Elthinia, a JRPG for iOS

Discussion in 'Upcoming iOS Games' started by Cobalt Plasma, Apr 6, 2013.

  1. Cobalt Plasma

    Cobalt Plasma Active Member

    Dec 11, 2011
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    Freelance Illustrator & Designer
    Hawaii
    #1 Cobalt Plasma, Apr 6, 2013
    Last edited: May 1, 2014
    Hey hey hey, TouchArcade!

    It's been a while since my friend and I released a game but we've been pretty much grinding out the last bits for our next game Elthinia for iOS which should be ("should be" heh) done in about 6 weeks or so. We're a 2-man team from Hawaii that handles everything ourselves from the top to the bottom, we've known each other since childhood and have been playing RPGs even longer heh. I wanted to post up here at TouchArcade and start spreading the word since we're getting close to finishing this crazy-long project.

    The long and skinny of it all:
    Elthinia is a JRPG-style game coming out for iOS which encapsulates a lot of what my friend and I really love about the genre: A fully fleshed out fantasy world to explore, lots of things to discover, both big and small, and an engaging storyline that we'll be updating as time goes on.

    Screenshots and then bulletpoints, gogogo!:
    [​IMG]

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    Quick YouTube video showing a small bit of combat:


    Okay now for a few game features :D:
    (Edited on 04.30.2014 to reflect current game system standings, hope this is okay ^_^)


    • An expansive and evolving storyline : We have the story with a strong core, beginning to end, but have it so we can always develop it even further; I've actually plotted out a lot more than our initial release plans for and would like to put it into Elthinia as a continuing story. This gives us the chance to release a game as a stand alone experience with the option available to enrich the game and story even more once it's all done.
      edit: This is still good to go, I just hope I have all the dialogue tagged correctly :D


    • Two major overworld zones to explore with a cache of dungeons to delve into and more on the way : We're aiming to release more and more continents (and all that comes with them) over the coming months and possibly years if given the chance :) Two are set, if we can squeeze in a third that'd be awesome.
      edit:We're still hoping to have both in ver1.00, we had some memory juggling we had to do once we fully populated the primary world map so some of the second area isn't fully accessible just yet. If anything we'll release 1.00 with a full overworld + a good section of the second zone (which is underground, with parts above.. ground..hehe) and then update it soon after release with more of the second zone. So that'll be more like 1.0.5 with 1.1 being our larger patch with the next full world zone.


    • Guild System : Acquire guild members for your 4-man party, enlist new companions in your travels and adventures and slot in whoever you want. You'll have 3 to start and pick up more soon after the game begins so you can start playing around with the characters earlier.
      edit: Oops, this should be 2 starting members, although you pick up your 3rd *very* soon after the game starts so it's pretty close :)


    • Open Dual Class System : Mix and match your favorite character classes to tailor to your play style and each character's core abilities. Each class contributes stat adjustments and as a character uses a class more in combat they earn more points to spend on skills. You want a Berserker-Priest? Go for it! Archer-Mage? Sure! Rogue-Beastmaster? I don't see why not :D
      edit: I just want to say how fun this is :) It was something I thought theoretically would be enjoyable but it's really, really interesting to mix and match class favorites.


    • Tons of, well, Stuff : We wanted to incorporate every single thing we could that we've enjoyed over the years of RPG gaming: You have your basic adventuring gear, stat/effect-based equipment, item sets to discover and collect, rare items, and gear enhancement through stat-boosting gems. I love digging around the world for new things and we're aiming to have a lot of new things to find in Elthinia.
    • Rare Monsters : I played a Hunter in World of Warcraft, *loved loved loved* the aspect of trying to find rare mobs to tame, and wanted to bring that into our game. Every zone, every area has a rare spawn or three that are roaming about or can be summoned forth if the correct item can be found, and if you are fortunate enough and have a Beastmaster in your party when you encounter a rare Beast you have the decision: Tame the beast and add it to your Guild, usable so long as a character in the party is a Beastmaster, or do you try to slay it and get a powerful piece of gear. If you're lucky you'll be able to do both :)
      edit: This is still good to go, but the rare tame-ables are sometimes *very very* difficult to find, since we wanted to make them a sort of big reward rather than a simple collection case. Granted in the age of the internet once someone posts the how-to's of picking up rares, well, then you'll have an easier way lol


