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Announcement

Release!



Well. It's been four years since SEP first was made as part of the IGMC. But it's been even longer than that for the SE series as a whole. Since the days of GW and beyond. Back when I was first making trash like Mystic Legends and Axis Saga.

But not Angelic Awakening. I loved Angelic Awakening.

After all of that, SE has finally gotten a commercial release. I still feel like the game is rough, despite all the time I've spent polishing it. But all the same, the game has been released.

You can find it on Steam and Itch.io here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/938100/Sacred_Earth__Promise/
https://miragev.itch.io/sacred-earth-promise

A big thank you goes out to the RM community for all the help I've gotten over the past, what, decade almost? People have come and gone, but I've taken the lessons I've learned to heart, and I'd like to think that this release is a culmination of all of that.

So once again, thank you.

Announcement

A Release Is Imminent

Wow. It's been about four thousand years since I posted a word game-wise on this website. Not since the days of yore, spoken of on the winds of prophecy.

I suppose that can change.

Anywho, as it turns out, I've still been working on SEP all this time, and now, it's finally got a locked in release date for Steam and Itch.io. Whose pages I will link here.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/938100/Sacred_Earth__Promise/
https://miragev.itch.io/sacred-earth-promise

That date is October 24th.

I will leave the original 2014 contest build up for posterity, but I will also be adding a demo of the current version of the game in the next few days, as soon as I can hunker down and chop the game down to a demo size.

It's been a surprisingly, unintentionally long road. And the scope of this game, originally meant to be a prototyping of the SE system from the original 2k3 version, blew up frankly. But it's done now. Just a few more little things to add in and adjust, and then this thing can go out the door.

I know that at this point in the RM community, I am Literally Who, so I won't say thank you for following me or anything silly like that. But if you happen to read this and find yourself interested, then you have my appreciation just as well.

Till later, then.

Announcement

Sooo....

In light of recent, off to the side happenings, I've decided to take some time to actually update this game.

I thought I was done with it forever, but...I have plenty ideas on how to improve it and extend the gameplay content. So here I am working on it again.

It won't be too long of a job, so I figure it's fine to take some time out from SEM to improve this project. Even if it doesn't actually connect to SEM in any real way.

Additions I have in mind are rather simple. The contest build of the game had no levels, no equipment, no skills to be learned. It was just a straight shot through. This is changing. There will now be levels, EXP, skills will be split up to be learned by level, the equipment system from SEM is being added to this game, and the number scaling and global damage algorithm from SEM will be incorporated into this project.

Additionally, there will be extra narrative and gameplay areas to further increase game volume. On top of that will be improved GUIs for menu and battle. Nothing groundbreaking, but all basic things that can only the game more playability and customization content.

I had previously taken down the contest build of the game, but I decided to add it back for posterity's sake. Let people see what the game was originally like.

And that's all from me. Later.

Miscellaneous

Post Mortem

It's been a short while since the game was released. I won't be touching it anymore, so I think that it's time to throw up a little reflection.

Initially, I had no plans of entering IGMC at all. I saw it, and immediately thought it would have been too much work. I already have enough trouble wrestling with real life, how the hell was I supposed to make a game in a month on top of that? But in the end, due to the passionate arguments of some friends, it was decided to at least give it a shot.

And so came the plan to conjure up a game without wrestling with resources too much. I already knew I had no desire to touch the RTP sprites, faces, and tile sets. I never have any desire to work with those. So that was out. And I knew mapping would be a royal pain in the ass, so that was out too. Naturally, we came to the conclusion that we should use what we have; which in this case would be all the resources available on Sacred Earth: Memory.

But there was no way to just take a snippet of SEM's story and toss it into Ace and have it all make sense, so a friend of mine volunteered to pen a short story with the characters, largely unrelated to the main game, but with character motivations and personalities intact. The intention was to craft a short story with entertaining, snappy writing, and a fun battle system to showcase the design philosophies that SE is based on.

And with the plan set, we began to work. I set about the arduous task to reformatting all of SEM's art assets into usable form again for VX Ace. That mean character faces, cut ins, and sprites, I think I was doing this right up until about the last week even. Our writer spent about two weeks writing the script, and even more impressively, he found the time to playtest the game over and over and over while overseas for a thesis proposal.

