Sorta Update

I re-shifted my focus back the original project. I've been working on a castle town which is proving to be a tad difficult. I'm used to making villages, caverns and to an extent; forests. I haven't really spent a lot of time making cities or castles. Hopping back and forth between this and the fangame project isn't helping, either. I'm constantly switching between two different styles of mapping and story telling while trying to maintain a semi-regular work schedule with both projects. That's hindering my progress on both and the original work has been in progress for a year now with nothing to show but two nearly finished villages that I still need to add events to, a small forest dungeon and a nearly finished mine/cavern that needs a bit of eventing done. The fangame has suffered; but not nearly as much. I've finished mapping out two towns, a forest, a cavern, a castle, a tower and a temple. I've even started working with the database; adding monsters items and equipment which I haven't done for the original.

So, I'm going to put the fan project I've been constantly mentioning on hold until I finish my original work. Hopefully I'll have a few more screenshots to show in a week or two and then maybe a demo in a month or so.

Update

Not long after posting the previous post, I shifted focus from my original game to one of the fan games I'm working on, so I don't really have much in the way of screenshots for either game or info about the fan game as it's still a WIP with  no main plot and only what I came up with on the fly while mapping out the first few towns and dungeons.

I do have one screenshot from my original work and instead of waiting another two weeks to post it, I'll go ahead and post it now:

Click to view full version.

That's the northern continent of the world parallel to the world of Viselle. The parallel world is known as Tepira and is a sacred world to the Wyrn. Magic is more prominent there, infact; all those born in this world have a natural talent for using magic.

Currently, this continent is the setting for one of the Viselle Saga games. I'm still debating whether or not I want to extend the story for that specific game beyond this continent and if I do, should I just make it episodic with 2-3 more games taking place on other continents. Though, I am leaning towards sticking with what I have since I'm planning on expanding this map to encompass the entire world of Tepira in a future game.


I also added info about the worlds to the Viselle Saga page.

Introductory Post

So, I kinda forgot this blog existed until I revived my main blog. I recently started working on a couple of rpg maker projects that I lost interest in a while ago. One is a fangame and one is just one of many titles I'm planning in an original series that got it's start a few years ago when I first started playing around with RPG Maker VX. Since then, I've migrated to XP, then 2k3 and finally 2k. Now I mainly stick with 2k and 2k3. I like the old school SNES type graphics over XP and VX's graphics, and I find it easier to work without the use of scripts.

I know scripts are apparently uber awesome and can do things like completely rework the battle system, add night and day cycles, enhance menu functionality and other amazing things. At first, I was obsessed with adding lots of neat scripts to the game I was working on then. I used the Tankentai Sideview battle system, had some skill add on scripts and even a few menu enhancements. I was so set on adding lots of scripts that I put things like the story and maps on the back burner while I was on a script hunt. Eventually I started focusing on the story but by then, I had gotten XP and the cycle repeated itself. It got so bad, that my mapping skills barely improved, what little progress I made was achieved through ghosting a couple of forums, lurking in the screenshot thread and leeching off tips and advice given to other people. To this day, I have yet to make a post on any of those forums.

When I moved on to 2k and 2k3 I became obsessed with looking for spiffy graphics and then I promptly stopped myself, and thought 'wait, I actually like the RTP graphics. You know what, I'm going to make a game using the RTP graphics. Sure, the game I'm working is going to need NPCs with pointed ears, but I can easily make those edits myself.' I already had a story planned out for this new game and how it was going to tie into the series itself. So, I started focusing on the story more, then when I had a rough timeline of events for the series as a whole, I focused on the races and locations a bit. Then I focused on mapping and wound up making maps that I can actually be kinda proud of. So far my favorite map is a mine/cavern. I'm particularly proud of this one because it's the first map I made that actually looked good. After finishing it, I was so pumped that I started modifying the world map some more. For a map that only contains half a continent, I think it looks good. I'm starting to get a little full of myself there. Anyway, what I've been trying to say with this last paragraph is that I've reached a point where I can look at my RPG Maker work and not think it's crap.



So...that's the intro post for this blog. Kinda long(by my standards, anyway) but it works. Over the next few days I'll add a couple of new pages with information about the games I'm working on and get some screenshots up.


Update:

I've added a page with some details about the original series I'm working on. It's linked up top, near the header.