Dark Era: The Awakening [Now with Lum as my plot advisor! : D]

[ChaosMaxima]

Before I begin, I'd just like to clear this up: I am Archayos.

Official Dark Era Website: http://alpha-makers.webs.com/

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/ ... Banner.png[/img]

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/ ... ntro-1.png[/img]
This is mainly an introduction of myself and my game. I started working on my game in about November, but then things weren't going perfectly, so I was forced to discontinue. Later in February of this year, I noticed some of old files, and drew a completely new concept from the old game by expanding the game's good qualities. I've started in February, and I've made significant progress in such a short while. I hope I'll be able to finish the game by September. =)

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/ ... tory-1.png[/img]
I'm not going to go deep into the story line, as some things have to be surprises. However, this is what the game is about. Something like what you'd see at the back of the cover on a book:

Long time ago, the Aezelians and the humans were living peacefully on a planet named Astreaus. The Aezelians lived on a floating isle, but since they had wings, they would often fly down to the surface to meet the humans. However, the Aezelians' rate of growth was higher than that of the humans, and as time flew by, the Aezelians began to advance with technology, whereas humans were still in the hunting stages.

Because of this, the humans slowly began to develop hatred and jealousy for the Aezelians. The Aezelians were, however, unaware of this. Slowly, the hatred and jealousy of the humans, for the Aezelians reached such a point, where the humans could not tolerate them. Then one day, a powerful mage, who had been practicing magic for 20 years, used a powerful spell, which completely sealed away the Aezelians in the seperate dimension.

5000 years later, a small boy, who is the supposed descendant of the mage who sealed away the Aezelians, finds a scroll, deep within a forest. He reads out what is written on the scroll. Two days later, the floating isle of the Aezelians reappears again. However, this time, the Aezelians hate the humans, and have sworn to take their revenge against them.

Now, for the survival of Humanity, this boy, who has magic residing within his heart, must seal away the Aezelians again...

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/ ... acters.png[/img]
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/ ... ght/t1.png[/img] Alex:
Alex is the protagonist of the story. He has an enthusiastic attitude towards life and is always ready to try things. He has a great affinity with weapons and can practically use any weapon given to him with a little bit of practice. However, he often tends to lose control of himself in his anger.

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/ ... ht/o39.png[/img] Ruke:
Ruke can be termed as 'greedy', even though he is not. He is Alex's best friend and is basically a show-off. He's also a daredevil and takes up great risks that Alex would have never even thought of doing. Throughout the journey, he keeps inspiring Alex when he's feeling down and also continuously helps Alex in battles. Ruke is very good when it comes to handling swords, but he's hopeless at using other weapons. (Mostly because of his narrow mind.)

More to come.

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/ ... creens.png[/img]
(Each string of text is clickable)
"I'm not your slave, you know!"
Randomly exploring the village.
"I just love ponds."
"Open your damnit shop, already!"
"Okay, this is really shiny."
"I'm going to blind the guard. WoooOOOoT."
"Er... I think some guy just died."
"Now where should I move this box..."
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/ ... redits.png[/img]
Scripts:

• -Myself.
• -MomoMomo
• -Ccoa
• -DerVVulfman
• -Blizzard
• -Paradog

Resources:

• -Bestone.
• -Gozaru.
• -Kiralim. (To some extent)

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/ ... t/Team.png[/img]

Main Game Programmer: Archayos/ChaosMaxima (Myself)
Plot Designer: Luminier
Artist: Bestone, Archayos.

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/ ... nloads.png[/img]
None, as of now.

 

[Meness]

I remember this when I first saw it back last year. Now it has totally transformed into something beautiful and magnificent. The new story is really nice. Mapping, it has improved a lot since last time, though I suggest not to use the tree shadows in the second screenshot, it doesn't look good , to me anyways. The characters have a pretty cool personality. You did a very good job with the thread too, I'm looking forward to a demo, keep up the good work. :thumb:

~Kira

 

[ChaosMaxima]

Thanks. ^_^ Feels good to get some good comments after you've worked hard.

