The Epitome of Anima; Update

[Fisherson]

I'm eargerly awaiting the demo and i'll just go delete my copy as I never finished it anyway.

[Muraiko]

Alright, finally got around to uploading it. (I had a long pottery report I just had to do this morning. Took me forever...) Anywhere, it is! My game size has gotten smaller since last time. I think it used to be about 80 Mb or something. Well, now it's about 31.1 MB, so the size cut by more than half. Please play my game and tell me what you think!

 http://rapidshare.com/files/216927790/Arcane_Odyssey.rar.html

[Fisherson]

Awesome! Downloading now. If my new Winrar works good i'll give you a reveiw, since I can't open the file otherwise.

[Muraiko]

*Kick* and whatnot.


I haven't been online much, nor was I able to advance as far as I wanted in my game, just because of school, tests, and all that stuff. Anyway, school just ended for me yesterday, so I have whole summer to myself now! Yeah!

Anyways, I've made some major changes in my game since my last update. I've added three new playble characters that will join your party, so now there are a total of nine party members, and not six anymore. I thought the game would be more "RPG-like" if I actually had a little more than just a small amount of characters.

Buijoh is now an important character who will join your party. I also gave him a make over, so he's custom now, instead of just something thrown together with the generaters. He has a tribal spear, and has useful spells that can boost up his own stats.

Kichi is a completely new character I just made up. She was on teh same pirate crew as Davin. Her weapons of choice are boots. She's pretty much a kicker, with techniques that can manage your money or items.

Zaikoat is also playalbe now. Thought it would be kinda cool to have an "animal" party member.

I also redid Sophie's hair, because the whole "Pink Pigtails" thing was kind of getting to me. There actually are alot of characters in games and anime shows who have pick pigtails. So I made her do her hair differently. I think she looks more mature this way.

I also added a "Character's Eyes" HUD. Now there will be a small picture of the character's eyes of those who are in your party. It also has the button that you assigned them (Like pressing - key for the party leader and stuff) so it'll be more simpler than to have to remember what key switches you to what teammate.


I'm still working on this game first priority, so hopefully the whole summer will help me pregress far! I'm actually getting pretty close to finally "finishing" the game. I'm about 75% done now. I'll plan on getting this game done 100% before my senior year is over next year, if I'm lucky that is.

[Fisherson]

*Kick* and whatnot.


I haven't been online much, nor was I able to advance as far as I wanted in my game, just because of school, tests, and all that stuff. Anyway, school just ended for me yesterday, so I have whole summer to myself now! Yeah!

Anyways, I've made some major changes in my game since my last update. I've added three new playble characters that will join your party, so now there are a total of nine party members, and not six anymore. I thought the game would be more "RPG-like" if I actually had a little more than just a small amount of characters.

Buijoh is now an important character who will join your party. I also gave him a make over, so he's custom now, instead of just something thrown together with the generaters. He has a tribal spear, and has useful spells that can boost up his own stats.

Kichi is a completely new character I just made up. She was on teh same pirate crew as Davin. Her weapons of choice are boots. She's pretty much a kicker, with techniques that can manage your money or items.

Zaikoat is also playalbe now. Thought it would be kinda cool to have an "animal" party member.

I also redid Sophie's hair, because the whole "Pink Pigtails" thing was kind of getting to me. There actually are alot of characters in games and anime shows who have pick pigtails. So I made her do her hair differently. I think she looks more mature this way.

I also added a "Character's Eyes" HUD. Now there will be a small picture of the character's eyes of those who are in your party. It also has the button that you assigned them (Like pressing - key for the party leader and stuff) so it'll be more simpler than to have to remember what key switches you to what teammate.


I'm still working on this game first priority, so hopefully the whole summer will help me pregress far! I'm actually getting pretty close to finally "finishing" the game. I'm about 75% done now. I'll plan on getting this game done 100% before my senior year is over next year, if I'm lucky that is.

Glad to hear your still working on this, it's a lot of fun to play, too bad I lost my copy so I'll =wait till you get this new one doe before I download it again. Good luck.

[Rahl]

Yeah I really liked the game, it just seemed very choppy from what I played.

[Muraiko]

*****Major Update*****

I've made MUCH progress since my last update and I thought that I might as well show what I've accomplished so far...

