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[trexrell]

Yin was working on our skill upgrade system when we got into an interesting conversation about it.



Q:If you have skill-trees, will you allow respeccing? Will you be able to learn everything eventually?

A:Yeah, we will definitely have respeccing, but it will have a minor inconvenience for doing so. We were looking at the idea of it costing a few unives. Having a minor inconvenience makes it a bit more legit. It is not worth having a tree if you can always change your build any time on the fly. You could be able to learn everything, but also add to certain attributes like attack and defense. Also you could add points to skills to make them stronger. So in theory you can in fact learn every skill but you could also build a character to be stronger in a particular tree or skill to make him or her more effective in that field. We know players like control and want to give them some say and how the characters progress. This also has to do with the characters being skill based rather than having grinding become broken and OP. For Jagen he has a combo tree in which he can chain into more hits to perform that particular skill. In that tree if the timing is not right that particular combo could end and the move has a chance of not being able to perform. This particular aspect of the battle system may not be in the upcoming demo but it is something that we have documented. We have also discussed having the characters all play in an individual way giving them all varied play styles. In this way magic users feel like magic users and melee feel like melee users. Same with speed and strength. This is not set in stone but right now we are going to showcase the basics.

[trexrell]

So most of April has been about trying to bring you guys a demo worth playing as well as preparing for the kickstarter coming in May. The demo is coming along pretty well so far, but it pains me to say that we will have to release the demo in parts again, as the other parts still need time to be perfected.  The first part being Jagen’s introduction, the second part being Sen’s introduction, and the third part showcasing the first real town in the game including a big beautiful palace which took me some time to get done. We thought we’d have more of the battle system done by now, but that has been going veeeery slow and we only have a small bit of it to show which will indeed be included in the demo.




A still image cannot do this justice.

Hope you enjoyed the sneak peek :D Come join us for the launch on May 5th!



Kickstarter beginning on May 5th!

[trexrell]

We have been very busy working on our project and preparing it for this kickstarter campaign. Everything we have done has led us to this. We are so proud of what we were able to accomplish and we are ready to take the next step forward. Join us as we gather the funds to complete Celestial Tear: Demon's Revenge and make it an even better game.




Demon's Revenge Kickstarter



Thanks for taking a look at everything. Any feedback would be appreciated.

[trexrell]

We got through testing the 1st part of our Demo Celestial Tear: Demon's Revenge try it and let us know what you think. http://demonsrevenge.com/stuff/CTDR%20Setup.exe

[trexrell]

Who Are The Ridders?

This is something I have been dying to talk about. Now that the demo is out, I feel like I can talk about it without spoiling too much. Who and what are the ridders? I am sure this is a question many are asking even after they have fully played through the demo. In short it is a one world military force. They preside over the entire planet of Hasphal and pretty much regulate crime and corruption around the world. They were originally created by the mysterious man known as Granduer Maximillion to control what the humans call demons.

Ridders come from all over the world. Most of them volunteer to become ridders. These are usually young men and woman who look up to the ridders as being the protectors and saviors of the human race from demons. They usually come from the slums and use the ridder stature to honor their families.

There are some ridders who are hand picked from their particular part of the world. These humans usually posses gifts or talents that are particular to where they come from. These gifts could mean things as simple as natural strength or speed or the ability to channel the power of the sun into healing powers. They are usually held as the best of their kind and participate in tournaments to determine that right. These ridders are never drafted and usually accept joining as an honor. Most earn the rank of Elite Ridder and hold that position until they retire, when someone from their region can take their position.

Demo and Feedback

No one can seem to find this guy.  LOLs

For some reason this past week we have received a pretty good bit of feedback from our demo. The reviews have been very positive and it really gives us more confidence with moving on. There have been some minor bugs that we have mostly fixed and we are making the menu much easier to navigate by giving button prompts. We really love the support we are getting even though it took some time to get people to play the game but so far everything is going well.

