Pirate Rush

[Galv 1,387]

 

Welcome to my under-construction-for-fun project development page. I thought I'd take advantage of this section as everyone has been, so people can see what I've been up to and to get some feedback to see if I'm on the right track.

 

 

Word about treasure spreads quickly to pirates near and far... especially if that word is written on 1000 parchments, stuffed in 1000 bottles and scattered throughout the thous-err... seven seas.

 

Four hidden islands... each island containing a treasure that noone has ever seen... each treasure protected by an equally mysterious guardian...

 

"A race? Hooktooth's entire fortune to whoever brings him all four treasures?"

"That's what the message said, Cap'n."

“We have a heading then - we depart immediately. No telling how many other scallywag's we'll have to gut to get our turn!”

 

Even with the most vague details of the race, no pirate can resist exploring, fighting and most of all rolling in glistening mountains of gold. And so the great pirate rush begins...

 

Vex Silver is a crew member aboard the Orctapuss – a sturdy ship of rum drinking ruffians, one of the first vessels to arrive at the 'Sacred Islands'. During an attempt to make port, a fierce storm rises from nowhere, scuttling the ship and separating Vex from the crew.

 

Only one thing goes through Vex's mind when he finds himself alone on the beach... No need to split the treasure if he finds all four himself! Little did he know of the dangerous monsters, life threatening voodoo magics and the curse of the four treasures he was seeking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Larger image of forest map:

 

 

 

 

COMBAT EXPLAINED

The base of the combat will be centered around a unique fighting style for each main hero. The enemies will also be designed to make the battles a little more interesting than the normal "normal attack until they are dead" style.

 

Hero Combat Styles, utilising Yanfly's scripts

1. Vex: Combo Chains - Combo chain attacks use stamina. The more attacks in a combo you make during a single turn, the more stamina is used exponentially (I think that's the right word haha). The player has to determine the most efficient way to attack each enemy. Perhaps you need to go all out on an enemy that may cause lots of damage if you don't down them quickly but you may become fatigued and not be able to do much until you've restored some stamina.

2. Aryll: Kata - Kata attacks also use stamina. The user selects a set of basic attacks that can activate special abilities depending on the attacks used.

3. Striek: Follow up - He's a mercenary. He does what he pleases. But he does it BETTER when you pay him gold during combat. The more gold he gets, the more attacks he'll dish out. It's amazing what a man is capable of with a little incentive.

4. Mia: Spells - While not the best fighter, Mia's role is to buff, debuff and crowd control as well as use her steal ability to get rare drops from enemies.

 

Guard - Guarding actually has meaning in Pirate Rush. It greatly decreases damage caused and also restores some stamina.

Enemies make use of guard which happens after you've selected your target, so you have to make a choice if the enemy you attacked is now guarding - do you keep attacking with your combo doing a lot less damage and use your stamina? Or do you stop your combo short, save your stamina and try again next round.

Enemies also have certain stronger abilities that are broadcast so you know that they are about to do a powerful attack. Do you chose to guard it, making the attack ineffective? Or attack anyway, hoping to defeat them and if not, risk suffering the damage.

 

Off Hand Weaponry - Off hand weapons are secondary weapons (such as a flintlock pistol) that when equipped, add more skills for the character to use. They may also have limitations like ammunition and a cooldown (so you cannot use them every turn).

 

 

GAMEPLAY FEATURES

No 'wasted' time - I don't like spending lots of time in a game just to be defeated and see the dreaded 'game over' screen. All progress and time spent playing is usually lost and you have to do it all again from your last save point. I aim to change this. Whenever you are defeated in Pirate Rush, you will be taken back to the last save point as normal, but you will keep all the exp, items and gold you earned, so the time spent playing up until your death won't be a complete waste.

 

Buried treasure - What pirate game would be complete without buried treasure?

Collect treasure maps that show cryptic images hinting to locations of secret buried treasure. Finding these treasures is purely optional but very rewarding.

 

No gold-eating wildlife - Wild animals that would normally not carry a wallet of any kind do not drop gold. Instead, you can obtain feathers, tusks and other valuable parts that can be sold for money or possibly used to create potions.

 

Mini Games - My goal with adding mini games is to break up the repetition of the main gameplay.

Mini games planned to be included:

- Fishing - inspired by Breath of Fire 2 (Capcom)

- Pirate dice - gamble your hard earned gold to try to make more

 

 

OTHER FEATURES

- Animated battlers - side view combat (Jet's)

- Purchase your skills (you choose how you evolve).

- All parallaxed maps.

- Dungeon puzzles.

- Gab and event popups to keep certain info from slowing gameplay.

- No random encounters. All enemies will be visible and act differently. (eg. charge you when you get in range, ignore you or even run away from you if you are high level).

- Achievements - Gain awards for doing a wide variety of things!

- Oranges for scurvy prevention.

- PIRATES!

 

 

 

 

Graphics:

Atlus - Draglade battlers (ripped by Grim, edited by myself)

Nexon - Maple Story battlers - ripped by rasudoken

Holder - Animated battlers

Green Raven - Battlers

Namco Tales Studio - Keroro RPG battlers - ripped by Maverick-PK

Bandai - One Piece sprites

Kirby Mass Attack battlers

Squaresoft - Secret of Evermore dog (ripped by Davias)

Icons: Whitecat, Kaduki, Tim Wendorf / Urbansquall, Counterclockwise

Avadan's ship tileset

Celianna/Lunarea/Mack/Enterbrain Parallax tiles

Enterbrain - XP sprites, battlebacks and tilesets

Enterbrain - DS faces and portraits

Enterbrain - VX portaits

REFMAP charsets (www.tekepon.net/fsm)

Lucasarts - some Monkey Island backdrops

Soruve - Dog face

Garpie - Fishy

Dusty at Pixeljoint - Fishies

Message in a bottle - wallpapersonly.net

Capcom - Breath of fire 2 fishing

Nippon Ichi - Disgea 3 graphics for frankenspriting and battlers

Matt Beer - Cleaning up Striek's hair and adding symbols on his outfit + Boar charset

 

 

Audio:

Enterbrain - Other RPG Maker musics (converted by Mephistox)

Overworks - Some piratey music from Skies of Arcadia

lhs07 - Musics

Aaron Krogh - Musics

Geluf - Musics

www.soundjay.com - Royalty free sound effects

 

Scripts:

Yanfly (lots)

Jets Animated Battlers

Modern Algebra

Nelderson (N.A.S.T.Y.)

V.M of D.T

Hanzo Kimura

Tsukihime

Tidloc

Moghunter

Rokan (symbol encounter) translated by Kirin

Tomoaky

Izumiwhite

Bird Eater

Gamesfreak13563

KL - Event spawner

Mithran - crash fix

Victor Sant

Woratana

 

 

 

How I make my maps - a rushed example:

 

 

Download:(Updated 24th November 2012)

So I had trouble with file hosting, but found rpgmaker.net would host it.

If you would like to try it, go to my game profile and download from there:

http://rpgmaker.net/games/4260/

[Ignasis 3]

Story sounds great, Screens look good. This will definitely be a project I follow.

[Shardous 3]

You sure do have a knack for for pirate speak. Looks good thus far.

[syrus ultima 44]

Looks like a very solid game you have started here. I like the story line so far. Been awhile since i've seen a good pirate game.

Your parallax maps look wonderfull. Arrrrr!

[Avanura Seta 3]

This looks great! Can't help but be reminded of the anime, One Piece, which I love. By the way did you make the battler for Vex? It looks very impressive either way. I'm looking forward to a demo.

Edited May 14, 2012 by Avanura Seta

[Galv 1,387]

Thanks for the comments, guys

 

The battler for Vex is using sprites from a game called "Draglade" on the Nintendo DS (Ripped by Grim). I've just changed his colours to suit the character and put him into animations so I can have him darting around the screen doing attack combos.

[Avanura Seta 3]

Wow, the sprites from Draglade look great. I wish I would've known about them earlier!

But anyway, this is looking great. As a pirate enthusiast, I'll be sure to play this when a demo is released. You should also consider making a Support Bar. I'd support it for sure.

Best of luck with the developing.

Edited May 14, 2012 by Avanura Seta

[Matt Beer 33]

I like your screen shots... I see you used battle backs as your parallax... heh, Im interested to see how you intend to keep that up. out of curiosity, is your chain system by moghunter? If not, who is it by? Mog hunter is the only chain script i know of, but it's not in your credits.

