Last week, I talked about removing the vestigial resonars, and I've finalised that decision now. Since having neither a weapon or shield felt too empty, I've replaced the resonars with two new equippable items: an 'amulet' on the right hand for 'attacking', and a 'bracelet' on the left for bracing against incoming blows. I also designed two new monsters to replace the old skills!
The thought process behind the sword/shield replacements went something like: Maybe they should be rings? Magic rings are common in fantasy, and RPGs in particular. But they're too small and hard to see on the models at a distance. How about something larger around the wrists? Bracelets? 'Brace' seems especially fitting if it's for blocking, but maybe then the left and right hand things have different names? Bracelet for blocking, and... armlet for attacking (since 'arm' has weapon connotations). What is an armlet though, specifically? ...It's worn on the upper arm? Not really appropriate then. How about 'amulet'? That's similar, ends in -let so there's that nice similarity. Plus amulets as things have connections to warding off evil spirits etc. I always think of amulets as worn around the neck though, as they typically are in RPGs. Would one worn on the hand be acceptable? Oh well, might as well stick with it for now!
So I ended up with amulets and bracelets.
I haven't designed a proper look for them yet, though I like the idea of something built into each character's model (so they look slightly different for each of them), but with some small glowing gems loaded in based on what's equipped. Magic gemstones are also common in fantasy RPGs, and I had them in MARDEK. And everyone likes glowing things, right? Means they show up quite vividly even though they're small.
Maybe you could find gemstones and choose to equip them either in the amulet or the bracelet: the former would grant a passive to all skills used (eg Courage +10%) while the latter would apply to blocks specifically (eg Courage -10%). Maybe I need to make it so you can block magical/non-contact attacks too (you can't currently).
Maybe the outfit would always grant a passive that always applies at the start of the character's turn, then (Savitr gets damaged if Collie is KO'd, Collie is roused by 10%, Pierce gains Veil if he has any monster allies).
The other three equipment pieces could be miscellaneous passives with a variety of effects.
I don't want to overcomplicate things though. I'm thinking something more like Pokemon held items than typical RPG stat-boosting equippables. Ideally the equipment should be fairly simple, to direct focus towards the summonable monsters.
Speaking of which, I needed to replace the slash and music resonar skills with those, so I did that this week. Last week, I included this concept art for a possible bird/sword thing that might be used as a standard attack summon:
I revised that into this, imagining it as something like an animated sword or ∞ Honedge ∞ kind of thing, with angel (wings, halo) and aster (hexagonal symmetry) motifs:
I didn't care for it though, so I went back to the drawing board! Sometimes concepts just aren't working, and it's better to just start again. I did some crude sketches for something that felt more like an actual creature, which I felt would be more satisfying for the player to start with than an animated weapon:
I liked the idea, and it took a work day to turn it into a fully animated model incorporated into the game:
It's called Palade, a name I decided on after making a grid of synonyms for 'sword', 'knight', 'guardian', and 'angel' and playing around with - and discarding - a whole lot of combinations. The one I stuck with, Palade, is from paladin + blade + palladium, which apparently means "a safeguard or source of protection" (or so I learned). Plus it has 'pal' in there, like it's your personal friend who's helping you out, which I like.
It's a monster dreamed up and assigned by the Seraphim, a small fairy-like guardian angel, and both Collie and Savitr have one currently; there's no distinction despite her only being a Cherub. I could change that later, though for now it's just easier. I'm intending to have some dialogue bit about why Savitr hasn't come loaded with powerful monster essences if he's such a legendary warrior, anyway (why weren't Auron or Dunban massively more powerful than everyone else when they joined?!?); maybe he chose to only bring the minimum since he wasn't expecting much from this mission, or something.
That covers the basic attack. Savitr also needed a heal, for which I included this concept art last time:
And here's the finished model I made from it, again in about a day:
It's called Celestronaut - from 'celestial' and 'astronaut' - which was the name of a monster way back in Miasmon, though this looks completely different.
