The Viridian Journal

JSH357 · Joined: 02 Feb 2003 Posts: 1705

Baconlabs, we've all been there about the music. I'd say if most of your soundtrack is original/unique, it's OK to risk something that might be slightly recognizable. Sword of Jade, for instance, had to use a few non-PD tracks because Fyre's composer jumped ship, but you couldn't even tell because most of the music was fresh stuff. Don't stress over it. Besides, you're unlikely to get sued unless you plan on selling the game.

TMC · Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 10:42 pm Post subject: Re: A Quick Conflict

Baconlabs · Posted: Tue May 26, 2009 12:52 am Post subject: Re: A Quick Conflict

Camdog · Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 606

Regarding the music issue, another option is to ask folks in the community to help with original music. For example, I think you're game looks like it will be totally awesome, and I'd be happy to write a few original tracks for it.

Baconlabs · Posted: Tue May 26, 2009 10:57 pm Post subject: Explaining the Heavy

A while back I uploaded a Heavy soldier as my avatar.

This guy!

I figured I'd make a quick update explaining him and his fine soldier friends.

These guys!

Who/What do these soldiers work for?
Why are they all wearing purple?
These men, for the most part, hail from the northeastern country of Danke. They wear national colors - purple, maroon, and silver - in honor of their homeland. The Heavy is even toting Danke's emblem on his shield!

What are they doing in the desert?
Danke is an ambitious nation, and one of its territories, Anver, sought to expand its power by colonizing the sands to the south. Though Anver was forced give up control to the Archduke of Danke, colonization is now in full swing, and these soldiers are necessary to seize up the rest of the desert from the natives.

Are they friend or foe?
Those are battle sprites you see up there, so you'd better believe they're enemies. The chain of command gives full control to the residing governors, who only care about two things: Conquering the Sand Zone and protecting their own hides. No soldiers are sent to protect against bandits and pirates, which will create conflict and many scuffles will ensue because of it.

How do you fight them?
These are professionals, and will be stronger than standard beasts and monsters. It's also tough to use magic on them, ramping the difficulty up significantly. It will take careful coordination of your team to fight them off in swarms. A good strategy is to find the weakest link and go from there.
In a select few instances, though, you may be able to persuade them to join your side for a short while.

Baconlabs · Posted: Wed May 27, 2009 11:50 am Post subject: Recovery Underway

I finally got my old computer back up to copy the lost data - OHRgfx was able to work with Viridia since I converted it back to hasta-la-qb - and all of the images except for the box borders are waiting to be re-imported.

This process isn't without its flaws, however, and some color information was lost.

See for yourself.

But regardless, the recovery has officially begun.

Baconlabs · Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 10:11 am Post subject: Recovery Week 1

While patching the old graphics, I also decided to spiff up a few. Here's the results of the first week of file recovery - only maptiles so far.

New ground for fishing NPCs?

The Sword stand has a proper display.

Experimenting with the new "Sandfalls."

Sandfalls will function like the ledges from Pokemon - they're one-way passages and shortcuts.

Spoon Weaver · Joined: 18 Nov 2008 Posts: 421 Location: @home

wow, those are amazing

Baconlabs · Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 12:31 am Post subject: Recovery Week 2

I've finally finished repairing the backup file, so updates from now on will feature completely new content and we can all start moving on.

Furthermore, many things are much more organized now, so I've left room for more animations, especially for the main characters. I'll probably get to work on some of those soon.
I'll be back Sunday with some pictures.

==========

NEWS: My portrait artist has absolutely nothing done, despite "working" for about 4 months by now. She also seems to be ignoring me.
I'll need a new artist to fill her shoes, if anyone's offering.

Baconlabs · Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 2:35 pm Post subject: Prologue COMPLETED!

That's right, in a sudden burst of workaholicism, I managed to script the entire prologue in the past 3 days. Check it out.

Your objective for this chapter.

An angry mob wants you dead.

A mysterious enemy.

Thanks go out to Spoon Weaver and The Moglery for help with plotscripts.

I'll be sending this along with future chapters to Hamsterspeak, hopefully it'll make it into the July issue.

Moogle1 · Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 11:08 pm Post subject:

I've been meaning to port the Moglery content over to the wiki. I'm not entirely sure how people are still stumbling upon it, but I'm glad it's still helpful, five years later.
_________________

Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

Spoon Weaver · Joined: 18 Nov 2008 Posts: 421 Location: @home

I've been thanked! YAY

Baconlabs · Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 1:02 am Post subject: Hot Spring

Pretty and practical: Hot Springs

A quick update today. This here's a hot spring located conveniently in your headquarters. It'll be important during the open-ended chapters, where you'll be in your headquarters at the start of each mission.

Its main purpose is for quick, free recovery, much unlike Inns where you'll go through a long Inn scenario for a fee.

And see those crystals there? You can take one of them and sell it for some quick money. If you keep it, though, you might find a spiffier use for it.

Baconlabs · Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 12:02 am Post subject: Similar but Different

Today I'd like to talk about Viridia's enemies, which I have previously neglected.
Many of them have a certain feature in battle that I have adopted as my own idea: Several enemies can appear under the same name, but will look different in some way or another, giving a slight hint as to how they will battle compared to their like-named allies. It works better when you actually see them side-by-side:

The Gazer enemy cannot attack directly. The golden eye inflicts paralysis while the crimson eye inflicts instant near-death*.

The Dry Carniyave is harder to hit but easier to kill in the air; when earthbound, it will use Poison attacks.

The Cactus Man. A sad-looking one can summon a rainstorm to heal its allies, an angry-looking one uses powerful water magic. All of them are prickly.

So while there may not be that many enemy species in Viridia, they can come in a variety of colors or poses for a different battle experience!

Which reminds me, some bosses (especially in the later chapters) will change forms in battle to indicate a shift in attack pattern.

One of the enemy generals uses physical strikes, then brandishes magic attacks when low on health.

* - "Instant near-death" means your HP drops to 1%. From a moral standpoint, I think instant-death is cheap and stupid, and Viridia will not have any attacks of that sort.

Baconlabs · Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 1:14 pm Post subject: Quest for Webspace

This here journal's getting a bit bulky, so to make organizing my updates and screens a tad easier, I'm going on a hunt for some webspace.
Viridia will have its own production website early next month, if all goes according to plan.

In other news, I've got something interesting planned for the HamsterSpeak preview article to build some hype for the game.

EDIT: OH CRACKERS Looks like superwalrusland.com is down! That does it, I'm making a donation to the fundraiser.

EDIT: And I just now got Surlaw-certified notification to cease with the donating. That's never happened before.