We'll start with music:

Actually, our game is in a fantasy style, just with a lot of cosmological what-not thrown in. Think FF7, but maybe not quite as much techno stuff. Maeda is _not_ like Midgar, for example. It's just a really big, complex medieval city. I call it "stylized fantasy." We don't really have art yet. Our main character is a farmer, but he wears a tech vest and cargo pants and has spiky hair. Does any of this make sense? (Probably not, but that's okay.)

So the point is that music can be a pretty big mix. I'm thinking I want some ambience to our locations, though. You know, birds chirping, water running, people talking, and all that for towns. Spooky caves could have dripping water, weird echoes, whistling wind, etc. There's lots of stuff like that. I'm thinking most of our "ambient tracks" would be ambient sounds like this tied together with occasional spots of tuneful music, if you know what I mean. Try playing any of the Worms games and listen to their music. It's the closest thing I can find to my idea. Except ours would be more "musical."

Oh well, maybe that doesn't make sense either. Sheesh.

About resizing CHRs. We're doing that too. I know every verger is going to have a conniption fit when they read this, but...

OUR CHR'S ARE 81x81!

Yes, it's an odd number. That's cuz auroraborealisis prefers CHR's with 1-pixel centers, while standard Verge CHR's have 2-pixel centers. (Ask him if that doesn't make sense. Obviously I'm not doing too well at this today :)

It is true that hotspots are locked at 16x16. It's a pisser, but there's a way around it. Here's what we've done.

We have this big 81x81 square, right? But the character, despite being about 75 pixels tall, is only around 40 or so wide. The square is wide to allow him room for special actions. Our main character will be putting on his shirt and tech vest at the beginning of our game, all in animated glory. We need the space.

Anyway, back to the point :)

We centered the hotspot around his feet. His feet actually take up about 32x16 pixels, though, and his shoulders extend beyond that. All you have to do (even though it *will* be kind of a pain) is "pad" your walls on your maps with extra obstructions. Here's a pathetic ASCII example since I'm bored :)

|* *|
|* *|
|* *|
|* *|
|* *|

| = wall (obstructed tile, drawn as a wall)
* = ground (obstructed tile, drawn as ground)
= ground (unobstructed, also drawn as ground)

That was utterly pointless.

I will talk to auroraborealisis about all this. It sounds like you are more inclined to do maps than music. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I would like to throw out one more possibility that I think I forgot to mention. We will need lots of battle effects, i.e. spell effects and such. BIG ones. What do you think?

That is all.

--Invicticide

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For right now, spell effects are images used in conjunction with VC scripts. Basically, every effect will have its own unique VC function to run it. I'm scripting those effects. VC effects will move images around, draw them with translucency, animate them, distort them, make sounds, and whatever else special the effect needs. So the artistic side of it is those images. Pretty much every effect would have many images as it's "frames" of animation (since Verge can't load a grid of frames and break them up.) Kinda sloppy, I know, but unless we figure out a better way to handle this, that's how it is.

To be specific, they'd be hicolor PCX or BMP images in whatever size each spell effect called for (they'd all be different.) Spell effects would have to be planned before any art or scripting was done, so we could coordinate in a most efficient manner :)

Again, I'll run this stuff by auroraborealisis when he gets back from his damnable camping trip (he's supposed to be back sometime today, but I have to work later, and I might miss him.) I'll let you know ASAP.

That is all.

--Invicticide

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Damnable camping trip? Invicticide? :0)

not a lot to say, btw Ulver, Invicticide lives maybe 200 yards from my house, so whenever he or I post, we're most likely talking to you.

just my comments on all the conversations that took place in my absence:

concerning maps:

he and I have both taken cracks at vsp editing and have come up empty handed, however, I'm confident in my photoshop abilities. we came to the conclusion that we would have a VERY simple vsp set ( I invision mostly solid colors, maybe some shading ) and then a VERY complex entities set that we would overlay on top of the vsp's everywhere we could fit them. In my opinion, we need the most help ( concerning map editing ) with our base vsp's : marble floors, wood floors, grass, sone\brick walls etc. what-have-you. help with the entities is allways appreciated, but I think visually, we take a big hit in our inability to create tileable vsp's.

Musically:

Ambience is key. in dungens I want loads of ambience ( which is not necesarily under the umbrella of music tracks, but could be ) with intermittent music. I'm not looking for grand large orchestral stuff, I think thats over-shooting it big time, but I am looking for quite a few individual tracks, some sharing a common theme. I.E. I want a different song for every town in the game ( big task ) I want different tracks for every dungen ( somewhat smaller task ) i want incidental music to convey mood, I want character specific tracks, and I want a couple different battle tracks. overall, I want quantity not quality. whille the music should be good, I'm fine with very few instruments in each.

Spell effects:

these will have nothing to do with the chr annimations, but rather be full screen, or individual entity effects. lots of sparks and glitter and all that good stuff ( highcolor ) to overlay the battle. I don't have any specifics decided, but I'm rather just trying to give you a feel for what I'm trying to create. any given full screen effect could be compared to it raining or snowing in a map ( which we will probably also be doing ), its just a nice looking effect. blah.

thats it, I think, btw, I love doing chr's I'd be more than willing to help in that area on sheolwolf ( hoped I spelled that right ). and another thing, on your main page in the titlebar is the "old war chant" or something like that? anyhow, I was very impressed but forgot to mention it earlier. are you a writer\poet aswell? just schpieling.

-Auroraborealisis

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Behind an apparent aesthetic repugnance for politics sometimes lurks a vulgar conservative sensibility. ...The intellectual, just like any fool, is subject to the influence of his environment, his education and his interests. His inteligence does not op

on tracking: yeah music is a big part of my life too.. and there is so much in my head that i just cant put to a mod. right now its hard for me to get a note to sound like it does in my head or when I play it, I end up scraping complete ideas all together because they arent easy to track. Another problem is the mods for some reason sound a lot worse when they are used in VERGE. they become louder and there is a fuzzy static sound to them. Im not sure how much I can help with tracks. I will continue to play around with it and see what happens. not tonight though. got fed up with it. kinda frustrating to have something in head or hand and not be able to reproduce it on track.

I do write yes, poetry and other... I love to create my ideas through various mediums. drawing, painting, writing, music, legos... hehe. oh yeah, and VERGE RPGs :oP Sheolwulf is like your project in that it has been peiced together over years. then one day I decided to see if I could make a game out of it.

I can definately help with tiles.. stone walls and the like. spell effects seem easy enough. if you need help with map design (like actual layout and placement of things) I can do that too. I love to map, reminds me of my days with Duke Nukem. Music, as said before, is a little fuzzy right now.

I could probably use a good CHR creator for Sheolwulf... the monsters on the page were a short list... that was shortened even more... to preserve my sanity. there are pages of creatures and characters belonging to Sheolwulf. gotta sift through em all. Speaking of CHRs, man I wish we had 800X600 ability :)
http://www.geocities.com/sheolwulf/evolution.JPG
Unfortunately Ill have to find a middle ground between the last two :(
Hmmm... the nights still young... time to soak up some caffine...
Later,
-Ulver

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