Chp2 Dungeons built + twitters!

Have got two more dungeons built up now and am just adding the second subsection to chapter 2 and refining the dungeons, as well as polishing off the city.  The graphics/mapping is starting to get a bit lazy, as I’m running out of tilesets and with two projects on the go, I can’t afford to keep running around looking for unique tiles and music etc for every map in each game right now (there are plans to accomodate for this in the future though, but for now it’s just going to have to be dealt with, unfortunately).  Of course, have plenty of optional side-story involved, and have made sure all the side missions are optional, however they’re recommended as the final dungeon is nails; I’m still trying to balance it out, as I just got my ass kicked by the boss!

Also, after having seen Peter Molydeuxs twitter and have been readin’ it, have got myself a wee account there for spitting out my plans for either game without going on and making some huge post (like this) for every single update. Seems like the purpose of the thing and I could definitely use something that’s designed for smaller bits of info.

S’lookin’ good!  Are you excited?  I’m excited!

http://pixelbrady.wordpress.com/

Amn-Duth still needs filler content

Chapter Two contains a handful of dungeons and quests to complete optionally, before advancing onto the main dungeon and hunting down the primary boss of the Chapter; Stirling, the Drug Baron.  The hub area, where you will spend your time, is the populated Amn-Duth city, which is quite large (and quite laggy) and contains a lot to explore.  Multiple marketplaces with various prices to worry about.  The city contains countless people to talk to, many of them having at least something worthwhile to say (as each one has half a dozen different things to say) as well as many buildings to explore.  These buildings are anything from shops with even more wares, to quest collection NPCs, a Storytrader that sells information and clues and even a library with swathes of extra information to read up on, for those interested.  There’s now about five more buildings with empty doors waiting to be filled out with extra content, but I’m still working on what they will have, sadly!  Any ideas are welcome 😀

DotI’s first review!

http://rpgmaker.net/games/4179/reviews/1739/

Metatron has been the man to post the first public and proper review for DotI and gives a brutally honest opinion of it.  Much of the complaints about it are things that I’d have to agree with myself, although some of them (such as thinking the stealth mission was frustrating) I’m sad about, personally thinking Jezelles stealth sequence was quite succinct and to the point, I never saw a problem with it.  Then again, tunnelvision can create these problems.

Mainly, I’m pleased about the story thoughts, as that is my main goal.  As I’ve been promising over and over, Chapter Two is to be an improvement, and I’m taking on feedback such as this review towards that, I’m hoping that when someone decides to post another review based on Chapter Two, it will be a much better result, as it’s already exciting with the new plans!

Anyhow, the whole tunnel-vision problem I’m hoping to solve with Colonist, especially since there’s been a surprising amount of attention towards it, both feedback and people wanting to join the team or even just help out.  A whole new build towards the game and people involved has got me putting a lot of attention on that more than DotI, however I don’t want to think DotI has fallen into a hiatus, just that the past and coming weeks I’ve been fairly busy and haven’t been working on either so much; my sisters wedding and my neuro appointment have unfortunately taken precedence over getting more evented.

However, the latest thing I’ve had done on DotI is a swamp dungeon; it’s in two and a half sections, and the first section is a maze (of sorts) and took a few tries to get it right.  Unfortunately I made it impossible a couple of times, but now it seems do-able, since there’s at least one direct route to the end, but will need some testing to see how easy it is overall.   As well as that, the side missions have been built up and plans for the main mission have been more or less finalised.  There’s also the introduction of the Storytrader; the most well informed group on Averell, second only to the Storytellers themselves.  This shifty gentleman will  give you all the information you could possibly need to advance through the quests, but will only reveal these hints and secrets at a cost!

DotI evolves with ABS (SAS)

http://arcthunder.site40.net/en-sapphire-action-system-iv/

I’ve taken up Khas’ Sapphire ABS script and have gone back and am now retroactively converting DotI into an ABS game instead of encounters.

I’ve thrown up some quick shots on the Screeny page as well, and will be remaking the video once I’m finished converting chapter one into ABS.

“Why?” you ask, with such interest and enthusiasm like I’d hope you do.

Well, I’d be toiling with the idea from the beginning, but pushed it away because I had virtually no understanding of scripts or even VXA as a whole, and why I tried to do this on 2k3 years ago, it made me want to die.  I’ve come back to the idea because I’m increasingly understanding the software, but also heavily because the quality of the finished product is paramount over my schedule.  I don’t know when I’ll get it finished anyways, so if it takes a bit longer for me to redo some stuff, I’m okay with that if it improves the game.

So, why ABS for the game?  Well, because being based off of a story that had all the characters separate and meeting up here and there, it was hard to create a party system for the game, I was having to create other characters that would be relevant and interesting enough to play, but be able to write them off as soon as the main character moves on.  That’s fine for one or two situations, but for every single section of the game I feel it would become blatantly obvious that the story was not designed with the intention of big groups travelling around the world together.  This way it allows the character to run around and do exactly as intended within the constraints of the story, without having to imagine up various other people to follow you around and act important for an hour.
The ABS also opens up some doors in terms of puzzles and dynamic/interesting dungeons that aren’t as readily available with encounters combat, and being a story-driven game I want sections of non-combat involved as well to allow the player to explore and treasure hunt.  This is also a bonus by removing the tiresome transition between encounters and field and lets the player move more seamlessly between events and cutscenes, getting a better feel of the progression.  Or at least I find it so.
As for the bosses, it allows me to make bosses that are hard without making them “the biggest badass in town” because teh story already has a set hierarchy of who is hardcore and who is flimsy, which falls to pieces when you have to make a boss hard just to keep up with the combat.  ABS allows difficulty in the boss battle without ever specifically stating that the boss character themselves are actually stronger than you are.

