Alchemy Arcanum : Chapter 1

[WeebamNa]

Previously known as Ancients Forgotten, Alchemy Arcanum is an RMXP game I started nearly two years ago, in January of 2007, and have been working on it off and on since. I've learned to script, design better graphics, incorporate custom animations, and create unique playing environments.

Here's a spiffy video I've made to showcase the game and some of it's important features:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnbopUGgf-c

Basic Plot
A group of bandits, on an ordinary raid, discover a secret that was meant to be edited out of the history books. Following the directions, the bandits, led by Vliro, awaken Durgas, a demon that was sealed away fifty years ago. Gilden, an elder that was part of the sealing away of Durgas, has lost his wife to the bandits, but something begins to trouble him even more. When a mine is overcome with monsters, Graham and Gregory of the Bristendil army goes to investigate. Deep in the mine, he discovers that the miners were not the first people to ever go into the cave. The secrets of ancient alchemists begin to be discovered, and learning about this forgotten past is crucial to defeating Durgas, as well as the greater evil that has been awakened... the one that originally summoned Durgas with the arcane knowledge of alchemy.

Characters

Graham:
A commander in the Bristendil army. A young man in his early 20's, he advances his battle skill from not only swordsmanship to alchemy as well, following the advice of his teacher, the alchemist Tomar. His father sent him to train in the Bristendil army to practice swordsmanship. He didn't know that Graham would also be learning alchemy.

Tomar:
Head alchemist of Bristendil. Tomar is always looking for new ingredients and new spells to create and teach to his students.

Gregory:
The long-standing commander in the Bristendil army. By rank, Gregory and Graham are equals, but Gregory generally has authority due to age.

Vliro:
Leader of the bandits. Greedy, hungry for power, and doesn't mind killing to get what he wants. When he finds the hidden secrets of the seal of Durgas, he is unable to resist the urge to gain enormous power.

Haskir:
A new recruit in the bandits, a young man in his upper teens. Being desperate for money, he resorted to a life of theivery, and joined Vliro and his gang, but didn't know what kind of a mess he would be caught up in.

Several more characters will be in later chapters.

Screenshots

Spoiler: World Map

Spoiler: Ancient Temple

Spoiler: Crestwater Bay

Spoiler: Battle Scene

Spoiler: Alchemy Menu

Features:
. Custom action-based front-view battle system with animated battlers
. Custom World Map
. Alchemy System like in "Secret of Evermore"
. Steal Script in battle
. First Strike/Back Attack/See the enemies on the map system, like Lufia II. (Or the Research Dungeon, if you played that game of mine) This also means NO random encounters.
. All alchemy battle animations and a few others are custom made with Blender.
. The font and windowskin are also custom.
. Several smaller script edits throughout the game to make things more pretty.
. Two sidequests in addition to the storyline, available via Tomar and Lance.

Credits:
. Enterbrain
. The Blender Foundation
. vgmusic
Beta-Testers
. BrataOuOrojeye
. Alpachix

Chapter 1 will take roughly 2 to 3 hours, depending on the player and whether or not they choose to do the sidequests.

Download:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=56L9T5LR (65.74 MB)
Be sure to install the Handwriting font file included. Instructions within the readme.

Side note: If you played Ancients Forgotten and still have your save from the end, then it *should* work with Alchemy Arcanum, so you can just do the sidequests to see the battle system without beating the game again. Sadly, any other old saves will generate an error when you try to use alchemy.

Enjoy! :thumb:

 

[ama55]

I must say, your video has intrigued me. The battle system is quite nice. I will give this a try and let you know what I think.

 

[Xandrel]

This is a very good game.
The battle system is a little hard at start, but as the time passed I got used to it and it became easy.
The story is good, it kept me interested.
I'm waiting for chapter 2 because I want to see what happens in Nardoc.
Also, Haskir is my favorite character at the moment.

 

[chibifibi]

You battle character animation is extraordinarily impressive. :box:

 

[WeebamNa]

Thanks for the comments, I'm glad you enjoyed it, Xandrel.

