Sword of Moonlight Forum
Sword Of Moonlight Games => Complete Games => Taffer's Games => Topic started by: JC Bailey on April 07, 2014, 10:29:05 pm
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UPDATE: This game has already been released! You can find more info and a download link on this thread:
http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php?topic=813.0
ORIGINAL POST:
So I've been bouncing back and forth between numerous ideas for a short spring side-project to create in SOM, and I think I've finally settled on the idea of a quaint revisit to the isle of Melanat. Below is a quick rundown of what I have planned so far, but please note that this probably isn't as detailed as it should be, as I'm still in the early conceptual stage of development.
To start, the game will take place on Melanat about 50 years after the events of King's Field 3 and will be more light-hearted than past games, this is to remain consistent with the ending of KF3, where Lyle ushers a new age of light into the world of Verdite after having defeated Seath. The exact details of the story are still a work in progress, but the main plot will center around the player character who is a descendent of Lyle Forester, and the main goal (as per usual) will be to retrieve the Moonlight Sword from the island of Melanat.
The levels will, in theory, will be scaled recreations of Melanat's levels as seen in KF2 (minus certain multi-leveled sections). One major difference, however, will be the addition of a large 'Holy' Temple, built long ago in the center of the island to honor a legendary hero of light (Lyle Forester). This single most important venue will change how the maps in Melanat are interconnected.
The gameplay will be your standard King's Field affair, but I do plan on making a huge effort to balance enemies and make every item useful. I want for everything to have a use, in other words, no tier-based nonsense like we've seen in a lot of grind-y RPGs in the past. Puzzles will also be somewhat prevalent, though not as major as the focus on exploration and discovery.
As I stated above, the game won't be dark and bleak like the past games in the series, though I do still intend to retain the isolated atmosphere that King's Field is known for. Specific areas like the West Shore will have all new flora and be more populated (more houses, npcs, ect) and luminous. This of course means larger drawn distances, which will unfortunately result in a rather annoying graphical glitch SOM creates when in large open environments, where map pieces on the sides of the screen are cut off to conserve memory. I will however try my best to make this problem as least-noticeable as possible (this may mean having to play the game in 4:3 standard resolution).
Lastly, I'll be using music made by a Youtuber known as Jacob Lake (with his permission of course). He makes some very unique King's Field-inspired music that will be perfect for this project. (His channel can be found here): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGYuLbjr9gpj8-PXAqyQj0Q
Let me know what you all think, does this sound like a game you would play? :cool:
PS: If anyone happens to have the maps from King's Field 2, they will help me lots!
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The gameplay will be your standard King's Field affair, but I do plan on making a huge effort to balance enemies and make every item useful. I want for everything to have a use in other words, no tier-based nonsense like we've seen in a lot of grind-y RPGs in the past. Puzzles will also be somewhat prevalent, though not as major as the focus on exploration.
You won my affection!!! Those are rare things to find in games these days and I would LOVE to see them in a new SoM game.
Todd remade a lot of the Melenat maps in Dark Destiny. Might be worth seeing if you two can colaborate.
Just a dumb thought, but I wonder if you could make the game link KF3 to The Ancient City storyline?
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Wow, that was fast! You responded before I could make even a single grammatical edit. :tongue:
Linking the stories of KF3 & 4 isn't a bad idea. The only problem here is that I haven't played KF4 yet and have little knowledge of the game's story.
I'm actually thinking about doing a story that's more detached from the trilogy, but with numerous not-so-obvious connections. Kinda like what Dark Souls 2 did, a lot can change and be forgotten in just 50 years afterall. It'd give me more creative freedom in the storytelling at least (as I personally find the King's Field lore to be rather confusing). :drool:
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Sounds good and I think you are have enough know to make a project like this. I will be making the map tutorials soon and you'l be able to recreate some of the more unique places in Melanat.
About linking TAC to Melanat, I think thats a great idea. You could have a character in Melanat who is making the dark idol for example, only to have its positivity (possibly elf derived?) corrupted by a guyra - like monster.
I wouldnt worry too much about the tile cutoff, because alot of Melanat is underground and dungeon based - which is what SoM is designed around. The only problems you might have is around the west shore, but if you cut out the linking bridge from the shore to fire tower you wont... Melanat might have been hit by a storm for many years, causing severe erosion around the west shore?
Anyway what I like about this concept is the open scope of creating something unique, while having the lore and general level structure already there.