 

Also, How did you do the destination menu? Is it scripted? or evented with pictures? I like it alot.

[Galv 1,387]

Thanks guys - Yeah I plan to use battlebacks for most of my parallaxed maps... I'm also interested to see how I keep that up haha! (Gonna try for a very different town).

Chain attack script is by Yanfly.

Destination menu is evented with pictures. It's a rather large event as icons/names in the selection menu as well as pictures on the map change with destinations 'discovered' and treasure locations

Edited May 14, 2012 by Galv

[Matt Beer 33]

Im definately impressed with that travel system then. I'm trying to recreate it in my head, because there are a few parts of it that im not sure about how you did ^^. Any game that can do that, is impressive to me, because no many games can. good luck with this project. If you need anything let me know. I'd be happy to become involved.

[Galv 1,387]

Thanks Matt, I'll keep that in mind.

If you're trying to think of how I did some parts of it... Maybe if I told you that the names in the choice boxes are actually "actors" (not playable of course) - actor names and variables can be called with message codes, actor names can be changed and you can call a variable inside of an icon message code. I think it sounds more complex than it actually is... haha.

I enjoy eventing, even if I might be doing things the hard way

[SheolsPath 1]

This is a neat project. I'll try to keep up with it.

[Matt Beer 33]

Very creative use of missing actors. Ive seen that done before with door passwords and things. There is a scene in my game where you are hoping on pillars in smoke, you have probably seen the screen shots. The eventing for that was rediculous, there were about 42 switches involved not including self switches, to simply make the gaps go back and forth and to trigger loops incase the actor approached a jump from an unforeseen angle. Eventing is like a puzzle in itself. so cool. I look forward to your game man!

[dark96 1]

Yep, this is going to be great ! Can't wait to get my hands on loot the demo !

[Maus Merryjest 17]

This looks beautiful

[Stanley Zack 3]

Yo ho ho ho! Pirates!! Rawwwrrrr!! Love everything so far.

[amerk 1,122]

There's a lot of near spam posts in this thread. Let's get back on topic and only post when you have feedback the developer can use.

[Galv 1,387]

I've just added a video to my original post. It's just a quick example to show the main character Vex and his basic attack combo animations. (I do apologise for the low quality - video is not my strong point haha)

 

I would like to hear what you guys think of how it looks (What little you can see from the low quality that is...)

[Maus Merryjest 17]

I am incredibly fond of the combat animations for the main character, Draglade was a good choice! All in all it's shaping up very well. are you planning for a single release, or an episodic one?

[Galv 1,387]

Thanks Maus. Planning just the single release. It's not going to be an epic long game.

 

I will want to make available the intro and first part of my game in the next few weeks - to get people's opinions on how I'm doing with everything and what I may be doing right and wrong with the game. So hopefully there will be some out there interested in helping me out with that when the time comes

Edited May 26, 2012 by Galv

[Matt Beer 33]

I will definately try out your game and give 100% feed back. I want more screen shots here though to tide me over

[Galv 1,387]

I've been slowly adding more screenshots as I go, so depending on last time you looked, there might be some new ones for you

Trying to streamline my combat, I have an image of the initial combat and also a newer image with some tweaks to yanfly's combat system (faces moved up, TP bar tiny and below other bars amd names removed as I didn't think they were necessary).

 

I've also just added a screenie of a parallax forest map on my OP as well.

I am interested to know what people think of how I'm doing the maps. Like it? Don't like it? Here it is below as well:

 

 

[Avanura Seta 3]

It's very impressive! It reminds of some of the older Final Fantasy titles like 7 and 9 where the environment was basically an image. I really like it.

I'm curious, how long did it take you to finish this map?

[Galv 1,387]

I didn't time myself... and I had all the separate trees and foilage already setup from a previous map I'd made (so I could copy a lot of that over and then move it around how I wanted it). I would estimate maybe 3 hours or so.

 

I actually did it while working haha... bit of work, bit of tweaking map... bit of work, bit of tweaking map...

[Matt Beer 33]

I saw that map in the screenshot thread and commented there. My only concern is the barrels by the tent. they still have their rtp shadow and it looks like crap combined with your maps. See if you cant get rid of those shadows and make your own.

(edit): also, out of curiosity, what do you do for a living?

Edited June 1, 2012 by Matt Beer