[Jester]

Working Title: Stronghold (Interactive Fantasies)

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Last year we came up with an idea of an old school action-adventure game. Since we hadn't done anything in years (except Markus' "chinese democracy" Devil's Mind) we decided to start to make a game that was for once fun to do.

GAME
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An action-adventure game with mild rpg elements, where you explore a huge citadel in another dimension salvaging treasures and fighting various monsters. The Citadel consist of four diffrent areas inhabited by four different races.

FEATURES
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- Two weapon engines (Sword & Bow)
- Three different skills (Sword, Lockpick, Rune Craft)
- Two alignments to choose from that affect the world (Benefactor & Malefactor)
- Status board and Monster manual.
- Special Events and Quests that depend of your aligment.
- Different "titles".

GAME PROGRESS
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Done
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-Plot
-Weapon engines
-Statusboard and Monster manual
-Quest & Special Events

Current number of finished boards : 70

We are working with the game whenever possible, but our free time is limited. We do have a strong "gut" feeling that we WILL finish this one for sure.

SCREENSHOTS:

[asgromo]

Hot damn I am impressed with your progress and screens!

Is it fun yet, is it looking like a Good Game?

[hayashi]

Typo: alignment, not aligment (Or deliberate? You don't seem to have any more space for that N)

But otherwise (and apart from the default MZX font I'm sure you'll modify at some point), this looks like one hot dish.

This post has been edited by hayashi: 03 February 2009 - 04:04 PM

[Padz]

Impressive 70 completed boards already! Sounds really good.

[weasel]

Screenshot 2 is a wonder to behold.

[KKairos]

I'm loving it. Looking forward to this already.

[Kuddy]

interactive fantasies is still alive?

[Great Knight]

Yo Jester, this is turning out to be one solid piece of work, especially the graphics. Awesome stuff. How long has it been since you started developing the game? Also, will there be large enemies (i.e. they use sprites)? I'm also hoping there will be some totally wicked boss fights.

Great Knight

[djtiesto]

Looks nice, I'll check it out when it's done...

[Jauhis]

Hehey, long time no write!

Yesterday I finished designing the Dwarven Mines, and that means approximately half of the playable areas are now finished, woo! We've had so many great and not-so-great ideas with this game and the whole concept has changed a few too many times. In confused agony I'll try to spill out some of the key elements:

STYLE
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As everyone can see, the graphics will be obviously in style of my previous game Call of Caethrath, but now overall atmosphere is a little bit darker and somewhat moodier. The game world will be seamless as in CoC. We have also planned a decent amount of hidden areas and treasures to be found around the stronghold. The gameplay also shares similarities with CoC. This time the puzzles will be more reasonable, I promise.

STRUCTURE
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The outer stronghold consist of four main playable areas: barren mountains (inhabitated by humans), forest ruins (elves), mines (dwarves) and underworld (the Undead). Each of these races possess an element orb hidden in depths of their realms which are required to open the gate to the inner courtyard where the the final castle is located. In addition to these the game will feature many other smaller areas.

As said, each of these races has their own elemental orb:

Humans = Orb of Water
Dwarves = Orb of Air
Elves = Orb of Earth
Undead = Orb of Fire

When player finds the orb, he will gain special powers from it (for example Water Breathing from the Orb of Water and Plant Growth from the Orb of Earth). With these powers the player will get access to new areas and is able to complete/perform certain events and quests.

WEAPONS & SKILLS
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The sword attributes can be raised in both hit speed (swordfight-skill) and damage (upgrades or new swords). Crossbow can be updated once in the same fields. Lockpick is another passive skill and Rune craft is related to the powers that player gets from the orbs. Skills can be raised when player gains a level. Nothing really special here.

ENDING
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The ending depends of your alignment, so there will be 2-3 different possibilities. You will also see a screen where you see different titles (Trollslayer, Treasure Hunter etc.) you got and what artifacts you found during the game.

Stay tuned for more updates!

[Jauhis]

Hey you bloody weeaboos!

We've had a little creative break from the project, and today we brainstormed some pretty good ideas for the game. We scrapped some old (and unnecessary) ideas and tried to make the whole game more "solid" as a whole. The game seems to be progressing very well again, and I've been enchanting some areas graphically. Boards for two Realms and the final area are still to be made. Of course, we still have to tweak some of the game's systems and balances.