[trexrell]

So Yin has been working on a crafting system. The way it will work is you throw a bunch of items into a mix and then BAM. Item made! Or… not. Once you discover the recipe/formula/whatever I decide to call them, you can easily create it over again. Fun stuff. A thing that I’m trying to add right now is creating bonus items!  Once you put in a recipe, you have the option of adding bonus items to create a brand new item. These items will add in new features to the base item. Say you have a Lohal Vial which on it’s own heals 500 or 50% of HP, that is the base item, but you can add in up to 2 additional items. You can get a Potent Lohal Vial of Fire. An item like that might heal more as well as give a boost in fire resistance. That is not something that you can find anywhere in the game because you INVENTED it! That is actually functioning perfectly fine, but the aesthetics are killing me. The item list is not displaying properly and item names are appearing in the wrong spot among other errors.

With this news, I wanted to introduce a character who will be your go to gal for this stuff:





Mioni is the most knowledgeable alchemist from Annox Desert. Her father is one of the most decorated solders in the Annox military, which gave her the opportunity to learn from some of the most skilled alchemists in the city. Mioni is considered sort of an oddball, she almost never leaves her home and strange things seem to happen there quite frequently. She always experiments with new recipes and she is never shy of testing something new on the first test subject she finds. Mioni will become very important in the game as she will be your central hub for discovering and creating new items and enhancements.

Alchemy plays a rather large role in Demon’s Revenge. It is the basis of the crafting system and a very important commodity in Hasphal. On Hasphal, it has always been considered an essential part of human culture. Studied and manufactured by those with the means and proper equipment to produce it, alchemy is perhaps the greatest form of medicine in all of Hasphal. Although healing is considered the most useful form of alchemy, it is also useful in combat mostly against demons. It can also be used to enhance a weapon’s effectiveness as well as powerful concoctions used to cripple enemies.

Another thing I’ve been working on is a total revamp of the enhancement system. As it is now, I don’t like it much, not much can be customized. Just some stat boosts. I want to add enhancements that give you status effects, can be cursed and sealed, give you skills for as long as it is slotted, increase exp rate, etc. I may also do a visual overhaul, but nothing too different from what it is now.

Lastly, we’ve been having some computer trouble… Actually it’s just me, but I’m the one who puts everything together, so my computer going down is a big problem. Fortunately it was fixed. It’s on its last limb, but it is working and we can be grateful for that!

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you in the next update.

If you have not played the Demo here is the Link

DEMO

[trexrell]

We just did a rather huge update on the current demo so if you downloaded it previously you will have to delete your save or it will cause an error. There is now a survey at the end of the demo. If you have already played and wish to take the survey now, please do so. Your feedback will help us make a much better game. Also, if for some reason, you did not get to the end of the demo, here is the link. Survey

Demo

 Change Log: 1.04 -
[spoiler]- Fixed a bug in the infobook. I broke it in the last update. Images for items should now NOT produce an error
- Revamped enhancement system allowing more variety in enhancements stats, adding a tier system for each enhancement picked up.
- Revamped status screen, now shows a small description and uses the updated stats window.
- Changed game's font.
- Various small bug fixes.
- Fixed text cutoffs in the menu (Equipment menu)
- Totally redid the scan window.
- Updated the victory music.
- Blocked tent that causes the save file bug (Thanks to Shayoko from RPGMaker.net for discovering the exact cause, sorry I don't know how to fix it.... Yet ).
- Breathing forever underwater is not possible anymore.
- Make infobook buttons easier to figure out.
- Shop Menu done! (Can't see it in demo yet though).
- Crafting system is done! (Can't see it in demo yet though).
- Added easier way to read new entries.
- Fixed some jumping errors where you could jump off cliffs.
- Fixed evasion poses for Jagen and Maggie.
- Added in a few enemy sounds.
- Armehd now attacks in a line.
- Fixed scene by investigation site if you came through the alternate direction first.
- Added critical hits (Yay now you can do critical damage! (but so can the enemies)).
- Added character to infobook.
- Made it brighter later at night because it was still too dark.
- Removed enhancements from party member when they leave.
- Added Help Menu at the press of a button.
- Added target arrows so you can see which enemy you are targeting on the order line.
- Fixed box bug where if you had autodash on it and picked up a box, the box would chase you.
- Fixed known freezes in battle.
- Fixed some tile errors.
- Fixed problem where casting animations would not show properly.
- Fixed problem with full screen permissions (Had to replace it because it didn't work encrypted)[/spoiler]

We have moved forward with everything we are working on what will be the final leg of the demo because if it is any longer most people will probably not play it to its completion. So you will have the option to either play as Sen or Jagen for two smaller campaigns. We plan to give more info on that later on today in our first video log whenever my daughter goes to sleep lol.

