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Progress Report

Delays, Major Changes & the Future.

Hello, new blog post with some new juicy and maybe not so happy news.

So, for the last few months I haven't actually touched this project at all, in fact I didn't even open RPG Maker or log onto the site.
I see some of you have posted feedback and reviews and I'm very sorry that I didn't see them sooner. All feedback is still highly appreciated and I'll do what I can to improve the game using it.

Anyways, the reason I haven't worked on Deimos is because I lost interest, motivation perhaps. I thought I could better spend my time elsewhere, which I did. School was a priority as well for quite a long time and the way I imagined the schedule in my head was that I would work on Deimos almost full-time over summer break, get a lot of things done so that when school started back up again I could work 1-2 hours a day and still make it in time for the release date.

But this schedule went flying out of the way and now here we are....I decided to not continue college as I knew I wouldn't be happy by the time I was done with it. It just wasn't for me.
So outside of my job and a 1 year course in digital art which will be starting soon, I have a lot of time to actually work on the game again.

So, here are the big changes I have planned for the game.

1.
All cutscenes will be changed to VN-style. Most of you will know what this means but for those that don't I direct you to SMT4's cutscenes:



All art will be done by me, yes this means it takes a lot of time especially as I am still learning. I do promise it will look good though, I will make sure of it.

2.
The main character will no longer be silent. There will still be choices the player can make but there'll be less choices overall, all "meaningless" choices will be taken out. The MC will say more despite this. Choices that affect the outcome of a situation will still be player-chosen.

The main reason for this change is that the silent MC hindered me more often than not. Every time I wrote dialog I felt like I was working around the MC instead of with him, this of course because I'm not an actual good writer. This change is a big one but the dialog and overall story progression should feel better once all is said and done.

3.
Navigation through Kyndale will be done through a bird eye's view map. You click on icons to move there. Think Persona3/4 without the menu.
There's a reason for this: Engine limitations. The game becomes increasingly laggier as more events are made and because a lot of events take place in 1 map of the town, it would become pretty unbearable by day 20+. I remedied this somewhat by having copies of the same map and using them for different days but this could become quite messy and confusing overtime.
Working with a single image, a few icons and the cursor of the player is far more intuitive. I can also actually visually change the town depending on which upgrades the player has made so far since the entire thing will run on a single image which I can swap out easily.
The world map will remain the same, because a lot of events is exactly what I need it for.

4. (not so big really)
Weakness multiplier in battle reduced to 200% (down from 300%)
This change seems small but might be big overall. I thought a big weakness multiplier would be a huge incentive go for them whenever possible...and it was! But 3x the normal damage posed some problems.
Namely, that characters who could not hit the weaknesses of the enemies felt useless in terms of dealing damage. This was gonna become even worse when enemies would start resisting certain elements. By toning back the weakness multiplier it should open up the possibilities in battle a bit more, make the characters feel more balanced and make the player feel reasonably strong even when having a party that can't hit enemy weaknesses at all time.

I think that's all.
So the release date of the game will definitely be pushed back, I don't think I can get it done in 2015 (I'll try) but early 2016 maybe?
I'll release a new demo which will go to day 10 once I'm done with all the content up to that point. I wouldn't expect it any time soon, but I will post updates and screenshots of my progress as I make them.

Thanks for reading all of this!




Announcement

Demo V1.1 released!

Demo v1.1 released!

Hello all,

The updated, final(yeah right) version of the demo is now available.
I've set it as the main download so clicking the big juicy download button should get you the correct version.
You need the RTP to boot the game up, despite the fact that the game comes with every file you need...very odd indeed.

The patch notes are here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eP1s9hFe3i4vWr8TTwvLwct_E2r5XWqZJ7Ur8qFmdc0/edit?usp=sharing

I forgot to remove a quick test thing, which will make your character turn into an amazingly beautiful woman when in the first dungeon's keywarden room.
You revert back after beating the main boss so it's pretty minor, just a bit odd.


Anyways...
For those who have already played and beaten the first version, some things have changed but the content is still the same.
For those who are in the middle of their playthrough of the old demo, your old saves should work on the new demo.

Now I can finally continue working on the rest of the game. Feedback is still highly appreciated. Though as the months go by it will be increasingly harder for me to implement major changes.

