The Mists of Maderaan

So general update first:
I am still working on this. HOWEVER, the semester has been crazy. I thought giving myself until december for a release of Chapters 1 and 2 was about 2 months too many, and right now it feels like 2 months too few, if not more. So this is a good news, bad news deal. I haven't had the time to finish the 3 remaining dungeons of Chapter 2. I also won't have time to finish them this month if I want to finish retouching some of the scenes, dialog, and dungeon design in Chapter 1.

That being said, Chapter 1 consists of 5-7 dungeons (depending on how you choose to count) and is several hours in length. Following its quick revamp, I will be releasing that. When exactly, I don't know. My hope is for december, so that I can use January to finish Chapter 2 while taking some of the Chapter 1 criticism to heart.


Now, for the other news: Touch Encounters.
I've decided to add touch encounters to the game. On the one hand, I did it because random encounters are somewhat unfulfilling. On the other, I did it because I had some fun ideas. The touch encounter system is essentially chrono meets lufia.

That's to say, there are some semi-scripted encounters. It's not just all enemies are on the map wandering about, and suddenly they chase you. It gets a bit fancier than that. Some enemies are aggressive, some are cowards. Some hear you coming, others have to see you to chase you. All chase you based on a simple algorithm rather than just "Random Movement" or "Follow Hero" movement. If you manage to evade them, they'll stop chasing you. They might also not wander out too far out from their territory, or not wander into certain areas of the map(for example, some enemy types won't enter shallow water, but some will). They'll also only chase in certain situations, including enemies who don't mind you approaching them, but do mind you approaching their nest. for example.

Also, some enemies try to trick you. For example, there's a shining spot on the ground in the forest. If you go to check it out, bandits pop out of the woods and try to rob you for falling into their trap.

What that means is multiple-fold. For one, all monster graphics are now character-sized. No more big enemies. Secondly, it means that I've had to scrounge for refmap style enemy graphics. While most of the game thankfully uses human enemies, I've had some trouble finding animal sprites. I have goblins and lizardmen and spirits and elementals and all of that. Animals are little bit tougher. Particularly, amphibians and insects have been hard to find. At the moment, I use some Lufia 2 charsets for enemies. I hope to change this (or at least recolor and animate so that they look vaguely right) but if anybody knows where to find some monsters that would fit with REFMAP, give a holler!