Skills, skills, skills

Poll is closed early as it is obvious what the verdict is. Now it's time for a different discussion.

I was thinking about it was I was working on adding an element to Gunnar's strike chain. I saw the conditions for his 'Gamble' command skill and....I realized how useless it is. It's a rank 2 command skill in which you deliberately cut the damage you could be doing in order to have a random chance to MAYBE do more damage. No one is going to use that.

So the solution? Gunnar needs a new command skill! I discussed with dbace9aura and JIHAUS and now I bring this to you. Here is the current base idea, unedited.


New Rank 2 Skill: Convert
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* Change longbow into crossbow. Lasts 3-5 turns.
* Disables Burst Skill command, even with full BP. Also disables Sacred Will.
* Each step of Strike Chain costs 1 Ether. More hits, less damage.
* When an offensive Ether spell is cast, 10% of Power rating influences potency, but automatically reverts to the default longbow. Doesn't apply to elemental barrier-type Ether spells.
* Rank 1 Skill will appear in its place when in effect.
* Focus command will revert it back to the longbow. Reversion also takes place if the user is killed in battle.

I'm thinking that all these effects for one command may be a bit much. The Ether spell bit looks a bit out of place. In fact that COULD be another command! In fact, lets cut that out and do a bit of editing...

Rank 2 Command Skill: Barrage

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* Each step of Gunnar's Strike Chain has alternate animations with a different weapon and halved cost at 3 EP instead of 6.

* Disables the Burst and Ether commands, even with full BP. Also disables Sacred Will and Exceed Limit.

* Maximum hits are increased, but the damage modifier is even less than normal.

* Rank 1 Skill will appear in its place when Barrage is active. Allowing for dual effect.

* Lasts 5 turns. Once the turns are up, the Barrage's effect ends. 

OR

Rank 2 Command Skill 2: Arcane Boost
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* When an offensive Ether spell is cast, 50% of Knowledge rating influences spell potency on top of the normal damage algorithm routine,  Doesn't apply to elemental barrier-type Ether spells.

So, tell me. What do you think should be his new command? Feel free to comment on the matter in the cbox or on this entry. I will also put up a new poll. Looking forward to your opinions!

Have some screenshots to leave off!

Small Update

Hello people. I know I haven't touched this blog in a long while, but I am still working on this.

Bad news first, the completion of the base battle system has been halted indefinitely in anticipation of a tool called 'RPG Maker 20XX'. The features promised sound like just the thing I need to make production and completion of the battle system and the game overall that much smoother. But I HAVE done a little more tweaking to the numbers in the battle system in spite of that.

I noticed that early Burst Skills are actually WEAKER than Strike Chains. For example, Gunnar's Twilight Arrow is WEAKER than his Base Strike Chain. Amazing how I didn't notice this before! It was an easy fix though! Since the numbers of the battle system are easy to manipulate, it wasn't hard to readjust things. All skills have a certain multiplier that determines the level of damage regardless of what your attack is. So Skill X will always do more damage than Strike Chain. I just needed to give skills the multipliers they needed to be useful! Though, taking Elements into account, damage will greatly fluctuate regardless, so better watch out for that! Maybe I should give Strike Chains elements so that they also are governed by the elemental damage fluctuation.... POLL!

At Rank One, Gunnar's strike chain does about 60~70 damage. With a multiplier of 4 and a hit count of 3 at 79 PWR, Gunnar's Twilight Arrow does 93-103 damage. And when PWR increases, the damage done will still always be more than a Strike Chain. Easy, huh?

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On the story side of things, I'm actually progressing again! I had stopped to wait on the battle system completion that was taking forever to happen, so I went ahead and started plugging away at the story again. I am now working on the events of Day Two. I deviated from my initial plot outline to account for certain new mechanics, but I think it actually works better than before. Less wordy, and less event work while still getting character dialogue and objectives across.

I'll keep doing what I can do and hope that 20XX is worth it! In a meantime, you all enjoy your christmas, you fortunate people out there.

Have some art to leave off.

Not colored in because my BG skills are nonexistent. Sorry! ' ^ '

SEM - Town Layout & IDE

Just an example of the new town layout. You can accept quests, see small side scenes, visit the battle arena and library, and find out about current I.D.E.s

Available scenes and quests change often depending on events passed and the which day it is. So if you're on Day 2, then Day 1's Quests and Scenes will be gone forever.

