A nonlinear RPG, Draug's Resurrection follows the journey of the undead warlord Draug to retrieve the nine artifacts of its armour, restore its memory, and stop the necromancer Damian from bringing calamity to the world. Very slightly more formal website for it here: https://draugsresurrection.wordpress.com/
I'm currently on the home stretch of programming in all 223 Abilities. It's still going to be a couple more months til' I'm done and sufficiently happy that it's tested and stable. I figured I'm due for an update regardless, and I've realized that I never really explained that well what Abilities are. So let's fix that a little.
Each character has 16 pre-determined Abilities they can turn on or off at any time. They require AP (Ability Points), which are earned one per level up. Abilities vary in AP needed, but are generally between 4 and 14 points. All Human enemies have 2 Abilities, by the way, so they're more varied fights than ever. Here's 25 of what I think are the most interesting or indicative Abilities in Draug's Resurrection:
Backstab
Increases user's Direct damage by 0.3x when another Ally is on the opposite side of the enemy.
Very straightforward, and probably the most globally practical Ability. It encourages you to dive into the enemies' side of the field, so using this well might mean some creative strategies.
Stylish Assault
+0.3x Multiplier while not repeating a Skill or Spell for four or more consecutive turns.
Sounds complicated. And it is. Basically, motivation to keep switching moves like it's Devil May Cry. Thankfully, a sidebar popup will mention what your recent attacks were if you have this active and nothing else takes priority.
Front Guard
If an Ally behind you is attacked by an Indirect or Ranged attack, they take -12 damage.
In a game where you're almost always under threat from some distance, attacks can come from any angle. This makes you back row a ton safer.
Crusader's Armour
Negate damage less than 5% of your total HP.
Sounds underwhelming, but this also applies to multi-hits. This Ability can completely shut those skills down.
Partner Shift
Movement with Allies takes no Charge.
Stance Perception
Enemy's Counter-based Enhancements will now display as themselves, instead of being masked as Defend.
As suggested by the text, enemies 'lie' about when they've got Counter, Deflect, etc. on. If they didn't, you'd probably never be dumb enough to attack them. This unhides the state of those moves.
Freeform Tactics
Increase a random stat by +15 when starting a battle (+5 for Speed, +40 for Accuracy/HP/MP). If HP/MP, gain that amount at fight's start.
Medical Mist
Potions and Elixirs used by this character affect the entire party, but at half effectiveness.
No item naturally heals more than one person, so this is a massive boon for dealing with Field attacks.
High Confidence
Raise your Luck by +10 until a Potion or other Item has been used by your party in combat.
There's a few Abilities that give a bonus for NOT doing an action. If you feel winning by relying on items feels dirty, this is your Ability.
Potshot
Basic Attacks do increased damage to those with negative charge; the higher, the more damage
When enemies do a big attack, this lets you get in some pretty big damage for very little cost.
Restless Mana
Regain 3 MP after a Basic Attack.
Using basic attack as a Mage is pretty awful in most games, but between MP potions having massive recharge penalties and basic attack generally being above average in Draug's Resurrection, this might have more use than it first sounds.
Overwatch
While Defending, automatically perform a basic attack on any enemy in range that attempts to move.
Probably should've been a standalone Skill, but I think this is a much more interesting implementation. Archers rarely benefit from Defending, so let's turn it into something completely new.
Biding Vengeance
When Defend is active, raise Attack by 2 after being hit by a Magical attack. Raise Magic by 2 after being hit by a Physical attack. Increase your attack by getting hit.
Spectral Shot
This user's attacks are guaranteed to hit Foes with Vanish, Wraith, or Cyclone Shield active, and do 1.5x damage to them.
Massively punish enemies who are trying to be tricky and evade oncoming damage. Not frequent, but very useful when the situation arises.
Full Force
All Weapon Skills do 0.3x more damage, but also take 15 HP to use.
Note it's specifically Weapon, so Spells are fine.
Wild Swings
Momentum and Impulse Slash are 0.2x stronger per swing, but also self-inflict Confusion.
Many Weapon-Specific Abilities tend to have a downside or otherwise make a move 'spicier', or have fairly specific requirements to be useful.
Shackle Shot
Single-Target, Single-Hit Bow/Crossbow Skills have a 25% chance to inflict Rooted on their targets.
Barrier Shards
Barrier Buster and Bombard will transform the Target's removed Enhancements into a Terrain Effect, hostile to the Target.
For instance, if an enemy has Frost Mail on, then they get whacked while this is active, it'll create a set of Ice Spikes underneath them, jabbing them for damage. They'll be treated as though the Barrier Shard-user cast the Spell Ice Spikes, essentially.
World Ablaze
Increases damage of Heat Wave and Ashfall by 0.3x for each tile currently on fire by Scorched Earth.
Here's a skill that really wants multiple Fire users to get the full benefit from. Setting everything on fire's gonna take an awfully long time for one person. And, hey, the other Fire-user is probably really resistant to Fire, so they don't really mind the flames everywhere.
Altered Earth
User's Luck raises by 4 whenever anyone on the field casts Terra Shield or any Earth-based Field, Beam, or Wall Spell or Skill.
