The Edge of Chaos w/Demo

[Dis Calibur]

Here we go, the game I've been working on.

The Epic of Metatron part 1: The Edge of Chaos

The Basic Story

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The plot of the storyline follows a young knight known as Enoch Kluya who was once part of a heroic fighting force known as the Temple Knights. However he mysteriously vanished two years prior to the start of the game where he suddenly re-appears. Now he is seeking to do battle with an inhuman group of beast men known as the Anakim, while all the while a huge war is occurring between the Kingdom of Feragol and the Zelador Empire. The majority of the quest will be uncovering the secrets behind what happened two years ago and how Enoch's own quest for retribution will play out amidst a world that is gradually falling into chaos.

Characters(the Playable ones)

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Enoch Kluya: The son of the famed Kluya swordsman family from Farland which has served in the Kingdom of Feragol for several generations. At the start of Chapter 1 he joins the Temple Knights at the encouragement of father in order to learn about the world and expand his skills as a knight.

Alicia Branford: A Battle Maiden form the land of Altea who joined the Knights to fulfill the honor of a deceased warrior. She uses samurai styled equipment and the mighty katana, however she is highly inexperienced in actual combat. As a result she tends to overcompensate in combat by acting tough. Tends to look up to Master Osric as a mentor figure.

Cedric of Clan Skystorm: A mighty dragoon warrior from the distant and cold land of Alioth. He is the physically strongest of the Temple Knights and craves battle. However when there's nothing to do he's often found drinking or complaining about boredom. Also suffers from motion sickness.

Guy Teton: A knight captain who served as the bodyguard to the Prince of Zelador. He was chosen to join the Knights by the Prince due to his strong sense of reason and willingness for diplomacy. He acts as the Knights chief decision maker in their quest to battle rebel forces.

Manov Dezari: A fighting monk from the Holy Land of Isa. He was somewhat forced into the Knights at the insistence of his father so he could learn to be competent enough to take charge of the Isa Guard someday. He grew up a noble so he tends to think lowly of people lesser in status than he.

Janis Chizou: A nomadic assassin warrior from the desert land of Sanis. Says very little, except when it is important. He is the more stealthy member of the Knights and often times seems to reach or get into places the others can't.   

Other Characters

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Master Osric: The best swordsman in the lands of Nasira. he serves as a personal guardian to the Count of Isa and also heads the Jsara Knight Academy where he forms the Temple Knights as a way of countering the ever increasing troubles of the world.

Lord Edward Galander: The current ruler of the Kingdom of Feragol who was chosen by the nobles to act as regent over the infant prince. he works to appease the desires of the Feragol nobility while avoiding an all out conflict with Zelador.

Ron: The rebel captain who is leading the dissidents of Evaria into resisting the authority of Zelador. His actions are unwittingly bringing Zelador and Feragol into war with each other. He is the main antagonist for Chapter 1.

Screenshots!

First we have the inside of the Lake Shrine...

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Second we have a view of the Woods Fort(It's a fun but short area. Tooks me ages to debug though)

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Third, a shot of the rainy woods near Port Revival where packs of Kobolds roam randomly...

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Fourth, getting close to the mountain town of Faris here...

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And fifth, inside the mines of the Towering Mountain.

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What's below here are much older screenshots. Some things may be different in the demo...

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and lastly, a world map. (May not the best look looking thing, but it's the best I can do)

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Okay, so after all that, now you want to check it out?
Here's the demo.
The filename is EOM1CH1demoV01.exe
Filesize should be 19597 KB

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http://rapidshare.com/files/177959553/EOM1CH1DemoV01.exe.html

Some things about the demo...

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The demo covers all of Chapter 1. All of it.
It starts with the Prologue and then time skips back two years. Chapter 1 is essentially the story of the Temple Knights. 
I have play tested it quite a bit and everything should work smoothly(I can't rule out a typo I may have overlooked but it should be 99.9% typo free)

It also contains all the RTP necessary to run independently of the software.

I have timed myself while play testing it and I average the playtime to be about 4 hours. Being a through explorer, it can easily become more than 5 hours, speed running it can be done in about an hour and a half.

There are plenty of areas where useful scripts could be used to improve things. I acknowledge that. What you got here is something straight RM XP with no additional scripts. I have experimented with a few scripts, such as the large party ones I found here. Couldn't get them to work right so didn't include them(maybe I'm just too far gone into this now for those scripts to work). As such though...
I didn't encrypt the demo for the purpose if anyone who is more familiar with large party scripts can go ahead and try and get them to work with this.

The most that will be unique here graphic wise is the color edited sprites, battlers, and title graphic. Yup, for the most part it is mainly RTP. I work with what I got and to be perfectly honest, the RTP sprites aren't too far off from my original sketches of the characters. So it works out well for me.

I am currently aware of only a couple of bugs. One with the map item. It isn't a perfected item yet but it's not necessary for playing either. If you want to look at the map, it would better to look at the one in the topic here. As such, the bug is simply that the world map item can reset the screen tone of maps with screen tones back to neutral. I haven't figured out a way to work around that yet.
The other is that some tiles are passable when under trees while other times they aren't. Again I haven't quite worked it out, but it is far from a crippling issue and you'd have to go looking for it to find those spots.

