This is the development blog for Palasiel Quest. Palasiel Quest is a very small episodic RPG being made on the RPG Maker VX Ace engine, with a few enhancements. Check in regularly for development updates and other related stuff!
It's been a long time coming, but after a number of delays and just academic life getting in the way, I can finally release the first demo (Demo A) of the pilot of Palasiel Quest! The game starts at the opening cinematic, and then the demo skips forward to a later part of the game, where you'll be locked into doing one mission.
You'll join Daran and Ariel as they opt to join a woman named Saoirse to collect the royal Sigils of Parisa. But the journey ends up being more than just a simple treasure hunt...
The demo is fully voiced, including voice talent from TeamFourStar's Amber Lee Connors.
This game will only run on Windows (sorry Mac users!).
You can download the demo from HERE. (Click "Download Now" at the top).
If you DO NOT have the RPG Maker VX Ace Run-Time Package (RTP), you will need to install that before you can run this game.
You can download that from HERE.
I hope you enjoy this demo, and share with your friends!
This one is called Manaical Prodigy ~Reprise~. It's a remake of the original battle theme that I composed last year. It's unique to one of the antagonists in the game called Aceri, a very dangerous and insane girl. This is the "Tense Mix" version. A Tense Mix is something that occurs in my boss battle soundtracks, where once the battle reaches it's climax (last 25% HP or something) then the Tense Mix of the same boss theme will seamlessly cross-fade in, heightening the intensity of the track. A Tense Mix track will usually have more instruments, additional sections and might have a slight electronic vibe.
So I'm just gonna go ahead and give this a lil' ol' boot up. Haven't worked on this as much as I would have like to. I had delays and then uni started, but my laptop screen has been broken for like 3-4 months, so production time has slowed down heavily.
Gonna say some things though. Know how this was supposed to be split into 5 episodes each? That will no longer be the case. Palasiel Quest will be one full game. I made this decision because it will just be less stress on my end. However, the original intended "first episode" will still be released as a pilot, and then the full thing will be released when it's done.
A demo is also due too, but I've had to replace one of the voice actresses who appears in the demo, otherwise that would be out. Definitely pushing for a demo release by the end of this year.
Palasiel Quest OST: For Elise (Fur Elise ~battle arrange.~)
I had an idea of making Fur Elise into a battle theme. It was quite a random idea, and thought it'd make a nice theme for Elise, a character in Palasiel Quest. I feel like it's fitting for her. In any event, this is what I came up with.
I started this piece in the middle of the night and there was no electricity in the house at the time, so I had to put down what I remembered in my head, and I'm not entirely pitch perfect, but I still went on with it. The original time signature I believe is 3/8, but I did this in the project as 3/4 to make it easier on myself.
Something I came up with and started thinking about earlier today, regarding this project. This is more of a ramble as well as information about the project itself, rather than a progress report.
When I first posted the [url=http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/3207-palasiel-quest-episode-i-start-believing-in-rpgs/]thread of this project over on RPG Maker Web[/url] there was an initial bit of backlash over the project being just another mindless parody RPG with no thought to it, and trying to hard for cheap laughs. That really wasn't what it is about, but I do believe I might have brought it upon myself. Initially, Palasiel Quest was planned out to be a web-comic, and the main characters had totally different personalities and ticks to the ones they do now, and when I decided to make it into an RPG Maker game, I still had that mindset of a webcomic carried over, which is why I kept emphasizing the parody part of it.
Palasiel Quest has since evolved from that over the months of development and has started to become it's own RPG...almost. One of the key things about it are having Rules of Awareness (henceforth called "RoA").
For those that don't know, Palasiel Quest is about 5 young people from the real world being spirited away to world of Palasiel, an RPG world. Where RoA is involved is asking yourself: "How aware are these characters? To what extent do they know that they are in an RPG? How aware are the NPCs?".
I think this plays a key part in how engaged a player might be with either the character(s), story, or the setting. The 5 main characters are most aware, but they will never be so aware that they KNOW they are being played by the player. They will also never be aware of things such as BGM changes (unless of course the music is in-scene), or tileset changes and then comment upon them. They WILL, however, comment upon changes in the scenery and comment about the creation of the place.
I think I get just a little bit of leeway with this since because of a character called "The Creator". He is the person who introduces the game, the one who brought the main characters to Palasiel and is essentially the personified character of the developer, i.e me). He acts as a guide to Daran for the first parts of the game, before returning to simply overseeing the going-ons in Palasiel as well as pop up every now and again for some hints or banter. The main characters know that Palasiel is a world that's been created, by The Creator.
Those are the Rules of Awareness I have set for the 5 main characters.
As for everyone else, the NPCs. How aware are they? Do they know that they're in an RPG world? No, they don't. However most will act like NPC would/should. Their level of awareness only reaches the point of which they think that Palasiel is the only world there is. While a will make remarks to certain RPG-esque happenings, the way they actually portray these remarks (through dialogue or whatnot) will always be within the boundaries of their awareness level.
