Yes sir. I need someone to sprite two boss characters towards the end of the game.

No I'm not on the verge of finishing my game, but I'd like to get this out of the way so that I don't get delayed later on by not having proper monster graphics in place.

Basically I'm just looking for someone willing to sprite some larger monster graphics (Final Fantasy fangame, so naturally they have to take up a fair amount of the left side of the screen) for me. I only need two, and I can be very specific with the details that I have in mind for them. Essentially if you think you're capable of doing golems, knights, crystals, and ghostly/magical streams floating in the air, then you might be able to help me out.

If there's anyone here who is willing to do it for free then right on, but I'll also take on anyone who would want to do this as a commissioned project.

If interested, reply or send me a message. Also show me what you're capable of because I don't want to unexpectedly get weird Colecovision quality sprites or something.

On finishing Blackmoon Prophecy... It's unbelievable. I can actually see the completion of Blackmoon Prophecy being very attainable, and if I can keep myself motivated then it should be reached in February or March! It's just hard for me to believe that I may finally be able to push this game aside once and for all in the new year. I mean, I've been working on this thing since 2004! Regardless of how good (or not good?) the finished product is, I will just be extremely satisfied to know that it's finally out of the way.

I've had a lot of ups and downs with this game. I can't even count how many times I just said "screw this" and tossed the game aside for months upon months without working on it at all. I've lost motivation so many times that I just can't count. This game, despite how it looks and plays, has been a colossal undertaking for just me alone. My ultimate goal has always been to make something that's pretty full length and comparable to commercial RPGs. So many RPG Maker games are pretty short and even just half a dozen hours is usually ideal for us at RMN and other RPG Maker websites. I never wanted that with Blackmoon Prophecy, and it's probably why the damn game is taking so long! I'm just one guy trying to make a game that's longer than a good majority RPG Maker titles. I haven't completed a test play of the game recently, but my last one clocked in at somewhere over a dozen hours and I'm the creator of this thing, so I know what to do, where to go, where to find the little secrets and such... so how long is it going to take the average person?!

I'm over 800 maps now I believe, but I expect the final product to hover close to 1000. I still have another world map to make as well (Blackmoon Prophecy will have three) and it's going to prove to be a very challenging one that will require an ungodly amount of planning.

Anyway, here's what to expect when all is said and done around February.

1. Hopefully around 20 hours of play, give or take a few.
2. Three world maps (two are 500x500, the other is around 300x300).
3. Approximately thirty towns.
4. A dragoon, black mage, blue mage, white mage, red mage, dark knight, swordsman, ninja, caller, treasure hunter, and engineer as playable characters.
5. A freakish amount of equippable items, many which are hidden, secret, or upgraded versions of older items.
6. Huge amount of optional content. At least ten dungeons that don't even need to be visited, ever.
7. Arena, auction house, Aurabolt (basically Blackjack), chocobo race track, rabbit catching, and treasure hunting (think FF9 chocographs) as minigames. I haven't ruled out adding more, but they're not a priority right now.
8. Lots upon lots of items to enhance the power of your characters by teaching them magic, summons, and special abilities.
9. Sidequests. Ideally, I want at least one sidequest in every single town. Some of them are very obvious while others are a little obscure or vague.
10. The finished game will probably be around 60 or 70 megabytes archived I'm guessing, though it could be as low as 50.


On further revisions... A little idea I am going to tinker with is adding beaches to the world map. It wasn't done in the classic FF games, so it might look pretty cool and sort of bridge the gap between retro (FF 1-6) and modern (7+) in terms of world design.

Another thing I'm going to start on is upping the graphical quality of the FF4 chipsets that I use. I've already done this with a few locations such as Branch Castle (which is NOTHING like it used to be in the old demos) and most caves, but I'm not going to stop there. My goal is to have almost every tile in every chipset looking at least a little different. The FF5 tiles will hardly be changed since they look fine, but we all know that FF4's graphics are certainly a little dated in comparison. I have two reasons for doing this.

1. To bring a bit of originality to the game.
2. To bring the graphical quality of the FF4 chipsets up to the same level as the FF5 chipsets.

I may also attempt to give Vahn's sprite (a pretty blatant Kain) a few changes as well to make him look more unique. We'll see how it all goes!

I want people to have fun playing this game, so it seemed only natural to pollute the game with little diversions and games!

Here are the minigames currently present in Blackmoon Prophecy. While some (such as the rabbit catching) may only be fun to do two or three times, a few others may be a bit more fun and long lasting!



1. Auction House
Anyone who has played Final Fantasy VI will know this one. Do I really even have to describe it? My auction house is pretty much a carbon copy of the one from FF6 right down to how items are presented to the bidders. All you need to do is go in, take a seat, and continuously bid higher than the NPCs to win whatever item is up for auction. There are some items in the auction house that are only available for a limited time, since the items up for bid change as the player gets further in the game.




2. Arena
This is largely WIP despite being the first minigame I ever started to work on. The reason why this one is not finished and won't be for quite some time is because I need to literally finish the game to decide what monsters will be in the arena. There are 100 matches that you can fight through at the Arena, so think of it as a ladder. The fights start off very easy but get progressively harder as you clear more and more of them. As you clear more battles, you will have access to better rewards. I don't have the actual ladder functioning much yet because of the requirements for it (need to know how strong end game monsters will be, etc.) so take the battles in this video with a grain of salt, especially since they are meant for level 5-10 characters and the party I am using is 20-25.




3. Rabbit Catching
This minigame is actually mandatory to do at one point in the story because the keeper of the rabbits won't give you a certain item unless you catch some of his rabbits. It's all pretty basic, just run around and nab as many as you can before the time runs out. You can select what reward you want to shoot for as well. This minigame can be a bit slow or tedious, and at the moment the rewards become obsolete by the time you get the airship. I may make the rewards scale with the player's progression through the main story.




