Valor Emblem

This gamepage needs an updated blog!
Yeesh, the last one is from 2015. Granted, it's the very last day of 2015, but it's still over a year and a half old. Poor Stu must be feeling the stage anxiety hard.

So here's an entire map that takes place sort of mid-late game.



Anybody whose ever played any Fire Emblem is familiar with the Seize Castle objective. That's the idea here, with the castle being in the top left, guarded by a Dragon Knight boss.

You'll notice that there are two routes. The one on the left with a narrow bridge, and the one on the right with a big stack of axe knights (inside the red square). They're not just regular axe knights, though. These guys are called the Black Rhino Knights. Terrifying.
Every so often, you'll come across a bunch of enemies that go beyond the regular "Empire _____" mooks. They'll have names, a little narrative behind them, some kind of gimmick (theirs is extremely high Power with class mobility), and you'll only fight them once because, after that, they'll be dead

If you choose not to slug it out with the Bhack Rhino Knights, there's the western alternative of crossing the bridge. But as you near it, that asshole Armor Knight (circled in red) will step onto the fortress, holding it while his bow knight pals pelt you at range. If you bring in fliers to help buttress your frontal assault, the archmage will throw Excaliburs at them (anti-air magic).
I like devising evil stuff like that.

On the bright side, see those wyvern knights above the Black Rhino Knights? Because of story reasons, they'll leave the map after a few turns, long before you'll ever be in range of them. Hurray! Doesn't mean you won't fight them later though...

<_<
>_>
If you want a protip on how to easily squash the BRK, open the spoiler <_<;


And on one last note, this battle is actually on a split-path route. 50% of players won't see it

Yeah, so I've been away from Valor Emblem for way, way too long. That's all about to change now. I've finally got all my shit together IRL, all the dopey side projects out of the way, and finally finished this one damn Chapter (stage/level/you know) that kept hanging me up.

If you look at the main page, I've updated the game's description ever so slightly. For example, I've removed the obviously outdated Completion Target of 2012 and changed it to something that hopefully won't meet the same fate. And in order to report my progress frequently, without relying too heavily on the use of things like this blog or some vapid screenshots, I've added a little meter thing.



Basically how it works is, I've quantified what remains of this project into stages of development; each Chapter having Conceptualization, Mapping, Writing, Implementation, and Play Testing. Every time I advance one stage, I add the appropriate % to the meter. That way if you check back a week later and see that it's gone up by 0.9% even though the gamepage has been inactive, you know I'm still hard at it.
Don't worry about it seeming so low right now. If I included all the resource gathering, editing, and arranging, the whole thing would be more like 80%.

Support refers to Support Conversations which are less critical to final playability. If I finish the game but only have, say, 40% of them done, I'll still release it, then add the remainders as I churn them out.

So why the hiatus anyway? Well, it all began in 2012 when my computer's hard drive failed and I couldn't even boot the damn thing anymore. I'm in the habit of backing up my work periodically, and my most recent backup had coincidentally been 2 days prior so I lost literally nothing. The problem is, my computer was my work station. Whenever I sat down in front of it to gamedev or write, I went into the Zone. Any creative artist out there knows what I'm talking about.
The interim laptop I bought didn't cut it, and the brand new state-of-the-art machine I got later gave me new "problems". For example, it turned out my old CRT monitor was actually really fucking dark. So dark that what I thought I was spriting in black was actually a dark blue. Those of you with a good memory might recall me fiddling with new graphics and posting a few comparison shots in the Screenshot thread. To fix this, all the graphics underwent a manual palette overhaul. ALL of them.
Twice in the case of my attack animations.

Then there was some other shit too, IRL-wise. Government exams to write, a new job to hunt for and subsequently settle into, moving to a new part of the country, and getting a handle on the next step of this thing we call Life. I did work on bits and pieces, here and there, to and fro. But for all the non-RM bullshit on my plate, I just couldn't really get back into it.

But here I am. I finally overcame a major hurdle and am officially back in business. I'll be posting things now and then to prevent my game profile from falling back to page 185 or wherever it was when I posted this blog.

First Blog
Lo and behold, here is Valor Emblem, my flagship project for the past two years. I was motivated by Release Something '11 to post this gamepage. In hindsight, I probably should have done so much earlier, but I was waiting on my artist friend to provide me with a title image for use as a thumbnail. She's dragging her heels a bit. I'll berate her later.

When it's completed, it'll probably be the largest and most involved SimRPGMaker95 game ever made, assuming the Japanese community isn't hiding something. I'm pushing every limitation the program has. All the databases are maxed out, and my maps are constantly running into the dopey 100 object limit.
So the obvious question is : Will it be finished? I can offer a resounding Yes. The foundation is completely poured. All the unit sprites and animations are complete, as are the custom graphics (mostly facesets). The core storyline is totally planned out. At this point, it's Chapter by Chapter insertion, one after another. My big speed limitation is a self-imposed rule for dialogue writing. I write it on day 1, then review it for 3 more days. It ensures that I smoothen out the fluidity and different dialects, and helps me eliminate redundancy.
Next question : When will it be finished? It's definitely taking longer than I thought. My goal is mid-year of 2012, or summer. To put it into a ratio, I'm 20% complete as far as mapping goes. The overall project would be more like 70-80%, but maps are easily quantifiable and I can provide % updates at any time. I have 60 Chapters total, with multiple A/B routes, and am finishing up 12. Then there's the ending, which shouldn't take long, and finally writing the Support conversations which can be done anytime.

Features
-Difficulty Levels : Normal and Hard
-Custom FE mugs for player characters and core villains : All 100% Made by Dy
-Support System (fairly rudimentary)
-Two Endings in FE6's vein with a Complete and Incomplete ending.
As far as going beyond SimRPGMaker95 basic features, I think that's it. Though it's not like SimRPGMaker95 is an overused maker to begin with.

Anyway, if anybody still reading this is getting a good feeling, I fully intend to not let anybody down. Just don't go play my FE6 - TILoRtQatQfP and think "is this it?". The difference between the two is a 4-hour limitation and a 2-year dedication.
Thus ends my first blog. I'll stfu and gtfo now. Who left this table in my way? （╯°□°）╯︵ ┻┻