Thanks for playing and please look forward to the full version mid-2015.

Announcement

Demo released!

The demo is here!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Before posting a bug report, please look at this document to check if I fixed it already in the unreleased build!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eP1s9hFe3i4vWr8TTwvLwct_E2r5XWqZJ7Ur8qFmdc0/edit?usp=sharing

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello all,

The demo is finally released! You can grab it from the downloads section.
You do not need the RTP to run the demo, all files you need come with it.
The demo is about 2-3 hours long and runs up til day 5 in-game.

Now, as usual, this demo is what it is: a demo. While I did my best to remove as many bugs and issues as possible, I'm sure there are still some users that will run into unforeseen issues.
If you run into anything that doesn't work or glitches out, please do not hesitate to post about it in the comments section or by contacting me on my twitter (@Daedron).

What feedback do I need?
I am mainly looking for feedback on these things:

-How does the game run on slower PC's, both on the map and in battle?
-Did you find the game too difficult or too easy? (take note: the game is meant to be easy until day 10 or so.)
-How do you feel about the save system?
-Try to find a way to sequence break the game if at all possible, backtrack and do things you would normally not think of doing etc. Try to intentionally break the game. I'm interested to hear if I missed anything.

Any other feedback is of course also appreciated. Don't hesitate to post what comes to your mind!

Current Issues

The number 1 current issue in the current demo build is lag, it's not too bad in most areas but there are two notable areas in the game where it's worse than anywhere else. These are Arden Mansion's boss room and the Lemura Depths (the entire dungeon).
There's also battle lag present, which I'm not sure how to fix yet, but I have my eyes on a certain script that caches pictures and battle animations. I haven't had the chance to test it out yet and that's why it's not in the demo at present. I'll post back with my results once I have it thoroughly tested.


In any case, please
Enjoy!




Game Design

Character info.

Characters

Welcome to the last blog-of-the-day for some time, as the demo is nearly upon us!
Today I'll talk about the 7 playable characters and how they work in-game.

Lord

Main character, has to be named by the player.
Class: Lord
Armour type: Heavy
Gameplay style: The lord has access to two types of fighting styles. He can wield a mace & shield or dual swords. When wielding mace & shield he gets access to taunts, stuns and debuffs. His main role will be to tank, taking the hits for the party.
When he equips dual swords however, his main role will be to deal massive amounts of damage with his sword skills. He gains access to a plethora of melee abilities and useful party-wide buffs.
The fighting style cannot be changed mid-battle.

Leona Crawford

A woman whose past is largely unknown. Cold and harsh to anyone.
On the battlefield, she is known as the Crimson Blade.

Class: Blade Master
Armour type: Heavy
Gameplay style: The only thing Leona cares about is dealing extreme amounts of damage. Her special resource is "Hatred" and is gained by using Hatred regeneration skills. She also regains a small amount of Hatred when she takes damage. Her Hatred spending skills are mainly single-target. They are extremely damaging slashing attacks that apply stacking defense debuffs to the enemy.
She also has access to a self-buff that increases her Attack. this buff stacks as well, so prolonged fights are definitely in Leona's favour.

Damian Hendrix

A priest whose charm manages to win over all the girls.
Except not really. Light-hearted and loves a good time at the pub.

Class: Priest
Armour type: Medium
Gameplay style: Damian is the main healer of the game, but that's not to say he can't do anything else either! His special resource is "Charge". He has to use the skill "Charge" to gain it, though he also has other ways later in the game.
When he has charge he gain access to his heals and revives, but he also has damaging holy skills which deal a good deal of damage. These skills also dispel buffs on the enemy, making them extremely valuable.

Mayra Scriven

Cheeerful no matter what situation she finds herself in, she works at the Bounty Hunter's HQ. Studying was never her strong point.
Class: Gunslinger
Armour type: Medium
Gameplay style: Mayra uses guns to attack her enemies.(surprise!) Her special resource is called "Heat" and it goes up whenever she attacks the enemy with her Bullet Skills and by a small amount at the end of each turn. As her Heat increases, her gun starts doing less damage!
However, she has access to Heat skills which use up Heat. Heat skills are elemental gun attacks, heals and buffs. Whenever she uses Heat skills her gun switches to Heat mode and Heat no longer generates on it's own. Once she uses a Bullet skill the gun will switch to Bullet mode and start generating Heat on it's own again.