Anyway, trees without shadows? Wouldn't that look weird... Although, I CAN reduce the opacity of the shadows. That might help.

Anyway, comments, critiques, anybody? I'm open to everything. : )

 

[ChildoftheStars]

I think he's talking about the fog where there are all those shadows on the ground, not the three individual trees.

 

[Despain]

Dude, drop the overlays. They dominate your maps and make it nearly impossible to focus on the game itself.

 

[Devon Jacobs]

Add a cloud fog instead of the trees, then it will look more realistic.

 

[Meness]

I think he's talking about the fog where there are all those shadows on the ground, not the three individual trees.

Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[ChaosMaxima]

I don't think it looks too good with the cloud overlay. This is what it looks like:

Spoiler: Cloud Overlay

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/krypton-knight/Cloud-Testing.png[/img]

But it doesn't look bad when it doesn't have any overlay at all. See:

Spoiler

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/krypton-knight/Cloud-Testing2.png[/img]

What do you guys think?

 

[Despain]

No overlay.

I don't get why you have "MINIMIM PC REQUIREMENTS" in the beginning of this topic. This isn't a forum where you're advertising your game to players, you're working with other developers. We all have RMXP, and we're all familiar with the requirements. Something like that just makes you look like an idiot whose in the wrong place.

I'm not going to go deep into the story line, as some things have to be surprises.

Same thing. We're your fellow game developers here, and the purpose of this forum isn't just "lol advertising". If you're not willing to discuss the story in detail, it will be hard to give you a detailed critique.

We have a spoiler tag explicitly for this reason.

 

[ChaosMaxima]

I don't get why you have "MINIMIM PC REQUIREMENTS" in the beginning of this topic. This isn't a forum where you're advertising your game to players, you're working with other developers. We all have RMXP, and we're all familiar with the requirements. Something like that just makes you look like an idiot whose in the wrong place.

Ah. Sorry for that. Thing is that, I copied it out directly from my website and then put in the tags. Guess I kinda overlooked that.

Same thing. We're your fellow game developers here, and the purpose of this forum isn't just "lol advertising". If you're not willing to discuss the story in detail, it will be hard to give you a detailed critique.

There isn't much to that, really. That's basically a summary of what the storyline is. Going into depth... would mean, AFTER Alex starts his 'quest' sort of thing. I'm typing it out in notepad at the moment, I'll have it posted here in a bit.

EDIT: Done!

Spoiler: Major spoilers ahead. Don't read if you don't want to spoil the story for yourself.

The game starts off with Alex being woken up by his mother to go and buy some groceries. There's some amount of argument (if you can call it an argument) between Alex and his mother, but he finally has to go and buy them. Once he reaches the shop, he finds a letter stuck on the door of the shop saying "The shop is currently closed; Please come back later." Then some old lady tells him that the shop-keeper went into the forest, yelling something about his son.

In the forest, Alex asks the shop-keeper why he had closed his shop. He tells him that his son had gone into the forest and that he cannot find him. Now, you see, minors aren't allowed to go deep into the forest. Alex can't find the shop-keeper's son in that area of the forest, and he can't go any deeper either, so he consults the shop-keeper again. The shop-keeper gives Alex his shop's keys and tells him to go into the shop and get a shiny ball and a lantern.

Alex gets the items. However, it seems a bit shady to him, so he demands an explanation from the shop-keeper as to what these items are. The shop-keeper tells Alex that the shiny ball that he's got is called a sun crystal, and can absorb the sunlight reaching an area. It can then be used for allowing the sunlight at great intensity, hence temporarily blinding a person.

Alex uses this sun-stone on the guard. The guard isn't exactly stupid though; he calls other guards to chase the kid. Alex runs for a long time and finally goes deep into the forest and escapes from him. Deeper inside the forest, he meets up with his friend named Ruke. Ruke and Alex have a little conversation, and Ruke explains that he's in the forest looking for an ancient relic which he can sell and earn a lot of money. However, there's a gate blocking them from proceeding. Alex is reluctant to help him at first, but then finally succumbs to Ruke's requests.

