Advent Peril : Dawn of a New Age (Action RPG)

       Hello Community! EncryptedKnight here to welcome you to my Project Beta. It has taken me 8 long months to develop this project, and I have come to the point where I can use some user feedback in regards to resources used, game mechanics, and story line as well as overall map appearances.

Advent Peril : Dawn of a New Age is a non-linear, open world, action role playing game. The Player is immersed into a world where they have 3 in-game days and nights to complete the main quest or a game over will occur. The player has the ability to shift time forward or backwards by playing specific songs on an instrument; however, doing so will result in the loss of "Time Bound Items" such as gold, arrows, bombs, ect (Losing "Time Bound Items" does not effect, weapons, armor, key items or game progress.) The Player has the option to attempt any dungeon in any order they please. Other features include but are not limited to :

- A Short Prologue Tutorial to help the Player understand the game mechanics at the beginning of the game. 

- Custom Scripts.

- Custom Graphics.

- Keyboard and Joystick Support.

- File Size is 522 MB.

- Custom Sound Tracks composed by individual artists.

- A Banking System.

- A Library with Readable Books to help the Player understand the Game Mechanics and Story Line.

- A Archery Gallery Mini Game featuring 3 Different Courses.

- A in-game Day/Night System.

- 8 Directional Movement with Graphic Support for all 8 Directions.

- Fully Operational Main Quest focusing on Four Main Dungeons with Unique Boss Fights and Cut-scenes.

- Crescent Stones (When 2 Crescent Stone Halves fit, a new optional path open.)

- Optional Side Quests.

- Secret Portals that only appear at Night.

- Spell Tombs that serve as Enemy Drops.

- Sword Beam - A projectile unleashed only when the Players Health is at it's Maximum upon the third swing of the sword (Absorbs Enemy Magic Points and produces a temporary Knock Down effect; the projectile can be controlled based on the direction of the Player).

- Unique Enemies that each hold unique abilities, most of which can be discovered by the Player by obtaining and reading a dropped Spell Tomb.

- 4 to 6 Hours of game play if not more.

- Easter Eggs that reference other games.

- Combo System : Swinging your sword at the fastest rate can cause a miss towards the target, this is because after hitting an enemy, they are invulnerable for a short time to keep the game from getting unbalanced. Time you're strikes with a short delay and you will be able to keep you're enemies locked in a combo. 

Video showing how to get through the Tutorial :  http://youtu.be/yvapns9TkKo

The story and plot involves a Templar named Kastyl. Upon completing his training, he is instructed to visit Four Guardians that have become under siege from unknown forces. As a result, one Guardian is transformed into a hideous monster, thus breaking the balance of the world and allowing portals to appear throughout the land. Due to these mysterious portals appearing, the world becomes unstable, leaving Kastyl with 3 days and 3 nights to cleanse each Temple.

Although fully playable, this project is far from finished. I will be adding a lot of content as I want to design a game with lot's of replay value. The purpose of this Beta Session is due in part so that I can fully analyze any fundamental game flaws. Thank you for taking the time to read this post, you're input is very valuable!

Download Link Updated to 0.7 : https://www.adrive.com/public/3tqB6G/Advent%20Peril%20-%20Dawn%20of%20a%20New%20Age.exe

(The password is "download", this link will expire on 8/1/2014)

Note to readers :

- I do not recommend this game if you experience seizures as there is an enemy that throws mushrooms; upon getting hit by these mushrooms, a flashing color sequence and slow state called "shroomed" applies to the Player (See Screenshot 11). You have been warned!

- I recommend that users close all background programs before attempting to play the Beta of "Advent Peril : Dawn of a New Age". This should allow for consistent a frame rate. 

Credits :

This looks promising. I've yet to see a good fantasy RPG using the HF packs :)

I like that you gave seizure warnings; it shows consideration in a dev. I also like the idea of shifting time forward and backing using music?

The only thing is I worry about the "8 Directional Movement" part, as I'm on a laptop. It's not clear in your post whether this means the game must be played by mouse, which I dislike. Anyway, gonna give it a try! 

Hi Alkorri, this game utilizes the keyboard or gamepad and does not support the mouse. I updated the description as well, thanks for you're interest and I hope you enjoy my work.

Hi there, Encrypted Knight,

I just tried your game. Please keep in mind, there are only my first impressions as I could not get far into the game. In fact I could not even get past the introduction.

I apologise if I seem harsh. I really was hoping to see more of the game. Other players might have better luck. I wish you all the best in any case!

