Some of you guys may remember this as 'Project Pheonix'.



Links:

Legends of Steorth Site
Legends of Steorth Facebook page
Yokaan Games Studio Site





The Legends of Steorth: Ilxder I - Tempest Dawn (or just Ilxder 1/Tempest Dawn for short) is an adventure-RPG created in Sphere, with a strong grasp on storytelling, exploration, and puzzles. It takes place in the fantasy planet of Steorth, in the central Kingdom of the Phoenix. The player plays the part of the Ilxder, a young man endowed with some of the powers of the deity Tylbur, and must attempt to banish the Lord of Evils, Tai'Kalu, from Steorth. Along the way, the player can take part in side quests, exploration, puzzles and riddles, etc in this open-world game.

The story is inspired much by the stories of the Bible, The Elder Scrolls, Lord of the Rings, and RuneScape. The game is backed by lots of lore and writing that I've created over the past four years, and also borrows elements from a fantasy book I once tried to write back in my elementary and early middle school years. The game has been in casual development since April of 2009, and I feel like I've barely gone anywhere with what I have planned for it. However, I do want to finish it, no matter how long it takes. I've taken quite a bit of advice that was given to me by the Spherical community. (Including the spelling fix of Pheonix to Phoenix and I no longer consider YGS a company, but a simple work-from-home game development team)

I certainly will need more help/advice from the Spherical community down the road, including when I attempt, once and for all, to create a battle system. However, until I need that help, I think I will just stick around for some good chat about Sphere and games in general.

I think your game is the perfect candidate for an on-map-engine type of battle system. But they can be tricky to make.

I'd love to do that at some point, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to do it this side of the next 5 years. Just because I'm still very much an amateur in game development, but specifically programming. If I can't even get a normal turn-based, separate-screen battle system to run without much frustration, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to do an on-map system very well, at least, not without help.

You might be able to use my on-map battle system in some way, shape, or form, eventually. I even wouldn't mind tweaking a few things for you (your game looks pretty promising; I like the graphics).

The thing actually works currently, but there are probably a few bugs here and there, and most important the monsters don't really fight back yet....
Also it has a heavy dependence on the rest of my Arq framework. I'm not sure if I'll ever really isolate it from Arq, but if you don't want to use the whole framework (handles dialogue, cutscenes, shops, item, monsters, and some other stuff like weather and time of day) you might be able to get it to work.

On-map systems really aren't at all difficult to implement though, you could probably make your own after a while. Let me know if you do want to use mine though, I'd be happy to see if I could get it to work for you (although you might want to wait a little bit).

Screenshot (the oversized hand grenade is moving, which you can't tell from the picture):

Excuse the graphics, I'm a programmer, not an artist (plus this was a test for the battle system so I spent all of 30 seconds on the graphics....).

I'd love to do that at some point, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to do it this side of the next 5 years. Just because I'm still very much an amateur in game development, but specifically programming. If I can't even get a normal turn-based, separate-screen battle system to run without much frustration, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to do an on-map system very well, at least, not without help.

It definitely depends on the spare time you have. But I want to encourage you to just do it^^ Actually I think an on-map system can be a bit easier than doing everything without the map, because all the spriteset and camera stuff is already covered by the map engine. Just try  out different approaches and learn from them.

@Alpha - I can't take credit for ALL of the graphic work. Radnen really helped overhaul my old style graphics, and it's due to his tutorials that I've been able to improve the graphics I do create. But still, thanks for letting me know - I'll keep it in mind for when I really wish to implement the system. Currently in the process, I'm focusing on creating some quests, more unique areas and places to explore, etc. I'll certainly keep your system in mind, though, because it would be a lot more fun to play with an on-map system than the traditional separate-screen system that you see in older RPGs.

@Metallix - That's the problem, because at the time, I'm preparing for my HS graduation. After I graduate, I plan on taking a reasonably long break (six months or so) during which I could work on it, but after that break, it's possible that I will be going for certification courses (I really have no idea what I want to do degree-wise, so I'm not going to spend money on a degree unless I know it's what I want to do and use), and working part-time. I'll create test maps during that break and experiment to my best ability, but there's no guaranteeing I'll get anywhere.

@alpha123 - In your screenshot the font is super blurry; if that's one of my old conversion let me know so I can replace it in my common files package.

@alpha123 - In your screenshot the font is super blurry; if that's one of my old conversion let me know so I can replace it in my common files package.

It appears to be a font simply called "standard"; I have no idea where I got it.