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[EdenAeternum]

Welcome to Project Infinite Odyssey! The fact that you're here-- Thank you!
Either you came here because you saw some postings on Reddit, or Twitter, or you clicked the wrong link because you were out drinking with your cat Seymore. Look, I don't know why you were drinking with your cat, I didn't even know you had a cat. You don't? ...Well, that makes this a little awkward.

All jokes aside, I am grateful that you're taking the time to read this. Without you guys, this would be nothing more than a dream. Little bit of backstory here, I grew up playing the RPG Maker games starting out on the Playstation. I loved the prospect of being able to create my own stories. When I got older I got sucked into the RPG Maker XP game but I always felt like the assets they had there were limited. It was around that time, five years ago that I started designing pixel art. I won't lie to you, it sucked. Holy crap, they were just AWFUL! The sad truth is as awful as they were, I was blinded by my own creations. I was convinced they were quality pieces until six months lapsed and all of a sudden I had stepped up. This event has happened three other times and so now I'm on my fourth tier when it comes to drawing.

So, what is Infinite Odyssey? Let me start by saying this, it is NOT a Stardew Valley clone. I cannot emphasize that enough, although I was greatly influenced after playing that game. What's not to like? The game has charm, immersion, and the constant effect of telling myself "just fifteen more minutes." I ask you not to call it a Stardew Valley clone because I have any issues with such a title, but because I hold concernedApe in such high regard and it does his game an injustice to pair it with mine.

Infinite Odyssey is the love child of MMORPG concepts paired into the town NPC structure like Zelda Majoras Mask, and elements of Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon. Yes there are crops to be planted just as in Stardew Valley, and dungeons to explore, rotating seasons, night and day NPC schedules, and various other elements. The main difference is how we handle things here. When Stardew Valley was designed, concernedApe took everything he disliked about Harvest Moon and took it upon himself to fix it. I intend to implore a similar concept of overhauling elements from games that I feel could use improving.

Let's talk about the general concept here: First off we have a storyline for you to follow! I won't ruin the surprise for you but in the game's tutorial your character will get engulfed by the mists. When you awaken, forty three years have passed but you have not aged a day. Your old caravan captain has been the elder of the Valorfel Outpost that has twice collapsed, once by beasts and eighteen years later by a Cataclysm. Your goal: rebuild the town many have come to call home! ...or tell them to go screw themselves because you want to go fishing. Look, I'm not here to judge. If you want to figure out why the mists don't affect you I've got a nice storyline drawn out for you. If you want to make that sweet sweet money I'm definitely not going to fault you. Cohesiveness is what I'm looking for. I want to tie all of the elements together so you have reasons to enjoy doing everything. Want to go wreck some dungeons? Well save some of those crops you grew since food is the only healing object you have. Be strategic though, eat so much you get full and it will be awhile before you can eat again, you glutton! Just like in animal crossing I want to do different fish for different times of day and different seasons. As an added bonus, your character has 72 in game hours until they need to sleep. That's roughly 45 minutes though you'll feel some slight diminishes after 48. Explore the town at all hours because certain events only trigger at certain times of certain days. It gives you a reason to keep checking up around town.

How about combat? I said we wanted to put some RPG elements together but I didn't want to restrict the player to one class. We have four weapon types for you to have fun with: Sword, Axe, and Lance for melee and a Bow for ranged. Each weapon comes with a few different abilities. In addition to this we're going to be implementing a deity system! At the church you can follow one of eight different heroes, villains, and Gods. Offer prayers towards Sayne the Paladin and you gain a few of his movesets while you're adventuring. Block attacks with "Bastion," shield slam your way out of combat, or laugh while monsters fail to put a scratch into you. Perhaps you don't need defense and want to follow Ralen Bloodfury, the dwarf that attempted to end the humans: I can't stop you, but I can tell you you're going to be a wrecking ball. The idea was to have deities have ranging abilities so you can play with the weapon of your choice rather than to restrict you. Pairing a bow with a Paladin means you'll never get touched if the enemies ever do close in on you. Want to be a lancing druid? Add a little extra range as you wreck enemies with Nature's Fury. We'll reveal more on this in time.

