Lost Chapters IV

[UPRC]

I'm proud to present to you guys the latest game I am working on, which happens to be from an award winning series called Lost Chapters that I worked on back in the RPG Maker 2000 days.

How is it award winning? Well, the first game was awarded the title "worst RPG Maker game of all time" in 2001 and I am very proud of that!

The two following games were pretty bad too because I made them both in 2001 and they were mostly all RTP but yeah... Eight years later, I'm hoping that I can make something a bit better than RTP shitfests. I really don't want to be remembered for a Final Fantasy fangame so this is probably my last shot at RPG Maker mediocrity!


So what's this game about?
Lost Chapters IV is about World Trees, which are colossal in size and even more so power. In a nutshell, the World Trees were created by an all powerful being known as the Creator who gave birth to the planet and all life on it. The Creator looked into the future of his world and saw that the infant homosapiens (humans, obviously) would one day grow into a greedy, violent race that would harm the planet in many detrimental ways. He was aware that if he did not intervene before this happened, the humans would eventually destroy the planet. It would go from lush wonderland to giant desolate rock.
Becaue he obviously did not want his world to suffer this cruel fate, he decided to plan for this inevitable fate of the world. Rather than erasing homosapiens from his world (which he would not do, since he values all life), he decided to plant eight seeds which would grow into the World Trees. These eight trees, infused with vast amounts of mana, would counter the influence that the humans would have on the planet's health. These trees would pump their mana deep into the planet's core, which enriches the planet and keeps it healthy. In turn, the planet returns the drained mana to the World Trees in the form of essence, which the trees recycle back into mana and the process repeats.

The game itself takes place seven days after one of these trees comes under attack by Gorlasks, a sub-race of demons. The local inhabitants near the tree watch in horror as the demons drain mana from the tree. Eventually, the tree becomes a lifeless shell of its former self since mana was also needed to keep the tree alive. As the demons drain the last bit of mana from the World Tree, soldiers show up from Genesis, a world renowned research organization. The soldiers come from the military branch of Genesis, and they are known as biotroopers due to their enhanced elemental abilities. The Genesis biotroopers slaughter the Gorlasks and save what's left of the World Tree. After cleaning up, they regret not being able to arrive sooner and then immediately depart as if nothing had happened. Purdrassil, the World Tree that came under attack, is left to rot away now that it has been drained of its mana.

The game opens in a small town called Hillsdale, which coincidentally sits not too far from another World Tree. The player assumes the life of Lucas Vandergard, a young man tired of the laid back lifestyle of the countryside. However, his boredom quickly turns into curiousity and excitement as Gorlasks emerge yet again to attack a World Tree. This time, it is the one just outside of Hillsdale. Lucas grabs his best friend and rushes off to investigate, even though it is forbidden to do so by the village elder.

While it sounds pretty straight forward, I have some big plot twists already written down. Anyone who has played virtually every Playstation era RPG will probably be able to predict the twists, but that's alright.


Major Characters


Lucas Vandergard
The main character and protagonist of the story. Lucas is from Hillsdale, a small countryside village. He grows tired of the simple lifestyle that he is forced into by living in the village. His heart lies outside of the village due to his dream of being an adventurer. His dream is fulfilled when unexpected events force him to flee from Hillsdale forever. Lucas is often observant and analytical, catching onto details most would usually overlook.

Aiden Lundberger
Lucas' best friend. Aiden shares the same dreams, but for different reasons. He mostly feels that he simply does not belong in Hillsdale, that his exciting and suave lifestyle only spells trouble for the laid back village. Aiden counters Lucas' relaxed attitute with his own lively personality. He frequently evokes a fiery passion for anything he feels interested in.

Neville Kichfelt
The CEO of Genesis. Little is known about Neville other than his dastardly good looks and love of science, which are the only qualities of him known by the general public. Genesis insiders however know that Neville is often a dark and brooding man, putting scientific research above all else. Despite how he may appear to Genesis employees, few doubt his integrity and devotion to improving the lives of humankind through science.

Wolfgang Belmont
Wolfgang Belmont, is the current Emperor of Angtol, the nation which most of the game will hopefully take place in. He is an aging man who finds himself near the end of his road as his influence slowly fades away over Angtol as the people begin to look more towards the charismatic military leaders. The Emperor is one of the few people who object to Genesis' research, claiming that they are accomplishing too much in too little time. He believes that this will be their undoing.


Combat, Levels & Skills

I've decided to make combat a bit more interesting by completely removing physical attacks, meaning there is no "fight" command in battles. Everything is skill based. A character's command set looks like this:

• Action
• Defense
• Item
• Row

What is Action? It is essentially the same as any magic/special/skill command. This is where almost every action your character can make will appear. It's something like... Well, for lack of a better example the closest thing I can think of to compare this to is Chrono Cross. All skills are elemental based and do all sorts of different things. All characters will have one element that they specialize in, and they will learn skills of that element type as they level up. A wind elemental character will only use wind attacks unless an item is found that teaches them a skill from another element type (such as fire).
Characters will have 20 AP (Action Points, this is just MP) from level 1 all the way to 99 and most skills will only cost 1-5 AP. Now, this might sound like characters will end up with no AP very quickly, meaning they would not be able to take any action at all instead of using items. Well, no. The "Defense" command allows characters to enter a state of regeneration. When they use a defence skill, the character will glow blue (temporary, all characters will glow the colour of their element later) and regenerate a slight bit of AP each turn and their defense will increase slightly as well. Characters can still act while they are in this state of regeneration and are not restricted in any way.

