Author Topic: "Escheron: Twilight over Ragnoth" — progress updates and discussion  (Read 112096 times)

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Offline chickendude

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Re: Escheron: BW
« Reply #30 on: April 12, 2015, 03:35:34 am »
Is there any reason you aren't using smooth(er) scrolling? I imagine everything is still aligned, but it looks like you're shifting in blocks of 8, i imagine to make scrolling easier. But now that you've gone black and white smoother scrolling shouldn't be an issue. Scrolling 2 pixels at a time would be plenty fast and look much nicer in my opinion.

Anyway, i'm really happy to see this being worked on again. And it's nice to see you back Zera/Escheron!
We're doing that because we wanted an engine now and an RPG is so much more than just its tilemapper. I promise I'll work on smoother scrolling later but we're trying to pull together all of what makes an RPG and RPG in a fairly quick manner. The extra bells and whistles can come later.
On top of this we have some hidden plans in the works. Trust us this way is better for now ;)
Fair enough, i look forward to seeing what's planned.

Offline Escheron

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Re: Escheron: BW
« Reply #31 on: April 18, 2015, 12:51:54 pm »
——Update 4/18——

Everything is progressing smoothly. I finished putting together the tileset, which incidentally consists of exactly 128 tiles. I've also finished the first major draft of the design documentation, which Iambian and geekboy have hopefully had time to review. I've designed a few of the major maps, but I'm going to hold off on any further map design until I've had a chance to discuss some technical details with Iambian regarding tile limits per map.

For the time being, I have some screenshots showing off various in-game maps and menus.


Title screen:



Map exploration and cutscenes:



Various menus:



Battle screens:

« Last Edit: April 19, 2015, 01:32:58 pm by Geekboy1011 »

Offline Sorunome

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Re: "Escheron: Twilight over Ragnoth" — progress updates and discussion
« Reply #32 on: April 18, 2015, 01:06:18 pm »
Does the topic name change mean it has a name now? Nice!

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Offline Escheron

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Re: "Escheron: Twilight over Ragnoth" — progress updates and discussion
« Reply #33 on: April 18, 2015, 01:14:31 pm »
Does the topic name change mean it has a name now? Nice!

The project has always had a title, actually. I'm not sure why it was called Escheron: BW, unless Iambian or geekboy just wanted to distinguish it from the original grayscale concept. (which is now discontinued - the B&W version of the game will be the only and definitive release) At any rate, I edited this thread's title to reflect that.

This is generally the same game through and through. Just some of the assets are different. The original world, character and story layout I had planned is more or less the same, except expanded and more detailed.

Offline Geekboy1011

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I knew about E:ToR from reading old threads, but I was not sure if that was a different spin off the same game or what. So I decided we would use the code name E:BW for now to just get the ball rolling and have something to call it. The major details could/Would be ironed out later. And hey look they have been!

That being said there have not been to many noteworthy updates some  major random asset changes have occurred I will get some of those up a wee bit later this evening. That being said the main engine is slowly coming along. Getting menus and hotspots working correctly is taking a good amount of expected time. With them the engine will be pretty versatile tho and will allow us to get actual content pumping out pretty quickly.

Ok no assets going up trying to spoil as little as possible. Instead I will post some information about enemies and their related mockups!

So first is the gremlin. A very basic enemy. I will leave the infomtion here for you all to decipher ;) tho its pretty self explanitory
Code: [Select]
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Gremlin                RANK 1     GP 00040     DROP: Potion          [ 16/256]

 —— PROPERTIES ——   —— RESISTANCES ——   —— COMMAND SEQUENCE ——     HP     32
 [ ] Fire               [ ] Fire             1.) Attack            MP     16
 [ ] Ice                [ ] Ice              2.) Attack
 [ ] Poison             [ ] Lightning        3.) Fire            ATT     12
 [ ] Sleep              [ ] Gravity          4.) Sleep           DEF      4
 [ ] Undead             [ ] Poison           5.) Attack          MAG      8
 [ ] Drain              [ ] Sleep            6.) Attack          AGI     16
 [ ] HP regen           [ ] KO               7.) Attack
 [ ] Double attack      [ ] Holy             8.) Attack        CRIT.  32/256
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

And here is a dragon a rather late game enemy :P
Code: [Select]
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Dragon                 RANK 4     GP 00900     DROP: Strength potion [ 16/256]

