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Well today I finished my first Character profile image for one of the newest characters in TOTL. Her name is Alice and she's a baker in a village the protagonists' group will enter around Chapter 6. She's a sweet natured girl who loves baking (obviously), but what's really special about her is her ability to see auras (something that will also happen in the same chapter). She's the only character in the entire game who will be able to see these, and they will lead to many fun events and rough challenges throughout the game. Overall, she's a good companion to have close by. She'll not have a Lumminai companion, but her skills use cooking materials to make very special buffs unique to her alone that can do things like altering her allies' elements to others which can change the tide in battle very quickly.
Aside from her basic design in the game and full profile image, I have been working more on creating a few more side quests as well as wrapping up a couple errors I discovered during my most recent playthrough. Next on the list, the last 2 side quest additions, new guild quest, and a new lighting system for interiors if I can get the plugin working. After that, it's good for another release (after I test it again of course lol).
Side by side comparison pic of the starting village between MV and XP. This is just the top part of the village. The village will consist of four maps. One being a path, one being a field, and the other being the main part of the place.
Will be adding a few more terraces on the right-side of the cliff. I really am not too enthusiastic for MVs graphic style. The tiles are larger but it feels to vivid and colourful and seems to lack the detail of XP tiles. Feels a bit too square as well. Will have to try and see if I can make some alterations (if layers allow) to round out the cliff corner edges. Work in progress at the moment. I imagine it'll look a lot nicer when I can get around to parallax mapping it. Not sure how the indoor map will work for the newer version. I thought of dimming the outside and having the indoor tiles match up to the outside but it might feel a bit too cramped for the player, but hey that's what experimentation is for... Be nice if there was also a cliff-fade tiles as well. Signify depth properly. Like how it is on the middle-left of the XP map.
Certainly gonna alter those doors and make them narrower. Make it feel better proportioned.
I decided to try Windows 10, right? (Something I said I wouldn't do, but I did any way, especially after learning how to disable the "Everything you do we'll log and keep and..." thing from MS!) Anyway, to my surprise the graphics render MUCH faster than Windows 7 did. That may have something to do with DirectX 12 from what I've read. So ALL of the graphics have had a re-render using Nvidia's Iray. Using that would hang or crash the program in Windows 7 and XP. This includes all charsets, facesets and some of the tilesets I've started working on.
The character select plugin is complete (except for the player start coordinates), the save file plugin is complete, the Karma plugin is almost complete (might just rewrite it as a new script, not a portover/conversion), and the first map is complete. All in 3 days. Man, I love being on holiday!!!
I decided to try Windows 10, right? (Something I said I wouldn't do, but I did any way, especially after learning how to disable the "Everything you do we'll log and keep and..." thing from MS!) Anyway, to my surprise the graphics render MUCH faster than Windows 7 did. That may have something to do with DirectX 12 from what I've read. So ALL of the graphics have had a re-render using Nvidia's Iray. Using that would hang or crash the program in Windows 7 and XP. This includes all charsets, facesets and some of the tilesets I've started working on.
The character select plugin is complete (except for the player start coordinates), the save file plugin is complete, the Karma plugin is almost complete (might just rewrite it as a new script, not a portover/conversion), and the first map is complete. All in 3 days. Man, I love being on holiday!!!
Yeah win 10 is pretty good for that lol. After you disable the crap that comes with it, you're good to go and it's actually a very smooth os too. DX12 is just amazing heh, I am loving it ever since I got it.
Yeah win 10 is pretty good for that lol. After you disable the crap that comes with it, you're good to go and it's actually a very smooth os too. DX12 is just amazing heh, I am loving it ever since I got it.
Totally!! Even Skyrim and Runescape run smoothly on Ultra settings! It helps with my video tutorials too. Definitely keeping it! As long as Microsoft keeps itself out of places it shouldn't (I have software for that!). ;)
Totally!! Even Skyrim and Runescape run smoothly on Ultra settings! It helps with my video tutorials too. Definitely keeping it! As long as Microsoft keeps itself out of places it shouldn't (I have software for that!). ;)
Heh yeah I get ya there. Microsoft is known for sneaky stuff xP. I just got myself a new graphics card (750 gtx ti) while not the top tier it's a huge improvement on my gt 610 low budget one lol. I'm hoping it will be a huge help with the visual lag that I get when recording tutorials/gameplays. Heh...but...my gf didn't look at the adapter plugin before getting them so we have to wait for the adapter gender changers now lol...but once we got those all should be good to go!