Enhancement Theft
When using Wind Dagger or Cutthroat, also steal an Enhancement the target has, if available. Won't steal Deflect/Counter/etc.
Pretty obviously designed for specifically Rem. Her gimmick is of a thief, but her stealing options were limited. While mostly a reskin of the Fire Spell, Will o' Wisp, it suits Rem very nicely.
Pincer Formation
If the enemy occupies all four center tiles, increase Atk/Mgc by +4 and Luck by +10.
There's a variety of Formations, but this is the most straightforward. Corral the enemy to the center, and reap big stat boosts.
Fusillade
While another Bow or Crossbow user is also in the back Column, decreases Recharge time of Bow/Crossbow Skills by 33%.
Likewise, most weapons have a paired partner for Abilities like these. Hopefully, they should make using multiple characters with the same weapon more viable.
Unarmoured Blitz
Increase Speed by +2, but decrease Slash resilience by -40%.
Most characters have two 'negative' abilites. They give some small benefit, but the penalty should make you think carefully if it's really worth it. Some of these imply things about the characters who have access to them, like Lucy being afraid of water.
Runic Awakening
Increases Magic by +15, but start battles fully Silenced, and renders User unable to be cured of Silence by Herbs/Potions.
Good for someone with good enough Attack to be useful until the Silence wears out, and they can go wild with Spells.
Felt it's been long enough that I ought to give an update. Progress on adding passives continues apace, as is the addition of a couple new sidequests, but I've been maybe a little too distracted making alternate outfits of late. It's fun and interesting to come up with new outfit ideas that at least partially represent the character, and generally feature new weaponry, giving a different 'weight' to them, making some outfits just match better when someone's been built more magically-inclined or whatever.
The downside is that making that one base template isn't where it ends. It needs to follow with matching idles, attacks, casting, and mapsprites. Those are much less fun and interesting to make, but no less important if I want things to be done right. Below is the current sum collection of costumes thus far. Hopefully it doesn't break the page. Some designs aren't very finished and are shaded out. While these look impressive (maybe) and finished, I don't think all of them will have all associated parts ready by next update. So it may take another year to roll all of these out, but here's what's planned for the future.
Some designs I'm still not 100% on, especially in regards to colours on some. Should a person stick to a favoured palette, or jump around more? Some just don't feel 'different' enough, either. Marcia (Pink-haired archer) is a particularly bad case of this; 2 is a more casual/personal version of a uniform, and 3/4 are same-y, but 3 might be a little over-the-top for some, so I feel 4 is at least slightly justified to exist. Anyway, feedback rarely hurts. Or, less mentally-taxing, tell me which costumes are your favourites.
1.2.1 marks the addition of a whole new tab to the main menu, called Passives. It introduces a new way to upgrade your character, by Enhancing Spells/Skills along various basic attributes (MP Cost, Damage, Recharge Time, etc). In the original design for DR, every spell had five versions as you learned it, each with steadily improving stats. That's why the spell learning is broken into five sections like that. This addition harkens back to that idea, but makes it a bit more specialized and puts some player control into it.
Passive Abilities is also part of the earlier mentioned Passive tab, and gives characters boosts in more specific circumstances, like when surrounding an enemy, making Buff spells hit all allies but take much longer, or make an archer-type characters do more damage when performing their scarce few Direct attacks or while standing in the middle of the battlefield. About 70% of these Abilities have been completed right now, although they're naturally the less mechanically complex ones. Which generally means less interesting, too. They're all visible, just the ones that aren't done cost 99 Points to equip, of a maximum possible 50 or so.
The Passive tab also lets you see character's support status with each other (now called Unities), and now raises characters' elemental defenses as well.
Along with new upgrade routes comes more weapon types, also giving you a higher total maximum level. I was always dissatisfied that some mid-late Skills were created, some didn't actually end up on weapons themselves, and had to be Personal Skills (notably Rapier-oriented Clear Thrust and Lance-oriented Joust). First came Flamberges and Sarissas, then Chimes as a heavy physical Staff weapon (though they were Maces for a bit, until Macana came along and gave a decent non-Bash option for Maces), and the rest shortly fell into place.
Some of those new weapons have some of 25 new Spells and Skills added, many of which are focused on Terrain Effects, Movement Skills, and Enhancements. The existing Terrain Effects are now stored on the tile, rather than the caster, making them more versatile than before, and some fights now start with Terrain Effects already in place.
Minor, but probably really useful to everyone who isn't me. Pulling up the Battle Log can now also give you access to a nifty lil' reference of any active Ailments or the like currently active in the battle. It can expand to be bigger if it's a really convoluted battle.
The last big new thing is the ability to remove Draug from the party. Storywise, nothing changes, but it's great news if you didn't like the defensive-oriented playstyle Draug prefers, or just want to level your characters more evenly.
Actually, the really big last thing should be the end of the game crashing due to memory issues. I don't fully understand all of it, but older programs had a cap of how much Memory they could use, usually 1-2 GB. The cap has been editted to now be 4 GB. Why it was hitting 1GB at all is still a mystery to me, but considering a could run a random given game from ~2000 and it'll also hit 600+ MBs of RAM (despite their recommended requirements back in the day being about a tenth that), it's something about how modern PCs run… something. I dunno. I don't really get it. Regardless, issue should be fixed realistically forever.