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Here's a sneak peak at what's to come. :biggrin:
Below are screenshots of the West Shore, remade to scale (almost), and with the addition of two new houses. One main thing I'd like to know is if the tower will work as a lighthouse, or if I should make my own? Otherwise, I'm pretty satisfied with the way it all turned out.
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Wow, that looks pretty good! It's kinda odd looking at a bright and colorful Melanat.
The lighthouse dose look fairly small. You could make your own map parts or if you're lazy you can just say the tower was destroyed in a storm and it's in the process of being rebuilt.
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I can see that water tile I made you has been used well :wink:
I agree with Auric, it looks like its shaping up well. I think that you might be chopping and changing things when you know how to make your own custom tiles, though I will say... Making custom tiles can be a long process sometimes, but its very rewarding.
:beerchug:
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Wow, it is weird to a happy looking Melenant, but I like it. You seldom get to see the results of 'saving the world' in a game. So I think returning to a happy Melenant is quite an interesting story telling opportunity.
I think everyone will recognize the lighthouse, but if the player cant climb to the top, it might be a missed game-play opportunity.
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@Verdite
Yeah, those water tiles have saved me a lot of time and resources, thank you! I was thinking about the instant death thing, would it be possible to kill the player based on elevation of the model? I tried lowering the elevation in the editor to 9.5, but the death zone moves along with the water. I'm thinking maybe lowering the model's elevation in Meta itself by 9.5 would solve that. Also, when you get the time Verdite, could you help me make a few more of those water tiles with extensions? There are a few instances where I'll need some funky shapes in order to fill in some small gaps.
@Hwitvlf
The best I could do without making a custom model is make the Lighthouse enter-able. But it'd be REALLY small inside, maybe I could make an NPC who lives in it and is agoraphobic. :biggrin:
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Hmm there should be a set of map pieces in the SOM intall that can get you the tower with the steps to climb along the outside. DD had the tower fairly close to the original, I just didnt make it quite as big around. Did your SOM install not include the big white castle side pieces?
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I think I know what you mean, are you talking about the white castle map pieces that are on Hwitvlf's website? I could try those.
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I will definately teach you how to make map pieces MT, those extension pieces are easily made, so I could set you up with a tutorial. Also seeing as you are using the SoM helper tool, I may leave out the conversion process and just provide the basics. The only warning I will give you is that when you start modelling map parts you may very well abandon the SoM ones. It might be worth you making extensions to regular SoM pieces, and just changing the texture afterwards.
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So I was looking for objects to use to attach this waterwheel to a house, and came up with this: a water-powered BED! I'M A GENIUS!
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Lol...the hard part is getting the shaft-splinters out of your side when you wake up every morning!
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I think this looks better now, or, at least it doesn't look like a giant block anymore. :biggrin:
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Should you want them, I have a crap load of Melenet textures and models etc lying around from a few attempts at remaking the game and also from stuff I've recreated and not shared in the KFII resources yet... They're not in SoM format, but someone else might be able to do that for you... Also got the entire soundtrack in HD-FLAC format.
If you want maps of the areas, I also drew some down a while ago... if I can find my sketch pad and a scanner, I could send them to you.
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At the moment I don't need any custom resources, I'll let you know if I do in the future. I'd definitely appreciate if you sent me those maps though. :biggrin:
I actually have most of the soundtrack set up already, Jacob Lake on Youtube is letting me use a lot of his tracks.
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I think the new lighthouse looks better. :cool:
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Here's some more screenshots, this time of the rebuilt Garrison area.
As for overall progress, so far I've completed 3/7 of the base maps, all of which have turned out very well despite having to compensate for the multilevel sections. The story and soundtrack are already set up, all that'll be left when I'm done mapping is object and character placement.
I'm expecting to release this sometime in June, assuming I don't run out of coffee. :coffee:
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Looks fantastic. You've really got the lighting right there. Just curious, what of the compensating for multilevel sections? Did the SoM stock sets prevent you from having multi levels?
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Yeah, there are certain sections of King's Field 2 with multi-level areas that aren't possible to recreate with the default SOM tiles, but I've managed to work my way around them for the most part. Sometimes you just have to get creative. :wink:
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Central Village, done. Here's more screenshots. :cool:
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#2 is the winner for me. :cool:
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You mean #3? :tongue:
I just finished the East Village today as well, here's another screenshot!
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It is cool to see the work, I recognize every area youve built so far and it looks fantastic.
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Nope, #2 does it for me. You seem to have got everything right there.
Rest of the screens looks great.