It's based on an angel, a grey alien, a skeleton, an astronaut, a UFO... a bunch of things! The... cloth thing (loincloth? I've no idea what that'd be called) is suggestive of a beam from the saucer. I find simple but multilayered designs like this WAY more interesting than the sort of big, intricate, ugly monsters found in AAA hyper-realistic games and Hollywood blockbusters.
It also seems particularly fitting considering all the aliens/UFO stuff I've been looking into recently! THEY'RE COMING SOON, YOU KNOW. Savitr's technically an alien (or rather a hybrid), so I suppose that fits for him, and some people mentioned they liked the fantasy/sci-fi overlap in MARDEK (me too!), so maybe having this from the start will show I'm aiming to do that again with this (though maybe in a slightly less generic way?). Plus I like the idea that 'angels' were extraterrestrials.
When you summon it, it appears above the party rather than in front of the caster, more like a Final-Fantasy-style summon, kind of, though it's still a skill like any other monster:
You may or may not have noticed there that when Savitr puts his hand to his head, a mandala appears in front of his forehead, or rather his THIRD EYE; another common theme in fantasy and mysticism that I'm making heavy use of. This happens for all skills:
And when blocking, in place of a shield:
I like that, since they're essentially like the magic circles that are common in most fantasy - MARDEK and earlier versions of this game had an equivalent - but mandalas in particular have associations with the more spiritual side of things, which this game explores. The aster - the flower thing that symbolises Alora Fane - also has radial symmetry and could be called a kind of super-simple mandala.
I needed a way to create mandalas easily, and - presumably due to their use in adult colouring books which started appearing when general awareness of mental wellness, meditation etc started seeping into the mainstream - a few sites exist for that purpose. I explored a few, though annoyingly none of them are perfect.
I thought maybe I could even redo the elemental symbols as mandalas:
But they're too intricate to be readable and distinguishable at small sizes, so they're no good for the element symbols. These images could still be used for the mandala effects that appear when summoning or blocking though; each gemstone has a different mandala image and colour.
Next week, I'm intending to work on the revised intro I (think I?) talked about last week, where Collie starts off dreaming of (her interpretation of) the time Savitr saved her from the Blight Wolves.
That's very likely to take at least the whole week, then I expect I'll need another week to finish off all the changes. But I'm hoping - hoping! - that after that I'll be ready for another round of testing... which I've been saying for ages without getting there, I know, but, well, let's just see what happens this time!
I'm getting a whole lot done every day - I'm not procrastinating or just taking days off due to mental illness or whatever (I've been relatively okay mentally recently) - it's just, well, games usually involve teams of people for a reason, and they still take forever to make!
Speaking of which, I recently wrote about my experiences with ∞ Oddworld: Soulstorm ∞, which I think took something like five years to make with a team of about 30 people? And it's not even a hugely long game, plus it had the benefit of being built on an existing world and gameplay mechanics.
Though it sounds like the process wasn't exactly smooth - the credits were extensive, and I get the impression it might have been handed around between different teams or something? - so maybe it's hardly a typical example.
I'm mentioning it again because I finally got back around to it and finished it. Turns out getting past the previous bad ending unlocked a further two huge levels, so that was... an interesting decision, I suppose. I'm not sure whether the good ending I got (though I've read there are four, with a 'best' ending being a slight variation of the good one) was hugely satisfying or anything, but it probably was an improvement over the other? Ehh...
I looked into some other reviews, and they seemed way more positive and praising than I was in my write-up! Which made me wonder whether they have ulterior motives, whether their standards are just not the same as mine, or whether I just see games differently as someone who makes them and who constantly worries about how well they'll be perceived. Hmm.
Oh well, if at least some people found the story of that particularly well-done, maybe what I'm writing for mine will be good enough to not be completely shot down?? I can but hope.
I also noticed in the credits that Lorne Lanning did voice pretty much all the characters, including Abe, so no wonder they sounded the same as they always have.
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