And of course, if anyone comes across something that could be a bug or tile goof, let me know.

That said, there are a few secrets in the demo. Try to find them before exploring with the software.  :wink:

And yes, there are lots of references and homages to other games and stories throughout.

And that's it. Enjoy.

Edit: Just wanted to tidy a few things since the board shifted over.
Anyway, it's a been a bit now. Anyone have any thoughts about it thus far? Do I need to provide more info?

I guess I should have mentioned that the game is divided into four Chapters. I'm already working on Chapter 2 currently. I don't foresee the other chapters as being as lengthy as Chapter 1 individually. Oh, and it is my first project too by the way. (Well I did make a few silly titles just to test out the game engine but I don't really count those).

 

[Dis Calibur]

There isn't much to update on with this yet. Been busy.
Although I really was hoping there would be some kind of response by now so I could gauge where I'm going right and where I'm not going right. It's depressing when game topics with even less content than this get more responses. What's the deal people? I thought this place was for giving advice and criticism but getting nothing is even worse.

 

[pestilence]

Downloading as I type.
I'll try it out and post some comments later =]

 

[Xilef]

The opening battles are too long. I quit the game when the second encounter started up.
It was rather sudden to have bandits attack the shrine, that kind of jump straight into the game with a bandit battle is over used, I included that in my RPG game parody for the fact that a bunch of bandits attacking you at the opening is over used. Anyway, it is RTP generic and your demo, up to the second encounter atleast, didn't have much in it that seperates it from other games. Perhaps you are going all-out on story and forgot some mechanics?
And don't use the names Biggs and Wedge for the generic NPC pair, Square does that as a reference to Star Wars it became Square's RPG thing to do and it made me shiver when I read Biggs and Wedge.

 

[Dis Calibur]

The opening battles are too long. I quit the game when the second encounter started up.
It was rather sudden to have bandits attack the shrine, that kind of jump straight into the game with a bandit battle is over used, I included that in my RPG game parody for the fact that a bunch of bandits attacking you at the opening is over used. Anyway, it is RTP generic and your demo, up to the second encounter atleast, didn't have much in it that seperates it from other games. Perhaps you are going all-out on story and forgot some mechanics?
And don't use the names Biggs and Wedge for the generic NPC pair, Square does that as a reference to Star Wars it became Square's RPG thing to do and it made me shiver when I read Biggs and Wedge.

That made me laugh. Can't even get through the second fight? They're not that hard man.

Ok, I'll admit a bandit attack is a bit cliche. I'll think about what I could do to re-work it... but the attack does happen for a reason, so I can't just cut it out. I could reduce it to one battle(it's two fights the way it is currently).

Well Biggs and Wedge thing isn't really important so it can be changed.

Yeah, it is pretty story intensive. What would mean by "forgetting some mechanics"?

 

[Xilef]

That made me laugh. Can't even get through the second fight? They're not that hard man.

I never said it was hard, it was easy but took a while as the lancer dude had no attack effect and i had to rely entirely on skills. Just that after the first one I was taken straight into a second one and that made me stop playing as the first one took too long.

Games that are produced now a days have strong story, but a too strong story wouldn't be lenient enough to allow the game to flew around it. I generally got that vibe from the mostly-text intro and the scenario the player was dropped into.

 

[Dis Calibur]

I never said it was hard, it was easy but took a while as the lancer dude had no attack effect and i had to rely entirely on skills. Just that after the first one I was taken straight into a second one and that made me stop playing as the first one took too long.

Games that are produced now a days have strong story, but a too strong story wouldn't be lenient enough to allow the game to flew around it. I generally got that vibe from the mostly-text intro and the scenario the player was dropped into.

Well part of my idea for battles was to rely strategically on using skills for the event and boss battles, such as the enemies being hard to take down with just normal attacks, but making them vulnerable to certain attacks and status effects to give the player and edge in winning said fights. The bandits are highly vulnerable to being blinded and paralyzed which would prevent them from being able to attack much. There are regular enemies that can be hacked through with normal attacks, but event battles like so are meant to have more effort put into them in order to win.

As for your second part, do you mean that I have too much, or too little exposition at the start? That the player should have more freedom to explore before the battle? Less story and more gameplay?

 

[Xilef]

Less story, more game play. In my opinion, remove the opening text entirely and reveal all that you have to say about it whilst the player is in control, so the player almost immediately takes control and can wonder a bit before entering any kind of battle, have the player get the choice to read your prologue, like an NPC tells them about it, when she is praying perhaps have a wise old man wonder in saying, (Blah blah blah) "Have you heard about the history of this world? (Yes or No) *insert history and stuff* haha thanks for listening to the ramblings of a tired, old man."

You should really have an NPC tell the player that the bandits have a weakness for a certain type of skill, that puts the player into the mind set that slamming attack constantly won't always work so they wouldn't spend 10 minutes working out what effectively kills a guy standing in front of me like I did and then get tired out when more bandit come.

 

[Dis Calibur]

I have a few NPCs in the first town like that that give a bit more detail into the world. The opening prologue was kept rather general but I suppose there is a way I could work some of that into Noah.

Well this gives some ideas on areas to improve. I know the start of a game is critical as to whether a player continues on or not so I'll consider some changes.
Thanks for trying it out.