Crystals: Legend of the Sword

It's been nearly two years since my last update, and while work on Crystals has not stopped, it has certainly been slow. The primary reasons for that have been time and scope.

Time is the obvious one. I'm getting older and decided it was time for a career shift, headed back to school, and blah blah blah you guys all care about my life story, right? No? Good. Let's move on.

The second issue has been scope. The project was originally meant to hone my skills in game making, with me focusing a lot more on "get it done" than "get it right." As the project progressed, though, I found myself experimenting more. And while that experimenting was good, it also gave way to girth and scope creep. Before long it was clear that the old structure that I haphazardly put together wouldn't support my new ideas. So a complete database rework was necessary. But that meant I needed to know what the new database needed to look like so that I wouldn't have to fix everything again. That meant a ton of pre-planning, which isn't really a good thing for a "get it done" practice project.

On the plus side, that planning gave way to some awesome and amazing ideas. On the negative side, rm2k3 and "awesome" don't really mix all that well, and despite my best efforts (including making the Picture Text Creator program, which you should really grab if you're still using rm2k3), I decided I may need to look to a new program to make Crystals in.

I first tried out VXAce. Ace had some nice advantages, but not enough. I then looked around at other RPG game designers, then other game designing programs in general (like GameMaker). Soon I was looking into more do-it-yourself options like Monogame and Unity. And before I was done I was learning C# and looking at building a system from scratch using SDL for my graphics and Bassmod for sound.

All the while I continued planning out the game. I now have 26 planned characters, 31 passives, 28 actives, 34 skill-sets, 300+ skills, 92 relics, 20 status effects, and rudimentary story descriptions for the five games that were originally intended to encompass the Crystals "trilogy." (I'm going to pretend someone gets that joke, even though I know no one will.)

So what's the future look like for Crystals? I'm honestly not sure. I haven't found a way into custom designing that I'm particularly happy with, and the English version for rm2k3 keeps advancing. So maybe Crystals will return to its roots.

One way or another, though, Crystals isn't dead. It's just a little lost. And if all goes well, it'll be better for taking the detour.