     *Experience Bar Coded (It' just a yellow bar above your face portrait and shows how much Xp you need to progress to reach the next level)

     *Technique Switching (You don't need to press the [9] key anymore to unequip techniques. Just go ahead and pick which ever one from the main menu)

     *CMS Party Formation (You can modify both Primary and Ancillary team by pressing the [9] key. You can formate your party anytime and anywhere you like)

     *Experience Display (Whenever you win a fight, a new victory screen shall whip across the screen, and display how much experience in total was obtained)

     *Better Gameplay Balance (The difficulty of the game is now pretty fitting, and the amount of expereince per fight is more planned out.)

     *Phaeth Blue Magick (Phaeth is now more of a 'blue mage', so she doesn't gain techniques through leveling, but by using a skill called 'Probe' against different obake.)

     *Buijoh Skills (Buijoh acts kind of like a bard now. He can only equip one technique at a time, but can raise a certain stat of the entire party, such as strength or speed.)

     *Needs (Hunger, Thirst, and Energy needs now go down much faster, but using items heal alot more. Staying at an Inn will also replenish all needs to 100%. When a need reaches 0%, you no longer die, but instead get major stat penalties. A warning as also made, so for example, if your hunger reaches 50%, your character will have a thouht bubble above his head that contains a picture of food in it.)

     *New Title Screen (Made a new title screen from scratch, and literally took the whole day...)

     *More gameplay content added





When you press the [9] key, the party formaton menu comes up. The whole thing consists of pictures instead of a map, so it's pretty convenient.
It is kind of straight forward. You pick a slot, and choose which member to replace it with. To remove a member from a slot, just pick him/her again.


You can see the Expereince Bar there, above Kichi's portrait... yeah...


The hunger bubble will appear above your head when hunger is at 50% and 25%.

[Fisherson]

Look's awesome man, hope to see a new demo soon. ^_-

[Rahl]

Looks really great, I hope updates come more often as well as a new demo.

[Muraiko]

I don't have a demo ready yet, but I will soon.

Right now, I'm test playing through the whole game again (for like, the eighth time now...) to make sure everything goes smoothly. The difficulty of the battles are more balanced, but I"m kinda having trouble with the amount of experience the enemies give you...

Stupid question, but how exactly are you supposed to set the amount of experience gained from monsters? Do you just guess and see how it goes, or is there some formula to figure it out?

[Rahl]

Well personally I like the way Wow does it, there are monster with red, yellow, green, and grey names. Red gives you better exp but harder monsters and it just moves down until you hit grey and get no experience from them anymore. The colors depend on what level your character is. If you wanted a system like that, you could give every monster a level of difficulty, set variables that find the differnce in monster and character levels. Have like a red 120% yellow 100% green 80% grey 0%, or whatever you choose. But I dunno maybe sounds like a hassle but I likethe idea of it. And you can deal more with low numbers in exp if, and this also keeps players from farming for levels making bosses just as hard as you want them to be.

[Muraiko]

That actually sound like a really good idea. I've never really played WoW before, but I get the picture. It may take alot of work though, making the code for it, then copying and pasting it to each battle, so I don't think I'll look into it right at the momment, but thanks for input.

[Paradoxic_Symphony]

Dunno if it's just me, but the demo link doesn't work... and I really wanna play! You've come a long way with this project, keep it up. 

[Uberpwn_w00t]

Not blurry, so much as softglow.

[Muraiko]

     Demo finally out!

Made TONS of improvements since last relase, including MUCH storyline changes. I've also balanced out the gameplay difficulty alot more efficiently now.

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*** HP and MP gauges work, and don't mess up anymore***

*** The animation for switching characters are lot more faster***

*** Changed/Fixed some character's sprites***

*** New smaller HUD that doesn't block the screen anymore***

*** Reworked on some of Kichi's skills***

*** Balanced out battle system and enemy stats more***

*** Major changes to some scenes and storyline events.***

*** Added a "Bonus Gauge" to the Music Concert Minigame   )

*** Of course, added more content***

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The demo is on the first page, so go there to get it.

       If you've had a save file from a past release, it won't work in this demo because of changes in party member's experience and stats. Please start a new file.

Alot of scenes have been changed anyway, so starting over will still be a new experience.




Please enjoy the release, as it is now my 75% Mark of actually completing the whole game!



EDIT:  Funny... the download link isn't clickable for some reason... Well, just copy it and paste it in the URL. It should work anyway.