Right now am I currently working on one of the more elaborate cut scenes. It involves one of the main antagonist and happens shortly at the end of Jagens demo campaign when we next release it. Here is an example.


We are also working on doing some of the code for the battle system. Yin is implementing the timed hits and seeing how we could bring that to a more completed state. Yin has done a bunch of the code work for many things since the end of our last campaign. She has completed the crafting system which involves creating new and unique items so some combination of items could have different effects. We will go over more of this in our vlog.



Yin has also completed the shop. She took inspiration from the Tales of Vesperia series in which you can select all the items you would like to buy and check out all at once.



In our effort to gain more support we have launched an epocu campaign. With this we are looking for at least 50 supporters to boost our confidence and to let us know where we stand as far as having an audience. So if you like it please let us know by supporting us on this platform. Right now we currently have 18 supporters and I am pretty excited about that!

We also plan on relaunching our crowd funding campaign for the final time at the end of August or the beginning of September. In honor of such an occasion we are going to start a design contest for a boss enemy in the game. We will have details on that soon.


Thank for reading this update and we shall have our vlog up soon.

Sincerly,

-Tyrell & Whitney White

[trexrell]

Taking in some feedback one and trying new faceports.
Took your feedback and now we have new ports what do you think?





One of the things we are trying to do to make the game unique is getting a really strong hold on the comic book theme. So we are going to try to go all out with it. Incorporating new text boxes and some old school onomatopoeia. Let us know how we are doing. Your feedback can help shape the game.

Those who have played it took the survey and it is giving us a real good idea on what we need to do.

[trexrell]

Boss Enemy Design Contest!

In honor of our upcoming Kickstarter, we are doing a boss enemy design contest in order for someone to win some really cool stuff before the campaign even begins. We want people to get involved with the creation of the game and we figured this is the best way of doing it.

Here is how you enter:

1. Draw a boss by the 28th of August. The boss can be a human, jeht (demonoid being), or a creative mystical beast. Just about anything you can think of.
2. Write a compelling back story describing its powers and abilities.
3. Email your drawings to [email protected] with the subject line: Boss Enemy Design Contest!

Join our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DemonsRevenge
We will announce the winner on Facebook, Twitter, and our main website. There, you can comment onyour submission and put more attention towards your creation!

What Do You Win?
 


The winner gets their boss in the game, a poster of your creation drawn by our artist Ricky Gunawan. The winner will also receive a copy of the game.

Rules or Restrictions:

- By submitting to our design contest, you agree that you will give us your mailing address if chosen as the winner (unless you don't want the physical prize).

- If the design is a human, they normally derive their magical abilities from objects or the type of region where they are from.

- If the design is a jeht, they generally have red, black, white, or dark purple skin. Some are shape shifters and can look like humans with extremely pale skin tones. They usually have abilities derived from their physical physique, which is of immense strength and speed, and have natural abilities that deal with the elements of light, darkness, fire, water, ice, earth, and wind.

- Mystical creature anything goes.

- You agree that you are age of consent in your country, or have permission from an adult to give out your address and receive a prize from us.

- You can submit as many designs as you like

- You do not need to be a great artist as we will be judging the contest based on creativity in the design, story, and powers/abilities.

- If it's anthropomorphic, please don't use nudity. It will not be chosen.

- We reserve the right to change the rules as we see fit if necessary.

- Ask any questions on facebook, twitter, or our website, DemonsRevenge.com.

[trexrell]

We are less than 24 hours until our campaign day! We need all the support we can get. Even if all you can give is a dollar anything helps on the 1st day as we need to build popularity. If you guys think our game is cool please join us.

Visit our website for more info. http://demonsrevenge.com/

[King Tetiro]

I keep seeing this everywhere

What is it made in?

[trexrell]

Hey,

We have had a lot of progress since our funding. We have moved along since than and I have had a lot less time to actually post them anywhere so I am going to try to take a day and do that. That being said here is our latest update and you can check our blog to keep up to date and see our other progress since. Demonsrevenge.com



Hey guys! This update is a bit late, but there were somethings I really wanted to show. I have been playing around with Spriter Pro and I was able to make a pretty fluid animation for Jynx's stance. For a spriter, this program is very exciting for me and there are many things that you can do with it.



