"Cait and the Dragon" is now "The Dragon of Ard Geama"

Hi everyone,

J-Taylor recommended we start up this thread so as to keep us on track in completing this complex game idea.

The biggest change so far is a name change. We needed to change this because we decided to give a choice between a male main character ot a female so we made Shawn an equal potential character to replace Caitlyn if one prefers to.

We also plan to take J_Taylor up in his character creation plots scripting classes so if we do not fail his class we might be able to offer a few more choices (but nothing like what he's got).

As to the meat of the game we have first level graphics done for the town and are half way through the second level ones. We hope to figure out how to post our progress soon and when we can we will post that here.

That is about all we gotten finished so far. We will post again next week hopefully with at least one screen shot.

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The high and mighty confused queen of the thirteenth tile on the bathroom floor

To clarify, I offered to help. Anyone else more capable is free to offer as well.

Well we are getting ahead and have more secondary graphics together. Here are some samples:

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Let us know what you think, Thanks,

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The high and mighty confused queen of the thirteenth tile on the bathroom floor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadows

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

The town looks good. I love the two-toned sand tiles, and those grass tiles in the second screenshot are great.

The castle tiles could really use some contrast to make the walls and the floors look different

Check out this screenshot from Final Fantasy 4 and 5, and notice how the floors are darker than the walls, making it easy to tell them apart.

EDIT: removed a screenshot that didn't like being linked to



I notice you already do make your floors a little bit darker, but I think it needs a little more to stand out.

Thanks James Page for the compliments and insights. One in our group wanted to add highlights and shadows to that grass but J_Taylor said it would make it too complicated. He added we should stick to five colors maximum in most but not all cases. One of us took his side the other bulked and your opinion won argument.

Also our present graphics are second level graphics which means they are one step above place holding graphics and missing details like shadowing.

In general we create an image first and shadow later. Thus any unshadowed image is incomplete both in shadows and important details. Still with those graphics are now some finial graphics as hopefully you can see in the images below. Let us know if these changes are what you were looking for and we keep you all posted as to other changes.





We also finished the mill and have the wheel turning but this is a still picture:



Lately we put in part of the forests surrounding the town. We making it so you can move through this but its more like a maze. Gold coins can be found inside and of course pots of gold are very hard to find. Can anyone see it in this image?



If not there will be one choice that leads to finding what the little people hide or you ca find someone with the gift and make them part of the party.

We also have a new controversy in our group over which water looks better. On the left is one version, on the right is the original version. Which looks better?




Please let us know so we can finish putting the river in. Thanks.

That is about all we've done except for learning scripting from J_Taylor.

Thanks again for everyone who is giving us feedback and we'll will keep you posted as more gets finished.

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The high and mighty confused queen of the thirteenth tile on the bathroom floor

I... I'm sorry, but this actually hurts my eyes looking at it. There's so many colors in the wall trying to grab my attention, it feels like I'm looking at Magic Eye. It's pretty apparent that you love your colors, but at least for the stone wall, tone it down a bit. The mill texture is a little better since the colors blend pretty well. The forest is great, I like your variety in tree shapes, and picking brown for a background against the trees works pretty well. Also it's easy to see the bright characters and items, I even managed to spy the pot of gold.
And then there's the water. At first glance, the two sides look identical, and it's impossible to pick just one. The right side looks more streamlined and calm whereas the left side looks faster and more jagged. I'd recommend using one or the other depending on the area since you went through the trouble of making another tile. Or three. It's really hard to tell with all those colors.

Baconlabs, hi:

First off truth doesn't hurt and any help is wanted. It's not colors we love for the record, its getting things to look as "real" as we can. That is what we like in most RPG games we play.

Problem is sometimes the details we have in nature distract in games so any time you see this call us on it just as you did. As you see below, we removed the highlights from the stone and hope this now looks better.

Also thank you in mentioning the texture of the ground in the forest. We were struggling over whether it made the forest too dark but though it cover for shadowing at least in the deep forest were gold and other things can be found.

We are also glad we showed enough gold in that pot to be spotted but hopefully its not too easy to see.

Lastly you are correct on the water. It is suppose to be a fast running river, the Black River of of Ireland in fact is one of Ireland largest river where its strong tides is the cause of much erosion over the years. So maybe we should use the left side or at least here we have the water moving fast like around the fortress. Right now water is still in the place holding phase.

