Hello, viewers.



I've been pretty busy of late. Like I said in the last blog, I've been working on the new project, Moon and Star Preludes. Its been coming along swimmingly. Unlike Santoo Rinba, I decided to make the beginning of the game more... traditional.




In hindsight, I should change that "2" to a "two." I'm to lazy to do that right now.


Aperahama is Tawhiri's father.

While I won't talk about the story TOO much until a profile is released, I will list a few "features" for some awesome CC.

- Main Characters
Tawhiri. Obligatory 'I want to be the chosen one.'
Very competent, skilled, witty, but can be an asshole every once and awhile. He's also a tad shy.

Vaniel: Not insane. Despite my efforts, this trait won't work like you thought it would. He is, nevertheless, comedic relief during the more lighthearted parts of the game. fairly competent, amazing cliché healer, yet he loves to bother and annoy people. Vaniel becomes more serious as the game progresses for reasons too emo to write.

Ninshara: Token bada$$ female. All my women are bada$$ females. It's a prophecy I must follow until I die! She's a skilled gun mage with lots of big guns because why not. Very serious when on the battle field. Her personality is WIP.

James:

I don't need to say anymore other than the fact that he's support, and is nicknamed "Time Weaver."
I wanted another bada$$ female in my party... but when you can add an anthropomorphic time-wielding dragon as a player-character,
YOU'RE GONNA FREAKIN' DO IT.

Rushintow: A wolf born from a woman who would give up her humanity for ultimate power. She's the party's second tank, along with tawhiri.
Like Nin and James, she's a WIP. But I can say that she is probably the strongest character in Moon and Star. That's counting the final bosses.
How am I going to balance that? You'll see~

- The Similarities to SR
Like I said in the last blog post, the main characters are Tawhiri and Vaniel - along with Ninshara and Rushintow. Other similarities come in the form of NPCS and regions. There were quite a few places I loved in SR. Therefore, you will find areas like Moonlit City, Forest Down Under, Hightide, and even the capital City Santoo Rinba in Moon and Star.
While Tawhiri is a mishmash of characters from SR, I probably won't change a whole lot of Vaniel's design other than his personality.

- The art
All original character portraits, battlers, battlebacks, and lots of sprite edits/tileset edits. This insane amount of artwork is done mostly so that I can become a better artist - not because I want to be SUPER EDGY -- though I'm only half-lying.
Like SR, M&S has a lot of custom artwork. This is due to me enjoying the process quite a lot. Now I WAS going for ALL ORIGINAL tilesets and character sprites... but then the game went from ambitious to flat-out impossible.

- Mapping style
I'm following my own guide to overlay-conserves. Unless I want to make something really pretty, or it's a town hub - expect no overlays. This probably won't hinder the quality as much as you think due to me editing 99.999% of all the tilesets in some weird way. Also, it'll allow more time to be used for pseudo-open world content. More on that later.

- My undying fetish for UNIQUELY WEIRD ALIEN CREATURES
Case and point: all my characters are needlessly black for the sake of being... black.

I guess you could say this madness came to when my Ex was blatantly racist for no discernible reason. I told him off by drawing darker skinned people that had wildly different ethnic backgrounds. This escalated quite a lot from then.

I enjoy pleasing minorities in general -- at least in my writing.
People tell me my art is unique, but that's just another word for weird/mediocre. Don't be shy~
Also, if you happen to be homophobic, racist, sexist, or a member of the Westboro Baptist Church -- let's not be friends. Ever.

- OMG NO, ATB BATTLE SYSTEM! CLARE YOU SON OF A BITCH!

Ignore the red thing on the top of the screen.
I'm using a script called MOG_Actor_Picture_CM to show off player-battlers when its their turn. It's pretty nifty, and it gives me a reason to draw the character again. <3

And do not worry, viewers. I pride myself in being kinda-sorta competent with ACE. At the very least, I can quality-ensure my game fairly well. Maybe.... I don't even know ;___;

One of the cool features with M&S's battle system is the fact that normal attacks take effort. When you attack an enemy, you'll get something like this:

Every character has their own unique combos they can pull off WITH NORMAL ATTACKS. Hell, Vaniel can combo heal spells. Example.
- Weak heal that's conservative
- Strong heal that's not so conservative
- A heal spell that's not so conservative,but doesn't use a whole lot of ATB to cast.
COMBO 3 TIMES MOTHER HUGGA!
Yeah, I'm pretty excited about this, and I have to wonder why people don't use Yanfly's combo scripts a whole lot more. I guess people like spamming normal attack to save MP. :)
'Clare! You're ripping off World of Warcraft's heal system and putting it in ace!! Hell, you're using the holy Trinity!!! shame on you.' >.><.<

- MY CHARACTERS HAVE NO EMOTION
Unlike Santoo Rinba, I will redraw the character when they're giving a new expression of some kind. Example:

"I'm feeling pretty gay right now."

