The Epitome of Anima; Update

[Muraiko]

The game looks good.....no not good GREAT! though something about the facesets .. I don't know something just bugs me about the facesets you have for some of the people but I won't judge a game souly on facesets, can't wait to play it though

If you ask me... I think that only Davin and Phaeth's face look a bit "strange" compared to everyone else, but I really like the work I put in to making them, and to my eyes, I love the way everyone looks. So I'm still gonna be using them. I also still want to keep the white background around them, because I think it looks nicer in-game. Instead of just having a head floating there, the box kind of divides the portiat and map from each other. Just my oppinion.

I'm still gonna be using the realistic faces. That's not gonna change. But If I need to take time to make them look nicer, then I will. (Sorry, just that I don't want to settle for anime, cartoon, or generated facesets.)

Wow, you bought rpg maker, did you?

I just don't like theives. You can argue if they have the right to steal, and if I legally can't say or do a thing about it, but I'm not so enthusiastic about the idea of working so hard on something that somebody else will just take. I'll be highly offended if someone just steals my resources or scripts without even asking me, and I'm sure there are other people out there who wouldn't like it either.

Yay! Nasty flashes are gone, well for spells at least. Glad to see you're still awokring on this and that you're still active. I still haven't beaten the first demo, but oh well, we'll just see how this one works.

I'm pretty sure that all the flashes are either gone, or censored. I'm not entirely sure. I know for a fact that the spells, scenes, and party management are in the clear, so I'm glad that would be of help to you.

This looks pretty average, you should work on your mapping!

Yeah... mapping isn't really my strong side... but hey, at least it's decent, and not so ugly anymore that you just want to rip out your eyeballs. I know that my mapping isn't the best in the world, but at least it's not the worst either. I'm still working at it.




As for everyone else, thanks for the helpful compliments! If everything goes as planned, I might have the demo up tomorrow. I've also extended the the demo, so you'll get a bit more gameplay before the demo ends (It's gonna end with a shocking twist! So pay close attension to the story!)

For those of you who already downloaded my game before, and played it, then I must ask you to please stop, and wait for the new demo. The old one is just gonna mess up somewhere anyway. I would also advise you to start a new file, because I've changed ALOT of things at the begining, things you don't want to miss. The story won't make much at all anyway if you just keep continuing your file from whereever you are at.

[Fisherson]

I'm eargerly awaiting the demo and i'll just go delete my copy as I never finished it anyway.

[Muraiko]

Alright, finally got around to uploading it. (I had a long pottery report I just had to do this morning. Took me forever...) Anywhere, it is! My game size has gotten smaller since last time. I think it used to be about 80 Mb or something. Well, now it's about 31.1 MB, so the size cut by more than half. Please play my game and tell me what you think!

 http://rapidshare.com/files/216927790/Arcane_Odyssey.rar.html

[Fisherson]

Awesome! Downloading now. If my new Winrar works good i'll give you a reveiw, since I can't open the file otherwise.

[Muraiko]

*Kick* and whatnot.


I haven't been online much, nor was I able to advance as far as I wanted in my game, just because of school, tests, and all that stuff. Anyway, school just ended for me yesterday, so I have whole summer to myself now! Yeah!

Anyways, I've made some major changes in my game since my last update. I've added three new playble characters that will join your party, so now there are a total of nine party members, and not six anymore. I thought the game would be more "RPG-like" if I actually had a little more than just a small amount of characters.

Buijoh is now an important character who will join your party. I also gave him a make over, so he's custom now, instead of just something thrown together with the generaters. He has a tribal spear, and has useful spells that can boost up his own stats.

Kichi is a completely new character I just made up. She was on teh same pirate crew as Davin. Her weapons of choice are boots. She's pretty much a kicker, with techniques that can manage your money or items.

Zaikoat is also playalbe now. Thought it would be kinda cool to have an "animal" party member.

I also redid Sophie's hair, because the whole "Pink Pigtails" thing was kind of getting to me. There actually are alot of characters in games and anime shows who have pick pigtails. So I made her do her hair differently. I think she looks more mature this way.

I also added a "Character's Eyes" HUD. Now there will be a small picture of the character's eyes of those who are in your party. It also has the button that you assigned them (Like pressing - key for the party leader and stuff) so it'll be more simpler than to have to remember what key switches you to what teammate.


I'm still working on this game first priority, so hopefully the whole summer will help me pregress far! I'm actually getting pretty close to finally "finishing" the game. I'm about 75% done now. I'll plan on getting this game done 100% before my senior year is over next year, if I'm lucky that is.

[Fisherson]

*Kick* and whatnot.


I haven't been online much, nor was I able to advance as far as I wanted in my game, just because of school, tests, and all that stuff. Anyway, school just ended for me yesterday, so I have whole summer to myself now! Yeah!

Anyways, I've made some major changes in my game since my last update. I've added three new playble characters that will join your party, so now there are a total of nine party members, and not six anymore. I thought the game would be more "RPG-like" if I actually had a little more than just a small amount of characters.

