Rise of Erion

The morning was chilly.
Most knights were still sleeping and the few silhouettes moving in the morning fog were those of the squires, preparing the hastily put up tent village for their masters.
The last week of the big Telebrian spring tournament, this year held in the kingdom of Namaria, had begun. Many of the knights, who had lost their challenges in the previous days, and some of the nobles had already departed.

So far, Erion's master, Sir Jordovon, had prevailed against all of his opponents. But now, the other squires and knights where whispering to each other. Because yesterday during the festivities, Jordovon succumbed to an enemy no one anticipated: His own body.

I wanted to start a creative project with my 11-years-old son and so I thought: Why not create a game? It combines art, writing, programming essentials, and of course game design.
It is mostly a traditional jRPG without any overly original or groundbreaking ideas. It combines some western light RPG elements with inventory puzzles of traditional adventure games and tactical turn-based combat without losing the essence of a jRPG.

Features:

• more or less a jRPG with some western influences
• own tactical turn-based combat system
• lightweight custom RPG-system (no dice rolling and no numeric skills)
• Based on an original story and original universe - combining classic (Tolkienesque) fantasy with Liechtensteinian folklore
• meant for an age rating like ESRB "E10+" (Everyone 10 and older)

Some impressions:

Introduction sequence: The game starts with a short opening sequence...

...transitioning into the map of the tent village, where the player needs to make a first choice.

Most interiors have their own maps but sometimes, I prefer to stay on the same map so roofs turn invisible.

Also, your party members are invisible during normal gameplay but during story sequences, they are visible and interact directly with their surroundings.

Combat is turn based but the player controls each of the party members directly. For ranged attacks, abilities, inventory access or simply waiting, the mouse is (currently) needed.

We didn't have a lot of time to continue recently. School requires a little more of my son's focus.
But two things we weren't really happy about were the morning fog (especially because we wanted a sort of time progression during the prologue - the rest of the game will mostly have no time progression) and the way our water looked.

Now we got rid of the fog and used its mechanic to improve how our water looks. Now it has quite a nice gradient and becomes more opaque the deeper it gets.
And I can finally add fishes. ;-)
Some water plants are definitely needed now.

The lake behind the food tent already has some water plants, a couple of stones, and some fishes in it.

More WIP-shots:

Our terrible year seems to slowly get ... less terrible. ;-)

Anyway, we started to pick up our project again. Not working on it for quite a while made me question quite a few scripting decisions my past self made. :-D

Roni

Sorry, there is not yet a download available for Rise of Erion. We currently plan to release our first Demo in November.
Right now, we're currently going through the dialogues and replace our placeholder texts.

We also made a couple of other additions:

LuckyBoyAK
You mean how I made the Quest Log?
To be honest: It was done rather in a makeshift way.

An open book is composed of 4 widgets:

• At the bottom (i.e., called first) is a large, screen-filling, invisible button that runs a script to close the book.

• Then there is a widget without pass-through, containing the graphic of the book.

• Next comes a widget with the corresponding text labels (one for the title, then the first page and the second page). These are filled using a global variable.

• On top (i.e., called last), there's a widget with two large buttons for turning pages forward and backward. These are also invisible (achieved by setting the appropriate WidgetTheme).

Before I call all 4 widgets, I fill the global variables, and if the book only has one page, I simply omit the last widget.

This method actually works quite well for me. However, you lose the ability to move the widgets around. So they are statically positioned at the center of the screen.

I call it like this:

   widget["book0"].element["0001"].image = "openerionbook.png";

    $currentquest = global.property["currentquest"];
    $numberofquests = len(player.quests);

    if $currentquest < 1 then
        $currentquest = 1;
    elseif $currentquest > $numberofquests then
        $currentquest = $numberofquests;
    end;

    $currentquestid = player.quests[$currentquest - 1];
    $questtext = $currentquestid + "_text";

    if global.property[$questtext] == null then
        global.property[$questtext] = quest[$currentquestid].description;
    end;

    global.property["currentquestname"] = quest[$currentquestid].name;
    global.property["currentquestdesc"] = global.property[$questtext];
    global.property["booktext"] = global.property[$questtext];
    global.property["booktitle"] = "Quest Log";
    global.property["pagetitle"] = quest[$currentquestid].name;
    global.property["currentquestpage"] = $currentquest + " / " + $numberofquests;
    global.property["currentquest"] = $currentquest;
    global.property["bookpages"] = str($currentquest + " / " + $numberofquests);
    global.property["numberofpages"] = $numberofquests;
    $booktext = global.property["booktext"];
    $firstPageLines = 16;
    $otherPagesLines = 18;
    $PageLineLength = 30;
    $firstPageMaxLength = $firstPageLines * $PageLineLength;
    $otherPagesMaxLength = $otherPagesLines * $PageLineLength;
    $pageIndex = 1;
    $pageStart = 0;
    
    while $pageStart < len($booktext) do
        $remainingCharacters = len($booktext) - $pageStart;
    
        if $pageIndex == 1 then
            $maxPageLength = $firstPageMaxLength;
        else
            $maxPageLength = $otherPagesMaxLength;
        end;
    
        if $remainingCharacters > $maxPageLength then
            $pageEnd = $pageStart + $maxPageLength;
            while $pageEnd > $pageStart and substr($booktext, $pageEnd, 1) != " " do
                $pageEnd -= 1;
            end;
        else
            $pageEnd = $pageStart + $remainingCharacters;
        end;
    
        global.property["page" + $pageIndex] = "[color=#2a2a45]" + substr($booktext, $pageStart, $pageEnd - $pageStart) + " [/color]";
        $pageIndex += 1;
        $pageStart = $pageEnd + 1;
    end;
    
    global.property["pagetitle"] = "[color=#2a2a45]" + global.property["pagetitle"] + " [/color]";
    global.property["bookpages"] = "[color=#2a2a45]" + global.property["bookpages"] + " [/color]";
    
    if global.property["_journal_"] == true or global.property["_questlog_"] == true then
show_widget("book1");
    else
        show_widget("book2");
    end;
    
    if global.property["numberofpages"] != null and global.property["numberofpages"] > 1 then 
        if global.property["_questlog_"] == true then
            widget["book_Overlay"].element["0005"].script = "__nextquest__";
            widget["book_Overlay"].element["0006"].script = "__prevquest__";
        else
            widget["book_Overlay"].element["0005"].script = "null";
            widget["book_Overlay"].element["0006"].script = "null";
        end;
        show_widget("book_Overlay");
    end;