[Roots]

This is your typical project post. Just trying to get the word out about the game and hopefully get some people interested in the project. :)


Hero of Allacrost




Brief Description
Hero of Allacrost is a single-player, sprite-based 2D RPG. It's most closely modeled after Final Fantasy VI for the SNES, but we've added our own flair and features to make the game unique in it's own right. Allacrost is an open-source project, licensed under the GPL. The game will be made available completely free of charge to all who wish to play it. We have designed this game to be as platform-independent as possible and plan to make releases available for all flavors of Linux, *BSD, Windows, and MacOS X.


Features
I'm not going to list all the features here, simply because there are too many. :) The list below constitutes the major and most interesting features in our game.

Modular Release System
Rather than working for months and years on end to finally release one big game, we're taking a different approach. We work on one game "module" at a time and release them as they are finished. So after downloading and playing the first game module, you'd reach an end point somewhere. Then once the next game module is released you download it and "patch" it onto your game so you can pick up where you left off. We're shooting for approximately 30 minutes of normal playing time per game module

Skill System
In place of Mana and MP, we have SP. All actions in battle require some amount of SP. The more powerful the action a character makes, the more SP that is consumed. What makes this different is that SP can not recover as easily as MP. It slowly regenerates in battle and on the map, but any items to restore SP will be either very rare, or non-existant in the game. Furthermore, SP is not automatically re-filled at the start of each new battle. This means that players can no longer grind and repeat a tired formula of "cast ultimate spell defeating all enemies, recharge with mana potion after battle, repeat". It requires more strategic thinking on the part of the player because the actions you take in a battle will directly effect your next battle as well.

MAPS Battle System
MAPS stands for Multiple Attack Point System. Both characters and enemies can be attacked in more than one place. For example, you could target the head, torso, arms, legs, etc. These different "attack points" have different resistances and effects. For example, attacking the head would result in the most damage dealt, but is a smaller target and thus the hit rate would be rather poor. On the other hand, attacking the torso is almost a sure hit, but it causes relatively little damage. There are also effects for attacking certain attack points. If a character gets attacked on the arms, his or her attack strength may decrease. If hit in the legs, the character could see a drop in speed or evade rate.

MAPS makes battles more strategic and engage the player in combat much more than in some RPGs where you just typically button mash (keep hitting the same command for each character no matter what enemy). And that's just the tip of the iceburg. :)


Website and Additional Information
Well I hope I've intrigued you a little bit with this post, enough so that you'll come check out our website. We have some early screenshots, tons of great artwork, music samples that you can give a listen to, a lengthy prologue that contains the beginnings of the story and plot to the game, and a forum for discussion (also containing works that we haven't published on the main site yet). Come check us out, and if you have any questions/comments about the project feel free to post here and let us know about them. Thanks!

Main site:
http://www.allacrost.org
FAQ:
http://www.allacrost.org/index.php?faq
Story:
http://www.allacrost.org/index.php?story
Artwork:
http://www.allacrost.org/index.php?multimedia-art
Screenshots (these are very early/undeveloped):
http://www.allacrost.org/index.php?multimedia-screen
Music:
http://www.allacrost.org/index.php?multimedia-music
Forum:
http://www.allacrost.org/forum/
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Hero of Allacrost, a 2D RPG in development

[biggerUniverse]

I noticed you have a map design programmer, but have you considered Tiled?
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We are on the outer reaches of someone else's universe.

[Roots]

Actually I stumbled upon tiled just a couple days ago. I showed it to my map programmer, but we're too far a long with our map editor to just dump it and pick up tiled. Plus I'm sure that Tiled can't meet all of our needs for our map designs (doesn't look like it handles animated tiles). Thanks for pointing that out though. :)
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Hero of Allacrost, a 2D RPG in development

[Bjorn]

[Roots]

Oh that's good to know. We don't really like to have a lot of depencies with our game, especially libraries and APIs that are "unmature". Tile animation is extremely important to make our maps look nice, and if we used this program then we'd be waiting at the mercy of outside developers for the features we want, which IMO is not a situation one would want to be in. ;)


We already have tile animation working in our game build right now and it looks great. =D And we also have some advanced features implemented like tile blending that makes terrain progression look really nice. I enjoy being able to design a game without restrictions on 3rd party tools, even though of course it means more work for us to build our own tools and extensions.
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Hero of Allacrost, a 2D RPG in development

[biggerUniverse]

Well, I don't want to go on and on (I will anyway), but Tiled supports plugins for reading/writing other formats. There are examples in the codebase. Anyway, good luck with your project.
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We are on the outer reaches of someone else's universe.

[Roots]

Our team is actively seeking out a C++ programmer for working on the battle engine and an artist for creating battle sprites. There's a full-ad + detailed battle design info at the link below, which took me forever to make, so I didn't feel like copying the same thread over here. If you're interested please let us know (see the contact section in the link). Thanks!


http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=340379
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Hero of Allacrost, a 2D RPG in development