Hey there Alkorri, I will be making some major revisions, especially to the tutorial. I also want to mention that I have uploaded a video showing the Player how to get past the tutorial (Right above the download link.) As for some of you're questions :

"Why is S the Item command, and not Skill? (S = Skill, easier to remember)"

- This was due impart to the people who created the XAS Engine.

"When you die, why do you curse in Japanese? I thought this was supposed to be a Western medieval RPG."

- This is the default sound effect that came with the XAS engine which I haven't changed yet.

"Not only that, there is no option to Save during this introduction, forcing me to keep restarting the one-minute long intro."

- The tutorial is so short, I didn't think it would be necessary for a save crystal; but I'll add on anyways.

I will remove the overlay in the tutorial as you have opened my eyes to the fog issue.

"I died the second and third time against the bee, despite repeatedly using the Enter key to attack. Is this the case of my failing to dodge/block, or simply enemies being OP for a new player?"

- When attacking, swinging you're sword at the fastest rate will cause a miss to the target, this is because after hitting an enemy, they are invulnerable for a short time to keep the game from getting unbalanced. Time you're strikes with a short delay and you will be able to keep you're enemies locked in a combo. It's an element borrowed for "The Secret of Mana" in a way.

- Typos will be fixed.

- One Note : I designed this game to challenge the Player. If you don't take you're time and instead rush through the game, you will get slaughtered; I will however, make the tutorial enemies much weaker.

- When I have completed updating the beta, i will put version number "0.7"  by the download link. I will have it uploaded by today.

And finally, thanks for taking the time to actually try my game out, you're the first one to do so and your feed back will be used to improve the game in every aspect, thanks for your time and I hope you will be willing to give this project another try when it has been updated to 0.7.

Thank you for your reply. Was glad to help, and that explanation about attacking enemies makes sense. Perhaps you could mention that in a tutorial because it is not intuitive to the player (or me, at least)?

Advent Peril : Dawn of a New Age has just been updated to 0.7, enjoy!

You have a good idea, making the game play like Ys. So far I only played the beginning but from what I saw you're in the right direction. One thing, is it just me or are the enemies very powerful? I get killed with just two hits.

Hey there RicJFNas, thank you for giving my project a try. The enemies are indeed powerful after the tutorial. However, building your level up as well as upgrading your equipment and picking your fights is essential in the beginning of the game. There are enemies that are weak and enemies that are strong. The snake enemy is a good example of a weak enemy. 

 

A few tips for beginning a new game.

 


- The snake enemy ( As well as other enemies.) has a chance to drop a  unidentified spell tomb which can be translated by an NPC in Wayhaven. This tomb translates into Regen. Regen is very useful in the beginning of the game and is very important for boss fights.

- There are portals that only appear at night in Wayhaven and Clearfield Meadows. Red Portals contain enemies, blue contain no enemies; however, both types of portals contain an item called a "Life Stone" which increases your max life by 25 HP.

- The library in Wayhaven has very useful books you can read as well as a enemy database which contains only pictures, no text data as of yet. The librarian has a unidentified spell tomb for the Player upon talking with her which can be helpful for ranged attacks.

- The Archery Range has 3 courses , each containing a unique prize that will greatly benefit the Player for the rest of the game.

Hope that helps. 

Alright, so I'm writing this as I'm playing.

I really like the cutscene after you finish the tutorial place. It looks cool and interesting in how you did it with the character sets. 

But the first thing I've noticed, the first dialogue says "you're" instead of "your."

I don't really believe that grammar is game breaking or anything, but I know that a lot of people get bothered by stuff like this, so I always try to fix any grammatical errors that I make in my games.

Then, I'm confused as to where to go, even though the first NPC tells me to go north, east, south, and west to destroy something. 

When head to all directions, I have no idea as to where the things are. It wasn't until I whacked the bush to discover that the transfer event was a few squares behind the bushes.

I believe that it would be better if there was a clear indication of where the transfer point is. I don't think that the bushes are a good enough indicator.

Another thing about the transfer event, when I get transferred to the next map, I get transferred onto the transfer event. So I would have to move up and then move down again in order to transfer back. One way to work with this problem is when you make a transfer event, make it so that you transfer at least one step above the transfer event in the next map in order to simply move down to transfer spot to the previous map instead of moving up and down.

In the first map, that mushroom monster is too over powered. I died to that thing within 2 hits, which completely surprised me.

