Greater Realms

[bladeking77]

Background and Story :

Spoiler

BACKGROUND:
Even though few actually know about this, there are many realms out there.
They are divided into Greater and Lesser.
No one ever managed to count the exact number of the lesser ones...
But there are only 4 Greater Realms: Arethon, Tehyllus, Demonia and Divion!

Arethon-( which is very similar to our "Earth") is more of a name
for a planet than a realm. It is by the way, the main realm,
around which, the story will evolve.

Tehyllus- is a pretty strange one. There are legends that say,
that it is the same world as Arethon, but few Millenniums in the Future.

Demonia- is( obviously) a realm of Demons. Inhabited with
various savage demons, it is the worst problem for Arethon.

Divion- is a peaceful realm. All living beings there are living
peacefully and are very balanced. They don't interfere with any
other realms, though they are extremely POWERFUL!

Portals between these realms, are occasionally opened.
Mostly between Demonia and Arethon( About every 120 Years).
People on Arethon have always managed
to drive the demons away. At least, up until Now!

STORY:
Main story begins 87 years after the last Demon Attack.
Demons somehow managed to accelerate their Invasion.

Chapter I - Initiation of Destiny:

Axin just woke from a nap in the morning, when Shane comes in "inviting" him on an Adventure.
When Axin finally accepts it, Shane says that they need to go talk to Village Elder first.
Elder explains them what is their "adventure"-That he thinks that something strange is happening at Hasset Ruins.
But since they are too weak to go there( you have the option to go there 1st level, but you will indeed be killed.),
They have to get stronger first. So in order to get stronger they will beat some wolves and Giant Bees, they will also
have to fight against a wolf-boss, to save a Kid(Ron) and his Father(Garph-Blacksmith).
After that, they will travel to a new Realm, to pass the "Trial of Willpower".
Finally being strong enough they are going to the ruins and Kill a "Demon General". After that, they will meet Gannet,
who will explain some important things. Then they will return to the village, after which... The real adenture beggins...

Chapter II - A Long Journey:

Coming later.

Characters and Other NPC's :

Spoiler

Axin-Main Character

Last name: Mendey
Class: Fighter
Age: 21

Axin's mother died soon after he was born. He's father took care of him, and trained him from the moment
he could stand on his feet. Then, one night, after about 8 years, he simply disappeared, leaving Axin alone
in the village of Saki. Since then Axin has continued his training along with Shane, and with the
help of the villagers, he had a peaceful life. Well, at least up until now.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shane-Side Character

Last Name: Teryn
Class: Apprentice
Age: 20

Meredith's son, and closest thing that Axin has to a best friend. His father left the village, looking
for a clue to why Axin's father left, or where he left. Shane practices and is very talented with magic.
Even though his mother disagrees with him using magic, he still continues. He is not bad or
something, but he is pretty stupid and irresponsible, so he barely even understands the meaning of danger.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gannet-Side Character

Last Name: Rede
Class: Stonebreaker
Age: 46

Not much is known about his past( At least not in the first two chapters). He joins you after you defeat
Sceiton( Final boss in first chapter). He is a member of the Council of "The Guards". Knowing much about
Demons and other Realms, he explains to Axin about everything he knows so far. After that he asks you to
come with him back to Hazedon City..
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Tein-NPC

Career: Village Elder
Age: 44

Tein is the Elder of Saki Village. He owns the house in which reside most of the villagers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Garph-NPC

Career: Blacksmith
Age: 34

Garph takes care of all tools, and sometimes weapons needed for the villagers.
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Lucy-NPC

Career: Nothing Specific
Age: 31

Sometimes drinks, sometimes hunts, sometimes help other villagers, but she mostly sleeps or does nothing.
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Phelan-NPC

Career: Hunter
Age: 26

He is responsible for hunting, and is in charge of watching over Ealen Woods.
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Meredith-NPC

Career: Mostly, Cook
Age: 36

Since there are not many villagers in the Saki, she, with sometimes help of others, is cooking food for everyone.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ron-NPC

Career: Kid
Age: 11

A boy who's almost as irresponsible as Shane, usually doing something stupid.
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More Characters and better descriptions Later.