Just then, they hear a loud scream of somebody. When the go to place where the scream originated from, they see a shadowy figure walking off and the dead body of the guard who was chasing Alex. Ruke hears more guards coming to that place; and the last thing they want is to be caught for some crime that they haven't commited. Ruke also spots the key to the gate on the guard's body. So they take it, and run ahead into some ruins.

After that, it's pretty much some amount of dungeon crawling (no caves... caves are just annoying). Yeah, so that's about all I've done so far.

 

[Sonata]

The plot seems to have potential although it's pretty badly written in your synopsis. Hopefully Lumi can work his magic and bring about some good quality writing in game.

The screenshots look pretty good, although there is still room for improvement with your mapping. My only big concern is the use of the wall autotile in "Puzzle3", it just doesn't seem logical to have multiple layers of the autotile and it looks unnatural when the texture stops so abruptly. You've made a good use of The Inquisitor's water autotile, and I really like your grass tile, was that done by you? Another thing I just noticed is that you should have a few blades of grass going over your trees and other objects at the base. Right now they look pasted on.

Right now the characters don't really strike me as interesting, but i'll have to see how they're developed in game.

Also I'm not really sure it's a good idea to reveal plot spoilers to potential players.

All in all this is looking pretty solid, I'll definately give it a try when you have some playable content.

 

[ChaosMaxima]

The plot seems to have potential although it's pretty badly written in your synopsis. Hopefully Lumi can work his magic and bring about some good quality writing in game.

Yeah, I know. I'm just not good at writing storylines. In-game text is a different matter altogether. I mean, you don't have big paragraphs of text in-game, it's more like a sentence-by-sentence thing. So yeah, it'll be better. And Lum's always around to help me.  :tongue:

The screenshots look pretty good, although there is still room for improvement with your mapping. My only big concern is the use of the wall autotile in "Puzzle3", it just doesn't seem logical to have multiple layers of the autotile and it looks unnatural when the texture stops so abruptly. You've made a good use of The Inquisitor's water autotile, and I really like your grass tile, was that done by you? Another thing I just noticed is that you should have a few blades of grass going over your trees and other objects at the base. Right now they look pasted on.

I know. I'm reading tutorials. That's why you'll see that the maps will gradually get better as the game will progresses. And about that wall autotile, I was experimenting with it. I'll get rid of it later. It's not logical, yes, but looks pretty good.

The grass tile was made by Bestone, but then I edited it a lot. At first, it looked like this:
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/ ... -17-35.png[/img]

Right now the characters don't really strike me as interesting, but i'll have to see how they're developed in game.

I haven't written in detail as to what their personalities are. But I don't really want to, you can't "describe" a personality... it just doesn't work out. You'll need to play the game.

Also I'm not really sure it's a good idea to reveal plot spoilers to potential players.

That's what the spoiler tag is for.  :lol:

 

[Taylor]

I don't think it looks too good with the cloud overlay. This is what it looks like:

Spoiler: Cloud Overlay

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/krypton-knight/Cloud-Testing.png[/img]

But it doesn't look bad when it doesn't have any overlay at all. See:

Spoiler

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/krypton-knight/Cloud-Testing2.png[/img]

What do you guys think?

I like with clouds myself - or even very faint shadows of clouds, but without is okay.

However the tileset is way too bright in the fog-less screen.  My tip would be to maybe stick with a similar saturation as the original grass tile - or maybe something in between what you have now and the original.

 

[Reives]

My opinion is quite divided as far as the story goes. The part about the two races and their interaction/relations is rather interesting and hold much potential, but the "sealed by master mage for 5000 years, then the descendant breaks the spell" part is somewhat of a turn off. I suppose that to make the second part of the story and the actual conflict work, however, that sealing-away component is required. It could still work with the right execution, but I think it is best to try to come up with some kind of a twist for it. You may find it helpful to start biting Lummy for swift solutions.

