Paragons: Year of the Ebony Crown

[JayRay]

Say for instance, you're trying to find out where an exiled noble was sent to, and that it was some castle in the mysterious mountain expanses between two kingdoms. Only a few clues were given as to the location, like "Dragon's Roost", and.. "Where the titan cries!"

You then find a cartographer, and ask him about keeps near these two landmarks. Cartographer says, "you might try the Codex of Marash"

Six books, one of which says something about Titan's Tears, a beatiful waterfall in the western most portion of the kingdom, (variable 1)
Another book speaks of Wyrmnest, an old fortress near waterfalls that come straight out of a rock wall that vaguely looks like a face. (variable 2)
A third book has a map to Titan's Tears, and thusly, the sstronghold nearby (variable 3, location unlocked)

[Kain Nobel]

It is good to see you still working on this, attempting to keep order to all the chaos. I've set smallworldmap.jpg as my current desktop background :)

[kyonides]

I don't know but I kind of feel I would hate to live on such a planet, it looks like it's like ours or even worse due to all those large and extended faults. The first impression I've got was earthquakes and perhaps even tsunamis could take place pretty much anywhere at any given time. Is it that kind of world? Or is the map quite misleading?

[JayRay]

Actually YES, the world is very much geologically active. The map is not misleading showing scars of a world that has undergone great geologic change.

In Kharis - Yeshar canon, there have been five known recorded cataclysms. known as "Reckonings", some have been global continental shifts, breakups, volcanic near-extinction level events, and the latest one practically destroyed the eastern most continent of Yeshar, now known as the Broken Lands causing the mass migration to Kharis some twelve hundred years earlier.

The First Reckoning (???) occured near the southearnern most region of Yeshar, and was when a meteor blasted into the landscape. While it was not a complete extinction level event, it completely rocked and fractured the world, creating new fault lines, and spreading the first civilization to the four corners of that continent for survival. The ash cloud also dramaticallly changed climate conditions.

The Second Reckoning (2300 AR) was triggered by an alteration in the path of one of the two natural satellites of the world, the moon 'Raath', bringing it closer to the world, causing massive earthquakes, tidal motions, and very nearly destroying all life. Legends say a group of dragons chained themselves to the moon and dragged it back to where it was, but whether this legend was based on fact or not is conjecture as of now.

The Third Reckoning (2310 AR) was the eruption of a super volcano in Kharis, possibly agitated by the repeated jarring of tectonic plates, and tidal movements, near southern Merede, creating the ashen 'Banelands' of southern Merede and southwestern Sharistae. To this day, vegatation is sparse in the region, and the blackened sands are often stated to be 'cursed' and have creatures that rise from it daily, caked in the dark ash.

The Fourth Reckoning, (2350 AR) due the third was actually an after-effect, practically a 'snowball earth effect', where about 1/3 of the current oceans were locked away in massive icy caps at the north and south poles. The world was dormant for quite some time afterwards.

and finally the Fifth Reckoning (5455 AR), which, depending on who you hear from it, has a thousand origins, resulted in a chain of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, causing the shifting, breaking up, and geological destruction of one of the huge continental plates of Yeshar, and at the same time liquifying the icy stores of water, flooding the world's coastal cities in tidal force. Tsunamis ripped through civilizations, vast libraries of knowledge were lost forever, and moreso, out of the hundreds of millions of people that called Yeshar home, only three hundred thousand survived to escape to Kharis from those lands. Those that lived in Kharis already had spread widely enough in their exploration of Kharis that while losing port cities was a huge blow, they were still able to function. This event, is thought to have happened about 1200 years previous, which would have made the year 6655 AR , had not the Sharistan Emporer instilled a new era calendar, beginning on the day the first nomadic refugees landed at Saraava. It is currently 1196 ND, The Year of Seven Storms.

[JayRay]

New and Exciting News!

News #1: No More RTP!



Successfully removed the RTP button from the game, and with it, have started doing placeholders for all the graphics that will fill in the gaps for now with some of  my databasing

Second, Recently, I had an issue with some of my resources not having the 'full' benefit of resources for animated sideview battle systems. I have concluded that with a sort of "Doctor Who" approach. While I will still have approximately eight 'archetypes' (Factions/ Class combinations) I will be doing some frankenspriting to ensure that many choices come out of those frankensprites. Be a dark-skinned Meredian Bird of Prey, or an Elvin Jedean Mercenary, or choose the other mode and still choose one of 18 different main characters.