    • Time progression : As you adventure the time clock ticks forward and you'll see changes in the world and background to reflect that with 4 distinct times of day: Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Night. Some events and mobiles will only be out at certain times of day, we're also hoping to have items that can slow down or accelerate different times of day, like a set of Nightveil Plate armor that will slow down time progression at night and accelerate it during the day. So if there's a rare mobile that shows up only at night then you can maximize your chances of hitting that encounter... or if you just like a certain time of day you can pick up gear to lock it in longer :)
      edit: This is still holding true although not quite to the same degree since we've migrated away from random encounters. There are a few mobiles and events which only occur during specific time ranges but the variable was making the build more unstable as we added more encounter tables. There are a few in but majority of events will be static.

    This has been a labor of love, many long hours spent after work chugging along, lots of coffee and not as much sleep. No matter what, we're just happy to be almost done, and hope that we can find likeminded folks to join our Guild on this fun little journey that's been many years in the making. Just wanted to share this with TA and thank you for your time :D
     
  2. undeadcow

    undeadcow Well-Known Member

    Dec 4, 2010
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    Houston, TX
    Elthinia looks very promising; I've been curious about your releases since Obsidian Rift and Arena Slayer but couldn't ever get a good understanding of the game mechanics so never took the plunge. Will Elthinia be primarily combat or will there be world exploration? A more detailed video would be great.
     
  3. bigred447uk

    bigred447uk Well-Known Member

    Apr 16, 2009
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    An overworld is mentioned but it would be great to have more detail / screens about that aspect.

    Having said that this looks extremely interesting to me and I will be following this thread closely until release.

    I particularly like the hunting rare mobs aspect along with rare gears of course.
     
  4. Cobalt Plasma

    Cobalt Plasma Active Member

    Dec 11, 2011
    44
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    Freelance Illustrator & Designer
    Hawaii
    Thanks everyone :)

    @undeadcow, it was interesting what we learned over the last couple years working on our games; Obsidian Rift was definitely a 'first attempt' at a game with tons and tons of flaws while Arena Slayer suffered from a lack of solid direction (and some missteps), but Elthinia is where we've been applying all those lessons we learned.

    The game is a bit more combat than exploration, a little dungeon grindier than it is finding/discovering new things, but there's a lot here and there of the latter. I just finished a map object that is unreachable when you first find it but a lot later in the game you have a chance to go there and find out more about the lore behind it. The game will have a lot of small things like that and will try to reward you for remembering previous places you've been with hopefully worthwhile rewards :)

    @bigred447uk, as soon as we've finalized our UI assets and overworld sprite I'll post a shot of it. Right now we actually have Samuel from Obsidian Rift as our stand-in for our overworld sprite :D The overworld itself is a tile-based map, similar to our layout in Obsidian Rift; it doesn't offer smooth scrolling, instead it uses tile-by-tile movement, but every single step is automatically saved so you just about never have to worry about losing your progress if your battery dies or someone calls you or your 21 month-old son sneaking his hand in to press the home key.:cool:

    I'm glad to hear that you enjoy hunting rares and going for gear, it's something that's stuck with me for a long time. I really wanted a lot of things built into this game that I've enjoyed over the years, hunting the esoteric and powerful being one of them.

    Thank you again for the kind words and interest, I'll post up more screens and an extended video as soon as I can!
     
  5. Cobalt Plasma

    Cobalt Plasma Active Member

    Dec 11, 2011
    44
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    Freelance Illustrator & Designer
    Hawaii
    Okee dokee, we finally had a chance to hammer out everything for the overhead view (well just about, we're still missing a couple small UI elements but majority of the work for that view is done I believe) and we have a short video showing some of the overhead movement + basic combat.



