Working more on the game. Fully completed the save/load pairs and added map restrictions so you can't just save anywhere. Trying to build the menu where you can view what "Magick" you have but an oversight forced me to do a character select menu, which was a cause for much strife. The remaining part is actually getting to the screen where you can select what you have and possibly use it. Each spell has some flavour text to it (description). That eats space so I went ahead and compressed all that junk. Also did it for the item descriptions. Subtract over 1000 bytes from the total ^_^

Oh, by the way, the mentioned blemishes on the screenshot is as follows, so you, too, can see what I was talking about.

1 : The sprite is loaded too soon after the menu exits back to the mapper. The sprite appears before the map is rerendered.

2 : The water edge tiles upon loading the game isn't filled in until another game cycle or two later so you see some strange junk in that area.

Oh. I can see the first one, but not the second.
It looks great though.
Is there a way to make the water under the culvert move. I saw this after you load the saved file. (The tile next to you when you quit at the end of the gif is what I'm talking about.)

It's not strange stuff as it is more of a white clearing as the map loads to the screen. It's much more obvious if you loaded the map and you are close enough to the edge to see more of the ocean. I hope to fix this so you'll never see this.

As for that little thing you were talking about, it's supposed to be a port where you can dock your ship. I didn't think the water needed to move as it's supposed to be rather calm in that area. If it's decided that the water really does need to move in that area, I can make it move in a fashion similar to how I made the water on the edge tiles move.

Just make sure the save points are not too spread out, like for example, taking over 2 hours to reach a save point from another, because some people might have restricted time to use their calc and might not want to let it running overnight or during an entire class where calcs aren't allowed

Yes i agree all but one of my classes don't allow calcs to be used and that is math but i have to actualy do math with it in that class

As for myself, my parents allowed me to play video games only one hour a day until 2002, but I could do calc stuff all day long, except that my mom kept complaining I spent my entire time doing that and got my calc taken away twice

ya the same thing would more than likely happen to me if i were on my calculator more

Wow, an hour a day! I'm only allowed 2 hours on the weekend...
And we all know what happened to my calc :p

i didn't notice that part but i get the same thing as Eeems for videogames which realy bites when you get a new game

yeah
oh well I find ways to be on longer though

true enough we both do aparently

Much appreciated that there will be a video involving this game once the battle system gets up and rolling. At the moment, though, I'm still sitting on top of the spell menu, trying to get some of the elements up and running. There's a little debate as to how the menu is supposed to actually appear, but it's all for the better.

The next thing on the list will be the item menu. That will be a pain since you're also going to be able to reequip your characters from this menu. That will be quite a bit of development, though I hope to reuse some code from the efforts spent on the spell menu to make this move along faster.

Then will come the status menu and then after that, I'll start with encounter zones and start throwing together something that'll resemble a battle menu.

Just fyi: Some of the specifics of the battle engine will be as follows.

0 : The battle screen looks a lot like Dragon Warrior with respect to how the enemy is shown on the screen. The talkative part is two lines at the bottom. Very basic animation, like flashing and screen shaking is pretty much what you'll see.

1 : You do not have a traditional experience system. It's more aligned to how often you use spells and abilities and how they will strengthen. Equipment "proficiencies" will involve how well you can use: Sword, bow, axe, staff, shield, and armor. You gain bonuses from having a higher proficiency level for each. Every so often, your base stats will improve based on probability and the stat gain associated with each piece of equipment. It'll be your job to figure out what those gains are.

2 : Enemies will have certain "ranks" so you can't just grind on low ranking enemies to reach "max level" on anything. Your base stats will only increase so much if you grind on low level enemies. You have to find higher ranking (and harder to beat) enemies to get further in the game. There are three ranks.

3 : Your max HP is 255 and Zera specified that the most you can dish out is a collective 1024 damage per attack (spread across multiple hits), though I'm just going to unhinge that depending on certain conditions. You're not likely to reach that amount of damage when you really need it anyway. The original secret boss has around 3000 HP and it's supposed to be a crapshoot when you fight it. My secret secret boss that you're never supposed to beat has 65535. Go figure.

4 : Your base stats other than HP should only max out to 99. I believe this is to allow room for equipment bonuses so that the combined total is not more than 255. The DevTeam development character does not observe this, so it's probably gonna be done in 16 bit math anyway.

5 : You have limit breaks. In-game, it's called "Quickening" which throws an attack that pierces defenses and stuff like that. I haven't read up on what contributes to that damage calculation, but I do remember that you have a chance of using it when your HP falls below (IIRC) 16% of the max, and after you use it, your HP returns to just above 16% of the max so you can't use it until your HP falls below that again. You can probably abuse this, but chances are, the enemy is gonna kill you before you get that chance. Unless you're fighting enemies you have absolutely no business (lack of benefit) fighting anyway.

6 : You've got four different status effects from what I've seen in coding. "Dead" is one of them. You've got three instant death ways to get it. Different words, same effect. Plus, the boss of the game has a spell that causes it without regard to your resistances to it. Just to make it harder. The secret secret boss will either spam that spell or just dish out a crap ton of damage. Or both. If its HP gets low enough... you'd better be feeling lucky. The other status effects is poison, enchantment (comparable to temporary partial paralysis if you're thinking Pokemon), and blindness.

7 : Your characters have "merits" that can enhance what your character can do. One of which gives you a certain chance to auto-revive if they're killed. Another allows you to use both a shield and an axe at the same time.

8 : Many pieces of equipment carry passive abilities that can become very important to how the game is played. The "Ribbon" found in many Final Fantasy games will give you a good idea as to what that entails

9 : Most importantly, none of any particular stat is written in stone. There will be plenty of room to balance the game once you can start fighting enemies. That will help ensure that the game has about 10 or so hours of game play.

10 : Robots aren't "alive" to begin with. Think about that one for a while when we start putting in a replay mode called "Full Metal".

This is just some of what's in there. The design documentation provided to me by Zera is far more comprehensive than this, but you're not going to see it immediately after the game is released. Maybe except for any beta testers that might apply once the positions come about.

Oh, and to quell any fears about save points or whatever, there will be "enough" of them to go around. Most of them are placed right before any real tough actions, like fighting bosses or whatnot, so your grinding efforts won't go to waste if you decide to do it in a dungeon where the enemy ranks are usually higher. You can also save anywhere on the overworld or in the underworld, so just use your "Exit" spell and save. Though your exit spell does cost a fair bit more than just MP, so beware.

I'll be happy to answer any further questions.

EDIT: Thank god for in-browser spell checking. Get Firefox or Chrome
Right-clicking the "misspelled" word will show possible corrections in Firefox. Maybe Chrome as well. Still won't help with a fair bit of programming jargon, tho.