Hello Everyone,
So, I started developing my first real game for VXA after giving up on RPGMaker 2003 because of it's lack of scripting freedom and other features. "Realm of Legends" (ROFL) is still in very early development, but I already got support from several people here on the boards. I would like to introduce the project to you and ask you for some feedback and fresh ideas. "Realm of Legends" is a so called "random crawler" (note: this word creation is copyrighted by Mr. Trivel), with many features found in "Roguelike" games like Shiren or Torneco. The only major difference is, that ROFL is party based and uses the regular, turn based combat system instead of on-map-combat.

Over the course of the next blog entries, I would like to talk a bit about the features Im currently adding to the project. Progress is slow, thats due to my job and real life commitments, but its steady. Today I like to begin with a tiny little feature as this blog post is already quite long: The Haggling Feature!

So, there is a set of "common skills" in the game that every character can learn. This skill family compromises typical out-of-combat and every-day skills like "Haggling" and a few others (to be announced later). Every character can learn to haggle and the skill can be upgraded two times to a maximum level of 3.

Haggling is a passive skill that you cannot directly activate. Instead, whenever you access a shop or inn, there is the possibility that "Haggling" grants you a discount to the goods purchased or increases the money you make from selling items. Each level of "Haggling" (1-3) adds 1% discount/bonus to your sales/buys and its important to note that the total Haggling skill of all party members counts. Its therefore possible to gain a 12% discount/refund from 4 party members with Haggling 3 each. Finally, there are some vendors you cannot haggle with, your skill will be ignored. In addition, there is a random factor, so you cannot count on your skill level blindly. Haggling might be just a tiny little feature, but nonetheless its part of the overall style of the project.

Finally, here is a small demonstration movie to show the basic functionality of the engine (kudos goes to Saba Kan for his random dungeon generator). Please ignore the story part, thats just a placeholder for now and note that I accidentally set the enemies to "through". All in all, this video is just a humble beginning of the engine: