Still planning the environment system out, which leads to the next change in Nostalgia's game mechanics: your items are affected by the evironment!
I got the idea while I was playing Lunar Knights, because your perishables items (meat, fruit) spoils if not used in a certain amount of time.

So I came up with this plan:

Jerky
Pork
Steak

Pork and Steak spoil after a few days (in game), turning them into Spoiled Meat, which harms you instead of healing you.
However, to prevent this, you can have your Pork and Steak cured in a town to prevent them from spoiling. Jerky won't ever spoil, since it was prepared that way.

Water
Spring Water
Liquid Ether

In snowy weather, if you stay out long enough, your Water and Spring Water will freeze, halving their effects. Liquid Ether is unaffected by the weather.

Holy Arcana
Tent

The Holy Arcana revives a fallen ally. However, if you spend too much time in the rain, the Arcana becomes soaked, and will only restore your ally to 1 HP instead of 1/4 their total HP.

Tent provides shelter for you, restoring your HP and MP in the field. But as you wander in the plains, or high in the mountains, you might run into a thunderstorm. If you are struck by lightning, you'll take damage, and there's a chance one of your Tents will be charred, causing it to randomly either heal a small bit of HP, a small bit of MP, or do nothing.

To accommodate for the items being affected by the weather, and therefore possibly changing types on the fly, your inventory will be limited to 64 item slots, each slot holding one item. It's not unlike Illusiat 13's iventory, but it only holds items. Key items and equipment are held elsewhere, as they don't need to change on the fly.

Alright. Finally, I have a screenshot worthy bump!

I give you the fruits of a few hours work: the completion of the puzzle elements in the mapper!
* Jumping over small streams of water
* Chainblade (Hookshot type item, reach of about 4 blocks, can hook onto posts and only travels over open ground and water)
* Pushing blocks (pushing them into water turns the area into ground)

I've also done a bit of work on the weather system, so NPCs can now trigger rainfall during a conversation.

My next objective is to get the time system working. My plan for day is to be normal contrast, and for the contrast to get darker during dusk, then return to normal and have the screen invert during night, and the screen to return to normal and contrast lighten and gradually return to normal during dawn.

Nah, I think the pushed blocks are fine as long as you call it "kicking blocks" instead of "pushing blocks."  This looks incredible.  I'm blown away with how awesome this is.  You're doing a wonderful, wonderful job with this, Finale.  Keep it up!

Edit:  Is it possible to animate the water tiles?  I think it could look even better if the water moved.

Actually, the water does animate, though it's kinda slow. I can try messing with the delay,  see if it turns out better.

Oh, and thanks guys!

Actually, the water does animate, though it's kinda slow. I can try messing with the delay,  see if it turns out better.

Oh, I see it now!
I think it could change at every frame refresh, or at least every other refresh.  That'd make it look like it's moving more.

I like this. Especially the rain and the block-kicking. But I agree with ztrumpet, if the water were animated a little faster/more smoothly, that'd be great.

something you could do to make the rain look more realistic would be to have several different possible animations to be drawn in each tile and then apply a random matrix of the different values every time it runs through a full loop. that wouldn't be much more difficult, but would look a lot more rain-like.

i love the chainblade. that could definitely help in some interesting puzzles. i also love to see that old projects are still being worked on. keep it up, guys. =)

Alright, that is awesome.  Excellent job there, Finale.  Wow.