    4-frame animation for our overhead view character. I'm no animator by any major stretch of the term so in order to get this done we figured on just having our main character animated, I mean she'll be with you the entire time of the game anyways
    [​IMG]

    A few more shots, showing some of the time transitions
    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Rare spawn you can tame:
    [​IMG]

    Another rare rare you can acquire, this one I believe is only at night (and actually not in this zone heh, just wanted to bring up encounter, forgot which area I was in at the time):
    [​IMG]

    We have a lot of abilities with status effects, different buffs and debuffs that are built into skills and sometimes equipment, too:
    [​IMG]


    Thanks again for checking this out, if you have any questions I'll try my best to answer them ^_^
     
  6. Exact-Psience

    Exact-Psience Well-Known Member

    Jan 12, 2012
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    The Work-At-Home Guy
    Philippines
    This looks truly fantastic. Cant wait for this release!
     
  7. yvcgamer

    yvcgamer Well-Known Member

    Oct 12, 2011
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    Belgium
    I agree, this game sounds really promising :D
     
  8. Tyra

    Tyra Well-Known Member

    Feb 3, 2011
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    Illustration & Graphic Designs
    Germany
    Oh, yeay! :D
     
  9. Vovin

    Vovin 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Nov 28, 2009
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    Germany

    *laughs*
     
  10. jtall

    jtall Well-Known Member

    Mar 14, 2012
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    North Carolina
    This game is going to the top of my most anticipated list! What's the estimate on how many hours this game is? I can't stand rpg games that I can beat in less than 20 hours.
     
  11. Cobalt Plasma

    Cobalt Plasma Active Member

    Dec 11, 2011
    44
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    Freelance Illustrator & Designer
    Hawaii
    Wow, thanks guys :D I'm really happy to hear that you folks are looking forward to it, it's been a labor of love that I'm just, well, really happy (haha) to hear that others may enjoy this, too. I don't have an update right now as I'm at work, my regular 9-to-5, but will try to get more screens and info tonight when I get home.

    @jtall, thanks :D To be perfectly honest we're not too sure how many hours the game is since we're still integrating all of our art assets and tweaking a lot of numbers. My friend who's programming it threw out "10 hours" but I think it'll be a bit longer than that since I can spend 15-30min. just in the very earliest parts of the game hitting level 3 for most of my party as I walk around and check out the UI elements. So of course he adjusts his estimates to "10hours, 30min.!"

    If I had to make a 'safe' guess, I might put it in the 10-12hr range to do just the core quest line and then, gosh, another 5-10 at least if you want to collect everything like all the rare spawns, armor sets/rare items, and guildmembers. It could be considerably more, I know it won't be less, but the other thing is we're going to be updating the main game whenever we can, adding more areas to explore, things to find, rares to collect, etc. so on a long enough timeline you'll get a lot of game for $1.99 :)

    Thanks again for the kind words everyone, I hope we can deliver up to expectation! ^_^
     
  12. Cobalt Plasma

    Cobalt Plasma Active Member

    Dec 11, 2011
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    Freelance Illustrator & Designer
    Hawaii
    Alrighty, another Friday, another update! Actually I'm hoping as we get more and more assets in it won't be just on Fridays, it just happens to synch up with our work schedules right now :D

    A small hint at one of the dungeon zones we're finishing up, Dougra Temple to the east of the capitol city, it also shows some of our attack animations and zone transitions.


    Screenshot time :)
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    We've fully implemented combat rows for mobiles, where those in the back deal and receive less damage unless you have a means to do ranged damage such as with a Mage or an Archer. This adds a little more dynamism to combat and choice of what classes you want to field if you know/learn that the zone your'e in has a lot of front/back adversary mixes.

    Our time management system has also transitioned to its own layer to help conserve battery power consumption, but in doing so we had to slow down time a bit, too. Personally I like the change since it makes time feel more significant, like when dusk starts settling in you know you're gonna have to drag it out with the nocturnal denizens for a bit before you're "saved" by the coming light of the morning suns :) We're also including time-adjusting equipment earlier in the game for those who want to transition quicker/slower through certain time periods.

