Alright so lately I've been working on airship stuff and sidequests. There's a couple custom menus I created for airship interaction.

Last Sunday I spent pretty much the whole day polishing up dialogue and removing unnecessary bits.

I also started on the first sidequest. The setting is good, and I have a general idea of how it's going to be set up, but I'm struggling to keep it at the same comedic pace as the rest of the game. I don't want it to stand out.

I'm definitely going to post a huge demo online within the next month or two. I've been thinking about how the story is going to lead into the second half of the game, and today I finally realized how I can tie what I have planned with what's already been established. I'm going to get started on it this weekend, but basically it's going to be a parallel narrative taking place directly after the Firam chapter, that puts you in the point of view of one of the characters that gets separated. It's going to introduce one of the main cities planned, as well as the 7th playable character, and also develop the main villain more. At the right point, it'll jump back to the main narrative. It's important for the development of the villain, as well as the character that takes a back seat for most of the game. It's gonna be a little tricky, but I promise it'll be sweet!

Oh... I guess the other significant thing I did was change Sparrow's faceset completely last weekend. It's awesome now. I'll post it later.



Oh, on a completely unrelated note, I designed the title screen/logo the other day for CHRONO TRIGGER 2: TIME'S ECLIPSE. I'm skeptical about how the game will be, because it's trying to add onto Chrono Trigger, but check it out here: http://rpgmaker.net/games/1899/

I think these screenshots speak for themselves:


(Main deck)


(Engine Room)


(Rec Room)

I pulled the jukebox from my ALEX III map, because I love it. In game, it was found as a "relic."

And to quote Nate's absurdly vague remark when I showed him these screenshots, "more things need airships."

So as you can tell, I took a brief hiatus. I was busy with a lot of things, but the creative juices are finally flowing again lately. One thing I actually did recently was play and beat Final Fantasy VI for the first time! What a game!

In EJ though, I've accomplished several things I didn't expect to get done so quickly over the past few days. I finished up the work I was doing in Hiram. A new mini area called the "Blue Marshes" has been added. I finished a number of dialogue rewrites in that area & changed the look of the Krakken boss (pictured below).



In about 2-3 evenings, I have already rewrote the dialogue in the Crystali chapter, and redone the tilesets. There's only a few changes to the outer town set, but the inner has been completely reworked to stay consistent with the other inner tilesets.



The only thing I have left to do is rewrite some of the final dialogue before the party gets an airship, and then work on these things:

-Rework airship inner & Paul's mansion inner tilesets.
-Minor dialogue edits in Paul's mansion chapter.
-Ruined capitol of Sriole, which will be an area you can visit prior to Paul's mansion, but the sidequest won't start until much later.
-Make sure areas you can revisit via airship all make sense with continuity. I'll need to write a couple things for the gnome village, but I think the other areas are all set.

After that will be the second round of beta testing. My goal is to get that stuff done within the next month, but we'll see.

I finished a couple tilesets. The inner tileset for the Hiram castle town has been modified to match the style of the other ones. I've pretty much finished the inner tileset to the castle itself. It's a tad similar to Firam Palace, but I'm going for more of a serene, peaceful style.

See, look! This guard doesn't know what to do with himself!



Basically, the castle has never been truly mapped before. I made one room originally that had the King & Queen in it, mainly because I was lazy and I didn't want to map another castle. What's happening now is that because of the way the outside of the castle is shaped, it's going to be split up into 3 parts-- the main audience chamber in the center, the east wing (which includes a pub, the armory, and royal chambers), and the west wing (which will include the main dining hall, some bedrooms, and the other half of the royal chambers). I'll keep the royal chambers off limits to the player in both wings because there will be enough to explore already, and there wouldn't be much I want to put there for the player to interact with. The east wing rooms are mostly done at the moment, so I'll be working on the west wing over the next couple of days.

These are some old screenshots of the outside of the castle, and part of the town. The outside mapping hasn't really changed.

The mines are officially finished. I haven't done a full playthrough so I don't know how long exactly it is, but I'm guessing it'll take an average player between 30 to 45 mins.

Here's a peak at one of the maps!



The last map and the boss fight turned out really really great. I'm really excited to find out what people will think!