We scrapped the crossbow and planned to replace it with lot cooler "Alien Blaster". The idea is that the blaster uses elemental powers from orbs besides it's own damage. For example, if you equip the blaster with fire element, you deal extra damage to enemies that are weak against it. Also you can melt icy walls and burninate the countryside with it.

The blaster will also be upgradeable by four different attributes.

- Damage
- Cell size
- Rate of Fire
- Range

And that's about it. Now I'm going to make some more boards.. BOARDS I SAY! THEY SNEAK INTO MY DREAMS! CALL THE POLICE!

Oh, and here's a brand new screenshot:

This post has been edited by Jauhis: 15 August 2009 - 08:24 PM

[Seventh Shade]

Why a ray gun istead of a wand? This seems like a pretty fantasy heavy setting and you haven't exactly been avoiding cliches (no offense. I don't mind a classic fantasy game at all if it looks as good as this). The graphics are amazing.

This post has been edited by Seventh Shade: 16 August 2009 - 06:42 PM

[Jauhis]

Seventh Shade, on Aug 16 2009, 06:41 PM, said:

Why a ray gun istead of a wand? This seems like a pretty fantasy heavy setting and you haven't exactly been avoiding cliches (no offense. I don't mind a classic fantasy game at all if it looks as good as this). The graphics are amazing.

Who said it's going to be CLASSIC fantasy game?

I admit that there's a huge amount of traditional fantasy stuff going on in the game, but the current background plot seems to be more like scifi. I think it's going to be a somekind of cross-over between our influences.

[Jester]

To Arms!

Okay, we'll write something about the plot/overview of the game's world after we are satisfied with it ourselves. Like Jauhis said we have scrapped some of our ideas and tried to make the game more solid. This means that some aspects of the game are evolving and and that we have made few adjustment on the plot and playability.

We decided to scrap the Runecraft skill and the whole "special powers from the elements" thing... or more likely combined it with the "Blaster"'s ability to use the elemental powers or at least that's the idea for now.

Also since we scrapped the crossbow as a weapon we are currently trying to make a "Blaster" engine that is traditional, but still non traditional or something like that.

Oh, and there's something we need to ask you guys. Would you prefer that when you are lockpicking something and failing the game tells you what lockpick skill level you need to open the door or just tell you that you don't have enough skill yet?

that's it for now

i guess

[Goshi]

Jauhis, on Aug 17 2009, 08:14 PM, said:

Who said it's going to be CLASSIC fantasy game?

I admit that there's a huge amount of traditional fantasy stuff going on in the game, but the current background plot seems to be more like scifi. I think it's going to be a somekind of cross-over between our influences.

So kinda like some of the Wizardry games right? Spaceships and all that but with typical fantasy races and weaponry?

Quote

Oh, and there's something we need to ask you guys. Would you prefer that when you are lockpicking something and failing the game tells you what lockpick skill level you need to open the door or just tell you that you don't have enough skill yet?

I'd like something along the lines of "You failed to pick the lock!", having the game tell me how much skill I need feels awkward =/

[Seventh Shade]

Ah, okay. Everything you mentioned so far made it sound totally fantasy. As for lockpicking, I think it should just tell you you can't pick it yet and leave it at that. It's probably not a good idea to break the fourth wall.

[Jester]

It seems we are now mostly satisfied with the overall plot and whatnot of the game, so here's some... stuff.

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BACKGROUND
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A starship on a mission to explore the universe for habitable planets discovers an unknown alien planet that seems to have an ecosystem that is able to
sustain life, but only on a certain limited area. After a hastly scan for alien lifeforms the commander of the starship decides to send in a scout for a
recon mission on the planet. You are chosen for this expedition. After the briefing you get in your scoutcraft and begin your flight towards the surface. When you enter the planet's atmosphere an unknown critical malfunction occurs on the scoutcraft's electronics and it crashes on the surface and you lose your consciousness.

You wake up in a pit that seems to function as a corpse disposing area. It seems that the pit is a part of somekind of ancient desolated medieval prison. You
realize that all your possessions including your gun and the scoutcraft are missing and you are wounded badly. You stand up and start looking for some way
to mend your wound before it's too late...

