M A Y    2 0 0 2 05-26-2202, 2:57pm - I've added a new game in the downloads section. It is a playable demo of Slayer, a mini RPG being created by Lithium. I contributed the musical score for the demo. That, is one of the latest screenies from my mini RPG. I held a vote over at the DarkBoard to decide which one I should show, and this was the winner. Actually, there was a tie, so I chose this out of the two winners. As you can see, it's coming along nicely. The FF3(6j) style houses came out exactly as I wanted them. Let me tell you, I never want to stare at FF6 screenshots again, heh. It was however, a good study to see how it was done. I think I emulated the style well, but modified for this game of course. The major thing I needed to do, was make sure that they would look good as small houses, since the viewable screen will only be 8x8 tiles. If you go to the articles section, you will notice a new addition to the "So You Want to Make an RPG in Qbasic?" tutorial. This one, shows you how to use gifs, and custom palettes in your game. Finally, I'm likely going to implement a blog-like comments scheme for next month (thanks, Mandrake!)... so you will be able to comment on new updates and such. 05-22-2002, 3:12am - There is a new section available now; the articles. Of course, as I've just started this section, it is a bit light on the content side. However, there is an article available. It's the very first part of my new series of tutorials: "So You Want to Write an RPG in Qbasic?". In the future, I will add interviews, and development journals... as well as more tutorials. This is another screenie of my mini rpg. As you can see, I've added more to the tileset, and now, the main character is there as well. Oh, this shot is only the viewable area, and it's blown up to 2x size, to show detail. 05-14-2002, 10:47pm - I've put more thought into the mini RPG thing. Seems like I might have a lot of fun with it. I've just been listening to the Xenogears OST, and playing around with the trees from the tileset I showed a few days back. That's what the tileset looks like now. I will probably add some mountainy type stuff to it, and get to actually using it in a tile engine, heh. Of course, I'll need to draw a test sprite for that too. Perhaps... I'll even use Cooey in this little game. Oh yeah, I've also updated the links section, and added a new link. DarkDread approved, of course. ;) 05-10-2002, 12:26pm - Work has begun on a secret project between myself, and an ex-Darkness Ethereal member. For the moment, we don't plan on revealing any hard information about the project, other than to say that it will be an RPG, and it will be a sequel to a Darkness Ethereal game. Are you wet with anticipation? ...erm, anyway... one thing I will do, is show two enemies from the game. As you can see, the wait animations for both are more than just a pixel shift to show hovering. Granted, that is in both animations, but there is much more going on. Fred is bending his legs, and moving one arm. The fish enemy, is swinging it's tail, and shifting the fin like claws. One of our goals with this game, will be to provide meticulously (did I spell that right?) animated enemies. The two frames that you see above, put both enemies at a completion rate of only 20% (at most), and even at this point, the waiting animations have not been perfected. At any rate, these are test enemies for now. There is a chance that one, or both, of them may not even make it in the game. See what kind of cool 'insider' stuff you get from reading this site? ;) Feel free to fire off an e-mail my way, and tell me what you think. 05-04-2002, 12:50am - I'm thinking about making a series of mini RPGs. Basically, code one engine and set of script routines, then, when I fancy, I can add another chapter to it. That, would be a five minute pixel job. Just something I did, so I can have some tiles to play around with, should I decide to go ahead with the engine and scripts. Yes, the trees are ugly... they're certainly temporary. At this stage, there is no point in spending a lot of time on tiles, 'cause I don't know if I will finish this up. Note the small viewing window... That is actually the way I plan to keep it. A small screen is fun when you're working with pixels... and it's a nice change from the 320x200 full screen games I've always done. 05-01-2002, 12:37am - As you can see (or not, if you've never been here before), I changed the colour scheme for the site... and, as has been tradition for the last four months, changed the logo. Granted, this one is similar to the last one, but that's because I liked the look of the last one, and thought I'd work at making it nicer. Anyway, you might expect to read me ranting a lot about Darkness Ethereal, and Mysterious Song DX for the next little while. This is because, that's what we've decided to do (well, okay, I've decided to do... but, those working on MSDX have agreed with me so far). Our goal right now, is to finish MSDX, and release it as quickly as we can. I do think it's about time DE had some product. Our last complete game was released in 2000. Can we say ouch? Other than that... I am still having fun working on LoGT... thinking about releasing a demo, or some sort of teaser. I won't promise one... but, you never know ;) -- DarkDread Site design, images, text, are (c) 1995 - 2003 M. Zuchowski. Falls under 'fair use' rights. Hosting provided by rpgdx.net