From the synopsis, I can't help but to get the feeling that the descendant of the mage getting the scroll and unleashing it feels rather "cheaty", if you know what I mean. Conveniently after exactly 5000 years later, a child finds the scroll (that hasn't been found for 5000 years by anyone) and it is easily unleashed just like that. I understand that this is just the synopsis, and things will be explained in detail in-game - But again, just try to put some kind of a twist on that, since those two parts are the bottlenecks of the story, where it crawls near the generic pile the most.

Now for the screenshots. First of all, they inspired me to seriously consider adapting a custom grass ground tile for my project. The colours scheme used overall in this seem to be rather consistent, and have a very vibrant and lively atmosphere. Kudos on that. (The doors still need to be recoloured, though.)

However, even though I am a fog-whore myself, I have to agree with the others on the RTP tree fog. Their use in the said cases don't seem to add much but to busy the screen. If you are to use a fog, I would recommend going with a cloud fog as mentioned previously as well; but not the one that you showed afterwards (that one just looks like morning fog-fog). The RTP puffy ones might do, but I'd recommend to simply make a few black puffy shapes in photoshop. The maps in general are actually well designed in my opinion, and function nicely.

Anyhow, good luck with this. It certainly has potential.  :smile:

 

[Sonata]

Now that i think of it that tile looks an awful lot like ccoa's. No worries though.

 

[serrated_colon]

I don't get why you have "MINIMIM PC REQUIREMENTS" in the beginning of this topic. This isn't a forum where you're advertising your game to players, you're working with other developers. We all have RMXP, and we're all familiar with the requirements. Something like that just makes you look like an idiot whose in the wrong place.

Ah. Sorry for that. Thing is that, I copied it out directly from my website and then put in the tags. Guess I kinda overlooked that.

Same thing. We're your fellow game developers here, and the purpose of this forum isn't just "lol advertising". If you're not willing to discuss the story in detail, it will be hard to give you a detailed critique.

There isn't much to that, really. That's basically a summary of what the storyline is. Going into depth... would mean, AFTER Alex starts his 'quest' sort of thing. I'm typing it out in notepad at the moment, I'll have it posted here in a bit.

EDIT: Done!

Spoiler: Major spoilers ahead. Don't read if you don't want to spoil the story for yourself.

The game starts off with Alex being woken up by his mother to go and buy some groceries. There's some amount of argument (if you can call it an argument) between Alex and his mother, but he finally has to go and buy them. Once he reaches the shop, he finds a letter stuck on the door of the shop saying "The shop is currently closed; Please come back later." Then some old lady tells him that the shop-keeper went into the forest, yelling something about his son.

In the forest, Alex asks the shop-keeper why he had closed his shop. He tells him that his son had gone into the forest and that he cannot find him. Now, you see, minors aren't allowed to go deep into the forest. Alex can't find the shop-keeper's son in that area of the forest, and he can't go any deeper either, so he consults the shop-keeper again. The shop-keeper gives Alex his shop's keys and tells him to go into the shop and get a shiny ball and a lantern.

Alex gets the items. However, it seems a bit shady to him, so he demands an explanation from the shop-keeper as to what these items are. The shop-keeper tells Alex that the shiny ball that he's got is called a sun crystal, and can absorb the sunlight reaching an area. It can then be used for allowing the sunlight at great intensity, hence temporarily blinding a person.

Alex uses this sun-stone on the guard. The guard isn't exactly stupid though; he calls other guards to chase the kid. Alex runs for a long time and finally goes deep into the forest and escapes from him. Deeper inside the forest, he meets up with his friend named Ruke. Ruke and Alex have a little conversation, and Ruke explains that he's in the forest looking for an ancient relic which he can sell and earn a lot of money. However, there's a gate blocking them from proceeding. Alex is reluctant to help him at first, but then finally succumbs to Ruke's requests.

Just then, they hear a loud scream of somebody. When the go to place where the scream originated from, they see a shadowy figure walking off and the dead body of the guard who was chasing Alex. Ruke hears more guards coming to that place; and the last thing they want is to be caught for some crime that they haven't commited. Ruke also spots the key to the gate on the guard's body. So they take it, and run ahead into some ruins.

After that, it's pretty much some amount of dungeon crawling (no caves... caves are just annoying). Yeah, so that's about all I've done so far.

You need to make the intentions for major events clearer. Why exactly does Alex use the sunstone on the guard? Why do they go to the place the scream orignated from and then see the dead body of the guard? I can see most of the intentions have been made clear, but I'll be picky and say this really sounds like a typical RPG from your elaboration. Also the name of your RPG is quite immature in my opinion. I mean read it and tell me whether you can take it seriously or not. DARK ERA: THE AWAKENING. I can understand the reason why you'd choose this kind of name as it seems akin to POST SEARING ASCALON(guild wars reference hehehe) or something. So yeah, just some minor things you need to think about.
As for you eye-candy, I can't really elaborate on whats being said until I actually play the game!

 

[ChaosMaxima]

Now that i think of it that tile looks an awful lot like ccoa's. No worries though.

Nah. Ccoa's is less blurry, and the colors are pretty different. Basically, I recolored the DBZ: LoG grass and sent it to Bestone. He combined it into a single tile.

You need to make the intentions for major events clearer. Why exactly does Alex use the sunstone on the guard? Why do they go to the place the scream orignated from and then see the dead body of the guard? I can see most of the intentions have been made clear, but I'll be picky and say this really sounds like a typical RPG from your elaboration. Also the name of your RPG is quite immature in my opinion. I mean read it and tell me whether you can take it seriously or not. DARK ERA: THE AWAKENING. I can understand the reason why you'd choose this kind of name as it seems akin to POST SEARING ASCALON(guild wars reference hehehe) or something. So yeah, just some minor things you need to think about.

Alex uses the sunstone on the guard because if he were to go home, his mother would think that he's making excuses, and would send him back anyway. Her personality is explained in the game.

Also, it's pretty obvious that somebody would go to a place where they hear a loud scream originate from. That's realistic. Tell me, if you hear a scream as if somebody is murdered, what will you do? Just stand there? That wouldn't make sense. Oh, and what's wrong with the name? "Dark Era: The Awakening" depicts that the awakening of the Aezelians brings about an era of darkness on the earth. I don't see what problems one could have with that.

My opinion is quite divided as far as the story goes. The part about the two races and their interaction/relations is rather interesting and hold much potential, but the "sealed by master mage for 5000 years, then the descendant breaks the spell" part is somewhat of a turn off. I suppose that to make the second part of the story and the actual conflict work, however, that sealing-away component is required. It could still work with the right execution, but I think it is best to try to come up with some kind of a twist for it. You may find it helpful to start biting Lummy for swift solutions.

From the synopsis, I can't help but to get the feeling that the descendant of the mage getting the scroll and unleashing it feels rather "cheaty", if you know what I mean. Conveniently after exactly 5000 years later, a child finds the scroll (that hasn't been found for 5000 years by anyone) and it is easily unleashed just like that. I understand that this is just the synopsis, and things will be explained in detail in-game - But again, just try to put some kind of a twist on that, since those two parts are the bottlenecks of the story, where it crawls near the generic pile the most.

Now for the screenshots. First of all, they inspired me to seriously consider adapting a custom grass ground tile for my project. The colours scheme used overall in this seem to be rather consistent, and have a very vibrant and lively atmosphere. Kudos on that. (The doors still need to be recoloured, though.)

However, even though I am a fog-whore myself, I have to agree with the others on the RTP tree fog. Their use in the said cases don't seem to add much but to busy the screen. If you are to use a fog, I would recommend going with a cloud fog as mentioned previously as well; but not the one that you showed afterwards (that one just looks like morning fog-fog). The RTP puffy ones might do, but I'd recommend to simply make a few black puffy shapes in photoshop. The maps in general are actually well designed in my opinion, and function nicely.

Anyhow, good luck with this. It certainly has potential.  :smile:

My opinion is quite divided as far as the story goes. The part about the two races and their interaction/relations is rather interesting and hold much potential, but the "sealed by master mage for 5000 years, then the descendant breaks the spell" part is somewhat of a turn off. I suppose that to make the second part of the story and the actual conflict work, however, that sealing-away component is required. It could still work with the right execution, but I think it is best to try to come up with some kind of a twist for it. You may find it helpful to start biting Lummy for swift solutions.