Following the preparation of SEM resources, was the design of the menu layouts and the battle system. Designing the interfaces too no time at all really. I got it done in about two, three days tops. What really took the most time out of everything definitely had to be getting the battle system up to working order. From the beginning, all the way up until about the end, I was jumping through flaming hoops to try and find a battle system that worked with the combination of mechanics I had thought up.

It's kind of amazing that in all of VX Ace's lifespan, there still doesn't exist a simple individual turns structure that's not ATB or something overly convoluted as CTB(Though I do love my CTBs!). 8V

After cycling through about a million battle systems, some working more than others, it ultimately came to the point where in order to ensure the highest caliber of compatibility, the safest, and best choice was...the Default Battle System. With YEA layered over it, but the DTB all the same. I abhor the DTB turn structure, so I made it my personal mission to make the battle mechanics as fun as engaging as I could think of, while still staying true to the roots of SEM.

SEM, while still my baby, is undeniably what one of my friends likes to call 'The Guilty Gear of JRPGs'. Mechanics on top of mechanics, and several layers of advanced tactics that the layman probably will never use. 6 different resources to keep an eye on and manage, all while trying to keep your characters alive and figure out the best way to win.

I love it. I am not ashamed of this. I love fighting games, and I love guilty gear, blazblue, king of fighters, I love all of it. So likening my battle system to a fighting game is a compliment to me.

But this isn't true for the average player. Likely more than half of the people who played SEM couldn't make heads or tails of the battle system I had set up. I still think it's possible to get people to understand with a little hands on and some comprehensive tutorials to reference. I have a handful of players who clicked with the game and went on to say good things about it. Hell, the SEM battle system won a boss design contest, so I know the potential is there.

But I digress. For the purposes of this contest, the SEM design philosophy was streamlined. Simplified. Made easier. Easier than I honestly would care to ever make it. But the point wasn't to crush the player with epic difficulty. The point was to let them play through and experience the story and mechanics, so the difficulty was adjusted to account for that. It's one of those things that can't be helped! But I think it worked out in the end. It may be on the easier side, but it is better to err on the side of easy, than on the side of hard.

As for the writing, I personally think the script is hilarious. And I can say that, because I had no hand in writing it at all. But more than being hilarious, the script also has it's serious moments, and I think that it really does a good job of highlighting certain aspects of the characters. The city conversation system was kept in the game purely for the sole purpose of throwing in as many of these amusing little side conversations as possible.

At every opportunity we could think of, there was a new event devised for it. And we determined that while the chances of people checking events twice were small, we would add second replies to all of these events for incentive. So there really is a lot of side content to read through and chuckle at. The points in which they change should be obvious, so I won't say exactly when.

Of course once everything was said and done, the game was released and I laid back, deeming my job finished. ...Of course it wasn't. There's this thing called PR and advertisement. I'm terrible at these things naturally. So it's no surprise to me, the relative underground-ness that the game has. I'm personally just happy to have finished a game and made a successful second foray into the VX Ace Engine.

But where do I go from here?

It's been suggested by multiple parties to move SEM to VX Ace and continue on with the momentum, but.......I don't know. SEM in 2k3, has an entire unique battle system that can't easily be replicated in Ace. Sure, the streamlined version of it for SEP works nicely, but it ultimately is not the same. While I do think moving to Ace would certainly help my visibility, I really do fear losing the mechanical integrity that I've worked so hard to achieve in 2k3 so far.

What does one do about this?

The other solution was to begin work on another project using the same engine from SEP to tell another story. This is a more attractive idea to me personally, but it would mean SEM getting sidelined. And that bothers me greatly.

In the end, there doesn't seem to be an easy solution, so for now I will take a break and await the results of the contest.

Announcement

Fixes incoming

While the game is fully playable in it's current state, there are some minor bugs we've managed to catch. Mostly due to fatigue creeping in on us ever so surely. A fixed file is being uploaded as I type this. Hopefully it will be the final contest version as I sure as hell won't have time to upload enough version for whatever reason.

I spent all month pulling near all-nighters every day to get this done in time. And now that I'm at the finish line, my body is just like 'That's it! We're done! No more!'. That being said, it's been an interesting ride, collaborating with a friend and letting them basically do whatever the hell they want with the established characters of SEM. It's given me insight on what I can do when I get back to the main project.

Anyway, just a heads up on the fix. I'll edit this when it's live.

Edit: Fixed version is available to download~
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