Features and Screenshots :

Spoiler

The images are Resized. Right click and press view image for full size.

Let's begin with something, that's vital for all RPG's:

MENU( MenuStatus Mod - PHLiM2):

(Down below are things which it contain.)
INVENTORY- And fair number of items to come with it.

(More Items coming Soon.)
CHARACTER- (Yanfly - Scene Status ReDux)Open's a detailed character window:

(For developing, viewing and equipping your Characters.)
BESTIARY- (Yanfly - Bestiary)So you could See your enemies.

(All you need to know About your enemies.)
JOURNAL- (Aindra's - Custom list and pages) Well as you can see....

(This is an example for QUESTS part of your journal. There will also be CHARACTERS, ITEMS, And LOCATIONS, each containing lots of Entries!)
SAVE- What would a game be without a saving option?
EXIT- Hope you won't use it right after starting the game!


Now for the Mapping part :

(Ealen Forest is the first dangerous part in game- Some enemies await you there.)

(Saki village... your hometown.)

(Outer part of the Hasset Ruins.)

(As soon as you wake up, Shane comes to talk to you.)

(Beginning of one of the simplest side quests in your village.)


And now... Battle Scene (Tankentai- Battle system):

(Front view Third person Battle system.)

(Just about to kick some Wolff-asses.)

(Even the weakest of demons are capable of killing you. )

Video:

Spoiler

A video that shows a bit of the gameplay:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB2-XpKLe4o

Credits:

Spoiler

Scripts:

MenuStatus Mod......................................................PHLiM2
Exp Add-on.......................................................Dariathan
Neo Gauge Final...................................................Woratana
Outline Text......................................................Woratana
Sideview Battle System......................................Tankentai(Enu)
Animated Title Screen.........................................Hanzo Kimura
Battlebacks VX.................................................DerVVulfman
Scene Menu ReDux + KGC Custom Menu Command................Yanfly Engine RD
Scene Shop ReDux..........................................Yanfly Engine RD
Bestiary + Display Scanned Enemy..........................Yanfly Engine RD
Display Party Data........................................Yanfly Engine RD
Scene Status ReDux........................................Yanfly Engine RD
Display Item Query........................................Yanfly Engine RD
Display Skill Query.......................................Yanfly Engine RD
Display Victory Aftermath.................................Yanfly Engine RD
Icon Reference Library....................................Yanfly Engine RD
Event Chase...............................................Yanfly Engine RD
Custom List & Pages.................................................Aindra
Attribute System..............................................332211/uresk
Neo Message System................................................Woratana
Mini Map..........................................................Woratana
Time System.......................................................Jet10985
Interface For Win 32 API...............................................KGC
Title Direction........................................................KGC
Draw Format Text.......................................................KGC
Extended Equip Scene...................................................KGC
Distribute Parameter...................................................KGC
Equip Extension........................................................KGC
Map Lightening.........................................................KGC
AnitLag.............................................................Anaryu

Graphic:

Main Facesets.......................................................Kaduki
Other Facesets\Several Charactersets...............................Vibrato
Main Charactersets(Generator)..........................Damian666/Hacker618
Windowskin(Generator)......................................Aindra/Woratana
Additional Tilesets...........................................REFMAP(Mack)
Iconset...................................................Whitecat,Kaduki,
.............Tim Wendorf/Urbansquall,Counterclockwise,Enterbrain,Nintendo,
.......Square Enix, GrandmaDeb, zbdarkflame, SBS, Twillight, SD-Arius,Wong

All resources that are not credited, are either Standard RTP, Mine or
I simply forgot to credit them. If you see a mistake don't flame me, let
me know instead, and I'll be happy to fix it.
Also I'm using lot of sprites for Battlers from this site:
http://lud.sakura.ne.jp/battler00.html
But I don't know whom to credit. If someone does, Please let me know.