Alma Baines

A quiet young girl with the glowing green eyes - the spirit eyes.
Her control over the spirits of the world is unmatched by anyone.

Class: Spiritualist
Armour type: Light
Gameplay style: Alma's main role is to pelt the enemy with destructive spirit forces. She can poison, confuse, fear and entangle the enemy with the hands of death.
To do all this, she has a special resource called "Spirit Power". SP regenerates entirely on it's own every turn. The rate at which it does so is tied to how much SP Alma has. If it's high she regenerates more and if it's low she regenerates less. High SP increases the damage of her skills while low SP decreases it. You can either hold onto it, waiting for it to reach it's max and deal extreme damage in a single blow, or use multiple smaller attacks and debuffs to annoy the enemy with.
She also has access to the "Sprit Sight" ability. Battles may have invisible spirits floating around, by using the Spirit Sight skill, it's possible to see these spirits. When a spirit is killed it will aid the party in different ways, like fearing the enemy party or healing the player party.

Ari Balog

A half-breed vampire. Trainee Blood Mage.
She loves a good fight and stops at nothing to protect those dear to her.

Class: Blood Mage
Armour type: Light
Gameplay style: Ari is a Jack of All Trades character. She can tank, deal respectable damage and has access to healing skills.
She has no special resource, just like the Lord she only has HP and MP. However she uses her own HP to cast her Blood Magic. To offset this, she can regenerate HP on her own through her drains and through her Knife skills. Knife skills all have a base 15% lifesteal, allowing her to heal herself when necessary, so long as she can actually dish out damage against the enemy she's facing.
While she wears Light armour, she's still an effective tank as instead of taking hits, she dodges them. Ari has a high base dodge chance and her main taunt increases this chance even further. For healing purposes she has access to Blood Transfusion and Sacrifices: healing the HP of others with her own.

Sharif Hakim

The last remaining elementalist on the planet. Due to his extreme innate power
he was confined since birth. He loves shiny things.

Class: Elementalist
Armour type: Light
Gameplay style: Sharif is not functional yet, so I can only give a brief summary of how I want him to play.
He has access to four elements: Fire, Water, Ice and Electricity. To use magic from an element, he has to cast an orb corresponding to that element. When he does so the party gains a buff and Sharif can start casting his magic. After a few turns the orb automatically disappears and he has to cast a new one. The buffs from different orbs stack so he could be a massive boon to the party by chain-casting different orbs instead of dealing damage.
I'll have more details once Sharif is fully working.

And that's all for today!
Later today I'll upload the demo and I'll make a blogpost about it, please look forward to it.

Game Design

Town Mechanics

Become a Lord

Hello and welcome back to yet another blog-of-the-day.
This will be the 2nd to last blog and today we'll be talking about the town mechanics and its upgrades.

Upgrades & Structures
At the end of each day you get the chance to select a structure to upgrade. The upgrades are not free however, as you need resources and TWC's to perform upgrades. You get them from dungeons and dungeons only. Higher level upgrades require more TWC's and higher rank resources to build. Naturally, higher rank resources drop in higher difficulty dungeons.

There are 6 different structures to upgrade, these are:

General Store:
The general store supplies you with food every day, the so-called "free food". The amount and type/level of food is determined by the level of the general store.
As you upgrade the general store you receive better and more free food. However, it's possible to buy more food with your hard-earned money if you so desire.
Food expires in 1 day(what kind of weird food is this?!) so it's important to only buy what you think you'll need, or perhaps you think the free food is enough to carry you for a whole day...

Blacksmith:
The blacksmith is your go-to-stop for all your quick armour and weapon needs.
By upgrading the blacksmith, you will improve the quality of items available to buy (read: higher levelled).
He's mainly intended to fill in gaps in your items. At the same time I don't want the blacksmith to become the main source of gear, which is why he does not always sell every type of item every day (it changes randomly day-by-day).
He will also carry better gear the further in the game you get, though upgrading will still be the most effective.