I think this is probably a good place to start! By now I imagine you have a lot of questions, and I promise I will get to those in time! I WANT the community to get involved. This is as much for you as it is for me! If you have questions, comments, don't hesitate to ask. I can't promise I'll be able to answer right away, but I'll do my best. You can post up here, hit me up on twitter at Eden_Aeternum, or email me at [email protected]. Admittedly I forget regularly I have the secondary email...

Those being said, remember how I said this is as much for you as me? Well, I meant that. I'll need your help however. If you like what you see here, tell a friend, email your grandmother, or even text not-your-cat Seymore. If you believe in this as much as I do, then let's get this out there to everyone! That being said I want to clarify something, at this time I have no interest in doing an early release. I don't want to publish this until it is completed by my standards. I wouldn't feel right about taking money on something I knew wasn't finished.

Anywho, I hope you have enjoyed this much, I'll get you some more posts in the not too distant future!
Thanks again!
 -EdenAeternum

[EdenAeternum]

I may be link challenged so I'll just submit these here until I figure out how to attach links. Forums are NOT my usual business.

http://imgur.com/7Pwk5xI
http://imgur.com/EjHmN8K

[mblued]

Food! I like food in games, but I'm not sure being the only healing source is a good idea. Especially if we have magic and/or alchemy in the game. How about a stamina/energy resource that is used to power special moves/magic/etc and have that be replenished by food and rest? Or a system similar to Pillars of Eternity where you basically have two health pools, one is smallish and is used in combat (active health?) and the other is a big pool and is used to regenerate the lost health from small pool. Food in this case can be most effective at regenerating the big pool while healing magic affects the small active pool. Food can also give stat bonuses and positive status effects (or cleanse negative ones). I think Pillars of Eternity did good food.

All in all this sounds pretty great. More updates please!

[EdenAeternum]

I've been batting back and forth on the mechanics of it all but I'm pretty adamant on leaving food as the sole healing capacity because I'm actually not looking to pursue anything in regards to alchemy. I would rather food offer various buffs instead of throwing in potions. By focusing on the aspects of food, it gives crops more value rather than just farming to sell. It also applies pressure to really master the mechanics of combat (think Zelda), and you'll be fine. I'll weigh all options as we expand if it feels too difficult or too shallow of a system but with everything in plan I think it'll actually pay off. Only time will tell! We do have a secondary bar as well which is used for stamina and the mechanics for combat have another function. It'll all make sense in time.

[mblued]

You can still give a lot of value to crops (and to farming in general) with alchemy. In my opinion, cooking itself is a subset of alchemy. You can still use crops for alchemy products (refine them lemons), and maybe even use farming to obtain alchemy ingredients. But I understand if you don't want to go there - it opens up a new area of design and balancing and I don't know if it will work with your lore (and it needs to).

Any more details you can share about combat?

[Pixel Noise]

Really like the way you're describing combat/skills, etc. I love to be able to mix and match playstyles!

Checked out your twitter, and the images look really nice. Please do get them to embed here, as I think it would really help to interest people in your game and devlog. A lot of people will skip over walls of text 

[EdenAeternum]

Ah! Finally figured out how to get images in without redirecting links to another website! This is a solid victory so I'll repost the previous image before showcasing the interface and the test map. I've had a bit going on this week so I apologize I'm late getting to some of these replies.

mblued: You are correct when you mention that cooking is an offset in a manner of speaking towards alchemy. There is a bit of balance with lore and the land and everything but I will be looking into your recommendations to see how I can tie them in together.

