RMVXA Beyond the Veil

[ekhartpl]

Intro:​

Exiled and cast into the Veil, you find yourself in an unknown world. Desolated, ruined by war and the Plague; a world where death does not bring you salvation, but lets you face your challenges - time after time.
A world that lost the Balance. Your goal is simple - open the Veil again and find the King. Restore the Balance that was lost.


Immerse yourself into the world of Beyond the Veil; a rich, twisted fantasy world, where you will travel through empty lands, forgotten dungeons and mazes of deep caverns. Fight hordes of enemies - ranging from victims of the Plague stumbling around to mythical beasts. Face your fears and come victorious - or fall and learn.

• Dark and Difficult - Learn to strategize and overcome obstacles stopping you on your way.
• A Deep World - Explore and learn the story of the world; how did it become, and what was it like before?
• Progress - Enjoy hours of gameplay, with many kinds of enemies, bosses, and NPCs, all contained in a nuanced RPG system. In Beyond the Veil you choose how to take on the world!
• Flexible Character Development - As you progress, you must choose and determine your playstyle. Will you be a mighty warrior, sly thief, or perhaps a mage? A Jack of all Trades, or a Master of One?
• Every Choice Matters - With an active autosave system, each choice you make is definite - each mistake, each death - they all influence your progress.

Some more details about game and gameplay:

Plot:

Spoiler

Ever since the world has been created, there have always been three Guardians; people chosen to control certain aspects of world - Balance, Time and Conflict. After the lands were ravaged by the Plague, King Cain - one of the Guardians - crossed the Veil in search of answers. Losing one of the Guardians, the world lost its Balance.
As we enter the world through the Veil, we become Bound - unable to die until we'll complete our task. We have to slay four powerful beings, use their Essences as a fuel to open the Veil, cross it and find the King. Bring him back to restore the Balance.

Character Creation:

Spoiler

Upon starting the game, we're creating our character. Character creation is divided into 5 bits:

• Gender: standard choice, Male or Female.
• Attribute: determines starting stats and equipment. There are 6 attributes to choose from: Wanderer, Hard Worker, Caring, Swift, Fervorous, Average.
• Starting Gift: an extra item we can choose to start with. There are 5 to choose from: Healing Wares, Bombs, Purse of Coins, Essence of Past, Token of Mercenaries. Alternatively, we can choose not to have any extra items on start.
• Appearance: There are 7 separate appearances per gender.
• Name

Character Development:

Spoiler

Each level we gain we can assign a point into one of four sections:

• Survival - Increases Health, Defence, Agility and Luck
• Energy - Increases Strength and Defence
• Might - Increases Focus (mana), Faith and Resistance
• Support - Increases Health, Defence, Resistance and Agility

Battles and Equipment:

Spoiler

Beyond the Veil has a Side-View, active turn-based battle system. Agility determines how fast (or slow) we can attack. The equipment we're wearing also affects our stamina - heavy armor and big weapon will make us slower, but will let us tank more hits (and hit harder), while light armor and weapon might not give us as good defense and damage, but will let us act faster.
The equipment itself is pretty standard for an RPG maker game: Weapon, Shield, Helmet and Armor. Additionally, we can wear up to 4 rings, and an Amulet. Every character can access every bit of equipment (although Amulets are mainly for spellcasters - they let us prepare spells).
Each weapon we find has a Strength requirement (if our strength is too low, we can't use the weapon), type of damage dealt (Slashing, Thrusting, Striking) and [p]Scaling[/b]. Scaling determines how our Strength affects the damage dealt - the better the scaling (going from E to A), the more of the character's Strength is being added to weapon's damage/

Screenshots:

Spoiler

And a gif showing the character creation

 

[kaffe]

This looks really good, and the graphics are breathtaking. Is there an expected release date, and an idea of how much it will cost?

 

[ekhartpl]

This looks really good, and the graphics are breathtaking. Is there an expected release date, and an idea of how much it will cost?

Thanks! The graphics are made by PVGames, here on the forum, although I do edit them quite a bit when making maps.

As for release date, I'll do my best to finish it sometime next year. The locations are quite large and mapping them out does take a good while (it's all done in photoshop), and they're done out of multiple maps (I've posted some stuff up on PVGames resource pack screenshot thread, like that bit, roughly half of the outside of first large locations - the Fallen Fort). That location itself is about 30ish maps if I'll count the interior, connected together!