Debbie, another sprite artist I have working with me, did a great job on animating the arm as well as other key frames to animations that we have been working on together. She is really good in different forms of animation and her work challenges me to make my work much better.

Here is another animation of a minor enemy we worked on together.



In a previous update we were talking about getting our custom battle effects, we have been working with Oray Studios and they have produced some really cool stuff. They are really great to work with and are very efficient with time and production as they had completed them in a short time period.

http://vid105.photobucket.com/albums/m219/trexrell/DemonsRevenge/Battle%20animations/16.Sens%20Attack%20Down_zpswh9rqtmz.mp4

http://vid105.photobucket.com/albums/m219/trexrell/DemonsRevenge/Battle%20animations/17.Sens%20Attack%20Left%201_zpshpvhfsdr.mp4

http://vid105.photobucket.com/albums/m219/trexrell/DemonsRevenge/Battle%20animations/20.barrier%20Breaking%201_zps8l41f41z.mp4

We have an update on the battlesystem and we are excited to really get some more work completed on it. We have a small preview of the battle system and as you can see we went in a slightly different direction on the way you do combos. One of our backers Steven introduced us to Xenogears and we loved the way those combos were performed so we did our own variation on it. Thanks Steven! We hope that you all will have fun with it as we plan to make it as fun as possible to go into battles. This is a very raw preview of it, as it does not have the effects that we showed earlier in this update as well as the proper hitsparks, timing, etc.



We are working to get a new demo/beta up in March and we are finalizing our end point for our project (at least for the 1st chapter). In March, we want to give everyone another chunk of gameplay like we had done in our previous demo. There will be a completely different portion of the game and you will definitely see the differences that we were able to produce with the funding. We are really eager and excited to get your feedback on what we have so far and we are working hard to make an engaging and interesting experience. One thing that we regretfully may not show is the card game, although it is being worked on we have a slight delay in it. It has made Yin pretty upset, but as you all know we have a pretty hard time letting things like that bring us down for long and we will take the positive and move on with that.

Thanks for checking out our updates everyone. We are doing pretty well and we really hope that you like what we will show you guys sometime in March.

-Tyrell and Whitney White

[trexrell]

Big Plans For March

So we are ending our February and coming into what could be our biggest event since our Kickstarter campaign. We are on a schedule of releasing our playable demo by the third week of March. We want to give you guys a little incite of what the demo will contain and how things have changed since our campaign up until now.

Demo News

The demo will be about an hour long depending on how you play it. It will be more or less an intro into the actual story and feature our main character. When we release the demo we are really going to be looking for some strong feedback, everything will be upgraded and we feel we can not make a great experience without your input. Our goal is to make a really great game, we want the game to do well commercially and critically.

Voice work

We have had some issues with the voice work for some of the characters in the demo. Most of that was due to some of the voices we rushed and acquired shortly before its release. Now we are going with our core and strongest group of voice actors for the next showcase. That would include Jalen K. Cassell, the voice of Jagen , Cecilia Yus, who will voice Mioni and hopefully Amira, Echo Viridian as Sinara, and our newly acquired voice actress Danielle Mcrae who will be the new voice of Sen.

Sprite Work

We are wrapping up this month with a lot of great news and content. I have been working on Jagen again and I have been making his sprite look more like the image that Ricky has drawn. I have added more detail to his armor and upgraded his gauntlet to look more like Ricky's detailed work.

Using this design I have been implementing it into Jagen's combo animations and I really like how they look opposed to what they were before. This new version will be featured in the demo, so he will definitely have to look the best he can look.

I have also been working on some animations dealing with the character sprites such as climbing, jumping, bending down, and stance. Here is a small example of Sen's in game map sprite.

We have enlisted some more on on tile sets over the past couple of weeks and the production has been fantastic! We have had some really talented people come along and the work they have produced along with our contracted spriter is amazing you are really going to enjoy what we have to offer as far as landscapes go.

Music

I firmly believe that we should have one of the best soundtracks for an indie game this year. Mark continues to impress with his remakes of our older tracks. Jagen's new battle theme may be one of the the best tracks he's made so far. I personally think Jagen has all of the best music associated with him. I can not wait to hear you guys' opinions on it.

