Lost Souls RPG

Storyline:

Quote from Storyline

You grew up in the land of Visus, a peaceful and prospering world full of awe-inspiring beauty. Despite the world's natural glow, there seemed to be dark spots; times when the Shedu would appear.. Periodically throughout history attacks from Shedu have been recorded. The attacks seem to be worsening over time with no sign of stopping. The Shedu are those who have passed from life, and, unable to enter into Heaven are cast down into Dystopia. Many Shedu become malevolent once cast into Dystopia, although a few stand firm and remain benign. These Shedu that remain benign, and sometimes even benevolent, are called Lost Souls. Recognizing this attack frequency increase you, a humble servant of the Basilieus (Emperor), rush to make this problem common knowledge. Though the Basilieus doesn't take a liking to your tale in the least bit; you are siezed, imprisoned, and finally executed.

As you slowly come to your senses you realize that are no longer in Visus, you seem to be in the fabled realm of Dystopia. At first you have a slight rage building up inside of you, but you slowly calm yourself and focus, becoming a Lost Soul. You must fight your way through Dystopia and the Shedu, even the legendary Cerberus, longing to return to your beautiful world of Visus.. The only being around you that doesn't have violent tendencies seems to be the senile Orpheus, who couldn't tell which direction was up or down..

Gameplay:
You play through this RPG in SINGLE PLAYER. The other player is now just an over-glorified observer, as I decided that the support player was just no fun. Both the player and observer can switch positions anytime during gameplay, and neither have an advantage over the other (experience is shared but displayed seperate), except for gold. Hence, there are no support spells; the ones I have in menu are lies and will be deleted.

Casting Spells:
To cast a spell, simply drop a unit out of your overlord on the bottom left of the map. The probe in the overlord is used to switch between player and observer.

Mana:
Mana is represented in vespene. For every vespene you have you gain a +1.5% chance of a spell failure. The lower your vespene the better.

Stats:
Strength:
This will mainly focus on allowing the player to equip certain items, though there will also be in game "dice rolls" and checks that, depending on your strength level, will allow to access secret areas. Perhaps moving a large builder, and busting through a barricade (in this demo only 1 strength point is required, don't spend more than 1 or it will be a waste).

Constitution:
This is your health factor, as in, how "sickly" are you. This will allow you to make poison checks against a variety of enemies that utilize poison, as well as a few checks during cut scenes. I won't spoil any gameplay though, as I believe this attribute can be rather useful and fun xp (constitution has yet to be implemented even though it is a working trigger system on its own).

Mana Degeneration:
Self explanatory. The higher your level of this, the faster your mana degenerates. This is a good thing!

Armour Class:
Simply your character's actual armour upgrade. This can be increased with attribute points, or with certain augmentative items (not occuring in demo).

Attack Rating:
Simply your character's actual attack upgrade. his can be increased with attribute points, or with certain augmentative items (not occuring in demo).










Important Gameplay Notes!

• More than 1 strength point is not required to complete the demo.
  
• If you are stuck in the jail, USE YOUR DRAGOON BUTTON!
  
• If you unload a unit from the overlord or shuttle and it doesn't auto load, put it back in by hand before you do anything.
  
• The defensive spells were meant for the support player, which has been ousted. Ignore them in the menu.
  
• Check Side Quests in the menu if you forgot what to do for a quest!
  
• Report any bugs immediately kthxbai
  
• Player two can NOT cast the magic missiles spell with any applied damage.
  
• Experience is shared but displayed separately between the players. Gold is not yet shared.
  
• The probe in the overlord is used to switch between player and observer.
  
• The zealot in the gateway is to quickly open//close the inventory -good during combat.

Latest, and most stable, version can be found here: http://www.staredit.net/176260/

The below sticky is the file for the Beta release I released for the Last Stand contest.

Since I'm not a judge (damn you all thinking I'd be biased about terrain!!), I won't check it out until its final release!

EDIT: The terrain in your screenies is... awesome. There are even some blends I've never seen before (afair).

Quote from payne

Since I'm not a judge (damn you all thinking I'd be biased about terrain!!), I won't check it out until its final release!

Very admirable, but the terrain I have displayed in-game is about 85% finalized anyways ;D

[Edit]I just realized, this is my release for the contest. I'm going away for a bit tomorrow morning to visit family over New Year's; I miss out on the extra couple weeks. So yeah, this isn't ganna be finish or final released or anything before the deadline. This is it.

