Author Topic: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake  (Read 39105 times)

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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« on: May 22, 2012, 12:09:37 am »
(This post has been updated on June 11th 2012)

This is one of very few RPG Maker/GM/TGF type project to occur on Omnimaga it seems, as this is only the third topic to be ever posted in this section O.O (There are more but they're mostly news or they got lost elsewhere on the board)

Spoiler For story behind the original 2003 version of this game:
From February to June 2003 during my last year of hi school, in compsci intro 2 we had to create some sort of puzzle/RPG type game where you had to find keys and items to continue further in your quest, kinda like Myst, but instead of being a point & click adventure game, you had to implement a playable character that could move around with keyboard controls. Since we didn't learn about tilemapping in compsci intro, everyone except myself had hardcoded collision detection, using squares and stuff to block the character way. However, by the time I started working on my game, I already had some coding experience from my early TI-BASIC days on my TI-83 Plus. As a result, I was the only person in the class to use tilemaps, which allowed me to create a lot more maps at a rapid speed and a larger (and much smaller) game.

This basically gave The Reign of Legends 0: http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=139

However, this game will only run on Windows XP or lower (and maybe 32 bit Vista/7 systems). Also at the time I ran into a 99 object/item cap in Visual Basic, so I ran out of them to display the tilemap, forcing me to go with 9x7 tilemaps. I also had no clue how to change the screen resolution while playing. This, combined with lack of pixel art skills, gave a rather poor visual result: 86x86 tiles that were basically 25x25 tiles scaled up, and on larger resolution, the game displays in the top-left corner, with an huge frame around it.

Basically, I decided to do an RPG Maker remake of The Reign of Legends 0, which I released in 2003. So far, I am unsure if I will add music, since it would be rather weird to have 9-10 MB music inside a 15-30 minutes long game, but I might eventually add some if this game was to ever be expanded or something. It will feature the entire map layout from the original game and the graphics will remain true to the original, but they will be scaled down to 16x16 and the game running in a 256x224 resolution, so it looks close to something from the NES or SNES. It will also be translated to English.

Due to the low quality of my pixel art back in the days, the game graphics might appear to look weird to you, but for the default game remake, I wanted to keep it as close to the original, while giving it a proper retro feel (even menu borders will remain the same):


Here are the most up to date screenshots, as of June 11th:







Spoiler For Outdated screenshots:
June 6th 2012 (graphical revamp!)


May 30th 2012 Outdated title screen remake:


[ Invalid YouTube link ]

Early remake showcase from May 22nd 2012, using graphics similar to the original:


Original June 2003 version below:








Also i remade the characters since they looked awful lol (even more at 16x16 resolution). I used Charas to remake them.

So yeah, basically this was kinda a side game that went along the ROL series, although none of the ROL games are related. ROL0 came out a few months after ROL1, but under two months before ROL2, and unlike the rest of the series, you don't fight monsters along your way: You just find items to unlock doors and activate switches.

As I do not have any long terms plan to learn any computer programming again, this is why I decided to use RPG Maker 2003 again for this game. Anyone is free to port it to an actual language or even calculators once the game is finished. At least I guess there will be a few improvements, though, such as speed (the original runs at around 3-10 FPS even on newer computers), animated water and character walking animation and the addition of scrolling.
 

As for future plans, here are the possibilities (although they are not guaranteed):

-Revamped mode: A game option would allow you to switch between the original, scaled-down graphics and new ones -Scrapped. Only new graphics will be available

-Expansion: It's possible that at the end of the game, in future versions the story would progress. In that case there would probably be monsters and the title might be changed. -Not started, but now officially being expanded

-Actual storyline

-Music: More chances of music if an expansion occurs. In the event where no expansion would occur but music got added anyway, there might be two versions of the game released: one with music and a smaller zip file with none. -Some music has been done so far.


Hopefully this game is made available for more people to try in the near future (since RPG Maker 2003 games runs on newer OSes too) :P. It is nothing huge, but I thought it would be cool that those who cannot run the original can still have a small idea of how it looked like, assuming they can run RM games in the first place (most likely, since they did on every computer and recent Windows OSes I tried). Hopefully in the future someone can also port it or something.
« Last Edit: June 12, 2012, 04:51:26 am by DJ_O »

Offline Juju

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2012, 12:14:34 am »
Cool :D

Yeah, VB6 isn't really the best language ever. Anyway I'm looking forward to this :D

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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2012, 12:17:56 am »
By the way, part of the issue about the game not running on newer systems is DAXCTLE.OCX. There's no way to get it to be registered in command prompt, unlike in XP (it gives an error about it not being compatible with 64 bit systems). In Illusiat 5 PC it's even worse, though, because not only its OCX depedency doesn't work on 7 64 bit either, but you also need to register it to play the game, which costs $40 or 50.