As for TOTL today, I've created this really neat Aurora effect for use in the high altitude regions during night time (think Northern Lights xP). The idea for these is to add some beauty to those rather dull areas that may look bland without some kinda life-like world stuff going on like it is elsewhere. I also created two variation of cloud overlays too, so now I can add in shadows that look like clouds. Other than that, not too much new, but I did Alice situated in the game's files now. Her sprite and all that is there now so that's good. Still a ways off before she's even introduced though lol so thinking ahead on that. Also, I managed to figure out a nifty way of making bridges/landbridges passable both under and on top of them so I can make full use of this in the canyon region and the cliffs. And lastly, I finished up another of the side quest additions which will unlock another ally xP (always fun to have more choices of companions heh). I still gotta work on getting the party changer added in, but once that's set you'll be able to swap party members at the party crystal pretty much anywhere where there's a safe save point (by safe I mean no enemies go near it ever which will exclude most wildland regions except a select few). Welp, that's it for today.
Quite busy of late, with yet further extensions of the Game set off and well advanced. Out of the Forest region, one reaches the North Plains; I wondered what to do with 'em. I decided that, as a part of the Overworld, it was a bit cramped to do much, really, so I duplicated it (approximately...), scaling it up to become an Outside Map. (See Spoiler for Screen shots...
The Northern Plains, Overworld...
The Northern Plains, scaled up Outside Map ...
The Idea is that, after having entered the Town of Waeldestone by crossing the Overworld, there will be a new challenge: catch a Unicorn..! That's where the Outside Map comes into its own, with about twenty Mustangs galloping about randomly, plus a rather shy Unicorn, which will back away rapidly if approached. Once caught, however, it will follow in docile fashion to be penned, thus allowing re-entry to the Town. It's not quite finished, but the major part is working, with various neighing sound effects from the animals when caught (and released, if they're not the Unicorn...). It's not too difficult, but should amuse for a while. I've yet to populate the Map with Enemies, though, to spice it up somewhat..!
Other news..? Yes, our eldest has been putting the Game through its paces, and came up with several 'bugs' or oversights on my parts, some of which I could have forseen, others less obvious (too close, ou see. It needs Candide observation to spot the obvious...). As a result, several minor and one major section have been revised, such as not permitting exit from the enclaved Village surroundings whilst the 'Spark' Spell remains undiscovered. The Passage is now opened, not simply with the Pickaxe, but with a Mini-Boss type battle, won only by using 'Spark'. A few other details tidied up; the resulting ver 0.5.1 is being uploaded as I type.
Things are drawing to a head; there is an impending sense of climax. I'll have to maintain this, and build further until... Until when, exactly..? I'll have to give that some thought, too..! ;-)
Heh yeah I get ya there. Microsoft is known for sneaky stuff xP. I just got myself a new graphics card (750 gtx ti) while not the top tier it's a huge improvement on my gt 610 low budget one lol. I'm hoping it will be a huge help with the visual lag that I get when recording tutorials/gameplays. Heh...but...my gf didn't look at the adapter plugin before getting them so we have to wait for the adapter gender changers now lol...but once we got those all should be good to go!
I have a GT 610, but it's more than adequate for my purposes. When I bought my computer, the guy put in an extra few Gb of RAM and gave some extra hard drive space to bring it up to 1.5Tb (very nice of him!!). And imagine my surprise when Skyrim played swimmingly on Ultra settings!! I've been wanting to upgrade my graphics card, but never gotten around to it. Because it's an SFF, options are limited. However, the maximum I can go up to is a 750 based on a 25-30W PSU. We shall see, as that costs around $100-150.
