Chronicle 7

[ThePotatoOfFire]

Chronicle 7
​

Polls
Party members:
https://strawpoll.com/7s5rew6


Story Outline:


The continent of Gavalon has been engulfed in war and conflict for as long as anyone can remember. During these times, mankind scrambled to get their hands on good weaponry or magic. Soon, a powerful force calling themselves "Harken Co." emerged, with the power and knowledge to build highly advanced weapons, above anything else the world had seen before. With all forms of military forces striving for this technology, Harken Co.quickly gained both money and power. Soon, they became a continental power and eventually the leading military and government power of the world. Ferrus Caldwell is an employee of their Continental Security Program, or CSP. He is partnered up with another CSP employee named Kaylen Luther, and they, alongside other teams like theirs, are used by Harken Co. to fight against a powerful rebel force from the Outer Regions. During their missions, they uncover the darker aspects of Harken Co.'s operations, as well as the horrific plans of the rebel force. Ferrus and Kaylen now have a difficult choice to make: Will they fight for Harken Co., or the rebellion?


Features:

• Classes - Classes play a major role in the combat of Chronicle 7. The class a character has equipped decides the abilities the character can use, the weapons the character can equip, and even the character's stats! Make sure you know what classes you have before going into battle!
  
  
• Burst Attacks - Burst attacks are powerful abilities unique to each character. These abilities become available to use whenever the Burst gauge is full. Burst attacks can range from single target attacks to summoning powerful monsters to your side. Use these powerful abilities to turn the tide of any battle!
  
  
• Dynamic Storyline - Take control of your story! Every decision you make has the potenial to take the story down a different path. Think carefully about your actions!
  
  
• Mind-bending Puzzles - Challenging puzzles and traps are littered throughout Gavalon's dungeons and cities, from deciphering codes to switching between characters to break out of prison!
  
  
• Missions - Go on missions for Harken Co. to gain rewards and open up new story elements!
  
  
• Monster Loots - Use the loots you collect from monsters to learn new abilities, or sell the loots for credits!
  
  
• Expansive World - You aren't just limited to the main storyline. Go out and explore the continent of Gavalon! Who knows what you'll find out there...

Ferrus's Classes:

Spoiler

Swordsman - Take up the sword and strike down opponents with fast and powerful abilities. Excels in one-one-one battles and taking down tough enemies.


>Duelist - An upgrade to the Swordsman class, with increased agility and max HP. Force enemies to focus on you, and bring on the hurt with new skills! Can now equip katana!


Striker - Wield greatswords and use abilities that lower the enemy's stats. Excels in creating openings for Kaylen to finish the job.


>Dragon Slayer - A powerful upgrade to the Striker class, gaining Fire-based abilities and enhanced strength. Can now equip gauntlets!


Lancer - Use the long reach of your lance to deal sweeping blows to enemies. Excels in crowd control and damaging specific rows.


Samurai - Wield katana to penetrate the enemy's defenses. Excels in defeating normal enemies.


>Shogun - The Samurai's enhanced form, with increased strength and agility and new skills. Can now equip lances!


Alchemist - Equip maces and use abilities that control status effects, and combine items to create powerful mixtures. Has a hidden "Alchemy" stat that raises every time you use a mixture and makes each mixture more effective.


Sentinel - Trade in your weapon for a shield and use skills that grant a plethora of boons to the party.


Brawler - Equip gauntlets and assault the enemy with a constant stream of blows.

Kaylen's Classes:

Spoiler

Gunslinger - Equip sidearms and use ranged attacks to hit your enemies hard. Excels in ending random encounters quickly.


>Spellslinger - An upgrade to the Gunslinger. Grants access to magical abilities, buffing attacks even further to make them hit like a truck.


Sniper - Equip sniper rifles and deliver fatal blows to single targets. Excels at taking down enemies while Ferrus distracts them.