Buijoh is now an important character who will join your party. I also gave him a make over, so he's custom now, instead of just something thrown together with the generaters. He has a tribal spear, and has useful spells that can boost up his own stats.

Kichi is a completely new character I just made up. She was on teh same pirate crew as Davin. Her weapons of choice are boots. She's pretty much a kicker, with techniques that can manage your money or items.

Zaikoat is also playalbe now. Thought it would be kinda cool to have an "animal" party member.

I also redid Sophie's hair, because the whole "Pink Pigtails" thing was kind of getting to me. There actually are alot of characters in games and anime shows who have pick pigtails. So I made her do her hair differently. I think she looks more mature this way.

I also added a "Character's Eyes" HUD. Now there will be a small picture of the character's eyes of those who are in your party. It also has the button that you assigned them (Like pressing - key for the party leader and stuff) so it'll be more simpler than to have to remember what key switches you to what teammate.


I'm still working on this game first priority, so hopefully the whole summer will help me pregress far! I'm actually getting pretty close to finally "finishing" the game. I'm about 75% done now. I'll plan on getting this game done 100% before my senior year is over next year, if I'm lucky that is.

Glad to hear your still working on this, it's a lot of fun to play, too bad I lost my copy so I'll =wait till you get this new one doe before I download it again. Good luck.

[Rahl]

Yeah I really liked the game, it just seemed very choppy from what I played.

[Muraiko]

*****Major Update*****

I've made MUCH progress since my last update and I thought that I might as well show what I've accomplished so far...

     *Experience Bar Coded (It' just a yellow bar above your face portrait and shows how much Xp you need to progress to reach the next level)

     *Technique Switching (You don't need to press the [9] key anymore to unequip techniques. Just go ahead and pick which ever one from the main menu)

     *CMS Party Formation (You can modify both Primary and Ancillary team by pressing the [9] key. You can formate your party anytime and anywhere you like)

     *Experience Display (Whenever you win a fight, a new victory screen shall whip across the screen, and display how much experience in total was obtained)

     *Better Gameplay Balance (The difficulty of the game is now pretty fitting, and the amount of expereince per fight is more planned out.)

     *Phaeth Blue Magick (Phaeth is now more of a 'blue mage', so she doesn't gain techniques through leveling, but by using a skill called 'Probe' against different obake.)

     *Buijoh Skills (Buijoh acts kind of like a bard now. He can only equip one technique at a time, but can raise a certain stat of the entire party, such as strength or speed.)

     *Needs (Hunger, Thirst, and Energy needs now go down much faster, but using items heal alot more. Staying at an Inn will also replenish all needs to 100%. When a need reaches 0%, you no longer die, but instead get major stat penalties. A warning as also made, so for example, if your hunger reaches 50%, your character will have a thouht bubble above his head that contains a picture of food in it.)

     *New Title Screen (Made a new title screen from scratch, and literally took the whole day...)

     *More gameplay content added





When you press the [9] key, the party formaton menu comes up. The whole thing consists of pictures instead of a map, so it's pretty convenient.
It is kind of straight forward. You pick a slot, and choose which member to replace it with. To remove a member from a slot, just pick him/her again.


You can see the Expereince Bar there, above Kichi's portrait... yeah...


The hunger bubble will appear above your head when hunger is at 50% and 25%.

[Fisherson]

Look's awesome man, hope to see a new demo soon. ^_-

[Rahl]

Looks really great, I hope updates come more often as well as a new demo.

[Muraiko]

I don't have a demo ready yet, but I will soon.

Right now, I'm test playing through the whole game again (for like, the eighth time now...) to make sure everything goes smoothly. The difficulty of the battles are more balanced, but I"m kinda having trouble with the amount of experience the enemies give you...

Stupid question, but how exactly are you supposed to set the amount of experience gained from monsters? Do you just guess and see how it goes, or is there some formula to figure it out?

[Rahl]

Well personally I like the way Wow does it, there are monster with red, yellow, green, and grey names. Red gives you better exp but harder monsters and it just moves down until you hit grey and get no experience from them anymore. The colors depend on what level your character is. If you wanted a system like that, you could give every monster a level of difficulty, set variables that find the differnce in monster and character levels. Have like a red 120% yellow 100% green 80% grey 0%, or whatever you choose. But I dunno maybe sounds like a hassle but I likethe idea of it. And you can deal more with low numbers in exp if, and this also keeps players from farming for levels making bosses just as hard as you want them to be.

[Muraiko]

That actually sound like a really good idea. I've never really played WoW before, but I get the picture. It may take alot of work though, making the code for it, then copying and pasting it to each battle, so I don't think I'll look into it right at the momment, but thanks for input.

[Paradoxic_Symphony]

Dunno if it's just me, but the demo link doesn't work... and I really wanna play! You've come a long way with this project, keep it up. 

[ellie-is]

Nice, but those heads are really blurry.