In the map where you first use a bomb, there was nothing that told you how to use it, the circle only tells you how to equip it, so I had to mash around my keyboard to find the hotkey. Usually people like myself don't remember all the controls shown in the beginning, unless I'm constantly using them like moving around and attacking.

When I'm teleported to the first town, I also have no idea on where to go. The girl who talks to me when I'm first there only says to check out the library or talk to other people. 

I find this to be very ambiguous because it doesn't tell me where to go or what objectives I have. 

I've noticed that you seem to have used parallel events as some of the cut scenes. You should use autorun instead because you don't want to be able to move during a cutscene or get stuck somewhere.

The mailman in the first town is seems to have the "through" option checked. You might want to uncheck that because it feels weird walking through someone.

And that is all I have played through because I have no idea where to go or what to do from that point.

All in all, I could see the effort put into this game as the tilesets are interesting and the voice addition was a pleasant surprise. Your cutscenes are also pretty good. 

The thing that I would work the most on is mapping, eventing, and the sense of direction.

Hey Sleepingnamja, thanks for trying my game out. 

- "I really like the cutscene after you finish the tutorial place. It looks cool and interesting in how you did it with the character sets."

Thanks, it still needs some work, I need to center the transforming sprite a little more.

- "Then, I'm confused as to where to go, even though the first NPC tells me to go north, east, south, and west to destroy something. 

When head to all directions, I have no idea as to where the things are. It wasn't until I whacked the bush to discover that the transfer event was a few squares behind the bushes.

I believe that it would be better if there was a clear indication of where the transfer point is. I don't think that the bushes are a good enough indicator."

- I recently added some arrows to point the Player in the right direction just by the bush events.

"Another thing about the transfer event, when I get transferred to the next map, I get transferred onto the transfer event. So I would have to move up and then move down again in order to transfer back. One way to work with this problem is when you make a transfer event, make it so that you transfer at least one step above the transfer event in the next map in order to simply move down to transfer spot to the previous map instead of moving up and down."

This is a really good idea, I will be sure to do that. I set my transfer events to move based on the direction the Player is facing. I was also thinking about deleting every transfer event and instead using variable map coordinates instead to transfer the player as having to many events can cause latency on bigger maps.

- "In the first map, that mushroom monster is too over powered. I died to that thing within 2 hits, which completely surprised me."

Yeah, I should make his shroom throwing skill weaker. Glad you didn't have a seizure because of the color sequences.

- "In the map where you first use a bomb, there was nothing that told you how to use it, the circle only tells you how to equip it, so I had to mash around my keyboard to find the hotkey. Usually people like myself don't remember all the controls shown in the beginning, unless I'm constantly using them like moving around and attacking." 

Good point there, I will add more details to help the Player further understand the controls.

- " When I'm teleported to the first town, I also have no idea on where to go. The girl who talks to me when I'm first there only says to check out the library or talk to other people. I find this to be very ambiguous because it doesn't tell me where to go or what objectives I have. "

There is a quest log to help you in the menu which I haven't explained in the tutorial yet; as well as NPC's that point you in the right direction, but here is the thing; this game is open world and meant for the Player to explore and discover for themselves. Just like in the tutorial, you need to head directly North, East, South, or West to find the Guardian's Temples from Wayhaven. There is a mini map hud in case you get lost. And there you can complete them in any order, although they do range in difficulty.

- "I've noticed that you seem to have used parallel events as some of the cut scenes. You should use autorun instead because you don't want to be able to move during a cutscene or get stuck somewhere."

Good point, I'll definitely try that.

- "The mailman in the first town is seems to have the "through" option checked. You might want to uncheck that because it feels weird walking through someone."

I'll change that as well.

- "And that is all I have played through because I have no idea where to go or what to do from that point.

All in all, I could see the effort put into this game as the tilesets are interesting and the voice addition was a pleasant surprise. Your cutscenes are also pretty good. 

The thing that I would work the most on is mapping, eventing, and the sense of direction."

I am going to redo every map using parallax mapping techniques so I can add the maximum amount of detail and beauty. This will be a very long process and will take months to complete. I am also going to focus on the story line and quests. The main point of this Beta was so I can develop a good modified XAS ABS game engine which I feel I have accomplished although there are some minor bugs that will be an easy fix.

Thanks again for your feedback Sleepingnamja, I really do appreciate as it will be used to improve the project in every aspect. 

I want to thank everyone for participating in my project, your feedback has been very valuable. The Beta session is now over and the download link is no longer valid, take care.