Project wise, I'm so happy with the way Otherworld's graphics turned out! They're produced much sharper than they were before; previously, I had to re-render them in GIMP to "photograph-ize" them. So I spent all of yesterday, part of today and continuing tomorrow updating ALL the graphics.
I started rewriting Anna's story. It's still essentially the same as the original, but rather than players knowing in advance how she died via a cut scene, she doesn't know so the players don't either. At least until later. Instead, she finds herself in a vast "nothingness". It's basically an "invisible" maze - utilizing my Map/Compass HUD plugin as an aid to help out - until she finds her way out, to the Nexus. As she makes her way through the maze, she'll have flashbacks (not Anna's memories per se, but insight available to the players).
Initially, these cut scenes were going to be mini movies. But, just as it was in VX/VXA, the Play Movie event command is crap. And limited. And, on occasion though not always, when the movie ends it doesn't actually close properly. I'll have to look into that later.
I did some work on Ebony Stars tonight. I managed to finish up the next part of the intro area (the simulations of the game's mechanics) and set up a neat stealth system to fit into the game's mechanics. I've also decided that the robot companion will be sort of like a mech but you don't enter it to pilot it. Instead, you access terminals and the robot deploys. By deploying the robot, control goes from the player character to the robot and you can make use of it's abilities without triggering battles (but your character stays at the terminal since they're controlling it). Certain areas must be accessed by the robot in order to procede xP as well as some hidden locations and such as well. This is all set up using the multiple party plugin which is just amazing how cool that is. Aside from setting up the simulations (tutorials) for combat, robotics, and stealth, I've also got the crafting section started as well. This will simply introduce how to obtain materials and where to refine them into items using the item synthesizer module. The last part of the simulations is a demo dungeon which will introduce all of the mechanics together in a small very simple dungeon. (You can gather the "mock" material here, sneak passed a guard that patrols a cooridor, craft a "mock" weapon using the material, and use the robot companion to hack a chest containing 10 currency.
So once that will be all out of the way, things should be extremely easy from then on for ES since it's literally a dungeon crawler so most of it will just be creating more dungeon levels. I'm aiming for around 150 total levels, I think. Seems to be a pretty good number for a random generated dungeon experience everytime you enter it. There will be a safe zone after every 5 floors where you can save/recover/teleport to hub, etc. Each dungeon will consist of likely 3 regular battles and a boss fight (or slightly stronger enemy on all floors except the 5th ones, since those will be boss fights). Once you've unlocked a safe zone, you can then teleport to that level instead of starting all over from the first, which will allow you to freely visit the HUB anytime you feel like it. (You can teleport out from any dungeon floor, but can only return to the safe zones that are unlocked after every 5th floor.) Still quite a ways to go, but it's got some progress.
(The reason I didn't work on TOTL today was because my RM MV kept crashing and I didn't wanna risk losing a lot of progress since I tend to do things in bulk in TOTL instead of saving every minute like ES lol.)
Quite a lot done, although it doesn't feel like it. I finished Anna's and Jack's graphics (except their character sets, as they're being reworked to fix some "odd" animations). Swan is having a rethink because Tina doesn't quite like how she turned out.
I've finished Anna's story in its entirety, half of which is still in my head, but I can still draw on it at a moment's notice. And started work on her starting map before her introduction. It's all RTP at the moment until it can be redesigned with the tilesets I'm planning on creating.
And also added a "Mature Content" toggle to the Options menu for those who don't want the blood and guts or otherwise "sensitive" stuff. It gives the option to turn that on or off.
There definitely seems to be a problem with the Movie Player event command, which I'll be looking into later; in the meantime, I omitted her intro cut scene.
I also started reworking the Otherworld Engine for the other systems - Status Menu, Status Screen, Equipment Screen, etc. and the Karma System - to work more smoothly. They're separate plugins at the moment for easier editing, but will eventually be integrated into a single system with corresponding system add-ons.
And finally, here's the official Character Select Screen. I went for something more simplistic in the end.
Testing a tileset mod. I thought the trees in game don't look properly to scale. They look too small. I decided to make them bigger simply by doubling the dimensions of them to nearest neighbour. Some neatening up required, the edges of the trees for example needs some aliasing work done. I wonder if 1.5x would've been better suited though. Also looking to round the cliff face edges. I find the top cliffs don't contrast enough with the background. I don't like using the tree autotiles. They don't sit right with me.