Pixel Noise: Thank you for following! I'm only partially tech challenged (mostly just when it comes to forums and hyperlinks) but I have them embedded now I agree that most people won't want to follow a text post, especially if they cannot see that its even something their interested in.

Today I would like to go over a few more details to help cover some topics. Combat is one of the biggest questions I see and I'm happy to see that we're on the right direction with interest in it! I LOVE a good class system but I hated being limited to weapons for that specific class. I'm a fan of number crunching AND flexibility so I loved being able to try weird builds in various games to see what was most efficient AND what was just purely enjoyable.
I want to give you guys that same magic and that's where the weapon system and deity system comes into play. For combat, it's pretty simple. If you look at the interface image I have linked you'll see you have 6 button inputs. We're actually going to give you guys two different interfaces you can fast swap so you can have an interface for towns, and another one for combat (giving the usual 12 buttons combined). By keeping abilities and whatnot limited we can focus on giving you quality and balanced abilities rather than "Here's 50 but only 4 are going to be utilized." For combat, think Legend of Mana or Legend of Zelda. It'll be fairly open and enemies will come after you. You can swing your weapon (left click) use your deity secondary ability: Paladin's Bastion, Druid's Vine Wrath, etc (right click)  either of your 3 weapon skills and either of the three deity skills in your 1-6 interface. At any given time that gives you access to 8 different attacks/abilities. We will most likely add a few extra to those if we need but again: start small and get it balanced and right THEN add as needed. In a way that sounds like a small number but with 4 weapons with 3 unique abilities a timed attack combo (2-3 hits), and 8 deities with 3 moves each plus a passive ability thats just around 50 different moves. There's also a small talent tree with the deities so you can modify some of the moves to adjust they're utilization. You've got an HP bar featured in the interface with an hourglass icon, when it runs empty you pass out and several of your consumable items will be missing in addition to gold as your penalty for falling. Weapon abilities run off of cooldown timers. I'm not penalizing anyone with mana requirements. Deity spells work a little different. They run a timer and an adrenaline buildup. As you give/take attacks your adrenaline builds up. At that time you can choose to fire away at some of your stronger abilities, bank the adrenaline so you can spam them as needed, or just store it for a tight scenario. At this time only the last deity spell will have a small cooldown so you think before using it. The others should just need a little adrenaline. This leaves weapon skills as quick attacks with the deity spells being your real damaging effects. Combat is going to be fairly fast paced, couple of hits drops most enemies, but a couple of hits on you and you get dropped.

This present a new problem: Character's DO NOT have an individual level. We're not throwing a bunch of stats at you like dexterity, strength, etc. It's a simple system: You have health, a weapon, and your player skill. Combat has its own experience tree, farming has its own tree, fishing has its own tree, etc. That is one feature I greatly enjoyed in stardew valley and I want to build a similar structure and redesign it differently. So what about armor and defense? This is where the larger struggle comes in at: I don't want a defense stat. I would rather make enemies have moves that do a fixed range of damage, say 2-3 for attack B or 10-15 for attack C. If they're enraged attacks do 1.5x more damage etc. There's two benefits to doing this. For starters I can balance ALL dungeons. The goal for the start is eight dungeons: 4 accessible once you do the prerequisites and 1 thats only accessible for each season. If I make defense a stat and you don't realize how to unlock the spring dungeon until summer when its no longer accessible: 1 game year can take up to 36 playhours depending on how you choose to play and how often your character sleeps. That is a LONG time to outlevel the stats of a particular dungeon so the next game year it may not have anything of use other than for collecting purposes. The other addition to doing things a bit differently is if I kill the defense stat you're now encouraged to dress your character however you want! Sure, your starter armor will be simple, but what if you really like a druid helm, or an assassins mask? Shouldn't you be able to just enjoy looking however you'd like? Yes you could just do armor skins and then actual gear but then whats the point in that? Why not give you absolute freedom to look like a Pirate, a Paladin, a Druid, a Rogue, a fisherman, or whichever other set or combination of suits you? By that logic we can have unique dungeon armor sets so you have a purpose to keep running the multiple paths so you can find sets that will last as long as you remain interested in them. From there we can also do some armor bonus perks where wearing three pieces of a fisherman's outfit boosts your fishing ability, or 3 pieces of rogues gear can grant a small bonus to crit. It helps round out some extra utility without breaking the game to where you don't feel penalized for not having that particular set but you do feel rewarded for using it for a purpose.