4. Chocobo Race Track
Ah, the race track! This one is charming and cute. You get to select one of four chocobos that you'd like to pick as the winner of the upcoming race. If your feathered friend wins, you get a nice reward! There are something like forty eight possible race results, so it can be fairly unpredictable. While I like the Auction Hourse and Aurabolt (below) more, this is probably my favourite minigame to watch because it's just so darn adorable. The black chocobos at the start of the video are actually outdated and don't even use the current chocobo sprite.




5. Aurabolt
The newest addition to Blackmoon Prophecy's roster of minigames. Originally I was just going to make a standard version of Blackjack, but then I decided to tweak the rules of the game and such to make it a little different. Aurabolt is a far riskier game to play than Blackjack because the chances of losing are greater. Cards are numbered right up to 21, so there is a lot of luck involved in not busting. There is also an NPC who will award you with items as you win more and more times. The top prize requires 1000 wins. Yes that's an insane amount, but if anyone who plays Blackmoon Prophecy ends up liking Aurabolt, at least they'll pretty much always have a prize left ahead of them since 1000 is probably unattainable unless you are a problem gambler.




6. Treasure Hunting
This one is somewhat in the game, but not really. I need to wait until the world map is complete before I work on this. Remember the chocographs in Final Fantasy IX? Same deal. You're shown the world map and an area of it will be highlighted. You have to venture to the area that was highlighted and find the treasure.


I'm always trying to think of new ideas for minigames. One idea that might get used is to have some kind of Frogger variant for a minigame. If anyone has any cool ideas, let me know!

Just a few questions I want to fire off at people who don't mind fangames and will play them. If anyone replies to these questions, I'd like to use the answers or at least keep them in mind while working on Blackmoon Prophecy. Helpful answers would be appreciated over silly ones, obviously. Answers don't have to be long and even one sentence would be fine. I just want to get inside of the heads of potential downloaders.

1. Why do you play fangames?

2. What is the deciding factor in whether or not you will play a particular fangame?

3. What would turn you away from a fangame aside from poor dialogue and/or mapping?

4. How faithful should a fangame be to the source material? How much truly original material should the fangame have?

5. What would you expect from a Final Fantasy fangame? What would you not expect?

6. What would make a Final Fantasy fangame feel like a worthy fangame rather than just the dream of a random fan of the series?

7. How important do you consider nostalgia to be when it comes to playing a fangame? How much does it help (or hurt) the experience?

8. Would you say that being too similar to the source material is a bad thing?


Thanks to anyone who answers!

Late last week, I picked up Blackmoon Prophecy again after letting it sit for two months. Instead of just pumping out new maps and lengthening the game, I looked back at the demo I put up in December and thought to myself, "What were the biggest complaints that people had?"

I made a lot of really substantial changes that have altered the game a lot, so I had to test the game from start to finish for the billionth time. Pretty much all of the changes are from feedback that the RMN crowd gave to me, so hats off to you guys for making me improve upon the early parts of the game that were sorely outdated! Here are the major things that I have changed.

1. INCREASED WALK SPEED!
People were telling me to increase this since the dawn of time (which was sometime in 2004), but I refused to do so. I wanted Blackmoon Prophecy to emulate the walk speed of the classic games with absolutely no exceptions. Well, after December 2010 when it felt like EVERYONE was on my back about the walk speed, I have increased it. As a result, the flow of the game is much better now. Tedious areas no longer drag on and on. Overall, this was a great change and even I am very happy with it.

2. Altered Beas... Er, Graphics
I went through the rips that I am using and decided that some of them just wouldn't do, and that the rips perhaps made the game feel too much like Final Fantasy 4. I have replaced a lot of FF4 tiles while others have just been given a little bit more detail.

A fraction of how much better towns look now.


3. Remapped Bad Areas
Some of the locations were simply awful. Branch Castle was in serious need of changes. A lot of people used to say that they were getting lost in the castle, but it wasn't until watching YDS getting lost in Branch Castle that I decided to give it a complete redesign. Some of the maps are the same (such as the shops and the dungeon) but the castle exterior and the main hall have been redone. Even a monkey would have a hard time getting lost in the castle now.

This is the new main hall of Branch Castle.


4. Smaller Music Folder
I was originally going to ditch the mp3 soundtrack because it was taking up 140mb, but after a tip from NightBlade, I was able to get the mp3s down to a much more reasonable size. The music folder has gone from 140mb down to about 36mb with barely any loss of quality.

5. More Concise Directions
Some folks were getting lost on the world map and sometimes not knowing where to go next, as instructions from NPCs were often too vague. I have fixed this problem by making NPCs give the player very explicit directions so that not knowing what to do next will be a thing of the past. Also, I have put tiles on the world map that, when walked on, will act as road signs and tell you which locations are nearby and what directions they are in. This was added after someone wanted me to add road signs.

Getting lost on the world map will now be a thing of the past. I hope.


6. Fixing The Dialogue
This is an eternal struggle for me, since the game has bits that were worked on from as far back as 2004 in it. The variation in quality from one location to the next in the game can be very extreme. I'm still trying to bring everything in Blackmoon Prophecy up to my modern level of quality, but with so many lines of dialogue throughout the game, it can be time consuming and easy for me to miss lines that need to be fixed. Grammar is the biggest problem, as having dialogue from my late teenage years looks pretty hideous with characters spouting the most juvenile or unbelievable lines imaginable. This is continuously being addressed and improved upon. The other big problem is my overusage of ".." rather than "..." early on. I can't count how many times I had made that mistake, but I'm trying to address that as well.