[Demo 1] Astralon - Truth

[Pumamori]

(Slight quality loss, due to shrinking it down was unavoidable. I will fix this shortly.)​

Starting a project, once again.
It's been quite some time since I last worked on a game, but I'm rather confident that this project right here will be completed to the best of my ability. Astralon's story developed over several months, and underwent quite a few complete reworks. Originally, it was named "Alastron" (yes, rather creative indeed!), the completed story that lies before you right now, is pretty similar to this predecessor of sorts in the way it plays out, but the whole focus of the story is something else entirely, for example, the characters remained the same, but the roles they play changed drastically. Either way, what are my plans for Astralon anyway? Well, I wanted to create a classic RPG, in terms of gameplay and story, but mix in some new, original features, that should make it the hopefully great game I've envisioned it to be. I've decided to present it here when one of the people testing it said, it struck him as something you guys would like, so here I am!

"Everyone who did something wrong lies, so nobody would notice.​

But I will uncover the truth, no matter how much it hurts, because​

there has to be someone, who fights for the people who have​

noone at their side, no matter the cost." ~ Rayden​

"Oh? I didn't see you there! Let me tell you a story. It's about a war. A war of epic proportions. A few years ago, the world was plunged into darkness, every country shrouded by a mysterious darkness, monster attacks were the daily fare. It was a terrible life, I tell you... Until they came... I saw them myself! Four brave adventurers, who fought for peace in the world! I can't remember their names clearly, I don't think I every heard them either, but these brave souls faced the darkness. They dared to find the cause of all the pain and suffering, whatever monstrosities they had to face. The records tell of a legendary fight against a single human, who's lust for power took over his humanity, a human, who's only referred to as a "demon". Nobody knew his old self, but that's another story.
One of the four heroes fell in this last battle, but in the end, they were able to defeat the demon, the world was saved, so it seemed. The death of this creature, riven by his endless hunger for power, led to a huge impulse, yes, I remember it as if it happened just yesterday! I felt so strong... magical energy flowing through my veins. From this day on, all the people of these lands were able to channel their powers, casting spells. A miracle, if you ask me. Either way, let's not get off subject too much. The three adventurers grieved for a long time, over the loss of their fallen comrade, but they were able to get over this grief.
Chosen to rule these lands, because they were the only ones able to fully control the magic, they introduced a new form of government, the king kept power over a single piece of land only.
The council of justice. An era of peace. But not for long..."

Rayden, a young adventurer from the village of Aeston, seemingly never experienced this impulse. He is the only one in the entire village, who is not able to use magic. As an earthquake interrupted his training, he stumbles upon the Astralon, a mysterious artifact, with unknown powers. How will this find influence the world?

Rayden, the Adventurer.​

Rayden is a young adventurer from the village of Aeston. He's brilliant when it comes to handle melee weapons, which is pretty unusual for the times after the great war. His mind is quite keen as well, and he bears the mysterious Astralon. Through the newly acquired power of the "Revelation", he's able to uncover the lies of his opponent and directly confront them with the matter.​

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Nem, the Dreamblade.​

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Nem is quite adept in close combat as well, preferably with the sword, but he's also able to use magic. He even managed to master a long forgotten technique from ages long past, that involves manipulating the power of dreams to smite his foes or enhance his abilities. Because of that, he established a good reputation among the people.​

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Avena, Bulwark of Hope​

Avena is a member of the royal guards, however, nobody knows when or how she joined the ranks of these elite knights. She's skilled with light-type magic like most knights, but also tries out the other elements when she got the time. At the moment, she is training with Rayden, to enhance her melee skills, in case someone was to develop a resistance against magic, and she wouldn't be able to protect the people close to her.​

​

???, the King's Son​

Little is known about him, except for the fact that he's cold and dismissive, nobody knows about his goals. Rumors, that he's trying his hands at alchemy are spreading, but there is hardly a reliabe source.​

​

Josh, Raph and Clyde. Copycats of a Legend.​

This group of adventurers is eager to live up to their heroes, the council of justice, but despite their confidence, they rather stumble through the world than achieving any heroic deeds, when they start to challenge the first stranger they see to a duel again, just to test their newly developed techniques.​

 

[Pumamori]

