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Miscellaneous

Ill Will Game Chill release

It's finally the time to release what we have, which is unfortunately by no means complete product -at least in every sense.

Kudos to Chaosproductions and Nessiah both doing terrific job at getting their task done in time, and with pretty smooth results. What comes to myself though, I might've taken too much work for myself.

As we were bouncing ideas back and forth, we came pretty confident of what sort of game we want make this to be. However, the presentation and emphasis I had envisioned for it, simply couldn't be done in such a small time frame. I don't really regret doing things the way we did, as it seems to myself that this project will turn into a great game in the following next weeks.

For anyone anticipating to play this game and enjoy it as much as possible, I would honestly not recommend the Game Chill version. We simply ran out of time, and faced few more or less unexpected problems.

Just few things to mention: I underestimated the time to reserve for directing and whatnot, as a result I wasn't even able to finish on graphics, when I already had to change task to directing - while the graphics wasn't even nearly close to completion. The result is that the graphics presented in the Game Chill version are still work in progress.
Some areas, like the dungeons Chaos designed, haven't even been touched by me at all yet.
Nor the sprites, or nearly all that needs to be.
The other thing is that only 1/7 of the game is directed or so. Meaning barely the intro. Yep, you won't have much else than raw gameplay.

What comes to gameplay, you might just be able to finish the game though. Chaos finished his task, the gameplay mechanics. There are some serious bugs still though, such as game crashing when you try to access the Trace slots (skill sets) of your party characters that are in reserve. I also encountered bug that killed the musics for me for the rest of the game. I hope we can get some hotfixes for those up as soon as possible, but here's another problem we ran into:

-Chaosproductions is absent untill 4th of January or so, and I have to be in charge of the game pretty much alone untill then. It's problematic as Chaos was in charge most of the mechanics, so I have very little of knowledge how to fix every, smaller or bigger thing that needs tweaking or fixing. All help with this subject is more than welcome.

Also, we weren't able to put out the game to our tester, for them being absent too... Hence only 2/3 of the game was tested by Chaos, before he had to leave. That means it's uncertain how balanced the game is after the fourth level, Purgatorio, which is how far it was tested.

Not much else to mention I guess. It's just very broken game, with great battles, I guess. It gives some idea what type of game to expect from the complete version of Ill Will that should be around January.

NOTE: I had no one to proofread the game, either. Don't expect perfect grammar or good english. We'll try to find someone to proofread for the complete game.

Adding download soon. Then off to bed. Been up for few days. Ciao.

Miscellaneous

Day 10 (12/23/2009 GMT+9:30)

After some action packed days, I finally have some time for my goddamn self to do whatever I want, so after doing secret santa gifts, I've been given the awesome chance to finally draw something for this darn game. So here we go:





And other than that I think we're doing Hubs and battle quotes and skills and I have one more drawing to do. I hope we will make it in time~

Miscellaneous

Day 9 (12/19/2009 PST) - "I missed some days." :(

Yeah, I did. Nothing interesting happened, so I didn't share anything.

Now I have something interesting. We're gonna teach Francesca some new skills.


Ignoring the fact that she's the spitting image of BOSS, we'll note that she has the Firestarter trace right now.
Obviously, that implies Fire magic.


And Fire magic she has. But that's all she's going to get from Firestarter - Attago is learned at level 07, and it
doesn't teach any skills after that. So, time for a change.


So we change to Brute. You'll notice that the skills are learned at levels 02, 03, and 06. Francesca is higher level
than each of these benchmarks, so she'll learn all of them at her next level-up.


Then we kill shit with debug for massive EXP. Francesca levels twice.


There you have it. France now has the all of the skills of both Firestarter and Brute at her disposal.

Hopefully this gives you a sense of how progression in this game works. Now, back to making interesting stuff so
the next blog post doesn't suck.

Miscellaneous

Day 6 - (12/17/2009 PST) - Improper Update

This isn't to much of an update - no proper pictures or anything of that sort. You'll get something along those lines in about 12-18 hours, roughly.