"I look like a girl, huh? Well... damn... I hate you, Clareain. Why must you draw inspiration from Bloodelves in WoW?!"

Now this has the side effect of me screwing up art consistency every once and awhile. I might go through and overhaul it once the game is completed, but if I don't -- I give you my deepest apologies.
Be glad I play test my game, at least!

- Mixing funny with serious
Did you guys play Santoo Rinba Chapter 2, Moonlit City? While the Humor wasn't to my fancy in hindsight, it hits home with its contrast to the dungeon inside the city. Everything goes from happy fun times to what the f**k, Clare!
If you have examples of games that pull this off fairly well, do share the inspiration.

Pseudo-Open World Content
There are 3 modes of gameplay in Moon and Star.
Town Hubs: Go around maps talking to werewolves, buying items from space lizards, and gathering side quests.

Dungeons: With more inspiration from Zelda games than Final Fantasy and its CAVES OF ENDLESS RANDOM BATTLES.

Fields: Large maps that have quite a few hidden treasures, bosses, npcs, and are great for side quests.

You'll run into a field every once and awhile, and it will be the place that breaks all linearity for a little while. It's Sorta like FFXIII's grand pulse... only done multiple times from the start of the game, and to the end. A concept, I'm sure!
And don't worry. All the side quests are optional, due to the difficulty system.

HEROIC DIFFICULTY
If you want to go through the game in about 10 hours, and uncover the super weird story I have in store for you with NO padding - go for it on normal difficulty.
Heroic difficulty is for the bada$$ players that complete most of the side quests and want a real challenge. Playing on Heroic could easily add 70% more hours of gameplay. At least in concept.
Also, there's no Heroic Power from Santoo Rinba. That system was a bitch to balance correctly. I was obviously very high in the creation of Heroic Power.

NO RTP
Okay, that's a lie. Expect several RTP edits once in a while.
The game will be independent of the RM RTP download. This might have the side effect of a large game, but oh well. Please note that I'm taking steps to conserve as much space as humanly possible. Right now, M&S is a 51 MB download.

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And that's about it.
The project is futuristic high-fantasy with a lot of surreal elements to compensate for my lack of skill. It'll be a hoot! Maybe...

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In other news, I'm finally in the CC mood. I've created a new feedback source.
Newest One:



Older One:



Unlike my let's play/tries, CC's feedback will only cover the intro and certain elements I can comment on. It might be a tad jarring to random viewers, but it'll cut the amount of useless in my videos by 70%. that more than compensates for it in my opinion.

If you have any comments and criticism for my work, feel free to list it here. Don't ask me when the profile for Moon and Star will be released. I probably won't create one until I'm half-done with the game. And I'll NEVER release a demo. I can take criticism very well. TOO well. To the point of losing my vision to please some random dude in Great Britain.

So if I'm not IRL or working on the All Hallows' Event, I've been working on Santoo Rinba. With that,
I've completed 2.0, which adds a fairly good amount of new content.
Here is the patch notes:


I am also looking into a patching system for Santoo Rinba. Once you download the main file,
all new content will be in smaller files for easy and less time consuming updates.

As always, feel free to leave comments and criticism. They go a long way in the making of this project.
If you find any bugs and errors, report them here:
http://rpgmaker.net/games/3794/Bug_Reports_C_2/
You will be rewarded with cookies.

Now for something completely silly.

I have a lot of fun when making my side quests~

So I've been working on Santoo Rinba whenever I get the time. A lot of hours have been spend on the Let's Plays and review(s), so I'm a little tight on time.
If you didn't notice already, I changed the title screen to something that reflects 2.0 (the next major update.) I'll admit that Vaniel, Tawhiri, and Rushintow aren't the major focus of this patch, but, honestly, I don't care :P
Expect a patch 3.0 (full game) title screen, once that day finally rolls around. For now, I hope you like the new drawing!

Now about that fabled Moonlit City. Here's a concept sheet of the city. Subject to change, of course.
A lot of districts are blanked out because they are unreachable parts of the city. Will I add maps there? If I need to, yes. But for now, I think 11+ maps is good for a major plot-area.
So yeah, I can't wait until I start on this city. Part of me wants to skip it because...it might overshadow my mapping skills, but I'll have the faith.
^-^

Now onto 2.0 gameplay. I would love to hear your thoughts on how Vaniel plays in his first 5 levels.
I feel as though he has a fun skillset for the early-game limits.



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If you guys have any questions retaining to Santoo Rinba,
or any of my projects, feel free to ask here or PM me.

