DEEPER - A COMMUNITY ROGUELIKE FOR RPG MAKER VX - YOUR HELP WANTED!

@Chaos:

The REALLY annoying thing is, I actually opened up RPG Maker to check the spelling, saw that it was Zelzi, and forgot to correct it.

author=Mr.Nemo link=topic=3845.msg77810#msg77810 date=1243826727
Orc
Description: Orcs are a blood-thirsty breed of creatures that vary in size and monsterous appearance as they are plentiful. Lustful and ferocious in mood, they've become the scourge of most civilized races ever since their Draconian masters vanished. They wage war on the world, leaving a trail of pillage, rape and destruction. In their natural home in the most unpleasant mountains of the world, crossbreeds between goblins, ogres, trolls are common but there also exists crossings between humans, elves & orc. The orcs vary greatly in appearance (mostly due to this extensive cross-breeding) but typical characteristics include a muscular build, very hairy (to the point of having a pelt), murky-brown/gray/ skin, great sharp teeth and often piercings or tatoos. There are but a few places around the world where orcs are partially accepted, typically by humans, gigantes and Zelzi (?). Orcs that doesn't rely on killing everything in sight, however, are not as common and are usually cross-bred outcasts that aren't fully accepted in either society. Additionally, there exists an even rarer type of orc that are very "orcish" in their appearance but seems to still dwell in times past; somewhat sophisticated and secretive in their longing for the return of the draconic era.
Attributes
+ 4 STR, +4 CON, -4 MP, -2 INT
Resistance/Weaknesses
Resistant (D) to Afraid, Weakness to Mind-altering skills (B), (A) to berserk. Weakness to diseases and POISON (B).
Abilities
Head-hunter (Passive): Whenever the Orc slays an enemy in combat, there's a chance that he will gain a random STAT-boost for the remainder of the battle.
Rage: Orcs may set themselves in a state of FRENZY at will (~200% STR, 50% INT/DEF, only attacks enemies).

(I made this class earlier today and I think it need more... direction. feel free to dissect, as usual. ButI don't think lowering DEX for them is a good idea, neither is reducing their MP/INT more than already; they can do other things than being fighters)

Dark Elf
Description: Cynical and violent in nature, the dark elves are, even though related to the "rather alluring" elves, their disturbing features include long legs & necks, VERY long ears (the only trait of warcraft elves I like) snake tounges and pale skin. They are said to have originated from a conclave of elves sworn to the dragons but through their seers sensed the changing tide and betrayed their draconian masters.
Attributes:
+2 DEX, +2 INT, -2 CON, -2 HP
Resistance/Weaknesses
Resistant to magical damage (D) and magical status-afflictions (prison, cube, curse, etc). Very affected by Staggered (A) and stat-altering afflictions.
Abilities:
Malicious intent : (Increases the chance of making critical strikes)
Betrayal : Whenever a Dark Elf is low on HP, he will turn on his former allies, inflicting betrayal/confuse/afraid)

I made up the dark elves as I went along and I think they turned out pretty balanced.

ALSO: on graphics, I'm done with all the icons and more than halfway through with the tiles but I'm too tired now, some guys are painting the ceiling in our apartment so we had to clean some stuff out. I can continue and finish it tomorrow. By the way, if these aren't the "real" graphics, how's the game going to look? originals? mac&blue (you mentioned this I think)?

EDIT:
cannot... sleep... must.. make tilesets....
(I thought about chaosproductions idea and sketched out a few things from it in my head, but we aren't at that state yet)

Do not open; unbelonging ideas ahead

Show

Never leaving the dungeon still means there will be shops here and there? Then, one could have random heroes (class/race/name) wandering around, joining you if you are short on buddies or need a new set of heroes. This got me thinking more, about the amount of starting characters (start solo with plenty of randomly generated characters to join in, but then again maybe not) and permanent death. WHAT? yes, think of it this way. If you loose a character in combat and have no means of reviving him somewhat soon after (think a number of steps or within a timeframe) he could die. Then you'd have to replace him with one of those wandering adventurers. but this is just a rushed idea I had and is totally irrellevant for the time being. ta-ta

@Nemo:
GOOD STUFF.

However, I'm afraid with the world history written, I need to completely change the flavor text. Suggested changes:

Orc
Description:
During the Bygone era, many elves were corrupted and ‘recycled' into hideous, brutish engineered killing machinesâ€" the Orcs. The Bygone used these as their terrors troops to suppress the Dark Elf insurrection. The Orcs alive today are the descendants of those that survived their replacement by the Centurion animunculi (the first test of the animunculi was the genocide of the Orc race.) After that, Orcs, for a time, served dragonkind. Stronger and faster than man, orks are also sickly and disease ridden, ugly and brutish. Orcs despise Elves and Dark Elves because they have fallen so far from that long lived and beautiful form.
Orcs are not necessarily evil but they do tend to see violence as the first and best solution to every problem. Unlike goblins and trolls, most (but not all) people have come to recognize orcs as sentient beings with basic humanoid rights. Other monstrous races such as the gigantes and Zelzi tend to be more accepting of Orcs. The orcs vary greatly in appearance (mostly due to this extensive cross-breeding) but typical characteristics include a muscular build, very hairy (to the point of having a pelt), murky-brown/gray/ skin, great sharp teeth and often piercings or tatoos.
Attributes
+ 2 STR, +2 CON, +2 DEX, -2 MP, -2 INT.
Resistance/Weaknesses
Resistant (D) to Afraid, Weakness to Mind-altering spells including Sleep (B), very weak (A) to berserk.
Abilities
Rage: Orcs may set themselves in a state of FRENZY at will (~200% STR, 50% INT/DEF, only attacks enemies).