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Oh you meant this number 3... :biggrin:
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:eek:
Wait, what just happened? :confused:
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It's perfectly clear #3 is #2 and #3,and #3 is #3 and #4 :drool:
Reminds me of those areas in SoM where counting starts at #0 so 0 is actually 1
Anyways, I like all the screen shots!
Edit:
Wow, just noticed the peaked roof- very cool!
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:smile: MT I am just encouraging you to create some new custom parts for that house so that it looks more natural, with a peaked roof. If you arent sure about it, I think I could find time to create something for you, like this...
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If i had the modelling knowledge - I would love to donate a high cliff set so you could build the heights of the environments from KF2...especially in the eastern village. What you have is spot on from a 2d sense, but obviously in KF2 the bridges above the water were probably more like 10-15m high rather than 3-6m. I know its trifling, but SOMers really could use a nice outdoor cliff set, and not the crap I made for my game :( or the limited height set that is in the SOM installer.
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(SPOILER ALERT)
I'm going to have a lot in store story-wise, but won't reveal anything until I release the game. Except maybe this... :sweatdrop:
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I really like games with good stories so I give a hearty two thumbs up!
:beerchug:
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Poor, sad Necron...he is such an awesome part of KF history ;)
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Just finished mapping the big mine, such a complex map!
Regarding the large chasm... I'm not sure if this will work or not, but functional minecarts are a no-no in SOM, so I've made a labyrinth of stone walkways based on the track layout instead. It's functional but looks somewhat off considering this is supposed to be a big MINE. Any ideas or suggestions on what I should do? Or does this look fine?
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I don't think it looks bad, especially if you make a plot point about how operations in the mine have changed to hand carts or such.
I made a railroad set for you if you'd rather go that way. It's attached along with the MQO model.
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Wow. Thanks Wolf, that set looks really good. I'm sure it'll make the map look much more natural! I'm going to have to make a few custom pieces to make it work though. One question, I see there is a layer in Meta called MHM, which I assume is collision to prevent the player from falling through the gaps in the tracks, so how do I make it appear invisible like you have it in the air piece?
I went ahead and set up some of those pieces, does this look better? :biggrin:
PS: It actually fits the music I'm using for this area much better, too. Very cool stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvhiKvVtlqk
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You're certainly welcome :beerchug:
That simple MHM square is what I used with x2mhm.exe to generate the collision for all the railroad Pieces. You don't usually need to use the actual visible model to generate the collision as their complexity often causes problems. I only used the visible models to generate the MSMs. MHMs are always invisible.
If you don't know, when you save as an X format model in Metasequoia, there is a box you can check to save "visible objects only". That makes it really easy to save each Metasequoia object as its own X model by just toggling visibility.
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This is awesome, like the tracks and the music you are adding to the area...that model looks fairly simple, creating a turn for the corners might be doable?
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I've made some custom pieces for this set; a diagonal ramp piece for increasing elevation, and an extension piece to allow for overlapping tracks. Going to attempt a corner piece next despite having no clue how I'm going to do this. :smash2:
Also, here's the extra parts if anybody wants them.
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Slope looks nice!
I started puzzling about what would work for a rail "corner" when you posted the pics. One idea was cart-stop at one rail's end with a turn table to rotate a track segment so that it plugs into the other track. The turn table wouldn't have to move in-game, just be a visual reference.
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KF2 chose to not use the actual boards on their rails right? I wonder if that was one of the driving forces...they just build a slow moving curve I think that would span probably 3 som map squares, but I am not sure without going back to look.
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I've finished the Cathedral and started mapping the Colosseum, pretty soon I'll be done with the base maps and can move on to the fun stuff! :wink:
Edit: Here's an extra image of the East Village's dual lighthouses that I forgot to post before. :cool:
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Looking damn good. You've clearly spent a good deal of time on this, and its shaping up!
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Nice!
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All mapping is finished, now for eventing! This project is going by so fast. :drool:
I might even have it finished before June.
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This will be my last update for Return to Melanat until it's released, here's a video trailer until then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i7VFsW-WlI
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Very nice indeed, great job great soundtrack for the trailer too :smile:
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Yeah, very nice! The music fits the scenes really well too. :beerchug:
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Prepare yourselves for Return to Melanat's complete soundtrack!
Everything here except the Garrison theme was made by Jacob Lake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFliW_-zLOM
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I have a crummy internet connection with limited bandwidth so I'm listening to this a little bit each day. Nice!
Who is Jacob Lake? Is he a pro composer?
