DBS fixes and updates

Hey all! Sorry for the gloomy last post, and the long wait until this post. With the help of Neophyte and SammyGamer, I was able to pinpoint and fix my DBS problems. With that said, I also got a little more of the CC Cave done aswell as one of Ephren's sickest skills, Blue Sting. Lastly, with the help of Void, Chainer, Farah, and many other helpful individuals, I was able to put together the intro of Hero: I and record it with Fraps to be put on Youtube for public view. As a result, It's quite grainy and needs a few fixes, but it's still in progress and is just a sneak-peak for now!

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvgzmCws_0M

Also, here's some new screenshots you may or may not have seen around.

You've seen a version of the third pick, Swallow Kick before, but I made another to show to you that I've re-tweeked it making it much smoother and faster. The final pic is Blue Sting, Ephren's second to last move in the demo.

Well... That's it for now. Thanks for stopping by and checking out Hero: I!

DBS faults...

*Sigh* Where can I begin...? Progress is fine and normal, but I've come across something that truly displeases me. In the DBS, there are about 19 pages per battle. Now, I would think this is a lot, but someone from GW said he's got around 50 and it runs perfectly. Now I'm trying to find out why the characters seemingly always get stuck after an attack. Some say it's my version of Rm2k3, some say it's my battle events, etc etc. In general, I will try to fix such a horrendous fault, and IF/WHEN I do, I will return and post happily, but for now, sadness. Oh yeah, no screenshots for today. (Unless you want to see some stuck battle characters.)

See you sometime... BLEH. (But thanks for checking by.)
~Stedar

[Darkheart, Mining, etc!] (Screenshot Frenzy)

Welcome back! I've been very busy...alright, a little busy working on Hero I. Although I'm *STILL* working on the Church Corruption sidequest, there have been many good improvements and a lot of new fun to be had.

The first thing I will reveal is the new Darkheart system. The Darkheart system is rather like the final fantasy series' Limit break. When Ephren's health falls between 1 and 15%, his attack option will change into [Darkheart]. 'Darkheart' is a skill subset in which all of the most powerful moves reside. Each attack in the subset will do well over 300 damage each, depending on Ephren's attack stat. Usually, this would be very cheap, but in demo 0.2, each Darkheart will only be able to be used once. (or just 1 of all of your darkhearts per battle.) This doesn't mean that only one character gets to use it per battle, all of them will be able to, just once each. (In 0.2) It's your choice, risk the hero's death for darkheart, or avoid such radical behavior!

Ephren has just sucessfully used Darkheart, which was about to do nearly 310 damage.

The second thing to reveal is the new Mining system. With the mining system, whenever the player sees ore rocks and has at least one pickaxe with him, he'll be able to mine the ores from the rocks and either use them to forge in an upcoming (possibly 0.2, or maybe 0.1) Forge system, or sell them to vendors for some nice cash. The minigame isn't all that easy though. See the meter in the center? The purple bars indicate the level of tension of the pickaxe. If the meter gets filled with bars, it will eventually break. When it does break, it's game over! You keep what you got, but you also lose a pickaxe. Here's how the game works. Tap the enter key to mine, you have 60 seconds to finish. When enter is tapped, the tension will slowly increase. Waiting without tapping will deplete the tension meter. (I'm still working out some kinks and messups I found.) Another long awaited screenshot. (this is also of the cave from Church Corruption.)

BEHIND THE SCENES:

This is a new segment I will be doing every once and a while. Here I will show screenshots of the game inside rm2k3 and talk about various parts of game development.

Today's part: Battle animations. Battle animations are an essential part of every game. Usually, they have to be very good, or it will just add to the player's bad feelings about the game. How do I do my animations? Well... I've been using rm2k3 for about 2-3 years now, and I'm always getting better. (even when it comes to animations.) With animations, you simply create cool effects with good SFX and you're done. When I do mine, I usually start off with the first frames as the animation fading into view. Then, I progress the frames with animations (slowly or fastly depending on the anim) until I get to the end. At the end comes the final fade out period. In the middle of the animation, I usally flash the sprite or screen, as well as a shake and a sound effect. (...More to come soon as I think!)
Thanks for reading and visiting! Come again soon for more news!

~Stedar