It didn't amount to anything, but I would like to make a brief footnote here that I seriously played with the idea of doubling the resolution of Draug's Resurrection, but ultimately went against it. In part because a lot of things are hardcoded in a way that would make that not great, but mostly because it seems like certain resolutions simply cause the game to freeze, and it seems machine dependant. Disappointing, especially as boards looked way better when viewed further back, but the stability risk was just too great.
In more normal news, Alternate outfits have been expanded a fair bit over the year, with most characters having two alternates and their default. Since that's honestly probably the most interesting thing to look at, I'll end this post with a few characters, showing of all their outfits.
So, I think this place kind of got away on me. There's been multiple DR updates across last year, but posts simply didn't make out here. I've tried being on a multitude of new sites in hopes of even the faintest traffic, and spreading those posts out slightly to clearly see which sites worked and which didn't, and, well, none did. So by the time Tumblr's turn came around, I was just so disenchanted and mentally drained that I just... didn't.
But anyway, new year (sorta; complications pushed this back about three weeks from intended), new update, attempt to be less terrible. Version 1.1.4 has three big update features, and a couple of smaller ones. Two of the bigger updates are a casino that's there more for moral obligation and making its town more standout than a sign that I actually like or use such casinos in RPGs, and a major change to all humans, giving them varied resistances based on their weapon, magic, and armour types. This includes the player's party, too. They're relatively small modifiers, but make fights quite a bit more volatile, and defensive positioning more important.
The main update, at least to me, is the ability to buy new outfits for party members. Why did that get prioritized? Well, two reasons. One, this does potentially address complaints that certain characters don't 'look' like their roles, like Alice being the de facto black mage, despite looking more like a healer with her pink dress and flower in her hair. The second, the main one, being that I think the ability to visually change a character is worth a lot in a game that tries you to drastically change a character's stats over the course of the game.
Equipment is tied to levelling up, and, say, Lucy swapping from a Iron Saber to a Steel Scimitar might see her Attack/Magic split go from 15/18 to 28/13, resulting in her playstyle changing dramatically for her Scimitar duration. Having her look different (at the player's own free control) is a good way to mark this change. Some outfits will try to look more mage-y, more armoured, more speedy, and so on. Gale above is another perfect example; normally a staff-user, she could instead equip a Dagger and be a speedy frontline support fighter instead. Maybe it's not that big a deal for other people, but some of my own play/test sessions are months apart and I frankly spend a solid five minutes wondering why someone's magic is so awful before checking their gear after battle.
But that was just stuff from one update of, uhm, seven, since the last time I posted here. To speedrun the highlights of additions since then; 100 New monsters have been added to the game. ALL enemies now have Weak, Dead, and Attacking frames. Some AI fixes, again. Academy Lessons provide uniquely crafted encounters as a way to teach the player about certain spells and mechanics. Ineffective spells/skills have a subtle 'fizzle' animation. A proxy of a Trophy/Achievement system has been added. Autosaves were added. And lastly the turn timeline that was the focus of the previous post here.
Just noticed I didn't include a download link yet, so let's just end this cleanly with that. Link to itch.io download here.
April marks Draug's Resurrection as being 12 years old. I suppose the date the project started isn't as prominent anymore, and the release of 1.0 is the more important date, but all the same, hearing it makes me wither and die a little inside. Or a lot.
Anyway, in more positive news. I've been outlining my goals for the entire year, slowly picking away at whatever I'm the least unmotivated not to do. It's always a bit of struggle to work on any aspect of the game that's not right at the start, as my brain screams nonstop that nobody's ever gonna see any of it. Anyway, said goals are:
Turn Timeline - As shown in the image above. Pressing ESC now also shows the predicted turn order of all living characters on the battlefield (except the current person’s turn, because that’s redundant). It's pretty basic, really, but I've found it makes battle feel more orderly and easier to follow. Unlike everything talked about below, this is completely finished and works fine right now. My only possible quibble is that this marks the first time the term ‘Round’ is officially used to denote a ‘tick’ of Speed being added to everyone. I think it’s a clear enough term in context, though.
Extra sidequests - There were about a dozen left on the floor, of varying levels of interesting. So far, only two of them are approaching completion. I have to fight myself a lot here, as there's a fear that they might be kinda filler fluff without adding any meaningful content or fun decisions. I doubt I'll finish all dozen this year, but I'd like to finish at least four. One of the more interesting/difficult aspects of the sidequests already added was the need for 'guest' characters, which leads into...
Puzzle fights - Basically, the recent system changes let me pull up four completely new characters from scratch anytime. The best usage of this that I thought of would be a series of preset battles, generally focused around specific skills and combos. On one hand, this kind of makes it like some kind of psuedo-tutorial thing, but on the other hand, it would logically make more sense if a NPC who gave these challenges with in the Academy, about as far away from the game's start as possible. I'm currently thinking that completing a minimum number of these will need to be finished to be granted access into the Academy now, but then will otherwise be entirely optional.
