562
Mapping out some areas of the game now. I will add encounters shortly once the map is set. I still have yet to decide if I’m gonna have populations run out like Paradise Blue, or have them come back when you re-enter the map. I’ll go ask and see what people prefer. No ABP like the previous game so I think people might be a little less likely to go out and grind, but we’ll see. It’s going to be more linear than Paradise Blue.
This is inspired by Skie’s post on the Sacred Earth series. So basically, a history of the world itself, how the games connect, and a personal history of game making from me. This may contain spoilers, so you may want to hold out on reading if you have not played Paradise Blue.
The game Azulea is based on the same World and Island that Island Sky and Paradise Blue have. Island Sky was the first, started in 2002. At first I tried to base it on the real world, so they have references to actual existing places on Earth. By the time Paradise Blue came around, I changed it to be a fictional world so I have more creative freedom to define the history and designs of that world. This was meant to be carried over to a remake of Island Sky to keep up with the new lore, but that has not been made yet. Azulea is a continuation from Paradise Blue, taking place many years later. It takes place at about the same time as Island Sky, some of the characters also appear in Azulea.
Azulea, Island Sky, and Paradise Blue take place in the same Island, called Azulea. Azulea is a small Island in the world. This world is called Cerella. The Island of Azulea was inhabited by natives, each divided into different tribes on the Island. They referred to the Island as “Land of Endless water”, as the Island is far from the main land continents so the natives thought that it was the only land. The name “Azulea” was not given by the natives, but rather by the Lusal Empire who took over the Island in the year 1612. The Empire of Lusal consists of the countries of Peren, the Island of Azulea, the Island of Bahen, and the country of Irisal. They had access to advanced technology (at the time), in the form of massive naval ships and steam powered mechanical armor called “Ancangers”. The natives could put up little resistance and were wiped out completely. Many buildings were raided for treasure, especially the exteriors as they were jewel adorned. The buildings still remain for researchers to study, and some treasures are put up in various museums, but most of it was sold and used.
It was settled in mostly by the merchant class and wealthier inhabitants of Peren (The country where the Emperor of Lusal is). Azulea was also used as a Naval base for Lusal. Once the Island was taken over, many of the Ancangers were taken down and used for parts, while a few were taken by various collectors, such as the Church.
Early Azulea had the same religion as Lusal. They believed in the God and Goddess pair. They had no physical form, but they watched from the heavens. The God controls the weather, and created initial life. The Goddess is in charge of thought and reason, and created the laws of the universe. They work together, but they largely stay out of human affairs, and do not expect anything in return from the humans. There are still temples built to honor them, although it is more of a community gathering rather than a place of worship. Even non-believers or believers in a different religion are allowed to use the temples for their purposes. In this belief, the God and Goddess have prepared an afterlife for each human and animal. The laidback approach they have to religion in Azulea actually contrasts with the mainland continent, who are very devout and believe that both the God and Goddess pair do intervene with human affairs. It is unknown whether the God/Goddess pair actually exist, if it’s the Sun/Moon Serpent which the natives believes, if there are no gods, or if there are other gods or goddesses that exist in Cerella.
Azulea has its own king, who rules over the Island but has to follow the laws set by the Emperor of Lusal. King Reinaldo was the king during the time of Paradise Blue (which was around the years 1670-1680), although by that time he has fallen ill and they were looking for a successor. There were 2 groups who fought for the crown: One who was meant to be the legitimate heir and closest surviving relative of Reinaldo, and a military leader who wanted the power for himself. As it turns out, the heir, Amaro, was deceived by the plan of Salomon. Salomon put his friends in power to rule over some of the important cities, he used them to get the real Sword of Kings, he got the backing of multiple scientists and stole the Ancanger weapons that Amaros group initially had. With the Ancangers, the true Sword of Kings, and the support of the people, he and his group were able to take over and slay Amaro and his bodyguard Llorcan.
Island Sky takes place about 330 years later. Many events have happened since then, but to list a few: The Island became its own country with its own president, The Empire of Lusal has collapsed and the country of Peren (the center of the Empire) has been renamed Lusal, and the technology has grown to a modern Earth or slightly more advanced state. Azulea is widely known for having the largest and most advanced city in Cerella, high quality of life, and is a popular vacation spot. The Island is slowly being eroded away and some of the towns from Paradise Blue needed to be built more inland because of flooding. Island Sky follows the vacation of a few students a teacher from the Island as they travel around the Island and enjoy their daily lives.