Thirdly, I really wanted to focus on archetypes, so I took the base attack out of the hands of the characters, and added Attacks into the Class feature. This way, the archetype can still learn their base skills, combined with skills from each weapon, when equipped.

Fourthly, Greatly expanded the Monster Base after a discussion with DerVVulfman. As it stands there are right now... There are 180 monstrous monsters in the game. In addition, with some of that clever frankenspriting, I plan to have dozens and dozens of humanoid bad guys to work with, with at least one alter-ego for each of the main characters of the game, an antagonist if you will....

Fifthly, World Map is still holding strong, and this game DOES look to be completely mouse driven!

More Information as it develops!

[JayRay]

Paragon: Heroes of Roguehaven

Developer's Notes for 8/15/15


What a road so far! I've been working on and off this project for years now, almost as long as I've been married! I've revised, rehashed, cried when my computer crashed, cried more when my laptop crashed, and now... luckily, I just got myself a nice little $50 1TB backup HDD. Yay, no more crashes!

Anyway, Like I said, I've been working on this a lot. I really have this to say. First, Enterbrain, you gotta love these guys. RMVXAce would be sublime if they'd have done one thing that the guys over in Engine 001 did. Engine 001 (and of course Enterbrain's Rebranded Love Child GGMaker) made it where tilesets were added and available on the fly from within the tileset window in a way that many tilests could be used on the same map, with an instant understanding of autotiles, the way walls should work, three layers, and the understanding that the three layers should be actually ste to the map (first layer being ground and items that are below the player, layer two being things that are at the same height as player, and the third being items that are above the player and other characters.

With that being said I figured that maybe I just wasn't seeing the BIGGER picture, so it got me thinking about how to best address this in RPGMakerVX.

Creating Event Sheets

“Pioneer's sets are aweosme, but so difficult to use”


Yes, I could have copped out, and just created a nice Parallax Background tile and made most tiles for the A default to a transparent walk-anywhere tile, but That would have been a cop-out, and I wanted my parallax to do more, like animated water and other items. So, I began to work on making the tilesets be something MORE... concentrating on larger items for the tilesets like houses, and walls, and castles and buildings. This allows the other items, like little rocks, shrubs, and more intricate items to be created as a character set, or in this case, event-character sets. This also allows a LOT of multilayering of forests, larger rocks and more.

A standard RMVXA Charset is actually 12 frames or cells by 8 frames or cells. This means if you have the need, you can use one sheet to house up to 96 events of the same size. This means all those extra rocks, shrubs, and other items can now be evented, kept below the character, or on the character's level if more than the traditional 1x1 editor tile. For larger events...


Rendered Larger Events

“So when you put down a tree, do you make the whole tree passable or tiles around it?”


RMXP had a lovely script called Large Events, but as I'm using RMVXA, I'm going to go with Shaz's Collision system, which goes a little something like this:




class Game_Event < Game_Character
alias shaz_large_event_collision_clear_page_settings clear_page_settings
alias shaz_large_event_collision_setup_page_settings setup_page_settings


def clear_page_settings
shaz_large_event_collision_clear_page_settings
@collide_width = 0
@collide_height = 0
end


def setup_page_settings
shaz_large_event_collision_setup_page_settings
@collide_width = 0
@collide_height = 0
list_index = 0
while list_index < @list.size && [108,408].include?(@list[list_index].code)
colx, coly = @list[list_index].parameters[0].scan(/<collision: (\d+),(\d+)>/i)[0]
@collide_width = colx.nil? ? 0 : (colx.to_i / 64)
@collide_height = coly.nil? ? 0 : (coly.to_i / 32 - 1)
list_index = @list.size if @collide_width != 32 || @collide_height != 32
list_index += 1
end
end


def pos?(x,y)
x.between?(@x - @collide_width, @x + @collide_width) &&
y.between?(@y - @collide_height, @y)
end
end


You would then just add to an event's Comment Tags this,


<collision: x,y>


Which does seem to allow me to interact with larger than life events, and be able to determine correct collision for these events. So, with that being said, when an event is on the same 'level' as a character, their BASE can effectively be have action start, collision , while still giving the freedom to be on a lower Y and end up BEHIND the event, or on a higher Y and be in front of the creature.