Mostly, just a status report here (since that's what this game profile is all about, after all). I'm posting from my last day of class before winter break. Between that and the nearing completion of the hub maps by Rei-, means you should be seeing some actual gameplay shots within the next two or three days. Now, as to my remaining duties thus far:

-I have yet to complete skills, as a direct consequence of my not completing animations.
-I have but a single tier of monsters, as a result of my not having skills complete.
-How items will be handled precisely - what types there will be and what tiers they occupy - still escapes me.
-Traces need to be set up.
-Dungeons need to be mapped, populated and evented!

I've also got to make sure ally leveling works properly. When you level, you earn a stat point that you can distribute. When allies level, their point is auto-distributed based on their level % 14, excluding the last five points that would end up in their strongest stat - since the cap for a stat is 40, all runover is sent to Cunning.

I also have to figure out how to go about giving the player their first few levels - which abilities to start them with, which enemies and items throw at the player first, etc.

Once all the dungeon skeletons are done and the enemies/etc are placed, I'll pass the dungeons to Rei- for prettification while I start making pure-gameplay runs to balance. Thus, don't expect any ground-breaking mapping from me - it's the least of my worries.

Miscellaneous

Day 5 (12/17/2009 GMT+9:30)

Hi there!

My name is Nessiah and I'm the artist...well...I guess random token slacker for Ill Will. I'm the one drawing the hideous facesets that you see in this game! Such as the cutesy Ethan:



Actually I've been blackmailed by chaos! He's a heathen I tell you!

Currently, I'm not sure what the project is, but my first impression is it's like Divine Comedy+Lord of the Flies, a faction divided into two with different leaders, a jock, that seems to be popular and the wise, which doesn't have much supporters. I believe that the protagonist, beanie head, is the mediator between the two opposing forces so that all of them can survive from the dark clutches of the Purgatory. But of course this is me speculating, I'm not even sure what happens in this story and if the tards will even make it out alive. I hope not hoho~

And that is all I will tell for an update with this project! I'm a very slow person to do all the portraits left but I hope you guys will stay tuned to our updates :D

Nessiah over and out!

Miscellaneous

Day 4 (12/14/2009 PST) - "All bends to my will."

Okay, so not ALL. But I can feel RGSS2 starting to submit, as it desperately tries to hide its secrets from me. Melodrama aside, somethings elude me but for the most part all is going well.


...You win this round.


All in all, the project is flowing nicely. Skills are coming together, states, animations, monsters, monster troops, all of them are coming together rather well. Thanks, Microsoft Excel. You rule.

Here's something to consider: Skill Slots.


I really need to figure out more information to show.


No matter how many skills you gain from traces, you may never equip more than the twelve your slots permit, mostly for balance's sake. The kicker being, some skills cost more slots that others. Meaning, even the decision between, say, Fire I and Fire II has some weight to it - do you want it as your main offensive skill, or do you just want an option for Fire damage? Will it prevent you from using a passive that might be necessary for your build, such as HP Preference? In short, do you need the skill more than you need the slots?

It'll take tweaking, especially such things as whether or not more slots are gained over time, will be necessary, but this is the basic foundation I'm running with.

And now, I leave you with


A screenshot. Who've thought?

Miscellaneous

Day 3 [Rei-] (12/13/2009 PST) - Silence, I kill you.

Hello.

Chaos bugged me to do a blog update too, while it's not much like me, I'll try to do my best. So let's get to the point and stop bitching.

My role in the team is to take care of the visual presentation and the screenplay. That pretty much means I take care of polishing the graphics we use, decide how we put them together, as well as taking care of what happens on the screen between the the gameplay sequences, storywise.

We have the plans for character and plot structures ready, now what is left to do is to flesh it all out.

Currently I am editing the sprites chaos made earlier, and trying to add bit more depth, detail and minor adjustments to them. Once I am done with them, I am taking a look to the chipsets we use, and going to try adjust them to fit our theme better.

All images you have seen so far are still subjects to major changes, apart the title screen.

We have just been gathering resources so far, but not starting to mesh them together properly yet. Or I haven't, as I guess it is what I am mostly doing! So yeah, I'm mostly in charge of the design, even though Chaos presents lots of concepts, and I strive to follow them as well as I can, even though we bitch at each others a lot.

So what should you expect to see? Here are some graphics we're using:

First off, great character portraits done by Nessiah:


Then sprites Chaos is doing for all the characters presented in the game, which I'm adjusting and polishing afterwards. One polished facing:


The system window:


And here's examples of our monster style. We're not exactly going for any cutesy style..