Hendrik. Lilian. Loki.​

The legendary council of justice, consisting of Hendrik, the melee-expert of the group, his strong desire for justice often leads to him, charging into the most dangerous situations, Lilian, a master of the spear, who enhances her allies ability to fight with multiple spells, even by setting their weapons ablaze and Loki, a mage who's known for only one thing: His merciless nature when he destroys everyone who opposes him in the blink of an eye.​

​

???​

A mysterious person, interested in the Astralon. He watches silently, preparing his actions.​

• You can totally walk BEHIND trees! Incredible!​
• A completely uninteresting plot, with no character developement at all!​
• A plottwist, obvious from the beginning!​

Alright, I'm obviously just kidding here. But you see, it's hard to list features nowadays, that are unique to a game. You see, everyone can just copy a script and slap it as a feature on a list. It just doesn't mean as much as it did years ago, haha. Either way, I'll try and list everything that matters, even though these features are not unique to Astralon alone.​

• After the last major update, good-looking maps with a lot of passion for detail.​
• Tons of secrets and hidden items, just waiting for you to find them! Exploration is being highly rewarded, even in the demo!​
• A protagonist, who can be played the way you want him to be played. 100%. Not only are you able to change his stats how you see fit, you can also adjust his style of fighting, equip a lot of different spells, that even regularly change when you upgrade or change your weapon, and you can even adjust the way Rayden's reacting when he's close to death!​
• Three incredibly helpful party members, that complement your main character, no matter which way you decide to play him.​
• The "Revelation" system. More on that later.​
• There is no real antagonist. No "ultimate evil" that needs to be vanquished. It was already taken care off, a interesting, promising story waits for you to explore it!​
• A whole lot of different weapons and armor, to, once again, complement YOUR play style.​
• Diversive Skills. They change even by equipping a different weapon. Heck, even two swords should never play the exact same!​
• Dynamic, well-balanced fights. I've learned a lot about balancing these past four years, and I dare to say that I know what I'm doing when it comes to balancing.​
• A "Last-Stand" like fighting system. Just because you're close to eating dirt doesn't mean that you are doomed for real! Every character in your party starts to react differently when they are close to death, completely turning the way you play them around. They could panick, or decide that it's over anyway and go All-In! It's up to you!​
• Balanced Item-System. Buy all the stuff you want, you can't just tank a boss by buying a bazillion potions beforehand. Every character is allowed to take three items with them, and that's it.​

All this fuss about this system, but no explanations yet? Let's fix this.
What is a "revelation" anyway? To explain it in a easy way, Rayden, in combination with the Astralon, possesses the power of sensing when his opponent lies, or tries to hide vital information on purpose. If he realised that the person in front of him is lying, there are multiple ways to approach the lie. Either, you directly start unraveling the mysteries, or you wait a bit longer until you've gathered more facts and evidence, before you try to confront the liar. If you reached the phase of "Revelation", Rayden goes through all the evidence and facts, and then recalls which statements his opponent uttered.
If the liar is indeed lying, there must be a contradiction in what he says, compared to the evidence to question his entire statement. This isn't that easy, especially if his opponent is lying without being aware of this fact himself, but more to these twists later.

Did you suceed in finding the contradiction, it's high time to confront the liar! In the process, a discussion between Rayden and the person commences, you often have to argue, why his statement couldn't have been farther from the truth and explain, how it wasn't possible for the things that happened to have gone down exactly as the liar said.
If the liar confesses at the end, you completed the revelation. It's worth noting, that not all revelation scenes look the same. Depending on the complexity of the whole situation, the layout of the map, amount of statements could change, and roadblocks appearing. Often, people lie without noticing it themselves, which makes things even harder, sometimes, Rayden himself gets locked up in a difficult situation, that might hinder his ability of logical reasoning. One thing is for sure, no two revelations will be the same.

But that wasn't even it. I just summarise all the systems I've worked out under the term "revelation", in fact, there are two more systems, not yet present in the demo, I didn't present anywhere else. The first, is the "Reconstruction". Rayden will try to re-create a scene that was mentioned in the statement of the liar (for example), and the player will be able to explore this dreamed up place to look for contradictions there. If one is found, Rayden will adjust his version of the scene, including the new found information, until you get the perfect picture.
The second one, would be a "Battle of Wits", a fast paced discussion that most of the times happen, when Rayden doesn't have enough evidence to confront a liar yet. He will try to outsmart his opponents to reveal vital information for his cause unter a time limit. These vary in difficulty, depending on the person you are trying to trick.

