Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Greetings Valcartians!

Seldom do I write to you, but Mikheli is currently swamped with work, as she has taken on the task of drawing up our Character Art. It's been quite a while since we have written and there is much we can relay to you all! Let's get to it shall we?

Valcarta I:
I'd like to start by outlining the recent success of Valcarta I, as it has gotten onto 2 of the biggest RPG Maker game sites that we know of (Aldorlea Games and Amaranthia Games) This as not only got us great exposure, but also a large boost in sales, which directly help the development of the Valcarta series! Remember, if you haven't picked up Valcarta I yet, you can find it on our website www.blackswordgames.com

Valcarta II:
Now for the good stuff, the reason why you're all here! You wanna hear the juicy news we have in store for you for Valcarta II. Well, where to begin? Oh yes, that should do!  Monday has officially marked the start of Valcarta II: Awakening's Production phase, meaning that all the planning and ground work for the game has been completed and we can get into the bulk of the work. Mikheli and I are both very excited about this project and we hope we can meet the standards we have set for ourselves. Our production schedule, as of right now, sets us to complete the game and enter testing phases by the end of May. We hope that we will be able to bring you a vast, exciting and engaging RPG within that time frame. I hope that the fans of the game will be signing up for the BETA test (TBA) as we will have 10 spots open for testers.

First on the board for production: Music
We have compiled a list of over 70 tracks to add to the game. These tracks make up all game songs (World Map, Dungeon, Character Themes, etc.). We feel that, in terms of music, Valcarta I fell short a bit so we hope to bring music into Valcarta II to bring it much more life. The songs have been obtained through many different resource packs, offered by the RPG Maker developers in hopes of widening the range of what music will accomplish in the game since we know it has such a great influence.

 Second off: Dungeon Demo
So I'm sure most of you have heard, but there is a Dungeon Demo being released sometime within the next week (or so). This will allow users to play a side-dungeon within game for the first 10 floors. You will have access to 4 characters (Dark Valak, Maria, Mikheli and.... Luci!). You will travel through the vast labyrinth that is aptly named "The Labyrinth of the Forgotten". This dungeon was created by the Dwarves of Lorham to hold and protect the treasures of the Knightblades. The Labyrinth is ever changing, meaning that no one will ever walk the same path through it. Each doorway and each staircase found within the dungeon will bring you to a new, randomly selected area. There are a total of 60 different areas in which you can enter, 30 of which have puzzles and a staircase down to the next floor, the other 30 are filled with monsters and will take you to a new room. The objective of this dungeon is to make it to the bottom, where you will be able to fight against and Ancient Guardian of the Knightblades. This guardian will give you a rare crafting item as well as unique accessory to bolster your arsenal going into the tough battles within the game. Every 10 floors with the Labyrinth puts the characters against a boss, that will be set a specific minimum difficulty and must be beaten before you are allowed to proceed any further. The possibilities within this dungeon are seemingly limitless, allowing you to fully level your characters if you spent long enough in here.




 Next bit of information: Crafting, Enemies and Character Growth!
As you may have noticed from Valcarta I, there was a lot of junk that dropped from enemies. This junk can now be used for something other than just selling for GP. Junk can now be used to craft or enhance gear into strong pieces and is currently Mikheli's Pride and Joy as she has worked vigorously on this all month (sadly, she's still not done...) Look forward to playing with the large amount of gear options for each character to build up your ideal team!
We've also changed how enemies and Player Characters will grow and develop. We have talked a bit about the Class changing system, giving the player the ability to change between 3 different classes when they want, allowing them to learn different skills and alter the rate in which certain stats grow. The stat curves are very step, so players will see a lot of gain early on, and will need to relay more on strategic game play later on.
That being said, we've changed the way enemies work, where-in they will level up with the character providing a tough challenge at any point in the game. Naturally, there will get strong and weaker enemies types depending on where you go. We hope that this layer of the game will bring a new and exciting challenge to Valcarta fans!


Lastly: World Travel
We've written the main story scripts for each of the Paths within the game: Dark Path, Light Path and the Fayvale Special Ops. Each of these groups of heroes take a different path through the world, bringing them to different areas at different times within the story. We have decided to go with a more non-traditional route and use a strict Fast Travel system that allows the player to select a destination which will be available to him/her based on which Chapter of the story the are currently in. Since the group of heroes has an objective to meet, free roaming throughout the 3 open provinces is really something we wanted to offer, thus limiting you to where you can go. That also being said, this will provide us with some cool tricks we can throw into some areas that will make the player want to explore everywhere before progressing the story further. I have developed 3 World Maps (Top Left: Illymader, Bottom Left: Fayvale and Right: Neo-Drachell) each of these maps will not be used in game, but are being used by our map artist, Kuma, to create a nice, hand-drawn adaptation of this so that the players see a clean version of this every time they select a destination. We hope that this new system will bring in some excitement.
Along with this system, I would just like to say, that this will not take away from zone discovery/exploration. By exiting an area to the world map, you are able to select are area which removed the need to walk around on an Overworld setting like in Valcarta I. By selecting this area, you will enter that area, and are free to explore and seek out your object. It's still very open ended!
Valcarta II - RPG Maker Tiled Map (Drawn version coming soon)
I hope you enjoyed this weeks Developer Blog, and I hope we can keep you all interested with our Dungeon Demo coming out later this week.

This is Talon, Blacksword Games - Supreme Overlord signing off!
Good Night everyone, and Stay Frosty!