The capital city of Azulea (which is simply called Azulea city) has adapted to the loss of the Island by being built and supported above the water and protected from floods. Most of the pedestrian activity takes place high up in the city, while the lower areas of the city are accessible by tunnels. It is not known how long the Island will last, but the rate of erosion and the frequency of floods is greater. At that rate, only Azulea city and the mountains/Extinct volcano will be left in about 200 years. It’s not a concern to the people of the Island as they believe it’s exaggeration or that it can be fixed easily in the future. Many deny it, and it’s not something brought up in daily conversation as they won’t be alive to see most of the effects. In fact, the rate that the Island is falling apart is unusual, and almost doesn’t seem natural…
On an unrelated note, I added a new blog:
Xhelia by Jihaus
554
The mainsite has been there for a while, but just now I decided to make it functional. It has links to Paradise Blue, Island Sky, and some Azulea info. It will also link back to this and the pixel blog. Finally, one thing down on my to do list!
546
…or so I say. I’ve been working on the intro to Azulea, it’s almost done, just need to add to the school and have some player control there. Also gonna rewrite a scene but shouldn’t take too long.
I added a porn shop, which no one will see in the game except me, therefore wasting valuable development time. Don’t worry, all it has are books and cds on tables, nothing explicit.
I worked on the battle system more, and it’s now pretty much complete except for enemy strategies/weaknesses and bosses, plus any quirks they may have. The characters have (for the most part) 1 unique command, and they can equip one extra. There are a variety of them, but they can never learn the commands that the other characters have. Some are pretty simple, like one that raises your attack power for a short time, or a scan ability. So you have some flexibility with how you want to make your character but it’s not a Paradise Blue type of full control. Since there are 6 characters you could switch between, I figured it’d be better if they still remained individual. Tisa does Status effects + Attack, Karen has an outburst attack when she attacks 3 times and a dance command which uses a random skill, Vivian has attacks that take up MP but she can restore some of it (depending on what she has equipped), Sabrina has protective and some attack magic, Micaela has stats down attacks, and Jesse has Elemental magic.
I don’t know if I mentioned it before or not, but no one has healing magic. All healing (or most of it, excluding things like Regeneration) will be done by items. You can hold 8 recovery items at a time, 12 if you buy a backpack. 8/12 of each type, rather.
I am now working on the main website, the one that currently says “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, blah blah blah”. Hopefully I’ll get at least part of it done today so I can finally make it useable and so I can link to it when needed.
And to end off, here’s a concept art for Tisa.
I failed in what I set out to accomplish.
And that was to make an RM2k3 game in one month. I guess it just changed a lot, I’ve been fairly busy with commissions, and have been playing games a bit more to learn from them, as well as waiting for the story, things like that.
I have the basic story now, I just need to set the quests, characters, motivations and all based on that. It is in the planning, and I’ll get to work on the game itself when I have it.
I also have a few more areas planned out now, I just have to map them. These are the “dungeons” that the player can visit. Most of them are actually optional, but some may be needed for the main quest.
I did some more work on the battle system in an attempt to balance out the characters a bit more. Micaela and Sabrina gained some more skills, Karens Outburst abilities cost less MP, and has a freed up command so she can have something new (haven’t decided yet), Vivian will likely have more shot attacks but I haven’t made them yet. Then I’ll probably have some command abilities that the players can find or get as rewards. One command (as in Paradise Blue too), but each character will have their fixed abilities and roles too. I’m not trying to make it Paradise Blue v2 though, I’m actually getting a bit of my gameplay ideas from other games such as Legend of Mana.
I’ve set up a carriage system so you can easily get around the town. You can use the port boats to get around to the other dungeons quickly as well too (actually, that’s the only way to get to them). It’s all free this time.
I also mapped out some of the school, so while I have posted a youtube video of my project before, the school there doesn’t look like the current version.
It’s pretty cool, I just noticed there’s a Let’s play for Paradise Blue. I never expected something like that for one of my games. It makes me happy to see people enjoying the game.