Less of a "Plan" list in the future, I'd rather include a list of what I'm working on right now.​

• A new HuD for the battles, as soon as the Luna Engine comes out, I will try to implement it as fast as possible. I really like designing GUI, so that will be a fun thing to work on.
• The village of Aeston, pre-mapping, parallax mapping and general re-design.

Indeed, it's not much, because I'm working on a project just as important as Astralon. But I will progress, slower or faster.​

Astralon: Truth v.2.0​

Download​

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If you receive an error about the RTP (Run-Time-Package) missing, you can download it here.
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Known Issues:

• One line of text was left untranslated, the log of one of the skills. It will be adressed as soon as the test phase on the forums here ended.
• A small typo in the first revelation scene. Same as above.
• The "Last Stand" Status, "All-In" will display messages even when outside of battle.

All these issues will be resolved as soon as the testphase here in the forum ends, so I can finally upload the "final" version of the "Truth" Demo.

-Scripts and General Help-​

Yanfly​

Yami​

Tsukihime​

modernalgebra​

Galv​

KilloZapit​

TDS​

DiamondandPlatinum3​

Kread-Ex​

Ramiro​

Pacman​

TheoAllen​

TinyMine​

JayArr​

ShiroiAura​

JayArr​

Cynder​

Everyone else who tested the demo before presenting it here!​

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-Music-​

Aaron Krogh​

And of course, Calbert Warner, also knowns as the "Schematist", who created a few pieces of original music for the revelation scenes.​

Take a look, he's creating some seriously awesome music!​

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-Ressources-​

Pandamaru​

Tchaku​

GrandmaDeb​

Celianna​

Indrah​

http://eurs.blog65.fc2.com/​

http://usui.moo.jp/​

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I really hope I didn't forget anyone, but these were all I noted in the list. If anyone was not credited, please, tell me immediately, so I may adress this issue and credit everyone properly.​

And that's about everything I have to say about Astralon!
Do you like this project? Do you want to support it? That's awesome! And I have just the thing for that! Yes, a banner! You can put it into your signature, linking to this thread or the demo download, or you could just put in there and say how much you despise this way of advertising and want to kill off an alien overlord llama because of it!

Thanks for lookin through all these pieces of information, have a great day!​

 

[migles]

where are you building the game? java? gamemaker?

 

[Pumamori]

This game is being build in RPG Maker VX Ace, I've gathered a lot of experience over the years (4 to be exact) and I think by now I know what I'm doing. May that be scripting (enhancing the default stuff by the addition of code), or eventing alike. ^-^
If you have any questions or troubles downloading/playing the demo, please, just write a message, I'll get to it asap!

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Pumamori Please fix the formatting in your posts, when you paste in text from a doc editor, it sets the font to a dark color that Dark Theme users have issues seeing (See below image)

Normally I would do this myself, however I don't want to screw up any of the other formatting in the post.

To do this, while editing your post, you highlight the entire post, and then press the little eraser in the top left corner. This will remove all formatting changes, so you'll need to reapply your bold text/bigger fonts/center alignment.

Once I'm able to actually read it, I'll see if I'm interested or not...lol

 

[Pumamori]

Main posts updated, to fix the problems occuring with the dark theme.
I am sorry for the inconvenience, I'd be more than glad to attend to more issues, should they arise.

 

[Quietlyawesome94]

Glad to see you finally got it posted! I'll be trying it now.

(Your Skype pal from ToS )

EDIT: I got an error when starting it, I think you forgot to mention that you'll need this to run the game.

http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/download/additional/run-time-packages

 

[Pumamori]

My bad, habit from presenting it on sites that were being annoyed by the full package, haha.
Thanks for trying it out, as soon as the testing phase here ends, I'll be uploading a full package, that doesn't require any extra downloads. (~180mb)

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Alright, I see that there's no point in further presenting the game here, if any moderator or the like reads this, they may as well close or delete this thread, I will not update this thread any further, nor will I keep checking, the interest is too low. I'm sorry if there were any people actually interested.