Warlock - Use elemental magic to deal damage to foes. Excels in finding and exploiting the enemy's weaknesses.


>Thaumaturge - An upgrade to the Warlock. Unleash powerful new magic with special effects.


Medic - Use restorative and support magic to aid your allies. Excels in longer battles where endurance is favored over raw damage output.


Mimic - Copy enemy's skills with the unique Learn command and turn their powers against them. Excels in a variety of odd situations.


Sorceress - Use arcane magic to weave deceit and illusion, redirecting spells and controlling time. Excels in weakening the enemy to make them easier to take down.

Design Issues:


Two Person Party - Having two characters simplifies a lot of the story planning and resources, but it poses a large gameplay issue. A lot of compensation must be made. In terms of story, while writing is simpler, it makes everything feel a bit repetitive by only having two viewpoints.


Plugins - Yanfly is an amazing resource provider, and does absolutely fantastic work for free, but because so many people use Yanfly's plugins, a pattern quickly emerges among RPG Maker games. I plan to use Yanfly plugins even in the full release of the game, but the menus and structure of the combat windows and CTB window will have to change.


Resources - I'll give it to you straight: Chronicle 7 doesn't have a budget. Everything thus far is riding on other people's works that have been released for free. I simply don't have the money to spare on commissioning resources. Since I'm certainly no code whiz like Yanfly or an artistic genius like Ækashics and Archeia, I have to stick to RTP and free-to-use work, which is by no means a bad thing, it's just not what I want for this project.

Version 0.3 of Chronicle 7 inbound!


Screenshots(2):

Spoiler

Title Screen(Temporary):





Game Over screen, courtesy of EternalShadow!

CREDITS:

Spoiler

• Yanfly Engine Plugins
  
  
• Himeworks
  
  
• Victor Engine Scripts
  
  
• Ækashics
  
  
• Tuomo Laine
  
  
• Jason Ritchie - better known on the forums as Kamui82. Check out his Musical Alchemy Pot! (It's closed right now, but you can still listen to his stuff. It's all really good!)
  
  
• Andy Chen - also known as Hadecynn. He creates amazing animations, and he's even been kind enough to let us use some of them for free! I highly recommend purchasing his Animations Collections. It's an investment I know I won't ever regret.
  
  
• Pearsona
  
  
• YogiKun
  
  
• hiddenone
  
  
• SumRndmDde
  
  
• Mr. Trivel
  
  
• Soulpour777
  
  
• Galv
  
  

• 2/10/2017 - Posted the first round of polling: Party members!
• 12/28/2016 - Update post! Classes got juggled around again, and I threw out a few questions for you to answer(if you want).
• 11/14/2016 - Updated Ferrus's Classes spoiler to show new changes, and intoduced Class Upgrades.
• 10/18/2016 - Huge apology, removed outdated screenshot and replaced it with Game Over screen graphic.
• 8/12/2016 - Removed Ninja class, and merged the Sorceress and Time Mage classes. Updated class descriptions. Dragon Slayer is still a secret.
• 8/9/2016 - Project files corrupted. Restarting.
• 8/7/2016 - Anarchist was changed into Alchemist.
• 8/4/2016 - Demo release date delayed
• 7/11/2016 - Screenshot Update: Main Menu + Window Skin Update! Also fixed the Credits & edited the Classes spoilers with their new info.
• 6/6/2016 - Initial Post!

 

[ThePotatoOfFire]

So I went to load up RMMV today, only to find my data files have been corrupted. I can't open the project, and I can't copy over into a new one- I don't want to start over, so I'm doing everything I can to resolve the problem. I can't say if the demo will be put out at all this month now, so my apologies on that. If anyone can offer advice, it would be greatly appreciated.


Edit: I can't recover the lost files. Project is lost. Will restart soon. Demo delayed indefinitely.

 

[eadgear]

That's a bad new that you need to restart. Did you ever ask in Support Forum about this? The concept is very interesting. How unfortunate that it was corrupted.