Anyway, that is all for now,
Collectibles
There are collectibles in the game too. I know where the locations of them are so it wasn’t hard for me to find it, but I dunno if that applied to everyone (all 2 people who played).
List of collectibles:
-Tokens. This is used for playing games at the casino (more on that later). So you don’t need to complete a set, each one is useful. There are about 12 Tokens I believe to find, one in each area.
-Crystals. This is once you get the Casino room for the toy store. You can go find Crystals and each will give you a photo. Unlike tokens there can be more in one area or not present in another. I did put in the guy to give you hints if you can’t find them.
-Power ups. You can actually buy them, but there are plenty to be found around. Makes for a nice enough reward for exploring, and obviously you don’t need to find them all. There are various strengths, normal, strong and ultra. +2 to stats, +7 to stats, and +15 to stats.
Minigames
About the casino. I put a bunch of minigames there for the player to play if they want. There’s always a strong prize for winning, like the next level equipment. Some of the minigames were okay, some were simple, some were bad ideas. I could have included these into the levels instead of making one big area for them. It’s okay though, I’d rather not force the player to play some of them.
-One of them involved a piano. You were played a note, and then you had to find that note and repeat it. Very hard to do, especially finding the initial note. Even harder for people not musically talented.
-One of them involved fighting the Last boss in under 4 minutes. You get cheat rings which up your stats by 255. Nothing will ever give you problems after that. I got a player massively frustrated with this one though. I guess it being directly up will do that too.
-One was a side scroller, and not very well done. Besides RM isn’t very good with this kind of thing.
-One was a fire toss, where you had two characters on the opposite sides, one button for each, and you had to hit a fire to go to the other side before it hit the character, and it went faster. It’s a fair enough idea for a simple minigame.
-One was going through a dark forest and avoiding the ghosts/spikes/goats. I made it too dark and I couldn’t even see the ground, which was bad when there were spikes there. Could have been done as a level just fine though.
-You had an area for buying an enemy encounter modifier. A bit too late unless you planned to do new game+ so you can skip all the enemies or even have more enemies.
-One was a race on boat, with various obstacles and an enemy boat. It’s hard to lose unless you intentionally try to do it, but maybe something can be done with the obstacles. I actually used this sort of idea in Paradise Blue, except instead of racing, it was killing octopus.
-The Gem room had a small square, surrounded by water both inside and outside. You had to go around and collect gems that randomly pop up on the path. If you fell off, you immediately lose. This makes the speed shoes you bought a bad idea if you have them on as you go so fast it’s easy to fall. This required too tight of a control.
-The next room had a room with a gem that appeared in various places, and never left until you touched it. So it’s on how fast you can touch them, while the path between one side and another gets blocked off at various parts. It was pretty random where they appear and where the path is blocked so you can do well one turn and poorly the next simply because of the randomness.
Levelling
-Levelling up let you choose your stats. Some games pull it off well. Here, you can gain so many levels in one battle (especially after one boss, where I went up a ton of levels) that it becomes boring to continue selecting your stats. Also, other than the beginning, you end up pretty much putting all your points in one stat. What I do first, is put all points into class so you can learn the stronger skills. At Level 11, you can have all the best skills, and you do gain some stats per each class advancement (it requires 10 points to level that up, and you gain 2 points per level). After that is done, then I put some points into Hit % so that everyone except Angela has 100%. Then after that, all points go into strength except for Sabrina and Angela who you can put in mind instead, or balance out Sabrina. Other than that, there’s really little thought that goes into levelling so it would have been better to be fixed stats. Or have a change to the levelling system and have different stats effect a character differently. Like maybe giving mind points to James allows for learning new skills, things like that. Later on, stat up items do a better job of giving stats, as I got Sabrina to be stronger than James despite his pure focus on power in levelling, stronger weapons, and higher base attack power.
Extras
There is only one town in the game, but you could shop from anywhere, which was a plus in that game. There were also fun things to play around with, like media player, e-mail and photo album. They just added a modern feel to it. They are extras though, and aren’t part of the core gameplay. Toys were part of the battle system, but you couldn’t use it on bosses. Nor can you refuse to use a toy if you have one, which was bad if all you had was one that didn’t work on the enemies you had. They were some that did damage to a certain type of enemy, some that stunned an enemy or powered up an ally. Fun to play around with but not necessary.