Supports - Not exactly unique, but these little conversations between two party members when resting at the inn fell to the wayside really hard. Only about 40 of them were ever written, and I know I need to have at least five times that for them to be a worthwhile mechanic. I just really, really, REALLY know I suck at writing two people talking about normal things, so I doubt I'll make too much progress here.
Arts - I'm always a little conflicted about doing extra art, because I get nothing but ire for my efforts. The most dire thing is redoing most outside field boards, as they basically devolve into empty screens of green. Forests and mountains look tolerable, so the intent is to mountainize the heck out of these wide-open fields. Slightly less critical is making actual dead sprites for monsters/human enemies, as about 90% of them still have placeholder X'es on their eyes for their dead sprite. Least critical (but probably the most fun) is making split physical/magical animations for monsters, as almost all have just one animation for all their attacks. As things sit, three Estarian boards have been redone, and I hope to redo a couple of the Northern Wastes boards by the time version 1.1 comes out.
New Monsters - With the nonlinear nature of gameplay and four monsters per battle, I still found that the current number of monsters isn't nearly sufficient. You still see the same things too frequently. A whopping 120 new monsters are underway of being made, with about 75% being finished right now. In short, this changes any given area from having 18 level-appropriate monsters to 27, and lessen the chances of being utterly stomped by something from a higher spawn table. All of the internal data (stats, movesets, random/determined spawn data) surrounding these 120 new monsters is finished and in the game. Just the sprites remain.
Library of Souls - Basically, a sort of Bloody Palace side-area-subgame. In an RPG. There's gonna be multiple different 'modes'; at least one on starting from scratch and tactically growing yourself quickly at checkpoint shops, one that's more endurance-oriented and eating through your potential stock of all 25 party members, and one that's just, well, normal. It might be a great place to have fun sets of monsters with specific synergy or feature human bosses that are almost never fought in normal gameplay. It's probably gonna need to be a bit stand-alone in nature, but I think it could reward alternate costumes for party members, or something of that nature. While fun to think about and something that might add metagame weight to doing NG+’ses, it's very, very low priority right now.
My ideal would be to put out version 1.1.0 with all the new monsters, the turn timeline, a number of redrawn boards, and the two mostly-done sidequests in it, sometime in mid-late May. But we'll see; that's a pretty optimistic goal, but I know I've been dreadfully overdue to talk about progress, so I know I had to post something.
This currently released version is finally 1.0.0, after almost 12 years. Download link at itch.io here. Although, in a lot of ways, it's just finishing off what wasn't by 0.9.7, that being the final set of 20 spells. Plus an additional 26 completely new ones to fill outs some spots or further utilize new mechanics introduced.
Now, truthfully, my playtesting hasn't been as extensive as I would've liked for THE big version number, nor does it mean the game is truly 100% complete. There's a lot of extra art work that I really would've liked to have done in time, especially related to the animation additions of 0.9.7, but seeing as things are mechanically finished and real-life issues might complicate things in the near future, I need to call it now. Again, ideally, this is not intended to be the final update, but if it is, I think it's a fair enough spot to leave it. Further, if I'm being perfectly transparent, I think for there to be any further growth, DR at least needs to appear finished enough that someone might want to actually touch it. Can't fix something if I don't know or don't think it's broken, you know? Worst case, save files are transferrable to new versions, so there's little fear of lost progress if a new version does come out.
So, with all that said, let's restart this at the very, very top. Draug's Resurrection is a completely free nonlinear RPG with a focus on incorporating that nonlinearity both narratively and mechanically. It features a unique turn-based battle system that has elements of tactics games and classic RPG battles, and allows for fairly ample party and character customization. While the tale of Draug's quest to re-obtain its nine artifacts and recover its lost memories and power is fundamentally a simple one, each of those events finds a way to culminate and effect future events, both in obvious and less-obvious ways. Total estimated playtime for a playthrough is... pretty hard to nail down, but I feel comfortable in saying at least 30 hours. With its nonlinear design, any two players (or any two playthroughs) should see fairly distinct differences, even if they take the same general path and alignment.
All spells and skills are finally completed, a task that's taken me nearly 8 years. In addition to the 20 or so holdout spells, another 25 brand new ones have been made, all told bringing the total up to 526. These final spells are primarily based around counterattacks and trap tiles that continually do damage (or some other ill effect, in the cases of Quicksand and Miasma Cloud). Some party members had some minor spell-list changes, with Chizuru, Minerva, and Julie gaining completely new slots. Everyone else lost permanent access to some spell or another in exchange, but they can still cast those old spells if they have the appropriate tome equipped.
The fun/annoying thing about counterattacks was finding a way for them to be effective in enemy hands. Fundamentally, they're treated as Enhancements, and seeing one would give their ruse away immediately. My workaround is that the game straight-up lies to you when an enemy uses a Counter skill, claiming they're just Defending instead. And if enemies have multiple Counter-skills or Defend active, they stack so as not to be suspicious. There's still hints that they're not actually using Defend, as Counter-skills take MP and may result in different Enhancement potencies or take longer to recharge from, but I hope this system is tricky without being frustrating.
