This series is cursed. I'm probably not going to resume it.
Ha! I bet you thought that Power II was dead again... but you were wrong! No, the hiatus was more of me focusing on Platform Tour. But this time, I worked on making the coding for Power II to function more like a code factory, with me making a few tweaks. The end result streamlined a lot of the time spent making maps, monsters, and events (well, mostly the maps). The hold up is artwork as usual, but I think I'm making the ends meet a little better once I get the style of art that I want to employ. The biggest thing is having the time to sit down and say, "I'm going to draw a giant sea monster today." Speaking of sea monster, we're going to have the party fight a sea monster in a few. Also, I've added two more playable characters as you can see. I still need to work on their back stories. They are fighting some dog mages here - the dog mages can protect themselves from fire, electricity, etc. by returning some of the damage back to you. This is tentatively called "Reflection", but I may change it to something else. Maybe I'll make it more like Rflect from Final Fantasy 6? Anyway, I've made some maps of Sycond and it is just as pretty as everyone says it is. You'll have to wait until a later update when I post pictures of Sycond and probably the Cargo Ship.
Well, I've completed a kind of large portion of Power II. Most of it was just adding more events to develop the characters a little bit more. I added a flashback in which Demi plays a game of JumpCross. I'll probably add a little JumpCross arcade resort or something in the game. Right now, our team is starting to realize that the Gaselier Dam events and the event currently happening in Lukarm are related. Maybe I shouldn't spoil it... ?
It's actually kind of sad to note that Nolakis has been complete for a year and I've only added two cities. But anyway, I've built the city of Eriega. There are roaches in the city that LOVE poison - check out all of the damage going on in the picture.
I've completed the route from Alvar to Swole and made the city of Swole. The people of Swole are very interesting - you'll just have to chat with them in my next demo. The guy in the picture is telling our hero about the city's new investment in the practice of necroelectricity.
I've finally completed the route from Nolakis to Alvar, crossing through a chunk of the Rect Desert. I also got to add in some nice dialogue sections in which Demi a.k.a. Ingrid expresses her feelings toward deserts! It is a bit relieving once you get to the end of the desert and the desert music ends and the regular Emris anthem begins
. Though, in the picture above I previously got pawned by a couple of Air Owners (flying bow and arrow shaped monsters) which reduce my party's ability to hit and enhances their ability to miss (like Darkness, but now called Dizziness, in true Power tradition) and about to get pawned by some Puce Igarics. (Yes, those appendages look like eyes.)
So, why does the brute forcer look like a snowman in the picture? That's because he got hit by a steel salgador! The steel salgador has a small chance of freezing an enemy that it hits, which would be the first weapon that has a status affect affiliated with it. And, as you maybe can tell, I've set up a thug and lowlife headquarter that is just itching to be raided. Also, I've made the leader, Josoph, pretty eccentric....
I added a bajillion (four) new effects. My new favorite is the Vacuum Attack, which consists of several small evacuated blasts hitting something... and afterwards the person become dizzy. The status of 'dizzy' is a derivation of 'intoxicated', but I opted for dizzy because I don't think evacuated blasts are intoxicating. Of course, I am required to have a "Monster" attack. If you've played Power I (which you haven't), you'll notice there is an attack called "Monster" - this attack occurs somewhere in every version of Power. If you think "Monster" sounds like a silly name for an attack, it probably is, since the name itself is over 8 years old (I have an old drawing of some critter executing a "Monster" attack). Following up every "Monster", is a more annoying attack, "Thigh Monster" (please don't ask me how I came up with this) and "Immobilize" (which is deadly). Only "Monster" has been implemented so far. I also did a Paralysis attack and an attack called Frenzy.
Finally got through with the interrogation scene and layout of the city of Nolakis. The music is kind of scary, though. Fortunately, I've been able to keep myself occupied by adding some stunning new effects. The Thunderbolt attack is really nice-looking and frightening! I practically scared myself.
And of course, some new enemies as well. The newt in the picture has a headache. A
I have indeed resumed work on Power II. I've added a lot of cutscene now. In this one, "evil" is stirring with three mysterious people faraway and they are revealing a plot for creating a new empire amidst their home country. There's also another one, but it's a spoiler and I don't want to spoil the story that I'm developing as well.
Power II Demo is ready for download (all 3.25 MB of it). Map Controls: Up, Left, Right, Down to move, Space to open menu, Shift to Run, O to open a save file, and S to save a save file (you have to be standing on a save point). Menu controls: Up and Down to highlight an item, Right/Enter to make a selection, Left/Backspace to go back. Esc to quit the game. Immerse yourself in the world of Power II: The Island. Over an hour of gameplay (yes, in the demo)! Revolutionary new battle system! Intelligent NPCs and monsters! No random battles! Fully usable interfaces! .NET open source! Etc. etc. etc. this is starting to sound like a commercial.
The Gaselier Dam is fully complete. This is probably as far as I'm going to go for the demo version that I plan to release soon. There are only a few more things that need to be fixed.
Well, I've finally added some customization to the game. You can change the default menu colors to whatever colors you want.
Shops are open for business! The monetary unit is the UI, short for Universal Iota.
Finally got Group attacks to work. Now it's really going to be a fun game! Once you get bosses with an attack that hits a group of people at once, you know you've got a good RPG.
Well, after the long hiatus with DamageZone, I've finally gotten back around to this project. No, it is not dead... hopefully, it will be very much alive by next month. Anyway, I have finally completed the Run command, which means that the Battle Engine is 100% complete. But, of course, it's only 99% complete, as I need to polish the status that determines which monsters can be run away from. But, hopefully, after I finish it, I'll be able to make a demo for it. I haven't added any new maps past the Gaselier Dam yet and I won't until I release this demo version.
I have elemental defenses working now, not that that's such a big event yet. Next up will probably be status defenses. I also added a few maps on the country of Emris, as you can see on the picture from the left. I still haven't implemented fleeing or saving yet. I keep finding small things that I need to test before I do it.
Well, I've added a few more events so there is a little backtracking (mostly for sightseeing purposes), but now I've started building a route in the new country of 'Emris' (the music is already uploaded). I also set up display and operation of status effects. The game engine is almost done (I'll bet that I've said that already), but looks like all I need to do now is fleeing and saving the game and this will be complete. After that - setting up maps, monsters, items, events, etc. will take up the rest of the development for the game. As you may notice in the picture, the menu is fading in over the map when the player presses the menu button.
The league headquarters are complete. I still have to polish some of the events for it, but things look really nice. I also added a few dialogues that advance the plot a little more.
Finished Water animation. Also, I have added more monsters to meet the characters as the walk to the League HQ. I've also added some equipment so that the characters aren't unarmed (Calci and Slice have guns - namely Tacet-15s), and I added a neat new way of showing who levels up (a box appears over their head with their new level in it). Working on the save prompts now (yes, that's the same Blue Gel picture that was in Power III).
I finished Drain animation. This is the first time that I have ever made an animation this robust. If I could make it an animated GIF, then I'd upload the whole animation, but for now, I'll just have to describe it: the purple circles first fly up (traveling in a small circle) to the top of the screen from the character. Then, they appear over the mosquito, still moving in their circle, but coming down from the top of the screen to the mosquito. Shortly after that you see the damage... green numbers for the mosquito and blue numbers for the characters.
I've set up animations for special attacks now.
The engine is almost complete. All I need to do now is work on the item screen and fleeing. Also, I need to add a configuration menu to the item. In the picture, you see C.Sgt. using a 'Bazooka' attack on 'Bola' (the ball shaped monster). Right now, the block kind of spins and flies into the enemy (no explosion, but that can be arranged), and then damage is dealt, but surely I can draw all kinds of stuff.
Worked on battle animations. I have it so that the regular attacks will have a different animation, depending on the weapon that the character has equipped. I also have some attack sounds that play while fighting so satisfying sounds of punches landing can be heard. Also, I've constructed a cave and set up the first boss. It's an easy boss, of course, so I don't have to change anything.
Most of my time was spent building the rest of the city. This got to be quite laborious, so I decided to make some adjustments to my map editor (some adjustments were cruder than others), but now I have it so that making maps is almost a breeze. I even started to build some of the route heading east, as you can see in the pic to the right. Spot the two lizards (Gilos) and the big floating head. Those are enemies so eager to do their duty... they're already on the route and it's not even finished yet. Yeah, OK, so I put them there a little early
but progress is coming nicely with the map editor. I will probably go back into the coding part and work on some animations and some threading.
This is another event that I've set up where the main character talks to the Coordinating Sergeant. Afterwards, the group is supposed to head east to the headquarters. Also, I have begun to set up the equipment coding so that our main character can equip a weapon. Next, I'll have to work on Skills for each player to use.
I worked on the game just a little more. I have an introduction event movie-thing set up. It's not complete, but it's a start. Also, my character doesn't look like he's asleep, so I'd have to fix that as well.
