The Tiamat Sacrament

Thanks to all the folks who offered support, play testing, and advice during the production of The Tiamat Sacrament. I really owe a lot to this community and I'm glad to be a part of it.

Though it's been mostly radio silence over the last 3 years, I've been learning a new engine (Game Maker) and testing small ideas with it. Those ideas have coalesced into a new game called Absolution, and I'd love for you to play it: http://rpgmaker.net/games/6972/

I've just got the game page online for now, but I'll be releasing a demo in about a month and your feedback is really valuable for me. If you would consider subscribing to that project for future updates, I would be immensely grateful. Thanks for all your support and I hope you like this new adventure.

I'm so grateful to those people who cared enough about TS to help me work the kinks out of the final version. Special thanks to Solitayre, edchuy, Todasmile, Kajiti, Blood146, Rjak and others for their help in the bug extermination process, the game is infinitely better for it.

I've just uploaded the final version of the game to the downloads section (both the project folder and the gamedisk for those without RTP) and they are both online now. This will likely be the last update to TS ever, unless something completely game-breaking comes to light.

It's been a good year and some months working on it and a terrifically rewarding experience to see it all come together. With just over 500 total downloads, it's more than enough to reward to imagine that some people enjoyed the battles, puzzles, and story for at least a little while. And of course, if you've played the game, you know I had my own motivation for seeing it through.

I imagined that as soon as I finished this game, I would abandon gamemaking for at least a few months, as it is (as we all know) a tremendous time sink. However, I enjoyed making the puzzles for TS so much that I've decided to intermittently work on a project much smaller in scope. Maybe something will come of it soon. I'll keep you updated.

Here's a farewell picture of the Az'uar sleeping sprite I drew up off of a charset titled bluedragontry.png, named thus because I had no idea what I was signing up for back when I put the pixels together a year ago:


Thanks to all of you who followed me on this adventure.

Now that I'm free from the grueling task of actual game productions, I've been able to fill things out a bit. I made a flash teaser to upload on Newgrounds and I've just completed a Strategy Board game page if anyone is interested in reading about the tactics portion of TS. It was tons of event work and I'm really proud of it. If anyone wants to implement a similar system in their game, feel free to jack it for your own use.

Also, a rare and illusive bug on the strategy board: for some reason, in an occasional playtest, killing a squad with another squad will result in double or even triple the CP reward that was supposed to be paid out. I've never been able to pinpoint the source of the bug, and it happens infrequently enough that I'm fine with calling it an easter egg. Enjoy your free CP.

Apologies for those of you that care. I was hoping to get the final version out so I could get to work, and since I've pulled the download off for debugging (and necessary debugging at that, dear lord) I've been juggling playtesting and school all at once.

Fortunately I'm in a Writing for New Media class so there's been at least some intersection. I've just finished a prototype Flash teaser for the final version that I'll release on Newgrounds just to get TS some exposure. I hadn't touched Flash in years before attempting this and CS4 made a lot of confusing changes, but it's something I suppose. And you patient people certainly deserve a look:

http://rpgmaker.net/media/content/users/4181/locker/DragonFlash.swf

Shrink the browser window from fullscreen to partial size, it should conform to the 640 x 480 size that the video is supposed to play in. It's only a couple seconds of Flash work but it took me a few hours (thanks, new button format).

Anyway, the game should be completely ready by the end of this weekend. Thanks to Solitayre for incredibly detailed bug fixes, I'll continue to debug as players report.

Maybe about 3 days later than I anticipated (due to the fact that a fight in RM2k3 engine with over 3 enemies slows to a CRAWL and I had to come up with a new plan for the final boss), but it's finished. I've uploaded full versions with and without RTP included. The without RTP version is a modest 9 mb packed with roughly 15 hours of play time. Eventually I'll do a full revamp of the main page, some sweet game profiles, and puzzle solutions for anyone that gets stuck, but for now I'm going to relax. I decided to deliver content over trappings. Content DELIVERED.

Thanks to everyone for the support that kept me motivated. Please let me know if you find any glitches, bugs, or stuff you just don't like and I'll do my best to fix it up. This is very much a work in progress and I hope to revise it with community input. Enjoy playing!