Development Chronicle I - Printable Version +- Mirage Source (https://mirage-engine.uk/forums) +-- Forum: Mirage Source (Nostalgia) (https://mirage-engine.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=61) +--- Forum: Archive (2006-2011) (https://mirage-engine.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=18) +---- Forum: Staff (https://mirage-engine.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=41) +----- Forum: Trash (https://mirage-engine.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=14) +----- Thread: Development Chronicle I (/showthread.php?tid=1447)

Development Chronicle I - ScytheCGC - 09-12-2007 NARRATED VIDEO VERSION Hey, Scythe here. I guess it's time to start the first Development Chronicle for Legacy of the Zodiac II. This is an odd one, and will probably be the hardest one to write. Why you might ask? Well that's simple really. I've already been developing LoZ II for a while now, but I just got the idea for the Development Chronicle a few days ago; so the first one must cover what I have done up to this point. Than the ones in the weeks following will will be "normal" ones. Some of this stuff will be old to you if you have been reading the stuff I was posting before; which are now considered Special Chronicles and can be found here. But I can assure you there is something you will really be interested in ;3. First off, I had decided to use an amazing 2D MMORPG Engine; created by our good buddy Bradyok. It is 1000x better than X-Realms; so if you'd like you can go check out the site here. Well the first thing I had to do was set up the Graphics (GFX). This took initially about a week to do. I compiled the Tiles myself which is what took most of the time. As you may or may not know, the LoZ EX Tiles.bmp was 32,518 pixels in length; the LoZ II Tiles are is 93,563 pixels in length. That's 20467 Tiles! I also reorganized the whole Items.bmp. Mainly, all the weapons comes first, than armors, helmets, shields and so on and so forth. The next thing I had to do, was design all of the Factions and the Classes of those Factions. I STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO READ ALL OF IT, AND BEGIN TO DECIDE WHICH FACTION YOU LIKE AND WHICH CLASS YOU WANT TO BE! IT ONLY TAKES A FEW MINUTES. You can find a complete list of the Factions and Classes with detailed information about them on the Wiki here. Mainly what I did was come up with what types of weapons the classes would use, what kind of spells they had if applicable, what buffs they had, what skills they had etc etc. Next I had to design the story for LoZ II, it is a very vital part of LoZ II and if you don't read it you won't understand a lot of things in the game. I BEG OF YOU, JUST READ THE STORY; IT ONLY TAKES A FEW MINUTES AND YOU WON'T REGRET READING IT! You can find the Story on the Wiki here. Next I spent a Saturday morning designing the Icon for the LoZ II Client; which can be found below. I think the Icon looks pretty good, better than using the engine's normal one. Now that I had all of that done, I could begin mapping; so I started off with the new Haven Harbor, and the new starting area; Jack's Ship. Than I moved onto the path to Haven and created the Town of Haven. Than I realized I should probably create all of the Equipment and editor stuff like Spells so I could add it into the game as I went and such; now this took a WHILE to do. I'll give you a quick run down on it. 24 Weapons per Melee Class, that's 24x6 plus one extra set from the Varhans/Gardians that has 14 weapons in it. so 24x6 + 14 = 158 base melee weapons. Than there are three mage classes with 9 Staves each so that's 9x3 = 27. So that comes out to 185 base weapons. You'll see why I am saying base soon. Than I had to make the +, ++ and +x forms of the weapons. Not EVERY weapon has a +, ++ or +x form; but many of them do. I'll explain what +, ++ and +x weapons are in a little while. I will now list off how many total +, ++ and +x weapons each class has. Archs have 23, Acolytes have 13, Artisans have 20, Lightweight Swords (Varhan/Gardian) have 21, Heavyweight Swords (Varhan/Gardian) have 15, Axes (Varhan/Gardian) have 19, Heretics have 12, Peltasts have 20, Hawkeyes have 12 and Priests have 14. So when you add all of those +, ++ and +x forms up you get... 169. So if you add all of the weapons up (including the +, ++ and +x forms there are 354 weapons in LoZ II (if my math is correct). There was 37 total weapons on LoZ EX (including Class Weapons and Staffs). Now, I bet you are all still wondering, "WTF ARE +, ++ and +x!?!". Well, I was just about to tell you that >.>; To put it simply first of all, +, ++ and +x are mainly enchants. As you know, there are the base weapons like I mentioned previously; so the non base weapons must be the +, ++ and +x right? I will now pick a random weapon from LoZ II and use that as an example with the enchants... Alright, I chose the Artisan's Lampyrid Warblade. The base stats for the Lampyrid Warblade are... 249 Damage, 249 Strength Requirement, 297 Durability. Now, the Lampyrid Warblade just happens to have a +, ++ and +x form; which is part of the reason why I picked it. First off, I'll explain what they actually do (for Weapons that is, it's slightly different for Armors but it is the same concept; mainly just it adds defense instead of damage). + Adds 15 Damage, 15 Durability, 50 HP and 50 MP ++ Adds 30 Damage, 30 Durability, 100 HP and 100 MP +x Adds 45 Damage, 45 Durability, 150 HP and 150 MP So, to distinguish between the forms, for example; Lampyrid Warblade has all three enchant forms; which would be... Lampyrid Warblade, Lampyrid Warblade +, Lampyrid Warblade ++ and Lampyrid Warblade +x So the stats for all the forms would be... Lampyrid Warblade -> 249 Damage, 249 Strength Requirement, 297 Durability Lampyrid Warblade + -> 264 Damage, 249 Strength Requirement, 312 Durability Lampyrid Warblade ++ -> 279 Damage, 249 Strength Requirement, 327 Durability Lampyrid Warblade +x -> 294 Damage, 249 Strength Requirement, 342 Durability As you can see, the Damage increases, but the Strength Requirement remains the same; that is because you are just enchanting the weapon to make it stronger; but it is still the same weapon. Another thing that changes is the weapon's name color to reflect the enchant color; wait I didn't tell