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~

Soul Evolution system complete

I managed to finish the Soul Evolution system is record time! It's all set up now. I just need to expand it to the rest of the party and then I can call the menu complete for now. This is actually pretty exciting. Once I finish this menu. I can finally start working on the game events and maps. It's been a long haul but I'm finally almost there. :3

Here's the final verdict.

You go from main menu to advance. Nothing special.



And then we get this. Your party is displayed at the top, and you can scroll through them with left/right.

The important thing here is the crystal layout under that. The way this works is that there are three skill categories. Burst, Ether, And Special. You spend SP on each category in order to gain skills from them. Each category has 5 ranks.

Burst gives you OB skills, which are used with the Outburst Command.

Ether gives you standard spells. However since each character has two sets of spells and only 5 Ether ranks, you have to choose between the elements you want.

Special gives you things like Exceed Limits and other passive abilities.



Choose your category, get a rundown on the skill that will be learned, and then choose to learn or not.

And that's all there is to it!

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And to leave off, have some art! It's Rhia. She's joining the show from SEB2 in order to help our heroes along the story.

Art by Zanktus

Status Menu fiiiiiiiiinally finished!

After five centuries of procrastinating, I finally finished the status menu. It actually wasn't all that bad. I came up with a much more efficient way of storing character stats and applying them to the number display with the least amount of work. Here's what I have.



EP isn't shown because it's a static value that'll be reset after every battle. And Life shown is Max LF. That does increase, so you probably would want to know how much you have.

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Also, I forget if I mentioned this before, but the battle party size has been reduced from 4 to 3. This increases the speed of the ATB a bit and it reduces the skills the player has at their disposal. I think it will provide a little challenge and make players choose who they want to take a little more carefully.


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And to leave off, have some art!

Art by Nessiah

Sacred Earth History Lesson: Part 3

Angelic Awakening was the game I was working on before the original SEB. It was actually a fairly successful project in the public eyes compared to my past projects. Unfortunately the project's engine was very sloppy and disorganized and that was ultimately my downfall for this project.

A mysterious bug in the field movement system completely ruined the development of Angelic Awakening. It still haunts me to this day as it was a project with a ton of potential and I was actually working full steam on it before that bug completely killed it.

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The story of Angelic Awakening took place a couple years after Mystic Legends and Axis Saga. The people of Miltiades, still struggling with the creation of the new world have banded together to form The Miltiades Alliance. A new order consisting of Humans, Beasts, and Eltians working together. Their purpose being to find a new world to inhabit. They turned their sights on Monervera, the world of angels. Monervera is a land abundant with natural resources and ether energy fills the air to a much higher concentration than Miltiades.

The Alliance made the first move, sending forces to strike various checkpoints of the Angel's strongholds as well as assassinating the Arch Seraph. War broke out after this act of aggression. It was a full on war between The Alliance and The Angels.

Which brings us to our present story. Remiel, a human who was adopted by the previous Arch Seraph, is a soldier currently enlisted in the Monerveran Army, much to his dismay. He along with his best friends Eristina and Liore serve in the army and do their best to help out in the war effort. They are soon joined in their journey by the demon, Astell, who came to Monervera to warn the Arch Seraph about the conspiracies of the dark council, the group currently ruling Ixtanel after usurping the ruling power from Lilith, the true heir. Mireille, an angel child who at first was stalking Remiel's group thinking they were enemies, but soon joins after witnessing the movements of the demons, and Clarinei, a whimsical and airheaded general from The Alliance army who decides to abandon her post and join Remiel in order to stop the true threat.

The six of them are removed from the main army by senior soldier, Marauldin, and now from a new secret investigation force for the angelic army codenamed, 'Angelus'. They are then charged with the investigation of several strange matters unrelated to the war with The Alliance. Remiel and his group soon discover that the Dark Council is planning their own strike on Monervera. They then work to stop the demons at every turn.

The worst happens when the group realizes that the true threat isn't from The Alliance or Ixtanel, the true threat was a mere child by the name of Lydalia. A half demon, half angel. This child, seeking vengeance against both the angels and demons for the life she was given stole an ancient artifact from the temple on the Millunia Mountain Shrine, The Creation Material, and used this artifact to strike down the angels, the demons, and the alliance. Lydalia's ultimate plan was to use the power of creation to create a new world, a paradise that she could reside in forever. Free from hatred. pain, and fear. A paradise just for her.

The only one unaffected by Lydalia's attacks was Remiel. It is soon revealed that Remiel was not human, but in fact the god of creation, merely in a dormant state of being. In response to Lydalia's rampant and uncontrolled use of the power of creation, Remiel's dormant soul awakens and he along with his friends move to defeat Lydalia and end this madness once and for all.

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Angelic Awakening is the game with the strongest ties to the current series. A good amount of characters are in the current series, and the storyline of AA still has effects in the current series.

Remiel and *Astell are the parents of Veili and Gunnar. Astell is also Melodia's mother. Both are still in the current series.

Liore is still in the current series as well and has already shown up even. Can you guess who he is?~

Mireille is in the current series as well. She's shown up in SEB2 and SEM.

Lydalia is in the current series but hasn't shown up yet.

Eristina is in the current series but hasn't shown up yet.

Razhell and Lilith made their first appearances in AA, and are still in the current series.

The Arch Seraph was actually a character from Axis Saga. Claire. She was the previous Arch Seraph's best friend, and the ruling power carried over to her after she died.

*Astell was previously named Komachi, but it's been changed due to it's out of place nature.

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And now for what the game looked like before it fell. I still have this project actually, but working on it is a huge question mark at this point. A huge HUGE question mark. That map movement bug considered. But enjoy these screens.