Lost Souls RPG

Story
You are an Unbound Shell. What exactly is an Unbound Shell? No one knows. Every couple of years, graves disappear and in their place, are the shells of people who once lived. They are given another chance to live once more, but no longer do they possess a soul within them. Hence, they search the land to attempt to fill the void in their body, to attempt to fill this empty space within them with the souls of others. No one knows why they're here, and why they were given a second chance, but their presence is widespread enough throughout the land for people to immediately recognize an Unbound Shell. You are brought to life, and with no souls or any idea how you were brought back, you must travel through the land in order to find out about why you exist on this plane.

Gameplay
Lost Souls is an RPG that revolves around the ability for your hero, the Unbound Shell, to steal souls from fallen enemies. The chance to steal a soul is 75% chance in-game. Stealing a soul is simple, all you need to do is attain the killing blow on an enemy who possesses a soul and you have a chance to steal it. Enemies that have the [S] beside their name are enemies who will release souls, while enemies who possess a [N] beside their name cannot have their souls extracted, or simply do not possess a soul for you to use. Once you attain their soul, it will be automatically moved to an area filled with 6 horizontal boxes (2x2 tile size).


Note: In this picture, the left most soul is the zergling, and my furthest right box is locked, as I have not put any stats into improving the # of boxes

These boxes represent the souls you currently possess but do not have full control over, these souls are basically in limbo until you do something with them. Souls will fill from left to right, until you have no more available boxes (boxes blocked off by buildings need to be unlocked). Once you are full on souls, you may continue receiving souls, but this will replace the left-most soul in your boxes. In order to do something with these souls, you'll need to use the gateway, which acts as the interface between the boxes and the stored souls area (high ground, or the area adjacent to the dropship).


Soul Selector (Gateway)

The gateway has the following functions, which all affect the leftmost box/soul:

Zealot - Store the soul, moving it from a box to an area where the soul can be permanently kept. Souls kept in this area will stay with you until death.
Dragoon - Break the soul. By breaking a soul, you immediately destroy the soul, but you gain the ability to use that soul free of charge (no gas cost). Breaking a soul has an inherent cool down, which can be reduced by leveling up the Improve Break Soul stat.
High Templar - Discard the soul. This discards the soul, moving all other souls to the left. This is useful when you have acquired a new soul but it is on the furthest right square. Because Break Soul has an cooldown, using the high templar allows you to select souls more easily.
Dark Templar - This property of the Unbound Shell is unknown, but may be unlocked later in the game. If you wish to know it's function, read the spoiler box.



Use Soul (Dropship) / Permanent Soul Area

Though the gateway system is important, so is the area where you have stored your souls permanently. This area acts as the main hub for all your souls that you have chosen to store. Do note, there is a limit on the max amount of stored souls you may have, this max limit is represented by the minerals near your dropship, and can be upgraded using stats. There are many options for a soul in this area:

Activate/Deactivate Soul - By bringing your soul to this beacon, you load the soul into the Use Soul function (Dropship). All souls that are in the dropship can be cast an infinite amount of times, assuming one has the required gas to cast it. Gas is naturally accumulated over time. This will be the bulk of your spell-casting, so make sure to hot-key the dropship. If you wish to remove the soul, simply bring back the same soul to the area and it will be removed.
Soul Info - As said, bringing your soul to this beacon will provide you info about that specific soul. Things that may be described include quirks about the soul, the mana cost, and any other restrictions that may be present on the soul itself.
Discard All Loaded Souls - This removes all the souls currently present in the dropship, allowing you to re-customize what is in the dropship.
Release Soul - Releases the soul, allowing you to store another soul in it's place. (NOTE: Releasing a soul will not remove it from the dropship)

Stats/Leveling Up
Killing monsters will yield experience and gold. Kill enough monsters, and you will gain a level. Gaining a level automatically fills your health to full, and provides slightly increased gas regen for a short amount of time. With every level, comes a Fragmented Soul. These fragments allow you to improve your character and make him stronger. Fragments can also be received through quests and finding glowing crystals in the world. There are four available areas you may improve with a Fragment.



Improve Break Soul - Improves the cooldown of Break Soul. Allows you to cast it more often, if you enjoy the prospect of using a soul at no mana cost.
Improve Soul Storage (+capacity)) - Increases the maximum amount of souls available in the storage area by one, this is represented by the minerals at your area. (Initial amount is a maximum of 3 stored souls)
Improve Soul Regen - Soul Regen increases your gas capacity by 5, and improves the regeneration speed of gas by 5%.
Improve Soul Boxes - Removes one building from your soul boxes area, allowing you to have one more soul in limbo. A inherent max of 3 is placed, allowing you to have up to 6 souls in limbo at a time.

Interactions with NPCs
Most NPCs in the world can talk to you, and all the NPCs in the first town will talk to you if you prompt them. Important NPCs are usually marked by a sprite of some sort, either meaning a quest or an upgrade is available. Currently, the talking system is very finicky, meaning you will have to move away and back towards NPCs that don't talk to you the first time, or try to approach the NPCs from different angles. Make sure to talk to NPCs, as they might give you hints about the world itself and reward you with Fragments and gold.

