Shining Fanwork: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

[greyskies]

Just dropping a quick "this looks awesome" here. I'm looking forward to your next updates!

[Chaoswizard98]

@Bum
99% sure I fixed all freezing issues as of the latest demo.

@Greyskies
I appreciate it!

Progress report:
The last few days I have been organizing all the scripts and objects as well as doing my best to create new borders and menu sprites.

As far as battle code goes there is really only 4 things left to add. Item use, spawning more enemies, status effects, and leveling up. Although these are easy to add (or at least theoretically they should be) I'm taking a break from battle code to work on the town stuff.

For the most part, town stuff shouldn't be too hard. Really the majority of the work is the menu system. I'll also be changing the 'escape' key from gamemaker's default 'close the game' to a main menu.



Edit:
The main town menu can be displayed but as far as the functionality of it goes, that's yet to be added.
I also added NPCs. They can wander (in a radius of their original room position) or they can be stationary. The player cannot walk through them nor can they walk through the player.

Edit: Re-implemented characters following you around town. The chain can also be as long as you want.

Edit: You can talk to npc's now!

[bum_199]

looking great! whats the goal by the time your class is done?

[Tyadran]

So you can arbitrarily change the length of the chain as desired?

[Chaoswizard98]

looking great! whats the goal by the time your class is done?

My original hope was to finish the entire game by the end of the class. Unfortunately, all we've done so far is paperwork and lectures so I will probably not have the entire game finished by the end. For now, I'm aiming to have the engine feature complete and the main game to at least be complete through chapter 1.

After the class is over, the engine will likely need a few optimizations and tweaking for user friendliness, (plus some time to port it to the newer version of GameMaker).

So you can arbitrarily change the length of the chain as desired?

Yes. You can have the size of the chain as big as you want (but really, having your entire force in the chain would probably look very cluttered). And I'm eagerly awaiting your first impression let's play of the demo

Today, I finished up the functionality of all the in town objects (unless I'm forgetting something).
Chests can now be looted. They can have an item, gold (and steal your gold if you give it a negative gold value lol), or they can be empty. Bookshelves (or any dialogue related thing that can be inspected other than NPC's) have also been added.

Both Bookshelves and Chests are as generic as possible, meaning you can make anything lootable or print out text should you so choose. All that's needed at this point is to make the databases for these items so that every instance is different.

[Earl]

Some good progress since I last checked the thread.
A couple things that might interest you... not important things, just little details you might like.

SF2 could do fixed and random wandering-within-range NPCs, but it could also allow NPCs to have a set movement pattern of arbitrary length and complexity. The soldiers who march outside New Granseal castle are an example of simple. The only "complex" example I can think of is the guy in old Granseal who makes a circuit of the pond there. Has the potential to make towns seem livelier.

And in the Japanese version of SF2, if a chest was searched in battle there was also the possibility that the chest would contain a monster, itself a callback to SitD. The way the mechanic worked, the monster would get to attack immediately, and when killed would drop the item the chest was supposed to contain.

Probably post-class stuff, if that, but fun to think about.

[Chaoswizard98]

@Earl,
Good stuff. I was planning on adding scripted NPC walking for towns at a later date. I mostly remember the girl chasing the chicken around in SF1 lol. Chest searching in battle was something I was going to add as well but I never thought of traps before. Did it spawn the same mob every time or was it a random mob?

Anyways, the bookshelf database is set up now which means you can now have different bookshelves and as a bonus, you can check for flags as well (maybe you find something different at a different part of the story?). NPC's will work the same way as well, but I'll deal with those once I finish setting up the main part of the story.

Stairs / room transfers were added. Now you can move between rooms ect. Your followers will also follow you between rooms.

The main in town member list is getting there. I've yet to do 'Magic' and 'Items' but those should be fairly easy now that the layout is done. Also, I coded the 'left and right arrow' stat display switch in a way so that should you want to add more stuff (maybe critical, block, double chances and resistances) you can do so easily. (copy, paste, change the text lol).

Storywise, I changed Kira's class from archer to thief. When promoted, she will be able to utilize the dual wielding feature.

I also worked on some weapon and item sprites with what little art skill I have lol. If anyone wants to use them for anything, feel free.



There's 6 weeks left in this semester to complete 7-9 things!
Cutscene functions
Item use
Leveling up
Church menu
Fix the hardcoded 'Egress' Spell
Shops (Optional as far as class goes)
Town Menu stuff (Member, Magic, Item, Search)
Character sprites (Optional as far as class goes)
And of course everything up to the beginning of battle 3.
Also anything I might have forgotten lol.