And the cost, well... I'm about 90% sure it'll be free. I'm using quite a lot of other people's scripts, some are quite minor and hard to find, and making sure I can use them in a commercial project would take a good while. And even if I'll get around that, and get an okay from every script author, I don't think I'd charge more than a $5 on itch.

 

[kaffe]

Well I'd say that $5 is more than a fair price if you decide to go that way. I would happily give you that, even upwards to $10. I am excited to see where this goes, but no rush! You are for sure working very hard on this and it appears to be paying off.

 

[padr81]

I didn't realize you were building this in Ace, looks fantastic buddy. Been following your screenshots for ages in the forum. You do great work with those assets.

 

[CrowStorm]

This looks great,. The influence of Dark Souls is felt very, very strongly here, especially in character creation but also in the overall feel of the plot and setting. I mean, you could more or less cross out your whole character creation section and replace it with "basically, like Dark Souls" : P.

While i'm at it, that round dais rather reminds me of the Pillars of Nosgoth where the vampire Kain saves (non-canon) or dooms (canon) the world at the end of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, and you have dialogue on the very same screen as it mentioning a "King Cain". Reminds me of some bizarre blend of King Vendrick from DS2 and Kain from the Blood Omen series.

I'd suggest acknowledging this inspiration/these inspirations right up front (forgive me if you did and I missed it, I tend to skim) so no idiot accuses you of "plagiarism", but I am not the one to give anyone demerits for being derivative. Souls series is a notable influence on my current project, just less obvious than the influence of the old JRPG Vagrant Story.

Are those Jesse's Pioneer Valley Games (PV Games?) graphics? They look like it to me at a glance, and if they are, congratulations on making such attractive maps with them, they're difficult to use well.

Using the POWER OF LITERACY I have deduced that yes, they are in fact PVG lol.

I'd love to see a battle screenshot. Also, the mythic, minimalist writing style of the Souls games takes more talent than you might think to mimic so I'll be paying close attention to the writing here.The Souls world is one of silence and isolation and dialogue like that shown in your 5th Screenshot is vanishing rare. People encountered in the world of Souls are usually loners, often untrustworthy, insane, or at least a bit "off", or Scottish. They very seldom do sensible things like forming parties that make any kind of sense.

My only criticism is what resolution are you using? I feel like I can see too much of those maps and it's overwhelming and not in a good way. The "camera" feels much too "zoomed out" at this (I'm guessing massive) resolution, and I feel like I can see too much of the map and too little detail of the characters on it.

Edit: your last three screenshots in particular are very impressive. Want some helpful Ingles tips?

"Wanderer" is an awkward thing to call an "Attribute" since it's a job/class in the Souls games and elsewhere. Might I suggest "Wanderlust" instead? It's one of my favorite words. I'm not sure if "Fervorous" is even a word--I doubt it--but the correct adjective for one possessed of great fervor is "Fervent". You want to call that one either "Fervor" or "Fervent" depending on whether you want your attributes to be nouns or adjectives (Wanderlust, which I mentioned above, is a noun).

 

[ekhartpl]

Bravo, you found both inspirations in story, world and the feel of the game - Dark Souls and Legacy of Kain! I was wondering when someone will pick up the latter one! And I was thinking about putting a note in the first post about those inspirations, but I'm afraid if I'll outright say "An rpg-maker soulslike" people will expect a proper soulslike, which I probably cannot give them!

I mean, you could more or less cross out your whole character creation section and replace it with "basically, like Dark Souls"

I could, but not everyone has played Dark Souls, so at some point I would still have to write more details about character creation.

you have dialogue on the very same screen as it mentioning a "King Cain". Reminds me of some bizarre blend of King Vendrick from DS2 and Kain from the Blood Omen series.

Again, that is sort of my intent. King Cain, one of the Guardians (no Pillars there though!) failed his people, and left the land to seek answer, cure to the Plague. Kain (in LoK) was a part of the Guardians of Pillars (Balance if I remember correctly), while Vendrick failed his people by falling for Nashandra's ploy. So yeah, a bit of mix between these two.

I'd love to see a battle screenshot.

It's pretty basic looking, although I'm still trying to tweak some bits around, like the windows, etc. And I noticed I messed up the battleback, made it a bit too small.

As for Souls writing, I know it is going to be difficult to recreate the atmosphere. I'm trying to take it slow, plan it, and occasionally I come back to some bits and pieces of dialogue and lore (items have descriptions, of course!), tweak it a bit, rewrite, alter etc. For the first two months my facebook friends kept getting random messages like "add character X in area Y, that's going to tell this story; ignore me, just making a note before I forget", until she told me I can just message myself.

And about 5th screenshot, when Anthia and Lucius are introduced - these are the only two NPCs that do join us. I wasn't planning that at first, they were supposed to just be recurring characters (think Lucatiel, Anri, Siegmeyer) that we meet occasionally, but then I realized that fights with only one character will be much more difficult to balance and will probably be more boring. I still believe a solid ABS would do that game good, and I tried to do something, but while I'm quite familiar with RGSS3 (and Ruby itself), it's a bit outside my scope

My only criticism is what resolution are you using? I feel like I can see too much of those maps and it's overwhelming and not in a good way. The "camera" feels much too "zoomed out" at this (I'm guessing massive) resolution, and I feel like I can see too much of the map and too little detail of the characters on it.

That's another thing I had others point out to me. The resolution is 864x480, but things are looking smaller mainly because I'm reducing everything to fit 32x32 frame (while the original graphics are made for MV at 48x48). I have Fullscreen+ script, and options menu set up, so the player can increase the scale of the window, zooming stuff 2x, but that only makes things larger, without really changing the scale. I was thinking about using full sized graphics, but then I'll have to either make (and redo) maps with both 32x32 (for blocking) and 48x48 grid in mind, which will be difficult. I might think of some other way of making it look better though.

And I do definitely want some English tips! It's not my first language, and while I use it daily, I don't find myself using words like "fervor", "cloister", "prithee" often
""Wanderer", Fervorous" are meant to be adjectives, they're describing the character - "He a Hard Worker, She's Caring, He's Average". And I think Wanderer was the hardest to pick, as I can't really think of any adjective that will describe someone that travels, wanders. Wanderlust could work though. And as of Fervorous - Merriam-Webster describes it as adjective for "full of fervor". Still, "Fervent" (a word that I didn't know until now) means the same thing, so changing it is a non-issue!

They look like it to me at a glance, and if they are, congratulations on making such attractive maps with them, they're difficult to use well.

your last three screenshots in particular are very impressive.

Thank you I am editing those graphics around to my needs (thankfully I learned some photoshop in college!), which really changes the feel of the graphics. And it's quite fun, when I have to do something more than copy and paste in correct spot

 

[ekhartpl]

A small update about how the work's been going lately, and, well, a minor bump for the thread!

I'm currently about 95% done with the first major area of the game - the Fallen Fort! And it's a pretty large area too - the outside of it, the interiors, and the dungeons (big images warning) cover over 1600 tiles. I'm pretty much only left with making one additional NPC, a couple item pick ups around interiors and dungeons, and adding a boss fight. So, mostly done.

Other than working on that location, I've spend some time polishing stuff up, trying to catch up on stuff I was ignoring. Also, added language script and worked on moving all dialogues, descriptions etc. into external file, which allows me to organize myself better, fix language stuff "on the go", tweak lore etc., and add another languages into game (working on polish version too, but english is a priority).

And lastly, I've been trying to improve AI in battles, as they were really basic. It's still an ongoing process, but I'm slowly working on it - not the main thing I'm doing now, but still doing it

Now that this location is nearly finished, I'm gonna have to start designing and working on second major area - Jail Ward. Once that is done, I might make a demo out of it, depending on how well everything's going!

 

[ekhartpl]

A bump, and an update on the progress!

Because of COVID, and lockdown, I was very busy at my real work (retail) which slowed the progress on the game considerably for about 2 months. Add the fact that I kinda felt I'm not moving much with the game itself, just tweaking stuff here and there, adding something, and working on maps. At one point I decided to connect all the maps into one world-map, to see how exactly it's shaping up, and honestly, I was surprised by it. A VERY LARGE IMAGE HERE, the whole map scaled to 25%, all of which (maybe apart from one minor area) will be available in the demo!

Speaking of the demo - I'm getting really close to having a playable demo (at least for testing purposes) - all that's left is few events, one minor enemy and two boss fights, and I can start testing. That doesn't mean the demo is coming just in next couple days though - I'll probably have to play it through 2-3 times, fix all bugs I find, adjust enemies and equipment, some balancing stuff etc. and then I'll probably send it out to couple friends for the second round of testing. So it depends on how the tests will go, but I'm close to the demo anyway - could be this month, could be early next month!


And just a few more things to showcase the progress. First - I have recently finished the intro cinematic (finally!) for the game. It took me a while, but I'm pretty happy with it!

And, as a last thing in the post, a couple newer screenshots from the game:

Spoiler

And that's it for now. Until next time!