The last small section I want to touch on is the interface. I am just one man and I never really considered myself an artist in the past. I understand several of the basics and I've been doing pixel art for years now but I know I have a long ways to go and much to learn. With that being said, I want the interface to be fun! That's why each year your seasonal interface design will be different depending on the season, and your chat text bars will also be different. Some people have said the art is top notch, others have called it "High Res stardew valley." I'm trying to create something beautiful for you guys and I want it to be fun and full of small details. That in my opinion is half of the excitement. Those of you who are following will get some of that stuff spoiled but imagine your first time walking out in summer and your interface is now completely changed, the music is different, the maps look different: it's an exciting feeling and when we have some real progress and playable work I want to showcase this at some of the conventions and see your faces as you get to experience a lot of this first hand. I don't want the traditional long interface display with just 1-12, I love the small circular ones that frees up your screen view, and the time clock is reminiscent to the HP bars of Earthbound. It takes a lot of time but I'm happy to do it because there's so much that can be done and I want to give you guys the best that I can put out!

[mblued]

Hi! Long time no see 

I really like the combat you're describing. The focus on player skill in particular is something I like, but it is also something you want to be careful with. Many people enjoy RPGs and not all of them are capable of/interested in developing their twitch/realtime control skills in order to feel powerful in-game (in other words, progress). I like Dark Souls because I feel powerful when I use my twitch reflex to execute that awesome parry to finally beat that damn dark knight. I also like Baldur's Gate because I feel powerful when I correctly plan a difficult fight and finally win it. Player skill in Dark Souls is twitch/real time, while in Baldur's Gate it is not bound to real time.
You are drawing both types of people with this game, and your combat is real time. Dark Soulers will love it, but Baldur Gaters may not because the focus on skill may have them play at a pace they do not enjoy.
I have three suggestions related to this:
A) Difficulty levels. You're probably already considering this though.
B) Add a dodge mechanic if you don't have one already. Maybe even link it to combos. Few things make me feel more bad-ass than a perfectly timed dodge followed by quick punishment.
C) Add a magical item that all players get (part of the lore maybe?) that can be customized, where one of the possible customizations is a damage reduction effect. This magical item needs to have a durability or charge mechanic so it also acts as a resource sink.

Basically the idea is a bigger margin of error for average skilled players, and more combat options for above average with the dodge.

The interface looks very nice and I like it all with the exception of the bag, which I assume is for inventory. You can go with a much simpler design without losing any immersion. I really like Rune Factory's but it was designed for controller configurations and not mouse keyboard. Stardew Valley's nice as well.

PS: Maybe edit the first post to add the screenshots there. Should attract more attention than two posts down.

[sbeast]

Sounds like an interesting concept, gonna be tracking this one! 

[EdenAeternum]

It's been a little while since my last update. Unfortunately this is one of those scenarios where I don't have much to showcase so I updated the images to be moved to the top. This week I had a relatively large project for computer graphics in addition to an exam I had for Economics. I won't spoil it for you but I'll say that exam took neither; prisoners, nor lube.

