imagined. We'll have to see how that works out for me.

Next week I'll work on improving the spell list: currently only 1 spell can be shown. I also want to create more spells for the first three characters, Viola, Fenrys and Niko. Lastly, I want to make a dynamic LevelHandler to keep track of chests, stories and enemies to make sure they can't be repeated.

The most important change I made this week was the change to Viola's movement. Essentially, Viola has a target velocity and a velocity. Velocity effects Viola's actual movement. Target velocity is influenced by the player's actions (like moving the control stick). Previously, every FixedUpdate would change velocity to instantly match the target velocity, making Viola's movement responsive.

Except, it was a little too responsive. After walljumps, Viola was able to instantly move back and forth, and (according to player feedback) Viola's movement overall could feel just a little too finicky.

The big change is that Viola's velocity now moves closer to target velocity with each FixedUpdate. This means that high amounts of velocity can't instantly be turned around. This gives the illusion of momentum during states of high velocity: wall jumps, and being launched from the newly created launchers.

One more change made is that some things don't influence target velocity, but will change velocity. Launching, walljumps, and jumps influence velocity so the player instantly lifts off at max speed, rather than accelerating over time.

This is the component for the basic launcher. Launchers are inspired by Donkey Kong Country's barrels: jump into one, be launched.

This is how the Launcher works (step-by-step):

• Touching the trigger attached to the Launcher brings Viola to the center (with an offset).
• After being in the center for a while...
• Viola is pushed into one of 8 directions.
• After being launched, the player has some influence over Viola's trajectory, but not much.
• Viola gets full control back when hitting the ground, or reaching maximum fall speed.

I've made 4 different versions of the launchers:

• The regular fires Viola in a direction as set in the component.
• The controllable launcher lets the player choose the direction with the control stick, then press A to launch.
• The moving launcher moves around, then lets the player launch in a pre-set direction by pressing A.
• A combination of the moving and controllable launcher: the moving launcher moves around, lets the player choose a direction with the control stick, and lets the player launch with A.

Early on during Viola's creation I wanted Viola to use an "Active Timed Battle" system, similar to Final Fantasy 4 and Chrono Trigger. The main reason for that system was so the characters could do Chrono Trigger style "Combo Techs": spells executed with more than 1 character, taking up turns for all characters involved.

I wanted these "Combo Spells" to make the budding friendship between party members a little more tangible during combat. The reason they ended up not being in the game is simply because it was gonna be too much work. Because of that, there was no longer a reason to use the ATB system, so Viola now uses a simple turn-based system.

I still liked the idea of the Combo Spell, so I decided to copy more recent anime-esque RPGs like Persona 5 and Xenoblade and create a "Chain Attack": all characters in the party attacking all at once. The player can now use it as a final attack in the final battle, but only in the true ending (which requires max friendship with all characters recruited).

The true ending can only be achieved by completing the party member related sidequests: the "Personal Quests". This idea is lifted pretty much straight from Bioware games like Mass Effect 2, where the best ending can only happen if you've done all the characters' "Loyalty Quests".

Viola gets a silver-colored violin because I love the idea of character development being signified by a physical transformation of sorts.

The particles in the second GIF are a neat little Mode7-esque trick that I like to call "just animate a gameobject to rotate and scale and put the sprites on there".

The effects in the final GIF however, are hand-drawn. Well. Tablet-drawn. You get the idea.

Next week is all about getting the true final battle to work, hopefully with animations for the final boss.

Viola has three endings: "Return", "Remain" and the "True Ending". The True Ending can only be unlocked by recruiting all the characters in the game, and completing their personal quest.

Return and Remain are pretty straight-forward. Either Viola returns home, or remains in the violin's world. I want both of these endings to be slightly... unsatisfactory, so the player knows there may be another ending they should be getting.

 To start, I made some concept art for both the final battles. I wanted a strange, faceless look for the regular final boss battle, and I wanted something that breaks the art-style of Viola to show off the otherworldly appearance.

I chose to go with a diamond. I'm not sure why: I was kind of thinking of a prism, which is often associated with colors. The final boss is the "Aspect": the creator and 'god' of the violin's world. So he's supposed to have "all colors", like a prism. But prisms look dumb, so it's a diamond now.

I gave him piano claws, and a violin head in his final battle, along with a space cape.

I worked on the pre-boss cutscene, a lengthy conversation between Viola and the Aspect, where the Aspect mimics his creations, Fenrys, Sybil and Momo. Their avatars however, have empty eyes and noise over them. Their "talk sounds" are also slightly more bit-crunched. Almost like a video game glitch.

I was surprised at how well just adding noise to each frame worked when animated.

Finally, I worked on the credits and the actual endings that comes after the boss.