But, since I don't want to have to create a note tag each and every time I place a pine tree on the map I created...

Utility Placeholder Maps!

“You going to add notetags to a hundred events?”


From enemies to happy little trees, from mining nodules to specific NPC types like inns and shopkeepers, I wanted to have a place to reference them, so that I could just copy the event to the map from the utility map. I also made it so that most Utility maps have a Parallax and/or Tileset, so that I can see the actual event (size and appearance) before placing it on the map.

I then create all the necessary notetags for those events, and when I need a group of cedar trees for a map, I can just copy and paste. When I need a glob of gold ore, I just drag and drop, and if I need anything as far as complex “Run after the character” or otherwise, I get the ability to just drop it into the map quick and painlessly, once. Now about that layer priority!


Layer Priorities


“VX Ace Mapping sucks, I like layers.”


As A3 and A4 typically are meant for walls with the addition of horizontal roofs, this is perfect for the little 1x1 tile character, without much need for anything else in a blocky world. However, I'm wanting Angled roofs, I'm wanting towers, I'm wanting ziggurats of awesomeness. This is why I've basically said that most of my B-E should actually be OVERLAY or LARGE interactive ITEMS. These are items that will either always be out of the character's way, or if collided with, and aren't events, can just be there and look pretty. The B-E tilesets are all set to be at the same layer so if you consider that with the exception of the first tile (and if you use custom shadows, possibly the first row of eight on the left hand side, you still have a 512x512 tileset for each of the four tile groups. This means, if it was an RMXP tileset, and we dropped out the first row of each one of these we'd still have a RMXP tileset of
256 x 3952, more than enough for any one map's tileset. With that being said, I will probably devote a couple of tilesets to different angles and uses of thatch roofs and shingled roofs, and then maybe something for curved walls, corners, and if I don't want to event certain overhangs like plant boxes hanging off the sides, or overhangs, I can place it on tileset E. If any of these overhangs overlap, of course I can still event any of those tilesets for that extra 'third layer' of overlay.


A million and one maps? Surely not, right?

“You should never need more than 999 maps”

Okay, I wanted my world to be HUGE, I mean really HUGE, but as I am going to be concetrating on using events in a lot of my mapping, I knew that each area map couldn't BE that huge. Luckily for me, I think I will be able to enjoy the ability to use “Map folders” to dramatically increase my mapping areas. I will probably devote a group of 100 maps to any given location, area, and when needing to go between different folders, I simply use that intermediary. A location map on my atlas for instance may reference a location in 'folder_004' which then goes to that folder for the data on that map. Now, granted, I'll still have to have all the utility maps and items still referenced in each 'folder' but the data itself, will be changed mainly on the maps section.

This way, I can still have all the stuff from the regular game, sharing data between folders on the fly, and completely bypass the 999 maps limit. I feel confident that there is NO area on my world that would require more than 100 maps, and I can use more of my UTILITY maps to Right Shift Click and Left Shift paste specifc map 'puzzle pieces' in a way to create maps on the fly, and then populate each map accordingly.

ALTERNATIVE: I can still use HUGE maps, 500x500, and only mimic the understanding that 100x 100 is the max size for a map, this way, if I need 25 little rooms or hallways that seperate one or two main chambers for my maps, I can do so and effectively turn a 25 map dungeon into a 2-3 map dungeon... The reason I say 2 or 3, is because in your typical cave, you might have different parallaxes depending on how deep you are. (For instance, the top most layers might be lava tubes, while the bottom most layer might actually be the lava itself.)


Location, Location, Location...

“Your world looks massive, I'd hate to be the one to have to map all that out for the in-game maps”

I wanted to have a little bit of a fell of overland movement, without the attempt to actually great miles and miles worth of maps for each section, so I created a large location map, of the entirety of the game-world, with each location set to be explorered by clocking on it with your mouse. This mode is much like Skyrim's Fast Travel device. However, and this is often the case with most open World RPGs... people expect to be able to run through every INCH of a terrain, and this simply is not necessary. Think of a spiderweb: the web itself might cover feet, but if you roll it up, you can usually fit it into the palm of your hand. In order to minimize the amount of maps, and definitely NOT have every inch of my world mapped out, I created path-maps that, while not being the whole predefined 'stuck in a hallway, go forward or go back' stands as a way to get form point A to point B the LONG way, and opens into other location maps or discovered locations. This way, my players can still 'explore' the world while not just wandering across vast expanses of areas that would be devoid of a lot of events as my mapping system may be event-heavy.

