I Think they look good I can also say we can definetily include A lot more then that. Iambian is seemingly infatuated with pucrunch so that honestly wont even take up that much space.

I just took the time to run it through pucrunch this is what it spits out with out file position optimizations(pucrunch is a RLE/Lz twophase compressor and just a change in the order of the sprites can make a difference.)
In: 14112, out: 2651, ratio: 18.79%, gained: 81.22%
So as we add more data the saving will continue to show.

Well that looks awesome. And its nice to actually see some more content for this game as I have no troubled my self to reread the entire 40+ page thread   hopefully the towns/castles have nice maps to them to. This could shape up to be a fun rpg!

This looks pretty good. The village reminds me a lot of Dragon Warrior 4 (I got the actual NES cartridge btw).

Yeah I know, it was pretty expensive when I saw it. I didn't mind much at the time, though, considering I had more money and liked that game.

The first dungeon in the game, the cave in Dredmoor Swamp. The black tiles with white speckles are sections of swamp. Each time Maya steps in them, she's poisoned. In order to make it to the cave, Maya will have to trek through the swamp leading to the cave. Poison damage will kill Maya outside of battle, so she won't actually have enough HP to walk through the cave while under the poison's effects.

Note that there are no curative items in the game. What the player will have to do is spend a little time grinding for 400 gold and pay the magic guild in Ragnoth to scribe the "Whispering Wind" spell in Maya's spellbook. This will allow her to neutralize her poison status as soon as she makes her way into the cave.

Any chests marked "Gold" will always contain a random amount of GP between 24..48, and will respawn when Maya leaves the dungeon and returns. This is always the case, even for chests found much later in the game. If you don't mind trudging through poisonous swamps and random battles, this is a good way to grind for gold early on.

Indeed. I've made a mental note to place gold-bearing chests into the deeper sections of each dungeon so the player can't make a quick trip in, grab some loot, then exit and repeat. Some of the early dungeons are bound to be on the shorter side, but there will usually be obstacles such as random encounters and swamp tiles to make the trip much more tedious. Even so, gold will need to be somewhat plentiful. If you're K.O.'d at any point, you lose half the gold in your possession.

No worries about experience grinding, though. The growth system is similar to FF2j for the Famicom. Instead of gaining experience points, there's something like a 16/256 probability that any of Maya's ability scores will increase by 1 point after a battle. The probability for certain score increases goes up when Maya is equipped with certain items. e.g. Outfitting her with clothing or robes will help her boost her Agility score more quickly, while giving her much heavier armor will boost her HP instead.

To keep the player from getting perpetual increases from weak enemies like Gremlins and Wasps, there's an enemy ranking system in place. Each enemy has a rank from 1 to 8. What this does is determine exactly how many increases Maya can receive from fighting particular enemies. For instance, once all of Maya's ability scores reach a value of 32 or higher, she won't gain any more increases when fighting enemies below rank 3. Gremlins and Wasps are both rank 2. By the end of the game, the only way Maya will be able to gain any additional score increases is by fighting very tough rank 7 and 8 enemies, such as Chimeras.

Although it will definitely be frustrating, it's necessary to ensure end-game balance. To be fair, I'll explain the ranking system in the game's manual so the player will at least know what to expect.

On that note, I guess I should go ahead and say that Escheron will be an <i>ostensibly</i> difficult game. There will be no hand holding of any kind. It's geared toward only the most seasoned RPG fans, or at least the most masochistic among us who enjoy a good challenge.

Let me highlight a few of the features I've been working on:


 - "Trap rooms." Entering the door places you in the center of the room, as opposed to near the entrance / exit where you should be. Every tile in this room is a forced encounter with challenging enemies. It should be noted that you do have an emergency exit spell at your disposal, but it returns you all the way back to the last monolith you used.
 
 - Looping warps. You'll often find yourself walking down endless hallways, which are actually just warp tiles that seamlessly and repeatedly transport you a few steps back.
 
 - Invisible paths, especially into complete darkness, complete with looping warps.
 
 - Warps to inescapable rooms. Just make sure you have your emergency exit spell before entering a dungeon. If not, there will be swamp tiles so you can kill yourself and be resurrected at the last monolith you used.

 - Invisible warps to trap rooms and inescapable rooms; warps that take you back to the entrance of a dungeon, and look deceptively like the exit you spent 30 minutes trying to reach; trick rooms that look like earlier rooms, giving the impression that you just backtracked or went in a circle.
 
 - Enemies are fond of instant K.O. spells. There are a couple of ways to resist instant K.O. - either by grinding your HP past a certain threshold, or finding a rare item. Both methods will likely occur very late into the game. There's one method for Maya to be resurrected during battle, but it can be put into effect only once per battle.
 
 - The best equipment is outrageously expensive. You'll need to have nearly the maximum allowable gold you can carry before you can purchase anything good. On the other hand, most of these items can be found in dungeons, albeit very well hidden.
 
The save system is a bit complicated, and if not executed carefully, can cause some serious mental stress. I think I'll need a few paragraphs to explain this detail alone.

To save your game, you have to interact with one of the various monoliths found through the world, usually in towns and dungeons. What happens is Maya makes a prayer to the Fates, the three goddesses who govern time and the predestination of all things. The Fates make a record of Maya's exploits up until that point, and should Maya be killed, the Fates will transport Maya's body and spirit to an earlier point in time. In simpler terms, it's just like any typical save game scenario - you pick up where you last saved.

Now, the Fates are very particular about how the player uses this system. The Fates will instruct you to return to them and make an additional save before ending the game and shutting down your calculator. Failure to perform this procedure will screw with the very fabric of time. Suffice it to say, the Fates don't take kindly to this.

What the game does is secretly set a flag in your SRAM file the moment you load a save. This flag remains intact until you use a monolith to save the game and shut down the program from within the game itself. If you do this, then the flag is removed. If you shut down the program without going through this procedure, then the flag remains intact.

The flag lets the Fates know whether or not you followed their instructions and shut down the game within the game, or if you just abruptly turned off your calculator. If you abruptly quit, then prepare for a 10-minute lecture on why you should respect the Fates and take their powers more seriously. If you <i>habitually</i> quit the game without first saving, then the Fates will start to inflict actual punishments on you, such as removing all your items, stranding you in an inescapable room and disabling your escape spell, or wiping your SRAM data entirely.

The purpose of this is to prevent save scumming. If you find yourself in a difficult situation and death seems inevitable, you basically have no choice but to surrender to death and deal with the penalties that follow. If you simply shut down the game and try to reload from your last save file, the game <i>will</i> detect your efforts to circumvent the penalties of dying.

In the event of battery failures or other unforeseeable circumstances, the Fates will give the player a few grace warnings, but after the player screws with them several times, the Fates will no longer accept convenient "battery failures" as an excuse.

That said, be sure to follow their instructions exactly.

_____________________


I probably won't be around to provide frequent updates, but I am actively working on this project. There's just so much that goes into storyboarding, typing out pages of design documentation, hand drawing maps, porting design from paper to computer, etc. It's really a lot of work, and a huge time sink at that.

Just in case I don't post back in a little while, enjoy some of my cheesy concept work in the meantime. Yes, my art skills suck.