The only thing left before I call this Version 1.0.0 and release it is to edit the movesets of enemies to incorporate these new spells, do some more playtesting, and maybe some extra animation work for party members. I'm aiming for sometime in early October.
0.9.7 makes some pretty massive strides, although I feel some of them are things people would argue should've been there since day one.
Despite the negative feedback, I went all-in on making quick one-frame attack animations, broken down into physical, magical, and 'third', a bonus category I can specify to make specific moves for specific characters look more standout. All characters, enemies, and bosses have at least one, though most are limited to just one for now, excluding your own party members, who all have two. All told, well over 800 new sprites have been made to support attack frames so far. In a similar vein, damage numbers now appear directly above the target in battle, in addition to being mentioned in the toptext. Both of these things make battles feel a lot more dynamic and engaging, even if nothing mechanically has changed.
Whiterock got a fair bit of an overhaul, making it less unfair if you go there immediately. A couple bugs and design flaws were addressed (the massive Whiterock Volcano got split from 2 boards into 9, as it turns out the engine can't reload old boards, but has to lock up new memory for each new board you go to per session). The biggest change was allowing you to recruit Oliver much earlier. There's four different ways to do so, and can interact with basically every single event on the island, so many got heavily reworked.
Lastly, and far more optionally, Save Obelisks have been dotted across the world, alongside the option to restrict saving to only in towns and in front of said Obelisks. However, by default, you're still allowed to save anywhere. Either way, they can be a helpful reminder to save regularly and a warning that a boss may be ahead very shortly.
Basically, the only things holding it back from being 1.0 are the lack of a full-blown epilogue, a few errant skills, and a need for more bug testing; all of which are time-consuming and unnoticeable in most circumstances. Anyway, link to the download at itch.io here.
While some work was done on the ceaseless load of attack sprites needed, most of last month was mostly spent on fixing up issues with Whiterock and adding visible numbers directly to the battlefield, as shown below.
It, like a lotta things in DR, probably looks a lot better to see it in action than to just see a tepid screenshot with a number lazily floating in the sky. Regardless, like attack animations in general, this is probably something that should've been added decades ago. While this information was already provided in the toptext, nor was it particularly demanding to get it work, I think it adds a bit more impact and immediate feedback to attacks. It displays exact numbers for Beams/Walls and Multihits, so those especially are improved.
Back to Whiterock, the big change is allowing Oliver to be recruited while still on Whiterock, if you go early enough. There's four separate ways to get him to join, and he has something to say about essentially every event on Whiterock, so there's a fair bit of content added there. Alongside that, there's a few minor tweaks to make an extremely early Whiterock more palatable. It's still not really recommended to do extremely early, unless you really know what you're doing, and Chizuru cusses you out much more clearly if she doesn't think you're ready (based mostly on playtime, money, and potion count).
Lastly, while it's limited to only four characters right now, Third animations now exist. These are used (for player characters only, probably) whenever a specific spell or skill needs some extra flair. Marcia's obviously has some personal significance to me. In addition, I changed the way the normal 'Physical/Magical' animations are determined. Previously, it was strictly based on damage typing, but after seeing too many fringe cases (most Direct Magicals and Indirect Physicals, like Lunar Blade or Rock Barrage), it's become its own variable, giving me more freedom on how moves are displayed.
I'm sorely tempted to say that I'll be releasing Version 0.9.7 on August 16th, regardless of if I've finished an attack animation for every single enemy or not. If it comes to that, I sincerely doubt anyone’ll realistically see those missing enemies, and those that do are already 20+ hours in, so are gonna be a lot more forgiving. All in all, there's already a fair bit of content added, beyond what the massive quality-of-life the attack frames and damage numbers add to combat, and hopefully setting a date in stone will get me to stop getting sidetracked.
I've been prioritizing monsters the past couple months, after giving some proper thought about where I should be focusing. After all, there are about a hundred monsters you can randomly bump into within the first couple of hours of gameplay, where most humans can only be fought under extremely specific circumstances, and generally in the later half of the game.
All in all, I'm about 70% done attack frames by now, I think. A few specific 4x monsters and some bosses need to be taken care of, but I'm probably comfortably at the point where anybody who'd play Draug's Resurrection or had played DR in the past wouldn't run into any enemies that don't yet have animations (and thus turn into black boxes for the moment). I am somewhat tempted to put up another release to gauge what someone might think of the animations in a more proper setting, but at this point, I've already long committed to a style.
In addition to this, I've finished up another minor addition; save points. I got a complaint years ago about someone forgetting to save their game, because there was no particular reminder to do so. While Draug's Resurrection currently lets you save anywhere, it's a somewhat fair point regardless; sometimes you can definitely stumble into hard encounters or bosses with fairly little visual warning. The solution is pretty obvious; clearly marked save icons, taking the form of black Obelisks. Eighteen of them have been added across the game's world.
But more than simply a reminder to save, I've added to the Options the ability to only allow saving when near these Obelisks and when in Towns or Sanctuaries, giving the game the feeling of a more classic console RPG. At this exact point in time, it still defaults to Save Anywhere being on, but this might change when the game is more balanced and less buggy. Might.
