Trailer

Blackbirds of Rye — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:19:36 +0000

Worry not, I have been working hard in the background as I prepare my game for its full release. In the meantime, a good friend of mine, Volrath (of Master of the Wind fame) made a trailer just for Star Stealing Prince! It’s totally amazing (and I’m not just saying that just because he’s my friend and it’s my game). He chose Iron Maiden’s “Look for the Truth” because the lyrics fit oh so well. Like seriously, when he first linked me to the song, even I was going “wow! that really DOES fit”. So if you want an idea of Star Stealing Prince’s overall plot, just listen to the lyrics.

A tentative release date is early February and that’s if nothing stupid happens between now and then.

Revamp + Beta-Testing

Blackbirds of Rye — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:51:13 +0000

All right so earlier in the week I did finish all the balancing in the game. Well balanced to my standards. No doubt I’ll have to do a few tweakings after my beta-testers get through with it. Which brings me to my first order of business! I am going to send out the testers the beta version on Saturday! That has me really excited! To finally have a finished game under my belt, it’s truly unreal.

In light of that, I’ve been editing this wordpress to better fit the needs of players who are new to the RPG scene or those who are just curious of the ins and outs of Star Stealing Prince’s style overall. If you’ll take a look, I’ve separated the characters so they each have their own page now (which also lists their skills). I have also expanded on the gameplay section where each section gets their own page (and I added a new one as well). Hopefully that’ll work to guide you into playing Star Stealing Prince.

If there is anything else you think I might need as a player, don’t hesitate to let me know.

Final Boss

Blackbirds of Rye — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:20:31 +0000

This is really unreal! I am almost done balancing the final boss.

Which means that after I fix a few other things, it will be sent off to my beta-testers and then I sit back, let them take a crack at it. Give me their reports, I fix up problems. And then I’ll be DONE. DONE.

Needless to say, this has me excited.

Also, happy new years everyone! I hope 2012 is good to you all! :)

One-Hit Kill

Blackbirds of Rye — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:36:57 +0000

One of the things I love about balancing is when I do it way wrong. I was setting up the skills for these two enemies and if the enemies got smart, they could flatten your party in two turns. Definitely not my intent, but I was laughing all the same. So I had to nerf a few of those skills and now they are a bit on the hard side, but definitely won’t kill you in two turns (and probably won’t kill you at all if you utilize stunning effects right). I’m still tweaking everyone’s skills because I want to make it so when you get to the end of the game, most of the skills are still useful. What’s the point of collecting the skills of course, if they become useless by the end, right? So I’ll have to do a few more tweaks here and there and hope my beta-testers can give me some helpful feedback about that.

Right now I have a boss to balance, one more half dungeon with a boss at the end of that, the optional dungeon plus the optional boss, and then the final boss. I also have to break the fourth wall before the final boss. Because of how the events are set up for the optional dungeon, as soon as you get out of it, you’re shuffled off to the final boss. Oops. So I figure players won’t mind if I break the fourth wall with a warning and letting them buy items, heal up, and save before they get thrown into the final boss. Of course and warn people not to save over their save file just in case the final boss is too hard.

I wish I had planned that a bit better, but I think it’ll be okay. I meant to be done by now, but I’ve had a job since the end of September (which is wonderful) so I had to rethink my “if it’s not done by December, something’s wrong”. Haha, clearly it wasn’t. But it’s definitely still on track! Hopefully by February–by then, if I don’t have anything (or at least have it off to my beta-testers by then) something is wrong!

Again, sorry I never have much to show you. Hard to show you just databasing screenshots. I’m sure that’d be a bit on the boring side.

Enemies and things like that

Blackbirds of Rye — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:14:21 +0000

So I’ve been quiet because I’ve been quietly working on balancing the game. I finished up all the events (barring a few I won’t get to until I balance everything) a while back so now all I need to do is the tedious balancing. And that really doesn’t give way to showing off what I’m working on which is a shame. I have three more areas to balance (which means 3 more bosses and then the final boss).

Since I don’t have much to talk about or show, I’ve been drawing doodles of the characters from the game to give people a more rounded idea on who these characters are. Because my game is short, it doesn’t really allow me to have an extensive demo which would allow you to meet all the characters and all that kind of stuff. Instead, I’ve taken to doodling them.

The first doodle is of Snowe’s parents: King Edgar and Queen Lina. I figure if I had wanted to, I could do a game of how they met and all that lovey-dovey stuff. It’d probably be epic. Everyone loves a game where a guy who isn’t royalty is able to sway the heart of the princess and get to be King in the end. The second one is just a quick doodle of Snowe and Erio which would happen near the end of the game where Erio and Snowe are just kind of stuck with each other. Neither enjoys it that much. The third is a hypothetical one of “what if they get off the island and live somewhere warm”. Here we see Snowe and Astra helping out one of the NPC kids make a sand castle. Clearly, Snowe’s not amused at what Astra is suggesting. The last one happens to be my favorite. Since Hiante basically raised Astra since she was eleven, he had to be a sort of surrogate father. Which includes putting braids and a bow in her hair, even if he has no clue how to do either.