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2012, 12:48:38 am »
Yeah, those games were unplayable because you had to find those hard to find OCX files. I guess remaking the games solves the problem.

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #4 on: May 22, 2012, 01:04:48 am »
They're easy to find, just hard to get to work. On XP, in some cases I just had to include the file with the game or register it via command prompt. The best thing for VB games is to not use any third party activeX controls or whatever. However without them, sprites just flickers like there's no tomorrow when moving around.

Offline aeTIos

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #5 on: May 22, 2012, 05:34:56 am »
DJ protip: remake the characters and tiles in a bigger size but keep the resolution. (as in 1 pixel is 4x4 on the screen) that gives a real cool retro feel.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #6 on: May 30, 2012, 10:43:40 pm »
Most of the afternoon and evening has been spent on working on the title screen remake and animation. This is how the title screen looks like with the old style graphics and the updated logo (the latter which was inevitable with an English translation of the title). I used some standard font, except I manually modified the E to remain true to the original ROL1 logo.

Also I was working on music in the last few days, which kinda slowed down progress a bit. The entire game map is done but of course events still need to be coded, along with the text entered.
« Last Edit: May 30, 2012, 11:06:00 pm by DJ_O »

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #7 on: May 31, 2012, 12:29:34 am »
Nice :D

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #8 on: May 31, 2012, 03:16:52 am »
Hmm I'd hate to say this but I don't particularly (?) like the tiles, but that's your choice.
EDIT: Wait, are those tiles view-from top? I thought they were a house.
EDIT2: Uhm you should make sure the brick tiles are not recognisable as tiles <_< If you want, I could help you with graphics?
(Aww this could sound very offending but that's due to the language barrier, no offense meant.)
« Last Edit: May 31, 2012, 03:20:29 am by aeTIos »
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #9 on: May 31, 2012, 03:29:24 am »
The tiles will most likely be interchangeables via option menus, for those who wants to have the original (kinda) graphics from 2003. The current ones can be used for many stuff, but there will be a graphical overhaul to bring the game more to 1991 standards.
 
Of course, that's assuming RPG Maker supports saving individual map settings. Otherwise, two separate versions will be made, one with the current graphics and the other with new ones (I have a few tiles ready, btw :D).

Note that the old tiles won't be available in full game mode, though, if the game is expanded beyond the original.

EDIT: By the way I doubt I'll need help with tiles/character graphics, but I may need some for monster sprites and magic animations, if I decide to include standard RPG battles.

Also video of the title screen (and theme song in action):



Should I add echo on that guitar melody? I worry it would clash too much with the rest. (Like in my song Escape) ???
« Last Edit: May 31, 2012, 04:14:34 am by DJ_O »

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #10 on: May 31, 2012, 01:39:52 pm »
no, it's great this way, really fits the game IMO.
+1.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #11 on: May 31, 2012, 03:27:12 pm »
Ok thanks. ActuallY i modified the song to test and it really sounds horrible with echo on guitar lol.
« Last Edit: May 31, 2012, 03:27:34 pm by DJ_O »

Offline jsj795

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #12 on: May 31, 2012, 04:47:21 pm »
really love the song! nice job on it :)


Spoiler For funny life mathematics:
1. ROMANCE MATHEMATICS
Smart man + smart woman = romance
Smart man + dumb woman = affair
Dumb man + smart woman = marriage
Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy
2. OFFICE ARITHMETIC
Smart boss + smart employee = profit
Smart boss + dumb employee = production
Dumb boss + smart employee = promotion
Dumb boss + dumb employee = overtime
3. SHOPPING MATH
A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need.
4. GENERAL EQUATIONS & STATISTICS
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
5. HAPPINESS
To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.
6. LONGEVITY
Married men live longer than single men do, but married men are a lot more willing to die.
7. PROPENSITY TO CHANGE
A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, and she does.
8. DISCUSSION TECHNIQUE
A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

Girls = Time * Money (Girls are a combination of time and money)
Time = Money (Time is money)
Girls = Money squared (So, girls are money squared)
Money = sqrt(Evil) (Money is also the root of all evil)
Girls = sqrt(Evil) squared (So, girls are the root of all evil squared)
Girls = Evil (Thus, girls are evil)
*Girls=Evil credit goes to Compynerd255*

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #13 on: June 04, 2012, 10:55:45 am »
Not much updates aside from more music making, but for those who wondered how the original game was like, I made a video of how (almost as great as E.T. for Atari 2600) the game was:



The original game had no sound, so this is background music added to the video. The song will most likely be used for the new version though.

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Re: The Reign of Legends 0 - Remake
« Reply #14 on: June 04, 2012, 11:00:39 am »
ew no scrolling <_<
The bg music gets a bit repetive, but is pretty good. You should make some more songs :D
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