 

[ThePotatoOfFire]

That's a bad new that you need to restart. Did you ever ask in Support Forum about this? The concept is very interesting. How unfortunate that it was corrupted.

I can't recover the data files, they're totally destroyed. All of the database information was deleted. Luckily, the maps and eventing are safe, so rebuilding shouldn't take more than a month.

 

[eadgear]

I see, I wonder if you really choose either of the two faction like a total different route

 

[ThePotatoOfFire]

I see, I wonder if you really choose either of the two faction like a total different route

It's a bit of a late game choice, but it does have a different sequence of events and ending depending on which side you choose. 

 

[GoodSelf]

How's your game coming along after you lost all of your files? I hope you're making some progress, cause I'm eagerly awaiting a demo!

 

[ThePotatoOfFire]

How's your game coming along after you lost all of your files? I hope you're making some progress, cause I'm eagerly awaiting a demo!

Databasing is coming along nicely, and I've pushed out a new map since the restart. I can't say when it'll be demo ready, but it hopefully won't be long!

 

[ThePotatoOfFire]

Since restarting, I've been doing some thinking and have decided that in order to insure delays like this don't happen again, I will be putting out the game and constantly updating it instead of having one set demo. I'm still not decided upon whether or not to make the game commercial, but that won't be something I have to worry about for a long time. I just want to make something for people to get into and enjoy, and not worry about the boring stuff like that. I look forward to hearing your feedback! 

 

[ThePotatoOfFire]

I know it was supposed to get put up yesterday, and it was going to, but Dropbox refuses to upload it. I'm going to do what I can, so please be patient.


Thank you for understanding.

 

[ThePotatoOfFire]

Okay, I have a lot of explaining to do. Here goes.


No matter how I tried, the demo file was too big for Dropbox. I will be uploading to Mega instead. 


On to the reason I've delayed more than two months :/ I decided to test the demo after removing some unused files to make sure I didn't commit a fatal error, and I found out that the battles are extremely laggy, and I've realized that since Yanfly's CTB hasn't been supported since MV 1.1, it's not compatible in the slightest with 1.3 and above. Now, if it was only a little lag here and there, I'd wave it off and upload, but after spending two months on it, I've deemed it unplayable in its current state. Luckily for us, Victor Engine Scripts is currently working on his own CTB, which I will be porting over to as soon as it releases. Until then, I'll focus on adding more to the other aspects of the game in between my schoolwork.


As a sign of my apologies for the delay, I will be adding two extra missions upon release, effectively making it v0.3. Please stay tuned!


Some new material has come my way! Loads of thanks to EternalShadow for the awesome Game Over graphic!

Spoiler

 

[ThePotatoOfFire]

It's been a while since the last progress update, so I'd like to give you all a synopsis of what's happened these past months.

• The Equipment Augment system has been added, and is almost completed. Thanks to Yanfly for the plugins.
  
• 5 maps have been finished, and 2 more have been created.
  
• The Summoning system has gotten major upgrades and improvements. Soon, I hope to make Hollows accessible from the main menu, so that they can learn skills just like actors.
  
• The database is past the 50% mark.
  
• Eventing has been fine-tuned, and some of the script has been revised or rewritten.
  
• Classes have been switched up a little(again). The Gunner has been renamed Gunslinger, and the original Gunslinger class has been removed, mainly because I had no way to make it worth using. The Spellslinger has been turned into the upgrade of the Gunslinger(the new one). Also, the Swordsman and Duelist have been finished, as well as the Warlock and it's new upgrade, the Thaumaturge.
  
• The Victor Engine CTB still hasn't been released, but the Yanfly version has been getting a little better, not sure why. It still lags like crazy when calculating damage.
  

