Wow - I cannot believe it has been almost a year since my last (serious) attempt to use VXA. A few of you might remember me, I was working on ASOE - a online script for VXA as well as expanding the Triple Triad script. Well, now the time has come to work on a real project again. I would like to hear some of your thoughts:

Monster's Den

A more or less endless 3d dungeon crawler made with VXA (single player). I am currently in the pre-production state as well as very early production state. The game is inspired by old classics like Arcana (SNES) or the Wizardry series. Instead of detailled text, I would like to show you several "feature lists" to give you the idea:

Boundaries & Restrictions

Some restrictions that I set myself in order to make the project more manageable:

1. No use of ripped assets of any kind (!)
   
2. All assets are either freely available, commercial or from older maker versions
   
3. Strong rogue-like flair, but dungeon levels are not randomly generated
   
4. The game features no real story, but might feature a series of quests
   
5. Monster's Den takes place in dungeons only (no overworld, no towns)
   
6. A single town at the beginning of the maze is accessible via Menu's only
   

Assets Used

Some infos on the assets. As you can see on the screenshots below, the style of the textures and the rest of the game clashes. This is due to the limited resources available and a simple test I did a while ago: Using low-res textures just looks ugly and really hurt your eyes after staring at them for a while. Because players will look a lot at those textures, I decied to go with high-res ones instead.

1. Textures by David Gurreah and freely available (downsized to 512x512 - still quite large)
   
2. All player characters are from RPGMaker 95 (!)
   
3. Uses a commercial Icon Set
   
4. Uses a commercial Monster Set that I plan to buy
   
5. Uses a very simple window set to underline the retro flair
   
6. Uses freely available music from a defunct GBA game
   
7. Animation and Sound Effect either VXA RTP or RPGMaker 2k3 RTP
   
8. Non-aliased retro font
   

Technology Used

All scripts by the maker community:

1. Most of Mr. Trivels old scripts he did for me a good while ago
   
2. Almost all Yanfly Scripts
   
3. Many scripts by Hime
   
4. All player character faces and NPC faces are animated (enemies are not)
   
5. Many other community scripts
   
6. Main Script: First Person Labyrinth Explorer (http://www.rgss-fact...rinth-explorer/)
   

Gameplay

Imagine a JRPG hardcore dungeon crawler with frequent random battles and tons of treasure. The game is actually a huge grind (but I like that to some extend), supported by a shipload of items, weapons, armor and spells.

1. Start in the Menu-based city to form and equip your party
   
2. Choose a party of 4 from ca. 15 different classes
   
3. Get a quest in the castle to have a reason entering Monster Den
   
4. Fight your way through Monster Den, complete the quest and teleport back to the surface
   
5. Rinse and repeat! (if you like)
   

• Pseudo perma-death system that gives you a limited number of "Revive's"
  
• 216 spells, 6 elements, 3 power levels of spells
  
• Hundreds of weapons, armor and equipment
  
• Traps, Chests, Locked Doors, simple switch puzzles and the like
  
• poisoned areas, lava areas, and other kinds of traps
  
• wandering merchants and hireable heroes roam the dungeons
  
• random encounters galore!
  
• Choose any party you like and try interesting new combinations
  
• Exchange fallen members with new ones you pick up in dungeons or at town (pre-levelled)
  
• Random shop inventories that increase with your level
  

• NO light system. NO food system. This is a JRPG that has a focus on battles. No need to eat/drink/sleep - because thats boring. We want to slay dragons with our left hand instead!
  

Release Date

None so far, as I have just begun working on Monster's Den!

Screenshots

Just two very early WIP screenshots for you to get the idea. Please ignore the lazy layout and the many little errors on the screenshots. I really just started working on this.

I explained the use of high-res textures above. The reason why Im putting all enemies on this kind of "playing card" is: Due to the 3d nature of the dungeon, the enemies look really weird as some of them get placed on walls etc. The "card style" makes things look a bit more abstract and removes the importance of enemy placements on the screen.

Thats it for now!

cheers

-Malagar