The last bit of the video shows how I.D.E.s are actually encountered. And fear not, they won't be that easy. I was testing.

Not dead yet

It's been a while since the last update. So I'm just updating to say that no, we are not dead.

What's been going on then? Well I've been working on refining some of the old systems and tightening up the battle system a bit.

First order of business; There is a new system in place to replace monster hunting quests. It's called I.D.E Detection System. How does it work? Well when you're on the field, if you get close to a designated I.D.E Zone, then this setup will appear.

With this information displayed, you can choose whether to face the I.D.E or turn back. Some I.D.E's may activate when you try to access side paths in areas, so it may be necessary to defeat some I.D.E's in order to get to them.

I.D.E's are categorized by levels between 1 to 10 in order to signify difficulty. Of course, a Level 1 I.D.E will still be challenging in the beginning. So the player must use their own judgement to decide whether or not they want to face an I.D.E. . What does I.D.E stand for you ask? Ohohoho, guess~

On the battle end of things, I made a small adjustment to the way enemies work. All enemies now have 100 EP max like the party and they regenerate alongside the party. I figure that it wouldn't be fair if enemies didn't follow the same rules as the party a bit.

Another planned change I want to make is to phase out having a walkable town. Instead there will just be a panorama and there will be symbols on it to show available quests, an NPC comment, or story events. The world map already does this, so it is not a hard change to make. I just need to get a town pano is all.

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And to leave off, have some art!

Music

Sorry, no meaningful updates on my end, so have some music from Troy Grant!





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And to leave off have some art.

Art by Nessiah

Soul Shaping Discussion

We'll be having a different kind of entry today. I want to discuss the Soul Shaping system.

From the system section:

When you travel about dungeons and field areas, you may find material called 'Soul Essence' laying about. Some of it is hidden, some of it is in plain sight. It is up to the player to find them. You spend your collected Soul Essence on this menu here to gain stat bonuses to help your characters alongside Rank ups. Think of it as a reward for going out of your way to find them. Each character has a max Soul Rank of 20. The cost of increasing a character's Soul Rank is the number of the next rank. So advancing to Rank 13 will cost 13 Soul Essence. That is about all there is to the menu.


However, I got an Email from DBAce9Aura who brought to me his opinion on how the Soul Shaping System was kind of bare as it was. After thinking on it. I agree with him. He also gave me plenty of great ideas on how to improve it. Many of which I plan on implementing. Right now, here is what I have.


As you increase your Soul Rank, in addition to gaining stats, you get additional bonuses in the form of passive abilities based on which category you choose when ranking up. There are 9 passive Abilities. They are divided by category and rank. So each category has three ranks of passive abilities. The catch here is that there are twenty Soul Ranks. So you can only gain 3 passives from the system. What you get depends on your choices. But you can gain any combination of Rank 1, 2, and 3 passives. Here are the passive abilities planned.



-- Soul Striker --

- Fury - 10% of Max HP is added to damage when performing Burst actions. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 5 via Soul Striker.

- Ail Strike - Chance to inflict a random status effect at the end of a Burst Action. (Poison/Debuff/Stop Movement/Freeze). Gained when getting to Soul Rank 10 via Soul Striker.

- Exceed Strike - Burst Damage is increased by 50 for each EX Block the attacker has in stock. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 20 via Soul Striker.

-- Soul Guardian --

- Healer - More LF and EP is recovered from Focus and LF from LP Revival is increased. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 5 via Soul Guardian.

- Watchful Guardian - LF and EP recovered from Crisis Recover is doubled. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 10 via Soul Guardian.

- Stalwart Guard - Parry is increased by 100 Permanently. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 20 via Soul Guardian.

-- Soul Magus --

- Rejuvenate - Regain an extra 2 Ether each passing turn. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 5 via Soul Magus.

- Magus' Will - Start off battle with an additional 10 Ether. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 10 via Soul Magus.

- Mystic Power - Ether Skills gain an additional bonus damage modifier based on current EP * 3 + Soul Rank = bonus damage. Gained when getting to Soul Rank 20 via Soul Magus.


