Outcast of Sentinel [DEMO]

[Emertinel]

Updates:
7/1/10 - HIATUS D:
6/12/10 - Demo released!
6/4/10 - Demo release date in sight! (June 12)
5/25/10 - Website up. (Website - Click here)
1/16/10 - Updated Thread, edited Story + All Character Bios. Added Banner.

Demo: Click Here


Release History:
v1.3 - Change game name + title screen' reduced amount of encounters in "Island Woods"
v1.2 - Passability bugs in Alteria City and cutscene fix at the end of the demo.
v1.1b - Changed font to Calibri from Futura Light
v1.1a - Fixed missing sound file(escape), added info teller, and added font with download
v1.1 - Fixed boat + bridge bug, and sidequest bug
v1.0 - Initial Release

-----Story----
It is the year 1619. Floyd is your average twenty-one year old soldier who lives in his own house, goes to a barracks and trains, and defends his country, Sentinel. However, his brother, Dane, is selected to be the heir of the king. After that day, things began to go downhill. Floyd continues his normal life for only a week, before the news of the old king's death. The soldiers of Sentinel come to a grim conclusion - their only neighboring country, Celtons, sent an assassin to kill the king in order to weaken Floyd's country. The next day, the people of Sentinel hold a celebration for Dane's ascension to the throne. Before the celebration began, Dane tells his brother a secret that makes Floyd decides to leave the country of Sentinel. There's spoilers up ahead, you can click it to ruin the story for you).

Spoiler

First, Dane was the true assassinator of the king.

Second of all, Dane told him to, since Dane foresaw war and did not want his brother to be caught in it. He claimed he knew that the king was actually a traitor to Sentinel, which could explain why Sentinel's military plans against the Celtons had failed miserably many times.
Floyd rallies two of his friends to go sail to elsewhere - somewhere far from Sentinel and Celton. Floyd explains that his brother was the true killer of the king, and Floyd couldn't continue living in Sentinel knowing his brother was a murderer, and they couldn't head to Greencoast like Dane said, since Floyd thought that there might be some sort of trap. Dane had also exiled Floyd from Sentinel, and that he was being pursued. Eventually, Floyd's party leaves, while Sentinel and Celton are thrown into a war caused by lies, and soon splits up into many parties believing a different view of the story of who killed the king.

Floyd later finds himself shipwrecked on an unknown island... Now he must explore it, and survive until they can repair their ship before moving on to a new land...



Character Bios: Main Protagonists (NOTICE IT SAYS MAIN)

Spoiler

Floyd:
Age - 21|Class - Swordsman
When Floyd was four, his father was killed in battle. Later, the war ended when he was nine. The following ten years of peace and nothing serious going wrong made Floyd a rather cheerful and optimistic person. However, his lack of being sad and angry weakened him a bit and usually goes into an outrage whenever he feels sad or angry. He is not quite a leader, either. His leadership skills aren't as refined as your typical hero's, but somehow, what he has works. He's not the most courageous person in the world, but not scared either. Somewhere in-between brave and cowardly. He normally likes to try out new things, provided that he is not in danger.

Spoiler

Lila:
Age - 22|Class - Archer
Lila was a recruit of Sentinel, and showed exceptional archer skills. Later, the government of Sentinel decided that recruiting females were a bad idea, as Lila didn't kill any enemies in the past five battles Sentinel had. Instead, she became a messenger for the king. She is actually probably braver than Floyd, but has weak leadership skills, resulting in Floyd being the leader. Lila can be stubborn sometimes. She can get bored easily, and is willing to do anything as long as it isn't very dangerous, unless she has no choice. Lila is also hates killing people, but will do it if she really has to.

