Monday, April 9, 2012

New Maps

Ok so I've sent out Chapter 1 to the world, my litter bird pushed out of the nest, and now I've got to start working on the next chapter. Now, when the game is actually finished you will be able to play the first 4 sections in whatever order you choose, however to keep the plot straight I will be releasing the betas in order chronologically, which means the next chapter is our Druid Teressa. I've just killed about 90 min working on this map, so I felt like sharing. enjoy!

Basically this temple is a giant tree that has reenforcement in the base and gets smaller as you go up. The interiar will spiral up until you get to the Altar room at the top. I used these two trees below as inspiration.


The smaller animated tree I found as freeware online, proportionatly it worked but it wasn't really temple-y enough for me. I may still use the image elseware. Tah!

It's finished?!?!?!?!

So you can't see me but I'm totally doing a happy dance at 1am becasue I've finished the first chapter of my game, well, sor of. There's about 2 hours of good quality gameplay with features like lock pick and pickpocket. A dungeon with a killer boss, an interactive up close field with a few other quests and another boss. Forgive me if you level up too quickly, i'm still working on that balance so you don't get killed in the begining but don't get bored after 5 min. I think it's ok. Feel free to critique as you see so I can continue to finish bugs. Also, not evedryone has an item for you to pickpocket yet, but some people do. So have fun!

Intro - game description





I'm a world torn by war, four adventurers must join together to unravel a mystery and seek their revenge. Enjoy hours of evolving gamepley with interesting characters and a huge open world to explore. Play with features like Thieving, hunting, and dungeon crawling. Complete puzzles to unlock first class loot, then take on challenging enemies in stratigic battles for ultimate supremicy. And don't forget to save the world!


Beta 1 contains the first chapter, Citus.

Dowload here

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Happy Easter!

I know it's not quite Easter yet, I'm a day early, but i wanted to send out happy thoughts now because I might not get another chance soon. I'd like to announce that Chapter 1 of my game is finished. It has around 60 min of core game play, not including battles. I feel really good considering that 3 days ago I had 15 min. Some of you might think that's not a lot, but I'd say it takes about 3 hours to do 5 min, give or take. It's still very rewarding once your project is finished! And if i need a break from the set up I'll just do a play through :-) I've got to love the picklock action... Anyways I'll be doing some final touches and setting up random encounters later today/tonight and hopefully will have the first Beta available here by Easter. Tah!

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Key Items Tutorial

Tutorial for Key Items in RPG Maker VX ace

The new key items feature has opened the door for an infinite number of
possibilities. This allows your character to use items to interact with the
would outside of the status menu and battles. Want to actually USE a key
to open a door? May it a "key" item (sorry for the pun) and away you go!
The player will have to actually select the correct key from within
this menu, instead of simply having it in their inventory. One drawback of this
is that after hours of gameplay, you may begin to accumulate hundreds of key items.
One way to combat this is to make sure to create in your events a removal of the used
item from your inventory, unless it is an item that is used repeatedly. Another
option is to notice that you can set common items to never be useable, therefor
you can put ite'm like "Grandma's locket" as a common item and it will show grey in your menu,
but itf it's not a useable key item, it won't clog up your very small window for selecting
key items. Now that you are completely confused, I'm going to break down the key item
feature, and yes, I will have pictures :-p


Firstly, the following image shows you the Item page in your database

Within this database you can create your items as well as assign them to be
either common items or key items. You can also select if the item can be used
in battles only, in the field only, or never.

This next image is the Event screen, showing you where the option for the key item feature
can be found and implimented.



You need to create your key item first. Write down the item ID (or the number of the item)
Like so


Now, this next part is where I got stuck.
So you have an event where the first line in the Event box is something like
Select Key Item [0000:name]
the next thing you want to do is create a conditional branch, this will basically make it so that
if the player has the item you want them to have, it'll work, and if they dont, it wont.
this is what it should look like
@>Text,-,- dark, middle
         :          :You need a key
@>Select Key Item: [000:name]
@>Conditional Branch: Variable [0000:name] == ###
   @>(here is where you put whatever the action using the correct item will cause
   @> this will always be blank
 : Else
   @> This is where you put the consiquence for using the incorrect item
   @> this will always be blank
 : Branch End
@>
And below is an image of my tester, basically I put a chest with the key item in it
and a door with the event on it (set to same as character)
The door only opens if i have the key.



And there you have it, it's just that simple. If you have any questions or would like to
see another tutorial, you know where to find me. Tah!
Below is a video of how the even will play out.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Beta?

I ran my first playtest today (from title screen to end of completeable quests) which basically means I spent 15 minutes running around my first town, making sure all the people talk, the bard at the inn plays music, all the doors, stairs, and ladders work, all triggers, gates, and switched in the first dungeon work, and fought the first mini-boss and Boss. With the exception of a few typos it all worked perfectly, but after spending almost 50 hours on it so far, I find my enthusiasm...lacking. 50 hours for 15 min of core playtime (no random battles yet), sad. Well, enough wallowing, time to make some coffee and get back at it. After all, it was a GOOD 15 minutes. :-p Here is a clip of the fist 2 minutes of gameplay and the first boss battle, unfortunatly I got in a fight with my video editing software and lost, so the battle clip has no sound...sorry.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

First Things First

Hiya all! I want to take a quick moment to introduce myself, then we'll get to the goods. My name is Jessica, I have been playing video games my whole life (Shocker, I know!) and this is my first real blog. I got into the idea of making my own video games when I was 12, my brother found an old snes emulator online and a games called, oddly enough, RPG maker (2 I think). I was very basic, and you had to use a snes remote, wich really sucked when your trying to type words. but it was fun and emersive. Needless to say I got bored for a while. Then, about a year ago I tried to find a new version of it, and low and behold RPGMaker VX was discovered! After the initial 30 day trial however, I did not continue with the program. Now about 2 weeks ago they came out with RPGMaker VXAce. ITS AWSOME. Everything VX was missing and a more streamlined interface. I can do in a hour what used to take me 3. The onlt set back is that because it's so new, there arn't really any tutorials yet. So i'll update little videos to help other users and hopeful will eventually post my entire finished game (in less than 30 days lol). I can already tell this will be well worth the eventual $90 the program costs. Feel free to share what you think! I can take it. Look HERE for the official website.