The Full Game

We have plans to release the game in the near two to three months. That being said, I want to clarify what this game will feature and what may be left out as far as the first chapter goes. As you all should know, this game is going to be chapter 1 of a full length RPG experience. We aim to make the chapters at least between 14 and 17 hours. We have 3 playable characters, 8 areas in 4 locations, and a few secret ones too, all in the first chapter.

What we may or may not be leaving out is an additional playable character and 3 more areas which would just take a little bit more time but could be added to the next chapter.We shall find out what we could do with that by the end of March.

-Tyrell and Whitney White

[trexrell]

We are coming very close to releasing the demo, we have worked very hard pushing each other and arguing with each other to make sure everything fits our combined vision. We feel that we have something that everyone will really have fun with. This month has been very exciting and we are eager to get feedback on everything that we have. Be prepared to lend us your unbiased opinion and let us know how you feel about everything when it comes out.



We are first going to be streaming the demo on hitbox with the Average Giants on Monday the 23rd at 9PM EST. Come see us get some direct criticism and see what Indie Game Magazine has to say about our game. If you guys can come and lend us the support, we would really appreciate it. It is always a fun stream and both Nicks are really cool people and usually very nice.


Battle Background animation

One of the cool things that we are bringing to the table and that gives the battle backgrounds a bit more depth is adding some really solid animation. We have managed to get our animator, Chris Lewin, back on the job and he has produced some really solid results check it out!



Ricky is at it again and he has done some really cool art work. He's interpreting our vision from my less than stellar story boards. He started working on the intros of the three main characters and so far, just looking at the first frame it is going to be epic!

How I feel about our project right now

We have learned a few things through these past few months about our game and what we really want to provide the players with. I think one of the most important things that we wanted to do as a developer is come up with something that is fun, engaging, and interesting. Then I believe somewhere beyond those lines we feel that we have a bit of a mature audience and we wanted to do something that would have meaning and a bit of social commentary without taking itself too seriously. At this point the game has sort of taken on its own identity and it is sort of developing into something that we would have never seen coming, it has matured into its own individual thing and like a parent to it's children we are very proud of it. Our game is dark and a bit grim at times and we feel like we really can not help it. We think our game is perfect the way we are writing it and we really hope you all feel like it is too. I hope that our central message is interpreted properly and everyone is able to find enjoyment with something we put all our heart into.


To give just a little more insight into how we operate and what we are thinking when we are working on the game, we never had a sense that we want people to think of this game as something from their past like nostalgia, nor did we want to recreate the wheel. We have played and have been big fans of RPGs and games in general. Our first priority has been to balance every part of the game and I feel when one part of the game starts to look, sound, or even feel a bit better than the other, there is a tiny voice in the back of my mind that is letting me know that the other things just have to measure up. I think to myself how could this part be just as good and that is the tough part about making this game with all the great artists, musicians and minds working on this project. We want so badly for everything to come together.

Thanks,

-Tyrell and Whitney White

[trexrell]

Hey everyone, we have been pretty quiet over the last couple of weeks mostly because we are working towards a predetermined goal. We have been hammering at our demo for the last couple of weeks due to a stream that made us work twice as hard on our game due to some of the missteps that we saw within in it. The good thing is that we have a pretty good demo and we are going to distribute it to our backer beta testers soon.

Presentation


We have had some pretty solid work done by Ricky over that time. He has been working on some of the character intros as well as the world map and hopefully we'll see the complete versions soon. He has already done an excellent job as always



Battle System Status

We have just a few more things to implement and test with our battle system, although it is almost ready to distribute and test for our backers we still have much more that we need to do as far as visuals and bug fixes.


Frost Bite

We are pretty excited about the combos and the combo finishers. They add some real variety and excitement in the battle system, enough to hold your attention. As you go further into the game you will be able to unlock, upgrade and perform more combos to help keep you engaged and having fun throughout your gameplay.

Interactive objects are something that is in the game but we have yet to implement it. This is something else that will add a little more depth and variety in our system. As we have been playing our current build we realize that this could be used to make boss battles a little more strategic and add some variety in the ways you can defeat your enemies.


- Thanks again, Tyrell and Whitney White