Life In Death (Respawning)

The respawn system is simple in Lost Souls. If you fall during in battle, do not worry, as any of your allies may revive you as long as they touch a stone statue. (Located throughout the world as a unique looking doodad.) There is no EXP or gold penalty for dying, but if you do happen to die, you will lose all souls that you currently possess, meaning souls in limbo and in the storage area. The only time you can lose in Lost Souls if no other Unbound Shells are present to revive you, or if all of you die during a boss battle.


If you become heavily damaged during a fight with an enemy or boss, you can heal by touching a blue fire. These blue fires will rejuvenate your hero, and provide a very slight increase in gas.


Music
I use a lot of sound clips in my RPG, so make sure to turn off Starcraft music and turn up the sound a little. However, if you do not enjoy listening to my various clips of music, there is an option present to disable it. If it is popular enough, I may release a version without a music, but I feel that would defeat the purpose of trying to build atmosphere/mood. I will try to keep the file size under 1MB however.

There is also a tutorial in game that explains everything I've basically posted about the game play, but I've had complaints that it is a little too in-depth.

Special Thanks:


Progress:
Terrain: 60%
Triggers: 40%
Ideas: 70%
Overall Progress: 55%


Any comments, suggestions, or ideas for cool spells for souls are welcome and encouraged in this thread. The version that is most recently uploaded for open beta testing is Version 0.5, located here: http://www.staredit.net/files/1848/

Post has been edited 14 time(s), last time on Feb 22 2010, 4:01 pm by Taylor Swift.

[Reserve]

Just my take.

I have to say that this is a great rpg. Nicely done. What I think really stands out is the soul customization thingy . You can arrange souls that you've absorbed in any order for your convenience. The bosses were fun, though it's not something you can beat single player unless you're skilled. Also, don't neglect to read the text lol or you'll be left clueless. I really encourage others to play this, with at least another player. Boss music is amazing btw.

If you need any helps on spells, ask me. I helped Kenshin on some of his spells for FF-BoG so I have good credit haha. Keep up the great work.

Thanks for the comments. If you want to help, I need ideas for a spell using the marine soul or the dragoon spell.

Well, give me the names of the souls and maybe what you are trying to aim for using those souls. Like offensive or defensive, passive or status effects.

I can easily adapt the soul names to what you think up of. I just need something a little more creative than create 3 dragoons for 6 seconds. I have something in mind for the marine, he's called a Poltergeist, and the tentative name for the dragoon is a Drakon. But like I said, I can easily change the names.

Well out of all the spells I've seen so far, I think a stun spell would work fine. Something like stun enemies in an area for X seconds, but I think the stun would fit nicely for an electric soul, if you're implementing such a soul. For Poltergeist, it's something like a ghost, so maybe have it possess an enemy for a certain amount of seconds. Then after the use, the unit turns back to normal. You can add extra effects like when the enemy gets the unit back, it's at critical health. This will give players a good incentive to use it.

Dunno what a Drakon is, but I'll see what I can come up with. haha

Okay, finished adding the upgrade system for souls, which is based on usage, and I also made it possible to combo when using break soul, woohoo!

You don't lose the upgrade if you switch out or discard the soul right?

No, the upgrades are permanent. Most souls will slowly upgrade through use (both through breaks and through using them) and some souls passively upgrade themselves. I was thinking about doing something like that, but I think it makes more sense that once you've grown used to a soul, you don't forget how to use it, it's like riding a bike! However, I was thinking about removing it if you died though. >=)

The best part about this RPG, IMO, is the Haunted Ship part. And the imaginatively named spells. mud MUD MUUUUUUDDDDDD

Favourite boss is the Sand Worm, hands down. The phases are simply too epic, and cannibalism? Epic. Especially... MUDDDDDD!

Okay, finally finished the two souls for the Haunted Ship, the Drakon (Dragoon) and the Poltergeist (marine). Took me forever to think up the ideas for the Drakon though. I've realized that I probably spend 200% more time finding an idea than I spend triggering the actual idea itself. Like finding the drakon soul took me like, 3 days to figure out what it should do, and 1 day to implement. So I either really rock at triggering or really suck at brainstorming. Spoilers for the souls below, if you're interested in that kind of stuff.

Haha, seems like my spell idea was twisted around but that's good. Sorry, couldn't come up with any spell idea for Drakon.

My ass. The water runners boss was Epic. So epic, I'd rate it up there with Rush. I'm srs.

I'm still available for testing and ideas throwing

For Zombie, because he thinks I'm inefficient. ;o

I once got three lings in one box. The ship is annoying. I only got to the ship before I had to go, but it seems pretty fun except for waiting for the boat.

Hm, what player were you? If you could replicate it I might be able to fix it. I get the whole ship thing alot, I could use a faster ship but I feel the carrier gives the best representation of what I want. Shame you had to leave before hand, the water temple is probably where it gets the most interesting.

I was player 2. I believe it happened when I cast my ling spell and killed a bunch of enemies in quick succession, though I'm not sure about this.

It's quite possible, but I suppose you'd need to kill them extremely fast for that to happen, as my trigger to make souls is just one trigger cycle. I'll look into it, I've never seen it before. Were your lings upgraded? Also, I'm not sure how it happens though, if you killed them fast enough, it'd only register as one kill because of the way my triggers are set up.

Don't forget to take a look at the Sounds Loops that I've uploaded in the DLDB