Divided Worlds

Been a while since I’ve posted any updates since I started College again a few weeks ago, resulting in me working on projects less than I normally should.

College, Web Projects, Game Projects, Homework, and not to forget – Minecraft (aka slacking).

Anyway, progress on Monsteration may have been slower than usual but I’m actually seeing the end of the first Arc coming into sight. I will be over the moon once I’m able to move on from this Arc, I’ve pretty much been staring at the same old tileset for around 4 months now.

Still no idea on when I will release a demo or any video footage but I know for a fact that it won’t be until at least 2-3 Arcs are finished.

Started work on a new tileset since I wanted a break from working with all dark colours for a change. So far so good, in fact I’m loving it! Here’s some images of the new tile set that I’ve been working on.
Oh the player (Nyte) has a new sprite too!

Battle Room:

Overworld:

Battle Room Summary:

Scrapped the ATB type system that was originally used, instead the battle system is completely turned based. The reason behind this is to make combat progress much faster instead of having to wait for a bar to fill up.

Anyway going over some of the games graphics an enhancing the ones that look plain / boring or just out of place. Nyte’s world sprite has been redone to remove the ‘dwarf’ style he had, basically no more big head mode.

This time around I’ve been adding a few new enemies (3 so far) and gradually adding more as I go along. Still need to implement enemy skills and the use of items in combat which I still haven’t got around to, I’ll put those on my ‘next’ list.

Been working on rooting out some of the new bugs in the battle engine and working on some interface upgrades. Again not much more progress on the story, however I have added a few extra tiles in places to add a little more variety to things.

Well there’s something I want to explain anyway and that’s how physical / magic attacks work. It’s not noticeable yet but I’m planning on some enemies having really high defense meaning physical attacks won’t do much. Their weakness being magical attacks that will completely ignore the targets defense.

Oh an selected players will now flash when their turn is active, making it easier to notice who’s turn it is without looking directly at the unit frames.

Here’s the sample:

Took me around 7~ hours last night adding one new skill to Nytes skill list, the longest it’s ever taken me to sprite and program a new skill.
I got bored an wanted to make a god-like skill animation and that I did, I still need to refine parts and add a few more effects including a few particle systems but so far it has been worth the time and effort.

Only thing that I want now is some original sound / music but I’m no composer and I have my hands tied with programming / spriting as it is.

Alright I was slacking recently but I’ll make up for it! Yesterday I got around to adding the 2nd main character, doing the sprites and battle animations so and so. Still need to tweak some of the animations since the attack animation lacks some sort of momentum so I’ll go over that again today.

Although now I want to go over an redo Nytes sprites because he was my first attempt at spriting something like this and I feel like I’ve gotten a bit better since I sprited him.

Here Nyte’s sprite isn’t so bad, but outside the battle room it’s a mess.
Well anyway, introducing Sena the 2nd main character.

At the start she’ll be a temporary support character having access to heal skills early on. Her quick agility makes her act much quicker than anyone else, although she had poor defense and attack. As time passes she’ll become a crit monster since she has the highest base agility which increases both crit rate and crit multiplier.

Been slightly quiet lately, mostly all work I’ve done has been code and not much visual updates.
What I’ve been working on so far is a unit system – Each character has 4 unit slots which can be used to add unique enhancements. Although there is only 1 enhancement of each kind so equipping same enhancements across multiple slots or characters is not possible.

Some examples of units:
Hp Boost I – Increases max Hp by 5%
Hp Boost II – Increases max Hp by 10%
Hp Boost III – Increases max Hp by 15%
Null Poison – Makes character immune to poison

It is possible to equip all 3 Hp Boosts but it’s not possible to equip Hp Boost I (or any other unit) more than once. This way I can prevent the party becoming fully poison resistant for example. You’ll be forced to give each character their own play style and how they react in certain situations.

They’ll also be some character specific units that enhance skills and other traits.

Okay I modified the games page slightly today so it now shows any flash games (which are hosted on Kongregate) that we have developed.
Flash is only our minor priority but it’s a nice break from GameMaker every now an then, so hopefully I can release more Flash content soon.

Haven’t got round to introducing the 2nd main character yet, still have to do the spriting for that. Anyway here’s another screenshot showing outside the battle room this time.

Right now my priority is adding more variation to the game as the amount of black/red is doing my head in. At the same time I don’t want to sacrifice the dark/mysterious style to it.
Well I have other things to work on such as including enemy skills since they only have basic attacking for now, not to forget they lack attacking animation.

Monsteration is the main project which were working on right now, which is basically a J-RPG type game.
Development has been running for about 2-3 months now with progress being made at a steady pace, but it’s currently in the phase where I can start releasing some details about it.

Implemented Features
- Turned Based Battle System (Nearly all done except for using items)
- Inventory / Equipment
- Save / Load
- Exploration
- First part of the story
- Surface Lighting Effects

Above is a quick sample of the battle room along with the current interface, expect more screenshots later.
Most of the system is currently done and all that is left for me to do is work on graphics/story so should see some progress over the next few days.