What will be interesting about the 5 main characters is their familiarity with RPGs. In the original concept, back when I wanted it to be a webcomic years ago, all the characters had played RPGs before and therefore knew most things about them. While Palasiel Quest will cover some common tropes and clichés, they will either be played straight, or deconstructed. Palasiel Quest will never try to make a joke out of everything. Writing comedy is hard as hell, anyway. Daran, the main protagonist, isn't COMPLETELY familiar with RPGs. You'll find that he's played a Kingdom Hearts there, and maybe a Final Fantasy title or two. Ariel, his side kick, LOVES RPGs and plays them regularly. She is the one who will know her stuff.Same goes for Opal, fifth main character. Keon and Sanya, have never played an RPG before and their lives and it should be interesting to see how they cope in the RPG world, especially with players playing as Daran who isn't all that familiar with them, so he'll be finding out stuff about Palasiel at the same pace the players will.
Again, sorry. Not much of an update. Just me rambling on at 1am. I actually have to do about 2 weeks work all over again, because I had a harddrive failure and lost everything, but I had a backup on Dropbox which isn't too far back. All I have to do is replace all the facesets with the portraits I have, and insert on characters voices for about 2 scenes and that's it. So progress had been halted for the past 2 weeks.
Guest Party Members || Side Character Fighting Styles
With the 5 main characters being Daran, Ariel, Sanya, Keon and Opal, they are each introduced slowly during the pilot episode of Palasiel Quest.
The game will have plenty of side characters that will join Daran on his adventure, each boasting a different fighting style that will give players an interesting take on the turn based battle system.
For example, one character, Soltier, is a weaponmaster, and this plays into his fighting style in that he has a different skill set for each weapon type. So while he has an axe equipped, he becomes a powerful attacker, holding a blade will have him focus on aggro direction and defence, whilst holding a rod or wand will have him magic focused, increasing his versatility.
Another example is a character called Elise who is a fencer that wields a rapier. Her fighting style was an interesting style to design, and I based it around music and dancing. She has four different "modes" which I call Movements. Each movement focuses on a different asset. For example her "Appassionato" Movement focuses on magic and healing. Certain skills will move Elise into a different Movement, where she'll have another set of skills based on the Movement she's in.
Another feature is Guest Characters. There will be some characters that will join your party, but will not be fully playable as a party member, at which point they're referred to as Guests. With Guest characters about, they provided certain special bonuses, and at times, they might intervene the battle by casting defensive magic, or throwing a bomb at the enemy that might stun them. Similar to what happens in Final Fantasy III.
PATH DIVERGE: A Path Diverge is a story segment that's triggered by talking to certain NPCs at which point the party will diverge from the main story route and take a different path in the story, or take a detour. Path Diverges can lead to additional backstory information, bonus scenes and additional Choice Diverts.
CHOICE DIVERT: At certain points in the game, Daran will be presented with a choice. Whether the choice may seem big or small, the effect these choices may result in can be anything from a small alteration in a scene, to a less/more difficult dungeon to even a character death. In essence, Choice Diverts shape the future.
So I commissioned a wonderful artist. Her name is Judee Zabala. She's quite the creative package; she draws, she sings and she voice acts. She will be in charge of drawing the characters' bust images. Yeah, I'm making the move from facesets to busts.
You can see some of her talent or just follow her in general on these following platforms:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/judeezabala
Tumblr: http://astrayeah.tumblr.com/
YouTube: http://youtube.com/astraiaiaia
Twitter/Instragram: @JudeeBurr
As far as things are going with the game itself, it's been an a semi-hiatus with uni work holding me down. In the meantime, I've been scripting all the scenes I've got so far and I've started to send them out to the voice actors and I've been getting some voice material in, including some battle quotes. I've also got all the voice clips for the opening scene ready too, so things are moving along nicely. I might upload a video of the first half of the opening scene. It doesn't give too much away anyways!
Palasiel Quest has made a move from Yanfly's Battle Engine to Momomaru's LNX11 Battle System. I find it much more cooler and pleasant to look at, though I do miss some of the old battle system's features, especially in debugging.
The transition effect and the moving idle enemies and animations upon death effects are all due to Moghunter's scripts.
Also, the voices you hear are placeholders until the actual voice actors' lines are recorded. And yes that is Tales of Vesperia's Yuri, as Mikhail's voice.
It's a simple video showing what I had before, and then now.
Just want to take the time to announce that my best friend and Palasiel Quest character artist just finished his first RPG Maker game called Esper Wing Chronicle. It's a comedy RPG with a bunch of quirky characters you'll love with an underlying dark storyline. Click the post title and check the page out for more details and the free download!
To run, you need to have the RPG Maker VX Ace RTP (Run-Time-Package) which you can find through this link: http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/download/run-time-package
I don't know what happened, but I've been on a roll. After spending a heinous amount of time re-mapping (almost) all of the maps. And setting a few things up in the database, and working on introductory cutscenes (I.E. THE BORING STUFF), I've been able to get to work on some gameplay. So far I've achieved just over 30mins of gameplay out of a total of a predicted 2 hours of full play time. These past few days I was able to finish eventing and testing two "quests" the player must undertake.
I've also been doing a bit of overlay mapping as well, and getting the hang of using lighting and tints. So at least places look a bit more pretty.
Lately I've been working on the Skit system. Or at least, re-working it. In the first build, it was rather clunky and it didn't really work efficiently, due to the fact that it was using parallel processes which has a tendency to clam up the game's speed. Found away to do the system more efficiently, and I've also taken the time to use my crappy artistic skills and make the skit scenes a bit more aesthetic. The attached pictures are mock ups, done on Photoshop just to give me and idea of how they'll look in-game. By this point of writing, they have been testing and personally, they look great.