Edit:
Battle 1 is 100% done and balanced, though I may need to add a point to enemy attack damage yet when I add experience and leveling. Victory, failure, and character death flags are less hardcoded. Now if an enemy boss is defeated, so are all other units. Character death can also change enemy AI. The minimap also draws an additional 2 tile layers now (total of 3) I had to do this for depth purposes. Enemies 'Wolf' and 'Alpha Wolf' have been added to the game.

Sneak peek of Battle 1!

Spoiler

[Corsair]

I don't know if you have access to the LoV page, but if you see anything there you'd like to be adapted to work within your system lemme know and I should be able to produce some usable assets.

[Earl]

Same mob, as far as I know, although different hest would contain different mobs.

If character joins set flags... searching a bookshelf could also be understood as "This character knows to look in book X, or knows Item Y is on the shelf"... or a theif character being able to find hidden compartments in a chest... That's an interesting idea, SF2 really never uses flag checks on searchables (except to mark chests as having been opened, obviously).

[Chaoswizard98]

@Corsair
I appreciate the offer! I sent you a pm with the specifics.

@Earl
That's exactly what I was thinking when I added it lol. A force member (or important story character) knows the whereabouts of something. I should also note that any global variable(s) can be tested for. Gold, force members, active battle party members, if a team member is dead or not, who is following you around town, stats, spells, items (including more specific things like 'does character X have item Y equipped?'), what stage of a battle you're on, ect.

Also, what are your thoughts on giving chests the ability to hold more than 1 item?

Anyways, I added experience and leveling (though it needs a tad bit of tweaking to make it more readable).
Leveling up is looped, meaning if you somehow had 200 xp (99xp +1 for item use of brave apple, + 100 for effect of brave apple) it would level you twice. This makes testing and balancing stat gains easier, and it allows for something like a golden brave apple to max level your character or something lol.

If you really wanted to control the stat gains of your characters, you have the ability to make the gains for every level different rather than every 10. New spells and levels are obtained on the level you tell them to be obtained at.

- Fixed an issue with enemies not pathfinding around walls correctly.

[Earl]

Multi-item chests would be a nice time-saver in some situations... like a treasury that for some reason has three chests that hold medical herbs, why bother making players search all three? Or a cursed sword and a glove to hold it might, logically, be stored in the same chest. Or just if you want to give the player a few things, and the map doesn't really allow for space clutter...

On the other hand, I could see where more chests maybe add to a sense of exploration? Or how each chest is a mystery, so would lessen that small surprise... still, I imagine the first time multiple items were had, that alone would be a surprise.

Practically, you would also have more stuff to deal with in inventory management. Instead of just passing an item to the next open slot, you've got a queue of items. Probably a simple thing to loop the code, but maybe there's something else I'm not thinking of.

[Chaoswizard98]

Okay so, it's been a while since I posted an update. The end of the semester always has a habit of sneaking up on you and dumping a ton of work and final projects on you. Not to mention it's also my last year in college so I've also been looking into jobs as well.

Anyways, as of today, I have 11 days left until I present my project and for the most part, it's all down to cutscene work and touch ups. Speaking of cutscenes, I wrote a few very useful time saving functions. Nod Head, Shake Head, and... Studder? Not sure what to call that last one, the gizmo does it right before he summons the others for the first battle of SF2, and Peter does it when trying to remove the jewel of evil from Bowie's neck during the last battle.

These functions basically take a character's existing sprite and rip it apart for the duration of the function until the animation is finished playing. This way, you won't have to make your own 'nod head' animation for every character. For obvious math reasons, these functions probably won't work with abnormally large sprites such as zeon or taros, but if that is needed down the line, it's not hard to add.

The animations controller is also coded in a way so that if the need for more animations arises, more can be added. (Probably shrink in / out, fade in / out, dramatic death like hawel in sf2, and explode at some point)

Cutscenes are no longer a huge pain to work with as I managed to abstract the majority of the code away from the user. Now it's essentially 1 large switch case statement filled with whatever dialogue / animations you want your character's to perform. Although these are still quite tedious, I can now make an entire cutscene without having to load the game every step of the way to make sure it works correctly which is a step in the right direction.

As far as bugs go, I think I fixed the freeze issue mentioned in the other thread. Since that one should be considered it's own standalone game, I'll be re-uploading that when I get the chance.

You can also expect another more up to date demo sometime this week! (The entire game up through the end of battle 1 minus the opening cutscene).

[Assassins]

Shudder is more accurate for the animation the gizmo makes

[Bones]

Hey ChaosWiz, hope all went well with your hand in / presentation.

[bum_199]

hope all is going well with this. looking forward to the next update.

[Chaoswizard98]

Well it's been a hectic past few weeks. Capstone presentation, job applications, graduation preparation, and an offer from a composer to work on the audio for my game (which honestly shocked the hell out of me lol!). Nonetheless, I finally have some downtime to post an update XD.

