[CHEZZY]

Jello 2 died a while ago... I cried all night. But now, I've decided to start a new creation!!! Farwood Isle is an open ended freelance rpg. Think Morrowind, but with a Zelda classic kind of feel. Right now I have already finished all the swords and armor, the menu, a few enemies and the status screen. Heres a list of swords and armor:

WEAPONS:
wooden sword
iron sword
steel sword
emerald sword
flamegrater - SPECIAL
death - SPECIAL
bloodshed - S E C R E T

ARMOR:
iron armor
steel armor
gold armor
emerald armor
fireguard - SPECIAL
decay - SPECIAL

I'll get a demo out there as soon as the rest of the engine is finished. I WOULD do some screenies, but I don't actually know how to put them in a post.

Any comments would be apreciated, but only ask me to change something if it is something I CAN change.

[hob nado]

For the king, for the land, for the mountains, for the green valleys where dragons fly! For the glory and power to win the black lord, I will search for the EMERALD SWORD

Oh man, thank you so much. I was feeling like crap a minute ago, and you reminded me of this song, and I put it on, and I feel so much better now =D

[Koji]

XD

[asgromo]

Esdemo1, on Sep 8 2006, 12:16 AM, said:

For the king, for the land, for the mountains, for the green valleys where dragons fly! For the glory and power to win the black lord, I will search for the EMERALD SWORD

Oh man, thank you so much. I was feeling like crap a minute ago, and you reminded me of this song, and I put it on, and I feel so much better now =D

I never thought I'd consciously write a post for this alone, but: YES

I'm putting that on right now. Right Now

[CHEZZY]

Esdemo1 Posted on Sep 8 2006, on 04:16 AM, said:

For the king, for the land, for the mountains, for the green valleys where dragons fly! For the glory and power to win the black lord, I will search for the EMERALD SWORD

um, I am making a game you know. That's what the threads about?

[Terryn]

CHEZZY, the band Rhapsody tends to do that to people. About the only thing that can get a bigger reaction out of MZXers would be if you named one of your spells "Dragonforce".

Okay, time to ask some relevant questions. How much randomisation is in this thing? Open-ended games tend to be much more random, though it's possible to smartly make an open-ended game that's completely planned.

Also, how big is the game world planned to be so far?

[CHEZZY]

Not a lot of randomization. This game is more about skill, but there still is some random stuff, like getting random things out of chests.

The game world is going to be big. Not huge, but still pretty big. I plan to have every outdoor area stuck on one world map, but the map is not really a map, more a huge board. The towns are true size (not smaller than you like on other world maps) and the only times you will ever have to come off the world map is when you enter buildings and dungeons and stuff.

btw how do I post screenshots?

[Terryn]

Either use the "File Attachments" option and attach one / an archive of them, or put them on webspace or an image host such as ImageShack and use the

[img]picaddress[/img]

tag to directly show them.

[Lachesis]

i demand wooden sword is replaced by SHORT SWORD

[Dr Lancer-X]

also replace iron sword with iron hammer

see, a hammer is like a sword, but... NO

[Pyro1588]

what about hammer? "like a sword but a hammer."
es: i'm looking that song up right now. haven't heard of it before, but it sounds cool =)
chezzy: sounds cool! you've got a good selection of weapons already. i'm looking forward to the demo.
edit: es: this song totally rocks! how come i never heard of this group before?

This post has been edited by Pyro1588: 08 September 2006 - 01:40 PM

[Koji]

scale cities and world 'map'... Damn you... I wanted chronostodian to be the first game with that

Oh who am I kidding chrono is dead. I look forward to seeing this completed, don't make it too huge because.... chronostodian

[hob nado]

Rhapsody is fun, inmate got me started on them. I'm not a huge power metal guy but there's no denying Emerald Sword =)

Anyways, sorry for digression. Chezzy, if you're building a huge outdoor environment on one board, you might want to consider automatic generation - laying out big boards, I've always found, is the most tedious part of MZX. So if you're going for something very big that's going to be populated by random trees, grasses, fences, etc, I have a level-building program I've been twiddling with (which I call "Megahax") which makes it easy to generate huge, randomly-decorated boards, if you're interested.

[CHEZZY]

I was thinking of doing that ctrl + 1, 2 ,3 so on move to come back to certain areas to make editing a huge map easier. The reason I'm doing a huge one board outdoor area is because the day/night engine is slightly complicated and won't work over different boards.

Esdemo1: thanx but no thanx. The whole game relies on everything being exactly where I put it, like monster generation and object pickups. You'll understand when it's done.

Kuroneko and Lancer: too late, the sword engine was finished long ago. Too much hassle I'm afraid. Plus the whole game is centered around swords. I like swords.
No hammers.

[Tixus]

I've tried doing gigantic one-board worlds before, and believe me, it gets absolutely tedious! But, if you're not overly ambitious with the graphics, then you shouldn't have too much of a problem with that at all. I'm interested in seeing what this looks like, since it's been something I've tried a few times before.

[Bramble]

This game will never become anything of value. Can you prove me wrong?

[Dr Lancer-X]

Tixus, on Sep 10 2006, 01:30 AM, said:

I've tried doing gigantic one-board worlds before, and believe me, it gets absolutely tedious! But, if you're not overly ambitious with the graphics, then you shouldn't have too much of a problem with that at all. I'm interested in seeing what this looks like, since it's been something I've tried a few times before.

Yes, well, it can be strangely rewarding as well. Damnit I want to finish that game ;(

[Quasar84]

What Tixus and Es said and implied is right, level design is the biggest pitfall. When you get down to it, it's not a lack of technical expertise that kills a project, it's tedium, and level design has it in spades. So try to use graphics that are very copy+paste friendly to speed up this horrible process. They might not look quite as good in the end but your sanity will thank you. You don't want to spend like, 8 months working on and off on one area of one game, even if it's a core area, do you?

[hob nado]

Yeah, I think I'm becoming a proponent of automation of at least some parts of level design; however much you want to automate is up to you, but certain kinds of games with certain kinds of levels just call for it. Megahax was bred from laziness specifically for the big world of State Road Seven (still don't know if I'll do anything with that.)

[Koji]

ES: Make something like

Hobodan II : The Escape from the Void!!