    So far so good, chuggin' along one art asset, one sound note, one line of code at a time :D Thanks for checking this out!
     
  13. saansilt

    saansilt 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Mar 23, 2013
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    Cool. Looks like a jrpg I might enjoy. Like lod.
     
  14. Cobalt Plasma

    Cobalt Plasma Active Member

    Dec 11, 2011
    44
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    Freelance Illustrator & Designer
    Hawaii
    saansilt, thanks :) We're hoping it delivers in the enjoyability department :D

    Well, it's Friday again, time for more screenshots and updates ^_^ We hit a few minor snags this week regarding time available so we haven't been able to power through as much of our to-do list as we would like to but things are still chugging along. Still, we managed to wrap up our main character, Lyssa Symbril (who I accidentally mislabeled with a different family name, oops), at least her art assets are all done, we still have to implement her core abilities heh.

    Her profile screen:
    [​IMG]

    Combat sprite:
    [​IMG]

    Our loot system is in, still have to tweak placement and z-axis placement with regards to the other assets (and adjust label placement) but it's in and working a-okay otherwise ^_^
    [​IMG]

    Implemented our in-game dialogue event handler. This is how the more important dialogue conversations will look like, lesser dialogues (i.e. with regular townfolk) will mainly occur with just the chat window.
    [​IMG]

    A notable issue for my friend while he was testing was that having larger fingers lead to more finicky tapping with the directional pad, so he added an option to make it larger, easier to press (I thought that was pretty cool :D)
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Boss fight!
    [​IMG]


    YouTube is being real obtuse today, I can't seem to upload our latest video. I'll try again when I get back home, it mainly showcases our zone-to-zone (or in this case zone-to-dungeon) transition, dialogue, and some in-combat item usage. Coming soon! ^_^

    Thanks again for checking this out :D
     
  15. Cobalt Plasma

    Cobalt Plasma Active Member

    Dec 11, 2011
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    Freelance Illustrator & Designer
    Hawaii
    #15 Cobalt Plasma, May 5, 2013
    Last edited: May 5, 2013
    Finally got the video uploaded and visible by the public :D



    edit: Whoops that was post, not preview o_O lol... but yeah we're gonna tweak the chat window a touch, clean up the inside a bit, then work on more dialogue adjustments like spacing and borders, etc. but it's pretty functional and robust as far as the built system goes; compared to, say, our first RPG, Obsidian Rift, where our dialogue was incredibly sparse, no character-to-character at all, Elthinia to us just feels like it's worlds ahead heh.
     
  16. Exact-Psience

    Exact-Psience Well-Known Member

    Jan 12, 2012
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    The Work-At-Home Guy
    Philippines
    After watching the videos, i wish there's movement/animation on characters during combat. Feels bare without anything moving. Anything planned for these? I was hoping even just a pic change when it's his turn to execute his attacks, and maybe some outerglows when it's his/her turn to be assigned moves or something like that. Anything that will make the screen look alive.

    Also, maybe it needs something moving in the background, like the smoke, or maybe just some lighting effect with some clouds moving to cover them in a semi-dynamic illusion.
     
  17. Cobalt Plasma

    Cobalt Plasma Active Member

    Dec 11, 2011
    44
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    Freelance Illustrator & Designer
    Hawaii
    I know what you mean, it was something that my friend and I had been discussing for a while (like, many months-worth of back and forth on this) since we've started going really deep in our development cycles; my strengths have always been more in an illustrative comic/sequential art sense rather than an actual frame-by-frame so it was something we weren't sure we had the development time to really commit to since it takes me a long time to animate anything decently.

    That said, I did some simple sprite-like 4-frame animations for the player characters and they seem to be okay, transition-wise. The hard part will be seeing if we can get these animations into the engine without needing to bandaid too many things along the way, but it looks like we might be able to. It'd add a lot to bringing a bit more life to combat.

    One concern we have too is adding animations to everything just increases the overall size of the game by a geometric rate, so we're not sure if we want all sprites to have it or just the player characters since they're at the forefront of the player experience.

