Detelamane [I'll Find Your Face]

Borrowing elements from scraps of Pixel-Based movement and a loop-structured RPG, old recycled ideas and models, and a neat mechanic I've always wanted to expand upon, along with some Dungeons and Dragons shenanigans (Big boost of inspiration from Bioware games), this is my most recent attempt at Detelamane.

I've spent a few months of painfully slow progress to develop the framework for what I personally expect want to get out of the OHRRPGCE.

Up until now, I haven't actually gotten much more than what the system offers by default.

But what I have managed to get are:
* Pixel-Based movement and three-framed walks.

Chrono Trigger's caterpillar. It's what I've always wanted.
I've only managed to get the leader walking as of yet, but it's a start!

Most of this is ported (in spirit) from Magnifawesome, but with the exception that I've limited each step to four pixels, making things much smoother.

* Giant loops

I spent a bit of time playing around with Mogri's fantastic sidescroller tutorials in The Lancer's Tale. I've twisted the original model since then, making it easier for me to customize certain game aspects (Menus, object interactions, and the like).

Having these loops also lets me have nicer looking battles where heroes and enemies alike can bounce around in idle animations while the active participant is performing its action along with animations outside of combat.

* Battles

I should have just copied and pasted the script for this, but that's just not how I swing.
Combat will be turn-based again, but turn orders will be more like a Tactical RPG. This was pretty much a direct copying of a D&Dish initiative order (I was pretty proud of myself for figuring the sorting out).

* As many stats as I want and Elemental Affinities

I have to wonder how much of these are actually necessary and what I'm just running off with from some big JRPG's, but I've decided to make room to accommodate them anyhow.
I really wish arrays were here already, but I'll just have to make do with my 'read global's and 'write global's.

But yeah, percentage-based resistances go go go!

* Object Interactions

Yeah so you can do this two minutes into making a normal game in the OHRRPGCE and I may have spent too much time getting this to work out, but I've got some big plans for this.
A dueling-glove that engages NPC's in combat is a fun idea that I've been tossing around for a while.
Mind-Reading has also been on my list since first playing Golden Sun.

Graphics are coming out slowly but surely (I'm still not used to Windows 7 Paintbrush, but it's a good thing I've been mostly using the OHR's Graphics editor for a while anyway).
Also, I am somehow having a tough time with maptiles now

Den finally gets his nostalgic green garb back!

I've also been putting enemy sprites in the hero graphics for easier management.
I'm worried about the time when I'll need bigger sprites, but I feel like I'll be ok when I have to cross that bridge.

I'm also trying Multiple-Expressioned portraits again (not shown below).

Noses usually turn me away from doing portraits (I can draw exactly two kinds of nose), so I've been following FFT's system of [don't use 'em].

I'm also curious about not listing names in dialogue boxes.
They'd just be using up an extra line of text that I don't really feel is necessary.

I've just started putting in stats for the two heroes and one enemy, trying to figure out how my battle math will work out.
I hate when the hero misses (In Magnifawesome, I actually had every hero's attack auto-hit just for the fun), so I'll be trying to aim for a model that'll allow for as many hits as possible (Looking into Fire Emblem's with accuracy tacked onto high weapon accuracy-percentages). I've also modeled most of the stats after D&D. Crossing my fingers for this to work out.

I've a bunch more mechanics and ideas to play around with.
I'll be devoting most of my development time to getting a battle cycle working.

Also pretty excited for the Mask system and most of the story in general.

The idea behind making this game is 'If you're going to take forever to finish this, you may as well squeeze in as much as you can'.

I'll see you at the next dump

This update makes me happy and sad because most of the things you're talking about won't become apparent until we can actually play the game. So hurray for progress, boo for how this is probably going to be quite the long wait for a great game. Once the Heart of the OHR contest is done, I encourage myself and other participants to go freelance and help others with their games for a while. Like this one.


Now that you mention it, when you've got portraits handy, names become redundant (as long as you remember to introduce everyone.) On the other hand, in order to make sure there's no confusion as to who's talking, you will need to make portrait graphics for every single character. The sheer thought of doing that for every little NPC, even with palette swaps and re-uses, makes me a bit ill; I don't know about you, though, your portraits are small and manageable.

boooo

Delightful! I can't wait! :)

is that buelle? awesome! i'm assuming that he's a monster, correct? i just recently played Detelamane, and also Buelle. i wish i could make a side-scrolling RPG like Buelle, but i don't know enough about scripting to do it. it is my dream-game. can't wait for the updates of both!

Yes, but not quite!
He's going to be something more like a playable character.

Been thinking on and off on how I want my battle system to work out, and it's been settling into something like this.



I can hopefully get it to make more sense soon.

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♪♪♪ Du du duuuu ♪♪♪

So it's like the oven section of an appliance shop?

I... I'm speechless.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

I'm pretty sure the bottom row is supposed to contain player characters, and the top row is reserved for enemies. The three squares above each slot probably have to do with health or special abilities, or maybe it's another ATB system.
There doesn't look to be much room for a background here, though.
Also I just noticed that the character sprites several posts above here look strikingly similar to Mother 3's designs.

My early designs were much more blatant

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♪♪♪ Du du duuuu ♪♪♪

Want'n to make me some first-person combat something fierce now.

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♪♪♪ Du du duuuu ♪♪♪

wow, those are some freakin' creepy monsters. especially the baby thing and the marionette!

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Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy... So here's some lunchmeat... Sandwich, maybe?

I would be happy to provide some DYWTBAH scripts if you would like

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

i have a mostly-working earthbound battle system rip off sitting around somewhere, and i used slices instead of globals for elements and stats and status ailments.

basically, there was an enemycontainer which contained a sprite, in addition to all of the stats (which used extra data like: (stat:str, *max*, *current*))

then, when an enemy (or hero) was hit with a status ailment, it would add a slice which corresponded to that affliction.

element resistances were put in with a slice like (elmt:fire, % damage reduction) with a negative number if it should heal them. (never tested to see if the negative number worked though.)

it allowed for much easier management of large battles, because i didnt need, say, 8 groups of 30 some globals. and i could write just one lookup script, as opposed to one for each enemy. (or one that does some goofy (if thisenemy==enemy2 then thisstat+=30) sort of thing.