There were a lot of bad puns, and silly dialogues. For some reason I actually like the dialogues of Sabrina, Angela, James and William. Lisa doesn’t talk much at all, but they actually felt like a group of friends going around. Maybe I can do a better job with the comedy and dialogue, but I liked that feeling of having them feel like they interact with each other.
I don’t think I expect anyone to read through this, but I’ll keep this handy in case I need to reference it for the future.
Battles
I had random encounters in this game. The battle system is tactical style. Even though the battles can be pretty short because of the easy difficulty, it still doesn’t seem like it’d fit having random encounters. At least running was 100%. The random encounters did sort of turn me off to exploring it until I got the encounter-none ability. I’m not a big fan of random encounters though. I prefer being able to avoid and fight whatever enemies I want. Not everyone liked it, especially because they wanted to develop their characters, but I did like what I did in Paradise Blue. You have a limited amount of encounters in a map, and once you beat it, they’re gone forever.
Character Roles
For the battle system itself, I had various characters with their own roles, and you can pick 3 of the 5 in battle. Sabrina would do 2x damage against water enemies with her attack, and has healing/attack magic, while Lisa would have buffs, long range attack, and do 2x damage against land animals, and so on. I liked the general idea. You can fight a battle in different ways depending on which party you used to fight it. However, there ended up being one party that would end up being too strong, and there weren’t too many abilities to play around with. For someone like Angela, if you’re not using the limit break ability, she would stick to an elemental spell spam. In the end game, you can have Sabrina, Lisa, and Angela. Courage with Sabrina to raise everyones limit growth, Magic buff with Lisa to double magic power, then limit break with Angela and then cast a spell with her. That should just about handle most battles, if not just have Sabrina/Angela continue casting. No need for any of the characters to even move as the spells were all enemy effect. I liked how each of the characters had their own use at least, James was a great boss killer because of his 2x damage to humans and multi-attack limit. William less so but attacked long range at least and was an anti-aerial attacker.
Enemy AI
The enemy AI I feel brought it down a lot. I didn’t code anything special for the enemies so they just run around until they’re in range of a character and then attack. Few problems here: The player doesn’t know how far the enemy will go (as enemy phase is done based on time rather than enemies taking their turns), no indication on how hard the enemy hits, who will get targeted, and things like that. The game is easy enough that you likely wouldn’t lose a battle, although you just need one character to die to get a game over. Part of the fun of the battle system, other than your characters development, and experimentation, is the enemies AI. In here, the enemy phase was just a blur, they all just attack and you hope that your character remains alive so you can patch up the damage (if any) and continue on. I myself didn’t know how much defense I should have when fighting certain enemies.
I did try to make some sort of variations for how the battles were fought, and even though they didn’t all work, at least they provided some much needed variety for the battles. The one I personally liked most was the fight with Lou Zar (This game has a lot of bad puns). Instead of doing damage to the enemy (although with Angela’s Lumina, that is an alternative way to win the fight), you have to push the enemies to one side while they try to push you to the other side. An attack will then push them one step back, while enemy attacks will push you back. It is amusing when an enemy kills themselves and goes in the light area during their movement phase. I tried personally to make each boss battle fight a little bit differently, which I thought was a good idea. Some don’t have much in the way of customization, some (like the mentioned battle) have a lot more. One other problem is that there’s a list of who the enemy targets, and it’s always the same. If the enemy encounters someone in range, it’ll first check if it’s Sabrina. Then Lisa. Then Angela. Then James, and finally William. It is a good idea to keep everyone armored just in case the enemy finds someone else first, but mainly you just have to focus on keeping Sabrina well armored. Until ironically the final boss when it’s best to have Sabrina unequipped but everyone else equipped. That final boss bases the damage on Sabrinas defense, which is bad if you have her defense very high. It wasn’t a good way to balance it as I thought it would be.
The boss battles and the ideas behind them:
-The first boss has you against 2 animals and Eva Lanche. She occasionally casts Mute when she attacks, so your character is prevented from using skills the next turn. Otherwise it’s a normal battle. This one is probably the most balanced boss so it’s actually possible to die from this boss if you’re not careful. Angela should probably be the only one at the moment with all enemy attacks so you’ll likely be moving around and attacking with Lisa (Animal slayer) and James (Human slayer) and have Sabrina around for healing.