Demo (NOT AVAILABLE!) :

Spoiler

I plan on releasing the Demo when I finish First Chapter, so... Demo coming soon!

Please note that this game is Still in early development, meaning that any material in the Screenshots, or anywhere in this thread might be modified, changed or removed. Also I will add new materials as I go
on with my project.

About the Poll. I need a lot of facesets, because I want for almost every communicatible characters to have one(including Demons, Dragons, Magic trees...).
And since there aren't any covering it all in the same style, I need to use various Facesets, from various Artists.
I was just wandering whether or not would that spoil the game's atmosphere or something.

If you have any comments or feedback on your mind... Please, let me know what it is. It is always highly appreciated.

 

[Kaimi]

Screenshots are all well and good, but story isn't very... deep. I must said battle are gonna look great (you "frontviewed" Tankentai - how's that?)!

 

[bladeking77]

Screenshots are all well and good, but story isn't very... deep. I must said battle are gonna look great (you "frontviewed" Tankentai - how's that?)!

Well, I think that story will be quite deep and good, I just didn't know how to
write it well in a few sentences. By the way it's more about how will
the details be played off, than the story itself. But off course I will
still work on it.

Tankentai is very customizable, so you could make many things out of it.
I just customized it to Front view.

PS: Thanks for your opinion. :grin:

 

[bladeking77]

Thread updated. Added credits, and some other stuff.

 

[Kaimi]

When are we going to see a demo? I can't wait!

 

[bladeking77]

Well, I'm not going to lie to you. I still have a lot of things to add, and then testing and balancing... All in all, it might take a few months, but I think that first demo should be ready in about 1-2 months.
Thanks for the interest by the way, it should give me motivation to speed it up a little.

 

[Kaimi]

That's a lot of time... But all I can do is wait.

 

[Star]

Okay so I read it over. The story's part has a few grammar errors you might wanna check out. Mainly this part

Spoiler

Elder explains them what is their "adventure"

It would sound better if it was

Elder explains to them, what is their "adventure"

or

Elder explains to them, what is to be their "adventure"

Enough about that, I suck at grammar myself, dunno why I'm correcting you, it might not even be wrong.

Then I noticed that your game seems to have a lack of female playable characters. It is not very cliche, but it does seem like maybe they need a little order to their testosterone levels. I dunno, maybe you got something against females.

About the maps, I'm not even sure, I don't do VX graphics. So I have no idea if your mapping is great, terrible or awesome. Except that table in front of the old man Tein complaining about Shane looks like it's floating without a bottom.

I'm not so sure about the battle's, cause the character sprites look out of place from the enemy battlers. Maybe you should use enemy sprites instead of battlers, or vice versa. Does VX even come with enemy sprites? I really don't know :crazy: I tried VX and just never liked it.

As for the realm of Demonia the first thing that comes to mind is going to Hell on Earth in DOOM! CYBERDEMON :shock:

Overall good work with the game, I mean afterall it should be good enough to get more comments than this.

 

[dadevvtsvre]

I looked over your screenshots and info real quick, here are some of my thoughts.

You might want to consider changing your game's font. Comic Sans is a universally hated font and looks very silly in RPGs! There are better fonts to use that are more appropriate and liked, just remember to keep it legible and clean.

Apart from the font your menus look very crisp and sleek; really appealing.

I'm not sure I understand the "enemy's distance in relation to it's danger" thing. Wouldn't an enemy being position farther away be less dangerous, instead of more dangerous? It's a cool feature to have but seems kind of contradictory. Unless I'm misunderstanding?

Urgh, I'm assuming you have random battles going by the maps. This is entirely up to you but I know very few people who are fans of random battles. Generally the more liked alternative is to have enemy sprites roaming your map; touching the sprite initiates a battle, and the enemies will chase you around the map. (see games like Earthbound or the Mario & Luigi RPGs) Again, it's up to you, but unless the random encounters aren't very frequent they can easily turn a player off of the game.