On to Hiram!

The mines are almost done. It's split up into 4 sections. As mentioned in my previous posts, each character recounts their favorite moments traveling through the mines, and each section is represented by each character's retelling.

I also took some time to create some GREAT puzzles. There's also some character tension going on in this section, so look forward to some interesting story twists.

Tonight I'm going to finish up some dialogue in the third section and hopefully finish up the boss section.

After that, it's Hiram again. The only thing that needs work there is to tinker with the town's inner tileset and map the inside of Hiram Castle. I only ever made one room previously, where you talked to the king of Hiram, so it's going to get expanded a bit.

Probably the last entry for a little while! I'll be working on the above and update again when I have something cool to show! Later peeps!

Wow, I got more done this week than I thought I would! I think the Mines of Insanity chipset is pretty much done. I've already begun mapping with it, and it looks pretty nice. I honestly don't know what else to add to it at this point, but I'll figure that out as I go along. The edit starts with the sister chipset to this (made by mack & blue): http://uirpg.com/resources.php?act=view&id=1610 and I added a ton of new stuff like broken tiles, dirt/rocks/debris, different styled columns, etc. Here's a taste:



One of the original enemies of the Mines of Moglia was a zombie, so I decided to ask the question "how did those zombies get there?" In the chipset, there's broken up ground, and dug up dirt along with gravestones, so it's more logical now that the zombies could exist.

Here's two more screenshots for today, one of the entrance:


It's styled similarly to the Firam tiles.

...and one of the exit:


This one is styled like Hiram. It took a while to get the overlay right, but I'm definitely content with how it is now. Thoughts?

Alright so I've officially finished Firam. There's a sidequest I'm gonna add within it at some point, but not right now. I'm going to FINALLY redo the MINES OF MOGLIA... which, (since Moogles no longer exist) has been renamed the MINES OF INSANITY!! Originally it was just a really long, poorly mapped area that made you want to bash your head against the computer screen by the time it was over, due to the lack of dialogue, endless battles and overall boredom factor.

My idea to spruce it up--and I mentioned this ages ago in one of my blog entries when the site had its previous layout--is basically to have the player go into the mines initially, and then cut "several days later" or something to everyone at the exit of the mines sitting around a campfire going over how daunting of a task it was to go through the mines, each story cutting to a screen where the player has to solve a puzzle or something, and go through some battles. Then, cut back to the campfire, and someone brings up another event, cutting to a new screen in the mines.

What this does is remove the linearity of the mines. There is no obvious beginning, middle and end. It'll give the illusion to the player that it's a really fucking big place, that could very well take days to travel across.

I haven't decided yet how customized the tileset is going to be. The one I have for the mines right now is a plain refmap tileset, so I might try to spruce it up a bit if I can.

That's the plan! I'm going to try to haul through the production of this so I can finish redoing maps and get back into creating new ones. I've had this "frog city" idea planned for something ridiculous like almost 2 1/2 years now that hasn't really been turned into anything other than a test map. Oi.

Until next time!

I uploaded a new video for the area I'm currently working on (as pictured in my previous entry). Enjoy!!

Firam Palace Introduction

Progress has ben slow as usual. Firam took a lot more planning than I had originally thought. I have the first two floors done, including the plot up until that point. Originally this was probably the weakest chapter. The tilesets were boring, it was really straightforward, and there was nothing driving the player from the moment you leave the dungeon to the end of the chapter. It was rough, but this was also the chapter that originally got me back into RPG maker at the end of December '06, so I felt the original idea to do a revolution against a fascist government was still fun, but it just needed more substance and more comedic appeal. It was also supposed to be the "Magus' Castle" of EJ, and oooh boy was it far off.

I think I successfully achieved what I set out to so far. It's no Magus' Castle, but I think its' as close as it's going to get. There's a ton of new dialogue and some supporting characters to really make this chapter feel more meaningful.

The playtime for this area will probably be close to an hour from the moment you step in the palace to the end of the revolution. Just like in the original it covers 2 styles of dungeons, and 2 bosses during the 2nd of said dungeons with a seat gripping finale (well, hopefully haha).

Anyway, here's the screens:

Before:


After:


Front entrance to Firam Palace: