I was sitting here trying to think of ways to make characters in Blackmoon Prophecy a little more customizable and I decided that one way to do so would be by adding a new accessory type called augments.

What are augments?
Slightly more expensive than regular accessories, augments are character-specific equips that increase stats in a way that is relevant to the characters equipping them. For example, Godot's augments will boost defense and speed a little, magic will be boosted drastically, and vigor will receive no bonus. Siegfried's augments, in comparison, are pretty much the complete opposite.

Aside from just boosting stats, each augment accessory will allow characters to use a brand new ability while the item is equipped. These are abilities that the characters cannot obtain in any other way.

So this sounds pretty dandy! Stats and cool new abilities! There is a catch though... once an agument is equipped, it cannot be removed.

How do we take an augment off, UPRC!?
Why, by using an item called Augment Off! This is a one time use item, but they are relatively cheap. An Augment Off item will unequip the accessory slot of all characters.

Where do we find augments and Augment Off items?
Augment shops! I'm sure that a lot of players have found pretty useless houses in some towns that contain either an NPC with pointless dialogue or absolutely nothing at all. These filler houses will become augment shops. Towns that don't have any such useless buildings will instead have augment shops added to them. If I don't want to bother increasing the size of some towns to add an augment shop (I'm looking at you, Palumpu!) then the augment vendor will be roommates with the accessory or item shop vendor.

What kind of abilities do augments teach characters?
Each character can learn four different abilities. Here's one from each character as an example.

Ami - Mustard Bomb (Fire damage, berserk, and gradual HP loss on one enemy)
Darius - Vampire (Absorbs a moderate amount of HP from a target)
Elina - Magic Breath (Heavy non-elemental damage to all enemies)
Godot - Acid Rain (Water damage and inflicts poison on all enemies)
Jasmine - Quasar (Massive non-elemental damage to one enemy)
Nobumasa - Sosei (Heals KO and approximately 100 HP)
Oalston - Ultima (Massive non-elemental damage to all enemies)
Siegfried - Pulsar (Massive non-elemental damage to all enemies)
Vahn - Jet Stream (Air and water damage to all enemies)
Vera - Fantod (Greatly increases her magic stat and restores MP gradually)

Bosche has no augments because his accessory slot is already locked.


I'll have augments ready in my next update.

Kind of inspired by a blog post Ocean recently made detailing things that never made it into his game. I decided that it might be fun to do, so I'll give it a go as well! Here are things that I didn't add to Blackmoon Prophecy. Also note that there are some spoilers below.

1. MogNet
Similar to the location in FF9. I intended for it to be located in Ivalice and I even started to map it out (it's probably still in the map tree somewhere), but I just had no real solid ideas for what to do with it and decided not to bother with it.

2. Esper World
A few drafts before I finalized the story, I had planned for the party to visit the Esper World to take the fight to the Archareons head on. A second reason for Vahn and friends to be in the Esper World would be to stop Malacore from absorbing the Holy Crystal and Dark Crystal. The Holy Crystal eventually ended up becoming the Life Crystal and I scrapped the Dark Crystal entirely. It's probably a good thing that I didn't go this route because making a fourth world map probably would have killed me.

3. Mog Has Joined The Party, Kupo!
This was tossed out at the LAST SECOND. Mog was going to be a secret recruitable character who would perform similarly to his FF6 incarnation. What stopped me from adding him? I didn't want to run through the entire database adjusting item/spell properties just for the sake of one missable character.

4. Branch Liberated
There was going to be this epic assault on Branch Castle by the player to take the castle back from the Archareons. This would involve overcoming dragoons transformed into lizard creatures, defeating (killing) Hans, and then helping Adder escape only for him to betray you. Branch Castle was going to serve the same purpose as the Rift Shrine, but I decided that I didn't want to do this.

5. Blue Dragoon Can't Jump
But he used to be able to! There used to be an actual jump command for Vahn a long time ago. We're talking three or four years ago. I loved having the command in the game, so where did it go? I accidentally caused some kind of catastrophic error in 200+ monster formations. Rather than going through and fixing each of them one by one, I just decided to get rid of the Jump command and replace it with individual jumping attacks.