Why did you remove the secondary player? It sounded like fun! How will I use my support spells now? =(

It sounded fun, yeah, but it wasn't fun. I may in the future use a second player, but for now I don't intend to. This is because it was taking too long to get deep enough into the game to where the second player would be both fun and useful.

Excuse me wtf? Why is in this forum when it's not complete? This should be under map production.

This requires posting of 'an alpha, beta, or complete'. This is a beta. It's fine here.

Because this is a finalized map, a demo. I didn't think map production was necessary because I will continue to use my old thread in map production as I finish the map. This thread is for this demo.

Apparently you can keep talking to the guy when you recover his soul, I did it twice now. You also have a bunch of weird grammatical errors, like "What are doing here Arch?", "You are a magus; to stick to your arcane duties," your spelling of gaurd everywhere. There was also a bug where I was fighting the purple sunken and my spells kept happening slightly outside of the room, and getting spell failure only for my spell to cast later. =X Also, the strange box does not leave your key items, not sure if that was intentional. And the enemies kept attacking me while I was talking to that guy, and I couldn't fight back. =( Also, the spell menu was kinda confusing, because the SCV's were all jumbled up, I kept casting heal instead of meteorite. And me dieing to that infested terran was just confusing, lol. And then I died because enemies kept spawning on top of me near the door and it didn't teleport me. Some of the doors are kinda hard to see. ;o But the game-play was pretty good, I'm not sure if I could effectively use my inventory while in battle though. The whole dragoon thing takes getting use to too. But not bad, it's different from the typical RPG.

Oh wow, thanks for the helpful post Ultimo.

Quote from HoN-Ultimo

Apparently you can keep talking to the guy when you recover his soul, I did it twice now.

What do you mean keep talking? When I played through, you get a different text after recovering the soul, he opens the door for you, and that's it; he doesn't keep talking.

Quote from HoN-Ultimo

You also have a bunch of weird grammatical errors, like "What are doing here Arch?", "You are a magus; to stick to your arcane duties," your spelling of gaurd everywhere.

Thanks for catching those. I have a habit of leaving out entire words when I type.. I think I just type slower than I think. Then during gameplay when I search for errors I read the messages too fast, and the read the message as if it were saying what I wanted it to say, so it's easy for me to miss things like that. But about the gaurd thing.. I could have sworn I caught all those..

Quote from HoN-Ultimo

There was also a bug where I was fighting the purple sunken and my spells kept happening slightly outside of the room, and getting spell failure only for my spell to cast later.

Ah, my targeting system is set up to target only enemy men right now, and the offensive spells only work when enemy men are near. This was intentional, but probably not a good idea. Will make a note to add in building targetting. About the spell failures, did you read my OP? Spell failures are apart of the game.

Quote from HoN-Ultimo

=X Also, the strange box does not leave your key items, not sure if that was intentional.

You actually found the strange box? That's amazing! I didn't think anyone would

And no, I honestly just forgot to stop displaying it (assuming you finished its quest)

Quote from HoN-Ultimo

And the enemies kept attacking me while I was talking to that guy, and I couldn't fight back. =(

Thanks for addressing this, I never thought of this happening. Can be solved with a simple setting of invincibility.

Quote from HoN-Ultimo

Also, the spell menu was kinda confusing, because the SCV's were all jumbled up, I kept casting heal instead of meteorite. And me dieing to that infested terran was just confusing, lol. And then I died because enemies kept spawning on top of me near the door and it didn't teleport me. Some of the doors are kinda hard to see. ;o But the game-play was pretty good, I'm not sure if I could effectively use my inventory while in battle though. The whole dragoon thing takes getting use to too. But not bad, it's different from the typical RPG.

Well I plan to have a full overlord of units, just like the shuttle, when all the spells are done. Hopefully that will make things less confusing. As for now, you have to deal with that, or have buttons in the overlord that do absolutely nothing as to push all the units into the right sequence. About the door, are you talking about the top left door that you open after collecting the soul? Because if so, that means you needed to walk down about a pixel, will change that

Thanks for the amazingly helpful post Ultimo. I don't have time to fix anything you mentioned though as I am leaving for a few days soon.

In addition to what have been said.
I've casted Sci Vessel and it never ended.
The mineral at the entraince of the cave at the last town could be killed.
If you kill Ragnosaur it will spam you with +50 gold.

It will spam as in not stop giving you gold?