-The second boss is 2 birds and Robin M. Blind. Robin M. Blind is completely invulnerable until you get rid of the 2 birds. After a turn or 2, one bird will be brought back, in which case you must destroy it again before you can hurt Robin M. Blind. Sabrina is good for healing and perhaps if you have it, the all enemy Storm spell, Angela can use storm spell, James is good for taking out Robin when the defenses are down and William is a good anti-bird attacker.
-The third boss is 3 knights (Sir Loin and his guards). The rules for battle are changed, so spells aren’t going to do damage. You need to attack the ball and have the ball pass by the enemy or touch the enemy for them to take damage. So Sabrina (for healing again), James and William are best for this task since Angelas spells won’t work anyway. As we see, we can tell that Sabrina ends up a bit too useful simply because she can heal. You have items that have but they won’t full cure your team and you can only use one per character.
-The fourth boss is a Helicopter and 2 birds. This battle has a forced team of Sabrina, James and William, and I think that was a bug. If you cast Fire on the Helicopter, it does high damage but you get counter-attacked (all ally damage). If you cast Storm, then it’s completely ineffective. So I use Sabrina for casting Ice, Healing, and attacking, while James and William do damage. William is good here because of his 2x damage to all the enemies, but James should have the multi-attack command which will also help when doing damage against the helicopter.
-The fifth boss I’ll list is an optional boss, her name is Anne Teak. She was actually a story boss in the original version but I replaced her. She has 2 birds and will pick an element to defend against. So perhaps one turn, fire will not work. Other than that, it’s a standard battle except she has a lot of HP, which nets a lot of EXP. That’s the other thing I forgot to mention, you can get enough EXP from simply fighting boss battles that you don’t even need to fight a normal battle. I’ve played the game that way, running away from every encounter except the boss ones and still managed to be at a fine level for the end game.
-The sixth boss is in the same area, her name is Constance Noring. Her role in battle is similar to that outside of battle, making the characters fall asleep. The enemies around her (a squid and a shark) will attack you and that will wake you up when you’re hit, but if you slay them you can actually go a while before naturally being awakened. I got annoyed at that. Sabrina, Lisa and Angela should be fine for this, Sabrina for Fire and for 2x water enemy damage, Lisa for magic and power buffs, and Angela for Star limit (reducing enemy HPs by 25-50%) and more Fire.
-The seventh boss is the Lou Zar boss which I mentioned previously. You have to hit him and his 2 crows to one side, while they try to hit you to the other side. You can make good use of the Shield spell here as it prevents you from being moved by an attack. My favorite battle.
-The eighth boss is Stan Dintall and 2 Golems in the crater. The leprechaun (which he denies) is really easy, and it’s the Golems who have high HP and very high attack power, it managed to one hit kill me. Sabrina/Lisa/Angela strategy again, except I have them move as far away as I can.
-The ninth boss is 3 Islanders. I think I put on some elemental weaknesses/resistances to some, but I just Lumina them to death. Nothing special about the battle.
-The tenth boss is Jim Pansey. He comes with 2 animals but they’re nothing but distractions really. Whenever Jim moves, everyone takes damage. So basically you need to have high enough defense and make sure you heal it, or trap Jim so he doesn’t move. Then once he can’t move, you can just attack free of worries.
-The last boss is Leviathan. 3 Forms of course. The first form is Leviathan and 2 sharks. You can avoid the sharks by not going near the water and just casting Fire spells. Sabrinas attack works well here too. The second form I made a bad decision. They take away your items. You have 3 people to attack the Leviathan. You should make it as it just spams one spell. Then for the last form, it has a lot of HP (Every later version of Island Sky has this HP amount lowered). At first, it was 99,999 HP, which makes Angelas Star limit absolutely necessary to remove it. It just stays in the same spot and spams one spell over and over, and you have 5 characters for this battle so everyone just spams their own stuff.
Island Sky
Island Sky is an old RM2k3 game I made, released in 2005, started in 2002. I had made an old version, remade the game, then lost all the RM2k3 projects I had except for that old version of Island Sky. I then decided to remake it again, which is the version I released in 2005. I had little experience with doing custom graphics then, but I did try to compose the soundtrack for it.