That being said I don't want to leave you guys in the dark with nothing to see so I have an additional photo at the top with a water reflection and then two new trees to compare to the smaller choppable version. Hm, chopable? Choppable? Eh says they're both wrong. I could Google a proper spelling but I like the two p's. Just feels right.
Ehem! At this particular moment I'm working on animations which is NOT my strong suit. We're compiling movements for swinging and chopping so there should be something to look forward to in the not too distant future. When we have some animations in place I may record some of the test rooms to showcase growing/harvesting, the night day cycle, etc.

mblued: It has been awhile and I'm convinced at this point you're saving my ass when it comes to this post :p
Unfortunately a difficulty mode won't work too well in this scenario. Don't think of this as Darksouls, think of it as SNES Zelda but with a bit more mobility and far more abilities. I've considered a form of dodge but I'm concerned our button layouts may be nearly maxed out. It's something we'll have to check out when we get to all that magical nightmare material.

sbeast: Thanks! Always great to have more followers! There's a LOT of days where I want to beat my head into the wall and go play something on Steam or on the console but I start thinking about the excitement of having everyone able to see what we create and that keeps me pushing.

[Pixel Noise]

Don't think of this as Darksouls, think of it as SNES Zelda but with a bit more mobility and far more abilities. I've considered a form of dodge but I'm concerned our button layouts may be nearly maxed out. It's something we'll have to check out when we get to all that magical nightmare material.

I really like the "SNES Zelda" + mobility design vision - that said, I'd definitely recommend including a dodge roll, if possible. Granted, I'm biased, with easily ~2000 hours in Souls games. But, I've also played a ton of other games that including some sort of evasion mechanic such as that. It's a great "mobility" option, and I don't want to say it's expected, but I know I personally expect it in just about anything at this point - if not an actual "roll", then a "dash" mechanic would also work, I think.

Not deal-breaking, but if you're going for "mobility", then I'd definitely consider it. 

[EdenAeternum]

I just looked at the most recent post and I have to say I'm a bit embarrassed! I intended to post a bit more frequently but admittedly Breath of the Wild took a good week and a half away from me and then finals took a sizeable chunk. Fortunately I only have 4 more classes to go until I can taste the sweet taste of freedom! With that being said, I have still been squeezing in some time here and there when I can. I was working on animations last but I took a bit of a break (i.e it was not going well). Bouncing back into things we decided it'd be a nice switch to work on the crafting system a bit for a change in pace. Mind you it is still in progress (looking at you wooden table texture), I wanted to give you something to at least see and to let you know I'm still alive!

[mblued]

Long time no see

The UI looks nice! Any details on how it would work? As in, is it discovery based or do you learn recipes and apply them? Or do you put ingredients in the circles and a list of possible craftables appear in the middle?

Also how is the game going aside from artwork? Any new WIP in-game screenies ?

[EdenAeternum]

It has been a little while. I have certainly been slacking on the postings! I'll definitely need to get a little better on that. As for the crafting interface you have two options: Discovery and recipe: You can drag objects into the circles to create objects, or you can just craft something you already know from the window itself. The recipes will all be different so you can't just throw wood in there and expect 5 or 6 different things. If you wanted to make a lantern for example you could toss up copper wiring, a glass panel, and an iron casing, and voila! I'm thinking of adjusting different objects popping up from the windows themselves so when you're crafting armor, I'll have armor components and armors instead of the chest/fence/wooden fish etc. That's a small feature though so that'll be something I tackle in time.

I've got a little something I can show right now. I spent the last week and a half writing character stories and quests and thought a little about how I wanted to go about the value of the NPCs.

Before I get too distracted, an image.

The mail carrier is a raccoon rather than a traditional NPC. Why? Because Raccoons are cute and who doesn't enjoy a cute furry little animal who decorates his home during the seasons and waddles around chasing butterflies. Second, there is a heart behind him. With NPCs I wanted them to have a little purpose. In reality, you can draw strength from your friends. In times of crisis I believe everyone has a small handful of people we can trust and rely on. In this project I don't see why that should be any different. I want to reward you for taking the time to make friendships and bonds. Every NPC holds a different piece of the puzzle, all building a stronger heart. By building those bonds, you will do two things: You will be introduced to a character's personal story with a branching effect, and you will be rewarded for the outcome. Thing of friendship bonds as tiers. (I'm thinking either 10 or 15) At tier 3, that character will open up to you and you will get an introduction of something to come. At tier 6, you will be introduced further into their quest which is typically where the branching path comes in. At tier 9 you'll be offered the resolve of your decision and you'll get two cutscenes: The end of the quest, and memory fragment of their former life.