This is just a test image of a forest clearing. The map is only temporary, to see how it'd work. Bit to bright to work as a forest anyway.
Well, today I wrapped up the remaining Chapter 3 side quests in TOTL! I also got the character assets in for Alice, and a couple of other characters. Drifty's dojo is all set up and a special Lumminai now blocks the path (*cough Snorlax easter egg*). This Lumminai is a giant crab looking thing that's shell looks like a boulder. It's slow, and rarely speaks anything but 3 words. (very....very....slow). xD The concept for that one comes from Ian, not me though lol it's entirely his Lumminai design. I just chose the element which is Gaia. He wanted to make it appear early in the game, so it will take full effect in Chapter 4's ending. You'll have to do a small puzzle to figure out how to wake this lazy beast heh.
Aside from that bit, I've added in a couple more image overlays for use with the "Twilight Peaks" map which is at the top of the cliffs that Drifty's Dojo is on. I hope to create the awesome Aurora lighting effect if I can get it to work right. As for everything else, I've modified several crafting recipes and tooltips on the items and skills to be more understandable for what they actually do as requested by the testers. That's about it for today though, so not too far off from V0.56 release!
I keep creating sprites with @Amysaurus bases. Hetalia characters as children and babies. And I'm not sure whether I should post them on DA or not....because it's a lot. Oh, and I keep procrastinating xD
Something of a revelation yesterday, which inspired me to (figuratively...) get my hands dirty and edge closer to the Dark Side. The trigger..? I was looking to create a 'snitch'-type character, or Event, that would steal a random Item from the Party. Easy enough to Change Item, but how to know what Items are held..? Ah-ha... A rapid search produced a helpful topic on the subject by one Yanfly, a name I've seen more than once in these hallowed pages. Supposedly part of a series of plug-ins (which, for divers reasons, I'm loth to use...), I had a good read through and decided that it could be treated as Script for an Event, without any supporting plug-ins, with a bit of careful editing. The result..? Several hours of trial and error (I know next to nothing about js code itself, despite several decades as a programmer/coder in several languages...), ending in a fine 'Snitch' routine, now firmly ensconced as a Common Event, ready to be called upon by any Madpie or Sneak Thief that wander about in my Forests..! The hardest part..? How to treat the case of having no Items left to have stolen..! The Yanfly code didn't treat the case (maybe it doesn't arise in her 'plug-in' context..?); my additional conditional needs caused havoc with the positioning of the 'curly braces', and the very limited number of lines available in the Script Editor made clear, expansive, indented and commented code impossible. Anyway, it works now, so I'm very pleased. It breaks my original intention of using neither plug-ins nor scripts, but, as it's, in essence, a Script I've coded myself (albeit with enormous assistance from having the Yanfly model to start with...), I'll use it.
One thing lacking, for the moment; I'd like an Event (a flying Madpie, that well-known thief of birds...) to flit around the forest at random, above the trees. No problem there; I already have several decorative volatiles doing this. However, I'd still like to have interaction if, by chance, the Madpie encounters the Hero, and thus trigger the attempt at theft. I can do this, by monitoring the X-Y coordinates of each and comparing them, but that seems to be a bit overkill. Still, for the moment I see no other recourse; I'll try it and see if performance is not too penalised.
Result, in any case. I'm now, in my own mind at least, slightly more reconciled with the notion of simple scripting. No, I'm far from the giddy cliff-edge of plug-in creation, but it's a step. I'd like to publicly thank Yanfly for the extreme clarity of her original post which enabled this feat. I may be back for more...
For anyone interested, here's the script, in 'expanded' form then 'RM Editor-friendly' form...