Appraisal Store:
The appraisal store is used to salvage items back to their most basic component called Magicka. You can use Magicka to buy boxes with random items. You can buy a small box with 3 items, a medium box with 6 items or a large box with 9 items. These are relatively expensive so it takes a considerable amount of salvaged items to get a chance at new loot.
The boxes work the same as chests do, with a small twist. The appraisal store gives you a small Magic Find boost when buying boxes. By upgrading the appraisal store you have a higher chance of receiving Rare/Epic/Legendary loot from them.
Items in boxes scale with your level, but so does the Magicka cost!

Residential District:
The Residential District is the district where all your residents live (wow!).
By upgrading this district, more residents will move into Kyndale each day. At levels 3 and 5, they also start paying more tax.
Tax is intended to be a big source of income. Money drops from defeated enemies but only in small amounts.

Military District:
The Military District is the district that trains soldiers and houses the Bounty Hunter's HQ. By upgrading it, more residents will be enrolled into the army. Residents enrolled into the army do not pay tax.
A higher military power changes how certain events in the story play out.
The military district also has to be upgraded to get access to higher level bounties.

Support Team:
The support team are the unnamed, invisible NPC's that accompany you on your journey. They are there to keep your spirits up, or in other words, they are the source of your Stamina. By upgrading them, you'll be able to do more per day.
They also save your ass when you are defeated in battle!
...
And that's about it, poor Support Team.

It's possible to upgrade every single structure to it's max level of 5 in a single play-through, but just barely. You'll need to perform an upgrade each and every day, if you don't have enough resources to perform an upgrade, then say goodbye to maxing out the town until the next play-through.

And that's about all I have to say about it. As of now the town does not visually change in appearance, but it is planned for the full game (albeit very low priority).
Look forward to a new blog tomorrow! We'll be talking about the 7 playable characters, their play-styles and roles in battle.

Also, the demo. ;)


Game Design

Loot Mechanics

Thar be treasure!
Today I'd like to talk about the shiny things that keep you playing, namely all the delicious loot you can find.

Rarities
Loot is divided into 5 rarities:

Common - Used for starter gear only. it's trash
Uncommon - Items with basic enchantments, you'll find these the most.
Rare - Items with better enchantments, some of them may even have a special effect.
Epic - Items with lots of enchantments and sweet special effects
Legendary - Items that are borderline broken, they have incredible innate abilities. You'll probably never find these.

To give an example, here are 3 different gun weapons within the same level range, but with different rarities.

Uncommon Gun

It only increases the basic ATK attribute and very slightly increases resource generation.

Rare Gun

A gun focussed on increasing damage. Higher ATK and extra stat increases compared to the uncommon gun.

Epic Gun

Now this is what I'm talking about! Epic items are really good and tend to have
neat effects. This gun gives a chance to use the "Explosive Shot" skill whenever you perform an attack.


Epic items are designed to be used long-term or for very specific situations.
A lvl 5 epic item could still be better than a lvl 50 Uncommon item thanks to it's special effect. For example, boots that grant fire immunity in a dungeon or against a boss that mainly uses fire attacks. You might lose out on core stats, but that doesn't matter when you're immune to it's attacks!

Here are a few more examples of epic items.

Epic Light Helm

50% chance to confuse every enemy at the start of a battle, pretty useful! and nice passive healing.

Epic Heavy Armour

The stats might not be that high, but the Counter-Shield skill grants a 100% chance to parry physical attacks, effectively making you immune to them for a short duration.

Now, how do you get these items?
Well, from chests of course!

Item Ranks

Item distribution works differently from what you might be used to. To anyone who has played Dragon's Crown, it works similar to that.
When you open a chest, instead of items, you get item ranks. Then once you get to the end of a dungeon, all your obtained item ranks are tallied up and the items are handed to you. This only happens if you get to the end of the dungeon, if you die, say goodbye to your obtained item ranks up till that point.

So, what ranks are there?

The most common rank. This ranks gives Uncommon items.

A bit more rare. This rank gives Uncommon with a chance of Rare.

We getting somewhere now. This rank gives Rare with a chance of Uncommon.

Clap your hands when you get this rank. This rank gives Rare with a chance of Epic.

You hit the jackpot! This rank gives Epic with a chance of Legendary.

However, it's still possible to get rares from an S rank, as you might get a loot table of lvl 5-10 helmets, which for example contains no epic or legendary rarities.