How many times did you use the resistance scroll? I'm assuming that a corsair near the bottom right of the map flew up and shot your science vessel as it was being blinded, knocking it out of the location.. If so, then that should be the second or third cast, and will be fixed.

Lots of grammatical errors, Eurydice sometimes loses the 'y'. Vespene tank at the first merchant is attack-able (and unnamed). I would make Z yes and K no, with T being item menu. It is supposed to be "Oorb"? Ordering the dropship should toggle the menu. I died because it kept ordering my unit when this guy began talking to me while broodlings pecked on me to death. I didn't see any explanation for what the attributes did in-game. Templar Archives doesn't have the upgrades removed.

So far so good. I will load and continue.

Quote from Kaias

Lots of grammatical errors, Eurydice sometimes loses the 'y'.

As mentioned earlier.. I actually didn't see those. When I get back I'll look over my strings again (sigh)

Quote from Kaias

Vespene tank at the first merchant is attack-able (and unnamed).

I didn't put much effort into making sure everything was named. I wanted to get this demo out today yesterday and keep my previous word on doing so. I had to stop working on this map at some point. I could have kept going on forever improving things. Nonetheless thanks for catching these.

Quote from Kaias

I would make Z yes and K no, with T being item menu.

Could you explain your reasoning? I like how it is setup now, but if you have a good reason as to otherwise I'll change it.

Quote from Kaias

It is supposed to be "Oorb"?

Yes, I thought I was being stylish at the time

Quote from Kaias

Ordering the dropship should toggle the menu.

Very good idea. I shall do this with a couple triggers and an inverted location.

Quote from Kaias

I died because it kept ordering my unit when this guy began talking to me while broodlings pecked on me to death. I didn't see any explanation for what the attributes did in-game. Templar Archives doesn't have the upgrades removed.

So far so good. I will load and continue.

Oh, I never thought to explain attributes in-game. Good idea. And yes, the broodling thing has been brought up before, and will be addressed

He opened the door twice for me lol, it was the exact same cutscene, I'm not sure why it happened twice. And I meant to say that the spell says it failed, but then it cast the spell still. I also find it difficult with all the shuttles/gateways, I think I had 4 hotkeys to keep up with, 2 of them having 8 options in them, but you really can't help that. Personally, I found finding that fire augment harder because you had to use the dragoon. Also, when you're in jail, you shouldn't make the unlocking of the door so picky, I tried near the front of the barriers for a couple of minutes and it didn't do anything, and then I finally walked right up against the block adjacent to the mud and got it after using the dragoon.

Quote from Kaias

I would make Z yes and K no, with T being item menu.

Quote from (CecilSunkure)rE

Could you explain your reasoning? I like how it is setup now, but if you have a good reason as to otherwise I'll change it.

For this one Cecil--I agree. "T" is easier to reach using the index finger in contrast to "Z" with the pinky finger or ring finger. Therefore, the Inventory would be easier to access using the index finger--which you'll need most since your in battle more than you talk.

The cutscene where after we break out of jail bugged. I got out, the DT was given to another player and ran into a corner. The 2 ghosts attacked some zerglings after and nothing happened after that. The DT still belonged to another player and I couldn't do anything

I don't like how you talk to NPCs. I'm never certain if you can talk to one or not. Sometimes I talk to an NPC when walking up to it while other times I have to wait 10 seconds :S

I thought the different player colour would have helped distinguish when you could talk to them, but it seems random to me.

Ah ok. I can color coordinate the people you can talk to to make the game a little less random.

I've had random problems with the cutscene you are referring to yoshi, but only with two people, and only when one of the ghosts survive. In order for the rest of the cutscene to continue both ghosts need to die. You can just load up the map and try again. I won't be able to fix that until I get back next week.

I'm also convinced about the switching of the two keys.

Has anyone talked to the three without branches yet? Has anyone found the Orpheus's package (besides Ultimo).

As for how I talk to NPCs, I just use burrowed units, and different amounts of burrowed units. The triggers for the cutscenes work immediately, you just need to walk over the burrowed units.

One problem I found while playing this earlier today was the inventory and spell systems....
I was looking through the inventory when I accidentally tried to assign a stat point that I didn't have, and the SCV didn't reload. After that, all of the SCVs and Drones got mixed up and out of order.
As for the spell system, when I was trying to use several spells in succession the SCVs would, again, get mixed up.
I like the system you have in place, it just doesn't work 100% of the time.