And this is it. You can only get any combination of the first, second, and third passive abilities. So you can never get Fury, Rejuvenate, and Healer together!


As a note, I've decided to cut all passive bonuses from Strike Chains. They are meant to be basic attacks only for reducing enemy barrier. Making them more useful will take attention away from burst and ether, which would mess up the real focus of the battle system in my opinion.


This is what I am currently implementing. Is this good? Should there be more passives? Is it a horrible idea and I should burn in hell for all of eternity?


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And to leave off, have some art!

Art by Sathane

Video: Quests & Brave Clear & RANKUU UPU

"Apologies for the off sync-ness. My laptop isn't exactly cutting edge now. 

This is just an example of taking quests from NPCs as well as the Brave Clear, and Hit Counter Systems.

Battles will present you with random restricting challenges that you can adhere to gain a large boost to your battle score if fulfilled, which gives you the chance to get a higher battle grade, which in turn increases your overall SP and RP gain. But know that it is entirely optional. You can ignore these conditions. You merely won't get the Brave Clear Bonus for following them.

The Hits and Damage Counters are also two new systems I've implemented. On top of giving you a general idea of how much damage you're doing, your hit count gets added onto your damage in real time as they connect. So damage will actually escalate as the combo rises.

You also get a bonus onto your SP at the end of each combo based on your total damage. So deal as much damage as you can in order to get lots of bonus SP!"


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In other news, I have been plugging away at story events. Refining them and making sure they flow together. I've also got battle voices for most of the party, so that has also been implemented. However most of the work I've been doing is in the design document. Typing out ideas and setting others in stone. Why am I doing all this instead of advancing the story? Well I'm moving too fast and others need to catch up mostly. Amusing as that way sound. I also want to consolidate the game's engine before I march off and make story and battles, then end up having to go back and fix things!


That's all from me, have some random art to leave off!

Art by Nebelstern

And then there were updates

Hello people. I've been working on SEM here and there when I could. I have some progress to show you all.

Or rather, a bunch of screenshots.

The last one is the highlight here. It's the new system I've been talking about implementing in the place of the now defunct Crossovers. It's the Combo Chain system. At a glance, it's just a hit count and damage display, but the catch here is that your hit count is added straight onto your damage in real time as your hits connect. It applies to Strike Chains, Bursts, and Spells. I also have to note that I shamelessly stole this idea from Jaymonius. He deserves the credit for prototyping the idea. I just went and made my own as well as added my own twist to it.

So yes, this is it.

So where does SEM stand now overall? Well that demo is still looming closer ever slowly. What's the holdup? Well Lily needs to complete the art for all demo relevant characters, and I need to finish the Soul Essence menu pictured above as well as finish applying the combo chain system to burst skills. After that I need to polish up the sidequests and make sure everything runs together well, then we'll be cruising down demo street~

Until then, have this art!

Art by Psychephilia

Numbers and stuff

I posted this elsewhere, but I figured this was good blog material. I go over this briefly in the systems section, but this is more in depth. What we have here is basically how the battle system handles numbers.


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Damage Algorithm = (User's Offense * Skill modifier / 10) - (Target Defense / 20) + (Random Number 1-5) * (Elemental Modifiers) + (Critical Check) / (Target's Barrier)

Offense: That stat used for offense can either be Power or Knowledge. Power is used for Melee and Knowledge is used for Magic. This stat is divided by ten to make up your base damage. 

Defense: The stat called Parry reduces damage from both Melee and Magic attacks. It is divided by twenty before being taken into the formula. Since it is divided by twenty in the formula, this means that damage will always be dealt and that it is very hard to overcome damage with defense. Only reduce it.

Skill Modifier: Skill modifiers are merely a single number that the offensive stat is multiplied by at the beginning of the formula. It can be a number anywhere from 2-15. Different skills have different skill modifiers. Obviously higher skills have higher modifiers generally, but since they cost more EP(MP) it's a tradeoff. As a general rule. The less hits a skill has, the higher the skill modifier. To a point that is, the highest skill modifier a starter single hit skill could have is 4.

Random Number: This is merely bonus damage that is added onto the base damage in order to diversify the numbers seen. It is randomly chosen and can be anywhere from one to five.