There’s a number of reasons I feel this is the right path to go down, and after playtesting the first two areas (the Wildness and the Tunnels) I feel it’s drastically improved the game.  The Chasm escape scene is now much more fun and challenging without becoming an issue of being transition-locked between constant battles. I was going to avoid it at first and maybe worry about it on a remake or split the game up into parts and ABS one of them, and any number of other avoidance plans, but I just couldn’t let it go once I started thinkin’ about what a benefit it could be.  Luckily, the more I work on it, the more convinced I am that it’s an improvement on the game and that it definitely was the right choice; not to mention it’s oodles of fun to playtest!

I am so, completely, utterly looking forward to making up the Grimaldus battlefield scene again, as with ABS it’s going play/feel amazing, I do believe!

Help me shape Chapter Two (poll time!)

Polls!  I need some feedback and polls seem like a good idea to get that! 😀

So, this is just a quicky wee post.  Amn-Duth City is taking pretty long to build up; there’s 70+ villagers and over 120+ conversational lines between them, some of them including pointless chit-chat, others informating city events and some even essential to quests!  There’s also thieves that will pick your pockets should you get too close, several merchants each with their own pricing agendas, trying to get as much of your money as possible and even another party member just itching to join you!

Chapter Two will be focussed around this city and the areas nearby, based around the central quest of catching the main baddy with a backup of several other side-quests to accomplish to help you level and get better gear, as well as find more characters and back story, including learning more about the Druids, if anyone remembers the mention of them in the Freelands.

Anyways, it’s coming along well at least, if slowly.  I’m not rushing it because this will be the focus of almost the entire chapter and no one wants it to be half-assed.  The city is fun to run around in because you do get completely lost, but there’s a lot of people scampering about and there will be hidden stuff to make it more worthwhile.  But, to the point, I’m not getting a lot of feedback despite views on both the blog and forums going up constantly, so am hoping that a poll might get me some better responses.  It won’t require you to log in to vote or anything, just two seconds to read and click, and it’ll all help direct me where I’m going, which is eaxctly what I need right now; I’m sorta floatin’ around in that “so much to do; where to start?” area and need something to focus on and build around!

The craftsman is one of the many merchants in Amn-Duth who will sell you various parts and pieces for various prices.  There’s a group of other marketplace salesmen who will also buy and sell gear at mixed prices in an attempt to scam you out of more than the items worth, as well as some who will actually sell you it even cheaper than normal!  There’s also a chemist poking around with all the best healing and restorative items.

The regional map is still a bit empty to look at, but not too much time will be spent on it, as it’s mainly a travelling section between the city and the scary-ass swamps to the east where you’ll have a quest to go in and visit in the name of saving a Druid!

Context

Context changes a lot of things, I believe.  It’s a heavy basis of how the story of DotI came around, knowing that something that comes across as irrefutably evil and wrong can be seen in a completely different light, given the right circumstances.  The story is about people who change their stories, hidden figures, deceit, disguise and mystery, all the things that cloud judgement and cloak context, making the true nature of any one event hard to read.  To add onto that, the characters all have ambiguous natures and goals; it’s never exactly certain what they’re thinking or why they’re doing this, and I’m trying to bleed that into the story from the start; giving a very one-sided, flat concept, then throwing some ambiguity at it to create that speckle of doubt about it.

It’s the “Dance” of Immortals because nothing is just a straight line, no one is just a mug shot, nothing’s that simple.  Everything is in constant motion, the characters are all moving around and changing their minds and having secret agendas… it’s more like a dance: looking at it in pieces and short segments looks like people just falling around aimlessly, but from my side, when you know what’s happening with everything at once, it’s more of a dance, more flowing than that.  Everyone’s going to where they’re supposed to be, but they’re not just walking there in a fashion that makes it simple to uncover from just looking at a step at a time.  Question really is; which one of them is who they appear to be?  Which one of them is actually evil?  Any at all?  Everyone

As an example, Chapter One introduces the Imperials fairly strongly.  They’re our bad guys, they’re destroying an innocent archipelago full of innocent folk.  Take that one piece of information and we have a typically “evil empire” scenario.  But that’s too boring, too cliche, no?  So we throw in a few curve balls at their story.  There’s a few cutscenes on the island as you run around as Kata, each tossing out some other viewpoints.  Then at the end of the chapter they’re brought up again and once more you get a different question about their motives.

I believe that context can change the world; had my fair share of being judged and abused based on one snippet of information taken out of context and it happens a lot.  People have a habit of seeing one side of things and accepting that as the raw truth, forgetting that everything is three dimensional and has different viewpoints.  I’m trying, I’m hoping, that I can bring that sense of context into this game, and really encourage the idea that you need to focus on more than just what you see at first.