***

When you begin the game you need to choose your profession.

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PROFESSIONS
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Tech-Engineer
personality: Selfish

Pros: can fix machines
can upgrade the energy-gun

Cons: can't upgrade health


Bio-Engineer
Personality: Altruistic

Pros: can upgrade health

Cons: can't fix machines
can't upgrade the energy-gun

***

The professions have few active and few passive effects on the whole game, but you learn more about these when it's finished. At the moment the last realm
and the FINAL PLACE are still to be made. Now we are mainly focusing on enemy programming and we are trying to make some "behavior" patters so that they
won't all just seek the player and shoot seekers while pushing you into a lava pit. That's it for now. It will still take quite some time until it's finished, but we are slowly getting there.

[djtiesto]

Reading the OP over, I had no idea IF was still around actually...

[Jauhis]

Hello fans,

Sorry, the project has been cancelled due to a harddrive crash... LOLOLOLOLOL! Just kidding! I can almost imagine your hyperventilating corpses!

PROJECT UPDATE:

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All areas are finished now. Total number of boards at the moment is 110 excluding the cutscenes and other possible boards we might add during the progress (lolz, board-whoreing). The gun-engine has finally been approved by council of crappy engines.

We scrapped the whole level-based system, and the skills are now "bought" with treasure in the Outpost, which is the safe-haven located in the middle of the Stronghold. The Outpost also serves as a forge, where player is able to upgrade his sword and gun.

We also scrapped the element-based damage on the gun and made it so that it does just basic damage (that can be upgraded).
The elemental orbs now give different passive skills.

Because of our fading sanity we ALSO scrapped the whole profession thing and went back to the original alignment/event-based system. Now your actions will determine your fate (and the ending of the game). The plot has also gone through some changes but they are so trivial that we are not going to get into them right now.

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By the way, now that we are halfway past through the game, we noticed that we need a suitable font. If one of you wants to help with that, it would be AWESOEM!

It seems like this thing is going to get finished. It's no longer a gut-feeling, because we have managed to get this far (<- this is the new "democurse"-expression).

Brainstorming from HELL! Oh the agony!

[Galladin]

Jauhis, on Oct 25 2009, 06:44 PM, said:

By the way, now that we are halfway past through the game, we noticed that we need a suitable font. If one of you wants to help with that, it would be AWESOEM!

Attached thumbnail(s)

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[Revvy]

Woah. Pretty font.

[Bramble]

What will you call said font?

[T-Bone]

Hurray for the return of "IF"

[Jester]

The second one is more what we (read: i'm) looking for, but those lower case letters in the second one bring rage and confusion in my mind. If you could fix em , so that they wouldn't be so infuriating, that would be nice.

[Galladin]

Any better? It is rather difficult to eliminate "rage" and "confusion" and make something less "infuriating". =)

I'll try to catch you over Messenger or Facebook when I get some free time from the university if you want the char set.

Attached thumbnail(s)

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[Jester]

Galladin, on Oct 29 2009, 12:48 AM, said:

Any better? It is rather difficult to eliminate "rage" and "confusion" and make something less "infuriating". =)

I'll try to catch you over Messenger or Facebook when I get some free time from the university if you want the char set.

I'll also try to get some free time from the UNIVERSITY also, you know us being busy because of the UNIVERSITY and all.

edir:

i aslo forgotten. by less infuriating and confusing i mean less "kaunomainen". That thing destroyed visions in Spongko's Legendary journey.

This post has been edited by Jester: 29 October 2009 - 06:13 AM

[Galladin]

Jester, on Oct 29 2009, 08:09 AM, said:

I'll also try to get some free time from the UNIVERSITY also, you know us being busy because of the UNIVERSITY and all.

I am aware of that and I believe I never implied anything else.

[Jester]

Galladin, on Oct 29 2009, 12:29 PM, said:

I am aware of that and I believe I never implied anything else.

and so my sarcasm is lost in space and time =(

but anyway, you should send that charset to me via e-mail, or better yet send both fonts. Thankyoi.

[Jauhis]

Hello,

Graphical updates are a proof of progress!

[Jester]

i have done many many many hours of work for Stronghold, mostly brainstorming.