@Assassins
"Shudder"
That was the word I was looking for! The name has been updated!

@Bones
Yes! Everything went well with the presentation. I temporarily changed the bookshelves and some generic NPCs to say funny things about my professor for the duration of the presentation which made the class laugh. Overall it was really fun!


Today was the big graduation day! And with that, I present to you, the alpha demo! (The legit start of the main game!)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-F-g- ... sp=sharing" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I haven't added the opening cutscene yet, so I apologize ahead of time if something is unclear storywise.

The bookshelves and unimportant NPC's don't have much to say right now and are simply placeholders. I'll be getting those fully added once I flesh out the backstory of the team's advisor.

I officially converted the controls into a 'settings' script so I can now change those at will. I'll be setting up in game control config soonish.

As far as this demo goes, I would appreciate it if you could give me some feedback specifically on the story (if you can understand it without the opening cutscene.) and the balancing of the first battle. If you have no clue what's going on storywise or you simply wish to guess at things that may or may not be hinted at, feel free to share your thoughts!

Also regarding any bugs. If the game crashes or freezes ect, hit F5 and send the save file to chaoswizard98@gmail.com

And again, I just wanted to thank everyone here on SFC for supporting my project these past 2 years. It's been a fun and sometimes challenging ride, but I'm pretty much at the point where everything becomes easier (At least I hope so!). Even simply being able to create cutscenes and battles with relative ease and knowing that they work before I even test them is a huge step. Sure I have a ways to go yet, but for the most part, it should be all downhill from here.

Thanks for the support everyone. I appreciate it!

[Diego_Didakus]

testing right now!

[Bones]

Congrates! Glad to hear all went well.

I've had a play through of the Alpha demo (thanks very much) and very impressed. I liked the story. It made sense and made me want to see more of it. I'm sure it would make more sense with cutscene but like the setting and the music is awesome. A little mystery is good too.

Loved the wolves in the first battle. Balance wise I found it a little easy. It is the first battle but I think the Wolves could do with a little higher attack. Only so they do 2 damage rather than 1. Was a good battle though with a nice layout.

I didn't get any bugs atall.

Are you going to do controller support? I tested with 360 and Xbone and both work okay with the Wireless adapters in Game Maker.

Hope that helps feedback wise and thanks again for the demo.

[Chaoswizard98]

Now that I think about it, the opening cutscene probably adds a bit more mystery since it tosses you right into the event that happened weeks prior, but overall it does give you a good reason for the current state of things when you finally start playing lol.

The slight mystery in the story is somewhat intentional and the story of the past gets cleared up as the story progresses. Simply because every character you see at the start was there for the events mentioned. The later characters will obviously not have been there. Rather than explain the past twice, (once in the beginning for the player and once later to catch up the newer characters) I figured why not just explain it once later on. A lot of character relations and such will be shown that way as well since they do all technically know each other before this story happens.

Overall, this universe is quite big. I have so many ideas and stuff that I want to add to the story that there's no way to get it all into one game. If I could hire a team to start pumping these games out right now I would! lol.

Yeah I felt the battle was pretty easy too though I wasn't 100% sure if it was because I'm just used to SF and I know the way the battle is set up or whatnot. I'll probably up the attack a bit and make them slightly more aggressive should you attempt to blitz the boss.

A few others asked this as well. Controller support is something I can't do right now since 8.1 doesn't even have an option for it. Once I get it ported to GMS, I'll look into adding it.

Overall, It's good to know you didn't get any bugs or anything and that you're enjoying the story. I will say that the story definitely escalates in the upcoming battles, and I'm looking forward to working on them. I'm especially looking forward to the introduction of the rest of your starting team, especially Kira because of how unique of a character she is and how much she brings to the story.


Overall I'm glad you didn't experience any bugs and found the demo enjoyable. As always, I appreciate the support!

[Bones]

Can't wait to see that, sounds very cool. I remember when I first played Shining Force 2 I loved the opening and really set the scene for the game. I did have a think about it though and actually on a demo I normally skip all the cutscenes until I've got the full game. That might just be me though.

Sounds like a big project and glad to hear you are continuing on after finishing your course. You seem to have the coding down and probably more in need of artists and musicians but if I can help in anyway please let me know.

I actually did blitz the boss and the wolves to the right did attack. If they had more attack I would have been in trouble.

Controller support on GMS is infinitely better than GM8 but I'm pretty sure you can use a 360 pad with the joystick functions. Probably worth waiting till GMS though cause they are all gamepad functions then so would need to rewrite it anyway.

Lol you could teach alot of the big gaming companies a thing or two about no bugs. It was good to see and I like that you had error trapping to give you information in case you do get them. Kira looks awesome and is that dual wielding?

Thanks again for the demo and look forward to seeing the next part.