[XP] Eternal Night

[Unka Josh 0]

Beyond Midgard, there are two worlds-- the land of Day, and the land of Night. Humans sometimes make the mistake of regarding Day as a land of good, and Night as a land of evil, but it is not so-- Day is a land of peace and order, but rigid order. Night is a land of violence and chaos, but absolute freedom.

 

The King of Night, by definition, is the strongest in that land, and the current King of Night has held that position for untold years. Now, it is said, he seeks to make all-out war upon the land of Day. But is his true purpose something darker?

 

 

Timothy Shaper is the son of the King of Night. Timothy is a strange child-- he doesn't sleep in a coffin, can't drink blood, can't change shapes or summon the dead or tear his foes apart with claws. He is regarded as incredibly weak, and feels like he doesn't fit in. Where does he belong?

 

He uses a crossbow, as it's one of the few effective weapons that he's strong enough to wield.

 

 

Chalcedony is a succubus, and Timothy's childhood friend. She wants Timothy to become strong-- strong enough to challenge his father. But Chalcedony is of Night, and perhaps has her own plans.

 

 

Angela was sent from the land of Day in response to the King of Night's efforts to raise an army-- sent to kill him. Her expedition failed, however, and she was captured, soon to be killed and eaten by her captors. Timothy rescued her, however, and agreed to help her against his father. But can a child of Day and a child of Night really work together?

 

 

Eternal Night uses a combat system that I threw together, where every action costs energy, but energy is fully restored between fights, and all attacks have elements. It will also have five different endings-- Timothy's path is not fixed at all, but is determined by an series of choices that you make throughout the game.

 

A key aspect of the game is getting allies to help in your struggle. But allies won't help for free...

 

Sound worthwhile?

[Nisage 31]

Interesting, I'm tempted to play it now. I like the 3 main characters, but is the Battle system something like an Action Battle System? But yeah, sounds worthwile.

[Polraudio 122]

Yup it Sounds worthwhile. Nice little story. Cant wait to try this game out. Can you put up a few screenshots if you can?

Cant wait to see this battle system.

[Unka Josh 0]

Well, I'm going to do a little more work before I put the game up for a download even of the early chapters-- right now, there's way too much that's unfinished.

 

However, screenshots!

 

 

Mandatory title screen bit. For no reason.

 

 

Timothy first meets Angela... and faces an urge he didn't know that he had. The first of many decisions you make throughout the game that ultimately determines the ending... but many of them are more subtle, and what you're choosing isn't obvious.

 

 

Timothy and Angela run into Chalcedony. Yes, the sexy one is the childhood friend character. Because cliches are good to mess with.

 

 

The combat system at work.

 

And, on that subject:

 

How I did it, or, Unka Josh isn't much of a scripter, but can improvise a few tricks.

 

Of course, everybody's seen those animated sideview battle systems, where you make those 44-frame character sets.

 

But I suck as a pixel artist. Such is my suckage that I'm reduced to ripping off a Gaia Avatar maker (located at Tektek.org) to create battlers of my main characters. I lack the skill to create those fancy animated systems, to use them properly, or to create charsets for them.

 

So I cheat.

 

I know enough scripting to move the battlers up onto the battleback. That's easy-- I just altered a couple of lines of code in game_actor.

 

Then I create attack animations that are unique to each character, by copypasting the battlers into the animation frames, and then using Hide Actor to make the characters charge the enemy, weapons swinging.

 

Result: Kinda FF6-ish animations, with almost no scripting on my part.

 

The battle system is similar. I used my minimal scripting abilities to eliminate the "Attack" option from the menu. I begged someone to give me a script where MP are restored by defending. And I went through and made slightly more complex enemy AIs, as well as a lot of assorted skills to cover all the effects of "normal" attacks. Finished it up by adding a parallel process common event that recovers the entire party.

 

Result: Both PCs and Monsters can only use skills. HP and MP are restored between fights, but characters don't have lots of MP, and neither do Monsters. (Everybody follows the same rules. Fair's fair.) A combat system that, in theory, requires a little bit more care and resource management.

 

Still look interesting?

[Polraudio 122]

Way more interesting. Battle system looks cool. Good mapping. I might have to make you a title screen if you don't mind.

[Nisage 31]

It all looks great to me, battle system looks cool as well. Can I also help with the Title Screen, and maybe a Game Over screen?

[Unka Josh 0]

I'd love it! Thanks, guys!

[Nisage 31]

I'll get to work on them then, but what do you want the Title Screen to look like? When I think of the words "Eternal Night", I think of something like this......

Title Screen

I can change the style and color of the words if you want. Now for a Game Over Screen, I have already made a couple of good ones, they're in the Rmxpunlimited Resource Pack. Here's the link to the pack.....

http://www.rmxpunlimited.net/forums/index....mp;showfile=188

[Unka Josh 0]

Edit: I like it, but there's one thing that it could really use, for internal game symbolism reasons. Is there a way to add a crescent moon?

 

Ironically, most of those gameovers don't fit this specific game. Everybody sleeps in a coffin in the land of Night... There's a couple that still work, though.

[Nisage 31]

Glad you like the Title Screen. Really? Well at least a couple still work.

[Unka Josh 0]

Yes, and they all look very cool. Kudos!

[bobzombie 0]

This game looks real interesting... I'd love to play it.

It sounds like a unique game. I'd offer to help... but I'm sure you have more experience than me.

[Unka Josh 0]

Well, maybe. I don't know how much experience you have-- I just don't have as much free time to work on games as I'd like, between my job and getting ready for Anime Central once again.

[Nisage 31]

I know the feeling, if only there was more free time, -sigh-. Anime Central?

[Unka Josh 0]

Yep. Here in flatland, or, as some folks call it, Illinois, there's this Anime Convention once a year, up in the mysterious lost city of Chi-town.

 

I went to this convention when it first started up, and kept going. And then, one year, they said "Hey, a lot of our volunteers can't make it this year! Help us!" to me, so I signed up to work the video rooms. I did that for a few years.

 

Then both of the guys who had successively been my boss at Acen wound up getting moved upstairs.

 

And somebody said, "Hey, Unka Josh, you can run this department, right?"

 

I didn't have the good sense to flee screaming into the night, so here I am, having to learn the content of more different shows than you would ever believe, contacting Anime companies, and trying to stretch my shoestring budget to show as much stuff as possible.

[Nisage 31]

Sweet, you're so lucky. I learn about different Animes from either Tv (mostly TV :P), online, or the library (yes my library has Anime and Manga :P). I did go to an Anime Convention a few times (only 2 times out of 2 times they had it. So I've been to all of them so far) The first one had a lot of people in costumes, like Temari (from Naruto), Naruto (from Naruto), Sango with a little Kirara stuffed animal (from Inuyasha), etc... The second time had a Ramen eating contest, but first you had to pass the preliminary, eat two pocky sticks without using your hand (I lost that round :() And a girl was cosplaying as Jirayia (a female Jirayia........ When you think you see everything, you find something new) Same for some more girls dressed as Deidara, Sasori, Kakashi. I'll just say there were a mix of Naruto and Death Note characters. But someone dressed as L from Death Note (while sitting like L in a chair) fell off of his chair, haha, it was funny. If only they had the Convention at least once a year not almost every four years (or longer).

[Arkbennett 16]

Looks interesting. I look forward to playing this.

[Unka Josh 0]

I guess I'd better work up a demo version, huh?

[Arkbennett 16]

That would be best.

[Unka Josh 0]

I'll see what I can do, then. Hopefully I'll have a demo bit available in a week or two... I just want to finish the half-finished bits that I'm working on now.

[Unka Josh 0]

Well, it took a bit longer than I planned, but I now have a demo of the first bit of Eternal Night!

 

I will here note that combat isn't well-balanced, especially at the higher levels, as yet-- I'll go back and do that later. For now, I'm hoping for feedback, and for people to tell me about bugs that I missed...

[Unka Josh 0]

Hm. Interesting. It's not showing as a download on this site.

 

Well, fine. Here's the link on Rapidshare.

 

Note that at this point, it needs the RTP, but it won't when I'm done.

[Nisage 31]

Let's see here....... Battle System is fun, it makes things more entertaining. No bugs found so far, unless you count a once in a while word being cut off. Also, nice hidden path to a secret room, that was interesting. It's really good so far.

[Unka Josh 0]

Cool. I'll need to do another editing pass to check those cut-off words... Well, I was going to need to do that anyway, to mess with the stats of enemies and skills and so on.