    That we have programmed into our engine, we weren't gonna add that in until later when we were a lot closer to finishing up combat as a section :) But yeah hopefully we'll have some moving clouds, maybe falling leaves or shooting stars on occasion or something.

    Thanks for the feedback :) I'll post up more when I can, I should be getting an updated build within the next day or so.
     
  18. Cobalt Plasma

    Cobalt Plasma Active Member

    Dec 11, 2011
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    Freelance Illustrator & Designer
    Hawaii
    Small but fun update for this Friday :D

    Meteo Strike!
    We've been adding in skills as we finalize the engine/outputs and running them through various tests. Meteo Strike will be a medium damage, high-cost skill that has a chance to reduce non-boss targets to 1hp. It's a risk/reward balance that we wanted to try out, it has a very high upside balanced against a low proc-rate and high MP cost, so you can't spam this at lower levels anyways and is meant for later in the game...but we won't stop you from taking it as your first skill if you want :)

    [​IMG]

    Core Values
    On top of class skills we've finished encoding our Core abilities framework for player characters. These will be abilities accessible by the character no matter what class he/she/it chooses to use, so if you're a Knight/Mage or Rogue/Priest you'll always have your Core skills no matter what. It brings a uniqueness to each character that you can use to weigh in bringing them into the party.

    [​IMG]

    Now onto the fun stuff :)
    We liked the idea of adding movement and animation to our combat, make it more alive and engaging for the player, and really wanted to incorporate that into our game for release. My friend mulled it over and was able to write a really good animation handler for the general combat layer and we got it in a-okay :) Passive party members go through their 4-frame cycle at a much slower pace while the active player has an increased animation cycle.

    So far, so good, no bugs that we've found so far so we're going to be implementing it for our final game.



    Thanks for checking this out..our next update will showcase our basic town layout and monster lore system! (hopefully around Tuesday-ish?) :D
     
  19. MurkyFS

    MurkyFS Member

    Jul 29, 2012
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    Any update for when this will be released?
     
  20. Cobalt Plasma

    Cobalt Plasma Active Member

    Dec 11, 2011
    44
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    Freelance Illustrator & Designer
    Hawaii
    Yikes! What day is it...?
    I should never give out specific days or dates when I'll be updating. A lots happened in the last 9 weeks that really set our timetable back immensely, we're almost back on track but man, what a big maelstrom of stuff to deal with... We're really sorry for the lack of updates, we've been working on a lot of things and just haven't had time to post anything really.

    Revising what still needs to get done and what we're overhauling, I'd say we're aiming for a September release, saying everything gets done but accounting more time for possible hiccups along the way. I know this won't be, like, a FEZ-level of revising heh, but it will be nice to finally wrap 1.00 up so we can start working on future content for the game.


    In Review of things to change/come/get overhauled
    We've decided to condense the two larger zones into a single, even-larger zone heh, so majority of the 'world' in ver1.00 will be the grassy hilly area merged with the forested mountains and valleys. Right now the map is about 16k tiles, I think 75-80% of that is completely walkable but I'm not 100% sure on that, and that doesn't include sub-areas such as towns, dungeons, temples, etc.

    On top of that I've been giving our master world map a big overhaul with objects and object population. There's a lot more trees to enjoy now, it's not quite so empty :)

    Dusk:
    [​IMG]

    Night:
    [​IMG]


    We also did an overhaul on our town mechanics, actually building them up like our map system instead of our original idea. Personally we like this iteration more, it's more 'classical' I guess in that you maneuver around town and can talk to anyone who happens by; we have pretty good control over the randomized pathing the AI can take, but we still have to prevent them from practicing parkour, aka walking on top of walls and rooftops lol.

    [​IMG]


    We're closing out our first set of basic dungeon mobiles, these guys you'll see throughout at least the first couple dungeons that you explore, the Matrons being the most rare with a chance to get a great 2-handed blade if you're lucky :D

    [​IMG]

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    Again thank you very much for all the continued support for our game and we're sorry for the lack of updates, we both just had a lot of craziness to deal with. But that's that, it is the past, and it is once again time to march forward :D Thank you for checking this out!
     

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