No, I'm pretty happy with the "Sealed by mage" part. Besides, Lummy's good at executing stuff properly; so if I do anything wrong, the first thing that I'll get from him is harsh criticism. I'll try to think of some kind of twist, though.

From the synopsis, I can't help but to get the feeling that the descendant of the mage getting the scroll and unleashing it feels rather "cheaty", if you know what I mean. Conveniently after exactly 5000 years later, a child finds the scroll (that hasn't been found for 5000 years by anyone) and it is easily unleashed just like that. I understand that this is just the synopsis, and things will be explained in detail in-game - But again, just try to put some kind of a twist on that, since those two parts are the bottlenecks of the story, where it crawls near the generic pile the most.

I think I'll explain that part to you over MSN. That's one thing that I'm NOT going to spoil now. Of course, I've already planned a twist for that part. I need to ask Lum whether it's OK with him when he's next online on MSN, though. : P

However, even though I am a fog-whore myself, I have to agree with the others on the RTP tree fog. Their use in the said cases don't seem to add much but to busy the screen. If you are to use a fog, I would recommend going with a cloud fog as mentioned previously as well; but not the one that you showed afterwards (that one just looks like morning fog-fog). The RTP puffy ones might do, but I'd recommend to simply make a few black puffy shapes in photoshop. The maps in general are actually well designed in my opinion, and function nicely.

Actually, I'm using a sunlight-overlay kind of thing right now. And it looks pretty good.

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w73/ ... nlight.png[/img]

 

[miss matcha]

That new screenshot (with the sunbeams) looks really pretty.  I actually thought your story sounded fairly interesting; the interaction between the 2 races, the jealously that grew out of the technological competition, and the events leading up to the wingers' hatred of the humans.  I imagine that you could piece together a very compelling cut scene explaining this backstory. 

I do agree with Reives though that in order for it to be really excellent, you're going to need to make sure a few plot elements are sealed up in-game.  For example, if humans have become so inferior as to warrant jealously and hatred, how is it that they have a mage who is so powerful, he can shut down an entire civilization?  I might throw in something explaining who these ultra-powerful mages are, and why (given their ultimate superiority over both races) the jealously thing would even affect them.  Obviously they aren't inferior to the wingers.  Why would they care? 

Perhaps they were once weak, but they were of a chosen few who possessed great potential, and they spent their life honing their skills so as to one day shut down the floating island... I'd also make sure to explain why in the world there was a scroll inside the forest with the capability of releasing the wingers... I'm sure you could come up with a viable explanation.

Anyways, I think you have a great start.  Based on what you have so far, I'd play your demo when it's released.

 

[serrated_colon]

I don't like this new overlay of yours. Isn't he supposed to be outside? The sun light would not come from CERTAIN PARTS OF THE SKY unless the clouds were really messed up or something. It needs to have more of a realistic feeling, even if it is a fantasy RPG, there needs to be EXPLANATION if you are gonna pull off this overlay.

 

[Toams]

I don't like this new overlay of yours. Isn't he supposed to be outside? The sun light would not come from CERTAIN PARTS OF THE SKY unless the clouds were really messed up or something. It needs to have more of a realistic feeling, even if it is a fantasy RPG, there needs to be EXPLANATION if you are gonna pull off this overlay.

Uhh.. you never witnessed the magic of 'sunbeams'?
It occurs when it's cloudy, and sunny.
At places where the sun breaks through the clouds, dense 'beams' of sunlight form.
You can clearly see those.

Oh, by the way, ChaosMaxima, this is a decent looking project, I didn't read the story and such, I just felt I had to comment on this post above.
I like the screenshots. Especially the one with the jail-like bars in the middle of the forest..
However, the sunbeams could be more.. real-ish.
There's a good tutorial for them here: http://www.rpgrevolution.com/forums/?showtopic=7919
(You gotta have photoshop though)