Look ma! No hands!

“Mouse interaction is cool, at least until we can touch screen everything.”

In my efforts to have no keyboard keys whatsoever, I am coming close and closer to a fully mouse-controlled game. I still need to work on some L and R features in the menus, as well as some other functions on map but, for now, all windows are working fine. I also decided to utilize Falcao's Mouse Buttons to create Hud-like icons on the screen to get the player wherever he may need to go.


Heroes of Roguehaven!

“I think you have too MANY people. It's hard to story arc with 80 people isn't it? “


And finally, I believe I may have the field of finalists for the main heroes of my game narrowed down to the eight characters that I want to be able to start coding the start stories to Paragons. These characters or their revisions have been played characters and NPCs in countless RPG adventures throughout an almost decade and a half of playing table-top games, so the storylines are definitely there. Only thing is storyboarding the actual scenes for this particular chapter, with a basis on one of my more recent campaigns. I also have a playing field of at least 12 others to join up with the party at varying intervals, and my main court of bad guys to cause panic and mayhen wherever they arrive.

Monsters University!

“You should have monster levels”


While I agree, I realized quickly that I would need to increase DRAMATICALLY the number of slots I have available for my monsters to ensure that variations of Hit points and powers are utilized for the nearly 200 different monsters in the game. I couldn't be happier with the way these guys turns out so far. And will be working tirelessly to convert their battlers to mini-battlers for the animated battler scripts already in place in my game

[kyonides]

Heroes of Roguehaven!

“I think you have too MANY people. It's hard to story arc with 80 people isn't it? “


And finally, I believe I may have the field of finalists for the main heroes of my game narrowed down to the eight characters that I want to be able to start coding the start stories to Paragons. These characters or their revisions have been played characters and NPCs in countless RPG adventures throughout an almost decade and a half of playing table-top games, so the storylines are definitely there. Only thing is storyboarding the actual scenes for this particular chapter, with a basis on one of my more recent campaigns. I also have a playing field of at least 12 others to join up with the party at varying intervals, and my main court of bad guys to cause panic and mayhen wherever they arrive.

Too bad IMHO, I thought it could be like Suikoden with about 108 heroes you could either hire or convince to join your team of adventurers or fighters for freedom. How large can be a team in your game? Would it include 1 or 4 heroes at most or even more?

[JayRay]

Heroes of Roguehaven!

“I think you have too MANY people. It's hard to story arc with 80 people isn't it? “


And finally, I believe I may have the field of finalists for the main heroes of my game narrowed down to the eight characters that I want to be able to start coding the start stories to Paragons. These characters or their revisions have been played characters and NPCs in countless RPG adventures throughout an almost decade and a half of playing table-top games, so the storylines are definitely there. Only thing is storyboarding the actual scenes for this particular chapter, with a basis on one of my more recent campaigns. I also have a playing field of at least 12 others to join up with the party at varying intervals, and my main court of bad guys to cause panic and mayhen wherever they arrive.

Too bad IMHO, I thought it could be like Suikoden with about 108 heroes you could either hire or convince to join your team of adventurers or fighters for freedom. How large can be a team in your game? Would it include 1 or 4 heroes at most or even more?

Well, while it would be novel and I definitely got enough characters for the basic character set, I DON'T have all of them in Holder Template format, and waiting for Pioneer to create a Generation 2 Medieval is like watching paint dry, long and unfulfilling.

The base team will be three people, but in factions there WOULD be at least a few template style people depicted for each of the main factions for the game, so basically you COULD hire on for assistance, but they would NOT have the same templates as the animated Holder battler templates.

That's definitely something I can look for in Paragon II though.

[JayRay]

BUMP to Build
1.000

There have been some improvements to the earlier 0.82 Revision, and for the most part, all the early basic needs of the game are now finished. With that being said, I wanted to go ahead and review the earlier revision and see if anything has changed.



* No more snakes – My wife is terrified of snakes, and I just found that there are four snames in the resource packs. So, unfortunately, I will NOT be adding any snakes on this game.



* Hundreds of monsters and monster variations – each with varying weaknesses special attacks, skills and more

* Animated battlers in a Sideview Battle System,

* Faction and Guild Rankings for expansions in NPC immersion, as well as getting the backing you need for your fight against the Khan!