All in all, a very promising looking game! The custom art looks nice as well. I'll try and give the demo a whirl when you get it out. Good luck! :robot:

 

[bladeking77]

First off, thank you for taking the time to write a reply.

@Star - Thanks for the grammar correction. I'll fix things up as soon as I update the thread next time. As for females... Maybe I do have something against them, maybe not... Dunno, but out of total 9 or 10 playable Characters, I think that 3 or 4 Female Characters should suffice.
VX is very screwy and some things are really hard to make on it. I can only use tiles I have and there aren't very many of them (At least less than in XP, I think). It doesn't have Enemy sprites so I have to use Battlers instead. And therefore I think that it will be a downfall since Player Characters are Animated, and Enemies aren't.

@Dave Strider - Why are Comic Sans hated!? I like them. But oh well, guess I'll change them. The menu has to look nice, because that's what I've been working on the whole time. Mapping and adding some new items/enemies/characters won't be a problem, so once I'm finished with the Menu, the only thing left is Eventing.
"The further, the more dangerous it is." I think you got it completely wrong. It's not related to battle itself. It tells you that in a Sreenshot before that you got a fight in a sunny forest, so there aren't strong enemies there, but the further (Deeper into the forest) you go, there will be More, and Stronger enemies to face. It's practically a feature that every game has.
As for the Random battles, I played both Earthbound and Mario and Luigi RPGs and I definitely liked them both. I am one of those people who dislikes Random Battles, but I'll stick to them for now. Since Greater Realms isn't just Rushing and Fighting, I'll reduce the frequency of encounters.

One last thing, which fonts would you Recommend?
And thanks again to both for replying.

 

[bladeking77]

Update:
-Added new Screenshots.
-Added a Video(which might be boring).
-Updated a Little of about everything else.
-Added a poll, because I'd really like to know your opinions.

Also, just so you'd know, battles will not be random, they will occur once you touch an enemy on the map.

 

[Crystalgate]

The story is rather bland looking so far.

First we have the four realms. Traveling between realms can be cool, but they don't seem very interesting. We have the normal world, the demon world and the angel type world, none of them showing any sign of containing anything we've not already seen over and over. There's also Tehyllus which we know very little about, but with three out of four worlds looking rather dull, there's very little reason to think the fourth world will be much better.

Then comes the start of the game. The adventure is sure interesting for the heroes, but for the player "investigate some ruins" is trivial. Nobody is going to feel exited about it. Worse, you then tell the player to basically go and level up. Nobody wants to hear that they are supposed to do something that won't progress the story or lead to anything interesting. After that they are off to the "Trial of Willpower" which again I don't see many looking forward to. Trial's in RPGs which are supposed to test mental strength are rarely well done.

Finally they will go to the ruin which a player will read as "at last I get to progress the plot."

The characters aren't very interesting either. Only Shane has any personality in his description and that personality is described no further than "stupid" and "irresponsible".

You have said you don't know how to make the story seem good in a few sentences. That's understandable, but saying that you think the story will be deep and good won't really cut it. Unless there's something interesting and/or well though trough i your game description, few will expect there to be any of that in the game. After all, would you dig for diamonds when all you can see on the surface is dirt?

If your story is really going to be deep and good, it doesn't have to be as generic as it is on the surface. You can start with asking yourself why Axin and Shane are spending time on combat training, time that could have been spent on farming instead. For example, I take it Shane knows offensive spells? If so, why didn't he train "make crop grow better" magic or something else that's more likely to benefit a village? Also, why the heck would his father leave him just to know why Axin's father left? The story hints at Axin's father leaving for a mysterious reason that may very well be extremely important, but the reason you gave Shane's father isn't anything a decent man would leave his wife and child for.

Tidy up the story a bit so that it makes more sense. If what you describe here starts to look well though trough, we will expect the rest of the game to also be well though trough.

 

[bladeking77]

The story is rather bland looking so far.