Character Bios: Main Antagonist

Spoiler

Dane:
Age - 30|Class - none
He is envious of his brother, since Dane did not get accepted into SMS(Sentinel Military Services) while his brother did. That envy eventually became hatred, but Dane never showed it in front of his brother or his friends. Before that denial of going into the SMS, Dane was a gloomy person - he lost a lot of things. When he was thirteen, his father was killed(Floyd was four) and then his girlfriend later broke up with him when he was sixteen. Dane never said a word to anyone for a week. Then, five years later after the death of his father. All these holes in his life eventually made him empty with the lack of happiness. Again, he did not show this, but instead, displayed great kindness. Eventually, he ascended to the 'Duke' status and was selected heir, as well, ever since he and the king became good friends because they both had numerous things in common. However, Dane later secretly assassinates the king and blames Celton for doing so. Later, he blames Floyd for doing his dastardly deed and exiled him. Soon, this sparked a nation-wide search for Floyd, while Dane reshapes the SMS... the way he wants it.

The World of Brightcoast:

Spoiler

You could say the continent of Brightcoast is shaped a bit like Alaska, except much bigger. It has snowy forests and peaks in the north and south, and a desert in the middle. The desert was made the border between the two countries Sentinel and Celton. There is a mountain range that splits the continent in half. There are forests spread everywhere throughout the continent, provided that it isn't too north or too south, or far from an oasis. There are towns mostly inside the heart of the countries, while the outside of them are outposts. Also, there are farms close to the outposts. For some history, the countries were formed in the year of 1449, and there have been a total of five wars, two of them lasting for fifty years, while one was short, and another one was three years. The last one is the one that is going on in the plot. Sentinel is weakening, and Celton is getting stronger. There are currently two discovered islands with colonies on them: Greencoast and Springcoast.

Screenshots

Spoiler

The title screen of the game.

Part of the opening cutscene.

A mountain, made by a combination of RTP and Mack's Tilesets.

An ordinary battle.

A snow forest.

A save menu, 100% evented.

Credits

Spoiler

Emertinel – Mapping, eventing, etc.
Enterbrain – RMVX Engine
puppeto4 – Gameover Enhanced
BigEd781 – FFIX Save Screen
Bulletxt – Thomas Edison VX
D�vic + Isaacsol - Logo
Moon Man – Wall Extension
Mr. Anonymous – Translated Wall Extension
Yanfly – Display Actor Data
woranta - Custom Title Screen
Palkia989 – Beta Tester
Mack - Tilesets
Epic Ancient - Tut on removing enemy alphabet tags
TAM-Music - Music
Freedom House the 2nd - Music
Famitsu - Charset Generator

Website - Click here

 

[friend]

Your evented menu looks cool, but the tint in the snow mapping has lots of wrong, im not a tint expert, so I'll just refer you to Tindy's General Mapping Guidelines in the tutorials section of this forum.

 

[coyotecraft]

The plot twist is hard to understand. Why would the Sentinel Kings betray their people just because Celton is a better place to live? Not only that, why would Dane kill the previous King and do the exact same thing?
You never explained why the two countries were fighting in the first place. I could speculate that they are fighting for land and resources and these two undiscovered islands are going to solve everything.

 

[Emertinel]

The plot twist is hard to understand. Why would the Sentinel Kings betray their people just because Celton is a better place to live? Not only that, why would Dane kill the previous King and do the exact same thing?
You never explained why the two countries were fighting in the first place. I could speculate that they are fighting for land and resources and these two undiscovered islands are going to solve everything.

I'll try to clear the twist up, then. I stated the reason why they're fighting, but with you asking I guess it's not clear enough . I'll get to it by tomorrow.

 

[Crystalgate]

Seconding "plot twist makes no sense".

I like a lot of aspects of the plot. You have an explanation to why the main character will be important to the plot that actually makes sense, he's the brother of the villain. Most RPG plots (way to often including my own ideas unfortunately) have the hero become important due to some inborn super-ability. That said, your plot needs to be smoothed out at some places.

Did Dane do community services and "great achievements" and then become a king just like that? He accomplished that in three years even. If community services makes you eligible to become a king that you bet there will be people with 10+ years of community service. As for the great achievements, he gotta be really badass to become selected as a king after only three years of trying.

The plot twist reveals that he and the former king has a similar attitude. Maybe you could use that to explain the former king selecting him, say he saw a kindred spirit or something? That would explain better Dane believing his chances are anything better than abyssal.

Dane also really shouldn't kill the king one week after being selected as the heir. That will make him the prime suspect.

If Dane really hated Floyd, why did he decide to reveal the assassination? Why would he care if his brother got caught in the war? If anything, sending someone you hate of to war would be convenient.

I like what you've done so far with Floyd. His strengths and weaknesses are well balanced and makes sense. Change "scared" to "cowardly" though, it's a much better opposite to courageous.

Lila also seems to be well-balanced in her strengths and weaknesses. However, hating to kill people unless they piss you off does not make you a pacifist.

Other than that, you set up a plot in Sentinel, but then proceeded to move the main character away from it. This is OK, but you must ASAP get the character involved in something important again. Otherwise the player will be left wondering why they are here while the conspiracy is going on there.

 

[coyotecraft]

Dane also really shouldn't kill the king one week after being selected as the heir. That will make him the prime suspect.

Well he did say everyone suspected assassins from the rival country.
The whole picking a heir makes you wonder what kind of system is in place. Is it normal for the king to pick someone out of the crowd? How long would Dane normally have to wait? Maybe the title of King isn't the high position that we normally think of. There could be a counsel of elders or something above him.
Instead of selected as a heir, it would make sense if Dane was made a Duke/Earl/Baron/Lord whatever. So then if there was no heir to the throne he would be next in line.
But this being a fantasy world, you could make up a system of your own. I would just use different titles so people don't get confused. For example Final Fantasy X had 4 maesters and 1 grand maester that were leaders of Spira.

 

[Emertinel]

I made some revisions, changing Dane's bio and minute edits to the other two. I extended the story a bit, and edited the story a bit too. I'll be changing that snow forest screen, I found Tindy's mapping guidelines and found the snow tint. I'll have that up soon. I cleared up the reason why Dane wanted Floyd to leave and avoid war (Dane set up a trap). I think I might have missed a few things I need to add/edit/remove...

 

[Sabao]

I can't wrap my head around how Dane seems to be a brilliant military strategist when he couldn't even get into the SMS. I could assume his accomplishments in war is due to his conniving with the rival state, but even then the very fact that a seemingly untrained civilian is trusted to lead an army is also hard to understand.

 

[Emertinel]

I can't wrap my head around how Dane seems to be a brilliant military strategist when he couldn't even get into the SMS. I could assume his accomplishments in war is due to his conniving with the rival state, but even then the very fact that a seemingly untrained civilian is trusted to lead an army is also hard to understand.

*facepalm* I'm so stupid! I can't believe I missed that detail in my own story! :sad: Well, I tried making a logical addition where Dane gets trained later on in the toughest barracks, therefore, having him being a rather good military strategist.

 

[Crystalgate]

*facepalm* I'm so stupid! I can't believe I missed that detail in my own story! :sad: Well, I tried making a logical addition where Dane gets trained later on in the toughest barracks, therefore, having him being a rather good military strategist.

That addition looks very much like a patch to a plothole. There have to be plenty of people trained in that barrack meaning we should have a lot of military badasses if being trained there is enough. In that case Sentinel would have won the war since they are only taking 1 loss for every 10+ the enemies takes. If merely being trained there isn't enough and you need talent as well, this gets us back to the question of why he didn't make it into SMS.

Even without going into details like that, the underlaying problem is that Dane wasn't badass enough to enter SMS, but he was badass enough to become a king.

There's plenty of options. You can make Dane be rejected by SMS despite having the needed competence. For example, an officer who handled Dane's application could have had a personal beef with him. You can also give him a way of becoming a king without having to be a military genius. Other than the example I gave in my former post, Dane may have achieved that position by use of other skills than military ones.

You could also go with what you already did and have Dane become a badass after being rejected by SMS. However, if you don't want that to look like a glaring plothole patch, you will have to put much more thought into it that "he got some training".

 

[Emertinel]

I'll need to think for a few days to try to come up with a logic explanation for that part... or I might just replace it with something else.

 

[Sabao]

Tread carefully. As Crystalgate just said, you don't want it to seem like just a patch job. Seeing as this involves a very essential part of your story I see that you might have to rewrite the larger part of the story in all. Perhaps Dane could have allied with the enemy state to assassinate the late king and coerced/conspired with the other nobles so he could assume the throne with very little else against him, and to ease public suspicion, blame was placed on Floyd?

 

[Emertinel]

I'm putting this game on a brief hiatus since I have lost interest in making games (it'll come back later like it usually does), and think about how to edit Dane's story...

 

[Emertinel]

I evidently revived this game from a shorter-than-expected hiatus. I shouted, "FUCK YOU!" in front of the barracks training and the military achievements, and replaced it with something a little more... logical. Now, as I'm typing, I realized I left something out... perfect...

 

[coyotecraft]

Dane's description is still wishy washy.You call him a traitor like he's going to hand everybody over to Celton. Even though he saved a town, became Duke, and saved his companions; he's going to betray them all because he has a grudge against the SMS. sibling rivalry. His father died. And his girlfriend left him when he was thirteen :haha:
Sometimes less is more. I think you're better off not explaining his motives:

Duke Dane ascended the throne by secretly assassinating the King. As King he exiles his own brother and plans to recreate the SMS (for the worst) which weakens Sentinel.

 

[Emertinel]

Hopefully, I finally got it this time... ...and I find more errors and plot holes. I think I actually might need a major revision in the dialogs in the game with this change. I think I might be making it more interesting and answering a few more unanswered questions that were skipped over by me. *huff huff* Off to work again!

 

[Crystalgate]

I don't see any plot-holes in Dane's bio anymore. However, I think there's still a few detail to attend to.

You don't need the bio to tell us twice that he didn't make it into SMS while his brother did, once is enough.

The part where his girlfriend left him seems insignificant. At 16 you rarely expect the relationship to last for very long. Compared to losing your father and not achieving the career you desire, a girlfriend who broke up should matter very little. Granted, there are 16 year olds who allow such a thing to really get to them and doesn't move on, but simple saying Dane is such a person is not a good idea. You better do a really good job with characterizing Dane if that's what you're going for. I think an easier way is to raise his age when that happened further and change the girlfriend to a fiancée who broke the engagement and married another man.

Other than that, the bio is looking good. He is looking really balanced when it comes to strengths and weaknesses. He could become a duke, but not make it into SMS. He certainly has talent, but not the one that's needed for the career he desired. He could put up a convincing outer facade and keep it up, but he couldn't get over the fact that he didn't make it into SMS (I'm assuming that's the case since he's so bent on changing SMS,) despite now being king. I think you have a solid villain.

 

[Emertinel]

Time to revive this project from the second page! I'm considering to release a demo in order to renew the interest in this game. I'm not sure if I should release a demo or a video or just more screenshots. I've put up a poll (for some reason) to see what I should release.

I'm not really focusing on making S:E right now, as I'm addicted to Warcraft 3 at the moment, so anything I release will take some time.

 

[Emertinel]

After a 3 or 4 month break, I've decided to start up the project again, and I realize no one's even voted at the poll, so I've really no idea what you guys want: a demo, screenies, or a video of gameplay or something. I've somehow managed to pull away from Warcraft 3 (very, very hard xD) and start working (actually, not working. More like fixing the 75923857425602065439 bugs the game has) on this project. It's not dead, and I hope I won't abandon it.

Oh yeah, and

*bump*

 

[coyotecraft]

Video's are nice so we can see the game in action without downloading it ourselves.
Demos let us play test it and find errors.
I don't think you need anymore screenshots. Just make the game. You'll get farther then if you wait around for critique.
You can worry about generating interest in your project after if completed.