And here's a few themes to give idea of the musical style.

One of the general themes:
http://rpgmaker.net/users/Rei/locker/155300_Javier_Anibarro___Through_.mp3

One of the battle themes:
http://rpgmaker.net/users/Rei/locker/182470_Vaifan90___A_Far_Cry_From_.mp3

One of the very main themes:
http://rpgmaker.net/users/Rei/locker/282068_NB_static_violins.mp3


So yeah, everything's still pretty much just separate resources waiting for being put together. I will come with another update when I have done progress in the actual game. For now I need to finish the graphics and whatnot first.

Miscellaneous

Day 2 (12/12/2009 PST) - Databasing, Pulling it together

So. Skills. Animations. Common events played both before and after each turn and each battle. Custom status effects. Things are starting to come together as a game.


YF kindly pointed me to all manner of incredible resources, such as this casting animation


The main points of interest, gameplay-wise, are Traces. Traces are the means by which skills are learned. Each Trace teaches a set of skills over the course of so many levels. For example, the Destroyer Trace teaches the physical skill Shout, the debuff spell Intimidate, and the buff spell Supercharger. These skills are taught at levels 45, 55, and 61, respectively. If, say, Francesca is level 70 but doesn't have these skills, she's not boned. She can equip Destroyer and level to 71, at which point she gains all of the skills her level qualifies her for - in this case, all of the skills taught by Destroyer. Now, if France was level 50, and leveled to 51 with Destroyer equipped, she'd learn Shout but not Intimidate or Supercharger. Simple enough, considering Traces list what skills they teach.

Now, there's another factor to consider: Traces have elemental affinities attached to them. The aforementioned Destroyer Trace grants immunity to Physical attacks and skills, but negates direct healing (revival and status removal isn't counted). Every Trace has an elemental resistance and a weakness. Basically, it's a bad idea to fight the fire demon with and Earth trace.


This was too much work not to show off. Even if it's completely unrelated.


So yeah. That's the status of the game so far. I'll leave you guys with this.


Sex.


Miscellaneous

Day 1 (12/11/2009 PST) - Housekeeping

This isn't gonna look like a proper game profile for a couple of days. I'm deeply entrenched in the process of gathering and tweaking scripts to suit the designs Rei- and I have discussed over the last few days.

The first thing on the menu is setting up Stats


What the hell have I gotten myself in to- Hey this isn't so bad after all!


This may or may nit make any sense, but:

These are the major stats. They determine all of your minor stats
ST (Strength) increases your base physical damage by 2 per point, and your critical hit rate by 0.5% per point.
TC (Technique) increases your base magical damage by 2 per point, and your maximum SP by 5 per point.
EN (Endurance) reduces your taken damage by 1 per point, and increases your maximum HP by 5 per point.
AG (Agility) increases your own hit rate by 1% per point, base 90%; lowers unfriendly hit rates against you by 1% per point.
CN (Cunning) increases your experience gained by 1% per point, increases your ailments' chances of success by 1% per point, and reduces the chances of ailments working on you by 1% per point.

These are the minor stats, determined by your major stats
Attack is your base physical damage for attacks and skills. Equal to twice your ST.
Magic is your base magical damage for spells. Equal to twice your TC.
Defense is your reduction of incoming damage. Equal to your EN.
Crit is your percent chance of getting a critical hit. Equal to half your ST (ergo, 40 ST gives you a 20% crit rate).
Accuracy is your percent chance to hit your target. Equal to your AG plus 90.
Evasion is the amount you reduce opponent's accuracy when they target you. Equal to your AG.
Affliction is your bonus to your 80% chance to inflict an ailment on a nonresistant enemy. Equal to your CN.
Resistance is your penalty to the base 80% chance to inflict an ailment on you. Equal to your CN.

That doesn't make any sense as an info dump of thirteen stats (and I don't even have HP, SP, or the Cunning experience bonus up there) but the goal is to hide the minor stats and make the player become accustomed to them via the major stats. When you go to place your stat point in Technique, for example, you will be told that your choice will increase your magic damage by two and increase your maximum SP by five. The foremost goal is to make everything about the battle formulae as transparent as possible.

And that's what I'm up to. Tweaking the engine and interface to accept five stats instead of four. Simple stuff.


Shoot me now.
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