Psionic Powers in my game are the equivalent of the Spells in a classic fantasy RPG game. Since I wanted to keep the interface simple, I don’t have 50 “different” spells like in most games. Instead each Power has a value that represent the character knowledge of that specific power, going from 0 to 99 (even if at start of game each Power has a random value from 5-10).

Each Power also requires Psionic Points (which from now I’ll abbreviate into PP) to be used – sort of the Mana points in fantasy game. The difference though, is that rather than having “Heal Light Wounds” and then “Heal Medium Wounds”, “Heal Severe Wounds”, “Heal Critical Wounds”, in my game there is a different (more casual) approach: each Power has a basic “casting” value, but you can spend more Psionic Points to increase its effectiveness. The base effectiveness is influenced by the character level and the knowledge of that specific power.

A few examples with some non-definitive value:

Level 1 Psionic character wants to use the Harm Power. He can use it spending the base PP value of 5 and deal 5 damage.
Level 10 Psionic character wants to use the Harm Power. He can use it spending the base PP value of 5 and deal 25 damage (the bigger damage is because the character is higher level and has more knowledge of that specific Power).
Level 1 Psionic character wants to use the Harm Power. He can use it spending a PP value of 15 (base + 10 PP) and deal 5×3=15 damage.

So as you can see, a level 1 character can deal almost the same amount as the level 10 if he spends x 3 of PP. Of course, at level 1, if you use 15 PP you’re left with almost no PP, while at level 10 you still have a good reserve of them

I think this system will still allow a good flexivity, but without filling the character “grimoire” with 50 powers that basically does the same thing, just in different proportions!

So you won’t face only grey cities, unholy graveyards and zombies, but you’ll be also able to relax in a more bucolic map. The engine was going slower with that amount of sprites to render, but isn’t bad considering: a) is still work in progress so can be optimized, b) the engine is running in debug mode, so the speed is already slower than its true potential

For the record, I’m surely not talking about a powerful/complex engine But it’s enough for the kind of game I have in mind. I’m sure players’ attention will be drawn by the enemies, the gameplay and the variety, but a nice art doesn’t hurt!

You can see a screenshot and a video below:

Bionic Heart – Today got some new voices for Bionic Heart, so we’re almost finished with it. I’m really looking forward to this release! I already sent out the beta demo out to some people and so far got very positive responses.

Planet Stronghold – I asked Deji if was possible to do some digital coloring of some old sketches another artist sent me. He is talented but he doesn’t have any digital tablet so isn’t able to do digital stuff…! I also found a character artist, she does an interesting realistic/soft-shading manga art, I think would work well in a space game.

Tower Of Destiny - Just got the new build of engine from the programmer. With it I should have enough to start creating the game maps. I’m going to add a graveyard to that town map I already posted before. Once it’s done I’m going to post another video on youtube

Heileen 2 - I’ve just commissioned new art. The game will feature some really nice art, and some small nudity too. If I have to label a game under 14 for the content, then it better be not just for the texts/description! Everything will still be of course very raffinate and soft like in the first episode. Will post more screenshots, and when the voiceover by sakebento is ready a short video maybe.

The Flower Shop – I got Marian sprite, and is really cute. I want to post shortly a sort of summary with all the characters in the game, like I did for Heileen and Bionic Heart (“The Cast”). Deji drew some really cute girls, hard to pick one…!

and there’s still another mysterious card game I’m working at which made great progresses recently too! I’m going to officially announce it when I have made a video or taken some screenshots.

Based on a mix of python and C++ (with PTK support), is extremely powerful because lets me change stuff on the fly and just hit a key to reload it – no need to restart from scratch everytime

So far I didn’t manage to create a decent-looking forest, but maybe will retry again. Meanwhile, the city town is looking cool, and with a few dynamic lighting placed correctly and a night theme it could look much more scary than in that screenshot.

I have already the story and characters in mind, but I don’t want to reveal too much. It will be something different from the standard RPGs anyway

The actors did an oustanding job so far, so certainly isn’t their fault for anything. Simply if I make voiced games in future I’ll need to start the voiceovers as soon as the scripting is done (before getting the final art). Or maybe I should avoid adding voiceovers to such HUGE games!

Another good news is that I am having a friend of mine doing a “dungeon game engine”. So yes, FINALLY Tower of Destiny will see the light! I have only a very early alpha version of the engine but it already rules. Full 3d means that I can move and even if the movement is “in blocks” (with turning of 90° degrees), being in full3d means that is very fluid, can have dynamic lightning, animated textures, and many other features.