As a completely random aside, I stumbled across some dumb little game development calculator someone made to scare people off from making games, and it estimated that DR should take about 18 years to make and cost about $2.4 million. I'm not sure who's supposed to cash that non-check, but I guess that means I'm some kind of multi-millionaire in exposure bucks. And that I'm actually comfortably ahead of the curve in terms of time, after all.
Here we are, 11 years, and Draug's Resurrection isn't in any better shape for it. Progress on attack frames is slow but steady. Maybe a third done now, all told. Mostly been focused on humans, as they're easier to figure out, and honestly kinda more fun to make.
As for my removal from RMN.net meaning the game can't be currently downloaded, I plan to wait until I'm done with these attack animations to upload a new version, 0.9.6, elsewhere. Probably itch.io. I don't particularly like the place, but I don't know of any other alternatives at the moment. I really couldn't make an accurate guess for time right now, but if pressed, I guess I'd say maybe July.
Spent the last month chipping away at the 650 or so single-frame attack sprites I need to make for Draug's Resurrection. Last time, I tried showing off what they looking like in (choppy) motion, so this time, I thought it better to just show them as simply as possible. I've finished more than this, but a lot do tend to run together, so I kinda hand-picked the better ones.
Right-Click -> New Tab here if it doesn't wanna show full size, because Tumblr is abject garbage.
Right now, I'm about 15% of the way through all that, with the party members all having two (one for physicals, one for magicals), but
even with the goal of all enemies only getting one right now, I've still barely scratched the surface. However, with some running along very similar lines, I imagine lots of the human enemies can basically recycle poses, hopefully speeding things up. There's only so many ways to swing an axe, right?
Currently, my three biggest struggles start with figuring an effective way to illustrate biting attacks for a lot of monsters. Some can get away with a bite-and-turn-away attack, like the Nahalith (the snake-dino in slot 3), but that won't work with chunkier individuals. Also pretty unsure about archers/crossbows, as their long-range projectile appears right near them, and the way most of them have recoil, making their arrow/bolt not align with where it was shot from. I'm not sure if the arrow should even be there at all, but then it looks too nothing, and I can't make the attack have an even bigger frame, especially when they could be aiming at 3-5 different target positions.
Next, there's the weird issue of magic casting frames generally being much less impressive-looking than swinging a big ol' axe around. I'm not sure it's entirely bad, but it's making me wonder if I don't NEED to do an update to their damage type animations to compensate. To make many spells have actual custom damage sparks, instead of the generic two-frame they get, based on damage type. Either way, that's a problem I'd have to deal with much later on.
Lastly, there's the very obvious issue of sprite-flipping. By default, enemies look right, playable characters look left. But, due to the whole ability to move around the field, there's reason to attack in the opposite direction of usual. Or y'know, just casting buffs on allies. In these circumstances, the attack/magic frames are flipped from normal (when attacking straight vertically, it maintains your 'normal' direction). For almost all monsters, not a big deal, they're pretty much all symmetrical. But for humans, those that don't two-hand their weapon, you get a pretty obvious flop of them suddenly stabbing with their alternate hand, not to mention more specific stuff, like eyepatches or clothing details, suddenly on the wrong side. It's not there for long, and is sometimes hard to notice, but it's still enough of a nuisance that it's getting me wondering if allowing for sprite-flipping is a good idea at all. That, and the flipping-sprites for one frame looks kinda... jittery at the best of times, as it's usually a much more drastic change in positioning and all.
First, while the goals for 0.9.5 have been reached, I'll not be uploading it. It only finishes three existing sidequests (VERY important ones, mind you), and adds one new one (the Estarian Dual Tournament, a kinda endgame-oriented two-on-two tournament featuring a bunch of characters you otherwise can't fight or can only fight after taking evil actions). Not to undersell them as easy to make or unimportant to the game's general progression, but their additions need to be put on the wayside for now. Why? Well, the Battle System is currently in massive disarray, and I'd like to play this idea to SOME degree of competence before resuming other updates.
I've started work on an extremely overdue aspect of the game: battle animations. While that probably sounds unimpressive, doubly so considering my artstyle, and triply so upon hearing it's gonna be single-frame animations, but the counterpoint is that, even at that, I've gotta do well over a thousand sprites. I've put up three so far, and while the GIF capture kinda borks some details/speed, the general idea is there.
In short, every party member is going to have three distinct attack animations; Attack/Physical Skills, Magic Spells/Casting/Buffs/etc., and a special 'Third' animation, which will be specifically called out for a character's more unique abilities. For Marcia above, while her basic attacks and weapon skills are going to be shooting arrows, her Third animation is called upon for her close-range Earth skills, represented by her uppercutting someone with a giant stone fist. For monsters, human foes, and other such bosses, while code to allow these exist, it's unlikely many will ever use a Third animation. For a looooong while, having different animations for physical and magical is gonna be unlikely. But yes, monsters are planned to use these animations, just as the player would.