Elemental Modifiers: Nearly every attack has an element attached. Depending on the target's elemental rating, the damage is reduced or multiplied accordingly. Each Character/Enemy has an elemental resistance that ranges from -1 to 3 on each element. 

If it's -1, then damage is tripled.

If it's 0, then damage is doubled.

If it's 1, then it does normal damage.

If it's 2, then damage is divided by two.

If it's 3 then damage is divided by three.

So it's important to check resistances and use the right skills and spells so that you don't waste EP doing little damage.

Critical Check: Depending on the skill in use, there will be a different critical check used. There are four types. 1/2, 1/3, 1/5, and 1/10 chances of striking a critical. As a general rule, the less hits a skill has, the higher it's critical chance. The more hits, the less chance there is to crit.

Barrier: This is a value that all enemies possess. It is like a second HP value. As long as they still have Barrier remaining, then at the end of the damage algorithm, the calculated damage is divided by 2. Even critical damage is reduced by this. Some skills can ignore barrier and strike directly at HP.


Crossover Damage Algorithm: User's Offense * User's Rank * Skill Power / Target Parry / 25 + Elemental Check + Critical Check + Barrier Check


For crossover skills, the user's Power or Knowledge is taken and then multiplied by their current Rank, and then multiplied by the Crossover Skill's Base Power. Base power is different for each crossover. The result is then divided by the target's defense, and then the whole thing is divided by 25. After ALL of this is calculated, the skill's element is taken into account, followed by the critical check, and finally the barrier division.

Another thing to note about this all is that the player will never miss. I despise missing and I facepalm every time I see it happen in other games. Therefore, I got rid of it. I do believe that is it for my numbers. I'm not a big math person so I try to keep it as simple as I can.


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Now for general progress. I have finished all the sprites I need to get back to work on making the scenes to finish off day one. Once I finish all that and test it myself, it will be time to allow the team to test and give opinions, and THEN we continue onto day two of the game. It feels great to finally be making a GAME instead of just spriting and setting up systems. I'm pretty excited myself actually!


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To leave off, have these.

Art by Hanaratsu-Kairi

This here is music track from the game composed by Troy Grant. He makes some pretty epic music and I'm glad to have him aboard!

And that'll be all on my end! Till next time!

Video: Trial Gameplay

Yep. For those who don't get to try it. Here's a video for you.

Marching On~

It seems that my passion for GoA is beginning to die down for now. So while I'm free from it, I'm working on SEM some. So far I've completed the intro scenes and began on the first scenes from the first story quest. I got a friend to look over my current script for the scenes to come and he gave me some very good rewordings and other fixes, so hopefully it won't be too terrible now. 

Anyway, I'll leave off with these sprites and a screen and rush back to work while I still feel inspired.

Later~

Under...construction.

Art by Evokid

Hello peoples. No I'm not dead...yet. And I'm still working, albeit things have slowed down considerably, but things are moving. I blame life sucking my soul dry. But on the other hand, I have been participating in some new RP group called GoA. I've never done it before, so it's been a fun new experience. But anyway!

In regards to SEM, what have I done? Well It's mostly been on the writing and design side of things. I've been designing quests, monsters, skits, and story events for the first 'Day' before I go and actually make them. I pretty much finished that and I made 2 out of the 5 quests available on Day One. I still need to design the monsters for the Bifrost Plains as well. If only it was as easy as messing with the default database. Instead, I need to set their LF overflow value, their Max Barrier, EXP values, and Elemental resistances all from the battle events page. It's tedious for sure. But nevertheless. It could be a lot worse. Other than that, a whole lot of story events need to be made. Which means hooray, more spriting!

And speaking of sprites, I finished Veili's new sprites and I implemented them all over her old animations. 

So Veili is now good to go. I really don't want to be messing with battle stuff again, so hopefully this is the last I have to hear from it for a while.

Also, someone mentioned something about how terrible the element icons in the status menu were a while back? I think it was DBAce9Aura. I'm too lazy to check. But yes, your wish has been granted. 

Courtesy of Nessiah. Thank you. ;A;

And on the artistic side of things, Lily has finished Mireille's faces. Here's a sample.