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Depends on what you mean by pro. I don't think he does it for money if that's what you're asking. He's a fan of King's Field and it happens to be an inspiration for his music, I asked if I could use some of his tracks and he said yes. :biggrin:
Anyway, I've got the title screen all made up. :cool:
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I didn't really mean did he do it for a living, just wondered if Mr. Lake composed a lot of music or if this was one time sort of thing. I'm fairly musically inclined, yet I've tried to write themes in the past with abysmal results. I'm just amazed at the music some people here have come up with, when apparently they aren't 'professional' musicians. :band:
Like the title- seems cheery, yet with just a hint of spooky!
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Jacob Lake is pretty good. I used his tracks while doing my Shadow Tower Let's Play, which I've still to finish. Good choice of composer, MasterTaffer!
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I've decided upon a release date for Return to Melanat, which will be June 2nd! Prepare to wait. :drool:
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I was doing some beta testing for Return to Melanat today and found a bug, lots of them infact. :smash2:
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Crush them?
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Ha! Are these good bugs or frustrating bugs!?
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*Looks for a queen bug with a kid trapped behind it.*
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Wolfman11983 will be doing a livestream of Return to Melanat tomorrow at 12:30 eastern time, be sure to tune in!
http://www.twitch.tv/wolfman11983
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I think the game may be longer than 4 hours, especially if you aren't familiar with King's Field. I've just been exploring around casually and I'm well over 4 hours in. It's quite nice and I'm really impressed with how bug free it is!
I really like the money system too. I've had to manage my resources and try to save up for stuff I want. The magic seem swell balanced and useful also.
A couple things that maybe could be improved:
I don't think the truth mirror description will appear for the 'Mama-maneater'. If I remember right the player has to be within 1m of the creature's center to trigger the description. If a creature's collision is too large, the player can't get close enough for it to work. Maybe you could put a regular ranged trigger event to display the description when the mirror is used near mama.
I feel like maybe creature's ATKs are too low. It was fairly early when I could take 2 hits from mama-maneater and still be alive. I had physical armor equipped with a total value of around 2 (ie not much armor), but my strength was ~30 which effectively gives +6 to armor. It's possible I just did too much wandering around and 'power leveled', and I don't mean it's bad at all. I just mean my personal preference would be for enemies to pack a bit bigger punch.
Another personal preference, I would have liked more intro story and story development along the way. The character/truth mirror stuff is interesting and well done, I just thought something more fleshed out would help to pull the player into the adventure. Especially if the person playing isn't a Kings Field fan already.
Overall, my first impression hasn't changed. It's really well done -amazingly so for how quickly it was made, nicely balanced, excellent map layout and most important it's just plain fun!
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This game is fantastic and I have already conveyed my thoughts on it to MT.
Anyway I am posting to ask hwtvlf a question... Sorry for hijacking your thread MT!
but my strength was ~30 which effectively gives +6 to armor
I noticed that this doesnt affect equipped armour, is it a 'general' armour rating? Or does it work as a damage reduction %?
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Every 5 points in strength/mag should give the player effectively +1 DEF and +1 ATK damage and defense.
But, if there is a DEF stat of 0 in a given category, a special damage formula is substituted for that category.
The special formula is ATK=Damage. 25 ATK vs 0 DEF = 25 damage.
Maybe that's what you're referring to?
Yes, sorry for hijacking! :badteeth:
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Loved the game myself, my only constructive criticism is more effective offense magic, or more areas to refill it through out the game. I am a magic whore in KF (one of the reasons I originally found the ancient city lacking as I did not find the clarity bracelet on my first play through effectively negating magic use) and I prefer to blow away my enemies with magic/attack combos, especially when my weapons of choice (the ones that look the coolest) are slow to recharge. With the enormous amount of enemies in the game, I ran out of magic all the time and wandered back to the fountain in the western shore until i unlocked the path to the eastern village.
Overall though, again, great job!
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I will be fixing the magic, I noticed a lot of the higher level spells do very little damage for what they cost.
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Has anybody made progress in Return to Melanat? Haven't gotten too much feedback since I released it.
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I don't know if you saw the feedback a few posts above. I could say more (it all boils down to 'I like it"), but I wasn't sure if you want to hear me blab on about my opinions.
My experience here in the past has been that feedback trickles in little by little over time. If you don't have a huge advertising campaign, it takes awhile for word of mouth to spread. I believe both Todd and Tom posted their games on Download.com which probably boosted their visibility. :beerchug:
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I made a gameplay video of the game : http://youtu.be/JJOeDG6sFF0 :beerchug: