RMMV Witch of Yagserra [working title]

[hppyniss]

"X meets Y" quick pitch: The Harry Potter series meets Studio Ghibli.
​

Synopsis:

Esme Green is a young witch-in-training who is beginning her first year at the magical school, Yagserra. The game begins in her cozy forest village and expands to new villages, forests, coasts, and cities as Esme learns more about the world she inhabits.

Esme becomes embroiled in a world that both mistrusts and relies on witches. At Yagserra, she learns what it means to be a witch, from spellwork to diplomacy. The friends she makes and the work that she does as a witch will define her for years (and future games ^_^) to come. As she experiences more of the world, she learns that all is not quite as it seems...

A sampling of towns and cities:

• Mistholler - Esme's sleepy hometown is located in the forest at the foot of a mountain-range, far from the King's conflict...
  
• The City of Fire - The capital city outwardly outlaws magical practice, but thrives on a less-than-hidden network of witches. Up in the castle, the King mourns his bride and is driven by vengeance.
  
• The Coral Terrace - This far-away coastal region has a proud history. The ruling House here embraces witchcraft, but has an interest with sea magic that might lead to the region's ruin.

Features:

• Witch combat: witches can attack using their daggers, potions, alchemical bombs, familiars, and combination-based spells. As Esme and her friends learn new elemental runes, they can test out combinations in battle.
  
• Story-driven quests: Complete main quests, side quests, and witch contracts. Choices made in quests and in dialogues will shape Esme's character and change the direction of her story.
  
• Crafting system: Craft your own potions, bombs, and incenses to aid you on your journey.
  
• Exploration: Explore 20 distinct towns and cities and many more forests, swamps, mountains, and coastlines. Esme and friends can discover the secrets of their magical school, Yagserra.
  
• Day/Night system: A day/night system adds realism to the world and affects characters, beasts, and quests.
  
• Weather system: Likewise, a weather system affects characters, beasts, an magical techniques.
  
• Magical school: Shape Esme's witchy future at the magical training school, Yagserra. Classes, dorms, dungeons, and enchanted grounds are a relatively safe way to hone your craft and gain experience.
• Friendship system: As Esme makes friends, she will unlock new followers, crafting recipes, quests, and magical techniques.

Screenshots:
NOTE: Some items are missing from maps, since they have been evented in. All of these maps are still works-in-progress, and should be considered very rough first drafts. These are my first attempts both at mapping and at parallax mapping (and heck, even at using photoshop). Improvements are being made daily!


World Map:


Yagserra dorm common room:


Yagserra dorm room:


The Common Mug:


Inn rooms at The Common Mug:


Progress:
Story: ~5% completed (approximately 30 minutes completed, and I expect anywhere from 5-20 hours - depending on side quests - at the end.)

Mapping: 20 maps in progress, many more to come


Credits:
Celianna
Driftwood Gaming
Galv
Game_Stailer94
HimeWorks
Hudell
mjshi
SmRndmDde
Soulpour777
Yanfly
...and many more will be added as the game progresses.

 

[hppyniss]

UPDATED on 2/13 with re-tiled Yagserra maps. I just noticed that one of the plants in the common room got cut off here -- time to head back into Photoshop to correct it!

I've been putting of database work in favor of aesthetic stuff. I worked on a handful of new Yagserra maps today. I'm really excited to see the magical castle shape up and become a big, highly explorable location.

Here's one of the hallways that connects the dorms to a few classrooms, the bath, and the library. (I really should grab a capture in-game for this, it looks much better with the candlelight effects.)


The bath (the water has splash effects when you walk through it! It also restores MP and decreases tiredness) Noticed a graphical error here too, correcting it now.


The Library, first floor


The Potions Classroom (Not totally satisfied with this one yet...)



I've also grabbed a few random outdoors screenshots, and a few battle screen shots to showcase the spell casting system.









That's all for now! More to come soon, I hope.

 

[fizzly]

Interior areas are toooo big/looks empty. Icon as a battler? Well... And those leaves effect on forest area doesn't look good. But I like the font and concept.

 

[hppyniss]

@fizzly Thanks for taking a look! I should have explained a bit about the battle scenes: those icons are base runes that can be mixed together (up to 5 of them) to create new spells...think Magicka, if you've ever played that! (This is an awesome plugin from @mjshi, for those of you who are wondering .) A large part of Esme's training at Yagserra will be learning new runes (she learns "fire" from her mother in the first few minutes of the game), and discovering new combos.

I agree that some of the Yagserra maps are larger than I would normally prefer, but I have created them based around eventing and scenes that I have already written, some of which are quite large given the number of students and professors at the school. The lighting effects that I'm using in-game also help to make the maps feel a little smaller and cozier, I hope. Thanks for pointing this out, though, so I can keep it in mind when eventing/scene writing -- I might be able to shuffle events around so they fit in a smaller space.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on the leaves in the forest -- I really, really like them, it just comes down to personal preference, I think

 

[Abdulla Al-Farsi]

Your maps are good but they are so big!!

See these maps and try to make something similar:

https://rpgmaker.net/media/content/games/1599/screenshots/Gardeners_HQ.png

http://i.imgur.com/G2k4gDe.png

http://i49.tinypic.com/skutmo.png



For the forest... hmm...!

I don't like these leafs effects. It could be cool for some people, but I believe it makes the forest very bad looking.

Try to resize it to very small leafs. It could be better.

Good luck.

 

[Starshine]

great job on the outdoor lighting effect! I think, if you maybe don't want to resize your maps, it would help a great deal to have npcs roaming around in them to make them seem less empty. It's a nice story concept! if i might make a suggestion, i think people might be tired of seeing the default actors like marsha and you might be better off generating a witchy char, or at least recoloring/editing that actor. everything looks great though, especially the lighting effects!

 

[hppyniss]

Thanks, @Starshine! Martha is a placeholder for now, though I am growing rather fond of her, haha. Ultimately, I think I will use an entirely different actor sprite set -- I'm not in love with the chibis.

There will be quite a few NPCs (both students and professors) roaming those maps, I'm glad you think that'll help! These are all fresh-out-of-photoshop, non-evented maps to give a general feel for the magical school. The school is one of the main locations in the game, and quite a bit of time is spent there developing friendships, questing for professors, and exploring. I'm glad you like the outdoor lighting! Playing with lighting has been really fun -- I'm using a mix of photoshopping and the Thomas Edison lighting plugin.