Lastly, I have a few questions for you all. The first one is short: The Alchemist class mixes together ordinary items and loots to create special effects, such as a healing mixture that restores HP to the party based on a percentage of Ferrus's HP, or an electric bomb that also lowers the enemy's Strength stat. My question for you is, what kind of mixtures do you want to see? Drop your ideas on this thread, and if you want, include what items you think should go into creating the effect.


My second question is a little bit heavier. The story of Chronicle 7 will cover a lot of sensitive or hard topics, such as amnesia, depression, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD). I need your help to make the story as good as it can be. So, if you have any stories or personal accounts, or even just a source you want to direct me torwards, please either PM me or leave it on this thread. 


That's all from me today, thanks for reading and stay tuned for more irregular updates!

 

[Eliel Micmás]

I've liked the game's concept so far, specially the class mechanic you're going to use.


There's something story-wise that's bugging me though: in war periods, science doesn't stagnate - actually, history has proved that many advancements in science and technology were made during war periods. It'd be better if science and magic advance during the war period, but Harken Co. manages to surpass its rivals. 

 

[ThePotatoOfFire]

There's something story-wise that's bugging me though: in war periods, science doesn't stagnate - actually, history has proved that many advancements in science and technology were made during war periods. It'd be better if science and magic advance during the war period, but Harken Co. manages to surpass its rivals.

You're definitely right, but in the case of this particular story, it was constant war with neighbors; nobody had the time or people available to make any great advancements. Sure, they made progress, but I guess what I meant to say was that Harken came out so much farther ahead that it dwarfed anything else. Thanks for pointing that out, though.

 

[Eliel Micmás]

You're definitely right, but in the case of this particular story, it was constant war with neighbors; nobody had the time or people availible to make any great advancements. Sure, they made progress, but I guess what I meant to say was that Harken came out so much farther ahead that it dwarfed anything else. Thanks for pointing that out, though.

I do get it. Still, people do manage to make advancements, sometimes notable ones. The First and Second World War are cases of constant war in which people managed to make great advancements.


The Medieval Age is an example too: wars were constant, and still, technology managed to advance, specially the ones that were useful to war (the Church hindered technological progress far more than the wars fought during that time)


Anyway, I just think that you should imply only that Harken was a pioneer and came out farther ahead than anyone, having sufficient time to surpass all its rivals.


And, sorry for being so nasty with that little detail xD I'm a war junkie, and I get easily triggered.

 

[ThePotatoOfFire]

I do get it. Still, people do manage to make advancements, sometimes notable ones. The First and Second World War are cases of constant war in which people managed to make great advancements.


The Medieval Age is an example too: wars were constant, and still, technology managed to advance, specially the ones that were useful to war (the Church hindered technological progress far more than the wars fought during that time)


Anyway, I just think that you should imply only that Harken was a pioneer and came out farther ahead than anyone, having sufficient time to surpass all its rivals.


And, sorry for being so nasty with that little detail xD I'm a war junkie, and I get easily triggered.

Hey, don't worry about it. This kind of stuff actually gets me really excited. You've really got a point there, and I think I might have to make some adjustments (I'l try to keep them minor) because it's really just backstory, and it doesn't make any other major contributions besides setting the stage for the game. I really appreciate your attention to detail on that!

 

[ThePotatoOfFire]

Hey all! I've taken the time between my last update post to think especially on the party dynamic, and how I can improve ad strengthen it. I already have Hollows as a countermeasure, but they're very situational and not convenient to the player. So, I thought up a few different ways to add more stable party members, and would like you guys to vote on it! Click the link below or in the main post to go to the poll.
https://strawpoll.com/7s5rew6

Also, big thank you to both @kamui82 and @xelius for their wonderful contributions to the Chronicle 7 soundtrack! Check out their work on their workshop posts!

 

[ThePotatoOfFire]

With the coming of Yanfly's STB, balancing has become a much simpler task, so hopefully I can get around to finishing the demo cut.

 

[Kes]

[mod]This thread is being closed at the request of the OP. If you want it reopened, Report this post and say why.[/mod]