Funny story; Lily, Haus, and I are all in GoA, so we'll probably be blowing most of our time on that for a while! Ohoho~

Anyway, see ya later.

Some changes have been made

Hello people. I'm not completely okay yet, but things are starting to look up a little. I got a job so I expect my free time to tank. But I'll keep working and try to get a sizable demo out. I can't say when but I don't want to rush and make mistakes, so we'll see.

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There's something else I want to address. If you aren't observant, then you may not notice that Nessiah has been removed from the team list and Lily is there now. Well a lot of things have happened now, and I feel really bad about it. But I think everything that can be done was done. There are no problems between us and we're still friends I hope.

And on that note, allow me introduce Lily. If you've visited the Magician's Quest link in the blogroll then you already know of her. She's a good friend of mine and she's agreed to take over from the ground up. So treat her well, okay? Here's an example of her work for the curious.

These are the faces that will be shown during skits. Which are side conversations that can be passed over at player discretion. They serve mostly to flesh out characters and give player insight on their opinions about current events, the people around them, and each other.

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And while we're on the subject of changes, Veili is getting one as well. I figured we had the chance since artistic resources were being done from the ground up again, so Veili will be getting changed into her SEB2 outfit. This way she and Gunnar aren't wearing the same thing! Plus it's a more interesting design. I've already started remodeling her sprites for this. Don't worry, it won't take too long at all. I pretty much just need to reshade the hair on her SEB2 sheet and then edit her SEM specific OB sprites and we're done. Here is what I have so far:

As you can see, it's looking better and it'll be less of an eyesore to see the same thing on two characters!

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And then have some screenshots! One thing to make note of now is that there are elements on the status menu now, so you'll know what NOT to do with your characters now. It's all on you~

Also, yes that battle screenshot demonstrates Crossover. You see Mir attacking but she doesn't have a battle HUD! She was called in by someone else for an EX Block.

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Annnnd I think that's about it for now. Have some art to leave off!

Art by Kafuka-Chan.

Till next time~

It's Sunday and I have nothing to do.

Hello people. I'm posting because it's Sunday and there's nothing I can do in regards to my situation today. So! Time for some SE Blogging!

You may be wondering what the heck I could be posting about, but! I actually have been working on SEM a little in the time where I could do nothing else at the moment. Kinda sad huh? With a serious situation at hand, I open up RPG Maker and work. I seem to have a natural skill for downplaying serious things. Well I guess it's okay, since I really can't do anything till monday anyway. Then it's back to the grind for me.

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Well anyway! In the time I've been absent, I've managed to finish mapping two travel areas: The Bifrost Plains, and The Icefall Labyrinth. Both of these locations will be used for various quests, so they needed to be large enough to have a variety of locations within them to execute quests at.

Here's my map designs for the two locations. The red dots illiustrate which maps are done, for the 'Beginner' sectors are available to the player in both locations with the rest of the areas temporarily blocked off for now. It's large enough with just the beginner areas, so the demo should have enough to do within them.

And now have some actual screenshots of the areas themselves.




In spite of my life situation, things are actually coming together pretty well! It's possible to travel through both areas, fight battles, gain SP/RP, advance your skills, and rank up. I'm actually finding it pretty fun to play through myself. But then, I made this game according to what I would find fun, so I suppose that's a given.

One thing that I have noticed is that ranking up, is a slow, laborious process. That's not to say that you don't get stronger after fighting many battles, but with the results I had from playing through the Icefall Labyrinth, I found that gaining SP and advancing my skills happened faster. I was Rank One throughout the entire area, almost Ranking Up at the end but not quite! It's kind of like Valkyrie Profile and it's slow leveling system.

Is this a good or bad thing? I don't know, but with the way it looks, endgame will probably be level 20-25 at that rate. I guess we'll just have to make some adjustments and see. Maybe doubling the RP standard will help speed things along. It would be a waste for endgame to be Rank 20-25 when Max Rank is 999!

Anyway a demo is not too far off! I need to link the story events to the gameplay and create a few more events, some new sprites, get those skit faces in, and then I think we'll be in business!

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I also want to take this time to go over that Crossover option in the menu.