Dark Elf
Description: In the ancient Bygone era, the Dark Elves fought their way out of slavery and escaped into the sunless duskbloom desert, which hardened and sharprened them while the Elves who left behind continued to grow soft in the lap of luxury as slaves. As a result, Dark Elves in Mundus are not as frail or as charismatic as the Elves of Mundus. They are smarter, and just as quick. The other significant difference is appearance. Deprived of the sun in the caverns and dunes of Duskbloom and Durosk, the Dark Elves have almost albino complexion, with pale blue ashy skin and dark red eyes. The ancient Dark Elves despise the line of Elves for remaining in the lap of luxury and servitude in the bygone age, and hate Orcs just as much for being their ancient enemies. Cynical and cold in nature, even though related to the "rather alluring" elves, their disturbing features include long legs & necks, VERY long ears and pale skin. Due to the lack of sunlight, they are somewhat less healthy than other races.
Attributes:
+2 DEX, +2 INT, -2 HP.
Resistance/Weaknesses
Resistant (D) to magical status-afflictions (sleep, paralysis, prison, cube, curse, etc).
Double damage (A) from light.
Abilities:
Duskbloom Curse - 3 MP - 80% (48% when adjusted for normal resistance) of inflicting Sleep and Blind on one enemy.

Will add once you approve changes/suggest changes to my changes.

Re: GFX:
The game will either use the 2D tiles (and non-animated but very accurate hero "sprites") or it will use Mac & Blue VX gfx, in which case I worry about being able to have graphics for every race, class, and conversation thereof. Anyway, I'll put it to a discussion/vote.

@Chaos Again:

Neand:
Made redundant by Orks and Gigante. Besides, man did not evolve in this setting, or if they did, it wasn't from apes.

Angel:
This is an excellent race. One problem is that I think ANGELS are too powerful to be playable. So I made some slight changes. Proposed Changes:

Nephilim
Description: Also called demigods, Nephilim are the children of a Celestial Power (angel) or god and a human. In ancient times Man revered them as demigods, and even now they earn Men's respect and awe when they make their true nature known.
Attributes: +6 MP, +2 INT, -2.
Weaknesses:
Weakness (A) to Dark.
Due to their intense connection to the astra realm, all magical damage dealt to Nephilim is increased by 50%.
Immunity to Light/Holy.
Racial Abilities:
Float (passive)
Melee attacks rarely find their mark when an Angel is involved (+25 EVA).

General announcement: Earlier today, I backed up all my work on our computer unless god-forbid something should happen with RMN's server issues or with the switch to RMN3 that would cause this topic to be lost. Also I am not adding anything new to the DB until I'm closer to being caught up.

OTHER PARTIES

Why can't other bands of individuals explore the Bygone Depths? Mayhaps run into our heroes and negotiate information exchange (We'll tell you where you can find some stair for, I dunno, 4G?), trade, or combat (They're monsters in disguise! Get 'em!)?

Let me say unconditionally that I absolutely intend to include encounters like these. Remember that all adventurers are COMPETING so eventually, they'll need to kill each other because they can't SHARE the rift codex. Hence encounters with other adventurers should always be tense, and should sometimes even result in outright combat!

As to Angel, I kind of made them...descendants from actual divine beings. But either way, divine or not...why should they be weak to death spells?

Anyway, I will think about Devil later, I am adding Raider to the DB now. Oasis is borked because I don't have a script that supports MP Regen. Other than that, Raider has been by far the easiest skills to implement. (You'll probably want to change the battle anims, which you are welcome to do when we get to that point.)

@Nemo:
I realized another problem with the Orc- "Frenzy" is already the name of a Level 8 Raider skill.

Edit:
Finished adding Raider to the DB though it is as yet untested. I plan to do the rest of the (currently accepted) races tonight and try to do the Alchemist some time tomorrow. Then I will ask Craze to add/setup the Judge and Thief classes and their skills. And then the DB will be all caught up and include the accepted races.

Edit 2/Last:

Finished setting up accepted races. DB is up to date on accepted stuff except for Judge, Alchemist, and Thief classes.

Graphics issues!

I was checking out Nemo's work with the tiles, and I really like them. However, I noticed an issue with the fact that the way he had set up Tile A4 with how VX works, random dungeon generation was impossible (because walls weren't set up next to ceilings, etc.).

I can explain what I mean better with this image...



Since random dungeon generation is really important for deeper, I tried to fix TileA4. I made some progress...but...ultimately got discouraged when I retardedly misaligned almost all of the ceiling autotils by just like one pixel. So I'm posting what I've done so far, if someone wants to fix it up some time before we get done with Phase I.



I also got the project folder back from Craze.

He didn't have time to do the tedious drudgery of putting his classes in the database. :(

He did add some neat new scripts, though. :)

More Phase I stuff in this post later as I work. If anyone wants to volunteer for some database work (implementing all the ideas we have on paper into the DB) that'd be awesome.

EDIT 1:
So I am thinking that the stealth class perks are retardedly complicated and will be an enormous pain in the ass to code. So I'm trying to figure out what I can do about that.

EDIT 2:
Thief added to the database.

EDIT 3/LAST FOR TONIGHT:
Alchemist added to the database. Once I finish making/adding the Monastic (on Wednesday or Thursday) that will be it for me and database entry. Someone else can translate the rest of the classes, races, and skills into the database, hopefully. I am pretty exhausted with it. Anyway, once I do the Monastic, we will be exactly halfway there, with two stealth classes, two combat classes, to magic classes, and two misc. classes in the database.

Probably wednesday or thursday I'll look at the pending race/class submissions and decide what we're doing with them.