 —— PROPERTIES ——   —— RESISTANCES ——   —— COMMAND SEQUENCE ——   HP    600
 [ ] Fire     [O] Fire          1.) Breath   MP      0
 [ ] Ice     [X] Ice          2.) Attack
 [ ] Poison     [ ] Lightning        3.) Attack ATT     60
 [ ] Sleep     [ ] Gravity          4.) Breath DEF     30
 [ ] Undead     [O] Poison          5.) Attack MAG     30
 [ ] Drain     [O] Sleep          6.) Attack AGI     60
 [ ] HP regen       [O] KO          7.) Attack
 [O] Double attack  [ ] Holy             8.) Attack            CRIT.  64/256
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

yeah sorry not to much to post right now. But it is something

EDIT by Zera: Your enemy table info was slightly off. Fixed.
« Last Edit: May 05, 2015, 09:44:02 pm by Escheron »

Offline Iambian

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Test/demonstration of: External save file loading (with debug save slot preloaded), main menu (base), saving, and reloading to ensure that save files stick and load properly.



Not shown: Choosing to load from a new game will dump you off at the game's starting point.
TODO: Either adding more menus, or put more work into NPCs and how to show their dialogue when you "talk" to them. After that, adding in cutscene support, since I want to tell a story, not have an overglorified tilemap demo.
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Offline TIfanx1999

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Very nice!

Offline Sorunome

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Looking very nice indeed! :D

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Offline Iambian

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Added a complete spriteset and put in dialog boxes. The following was the original test. Don't mind the debug info on the top-left.

Zera said that the text looked a bit cramped, and I was inclined to agree, though we haven't exactly changed the font yet to use the one specified in the project docs. Something about being unable to edit the font set as-is.
So what we did was changed the margins a bit for the textbox, increased line height by one pixel (to 7), and increased the amount of space a single space takes to 2px. Not shown was the menus I had to fix to cope with those changes, since these were global. Results appear much better:

Todo: Real NPCs and logic. And getting the whole village to say stuff.
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Offline Sorunome

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Yes, I must agree, the dialog box in the lower version is looking better :)

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Offline Escheron

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I guess I should post an update on my end, as well.

I've been alternating mostly between map design and script / event planning, both of which are quite time consuming. I recently finished the spriteset, hence Iambian now has all the character directions and facings needed to implement full character movement in his animated GIFs above. On that note, most graphics assets are complete.


A new feature I decided to add is battle backgrounds. These are 16x32 bitmaps that are tiled behind enemy bitmaps, and in some cases, partially blended (in a non-transparent manner) with enemy sprites.



I figured this would give the battle engine more aesthetic quality.

Offline Iambian

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NPC chat logic (and position-aware box drawing for chatting) now supported, along with scriptable events for each. "Treasure chest" logic is now usable, though it's implemented as hotspots so just about any square that you can talk to can contain a treasure. Demonstrated is gold and item getting, and a very early version of an inventory menu (it supports scrolling). Also sped up warp points that don't require a map reload by not reloading the map (and all that it implies, unless forced to via script).



TODO: Make the rest of the menus usable. Also. Shops.
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Offline Sorunome

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This is just looking awesome! I love how well it all looks even though it is monochrome.

Can't wait for some demos!

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Offline Digital

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I'm with Sorunome, this project is awesome. I hope there will be more screens, some demos and a release soon.
I'm sorry if i might make some mistakes, I'm German so English isn't my first language. Please correct me :)

Offline Escheron

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I guess I should post something to keep this thread active.

I suppose it's already been mentioned, but airship travel is a feature in this game. The first leg of Maya's journey is done on foot and sea travel, which is a fairly linear trek leading up to the party obtaining an airship. Once the party is in possession of an airship, the entire world opens up, including a few new towns and side quests.



Additionally, accessing some locations requires the player to fly their airship directly into it. One example is the Dreadnought air vessel belonging to Asnoth's forces. This is one of the smaller dungeons explored by the player late into the story.

(click thumbnail for full view)

The game world itself is turning out to be quite large. There's something in the area of 5 villages and 10 or 12 dungeons, a few of which are optional areas. Resolution-wise, many maps are between 32x32 - 64x64 tiles. There are a handful of areas that are broken into more than one map.