I’ve also been talking about how characters have grown since this project appeared in my head. Perhaps I’ll talk about that next time even though it’s already up at a forum I frequent. I just don’t often know if people even read this, so I don’t post often unless something reminds me of it (Hello new person watching the wordpress).

Thanks for reading! : )

Demo V2.0

Blackbirds of Rye — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 03:12:47 +0000

So I finally got around to putting up the second version of the demo on this site (look in the download section). I keep forgetting this exists because it just doesn’t seem to be followed by anyone that isn’t following it on another site. If you do play my demo, take a few moments when you finish to give me your thoughts. I’m getting a little annoyed that not many people have and I know people have downloaded it. Maybe it means they don’t like it, or they are just shy about telling me their thoughts. Either way, it’d be nice if I had more feedback.

Right now if you really care I’m balancing some monsters and adding another floor to the fourth dungeon because I think it needs to be longer. Though I haven’t mentioned it, I got a job at the beginning of the month so even though that’s a part-time job, it still cuts me SSPing a little bit. But that’s okay.

An Update!

Blackbirds of Rye — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:02:45 +0000

Hello again! I know I’ve been a bit quiet, but that means good things.

I have finished 95% of the events of the game! Isn’t that wonderful? I have also sent off the second demo to be beta-tested by a few people. When they are done and I’ve done a little bit more tweaking, I’ll release the second demo which is hopefully a better representation of the game mechanics than the first demo was. For now though, I have taken down the link for the first demo.

I have also added another part to this WordPress. It’s the gameplay link at the top up there. I don’t know if I’m done with it yet, but so far I am. It’s just for people who don’t play video games regularly and would like some kind of instruction manual that explains facets of the game that we RPG-players take for granted. And it lists all the status effects which could be useful for those who wonder what the heck my icons mean when they play the game.

Anyway, hope you all are doing well! Thank you for supporting me thus far. I can’t wait to show you guys the new demo. For now, it’s back to databasing for me.

Short and Sweet x2

Blackbirds of Rye — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:20:23 +0000

Again, keeping this short and sweet because I’ve run out of things to talk about.

What I’ve done since last week:
● Finished the bonus dungeon (20 maps!) and the events that correspond with said dungeon.
● Evented the events leading up to final boss.
● Did a few bug fixes.
● Did thumbnail sketch for the ending pictures.
● Finished making sunbeams for maps.
● Finished scenes with mass NPC moving and did the last NPC chatter for the game.

What I plan to do over the next week:
● Sketch out the ending scenes–hopefully get a few done.
● Do the mapping for the ending.
● Finalize how I’m going to do the ending, haha.

SO CLOSE. GUYS AND GALS. SO CLOSE.

Blackbirds of Rye — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:50:22 +0000

I’ll just be short and sweet:

What I’ve done:

● Finished the art for the second to last dungeon’s lovely art scene.
● Finished all the events in the second to last dungeon.
● Implemented Snowe’s dark-circles faceset (dark circles become more prevalent as the game goes on.)
● Planned half the bonus/final dungeon.
● Finished the dungeon before the final boss.
● Put cloaks on all my NPCs.

What I hope to have done by next week:

● Begin mapping and doing the puzzles for the bonus dungeon.
● Event the scenes that correspond with the dungeon before the final boss.
● Sketch ideas for how ending will play out.
● Start preparing sunbeams for outside maps.

SO CLOSE. I can’t believe I’m this close to being done! After all this, all I’ll have to do is the databasing and monsters stuff, but I mean, I am so close! *runs around like a madwoman*

NPC Chatter

Blackbirds of Rye — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:30:37 +0000

Let’s see, I’m finished with the Western Tower dungeon I was doing. All I have to do now for it is the ending cutscenes and then I can go to work on the last full dungeon and then the last mini-dungeon (really, it’s not as long as the dungeons that preceded it, so I just call it a mini-dungeon). After that, the ending cutscenes and I’ll be finished with the story. All that will be left then is to make the monsters (I have graphics already) and balance them. I gotta say, I’m excited.

Though before I can move on, I have to finish the art scenes I have at the end of the Western Tower dungeon. I only have about three-four images to do for that (the whole scene taking nine images) and then coloring them all which doesn’t take nearly as long as drawing them out.

I plan to have two different beta-tests. One for the story and another for the whole game. The story one will undoubtedly come before the whole game beta-test and I already have a few people I was going to ask. It just feels so weird to be this close to being finished. So weird! :O