As well as specializing in one specific element each, every character will also be weak against one element. Say that there is a character named Bob who specializes in fire elemental attacks. Well, if Bob gets hit by an ice spell, he's probably going to get banged up pretty badly. This introduces a slight strategic aspect to battles. Will you want to bring Bob to an ice cave? Definitely, because he would obliterate the monsters there with his fire attacks, even if he may take a bit of extra damage. However, if you have Billy the shadow magic user who is also weak against ice attacks... Well, what good is he if he won't deal any extra damage but will still be weak against the monsters in the ice cave? When there are more than four characters in the party, I'm hoping that this would introduce a bit of planning such as..
"Well, I'm going into the volcano. Which character should I take? Who will deal extra damage to the monsters in the volcano and who will damaged more? And which characters will sit in between, dealing mediocre damage while also being hit for average amounts?"

And then there is leveling. Aside from gaining new skills from leveling up, there won't be many more benefits. You may get a few increases every now and then, but the difference between levels 1 and 10 will be very, very little.  You're still going to need stats increased, though. This is where "essence" items come into play. They will act as the standard "use this to increase a character's HP by X amount" items. They will be scattered all over the world and will be found in treasure chests, in loot dropped from bosses, and probably as rewards for completing sidequests. Finding a sufficient amount of essence will be very important to not getting your butt handed to you later, but don't fret.. I am not going to make it overly difficult to find enough of these items.

Attempting to beat the game by grinding repeatedly to gain levels will not pay off either. Say you reach level 99 with all characters but you never use a single essence item. Well, you'd be slaughtered by basic monsters of the same level as the party. Essence items will be essential. To make this work, they will also be plentiful.

Though all characters will already have predefined roles to fit into such as Fred being a tank character or Ted being a mage, essence should allow you to redefine the roles if you choose to, but since that would work against the growth rates I'll be assigning each character, this would probably act as a "hard mode" of sorts if the players finds the game to be too easy. I can see something like this happening..

"This game is too easy! What can I do to fix that? Hey, I know.. I'll turn Peter the pathetic priest into an overpowered warrior!"

This sort of play style will be helped by equippable items.
There is no weapon slot, no shield slot, no armor slot... The equip screen looks more like this:

A
B
C
D
E

Letters. Each item will have an icon indicating which slot it fits into and no slot fits any specific role. If you want +INT items on all five slots, then by all means! Five +AGI items? Sure, do that too if you want. Also, almost everything that drops off of monsters will be equippable. If you want to wear a minotaur hoof or squid tentacle on your head, then you have the damn right to do so!

This is all being done to let YOU ultimately decide which characters will end up doing what.


A few parts of this chipset are likely to be changed. Regarding the tree canopy above, it is supposed to be from leaves on branches overhead. I may change the canopy a bit to reflect this better.


My own weird chipset that is a heavy modification of several other chipsets thrown together. This is inside the tree and shows that it's not supposed to be all warm and fuzzy inside. The character set is temporary until I put something together for Lucas.


Battle Test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibXHWy3bZV4
These dinosaurs aren't real encounters at all. They're just test subjects. This video also restarts after about 10 seconds, but it is fine after that.

Boss Battle Test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEHv36ejGqA
Just to show off how I want battles to look/sound. This isn't a real fight, but the mushroom monster will probably end up being the first boss.

Forest Walkthrough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-03RF8uWtc0
I made this forest before I even began working on this game. Since I am using the same graphical style, I've simply absorbed it into the project.

Intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TlvYzIFjqw
This is likely to change. I'll change the wording of a few lines and add some more effects later.


And that's it for now, I'll post more as I work on the game. I'm open to all suggestions, so don't be afraid to post any.

[Red Fox]

It sounds okay. The mapping is good, I've seen better and I've seen worse, a lot worse. I don't really see the point of watching a 2 min video of the DBS.

Also welcome to Charas.

[zuhane]

Looks lovely!

I'd personally add a few strategy elements to the battle like enemies charging attacks or attacking if something certain is triggered.

The intro could do with more life or a huge shortening.

Despite that, it looks fantastic! Keep working on it as it'll be on of the few games I'll play

[drenrin2120]

Hmm... I have mixed feelings about this. I like the intro, and then I don't. It was interesting up until the Gorlosks were introduced. I feel like that kind of killed it for me. Other than that, you've got some great ideas and your mapping skills are pretty good. I like the forest in that video a lot.

I'm not sure how to feel about the battle situation though. It could definitely use some more tweaking, but you're off to a good start.

[Red Giant]

Your mapping is superb. I really like the forest video. The systems are pretty well-thought out as well. Understandable but still non-generic. I like it.

However, that intro has got to go. I'm sure you have an elaborate story in your head, but you can't deliver it all in one go like that, because the player will switch off by the fourth comment. You need either;
- More stuff going on in the intro
- Less information in the intro
- Both

Don't feel you need to prime the player with every titbit of background information from the get go. You can let them discover things in-game. This will be better paced and more likely to stick with the player.

Also, don't take this as me saying your story is boring. It isn't. But it's all about delivery. Presentation can be all the difference.

[UPRC]

Yeah, I've only had one person online like the intro while many have criticized it for being too long for what it is. I'm definitely going to shorten it. The problem with the intro was that once I started writing, I couldn't stop.

I need to save that for lengthy dialogue sessions between characters during important plot development scenes..... Not the intro, haha.

[Rahl]

The mapping looks very good keep it up.

[FourPieceBars]

That forest looks really good.  Is it just me, or is it eerily similar to the first forest in Tales of Phantasia?

Looks like a great game none the less.