First we have the four realms. Traveling between realms can be cool, but they don't seem very interesting. We have the normal world, the demon world and the angel type world, none of them showing any sign of containing anything we've not already seen over and over. There's also Tehyllus which we know very little about, but with three out of four worlds looking rather dull, there's very little reason to think the fourth world will be much better.

Then comes the start of the game. The adventure is sure interesting for the heroes, but for the player "investigate some ruins" is trivial. Nobody is going to feel exited about it. Worse, you then tell the player to basically go and level up. Nobody wants to hear that they are supposed to do something that won't progress the story or lead to anything interesting. After that they are off to the "Trial of Willpower" which again I don't see many looking forward to. Trial's in RPGs which are supposed to test mental strength are rarely well done.

Finally they will go to the ruin which a player will read as "at last I get to progress the plot."

The characters aren't very interesting either. Only Shane has any personality in his description and that personality is described no further than "stupid" and "irresponsible".

You have said you don't know how to make the story seem good in a few sentences. That's understandable, but saying that you think the story will be deep and good won't really cut it. Unless there's something interesting and/or well though trough i your game description, few will expect there to be any of that in the game. After all, would you dig for diamonds when all you can see on the surface is dirt?

If your story is really going to be deep and good, it doesn't have to be as generic as it is on the surface. You can start with asking yourself why Axin and Shane are spending time on combat training, time that could have been spent on farming instead. For example, I take it Shane knows offensive spells? If so, why didn't he train "make crop grow better" magic or something else that's more likely to benefit a village? Also, why the heck would his father leave him just to know why Axin's father left? The story hints at Axin's father leaving for a mysterious reason that may very well be extremely important, but the reason you gave Shane's father isn't anything a decent man would leave his wife and child for.

Tidy up the story a bit so that it makes more sense. If what you describe here starts to look well though trough, we will expect the rest of the game to also be well though trough.

I get your point... "The game looks Boring, and because of that, many people might not play it, to see whether it really is, or not."
But, gimme a break here, This is my first Project(Other than the Three-Weekly Challenges) and story-telling was never a good side of mine... uch:

However, thanks for your feedback, it has given me some insight on my flaws. :thumb:

I'll try to give more info the next time I update the thread. :rock:

 

[mouse_std]

i think it looks good for now (havent played the game so not too sure )
*regarding character : i kindda agree with @crystalgate ,your main character need more ...character :blank:
my example: (im not forcing you too its just what i had in mind)
1.Axin mother died and raised by just a father(so maybe he was bullied when he was a kid and that event made him a passive person/level headed person/crowd hater/peacefull/nature/etc).
as for shane, surrounded by whole family made him a cheerfull person/etc , doesnt understand the meaning of danger doesnt exactly mean his stupid and irresponsible, maybe not a level headed person and rush things too quickly and made the journey much more dangerous and unpredictable (for axin of course :haha: ) and axin had to help.
2.axin had to live by himself ,that made him much more independent and more mature than shane whose life's been pampered, and when shane ask him on a journey(for some reason) axin refuse at first, but because he needed the reward money he go along with it. make a reason for every action , ppl dont just go to a ruin just because theres an earthquake there or some old ppl told them too it would be weird.
3.make axin and shane have contradictory moral view about which path they should take ,ex: chopping whole woods for ppl to live in (its either protect the nature or help ppl live) , stop a tyrant leader taxing money from poor farmer or uphold the law and stop poor farmer ,etc.
when i see axin and shane description i immidiately think of dark and light :box: opposite to each other but complement nicely (in a story).
*regarding story: it seems the story revolve about 2 friends [and some tag along ppl later on] that want to improve themself and then go to a ruin for...dunno why, it didnt describe , i hope you cooked a very good storyline for that cuz the beginning of the game is what draws ppl in , and better if it gives some moral story.
*the screenshot number 7 and 10 has a tree cutted by a fence, be carefull about that :smile:
*i especially like the original drawing (greater realms picture, a friend back to back) :smile: , not perfect but a drawing that's original gives a whole new respect (if not from anyone else, its from me ) :smile: