Quintessence - The Blighted Venom

[lunarea]

Albeit belated, congratulations on being the project of the month!

Your game has a wonderful flow to it and an immersive storyline. I'm looking forward to seeing more

 

[Scribblette]

"Who told you about the leash?!"

That made me laugh out loud. Bravo. The storyline in this is tighter than in others I've seen - while Nadir's Canon has charisma at a few points, in yours I've not yet felt the inclination to hunt for a fast forward button. Almost at the end of part 2, I think.

A few grammatical errors but nothing that couldn't be overlooked. Chapter one... I forget, even, but it's about the soldiers, and some word... I forget... in singular, not plural. Someone else has probably mentioned it by now.

Interested in how you planned out the making of this - game design document around for show? Also how long it took. Like the fogs for lighting. The RTP wasn't annoying like it usually is.

The music is fantastic. You've got three composers for your project or what?

 

[Reives]

Thank you Lunarea.

And Scribb, thanks for the pointers! I'll check to try to fix that cliff grammar thing. Feel free to PM me if you want to know how certain things were done. Cosmetic lighting was learnt from here: http://www.rmxp.org/forums/showthread.php?t=15030

The music was done by 3 composers including myself, but one of them (Kevin) retired now. The name of the composer of each song is at the end of each song's file name.

 

[Scribblette]

The battle system LOOKS very cool, mind you, especially in the movie clips, but my reflexes and patience levels... my second battle (against four snakes!) and first gameover was all that interrupted my playing session, haven't gotten back into it yet.

I think it could work better if the first battles had fewer enemies, or weaker bites, and some sort of reward for getting into battle rather than wanting to avoid them. Especially with a battle system that has obvious potential - and looks damn good, particularly in the movie clips.

Game design document - as in, how you planned it out. Not the content itself but the structure, I was curious. Battle system seems like it'd have been a rather interesting labor to design... glerp.

 

[Reives]

Heheh, the reward thing, as brought up many times now, is non-existent in this current Chapter 3 due to that it is the last chapter in the demo, hence not much use for levels. However, in the Chap 1-4 release later this month, there will definitely be experience points and item drops being present.

And the battle system's difficulty: It's my mishap that I forgot to include an in-game tutorial for it. I've received replies about its difficulty ranging from 'it's so easy it's boring' to 'I just can't get through them'. I think the main problem here is the learning curve; and due to its action based nature it's really hard to learn in a real battle. Being its creator and used to it, I find it easy to fight through most of the battles without loosing more than a quarter health (and remember that you can heal with Lunair).

But no worries! A tutorial about it will be implemented in-game to make the process much easier. I think I will also make the Chapter 3 normal battles easier, and then include a boss where the 4 blue scorpions group is at.

If you want, I can send you a save file skipping the battles for now. And sorry for the inconvenience!
---

Oh, and I don't really have a design document; but it's basically a mass use of pictures and variable manipulation through several hundred lines of common events. It's actually not that hard when you think about it, but it's pretty annoy to code it with eventing instead of normal programming due to language limitations. :|

I basically have a track variables event that retrieves all the important stats (mob's screen location, player's mana, etc.):
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v385/Reivier/CESS.jpg[/IMG]


And then do commands based on that.

At intro, I initialize each enemy's event according to their ID variable sent by touching their event; and the actual behaviour is inherited in their battle events with different pages.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v385/ ... /CESS2.jpg[/IMG]


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just some interior screenshots from Gaurav Town:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v385/Reivier/1-5.jpg[/IMG]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v385/Reivier/2-5.jpg[/IMG]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v385/Reivier/3-4.jpg[/IMG]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v385/Reivier/4-3.jpg[/IMG]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v385/Reivier/5-3.jpg[/IMG]

 

[Firestalker5]

Not to harp on you or anything, because they look great, but in the first screenshot there is a priority problem in the top left corner. The clothes rack you put there has the top part covered by the box that is supposed to behind it.

 

[Reives]

Oo, good find. Thanks a lot, will fix that right away.

 

[Scribblette]

Aye, also the flashback by the alchemist in town, the piano in the room from the kitchen... can be walked over. Not that it's a big deal, but FYI. The locked door hut on the first chapter also has a passable cliff on its right.

Ta for all the info on battle eventing. I don't comprehend it yet, but I've been focusing purely on pixel art and writing to this point.

By design document I didn't mean the battle stuff alone, however. I meant how you planned out the story and its implementation. ^_^

 

[Anglachel]

I just finished chapter 1 and I'm a little bit of the way through Chapter 2 so I can't comment on everything. But as far as first impressions go I was very impressed. The feel is very original and unique. The music was absolutely fanatstic at the start of the game. Although there was one repetetive tune while the action was taking place that annoyed me.

Its a lot to sit through of solid story and I think I still have a lot to go. It may not be for everyone but I enjoyed it.

I loved vikon. Definately some humour there. And his face just seems full of character unlike a lot of the others, most of which are generic. However all the expresions do add a lot.

I'll add more when I get further!

Oh and the start reminded me of Dark Eternal: Dissolution. (Thats not a bad thing)

 

[Reives]

@Shadow:
Thanks for the feedback! The tune that you found repetitive, is it the one at the intro where the two elemental things were fighting? And yep, the intro music video was indeed inspired by DE, heheh.

@Scribb:
Ah, ty for the heads up on those mapping glitches. I'll get to fixing them.

And as for the game design, I guess story-wise it's based on a 'fiction' I was writing two years back when I was 16 (hence crappy); stopped at a bit over 100 pages as I found RMXP, hahah. However as I went through with it in RMXP I saw that some stuff needed to change, and so I altered it. However, the core story's still heavily based on that. The writing was pretty horrible for the most part, and filled with a lot of grammar mistakes; it was like 4 years after I started learning English, so. :|

Just for fun, I'll post the first passage of the writing. It's probably one of the better parts of the written story.
(For the original version of Quintessence the game, I used this as intro; but for this refined version on this thread I changed it. Super-natural things weren't really used in the story of the writing.)

Act I[/FONT]

1327, 3rd month, day 5
Second hour and seventeen minutes past midnight

The vase met the ground with a loud clash as the young man rushed by. With trembling hands, he reached under his grass-sewn bed sheet and retrieved a notebook, a quill pen and a bottle of clear oily liquid. Dampening the quill in the bottle, he flipped to the blank page, fleetly trotting down the words as sweat dripped down from his forehead onto the tawny pages.

1327, Month 3, day 5

I knew something was out of place, but not like this... But if this is so, then where is the real her? And even worse, what if she. . .

What does it mean? No, I cannot state this here, for it is not safe.

But it is still her. If not the real her, she's been her for some time now... And nothing has yet happened. Perhaps I still have time.

Perhaps, just perhaps, I still have a chance.

He took a deep breath and wiped the sweat off his forehead. After redampening his quill in the crude bottle, he signed briefly at the bottom of the page as the rough handwriting above gradually faded into the thin air.

Reivier Wirt

Somewhat relieved that he has gotten it out of his head, he sighed and carefully placed the notepad, quill and ink back under the bed sheet.

The exhausted figure pushed himself up and darted through the opening of the leathery tent. He paused and stared into the calm night scene for a moment, only to hear the wind whistling through the trebled leaves. Dim, silvery moonlight sprayed upon the rustling branches, brushing gently against the thin, autumn night's air. With another sigh he began to saunter silently onward, but the sound of soft footsteps upon the grass made him to stop in his track and turn around.

Turn around to face the familiar figure that was now a stranger.

"Why is it that you are still up at this nightly hour?" The figure spoke softly, with a tone that Reivier had embraced countless times. "Do you not wish to have a restful sleep?" It added after a brief pause.

Reivier's brows lowered as he took a small step back. His trembling hand instinctively reached behind his belt for his dagger, but it was too late.

Under the serene shadows, the figure swiftly lashed out something colourless, yet shimmered in the reflection of the mellow moonlight.

Powders, perhaps.

But that was the last thing he saw.

-then it goes back to one day before that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Edit:

Rofl, I just finished a Vikon/Salory scene. Usually I don't laugh at my own jokes but I found this pretty funny; can't wait to get it released.


Edit 2:

Expected Chap 4 release date: a bit over July 20th.

 

[Twin Matrix]

Laggy video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YinX3wA4f1w
Keys and explainations are in the readme file.

It's a little confusing to learn tbh, I made a mistake of not having an in-game tutorial for it, heheh. Will have that for chapter 4 bundle though!

Ah, thank you. Too bad the battle system is horribly hard. I loved the game up to the point where you have to fight, though. 'Wish I could have gone past the first two battles and learned more about the world. :/

 

[Reives]

The battle system itself is not that hard to be honest once you are used to it, but the learning curve can be a huge pain. :p Sorry about that, I missed the in-game tutorial part.

But don't worry; I'm adding an in-game tutorial as well as lighten up the battles a bit next release with Chap 4 (a week from now probably). It will also include exp and level-up features in addition to new skills, too.

But for now if you wanna see the part after the battles, here's a save file to skip it : Just walk one step south after loading.

http://www.savefile.com/files/887387

 

[redmoon3580]

[Deleted]

 

[Reives]

Thanks. And eh, I used only 3 scripts, and they are pretty general:

-Advanced Message Script by Dubealex
-Caterpillar script by fukuyama
-Chrono-Trigger Menu system by Raziel

(And the skip title-page thing by anonymous.)

---

P.S. Chapter 4 is coming in perhaps 5-6 days. I am currently slave-labouring for it.
From today:

Day 1 - Finish the bunch of cut scenes in the end of chapter 4
Day 2 - Enhance the battle system with level-up features, new skills and two boss battles
Day 3 - Self beta test
Day 4 - Send to others to beta test while making ending video and composing its music
Day 5 - Repeat above
Day 6 - Release (Hopefully)

And no, Chapter 4 is far from the last chapter.

Edit: For anyone who's interested in playing this, don't download the current one. Wait for chapter 4 in a week or so; everything will be improved then.

 

[redmoon3580]

[Deleted]

 

[Calibre]

With events, not scripts.

 

[Reives]

then how did you do the battle system????

From the fully animated battle intro to the motion gradient health bars, the battle system is 100% event-created from scratch, utilizing over 70 variables and switches through 10+ parallel processing events...

:p


P.S. Zomg, these last few cut scenes I am currently making for the end of Chapter 4 actually makes me feel sorry for Lunair.

P.P.S. There's like 6 new original BGMs in the next release now. Still looking at about 5-6 days from today for release.

 

[Ratty524]

I hate Lunair. Every time she talks it makes me feel totally burned. xD
Shows good character development, though, since I can actually react in such a way that I feel like I'm part of the game.

Aside from that short, pointless post. I'm quite surprised the battle system was done with events. Keep it up! I can't wait for the next chapter!

 

[Reives]

Heheh, let's see if I can change your views a little with the upcoming chapter then, Ratty. :p Oh, and on a more thorough thought, Lunair might actually be the main character herself (heroine/villain opinionated), instead of Reivier. And Reivier is, at the moment, my least favorite character out of the cast (yet strangely my name reflects on him, heh).

Edit: Just finished Lunair's flashback scenes for the end of Chapter 4. Hands down my most enjoyable mini-story in the game so far in a bitter way.

 

[redmoon3580]

[Deleted]