Why is this so tumultuous to the game? Well, these three attack animations use different sprite sizes than the existing Idle/Weak/Dead ones. While they're 155x145, while these new attacks are 295x185 (also, yes, this means they overlap other sprites). So, right now, anyone unfortunate enough not to have one gets either a black box of doom, or a ridiculous STREEEECHed image for their attack frame (you can just barely see the Waspior do it in the above image in the last frame). While the X's on the eyes of dead things was tolerably jokey bad, this is, uh, kinda doesn't fly. I *NEED* to finish a significant number of these sprites. Oh yeah, and everyone goes into their Weak animation while they take damage now. So that's new too, but it didn't rock the boat, so I barely remembered to mention it. They also now switch to their Weak sprite when they're sufficiently affected by Ailments.
So why did this take 11 years to START getting put in? Well, lotsa reasons, but the two big ones are that my original plans were way more ambitious, but also kept changing. Originally, the plan was for full-on proper animations, and even to have the game cut to a one-on-one minibattle screen for these more dynamic animations. But, well, the engine couldn't handle that without eating just enough ass for it to look chunky and sluggish. Furthermore, while I did complete exactly one full spritesheet for Chizuru back in 2010, that took an entire week for me to do. Sure, I would've probably gotten faster/better with time, but still, I literally would die before the game's completion if I have to spend a week on every single monster. Just the playable cast would take over half a year. Also, the simple explanation; my artstyle is pretty much universally reviled. It's extremely difficult to work on something when you exclusively get hated on for even trying. But at this point, there's so little else left, there's not much else for me to do on Draug's Resurrection besides art and bugtesting/balancing. Any little tiny bit to make DR more palatable is worth trying, no matter how much blood, sweat, and probable sanity damage it takes. These one-frame animations make it clear enough who's actually attacking, and add a tiny bit of life to the battle system, but they don't slow down the gameplay.
Considering, as mentioned, I've got over a thousand sprites to do, several of characters whose vector files have long since been corrupted, I'm certain the next update won't feature everyone looking their finest. For now, my goal is to finish the standard two attack frames for every party member, and have at least one attacking frame for at least a third of the monsters (so about 100 or so). The rest? They'll just stand there idly like how things were, but even that requires some finagling right now.
Oh yeah, there's also code added to allow for characters to use additional sprites for when in a Defending (Defend/elemental shields/etc.) or Charging state (Focus Strike/Meditation), but that is NOT on the table right now.
While 0.9.4 was initially aimed simply at fixing several issues with the desert's third scenario, the majority of the time has been spent on adding sidequests and fixing up their framework. Six sidequests have been added. But the desert was indeed overhauled on schedule as well. It also features a fair few optimization and balance changes. Hopefully, it'll run a teeny bit faster and a lot more stable. As always, full details are on the download page at RMN.
Version 0.9.4 is looking to be The Sidequest Update, and is currently looking to add nine new sidequests. In truth, I wasn't planning on prioritizing them just yet, but when I saw how slipshod the Request boards in the towns were, I HAD to do something.
There's quite the variety of sidequests, from tracking down stolen jewellery to participating in a hunting contest to distributing tomes across the continent to stopping a plague. The most interesting mechanically is probably Harvest Season, as you leave allies behind until you find another artifact, so you're forced to scrounge up a backup team. Or just send your backup team on that sidequest and continue on your way. It's currently the only surviving incident of an idea that you'd send off your allies on several sidequests like this, while retaining control of Draug's party. The largest instance was that this was going to apply to all of Whiterock Island as well. That you'd never go there, merely send allies to help Chizuru on the island, but that got significantly changed.
More than that though, I'm also working on some significant changes for the Desert's third scenario. For starters, the scenario needed to be largely redone, as about half the characters involved could now die at various other points in the game. Rather than Draug having to visit two enemy camps in whichever order, the party is now split up into two groups of (ideally) four, each one handling one. Between this and Harvest Season, two parties is now a semi-common occurrence in the game, rather than someone just dumped on you at the end of the game, so I think the normalization of that is a plus of its own.
Due to the desert's reworking, a lot of dialogue is actually cut regarding which order you did them in, as well as a potential failure event. Failing that secondary event required you to be super-dumb though, so I don't see it as much of a loss. I hope the scenario flows just as well now, as while two teams makes more sense plotwise and punishes focusing on only a few characters, it does kind of defeat what originally made the desert somewhat unique. To compensate, there's now an additional event at the end of it, rather than it simply ending after the second camp.
The goal is currently late November. It's a pretty aggressive goal, so I don't know if I can actually finish up all these sidequests in time; right now, only three are actually finished with testing. I don't really have much choice regarding the mainline desert scenario, though; it's far enough in redevelopment that I can't slice a few lines to hide it.
PS. - I profoundly regret trying to make those stools in the game’s various taverns. I can’t figure out a decent way to make someone look like they’re sitting on them. Sometimes, the illusion that they’re sitting on them works. Sometimes, it’s pretty obvious they’re just clipping right through them, and looks, just, the worst. I’d be open to suggestions to fix it, but I’m not sure what a correct solution would even look like.
Remember when I said I’d make a general introductory post about Draug’s Resurrection and reblog that every three or four months, back in 2018? Yeah, that didn’t happen. So I sort of re-wrote it. Now with loads of pictures in between! Same idea as before; neatly tying together any general information a newcomer would want to learn at a glance, without being overly wordy. Maybe I’ll be more vigilant with this one. Probably not though.