Hi also to everyone else,

Just a heads up on what we completed this week. J_Taylor told us about Baconlabs comments that the colors on the fortress. We also suspected it was the highlights as said not the overall design so we redid it. Hope this makes it easier to see:



Let us know if this redesign is better and works.

We also created our first guard and have him pacing about checking out any trouble. Our form of shading which is about half in is also visible in this picture:




The next picture shows Caitlyn going through the shade. So how does our shading look? Does it work?



We also put in a wheat field with Caitlyn at the top of the field:



And we thought we should show our other character: Shawn. Any suggestions?



Caitlyn and Shawn are shown it as Dweomers, one of three choices of character (Dweomer, Druid and Warrior). However we haven’t finished scripting the others versions of each into the game, and even Shawn and Caitlyn are starting out in the wrong part of town. This isn’t because of scripting troubles as far as we know but because the places they are found in are inside buildings or in certain backgrounds that are not yet done.

So that is about all we completed this week. Thanks again for the feed back and let us know if we have things right or still need to work on them.

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The high and mighty confused queen of the thirteenth tile on the bathroom floor

We have only three images because each took a lot of work for one reason or another and one isn't even done. The first is the hayfield we are trying to script:



Next is the smith's place:



And lastly we put in chimneys and signs:




We also spent some time working on the story some more. Presently we have three different characters besides choosing male or female that you can choose from. We also hope that we can use scripting to game based on the answers to the questions given. This will also affect how your character will be and what skills he or she will have. In addition, each choice will also have a side unique to the character which you do not have to do but it pays to do them.

That is about all we have. As always we want to hear from you so we know if what we are doing is going to work for a game. After all, this is only our second game. So please keep the comments coming. Thanks!

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The high and mighty confused queen of the thirteenth tile on the bathroom floor

Every time you update with screenshots, all of the previous screens get their links broken. I'm not sure if you're deleting your own screens on purpose or if this is an accident (or heck, maybe it's just my computer acting up), but I'd recommend keeping them up so that everyone can keep track of the thread's progress and history.

Fixed and it won't happen again. Thanks for letting us know.

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The high and mighty confused queen of the thirteenth tile on the bathroom floor

For the record J_Taylor helped us script this which is why we value his input but when he read how we gave the stats for each player he stated we should abbreviate like its done in the OHR. One of us countered we thought writing more of it out made this easier for less experienced players of the game to read it but he says it makes it confusing. Any insights to bring us together on this?



Also we wanted to show how the wagon look and get a second opinion (and thanks again James it did work), is it the right size or too big for the picture?



Thanks in advance for helping us again. This is our second game and we are taking a few leaps in building it and we want to get everything right instead of finding out later we seriously messed up.

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The high and mighty confused queen of the thirteenth tile on the bathroom floor

The wagon looks great! :)

I think the text box describing the stats is a little confusing, but not because of the long stat names. It is confusing to me because you don't have each stat on a separate line.

I suggest one stat per line, but don't abbreviate them.

(or maybe two stats per line in neat columns? that is more work, but night look better)

The problem was when we tried to write the stats, one to a line, the box covered the faces of the characters. Still, formatting these side by side might work so we'll try that and post the end results.

If that doesn't work then maybe we need to script into two new frames for each characters stats which is a lot more work than we wanted to do. Further if we do that we probably should do so also with the other choices later on.

Anyway, thank you again for always being there for all of us.

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The high and mighty confused queen of the thirteenth tile on the bathroom floor

The system that held the most updated form of Cait and the dragon crashed. We thought the other half had a version because she was working on the walkabouts but apparently she didn't.

She wants to kill the project but I'm not willing to. We have the pictures we posted here so we can use those to recreate much of the game. Wish we'd posted the scripts but we wrote them once we can do it again.

Still it will take some time coming back and both of us need some time off to deal with the loss before jumping back in. We started another game in the intern that isn't quite so vast.

We'll let you all know when we start up this game again though its not likely until summer when J_Taylor comes home because he can get us started again on scripting. He's an excellent teacher and supporter of those who want to throw the computer across the room when the error messages flourish and can often see what we are missing.

Thank again every one for the support and help in scripting.

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The high and mighty confused queen of the thirteenth tile on the bathroom floor