KotL - Summoner project - finished Chapter 1

I go back to this about every 2 weeks. Last week? I was playing a ton of games. This weekend? My son was needling me about getting this project going a bit - he's definitely been interested in playing. Problem was? I had the custom code mostly in place, but untested and I had all of the pretty but relatively useless intro stuff in place, but no real dungeons yet.

Now for anyone who's used RPG Maker XP, they know that the basic systems are... well, super basic. Combat is a fight/skill/defend/item affair. Now most of the scripts I used? I did not write them. I did however have to modify a lot of them to get them to play nicely with one another and my own customized stuff. So now the combat includes things like Overdrives, Summoning replacement creatures and gear that can have spells cast off of it. Getting all of that debugged was most of my Saturday evening.

The other thing that I decided to do was work in a lot of branching paths and choices - for example either, both or neither of your siblings may survive the early going, which obviously affects some of the cosmetics to the storyline, but also who becomes available in your party. Which reminds me - I need to work on the party switching script next...

Anyway, that said, even with me knowing right where to go, I would say the game took me about 20-25 minutes to get through chapter 1, and it took my son about 35-40 minutes when he ran through it. I figure if it reaches 3-5 hours in total, I met my goal. Anyway, the video's nothing special, but I put in the last stage of the first real playable cavern, showing off some of the scripted events and combat options.

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KotL - Summoner

So, part of what I've been spending some time on over the last week was a demo of RPG Maker XP. I had mentioned this before earlier in the week. Now mind you, most of the code is in place, and graphically I'm using basic RTP graphic assets, but I think the 'attract' or demo mode turned out okay on it.




Basically, the storyline bouncing around in my head is a spin-off of my Kingdoms of the Lost MUD that I run with my wife. The premise is basically people dabbling in a kind of magic they don't know much about. Nothing too deep, but I get on these creative kicks where I want to not just play something, but make something (I do a lot of writing and already have the MUD) - this was just another outlet to help with that particular itch. Hopefully I'll regain some steam on it soon and do something with the gameplay - I have some stuff mapped out and implemented - probably about the first 10 minutes or so of the game. I may go ahead and try to get an hour or so of it out there and playable before too long. Anywho - thanks for taking a look and I'll add some posts here and there as I add things, especially if people show any interest in it. Basically though, it's a throwback the old 16 bit RPG era of gaming - one of my favorite times in gaming history.

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