@chibifibi: Thanks, all of the battle character animations were a pretty big undertaking, because I pixeled each frame of each animation. I used a 3d animated rig and pixeled over top to help get the fluid movement I wanted.

 

[Merk]

Played a bit of it so far, and I'm enjoying it. I'll lead off with the negative -- I dislike the familiarity of the music used in the game. When I hear music I recognize, I stop feeling like I'm playing "Alchemy Arcanum" and start feeling like I'm playing "RMXP game with music from final fantasy". Even if you're restricted to vgmusic.com (and in all honesty there are better resources for music), you ought to add music from games that are less well-known.

I do like the lufia-esque battle system and the alchemy system that goes along with it, although I'll note you get a lot of free water near the beginning, but only 1 part root (maybe more if I missed some, but still, much less root than water). You can probably buy that though so it isn't a big deal.

 

[WeebamNa]

I was actually trying to avoid having super familiar music in the game, which is the reason why there is only one song from final fantasy, and it's in a cutscene, and one from Chrono Trigger, in a cutscene. I did use a lot from Lufia 2, which more people may recognize, but the rest is mainly from Secret of Evermore, Illusion of Gaia, and Terranigma. -Maybe you've just happened to have played most of them. :wink:

I know there is a lot of water, and did that on purpose considering there's a freshwater stream running through the town, and it would make sense from that if you could get infinite. There are more roots around than one; I usually place them at the base of trees or with a brown root graphic on walls, although I think I just used that graphic in Bristendil.

 

[coyotecraft]

I played through most of the demo. I didn't fully explore the Bay area.
You did a good job with the maps and spacing out the ingredients. For most of the demo I had to use alchemy sparingly because you would run out of ingredients if you used it in every battle. About the time I got the thief in my party I had to go walk to the town inn to revive my characters because I didn't have a revive and I didn't have enough money to buy anything but potions.
Stealing potions from the cave goblins was the easiest way to make money. Since high potions do enough healing I sold all my full potions and had enough money to buy weapons armor and spells. But by this time I had already gotten the first summon and the demo was over.
I only saw a few bugs.
I'm not sure what causes it. But sometimes the blue map cursor will stay in the upper corner of the screen when you enter town. At one point when entering the mines the world map picture didn't disappear. I was running around blind, getting into battles until I found the exit so I could re-entered the mines and erase the map.
There were a few places where your old main character sprite appeared. Once in the scene when you find the girl. And your down pose when you die.

 

[WeebamNa]

Hm, yes, I thought I'd had that world map bug fixed. It's one of those pesky bugs that seem to just happen randomly. It's due to the map and cursor being animated and when one parallel process erases all pictures to teleport to a map another shows the next frame of the animation. I added a few switches and tested it like 20 times and it never acted up, hopefully that means I've fixed it.

Huh, it seems I'd completely forgotten to even make a down sprite and a head nod sprite for the new graham, haha. Thanks for noticing that!

 

[coyotecraft]

I don't know how you feel about the character portraits. The portraits you're using look like they all have the same eyes. The old men don't really look like old men with big glossy eyes. Since your characters are mostly just recolors of the RTP I'd suggest using Ruruga facesets. You can easily change hair color to match your sprites.
Can't you see these as Gram and Haskir?

The tileset you used for the shrine under the mine was another thing that I didn't like. It just didn't match. The fort interior tileset would be a better subsitute. You just have to recolor it blue. You can find better skeletons too. Unless they were suppose to be giants.

 

[WeebamNa]

Yes, my own drawing skills are lacking compared to others' available resources, but I used my own so that drawing different emotions would be easier. Plus I just needed some serious drawing practice, haha.

 

[MaRkNemesis]

hey there! Your game seems pretty impressive I'll give a shot for sure!

Cheers!

 

[maitrelatex1]

impressive game, but when is the full game??

 

[Xhukari]

Dayum Maitre, stop practicing your alchemy on threads! Don't transform dead threads to live ones! :p Does look cool though, but seems dead for about 4 years, so...

 

[Fanatik007]

link is dead can u fix it?