Basically it means nothing now! 8D

To be more specific; I redesigned my approach to that system. Crossover is yet another battle related system that makes use of EX. You see, at first Crossovers were going to be cameo character related skills that you could unlock and then set to your characters in the crossover menu. This means that each party member would have their own Crossover partner and in battle, you could call them to execute a skill for 1 EX Block. With this in mind, it was possible to create a combo of Burst/Ether Skill -> Exceed Limit -> Crossover -> Crisis Recover.

However I've cut that away and simplified it so that the system required no menu. How it works now is that during quests and the storyline, you may meet characters who will actually accompany you during the duration of the quest or storyline event such as Rhia, Alvis, Mireille, Mir, Etc. These characters will join as a GUEST. When you have a GUEST character with you, then you can call them in battle for a crossover skill. Which works the same as mentioned above, the difference being that all party members will use the same crossover skill instead of having their own. GUEST characters will leave the party once the event or quest is over, so Crossovers are not always available.

Hope that answers some questions! And as a bonus, here's a draft of the Crossover Menu before it got cut. There were going to be ten slots for cameo related crossover skills from other RM games. Deciding who was in and spriting them all was kind of a pain, so I decided to stick to SE related characters. There will still be cameos and easter eggs hidden here and there. Find them~

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And to leave off have some art!

Art by Kamikaze-Kaito

And that's all! I'm going to continue focusing on solving my problems this week, but I'll see if I can keep this sunday thing going maybe. But there likely won't be an update for a long while. So enjoy this large one! Bye~

Erm...

And at the drop of a hat, things have suddenly gotten really serious for me. I don't think I will have time to work on SEM or anything for the foreseeable future. I have some massive problems to deal with on my own now. The project is safe, and nothing is wrong. I've backed up too. But I can't work anymore for now.

I'm terribly sorry Anaryu, but Nightmare will have to wait. Maybe we can continue it even after game gale, if it's not done!

Zue, I'm sorry but sprites for Grimoire Nocturna will have to wait too.

And to Cloudreach, I hope to see the chaingame complete someday!

And to the rest of the SE team. SEM is not canceled nor will it ever be, please wait for me!

Thank you and bye for now!

Time to disappear

Past entries have been reinstated. Why? Well if anyone wants to read back, then they can feel free. Some people have complained to me about that, so this is the least I can do.

Basically I've decided to freeze all activity on places like forums, twitter, youtube, and this blog. All in order to get to work on SEM for a while. I'll post a public SEM demo once I have the work done. I've decided such will be my consolation.

Maybe once I feel like I'm back up to speed, I'll actively blog again, but not before then. No, nothing is wrong with the project at all, I just want to get work done. If any of the people who have been helping me need to talk with me, then I'm always on MSN. And once again, thank you for your continued help. We'll have this out the door yet!

Goodbye~

Sorry~

There hasn't been an update for ten days now. Sorry to say that I haven't been working. I got caught up in an art improvement rush for myself so I've been drawing constantly for the past few days. I keep telling myself that I should get to work on SEM, but I keep gravitating back to artwork! Sad how this hit right as things were picking up speed dev-wise. I'm sure this is just one of those phases that I'll get out of eventually. So till then please bear with me.

Have this art in the meantime!

Later~

Video: Tutorial Scene

SEM - Tutorial Scene

Linked because the embedded video is causing all sorts of problems. And yeah, it was on youtube, but it'd be silly to not put it here too. So here it is!

And then story work began

I finally finished all the damn field sprites needed for the beginning and onwards for a good while. I need to make some specific event sprites for this and that, but that can be done when I come to it. Now I can start making story events and gameplay! So I'm off to work! Maybe a demo won't be too far off. Hopefully nothing else gets in my way for a while.

Anyway! That's all I really have to say. I'll leave off with this and get back to work~

Art by JIHAUS

Gotcha!

This goes out to everyone who really thought this blog was gone for good.

Though this blog isn't gone, I AM removing my SEM stuff in other places. I downsized my youtube and deleted my RMN profiles for good. No need for them when I have this. SEBII Blog is gone for being outdated. No worries though. It will start back up when it's time.

And now for something completely different.

I had the weirdest dream last night.

There was this giant futuristic cargo truck speeding down a super highway. I mean, it was massive! And a lot of people were working on this truck as it sped towards it's destination. But there was one person on this truck that seemed to be captive or something. So he decided to escape. He was constantly on the run on this giant truck. Dodging bullets, escaping explosions, the works.

He finally made his way to the very front of the truck where there was a single driver. He was a pretty cool dude so he crashed in the passenger's seat for a bit. But the driver warned him that he'd be captured if he just sat there, so the guy got out of the truck and hung onto the front of the truck as it reached it's destination, then just hopped off and escaped in the confusion. I woke up there.

I haven't seen an action movie lately either, so this is pretty amusing.

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Regarding SEM, I'm currently stuck in spriting limbo. So there's not much else to be said there. It's hard making a full/nearly full custom game. Nevertheless, things are getting done. I just need to do a little more and then I can get back to work. However I've been taking a bit of a break in order to work on art for the past few days. I've wanted to try some things.

To leave off, have this. These two are NPC characters. They're not astronomically important to the story, but they are friends of the party, so you'll be seeing them in side scenes and taking quests from them a lot.

Art by Myself

Title Screen

The title screen was finished a couple days ago. I need to create the gallery still, but I'll wait till the last moment since guest/fan art could come in at any time.

The last part is the beginning of the intro. No worries, that's the only bit of text you'll be seeing against a black BG. I'm trying to make sprites as animated as I can, so I'm making many poses for cutscenes. This will probably kill me, but we'll see!

*Sorry for the delayed sound. No idea how that happened, but oh well!

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On the battle side of things, I applied some patches to the engine to get rid of autobattle and the row command. It's not a huge deal to the end user, but to me, it's a great thing. Autobattle would break the system if used, so it was a huge pain to have to see it sitting there all the time.

The row command was less annoying, but it was still pretty non essential to the system and it was just another unnecessary command in the battle menu taking up space. So it's good to see it gone.

So in short, there's one less button you have to press at the beginning of battles!

Someone asked how the elemental resistance system works, so I'll explain.

Each enemy has an elemental resistance that ranges from -1 to 3 on each element. Depending on this number, an elemental attack will do more or less damage.

If it's -1, then damage is tripled.

If it's 0, then damage is doubled.

If it's 1, then it does normal damage.

If it's 2, then damage is divided by two.

If it's 3 then damage is divided by three.

So it's important to check resistances and use the right skills/spells so that you don't waste EP doing little damage.

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I'll just leave this here and be on my way~

Video

Nessiah made me do this. :|

Have a new video.



The first boss of SEM proper. The great frost harpy as her name implies uses all sorts of ice attacks. Since this is the first boss, not a lot of features are available. So you can't increase Ice Resistance since you have no Ether Spells at the time. The strategy here is to use your custom commands to boost the effectiveness of your strike chains and focus in order to avoid getting OHKOed by her ice spells.

To finish her off, save up enough EX to take her down with a triple Exceed Limit rush.

As a note, the skill [Frost Judgement] is the boss' EX Skill. It's not actually weak, but since the characters are defending against it. It's something I just implemented; Defense against EX Skills. People complained that enemy FBs were unfair since they did a lot of damage regardless of whether or not you were defending. Well now it does matter. Defending divides FB damage by 3, so there you go!

If they weren't defending then [Frost Judgement] and Absolute would have definitely OHKO'd either Gunnar or Patchoulli.

Things may change with the final cut, so don't take this as being definitive.

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And to leave off, have some art!

Art by JIHAUS

Game Development has finally begun

I've finished the last menu finally. This means that all front end systems holding me back from making the game are out of the way. So now development on the game's maps and events are finally in full swing.

So what's my focus now? Well I'm mostly just mapping out the beginning areas of the game and creating character field sprites. Once I get things started off, I'll begin work on 'Chapter 1'. My possible demo completion point will be 'Chapter 1 & 2'. I say possible because there may not even be a public demo. But I'll decide later down the road.

Now onto my next point. I'm not a great writer at all. So I'm considering having someone look through the game's writing and fix/edit it once the time comes. I learned my lesson with SEB1 and Project DOAD. What's the lesson? Don't bother trying to write when you suck~!

With that said, have some screenshots.

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And to leave off, have some art!

Later~