Magic Find & Luck
The chance of getting great loot is really small. Luckily for us, we can increase this chance! Luck and Magic Find are similar but still work differently.

Luck is a character stat and is increased individually with items. By increasing luck you push the minimum roll number up a bit. Say the game rolls a number from 1-10000 and you have 200 luck across your characters, the roll will now be 201-10000.

Magic Find works similar by pushing up the minimum roll but it also pushes up the maximum roll by a percentage. a Magic find of 200 is far more effective than a Luck stat of 200. However magic find cannot be increased by items. It's increased by clearing Abyss dungeons, killing elites and doing certain side-activities.
To give an example of how it works, taking the 1-10000 roll. If you have a magic find of 500, the minimum roll will be pushed up to 501 and the maximum roll of 10000 is now 10150 (30% of 500 magic find).
Our final roll becomes 501-10150. S ranks are given when you roll above 9900. Meaning that the default roll of 1-10000 gives a 1% chance, while our roll affected by magic find gives a chance of about 2.7%.

By comparison a luck stat of 500 would only give you a 1.05% chance, a very meager increase of 0.05%. Luck is far easier to increase however, a total luck stat of 5000 might not be out of the ordinary. While 500 Magic Find is extremely hard to get, if not impossible.

And that is all for today, whew. A long blog post indeed.
The blog post for tomorrow will be about town upgrading. So stay tuned!

psst....the demo is very close to release






Game Design

Dungeon Mechanics.

Dungeon Guidebook

Hello and welcome back to another blog-of-the-day, you're watching TWC channel 5!
Today on the show we'll be talking about the dungeon mechanics, my co-host will - ah, screw this.

Let's get serious and talk about the most important aspect: how the dungeons work.

Difficulties
Before entering a dungeon, you'll have to pick your difficulty. There are three available in each dungeon: Normal, Hard and Abyss. To access Hard and Abyss you need to beat the previous difficulty; beat Normal to unlock Hard and beat Hard to unlock Abyss. Dungeons have different layouts per difficulty, as well as new enemies and challenges. Now, for a brief overview of how I tune the difficulties:

Normal:
Straight-forward layout. Enemies have limited abilities and resistances. Challenge rooms are easier and infrequent. No Elite enemies.

Hard:
Dungeon layout becomes more challenging. Enemies get extra abilities and resistances. A new enemy is added. Challenge rooms are harder and may stand in the way of your progress through the dungeon. Elite enemies are present.

Abyss:
Dungeon is actively working against the player. Enemies get yet another extra ability and are immune to an element. One more enemy is added. Challenge rooms require specific strategies to beat and will stand in the way of progress. Elite enemies are present and have unforgiving abilities. Extra mini-bosses are present.

In other words, difficulty levels are not just mere enemy level jumps. They are very different from each other and will keep you on your toes.

Rooms
There are many different rooms in a dungeon. Here's an overview of the ones currently in the game:

Normal room - Nothing special, room with enemies and the occasional unguarded treasure chest.
Treasure room - A room with an abnormal amount of treasure. The treasure tends to be guarded by enemies.
Challenge room - A room that places a special effect on the player and enemies. These can be good/bad, or a combination of both.
Puzzle room - A room containing a (simple) puzzle. No enemies present.
Key room - A room inhabited by the keywarden - a mini-boss. You have to kill the keyward to unlock the...
Boss room - A room containing the boss of the dungeon. Defeating the boss will clear the dungeon and give you your loot and resources.

Enemies
Most rooms are inhabited by enemies. These enemies roam the map and can be touched to initiate combat. They will not actively hunt down/chase the player. It's up to the player to choose their battles, as the food system makes sure you cannot just fight every single enemy, but you still need to fight to gain EXP/Gold. Pick your battles wisely.

Enemy groups are divided into two types:

Normal enemies - A random group of enemies with no special effects.
Elite enemies - a pre-determined group of enemies with one extra powerful enemy: the elite. The elite enemy has a special effect. Currently I have an elite that casts Poison Nova every single turn and one that increases the ATK/AGI stat by 50% for his allies. Depending on the effect, you might want to either kill the elite first or finish it off last. These are only present on Hard and Abyss difficulties.
Killing elites will permanently increase your Magic Find, which increases the chances of obtaining better loot. (more in the loot blog)

Last but not least, enemies may lock you inside a room as you enter it. When this happens you are forced to kill every single enemy in the room.