you about that did I? + Puts three blue sparkles on the weapon's item sprite, ++ puts four sparkles that are mainly purple with some blue, and +x puts five sparkles that are mainly bright green. Here is a nice chart I whipped up showing the In-Game Item Description for each form as well as the Item Sprite for each one etc. I bet you are all liking this, so you probably want to know how in the world do you get these on the game? Well, I was just about to explain that next ;_;... First off, NPC's now can drop up to TEN (10) different items. With that in mind, an NPC that might drop a low level weapon would also drop all the enchanted forms. Let's say an NPC drops a weapon 1/25, it would also drop the + form 1/250, ++ form 1/375 and +x form 1/500. These are just examples, not what the drop rates will actually be; I'm not fully decided on that, but I know one thing... + Weapons will be Semi-Rare, ++ Weapons will be Super Rare and +x Weapons will be Extremely Rare. Now, the dropping of the forms is all well and good for lower leveled weapons that are dropped correct? What about the high level ones gotten from quests you might ask? I WAS JUST ABOUT TO SAY HOW JEESE T_T! Well, it's simple; the only way is to remove the enchants from the lower weapons! There will be several spots you can go to in the game where you can (at a cost) have the Blacksmith remove the enchant from a weapon and give you a Sigil in return as well as another "price"; the weapon you remove the enchant from being destroyed. A + gives you a Sigil of Aquarius. A ++ gives you a Sigil of Capricorn. A +x gives you a Sigil of Aries. You can than take that Sigil and a weapon and have him enchant that weapon with the Sigil. BUT WAIT! YOU NEED THE PREREQUISITE FORM!! That means that if you have a Lampyrid Warblade and a Sigil of Aries, you can't just make it +x; you need a Lampyrid Warblade ++ and a Sigil of Aries. So you have to move up the ladder and go through each enchant form; not just jump right to the final form. This makes it a lot harder to get a +x and even a ++, since you need to get the previous forms too ^.^. I don't THINK I forgot anything about the +, ++ and +x forms; but maybe I did o.o. Well, I also had to create all of those item sprites, which is why the Item Sheet got even larger; since I had to make each of the +, ++ and +x forms by hand (adding the sparkles). Also, somewhere during the enchant time frame I realized I needed to get blade slash waves for the Arch weapons. Zez practically exploded on the spot when I showed and told him about these Lol. Here is two sample videos showing me running around attacking with blade slash waves. http://legacyofthezodiac.net/videos/LoZII/ArchBladeSlashWaves.html http://legacyofthezodiac.net/videos/LoZII/ArchBladeSlashWaves2.html Those slash waves have a range of 2 tiles, but the max range for blade slash waves is 4 tiles. So after that I made all the Armors, which are faction based, so each Faction has their own set of Armors. Gardavians have the best armors, Zodiacs have the second best armors and Valarians have the... worst armors. Pretty much what that means is that Gardavians have the armors with the highest defense, and Valarians have the armors with the lowest defense. This is to balance out other aspects of the classes in the factions; such as the Valarians are mainly berserker's that deal lots of damage (with the exception of the Gardians). Than I made the Helmets and Shields; which everyone shares the same set of. After that I went back and made the +,++ and +x forms for the armors; which there is no where near as many of as the weapons. Now that all of the Weapons, Armors, Helmets and Shields have been made; I moved onto making the Spells! That's what I have been doing this past week, and I am almost complete with the Spells; only problem is Spell GFX since I am waiting for Bradyok to make the Spell GFX sheet width customizable, instead of just 12 32x32 frames. I am also setting out the stats for the Buffs but cannot make the actual stats In-Game yet since I am waiting for Bradyok to change around the Buffs. I also worked a bit on the scripts and added some cool things in that you will just have to wait and see :3. Once the spells are done I can move onto making a few of the Accessories; which will not work like the ones in LoZ EX at all. The ones in LoZ II will be rare and boost only one or two stats, but have some pretty interesting effects. They will not be necessary for anything since they are rare and are just extras; except maybe some extra quests or something; like for the Zodiac perhaps. After that I can finally continue mapping, and let me tell you; I will be MAPPING! I say this because I will be doing something most other (if not all other) 2D MMORPGs simply do not do. I am even guilty of this on LoZ EX. The crime is that the world is NEVER complete, there are always random dead ends. For example on LoZ EX, if you go all the way to the left as far as you can go from the Harbor; what do you find? Well, you find the edge of a map, just a dead end, with no reason why you can't go any further! It will not be like this on LoZ II! The world will be COMPLETE! The over world (ocean) will be complete! If you go all the way to the left on the over world you will come out all the way to the right on the over world! On every continent, you will be able to go EVERYWHERE; no more random dead ends, COMPLETENESS! The only time you will come to a dead end is when you reach the ocean; which means the shore or the edge on the top of a mountain etc. The vastness of the LoZ II world is going to knock your socks off for sure. Also, the amount of areas needed will be amazingly crazy, seeing as each class has their own set of weapons and each faction their own armors; TONS OF QUESTS! I swear that the 2000+ maps on LoZ EX will look PUNY compared to LoZ II. I feel like I am forgetting something, it's kind of hard to look back at the past weeks and be able to remember the order and exactly everything I have done; but hopefully this helps you gain a better understanding of some things. I am looking forward to the future and the many months of development I have ahead of me. So keeeeep hooolddiing ooonn (bad Avril Lavigne pun). Thanks for listening! -Scythe Re: Development Chronicle I - Mithlomion - 09-12-2007 I love what i see.