Special thanks to Incarnate.

I'll use his review to the best of my ability when crafting the next (and last) demo.

Now with that said, I feel as though making every single skill right now is a bad idea. So allow me to write my main goal for every characters here.
That should suffice for now.

- Zirodolla, Our little goddess...?
Main roles:
Power-Healer- All her healing spells are on-demand.
Need a weak spell that's mana sufficient heal? YA GOT IT
Need a strong spell that eats up mana? YA GOT IT
Need heals that are quick and tactical? Guess what I'm going to say.
The problem is that she relies on MP, and if Zirodolla runs out, she becomes almost useless.

Holy/Unholy Damage- Some of the most powerful Holy and Unholy spells in the game.
The problem is that Ziro can't deal consistent dps compared to other characters.

Buff/Debuff Support- Spells like Ruin are very easy to use and are very powerful.

Off-Tank- For a limited amount of time, Zirodolla can almost become immortal, and take damage like a freakin' boss.
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Zirodolla makes for an extremely powerful support character all around. She's very useful if you want a character that can take care of everything. The problem is that she can't master anything.

- Naka, That black girl everyone likes hates
Main roles:
Critical Damage- Most of Naka's attacks can critically strike, which deals over two times more damage than normal. She also has a few abilities that can deal elemental damage.
Stun Support- Naka can keep one enemy completely disabled for the entire fight, if she wants.
She also has abilities that increase the amount of turns your entire party can use in battle.
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Naka is great when it comes to EP and MP resource management. Also her damage is pretty consistent no matter what. The only problem is when enemies are strong against Weapon damage.

- Vaniel, ^o^
Main roles:
Item-Healer-
Vaniel can increase the effectiveness of healing items, and create his own.

Buff/Debuff Support-
Vaniel has many, many buffs and debuffs- along with a few elemental spells and attacks.

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Vaniel is extremely powerful, especially if you're using other party members. The problem lies within his complex array of abilities.
If you don't know how to properly prepare his skill rotation, you will find that Vaniel can be pretty useless.

- Donna, Not-so-secret girlfriend
Main roles:
Physical Tank-
Donna has many buffs that increase her effectiveness for the role of Tanking monsters.
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For the most part, Donna can receive an unbelievable amount of damage without dying. Donna is also the easiest character to Tank with. This is because most fights center around her skillset. The problem is that they're better Tank characters in certain aspects- mainly magic wielders.

- Ebalestt, best emperor ever~
Main roles:
Elemental Damage-
Ebalestt can deal a consistent amount of Flame, Aqua, Earth, and Air damage to the target.

Healing over time-
Ebalestt can heal many people without using too many resources.

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Our little prince-going-emperor has quite a few tricks. If you know the elemental weakness of a target, you can do much worst than bring Ebalestt into the party.
Along with this, Ebalestt doesn't suffer from resource issues. The problem is that Ebalestt relies on the abused weakness of his foes.
He also has issues healing people who are taking an extreme amount of damage at once.

- Verniamachi, totally evil...
Main roles:
Magical Tank-
Verniamachi relies on his magical defenses to stay alive. Furthermore, his attacks will almost always heal him.
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Verniamachi is great for fighting enemies that use spells which go through defenses. This is because he has one of the biggest HP levels in the game, many resistances to status ailments, and the fact that he can heal himself almost effortlessly. The problem is that he does not have good defense, and some attacks might even one shot him- compared to Donna.

This is not every playable character. There are many guest characters that that fit special roles for special dungeons and quests.
Small example of guest PCs


With THAT out of the way, I'm going to start balancing the game and then I'll start working on Moonlit City, also known as the City of "Demons."
Expect a mapping video on MLC! Also expect a lot of Vaniel Shenanigans, And no Naka shenanigans.
Haha (oh gosh...)

*Event is over. I'll release a new blog in a few more days*
I'm still juggling a whole bunch of things, but with that said- I will be working on my character skillsets very soon.
The W.I.P Skills and Strategies page will provide every character's skills and abilities- along with a little video demo. :3

With that said, do you all have a character who's abilities peak your interest?

I would like to know in this blog, and post him or her as my first 'complete' character.
But please limit yourself to only choosing one character of all 6.

And do not tell me you want to see Nathie's skillset.
You'll have to play the game for that :P

I'll end this, or start a tie breaker on 7/18/2012 (next Wednesday) What I'm probably going to do is list the most wanted characters in the order of most voted. So if Vaniel got another vote, my order of work would be Van, Ziro, and random order of non-voted chars.


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Old Blog Videos:
*Scripting newer ones. These, however, are not. Just a warning :/*
Astalis News Part 2
Astalis News Part 1: Pilot