Resources
When you clear a dungeon, you'll gain resources and Time Warping Crystals(TWC). The resources you get depends on the difficulty; each difficulty has its own resource.
The amount of TWC's you get also depends on the difficulty. You get 1 on Normal, 2 on Hard and 3 on Abyss. Resources can be obtained multiple times from the same difficulty, but TWC's are only given to you on the first clear.
Both resources and TWC's are used in performing town upgrades, although the TWC's have other uses as well.

Cooldown
When you clear or get defeated in a dungeon, it will enter its cooldown state. This is a state where it's impossible to enter the dungeon for 3 in-game days. Thus, if you beat Normal difficulty on day 1, you could beat Abyss difficulty on day 7, though only in theory. It's not actually possible to do this with most dungeons because of the level gaps between difficulties. (but you're free to try!)


And that's about all there is to know as of now.
The next blog will be about the shiny things you can find: the loot. I'll probably have that up tonight or tomorrow.

Game Design

Summary of game mechanics and flow.

A new day, a new blog.

So, while the summary and the images I've posted so far could give you an answer as to how the game is played, I'm sure people would appreciate it if I went a little bit more in-depth with it.

The game is divided into 30 in-game days. Time does not pass automatically but is dependent on player actions.
Each day has 3 states of time: Morning, Afternoon and Night.

Morning happens after you wake up, new residents will move into your town and they'll pay some tax. You have access to all services in your town, like shops, an appraisal store and the Bounty Hunter HQ.
This is the time where you equip your party, learn skills, buy your food (more on this in another blog) and decide who to put in your party.

When you leave town and go to the world map, game time progresses to Afternoon. The game will remain in the afternoon state until you return back to town, which you could theoretically do immediately after starting your adventure...but who would do that?

On the World Map, you have a slew of things to do. The main attraction will be the different dungeons you can enter, but there are also tasks/events strewn about, golden chests to open, bounties to search & kill and other towns to visit.
Of course, it's not possible to stay on the world map forever. You have a limited amount of Stamina points to work with. You start the game with 3 points, which is a very limited amount, but you can increase this amount through upgrading your town.
Going into a dungeon takes up 3 stamina points, doing bounties, tasks/events and visiting other towns takes up 1.
Once you're out of stamina the only thing you can do is to return to town.

Once you've returned back to town the game time progresses to Night. All shops will be closed, save for the pub and the Bounty Hunter HQ. However, there's another activity to be done at night which is called Social Rank. It's possible to talk with your party members at set locations. The main point of these Social Ranks is to receive background information on that character, to learn more about them and increase their base statistics.
Once you think you're ready to end the day, you return to your manor, get your personal cook Jennie to cook you some delicious food and then you go to bed.

Once you're in bed, you'll get the chance to pick an upgrade for your town. This upgrade will be completed over-night and costs resources, which you get from completing dungeons. Once this is done, you close your eyes and the next day will begin. Repeat until the 30th day, where you will face off against Deimos, hopefully strong enough to defeat it.

Annnddd that is the flow of the game. Of course there are a tons more mechanics underneath, like in the dungeons themselves, the battle system, the abyss system and a few more.
I'll be posting more specific information as I work towards getting the demo done and uploaded. In the next blog I'll talk about the dungeon mechanics.

Until then.

Progress Report

General Project Information

Hello to whoever decides to read this!

This project started a month after I completed my first project "Blood Haze", which I released back in October 2012. This was supposed to be a small 6-month project, giving me some time to think about a sequel for Blood Haze and at the same time improve my skills with the program.

Now, almost year and a half later, the project has turned into something far bigger than I initially planned. the project was also on hiatus for a period of time, so it's not like I actually managed to get a tons of content in those 1.5 years. I'm actually only 1/6 done with the main storyline.

Still, with a decent work pace I should be able to get this done by august next year. If that includes NG+ and post-game content I do not know yet.
I'll release a demo next week so you can check out the game for yourself, I need feedback and second opinions on a lot of things so if you could help out by playing it, great!

Anyways, that's enough talking for now. I'll make a new blog on Saturday explaining the game's mechanics and what it plays like.
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