aurorablue-gamedev

[aurorablue-gamedev]

On Hold

I wont be uploading many pictures from development right now, simply because I have a little research I want to carry out. For those genuinely interested I will be doing written posts about my research and how it will affect the design process, but for now I have some stuff to look up so cy@

[aurorablue-gamedev]

Sorry for the downtime

I hit a wall with development, I'm currently retracing my ideas and thoroughly changing some aspects of the game, in order to move forward with this project, so keep with it and hold in, content coming in the next 24 hrs

[aurorablue-gamedev]

Interior Designs for the Academy Harbour are complete, took quite some time, and I feel a little like some of them are cluttered but its okay, these are just for now. Its worth noting that I’m using the RTP for RPG Maker VX Ace because I have the same art skills as a 4 year old on heroin. (Dark Humour Alert) But still, I feel like these designs are good enough to start adding the NPCs and building the first cutscenes and getting the game to a start, the moment I’ve been waiting for!

The first Image is of the Storage Unit, the second, third and fourth are from the guard barracks, I’m thinking of adding a side quest in here, hence the addition of the basement. Next image is of the Ports office and finally is the Student Hall.

Personally I am quite proud of these designs, and I will continue to work tonight, but for now I’m taking a fucking break.

Peace out.

[aurorablue-gamedev]

As promised, here is the final (maybe) design for the academy Harbour.

As you can see, I have changed the style of the docks, in fact I’m considering ripping out the right dock completely, it looks so bare compared to the left side.

Buildings have changed positions however they are all the same concept I had before, the big wooden building being a storage facility (in fact that’s an addition.) The building almost directly underneath, is the trade depot, where import and export is handled. Then, to the far right is the student welcome center, where initiation will take place. And of course finally, the building at the back, the guard barracks, where the protectors of the island eat sleep and socialise if they get free time.

The final addition, is the small shrine that can be seen in the lower left corner on the sand, this shrine is of the founders of the academy, but that story isn’t written yet, I walk work on that soon.

[aurorablue-gamedev]

Harbour for Academy

I finished the academy Harbour, however I don't have access to my laptop to upload a picture, my hours at work got heavily extended (sad times). On top of that, I have a back story for the character, I always have found it hard because when you start the game with a young protagonist there isn't really a place for a full story of him/her, so the next step is their parents. Now, I like to avoid the cliché of having an absent father or dead parents, and instead I have settled for the parents to have been war heroes that found love on the battlefields of a civil war. I have also done a quick fleshing of the story of that war, because there is a group of people involved in the war who the character will have to face along his full scale quest, again these details are fuzzy, but they're there so that I can work in some context and use to having an island where adolescents are sent to train themselves to become strong fighters. Back to the parents, I have names for them, both different variants to represent their families bloodline, the farther: Dasdren, a master of longsword, he was strong enough to weild longsword and even some great swords as dual weild weapons, one of his bloodlines most talented weapon masters. He has a rugged, handsome look, and he is a fun loving guy, like his brothers and sisters, even in the face of evil, he has time for jokes. His fun loving nature is important because it gives room for the main character to be fun in his nature, giving him a reason to accept silly quests, a nice break from the seriousness of the main story. Also, I support the idea of having the protagonist fight with his father Dasdren at his side later in the game, but that's another story. Next is the characters mother, Kitsume, a woman so adept with magic, a small set of spells received names after her, as she pioneered their use in combat. She spent her years fighting as a hard, calculating healer mage, fighting alongside Dasdren, and another man, Welkis as an undefeatable trio, she and Dasdren found love shortly after the passing of their friend Welkis, where they went into hiding for 7 months, mourning the loss, during that time nobody knows what exactly the now duo got up too, but they weren't the type of people to loose a friend in combat and do nothing about it. But again, that's another story. That is the main key factors that are forcibly focused for the protagonists story, this is part of the players history, as much as it is their parents, plus, it's always nice to know something about the family that you are apart of, and some games don't explore the bonds of the people closest to the player, rather in some cases remove those bonds entirely and I don't think that makes for a good story, personally, unless they do it well and like I said, not as a cliché. This will be all for now, I'm on my way to work, I will update later tonight.

[aurorablue-gamedev]

Academy - Harbour First Draft. Couple of position changes of buildings, I don’t have time to go into detail now but I will on the second draft.

[aurorablue-gamedev]

Academy Harbour While I'm on my way to work, I figured I would do some rough (very rough) sketches of the academy island areas, it will give me a better Idea of what to do when I get home tonight. As you can see it has two peirs, one the students will come in through, and the other one is for importing and exporting. You won't see other ships in this area, but it's good to know that the students and the business side of the academy are kept seperate, even when they collide. I'm thinking of adding a small booth where to player can go to sell items for the import export service, maybe every now and then they can look at imports? I have decided I want this to be more than the tutorial island included in runescape, I want this to be a fully functioning mini version of the game, seeing as the player is going to decide how they travel through the game at this point, it should be like the rest of the game. There are three buildings in this area, however I am thinking of adding a couple more buildings as homes for the people working in the harbour sector One building says student enrolment, this will be where the academy students are welcomed to the island, given a speech from the heads of departments, and so on, like a standard initiation. The other building is the import/export office, these people handle the deliveries to and from the island. The final one is the gaurd house, the people who live here will be the guards for the academy, keeping watch on all areas of the academy in shifts. This is a very rough sketch so if you can't make it out its ay-okay, by the end of tonight I will have a completed map for this area, however it will probably undergo improvements a few times.

[aurorablue-gamedev]

Some notes for the prologue

Just throwing in a bit of work I’ve done for the prologue/demo/start of the game. more to come tomorrow!

