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[csg]

Started to work on the worldmap now. Good old final fantay 7-9 style, just with a little bit more polygons and shaders. :D

Still a loooong way to go and very indev, just a small prospect!

[Skippi]

Congrats. MAN!!!
Send your CV @vanillaware/Atlus Studios!!! your style is perfect for them games!!!

[MECH6]

Wow, that's impressive. Keep up the great work. We will be watching this one!  

Edit: Also, yeah, I totally agree about the Atlus comment. This looks like it could be right up their alley.

[ANtY]

subscribing for updates

[csg]

Gonna share more characterinformation starting today :D

----

Kyara, the young mercenary

Kyara spent her childhood as a slave in the nowadays sparsely populated Misty Valley. When she was eight years old she brutally murdered whom she called her family, in a blood rage; helplessly watching her doings without any means to stop herself.
This horrifying experience led the girl to one of the few disowned cult of gods that was still in existence – the circle of bloody tides, servants of Wyeza, the fallen god of war.
The circle was still known in many places of Zirkonia, but not as servants of a god,but rather as greedy mercenaries who don't shy away from atrocities if the amount of coin pleased them.

One of the circle's mercenary lords took Kyara under his wings in the hopes to control and use the innate frenzy of the young girl.
Several years passed but eventually Kyara became a decent sellsword.

Though the holy blessing of Wyeza was never given to a woman in the whole history of the cirlce, Kyara's master believed deeply in her even if it meant to be mocked by his cult, thanks to her master's sheer over-confidence and his belief in a forgotten legend of ancient kingdoms: The very first of Wyeza's shield-maiden shall call down the gods onto the living grounds, so that they may pass their final judgement over Zirkonia.

Unaware of all of this, Kyara saw herself confronted with the day of her trial. Her master tasked her, deep in the everlasting ice masses of Icerestrias, to find an old friend of his and lending a hand with the abduction of the priestess of Central-Zirkonia.

When in battle, Kyara's mobility and lightning-fast attacks allow her to swiftly and effectively crush enemy formations. Her techniques may lack a certain finesse, but she is able to learn quickly and adapt her skills to her chosen battle partner.
Nevertheless you should watch out for her, if she suffers wounds too great for her mental fortitude she loses control of herself. Once fallen into blood rage nothing, neither friend nor foe, will stop Kyara's rage.

[bleek]

Wow this looks incredible. Can't wait to see more

[csg]

Final testmap is done, yey! Some impressions:








by the way, got my own tumblr now! Going to post more indev screens over there
http://umaikigames.tumblr.com/

[csg]

Working right now on our cooking-system and finished the background art! Next step: Creating the gui. Gonna write more about the system itself the next time! :D

[csg]

Another character! She arise from the idea that it would be nice to have a character, who can occupy more than one field. But I'm still not sure how to implement her movement behaviour. :D We will see!

Cheris, the nearly human alchemist

Nobody in the village knew the name of the old, grumpy man who purchased one piece of land high up in one the many branches of the cursed mountain plateau.
Pleased to live his declining years far away from the turmoil of society, he was flabbergasted when he found a strange being inside his tool shed. A scaled entity, neither snake nor human, nested itself inside the shed.
The attempts of the old men to scare the being away did not prosper and over the course of many months a curious relationship between the two began to develop. Even if the being wasn't able  to speak or understand the human tongue, the old man noticed some sort of human intellect and emotion behind the monstrous facade. Worries about what may happen to the creature, should he cease to be, drove the old man to consult an old acquaintance of his, in spite of his wishes to leave his past behind.

Despite being skeptic of the fanatic and inhuman interest his old friend, Magnitus, one of the ninety advisers of the formerly zirconian emperor, showed in the creature, they eventually managed to perform a mould-breaking ritual. A ritual, powerful enough, to bestow the creature with almost human appearance and completely human mindset.
Though fascinated by their accomplishment the old man knew all too well what the curse of humanity entails: The creature would eventually pity her newfound existence and condemn the old man for his doings.

In the following years the old man taught the human language and some knowledge about alchemy to his new student, but never gave her a name.
One day however the old man found her browsing through old records of his, uncovering a ritual itnended to make her fully human. Enraged and filled with the felling of betrayal the old man decided to banish his student, sending her off to the world.
As if Magnitus had been waiting for this opportunity, he took the poor girl with him and promised her to do everything in his power to transform her into a complete human being and so he brought the girl to the capital of central-Zirkonia.
She never looked back to the lonely cottage, high up in the cursed mountain plateau, but her thoughts would surely stick with the old man, especially after Magnitus showed her letters of the old man. Letters where he called her: "my daughter, Cheris".