6. Vahn + Vera = Love
It happens after the game ends, but the original plan was to have the two become lovers during the story. Why didn't this happen? Because it seemed sappy. Plus one character chasing the other for their affection for the entire game is sort of Final Fantasy tradition, so the route I went was probably for the better.

7. Ultima
I had this spell in the game up until a few weeks (or maybe even days) before I finished the game and uploaded it to RMN. I never included the spell because I couldn't settle on a battle animation that I was happy with. In some ways I guess the Armageddon spell could count as Ultima (even though Armageddon is earth elemental).

8. Gangsta Hans
I almost made Hans a black guy. ALMOST. The role of ethnic character was given to Elina instead. Hans kept his unique dialogue and he was instead changed to be a countryside hick of sorts.

9. Buried Treasure Everywhere!
I mentioned this in a past blog post once. One of the planned minigames was going to be similar to FF9's chocographs. Vahn's mother would give him a map that belonged to his father which would point towards Branch's lost artifacts. The player would look at a picture of the mini-map that would show a very vague area that a treasure is hidden at and the player would then have to go search that area for it. Why did I scrap this? I basically just said, "Nah, I don't feel like doing that anymore."

10. The Original Final Boss
After watching some Let's Play videos and listening to feedback, I found it interesting that a lot of people suspected Lord Adder of having a hidden agenda. A lot of players picked up on some hints that perhaps there was more to Adder than meets the eye and, well, those players would have been correct... once upon a time. For the longest while, I had the intention of making Adder grow more and more curious of Malacore's power, and he would eventually see draining his power as a way to defeat him. Malacore's power would then end up inside of Adder and he would then essentially follow the same footsteps that Malacore does. The plan to make Adder the final boss was scrapped when I came up with Zeul's character.

11. Dungeons Ahoy!
I tossed about 4-5 optional dungeons out the window. These would have been accessible after getting the airship on the third world map. I didn't make these dungeons because I just wanted to finally finish the game.

If you intend on fixing any errors yourself (such as getting permanently stuck somehow), feel free to open the game up in rm2k3 to get yourself out of the mess!

HOWEVER... The David patch is mandatory if you are going to do this, because Blackmoon Prophecy uses the David patch to increase monster HP and stats beyond their default limits. If you open the project in a version of rm2k3 without the patch, the monster HP and stats will be reset to the default maximum values instead of the ones I assigned.

If you have already opened the game in a version of rm2k3 without the David patch, no worries. Just download the 2 megabyte patch I have up in the downloads section and that should increase the monster HP/stats again.

Here is the David patch. Just drag and drop the contents of the zip into the rm2k3 directory: http://rpgmaker.net/users/UPRC/locker/David_Patch.zip

I'm working my butt off to crush everything wrong that you guys are reporting, so hopefully very few of you guys will have to do this.

I also recommend making sure that you are using TWO save slots for your game until I'm 100% convinced that players cannot be stuck anywhere. As it stands now, the only part of the game where it seems players can get permanently stuck is after you return to Branch Castle from Mysidia. I'll mention what the problem here so hopefully others can avoid the problem, even though I have fixed it in the newest download that is currently up.


So for those who aren't running the newest download...

When you return to Branch Castle with Vahn and Lord Adder tells you to go reunite with Hans, he will tell you to travel through Old Branch to reach the Eternal Blue's dock. Old Branch is located directly under Branch castle. Do NOT use the Trei Tunnel until you've downloaded an update (1.02 or beyond), as you will get stuck on the other side of the mountains with no way to get back.

I can definitely see the end of Blackmoon Prophecy in sight.

There were a lot of times when I didn't think I would ever finish this game (let alone even work on it again). There were several periods where I just didn't have the motivation to even open RPG Maker for months at a time.

Yet it's now March 15th 2012 and, at the rate I am going, Blackmoon Prophecy will probably be playable from start to finish by the 21st or 22nd. I still have loads of side content to finish, which I am going to tackle after finishing the end of the game and testing the game from start to finish again. I'm aiming to have everything ready for April 1, but if I don't meet that deadline then I should have the game uploaded a few days later (no more than two weeks later, which would be on the extreme end of things).

So where am I at the moment? I'm on the third last mandatory dungeon, though the final three can all sort of be viewed as "the end" of the game since it all leads into the final conflict.

