Eventually, he reached the horizontal shafts of a mine he swore must have been in the Old World, the place nobody was supposed to go. The tunnels snaked around him, meandering along the now-extracted ore veins. He wandered through it for only a few minutes and found himself lost. Even tracing his path back to where he started, he couldn't find the ladder. So, half out of desperation, he kept going deeper into the tunnels. Everywhere around him, he found lightstones. Nobody who had mined on Ste
All right! I've been keeping this system secret for so long, but It's finally time to reveal what it is: You will, as of Act III, be able to summon the Toa, Guardians of old, to aid you in battle. During your quest, you will find Great Kanohi, which belonged to various Toa. Each of these, when equipped, will teach a Kanohi skill (something I'm revamping for Act III) and a Summon skill, which allows you to use that Toa's signature ability. These powerful attacks will use a lot of Stamina with
Well, I said I'd update when that dungeon was in a screenshot-worthy state, and sorry it took so long, but here we go: That's right - you haven't found all of the secrets of the Library yet. I also have another bit of good news: Aside from some small very-end bits, whose tileset I haven't even made yet, Act III is fully mapped. All of the dungeons, islands, towns, etc. are in the game right now. Most of what's left is puzzle and story event programming, with some minor graphics (apparen
Whew... Brickshelf finally got over its server issues, so I can finally make this post properly (I was originally planning to do this on Monday, maybe Sunday). So, without further ado, the new title screen for Masks of the Elders: The logo will also appear in the opening cinematic. I'm also thinking of adding some animations to more clearly show transitions between acts. More on this as it develops (or doesn't, but I'm leaning toward adding them in right now). Also, the second dungeon o
For this update, I have a bit of a theme going: Audio/Video. What exactly do I mean by that?
Well, for Audio: If anyone happened to find, in the music folder of the mp3 version of the game, the soundtrack, and listen to the music outside of RPGmaker, they might have noticed some strange things in the ID3 tags of the tracks--things like "V[number or letter]" at the end of the title, missing or inconsistent artist information, etc. Well, when the Act II mp3 version is released, I'll be recifyin
In the words of a certain aging, lunatic mad scientist from the future: Good news everyone!
Act II is almost done.
Once again, I have to say I'm sorry for not getting this update out sooner. My workload from school really piled up this past month, which pushed Masks of the Elders to the bottom of the priority list. Fortunately, I was able to squeeze in little pockets of time where I could work on the game, and right now the three big things left to do for Act II are the story sections of d
First off, sorry for the long wait this time. Between school taking up far longer than I'd thought and getting sick not long after the last update, gamemaking hasn't been as big a priority. That said, this past week I've made some excellent progress, especially in the second dungeon—in fact, aside from a battle background and an overworld graphic (both of which are set to be done for all of Act II en masse), it's done. Hooray! To celebrate, here's a spoiler-censored screenshot:
What's he no
Another week, another chunk of progress. Like I mentioned in the last update, I've completed the enemy graphics for Act II and have started programming them (I'll get to balancing them a bit later). However, I've also been doing a bit of other graphics work, and got all three of the remaining characters' battle charsets DONE! Next in that department is to finish off the weapons graphics, which have the added benefit of not having to do any more of them for the rest of the game, since all the wea
I was going to post an update on Friday, but I'm glad I waited--I've gotten some really good stuff done in the past hour or so with graphics, and ALL of the enemies for Loro-Kava and the last island of Act II, Icosa Nui, are sprited. and they are looking great (some of them ugly--the good, mutant-monster kind of ugly). I should probably mention that, just in terms of regular, non-boss enemies, Act II will have considerably more varieties than Act I, almost twice as many, in fact. There will also
Sorry about all the slow updating. Things are just moving that slow on my end here. Unfortunately, as I predicted, the death of the game's topic really dealt a blow to my motivation, so I'm still on the same dungeon I was last time. Thankfully, I did manage to force myself to design the dungeon's sub-basements, one of the big roadblocks keeping me from completing it. I've also come up with some interesting puzzles to accompany this mysterious dungeon, but I won't spoil those either. One thing I
Well, I'm back from a brief vacation, and managed to get some work done on the game. As far as definite progress goes, I've finished mapping the first Act II dungeon and am about 1/4 of the way through programming it. I'm not quite ready to show a screenshot yet, though maybe next time would be good. There are a few things that have to happen before I'll be ready, but they should happens soon.