* Evented Non-Tile landscape, buildings and structures, with a tile-based collision detection system, in an active map for better 2.5D immersion than typical Ace mapping.

( expanded to Parallax Mapping, Non-Tiled Pre-Renders, with parallax and overlay mapping)



(Not to scale - Actual map image 1440x1440)

* Expanded Database – thousands of items at your disposal. Books, recipe items, key and gyph items, teleportation gems, and more!



* over 300 locations to discover through a fast-travel world map. Caves, Dungeons, Old Temples, forts, and more are accessible through storyline, and by discovering their location through study.



* Quests, quests and more quests – over 150 storyline and 75 sidequests to complete along with the storyline main objectives

* Recipies and Training – With the Open RPG style, spend a session mining, harvesting, digging in archaeological digs, training stats, and more!

* Great Music Soundtrack, using music straight from the Arteria3d Collections!

* All monsters and actors now utilizing Galv's Animated Sprites and Yanfly Battle Engine Ace for 56 frames of animation per battler.

* New Message System and Codes using Yanfly Message System

* On-screen Mouse-controlled GUI features.

* Multi-drops – Sometimes monsters have what you need, other times they don't – Monsters have certain specific percentages for items to be looted.

* New Experience System! - Takes longer to level, embracing the long-held idea of long table-top campaigns. You feel like you've earned your level, you don't blink and are instantly level 10

* Cheat Codes – Once the game is released, a new general cheat code will be released weekly that will do awesome things for your game. Add specific characters to your party, show all the locations, get special item packs, and more! The idea is that over all, we plan to introduce eighty cheat codes over the first year and a half. However, if you think this is a quick 'Cheat to Win' code, be forewarned.. cheat codes will brand your particular save-slot with the CHEATER monicker! If you cheat, a script is planned to keep you from advancing beyond level 80 in game, and any game credit screens will show your character as a 'cheater'

* Attacks are now a part of a skill group, and weapons bestow their skills on players.
*  NPC Dialogue System – All attempts will be made to create a conversation engine with Paragon to allow for unique dialogue depending on factors like; character leading party, faction and guild rankings, level, and location.

IN ADDITION - New Advancements
for Build 1.00

- HUD Display
In addition to the mouse buttons and mouse driven GUI for the system, there will also be an active hud, thanks to Moghunter's Ultima Hud
I will working on rendering a 3d looking display ala Diablo to house health pools and talent pools, along with a portrait of the character, known equipment, a revision of my game events log, gold, map locations, experience tables, and levels as well.

- Frankenspriting Success
While I still will be limited to less than 20 starting characters with variations from there, I'm please to announce that there ARE a few frankenspriting possibilities that worked out well for me, and because of suck I was able to frankensprite a few more Galv battlers. If I'm successfull, I think I should stick with 16 starting character possibilities and work my way out from there. As it stands I still have it set for up to a four member team, with NPCs available to join either through quest or through hiring.

Quest Screen Success
I switched my questing mode out for modern algebra's quest manager called Quest Journal 1.03 for RPG Maker VX Ace

Tilesets - Moving into the Real!!! (or rather pre-rendered)

As everything from the main game will now be parallaxed and overlayed, I will be changing passability to either be based on a single A4/A5 tile with tileswap options to allow for specific needs depending on the passability. This will allow for all 12 passability settings to be set for each map and such. Looking for PK8 for his latest version of Editor Tiles for VX Ace, so I can just keep the items in Editor and delete them from being visible in game. What I may do is ensure that ALL A-Layer tiles are invisible in game, and use them all to correctly map out my editor tiles, since I won't be using autotiles, going for a painted terrain look instead.

Also, wanted to give a shout out to : Yanfly, Glitchfinder, Falcao, Galv, JVMaster, Moghunter, Tsukihime, KilloZapit, TheoAllen, modern algebra, FenixFyreX, PK8, Seer UK & OriginalWij, Dervvulfman, BountyHunterLani, and Kain, with all their help thus far.

Big shout out Graphically, to Arteria3d, who will be supplying most of the models I'll be using, and PVGames for the rest.

[JayRay]

Some new screenshots! in the Maps and Screenshots Thread!

Bump - Build 1.00 Revision 1

I have increased the character starting pool to 20, information will be forthcoming on the front page.