Castle Paradox

[J.A.R.S.]

Here is JORDY.
Jordy is an illusionnist apprentice under the govern of the wizard known as Asmodeus. One day, evil breaks loose and Jordy is to accompany his master to the tower of Emervale from where is rumoured a demon was spawned. As they meet with the demon, Asmodeus is emprisonned and dies as a decoy while Jordy stabs the demon. The wicked fiend is sent back to hell and Jordy takes his master's wand with him. But something is wrong...

Time has not warped Jordy, but its course is altered. As a matter of fact, time flow was reversed. Without his master's help, it is up to Jordy to warn the king and advise him on the way to fix this. But apparently, the king doesn't even know him. Could it be that the time has already achieved such a massive advance in the past that the king did not know him back then? And if so, will Jordy survive his own birth in the past? or is uncreation about to eradicate all that once was?

---

Jordy is my hero. Unlike a lot of heroes, Jordy will be alone. Always.
However, jordy is no "click enter to attack" kind of hero. He is an illusionnist. Not only does he have spells, he has the ability of shapeshifting. The shapeshift is not only a matter of routing your enemy. Each shape has its own abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and furthermore, its own experience. But wait, it doesn't stop there. There are no levels in this game, just experience. Jordy's stats are always recalculated as a factor of his experience points which allows a smoother progression.

Here are the basics:

This is Jordy with an armor

This is Jordy as a swamp creature, his first shapeshifted apparence.

This is what the swamp creature looks like once in battle.

This is the world Jordy will evolve in. (Hopefully my grass isn't as terrible as my other drawings!)

To maintain a morph, his MPs decrease. When they are completly depleted or if the morph is killed, it returns to Jordy (with no more mps).
Mps under Jordy's shape recover over time at a constant rate.

So guys, do you think this basic game design is worth anything?

[The Wobbler]

[J.A.R.S.]

-aight-
All updated now, I think its working right. Works for me.

[TwinHamster]

Why would you feel the need to save your sprites in .jpeg format? .PNG is sooo much better in terms of quality.

Also, you can show the sprites in actual size and we can enlarge them ourselves by simply clicking on them.[/feature]

I suppose the gameplay sounds pretty good right now, but I must say that your graphics are all a little dated. Pixel Art in the OHR community has advanced a bit.

[J.A.R.S.]

That's the very issue I've got. I'm NOTHING of a pixel artist and I'm really getting issues with that. If you stumble accross a good read on this topic, I'm willing to learn on the current methods (not too accustomed to the import function anyway).
But heck, one can't quite expect to make a game without graphics, so I'm just hoping it turns out that the design outbalances the bad gfx... that's a bet I'm taking. Is it worth seeing production though? I always ask that before making a project: if the design idea isn't good, it is probably not worth being made, so it is best giving up now than starting and leaving it undone about halfway...

[TwinHamster]

The idea itself sounds good, but is this something you can develop?

Will you be able to script a custom battle engine that lets you transform your body into a new disguise? Will you be able to implement a system that recovers your mp every few seconds? Will you be able to add so much good gameplay that the player will instantly think to himself, "Gee! This gameplay is so righteous, that I don't even care about the graphics!"?

If you can make all of these things work out, then I'm sure that plenty of people will be interested in this game. If not, dream up a new game plan, kid.

[J.A.R.S.]

I was thinking about using different heroes in the custom .rpg file that I could switch. I did that about 5 years ago when I was working on a game I never released. The system was working great (sadly, the game sucked, and the gfx were worse) so as far as heroes come in, I'm pretty positive I can make it come true. Mp regeneration can be done even in the default battle system, so its not a big issue (instead of constant, I could get it chaining from every act taken, or something like that)
The basic idea is that I want to define the game by itself (the story and systems). I can always later improve the gfx with what I've learn as long as I've got drafts to work it out?

[msw188]

Ah, I had mentioned this exact idea in an earlier thread (I don't remember what thread, but the idea of having only a few characters that can morph into other beings, allowing the player to customize without having to limit party size was brought up; it was probably in that thread of mine about party sizes, huh?). The problem with having different heroes (which was what I was considering doing as well) is that these cannot be changed in battle, unless you want to script your own battle system. Yeah, the regeneration whould not be difficult (I'd probably just have an untargettable invisible enemy that only has one attack that restores MP to the hero), but you would need in-battle hero swapping to make your shapeshifter shift in battle, and still be controllable with a new menu.
_________________
My first completed OHR game, Tales of the New World:
http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=161

This website link is for my funk/rock band, Euphonic Brew:
www.euphonicbrew.com

[J.A.R.S.]

and I believe that is what stopped me 5 years ago...
Have you got another take on it? In-battle status modification would probably not be as interesting... and changing shape only between battle isnt too bad but... its not the same thing... So custom battle system I guess?