What is Draug’s Resurrection?
Draug’s Resurrection is a completely free, nonlinear RPG developed by one person. As the name suggests, it is a tale of the resurrection of the warlord Draug, and its quest to obtain the nine artifacts it held in life, thus restoring Draug’s full power and memories, and ultimately stopping the necromancer who raised you, Damian, from unleashing mass destruction upon the world. Or usurp his reign and become an immortal tyrant, or anything in between. Each artifact has the scenario surrounding it continually change over time, and these scenarios love cross-referencing each other. What you don’t do is just as important as what and when you do decide to do it.
For instance, one of Draug’s artifacts resides in the Midland Woods, guarded by a small group of priestesses. If you do the artifact early, it’ll be a fairly simple affair of trying to win the priestess’ trust (or kill them if you’re a huge jerk) and then pounding through a bunch of spiders and other beasties through the forest. However, if you leave the artifact for later, the local army will reinforce the area, not wanting Draug to obtain the artifact and grow ever stronger. If you’ve helped the army out in other locales, or if you’ve assisted other priestesses elsewhere, schisms will fracture the army’s presence in the area. If you’ve given them little reason to trust you, the army and the priestesses will happily work together and become a much more intimidating force. There’s even the third option of you murdered the residing priestesses early but never got the artifact, resulting in a similar but different way for the events to play out.
So where can I download it?
From RPGMaker.net or [itch.io link here].
As of this page’s initial writing, there are plans to release version 0.9.0 in a couple of weeks, so I’d recommend sitting tight until then; I figure it better to get people up to speed before its release, rather than afterwards. Despite the name, 0.9.0 is pretty much the full game, but without a thorough playtesting or twenty, I can’t in good faith say it’s done and stable until then. There’s also a couple major issues with trying an ‘Evil Draug’ playthrough. Still, in ideal circumstances, 0.9.0 is a complete game that takes about 20-30 hours to complete.
At DR’s sheer scope and my extremely limited ability to playtest all possible scenarios, there’ll always be bugs that slip through, or incredibly specific scenarios I didn’t plan for, large or small, which may range from a scenario getting stuck or an NPC talking about something that didn’t actually happen. I’m fairly committed to rooting out as many bugs as I can, and a set of eyes that aren’t mine’ll find things I didn’t think of or have gone numb to. Please contact me if you find anything egregarious. Just a comment on here should be good.
What’s the Battle System like?
Draug’s Resurrection’s battles take place on a 4x2 grid, and is part classic turn-based RPG battles and part turn-based strategy. Positioning is important, but rather than maneuvering around a mostly empty field, you’re swapping in and out of places with both allies and enemies, so you’re always in someone’s line of fire. Other things like Area-of-Effect spells, fancy Ailments, and beneficial Enhancements add further nuance to the system.
It’s a very extensive system, and while most of it is finished and works quite well, there’s still a few holdout spells that aren’t finished yet, mostly those related to counterattack-style Enhancements. Even without them, the Battle System feels complete.
As the game is nonlinear, monsters have to find some way to scale with the player. But scaling always carries massive issues. DR’s solution is that monsters themselves do not level, but the chance of seeing them fluctuates with game progression. In simplest terms, there are 18 monsters in each of the game’s eight regions with a high probability to encounter at any given time. It results in the player feeling like they’re getting stronger, but also remain challenged by encounters. It also means that the majority of monsters will never be seen in a playthrough, tying in nicely with other nonlinear aspects.
It should also be briefly noted that there are options to change the difficulty of encounters or virtually remove them from the game, if you’re interested only the the story. The reverse is also an option; higher difficulties technically give you greater freedom to customize characters as you want, as they effectively start at lower levels.
Who are the characters of Draug’s Resurrection?
Including Draug, there are 25 possible party members in Draug’s Resurrection. It’s impossible to get all of them in one playthrough; some of the requirements for one will seal off the other, and if those characters meet, a fight to the death is likely. Further, some can be recruited concurrently, but will refuse to be in the party together. While the party only has room for four, I personally suggest keeping an active rotation of at least six characters; there’s several occasions when you’ll be using multiple parties at the same time.
All characters have one type of weapon, one element of spells, and one class of armour. There are overlaps, but its enough that each character should feel fairly unique. How you equip them determines how they’ll level, and spells can be learned in any order you desire, by equipping the appropriate tome for an extended period of time. Both are done simply by completing battles while equipped accordingly; you don’t have to do needless stupid actions to increase your skill with anything. Following up on that thought, there’s a trio of pages detailing these points in a bit more detail:
Hello Acra! I was just wondering, which game toolkit are you using to make the game? Thanks, Paul
Draug's Resurrection is made with the RPG Toolkit. However, it should be noted that everything is completely custom except for a reliance on its board editor. It should further be noted that the engine's associated sites (ToolkitZone, or RPGToolkit.net) have been literally dead for close to a decade, and, to my knowledge, there's no place on the web that hosts its download anymore (specifically, DR is based on 3.1.0, and the more current 3.2.1 is incompatible with), so my act is quite literally impossible to follow.
Draug's Resurrection: A nonlinear indie RPG @draugsresurrection - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