This is all confusing! What on earth could this guy possibly be talking about!?
Here's a preview from the Blacksmith Quest "Lonely Hearts."
At tier 3, the Blacksmith Ahrmen is sitting outside alone. He spends the majority of his days alone working so he doesn't have much time for socializing. He is shy of people. At this tier you have a conversation and he opens up about how he envies the animal handler because of the time she spends with all the animals.

At tier 5 we have another conversation with Ahrmen, only this time we're not alone! At the end, Serah, the animal handler schemes an idea to get Ahrmen a pet so he doesn't have to be lonely. You now have branching options. You can decline getting him anything, you can get him a dog, or you can trap a wild animal.

At tier 9 we have a resolve for the decision. If you brought him a dog, the dog lives in his home and you will get different dialogues. His hours and schedule may change too, leaving him to leave work early some days to play with the dog. If you did nothing, he will continue working late, depressed and having different dialogue sets. If you trapped a feral animal you get a much more comedic scenario where he often sleeps outside in a bloody mess because the animal took the bed and he walked in his house without knocking first. He will be in an abusive relationship while maintaining denial about the experience. You get a sense of comedy but you also get different results because the action you took (or failed to take). When that scene is finished, you get a secondary cutscene where we see Ahrmen in his original life. Ahrmen actually lived in the house on the edge of town where his only friends were the animals he cared for. It gives a sense of understanding about his current world shyness and his envy of Serah who works doing what he loved. In his original life, Ahrmen wanted to do something to help people which is why in our "dream" world he is a blacksmith, creating gear to save lives.

[foofter]

I really like the menu you posted with wooden ledges and circular things hanging down. And the dialogue windows, too. They both feel clean, crisp, and cute. 

Maybe it's just me, but I like that level of crisp clarity more than gently shaded/textured, overly-wrought, detailed graphics.

[EdenAeternum]

Foofter, thanks for the encouragement! I'm with you, I like sharp and clean instead of blurred. Cutesy certainly never hurts either :p

[sbeast]

sbeast: Thanks! Always great to have more followers! There's a LOT of days where I want to beat my head into the wall and go play something on Steam or on the console but I start thinking about the excitement of having everyone able to see what we create and that keeps me pushing.

No problem, going to check back every once in a while for new updates. Also, have you made any considerations about the music for the game?

[EdenAeternum]

I have considered a few sound ideas but I haven't pushed on them yet. I've got about 14 years of classical guitar experience and a variety of equipment to give a nice variety of sounds but my experience in music composition is virtually nonexistent. I would love to do Yasunori Mitsuda proud. The sound tracks for Chrono Cross/ Chrono Trigger are phenominal. Unfortunately it might be awhile until I get to the music, as my time is pressed with the artwork. I know Mitsuda didn't even start the soundtrack for Chrono Cross until the game was mostly finished. He wanted to see and experience the game to get the moods for the songs.

[Pixel Noise]

Nice update

It sounds like you are taking some inspiration from the Persona series, with the NPC quests/heart bonds. Great idea, and the Blacksmith questline you've described sounds very authentic and well written!

[EdenAeternum]

I've never actually played the Persona series, so here I am thinking I had my own original idea :p I may have to take a peek to see what they've done to see if I can learn what worked versus what didn't work. I was originally just hoping to find a new way to make NPCs feel more valuable when I came up with the system. I wanted every character to have a reason, and a story for their life; just as every person here does. Some have darker struggles than others, but everyone is on a journey that we often share together.