I want to point out the flaws in the game, and what I think worked well or could work well with some fixing up. It could be something to consider in a future game. And Azure Ocean is partly an Island Sky remake, so it would be good to think on it.
I’ll start out on the original reason why I made the game. The overworld was the first thing designed and was the main feature at first. You start out with very limited choices of where to go, and as the game progresses, you would have the freedom to go where you want to and do things in the order you want until you get to the last area. Black star means that you haven’t unlocked enough areas to be able to choose that to be unlocked. Red star means that it’s locked but you can unlock it once you complete a stage. Purple star means that you haven’t yet completed the area. And finally, blue star means it’s completed.
Map system
I realized this system was similar to Legend of Manas artifact system. That one is more complex as it involves elemental levels on areas, and proximity to the home and when you place the land down affect the level and items you get there. But otherwise, it’s similar in concept. You need some areas to complete the game, but you can visit some areas and not others, and revisit an area if you have a new quest. In Island Sky, you can alter the order you visit some areas, but since you need all but 1 area unlocked, you’ll do most of the areas anyway. I expect most players to play through all the areas anyway, meaning that it doesn’t affect much except the order which you play some of the middle areas. What could have been done to improve it? Well, perhaps different requirements to unlock areas, and more optional areas. Or that the time you unlock an area affects it somehow. If the game is short enough, you can probably have more choices that the player can’t unlock all of them, so the 2nd playthrough of the game can be different. In a longer game, a player might not necessarily want to replay it that soon, but then it may be better in this case to use it for optional areas. Perhaps talking with NPCs can unlock an area, or doing a short questline can unlock an area.
NPCs
Speaking about NPCs. I put in some townspeople and other people at places, but you can’t talk with any of them. I figured at that time, NPCs don’t really say much useful things anyway and I didn’t have anything to have them say. Plus, in big cities, it’s not like you would go up and talk to random strangers anyway. But being a game, that approach wasn’t quite effective. People are used to talking to NPCs in the game, and I could have put at least something amusing for them to say. I could have made a choice of who would talk to an NPC, to bring out their personality that way. This problem has been remedied a bit in Paradise Blue at least, and I don’t plan to ever repeat this mistake.
Story
On to the story for Island Sky. There isn’t much of one so this should be short. Rather than a full story, it’s basically just short quests. You can go into each area, and have a cutscene and boss to fight there, and that is pretty much the extent of the story. You have a boss who’s a character with a particular quirk (For example, Eva Lanche, who is a young girl with a loud voice that causes earthquakes), and you fight against them. It doesn’t even solve anything really, none of them die. The whole setting is a tropical island vacation sort of feel and it goes along with it as it all ends up lighthearted. I thought some of the dialogue was amusing enough, but of course that depends on the persons taste.
Quote:
Which is already the first question: how many collectibles should there be in a game. I always like to link to this ancient Penny Arcade comic because even back then it was already evident that this mechanic is being abused by many modern games. And it got even worse when achievements and online unlockables arrived. Red Faction: Guerrilla lives up to that cliché… and then some. You collect: ore deposits, radio tags, propaganda billboards and supply crates. The game also keeps track of and rewards you for completing all side-missions, races and demolishon challenges.
I thought this was an interesting read, as I haven’t played the game so it’s nice to see what games do it right and what doesn’t.
I’ll put my own thoughts on it. I find that collectables can help make exploring more fun to do since you’re exploring with a purpose rather than wandering aimlessly. I like to reward a player for either each one they get, or set a small amount of them they need to find so it doesn’t seem like the goal is too far away. Also, rewards don’t necessarily have to be usable things, they can be silly things or give a little more detail about the world you’re in. So if a player is only playing for x reason, they don’t need to feel forced to collect these things if they don’t want to, but the players that do can be rewarded for it as well.
…released 2010.
This Christmas Card is a small community game made by YDS and AznChipmunk. It’s really short, and features many members from RMN. Some didn’t submit their lines so you have a few that say a generic “Merry Christmas”, but otherwise people will have amusing things to say.
I like these community games. I don’t really feel like I participate in much communities anymore, but games like this make for nice, simple and amusing games. I’m in the game, look for the one who’s hungry… for foooooood.