Prologue The Demo and first part of the story. The prologue will take place on a small island, not far from the biggest chunk of land. This island is home to a school in which people of the age of 14 stay for four years to learn how to fight, and defend themselves against some of the wonders of the world. Including beasts and other humans, and magic, and trickery, so that these young men and women may travel freely, with the experience of battle. When the game starts you will be presented with a small story. [Story not yet designed.] After the story ends, the text will read "You there. State your identity!" It is at this point the player will then choose the gender of their character and the name. Class selection will come later in the prologue. The player will then spend a couple of hours on this island in real time, learning the basics for skills in this game, including the minor item building I will add to the game.

[aurorablue-gamedev]

Sorry to those interested, I haven't been able to put much work into this game the past couple of days, due to work and home life, but I will be back on it after tonight's shift, I will be uploading the story surrounding the prologue and the academy island, then I will start doing the island level design, will keep you guys posted!

[aurorablue-gamedev]

To fill the time

If anyone would like to ask questions during my downtime, please feel free to do so, I would love to have a conversation with anyone, about this project, or about there’s, and so on, so stick questions in the ask box, or use that little messaging system that I have no idea how to use yet! It could be a while before I can give you guys an actual update, but I will be able to reply to anything while I’m at work, I live in England so in my time, I won’t be home until about 11:30 pm GMT. Sorry this is unrelated, but I have a passion and would like to discuss it!

[aurorablue-gamedev]

This is the first draft for the island in which the prologue/tutorial will take place. As you can see, I am basing it around an academy. This academy is where selected students at the age of 14 attend to further their combat capabilities and learn the crafts of their heritage, whether they be a swordsman, assassin, pole arms user, mage, so on, this is where they will come to learn how to use their capabilities. Among the randomly selected youth, will sit the player. at the age of 14 and no knowledge of his/her families capabilities, the player will have to decide within a short period of time what they will specialise for the rest of the game.

The Island Port is where the game will initialise, and where the prologue will end. This is where the students are welcomed and enrolled into the academy.

Academy Barracks is where the player will initially learn about the classes of fighting, and decide which class best suits their play-style. They will also learn other non-combat related activities here.

Plagian cave, found in the base of the western hills, this cave will be the first dungeon that the player will enter to face enemies and gather treasures. This is a test if you will to see where the academy students capabilities fall.

Then, the Academy Camping Grounds, in these two locations, the academy students will be asked to spend a few nights out in the camping grounds in groups to build teamwork, and also to drill it into the players head that you should take any help you can get in the larger world, bonds between characters are important. These camping grounds double up as dungeons, with the camp zone being safe and the zones surrounding them being a force, especially at night.

Finally the Grand Tyrants Ruin and the Training Arena. We will start with the training arena, because although the characters will be introduced to the Tyrants Ruin, this will be the last place they go. The training arena is where the combat practices will take place. The students will fight in one-on-one combat, and some doubles, to further their capabilities and gain experience in battle with equally skilled people.

And finally Grand Tyrants Ruin. These ruins will be the final testing grounds for the students at the academy, it is here where the player will first be actually challenged, and forced to search the surroundings, and fight two mini bosses and one full scale boss. it is the players choice to go solo, or take one team mate (they will be able to chose from any of the other students with them at the time, and the battles in the training arena will help the player to decide which team mate to take with them.

And that concludes the initial design for the Academy Island. Its worth pointing out I don’t have a story to go with it, yet. But I will spending the next hour working on this. Unfortunately I probably won’t make enough progress to upload some of the story line for this prologue, because I have to go to my full time job later on, but when I return home I will try to get some of it uploaded, maybe 8 hours from now? We will see.

[aurorablue-gamedev]

I think for now, I will settle for this map style, most of the land roughly links together, like tectonic plates (kinda), and it features the monstrous river splitting the mainland apart. The only thing that will change is the top third of the mainland looks way too thin, so I will edit the land shape a tad. But for now, this is good.

[aurorablue-gamedev]

Second map design. Again another throw up, I don’t feel as connected to this one, the fact that it lacks that feature of a very large river splitting the mainland like in the first map might be what its missing, and the mainland being dead central feels very... Unnatural. I don’t know, it doesn’t look very immersive so I may choose not to use this one at all.

[aurorablue-gamedev]

A quick throw up for a map design. Not named and not given any biomes, I will do two more designs and work from all three to make the final map. 

[aurorablue-gamedev]

And it begins! A little bit late but whatever man. Like I said before, I am an atrocity when it comes to art and programming right now, so I will be focusing on level design and story, of course items and loot, because that’s like the main reward system of RPG games.

Now the hardest part I will face, will be designing the world, because its one thing to just create a level, but to create your own universe with its own laws and people and so on, its going to be a struggle. But I want an immersive world, that I can get lost in, and enjoy a good story from.

[aurorablue-gamedev]

Development Blog

Before I get started, let me introduce myself. My name is Lee Smith and I am 20. I have been aspiring to be a game developer from the young age of 12 due to the impact some games have made on my life and the memories they have left for me.

Now I find myself leaning after years of starting projects and never finishing them, that this isn’t an easy world to get started in. I have learned that while learning the programming side of game development is cool, its not 100% the part that I’m interested in. From game maker to trying to understand C++, I could do it if I really tried, but its not where my heart is at.

My heart, along with the heart of the game, is not in the mechanics and physics, rather the story and the adventure. So I have decided now how I will set out on my first actual project.

Using RPG Maker VX Ace, I will create a world of my fantasy, but only using already available resources because I am seriously no good at the music or the programming or the art (especially the art). I will use this to create a world with its own story, own laws, everything I can imagine and limit myself too.

So this blog will be dedicated to the development cycle of both my game and the story. So with the introduction out the way. I will now begin to develop what will hopefully be my first complete project.