Also, I've finished spriting all of the Act II bosses, with the last one sprited being the first one
This is the last entry in the Project Terra Updates under that name, since the game is now in testing, and should have its own topic by the end of next month, I'm hoping before Brickworld. Now, there is still stuff to do for the game yet, since some non-critical items were withheld from the first round of testing in order to keep things going on schedule. I'll be getting to those within the week, if my new schedule pulls through. Then, I'll be sending the game off to Neya for the second round of
Project Terra Update #11
As far as progress goes, the third dungeon is fully mapped, and all of the puzzle/item finding elements have been added in. There's still a bit of story programming left to do, and a charset to be made for the dungeon's boss, but there isn't much left after that before the game can go into testing. I have to admit that the dungeons, with the exception of the second one, are going to be very same-y in the Demo, but given the locations I've chosen, there wasn't much roo
All right, it's been WAY too long since I've posted an update here, which is both good and bad. The good news is that the battle system I've been talking about is programmed, and most of the stuff left to do is in those two dungeons I haven't yet gotten around to. The bad news is that progress has been slower than I'd like, because of schoolwork escalating and the remarkably addictive phenomenon known as Pokemon Soul Silver… so I guess I'll say I've switched from "Development" to "Research" mode
This is an unexpected turn of events: things are getting done, at a very good pace no less!
Anyway, the battle charsets for the first two playable characters (the ones in the screenshot from earlier) are done, quite a bit sooner than I anticipated, and I even finished an entire SET of weapon graphics, so all the disk-based weapons are essentially done for the rest of the game. That means that as far as battle charsets and weapons go, I'm halfway done for the content of the Demo!--Wait, I ju
Just a note: This entry isn't going to be a very fun one. It's more of a history lesson. Also, there will be some bad news, but also some good news, toward the end of this post.
Now, to all those aspiring gamemakers out there who haven't been on the forums very long (if Piraka Mania was the first game of mine you noticed, listen up): Good gamemaking takes lots and lots of practice. It may not seem like I've had much at a casual glance, but go a bit deeper, and you'll realize just how much I'v
Okay, it's time for some major spoilers! In this entry, I'll be revealing the name of each Chapter boss in the game, and provide some details on their appearance and/or strategy.
Prologue: Granja (Ta)
If you've played the Demo, you'll realize that this isn't really a spoiler. Anyway, on to some tips: If he stops for a second, run away from him; he's about to do a jump attack. Also note that he does a second, smaller jump attack soon after.
Chapter 1: None (Onu)
Yup... there's no boss for
And now we come to one of my favorite subjects: Bi-directional Temporal Movement, or, for those who don't have a thesaurus wedged between their ears, Time Travel. It's been a staple of Sci-Fi almost as long as extraterrestrials, and probably has just as many stories surrounding it. Personally, I wish I could make a time machine, then go back and see who came up with the idea.
One thing I find surprising about time travel-- It's an excellent plot device, but nobody seems to use it! Only once i
Well, I never expected the forums to go offline, much less for as long as they did. That said, work on The Taluka Chronicles has proceeded at about the pace of forum posts over the past few weeks, probably due to lack of motivation (with no community with which to communicate here, and no other location in which the game is being released), and the fact that I was on vacation last week. So, basically, Taluka's been on hold for the moment, and will continue to be, unfortunately, for the next week
Well, I'll admit there hasn't been much progress on Taluka over the past couple of weeks. All that's really happened has been in improving the water tiles to look less blocky and mapping a little bit of the underwater area between Ga-koro and Hoi Island. In short, don't expect the next Demo to come rushing out anytime soon.
Part of the reason for this is that I've had my attention stolen away by college (it's starting to get into full swing now) as well as another project that's too early to
.....He pushed aside a loose stone, and from behind it, piercing white light shot through, darkening everything else. He threw up his hand, obscuring the incoming radiance enough to regain his sight. "Why are you stopping?" His friend yelled. "We're almost there!" He paused for a moment, then returned to clawing out the rocks that kept him inside. Each stone cast aside brought another color into view, and their journey an inch further.
.....Soon, he beheld the beauty of the outside: the skies
A few of you intrepid computer sleuths may have found out by now, but RPGMaker pulls its media directly from a file on your computer, contained in the folder you installed when you set up the game. This means that you can find and open those files. Because of this... let's call it a 'feature,' I've given the Enhanced version of the soundtrack a full set of ID3 tags, containing the track title, album information, composer information (when I'm certain who wrote the original versions) and context
Alright! We have more progress going on. As of now, the only puzzle-type gameplay left to do is a little bit in the Library. Other than that, there's a bit of story work left to be done at the very end, the tileset I mentioned earlier, and a few other little bits to round up here and there. As far as teasers and things to show, I don't have anything at the moment, what with half of Act III being top-secret, but there is one bit of good news: I've decided to re-open the topic a week from Monday
Sorry I've been so silent lately - between life, new projects, and a whole lot of complications with the Beta Testing process, I haven't gotten much done with the game in the past... well, it's been a long time. Anyway, there is good news: Act III will be released, and soon. Very soon. The plan is to have it out next week. Until then, stay tuned!
Well, I know I've been a bit inconsistent with keeping up the Taluka Blog posts (he said, addressing the void), but work has actually continued on the game, with the Bottom of the Bay and Hoi Island areas currently being mapped. With that in mind, the theme of this blog post is Digital Landscaping.
This is probably going to sound very egotistical and snootily artistic, but… with Book 1 Gold, I'm trying to make the landscape look more realistic and natural than my previous games, and to get aw