I can’t wait to finish some projects I still am working on right now to concentrate 100% on that game. Finally, doing a dungeon crawler RPG is a reality! Hurrah

I have still a project on stand-by – Tower of Destiny. However I’m thinking also about learning Flash/Director to make a online game. I have what I think to be a pretty cool idea that all Magic Stones fans will surely like, a sort of online rpg card game. The advantages of a online-only game are lots, for example multiplayer possibility, no need to store the data on your pc, possibility to play the game anywhere (even at work! eheh) and also the micropayment thing, so that you can pay only for how much you play the game (have still to decide the details, but this would allow much more flexibility on payment methods).

However I’m not saying that TOD will become waporware: I’ll resume working on it at same time as the online game. Just don’t ask me release dates, because I really have no clue, it’s going to be a very BIG game

Took a break from the map, and finished the skills screen. As you can see, there are plenty of skills to choose from You can re-roll the starting values, then fine-tune the skills you are more interested in, by spending the skill points available (this process will be identic also in the game everytime you level up).

You’ll add skill clicking on the + icons next to the values. Notice some skills are in red: this because the class I’ve choose in that screenshot (healer) is forbidden from learning some skills (like Dual Wield, or Black Magic!).

I’ll go back on the editor now. Will take quite some time. For sure making an editor will delay the game release after Christmas. But, on the other hand, will make me able to release episode 2-3 much faster than without it, and most importantly people will be able to modify in practice almost everything in the game.

Going to make the spells editor now

you can see the fog of war in action. The icon in the center of the screen represent your party. Ok the rest is just walls and the floor, and on bottom you can spot a door Not much else, the room is a bit empty now but I haven’t implemented items and monsters yet. I need first to make an editor for them and will take a while!!

Now that I have “visualized” the map, I’m going to resume and finish the character creation, and in particular the spells system. I don’t think I can have 180 different spells, so I’m probably going to:

1 – have some “common” spells between the various deities, and a few “special” ones that are reserved for each deity.

2 – reduce the number of spells you get each level. Now I reduced the maximum reachable level for episode 1 to level 5, so in theory I should have a new spell for each magic school (six) for each level (five) for a total of 30 spells for each deity, so 180 different spells total. I could reduce so that you get a new spells at level 1-3-5 so I would cut down the total number of spells to 108 (not that is easy anyway to come up with 108 unique spells!!).

I’m thinking to use method 1. I never seen a rpg with 108 spells anyway, and also as I previously saisd, I don’t want to just rename the spells but recycle old effects. Fewer spells but really different, this is the way I want to go

First performance problem – had to use batch to blit all the various tiles, since there are 4 layers… background, terrain, moveable objects (party and monsters) and fog all over it. Now with batch, I have some problems with zooming since I can’t now just use one single function to zoom in/out…

Well I guess that was too good to be true to have such a system ready in only 2 days of part-time work. I’ll have to spend more time on it. Anyway, I’m also wondering if is better to have big maps with realtime movement , or smaller ones with turn based movement.

The pathfinding algorithm works fine – so that’s not a problem. It is mostly about playability, not sure if exploration should be such an important part of my game, or just focus on combat (after all, in Magic Stones you go straight to the battles and people seems really to love it…!). With realtime, to make a level last some minutes, I would have to make a bigger map. With turn-based, would be more a matter of avoiding monsters or even using sneak attacks, and so on. Actually I was even wondering if to discard the first person view and use only the topdown even for the combat…
I’ll have to think carefully about this aspect since it would influence all the game.

Instead I finally came up with what I think a good idea. A topdown map, in which you’ll see an icon representing your party moving on it, and the monsters as well. I’m thinking of making it real-time, with possibility to pause it. The combat instead will be turnbased, unless I change my mind at last moment. In any case, even if it will be real-time, I’ll add the possibility to pause the game any moment.

What would be cool with the map made this way, is that you could see where the monsters are positioned, and so try to avoid them. I want also to implement a sort of line of sight, variable for each monster, so if there are monster particularly blind you can move just behind them. Or if there are others too slow, you can outrun them. Then once you are near (on same cell of the map), the view zooms in and you start the first-person combat with the view I showed you in the previous post.

I’m making the map editor right now – since I plan to make a trilogy of this game, better build up proper tools, which probably will be released to the public after the 3rd episode so people can make mods.