As a profound alchemist Cheris brings a wide arsenal of brews and mixtures into the battle.
Everything from highly-combustible oil, smoke-bombs to potions that induce hallucinations is at her disposal. Should Cheris run low on potions, she still has a pair of daggers to fall back to.

On the battlefield Cheris will occupy two fields, one with her upper body, the other with her tail and is thus capable of blocking larger pathways.
Additionaly she is able to poison her enemies with precise bites or drain poison from her allies if needed.

[csg]

Regular postings from now on, I promise! :D Did some worldbuilding in the last few weeks I want to share with you:

Zirkonia Worlddesign #1 - Mainland (Overview)

From the start, Zirkonia was aimed to be a fairly consistent World. But to keep it simple, the idea of a dying world came to us. The slowly collapsing
world is getting smaller and smaller over time, which affects the creation of the world: Looking back, the World gets bigger and more complicated, but in time it will shrink even further, its collapse inevitable.

The mainland is divided roughly into these parts:



Right in the center lies the World Cope. A gigantic rock, shaped like a tree trunk, its crown reaching far into the horizon, an infinite canopy. Therefore, there are no visible stars. Most of the time, the World Cope  is shrouded by clouds and dust, due to its height.
The thirteen waterfalls springing forth from the Cope are the central continent's only source of water. From there it is redistributed to the other
countries, in return for outstanding taxes of course. Unfortunately, There is no groundwater.

The mainland is surrounded by the Devouring Chasm, inhabited by giant sinister creatures, which no man yet laid eyes upon. Without rest, these creatures ram into the mainland, steadily chipping it away and causing it to collapse into the unknown darkness of the Chasm. The area between mainland and Chasm directly exposed to this threat is called the Soundless Planes. The name originates from the fact that usually there are no sounds to be heard in these planes. No one in their right mind would live in this place, risking to plummet into the unknown infinite void of the Chasm.

The Soundless Planes come in different variants, depending on the state of the ground:



The first variant includes that all ground layers are equally solid. These areas can withstand a long period of attacks and tend to break at inland breaking points only. It is not uncommon that great stretches of these areas collapse at once. Most of northern Icerestris is made out of this type.
The second type features weaker bottomset beds. These get carved out by the creatures, creating unterground caves. As a matter of fact, these areas are extremely dangerous, since it is hardly possible to determine how far the ground is already lost and how much of the land is literally just floating above the Chasm.
The last type is a result of weak soil or sand in the upper layers which crumble down, resulting in massive landslides.


More on this, next week! =)

[Birdorf]

Ooh, following. Looks and sounds fantastic, right up my street. Don't break that promise, now!

[csg]

phew, character modeling is really not my subject. :D But I'm getting better at it, and I think it should be sufficient for a tactical rpg, where you rarely get a close look on the models anyway.

[jctwood]

What is the tri count on that model? I think it looks really nice!

[csg]

Sorry for the late answer, kind of missed your question.

The model is arround 1200 polys.

Here a character from the playable prologue I'm working on right now:

[csg]

Working on some art right now! Background image for the prologue chapter.

[csg]

Done with the localization system for now!

As Zirkonia will be bilingual from the start, I wrote a rather simple system to take care of loading the appropriate files on startup.

This system is easy to expand for even more languages. You just need to copy an existing language directory and translate all the lines. The game directory will be searched for valid translations and makes them available ingame!

So, the first screen of the game looks like this:

[csg]

Working on weapons right now!

[csg]

Some information on our devtools today! :D

3d models, like weapons, characters and maps, are created with 3dsmax. But for game relevant stuff, like mapdata, I'm using some quick and dirty coded editors and save them to simple and plain .txt files.

You can switch between the game and devtools easily via the debug-control-center which is available only in debug-mode

This is the map-editor. It can define information regarding individual tiles like its height, tilt and type.

Simple map-editor

The next one is the character editor. It can display all character models, their animations and debugdata.

I think I'll keep them in the game. It's always fun playing with these devtools, in my opinion.

[csg]

First weapons are ready, and I learned a lot about modelling!



( chronologically ordered from left to right )

And here the wireframe with polygon count:



While working on the newer ones I recognized I used way to many polygons on the first ones: Some are not needed to specify shape and thus are wasted on objects as tiny as this. Details can be shown through texture which is way more efficient.

[Verrazano]

This game looks like pure gold. 'Nuff said.