I have a lot of optional content (minigames, side quests, etc.) that I need to wrap up too. There's the arena minigame, which is sort of like a cross between FF6's colosseum and the Golden Saucer's battle square from FF7. It's essentially a pre-determined ladder of 100 fights that you can work at plowing through at your own pace. They start easy (level 5-10 monsters) but by the 90th fight or so the player will be facing encounters that will be even too frustrating to appear anywhere else.

There's also a plethora of optional dungeons that I need to make as well, mostly just containing bits of equipment, summons, etc. Some of them are for side quests, such as one for the game's ninja character that involves him trying to prove his worth to his village by tackling the fabled Tower of Trial (think of something like the tower in FF7's Wutai that has Yuffie's side quest).

Optional content is what killed my motivation a lot in the past, so I think leaving it until the very end is a good idea because I'll be able to approach it with a "once I finish this, everything is 100% complete" mindset as opposed to last year when I was working on side content but still had tons of main story content to work on too.

So what am I promising with Blackmoon Prophecy? Nothing fancy. I really don't think that this is me being modest, just honest. The only people who ever seemed to appreciate Blackmoon Prophecy were those who liked old school Final Fantasy games. I'm really aiming for a very niche audience who will understand why the mechanics of this game aren't really that eyebrow raising. Things are kept simple to emulate 1990 era games that I grew up with, so I reeeeeaaaaally don't want anyone to expect any exciting custom systems or innovative features. The most innovative thing in Blackmoon Prophecy is probably item upgrading, which works like FF8's upgrading system.

If simplicity isn't an issue, then I think we're going to get along splendidly! What's Blackmoon Prophecy going to have aside from nostalgic and simple gameplay? Well...

1. It's Long
Around this time last year, my test plays were clocking in somewhere between 12 and 15 hours. I stopped counting them around 10. This is when I had A LOT less content finished. I'm also the guy making this sucker, so I always know where to go, how to get everything, etc. Sometimes I also cheated by holding control down to walk over walls or avoid battles. My play time is definitely a lot lower than what most people would average. So how long do I think the game will be? I'm going to be honest here and say that I really feel that it will be around 20 hours, though I'll have a better estimate when I test play the entire game towards the end of the month.

2. It's Big
The most common thing anyone ever says about my world maps is that they are big. Two are around 500x350 and the other is approximately 220x200 if I'm not mistaken. Because of the sheer size of these maps there are, predictably, a ton of locations. Not all of them are exciting, but they all have something worth checking out for one reason or another. A lot equippable items, as well as popular summons like Leviathan and Odin, are entirely missable due to being found in optional dungeons. I think the sheer number of places I throw on the maps definitely encourages exploration once the player has free reign to go anywhere they choose.

3. Mainstays & References Out The Wazoo!
Ever since I started working on this monster, I've taken to caling it not only a fangame, but a tribute as well. I intentionally throw in tons of references to various Final Fantasy games. A lot of events in Blackmoon Prophecy are directly inspired by things that happen in the fourth, fifth, and sixth games. So, chances are if you see something that seems awfully familiar to you, this is why! I've borrowed a lot of elements and themes from the 16 bit games, and I feel like it's created this sort of comfortable aura when playing due to sometimes knowing what will probably happen next, but this is not to say that there won't be surprises!
Aside from there being a lot of subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) references in Blackmoon Prophecy, there's tons of Final Fantasy mainstays that I've made sure are present. Ahrimans, antlions, bombs, behemoths, cactuars, flans, tonberries, zuus, and many more familiar monsters will be spotted. Cagnazzo, Gilgamesh, Rubicant, Ultros, and other baddies will also be standing in your way of finding great loot such as Atma Weapon, Excalibur, hyper wrists, Genji gear, ribbons, and running shoes. Of course this will all be a little easier with the help of Bahamut, Golem, Ramuh, Seraphim and the rest of their friends. I want there to be comfort and familiarity when playing this, and I don't think that will be an issue.

So that's that, and I think this will be the last blog entry that I write until I'm 100% finished.

Oh yeah, and here's a trailer of Vahn walking all over the place. A lot of locations in the video haven't been in previous demos or videos, so a lot of it will look new. http://rpgmaker.net/games/427/media/273/


TLDR: Almost done, hope it'll be fun!

Jesus Christ.



I think the game will cap out at around 1100-1200 maps.