Sounds awesome Iambian!

Err, I'm not dead. (sorry, I don't remember my original login details) I just haven't been active in these communities in a while. As far as I know, Iambian still has my email address. I used to correspond regularly with him via IRC, but I haven't used it in a while.

Iambian is welcome to pick up where I left off on the project, but of course, he's just as welcome to get in touch with me if he needs my input. I dropped him a line recently, just in case he may have forgotten my email.

Hi,

actually from what I recall, he tried to e-mail you once, but there were no answer. That was around a year ago I think, if not more, then he kinda went inactive himself as well, busy playing a game I forgot the name of. Not sure what is the state of the project right now, though.

like i said zera can you hop on IRC i will be able to point to you how to get a hold of him easier. I have been his coding partner in the insanity that is cadan and everything. and no he still is working on this on his off time cadan has the foreground as of the moment tho.

I sent you an email Zera please have a look at it. i lied i pmed it to you on the forum. your email doenst work 0.o

i can point you to omnomirc. its the chatbox at the top of the screen. as for reaching iambian the best way as of the moment is irc and his phone. some circumstances beyond his control are keeping him away from his pc as of the moment. (he irc's via a droid phone he has) i would grab mirc or hexchat. he isnt around tonight but he should be tommorow.

IIRC, greyscale was one of the things that made escheron so amazing in the past; it'd be a shame if you were to truly go down a pure b/w route. Still, it'd be an amazing game without pumped up graphics, and it's great to see it being worked on again

Hi, again. I got your PM and am back on my old account.

I'm not sure how to use IRC. It's been quite a long time since I've used it for anything. In fact, I think I deleted the old client I had installed. Could Iambian possibly PM me here and let me know his current email? I've possibly been trying to contact him through an account he isn't using anymore.

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I guess I should formally post some kind of update. Since Iambian was having a lot of difficulty implementing the grayscale, I went off to the side and worked on a few ideas for a strictly black-and-white version of Escheron, in case it might be easier to implement. (on account of having to rewrite everything anyway) It's not a definite thing - at least, not unless Iambian wants to go that route.

for IRC I actually just use Mibbit nowadays or AndroIRC. I don't have an IRC client installed anymore. Getting connected can be annoying, though, since many EFnet servers only work in specific countries.

As for the duplicate account I guess Geekboy could just delete it then add 2 to your current post count, but I guess that doesn't matter much since you could connect to the old one.

Also the monochrome versions of E:SoR look nice. I hope that grayscale can be kept, though, since it seemed like it worked fine at first. Hopefully Iambian can find a solution. On the other hand, monochrome graphics would allow the game to look nice on every single calc and emulators and allow smoother graphics.

I'm still alive, although usually busy.

I haven't had any luck getting in touch with Iambian, but he's always welcome to contact me here. I suppose I could check in every once in a while to see if I have any private messages.

I've been messing around with the idea of a monochrome game some more lately. I came up with something a little more "elegant" in its use of memory, and something that will hopefully respect the calculator's memory restraints a lot better.

I toned down the in-game lists and inventories so that there's 16 items per table - i.e. 16 different enemies that can be encountered, 16 different pieces of equipment scattered throughout the world, 16 different character and enemy skills, etc. That should fit neatly into memory without having to cross-reference multiple pages.

Echeron's original design has too much superfluous content, and much of it feels like an afterthought. For instance, you would often have your choice of 4 or 5 different kinds of equipment upgrades at various points in the story, but the stats and abilities of these items really aren't so different from one another. If Sword A and Sword B are almost identical, why give the player a choice in the first place?

Menus have also been grossly simplified. In fact, it's pretty much a clone of Dragon Warrior's menu layout. No more portraits, no more weird scrolling, etc. The whole menu system in grayscale Escheron is a beast that probably eats up most of the program, and all the little bells and whistles that make it that way aren't so spectacular that they would even make it worth the hassle.

The party system is very different. Battles are one-on-one encounters, and Maya is the only character you control. You can take a single guest character with you, but they don't have character stats / equipment of their own. What they do is tag along and occasionally (determined by pure chance) jump in and attack an enemy, or cast a spell. Enemies can't target guest characters, but if Maya is K.O.'d at any point, it's Game Over.

Guest character attack power is actually determined by Maya's own attack power plus a static bonus. This gives the illusion of guest characters being able to "level up" right alongside Maya. Maya's own stats are increased in a fashion similar to the original system I had planned - she'll gain random stat boosts after battles, as determined by probability checks. There's a default probability for any given stat increasing on its own, but wearing certain types of equipment will increase specific stats more often.

Nothing in the actual story had to be toned down. All the changes are mostly cosmetic and technical. Maya still encounters the same characters, has the same allies throughout the story, and the same major events take place. In fact, my script writing is a little more polished this time around. I shifted everything to Early Modern English grammar (i.e. Dragon Warrior) and started elaborating on each scene in much greater detail.

(Has it really been 120 days since I last posted?)

Anyway, assuming Escheron TI never comes to fruition, there's always RPG Maker. It wouldn't take me very long to put this game together in VX Ace considering the limited number of resources I'd have to port. One way or another, I'll tie this project up and post something for you guys. It's been way too long a wait.