............................ // Determine the success rate of stealing...
var successRate = 0.5;
// Generate a random n° and see if the steal succeeds...
if (Math.random() < successRate)
{
// Create an empty array for what are valid Items...
var items = [];
// Get the length of the all Items in the player's Party (n° of Items held...)...
var total = $gameParty.items().length;
// A for-loop is used to check each of those Items...
for (var i = 0; i < total; ++i)
{
// Define each Item for checking validity...
var item = $gameParty.items(); // Check to see if the item is NOT a Key Item... if (item.itypeId !== 2) { // If it is not a Key Item, add it to the array of candidates for theft... items.push(item); } // (End of loop...) } // Check that there are, indeed, Items to have stolen..! if (items.length !==0) { // Get a random number based on the size of the Item candidate array... var random = Math.floor(Math.random() * items.length); // Pick a random Item by using that random number... var item = items[random]; // Retain this Item's name, before it get stolen..! $gameVariables.setValue(70,item.name); // Have the player Party lose 1 of that Item... $gameParty.loseItem(item, 1); // Play sound effect... SoundManager.playCancel(); } else { // The steal attempt has failed. Retain a code to indicate this... $gameVariables.setValue(70,-1); } } else { // No Items to have stolen..!. Retain a code to indicate this... $gameVariables.setValue(70,0); // Play sound effect... SoundManager.playBuzzer(); } ............................ var successRate = 0.5;if (Math.random() < successRate){var items = []; var total = $gameParty.items().length;if (total !==1){for (var i = 0; i < total; ++i){var item = $gameParty.items(); if (item.itypeId !== 2){items.push(item);}} var random = Math.floor(Math.random() * items.length); var item = items[random];$gameVariables.setValue(70,item.name);$gameParty.loseItem(item, 1); SoundManager.playCancel();}else{$gameVariables.setValue(70,-1);}} else{$gameVariables.setValue(70,0);SoundManager.playBuzzer();} --------------------------------------------------------
... and the Common Event containing the script...
The Variable 'Item_Stolen' is, of course, Variable 70 in my Project; this would need changing in the script code in another Project to an suitable free Variable.
I kept comments out to save space; the value '-1' corresponds to 'Nothing left to have stolen..!', code '0' is a failed attempt (the odds are adjusted in the first line of script; '0.5' =50% chance of a theft, lowering decreases the risk, a value of '1' would mean a certainty of theft...). If the theft is successful, the Variable contains the Name of the stolen Item.
Maybe this will help someone else in turn..?
[doublepost=1470347855,1470239309][/doublepost]I put into practise the trials (and tribulations..?
) of yesterday, in the form of a Rogue, initially hidden (Page 1 of an Event with no graphic...) which switches to Page 2 when the Hero passes a certain Tile. The Rogue then springs forth, ostensibly from the surrounding dense Forest, and approaches the Hero. A Timer is started; the Rogue has 10 seconds to reach the Hero, in which case a random Item is stolen and a random member of the Party receives a blow, and loses HP. Another 10 seconds starts up for the Hero to distance the Rogue, in which case he disappears. If this flight fails, another Item is lost and a further 10 seconds of pursuit engaged. Fun in the Forest, eh..? Look out for brigands (except that these ones are hard to spot, being invisible..! Ha..!
).
A slight twist on the same theme, but with a different mechanism. I already had birds (excellent birds, let it be said, from a certain whtdragon's menagerie...) flying randomly over the forest canopy. These are harmless, or rather 'were'. I've equipped a few of these volatiles with an X-Y detector such that, if over the Hero, these 'Madpies' will swoop down and snatch a random Item. No, there is no counter to this; the Player has only some sense of observation to become aware of their particular flight behaviour to recognise a potential attack, and try to steer clear of 'em. Not easy, with all the other Forest creatures roaming about, plus the aforementioned Rogues..! No, it's not going to be an easy Game..!
Not quite ready for diffusion, as I still have a few storyline details to update, to guide the Player in his/her progression. Once ready, the Demo will be updated.
I had posed the question as to whether a 'staged' Demo, with 'leaps' forward to various parts of the Game would be welcomed; this would enable folks to have a glimpse of these various Maps without having to go through the whole, real-time course of the Game's progression (several hours, at a very minimum...). As yet I have had no response whatever; either the question has not been read, or the subject is of too little interest. Still, I thought it maybe worth mentioning. Now back to the storyline update...
