Comments - Strayfox

Quietly making progress on the game for now, but very happy with the progress made since June's push to finish porting the old engine to the new one. Sorry for the long wait on this project; the conversion from XNA and Playstation Mobile took longer to get going than expected, mostly due to finishing up school.

I can scarily relate to having a busy life get in the way of your project, but it's awesome that you still have a passion to bring it about. I say: go for it!

It's coming along quietly but diligently, we are being cautious with media updates at this time as I have not officially announced the game with a press release or submitted an actual preview trailer.

No worries!

1. Each of the playable characters has an archtype 'class' but there are a wide set of variations that the player directly works towards by training in the three experience paths (which I mentioned last time). Arashi, the main character, has the widest variety: her base class type is "Fighter" but she has mage tendencies, for example you can focus entirely on magic with the Soul experience path and turn her into a long range magic-user. She won't be as powerful as a fully mage-focused Laura, whose base class is "Mage", but Arashi's potential spell list has utility as well as power. I wish I could get into more detail, but I hope this gives an idea what this game is aiming for.

2. As hinted at above, for now Arashi is the main playable character. She is the center of the story so you can't really get rid of her. All of the party members, aside from Ket in the first part of the game, are totally optional even if they beg you to join the party and you can remove them at any time, so you can play most of it with just Arashi if you prefer a challenge. As for switching around control between the party members, that's a feature I'd really like to implement to be able to keep gameplay fresh, but for now it's not in. I'll get back to that when the game is further along, because I do think it's important.

I hope that gives a more clear idea what the game is all about! I'm really aiming to be a bit more story focused than most action/adventure RPGs while retaining a lot of options for character building and fighting, since there's a lot of the combat and loot-focused ones already on the market.

Thanks for the interest and the very good questions. Here's my answers:

1. I've been keeping my mod-ability/engine plans quiet for now, I've been focused on finishing the core content for the main game. However, I do think that the live editor I've built in for my own use has potential to be turned into a full fledged creator's toolkit. It's been something I've kicked around with my acquaintances and the ones less interested in the game itself are much more interested in the editor - all I can really promise for now is that it will be moddable at some point. It would be nice to have it fleshed out to be an alternative to RPGMaker down the road.

2. There is a combat training ground early on and something in one of the neighboring cities similar to a coliseum. Unfortunately I haven't focused on the latter yet until I see the balance of the final main game, so I can't be more specific on that yet or how in-depth it will be.

3. The demo vids don't really show the status menu, but there are levels. EXP levels are handled just a little differently in this game as there are 3 paths of training that combine to form your character level, but it's still your typical combination of experience, skill builds, and equipment.

4. I think I answered this in 1., but yes, I hope when the game engine is moddable by end users, it would let them basically do whatever they want as long as they wanted to put the work into the art and design. Having it fleshed out would also help me expand the main game's explorable area at will as later updates.

I hope I answered your questions! If you have any other questions or you want more clarity feel free to ask, and thanks again :)

thanks so much!

Thanks! Been working on getting more variety and unique gameplay elements to show soon, trying not to let it be so quiet for too much longer.

glad to hear it and thanks so much! :)

The comparison to Breath of Fire I take as a great compliment; that old Capcom style of illustration was a great influence on me and one of the most important things I wanted to capture with this game. I really appreciate it.
I could go on about Ket's unfortunate similarity to Keroberos (and sometimes Red XIII), but I'm comfortable enough with the character, especially after working with him for so long, that I didn't want to change him given how important he is to the story. I am sure it'll pay off :)
Thank you for watching!

Hah, a few of my friends have mentioned the Red XIII comparison, but I'm looking forward to how people respond to Ket when they finally get a chance to "meet" him.

I spent more time deciding what style to use for coloring her eyes than any drawing I've ever done, hehe, glad it paid off :)

thanks! Really excited to share more as soon as I can!

well she certainly isn't shy! :)

It's actually a fairly common format for drawing group images in manga/anime-style games, so I wouldn't be surprised if it reminded you of anything. Mainly the "Tales of" series for the mainstream JRPGs. It's just one of the candidate boxarts and if I don't choose it I'll still end up using it for a poster or something, if anything I just wanted to draw the main characters all at once since that seems to be the thing to do :)
Thanks again for your comments! ... Falco huh? Well I guess they are kind of similar in personality :)

thanks! me either, I want a print of it to hang on my wall when I'm done ;)

thanks! well one thing is for sure, there will be a lot more color ;)

There are some very slight mistakes in this drawing that I've corrected in the master artwork, just didn't update the image here :3 That may be what you're picking up! But thanks much :)

glad you like it, been working hard on the art since I'm sticking with a 2D game :)

improvement is exactly what I was going for, glad you like it :)

thanks a lot :)

Thanks much! I took much more time on her this time, she's the face of the game :) No offense to her, just didn't want to have to do this again lol, I have other characters to draw!

I couldn't resist buying Luka when I saw her design, she has a lot in common with Arashi :) I don't know how many songs I'll actually use her for, though; the one in this video was just a test of the program and the track wasn't even written for this game.
Even though Sony has had their problems with PSN lately, it is still a target platform for this game, I think it would do better there. And I definitely have always kept all the aspects you've mentioned in mind as the game continues development. Have added some more detail to Arashi's animations (especially in her hair) and Ket is actually a little bit bigger than he is here since he isn't just a sidekick. Hoping to have a playable demo of the first full area to get some feedback very soon. It's really amazing how much different the game looks/feels even from this video 2 months ago.
As for voice acting, I may not know a lot of people in general, but I do have some very connected contacts when it comes to that. Looking forward to annoucing more on this part this summer :)
Thanks for your comments!

Thanks! It may not be my best anatomy or pose for the character, but I've never been happier with how she turned out, especially the colors. Looking forward to finishing the other characters now :)

it's not just you, I knew I had really messed up the lower torso/hips area but just went with it. I usually draw her taller than she's supposed to be, so I was trying to compensate. This particular piece was a costume/color reference plus used in a couple places in the UI, but you never see this full pic in-game so I figured I couldn't stop after I noticed it. :(
Luckily there are three more exciting portraits of her I need to do for promotional use and/or in-game, so I'll keep my mistakes in mind (and look for others, just in case). Thanks for the comment :)

thanks, forced myself to take my time with this one :)

thank you so much! I've been working on finishing the menus so I've had to do a lot of final production character art, only reason it's been so quiet here lately. Don't want to have to redraw them later, hehe.

I really like this style. This is the kind of music I always wanted to compose for my games but never could "get", with the industrial mod-tracker sound.

There's two areas in my current project that totally need a sound like this, great inspiration lol

Thanks! And no, that particular track was considered but I ultimately dropped it, just wasn't working (as you noticed). No worries :)

You're the first to mention that! I am using her Vocaloid software for a couple songs in the game, but I don't think I can credit her specifically without permission from Crypton, so not really making a big deal of it until I send them an official request.
Since this is a legitimate licensed copy of her, I figured I would put it to good use :) This song here is still being mixed and mastered, and I only had like 2 days practice with her when I finished the lyrics, so that'll only get better, hehe.

Just wanted to add, since this is the most common criticism I hear: The game does have menu/dialog menu transitions and animations, it's just that this video was from a build too early to show that :)