[XP] Quintessence - The Blighted Venom [Revamped]

Awesome! A new chapter! I am downloading now.

(Sorry for the inactiveness on this board, the production of the next chapter and activities elsewhere have been keeping me busy.)

Chapter VII's production is still going smoothly.

A couple of sample map screenshots:


~~~

Demo video for the NON-BATTLE transformation system is now up!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZNrdbQlgmM

The design was changed from the initial plan. Not much going on in there, just the basis for the system.

Spoiler for:

Non-battle Beta version.

Control:
Hold down Z and the window will appear. Press X to move the cursor to the appropriate selection, let go of Z; it will transform to the selection (if the hair or whatever component of the form is in inventory) and gain its special attributes.

Not all of those forms and uses (e.g. flying) as demonstrated in this video will be available right in Chapter VII, as this is just testing some limitations of the system. So don't be too excited about flying everywhere, yet. :p

This is the non-battle system sample. Some notable attributes for the forms in the video (subjected to change):
-Black Hawk: Fly
-Wolves: Faster traveling speed
-Tiger: Decent speed and ability to do long leaps

In the battle system, it will be the special attributes plus individualized battle skills for each form to add variety. More will come on that.

Screenshots:

Spoiler for:

Now to work on the battle system addition/edits/skill codings. :x Feedback welcomed.

So how much time do you estimate will take you to finish chapter VII?  Is there still a lot to do?  Or are you almost done?

Sorry for the lack of updates on this forum. Activities on the home forum and .org have been a bit straining, so I figured it'd be best to give it a rest at times. But!

To make up for it, several news/updates and whatnot:


Misaos Inter-Community RM Award participation:

Upon its first time participation, Quintessence managed to acquire numerous awards as listed below.
 
* Best Atmosphere
* Best Cast of Characters
* Best Introduction
* Best Music
* Best RMXP Game
* Best Storyline
* Best Supporting Character (Vikon)
* Sleeper Hit of the Year

However, note that Misaos is a user nomination based award, hence there certainly exists bias in one way or another - This year, the majority of the voters came from hbgames.org. None the less, it was certainly quite a pleasant surprise.

~~~~~~

-New mid-chapter tech demo:
[*NOT the actual game, but rather just a system preview demo.]



Download:
http://www.quintessence-tbv.com/Quintessence_SystemDemo65.exe

Note: Read the HINT text file. Do not forget to use the transformation functions, as it is the main showcase of the demo - both in-battle and out of battle. Press Z to do so. (In battle, making Lunair the active character is required.)

Screenshots:




If you are stuck at finding the battle portal:

Spoiler for:

Change into hawk form and fly to near the North East corner of the map.

Videos:
Out-of-battle:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=HZNrdbQlgmM

In-battle [SPOILER TO THIS DEMO]:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2G2VF6cq7mk

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That aside, Chapter 7 is more than halfway complete. I'll leave this off with a couple of preview screenshots:





(Some mapping errors are in the above ss, please excuse.)


And on a last note, several new fanarts and whatnot have been added to the main site: www.quintessence-tbv.com Located in media -> artworks/fanarts section. Many thanks to the artists.

~Cheers!

Wow, congratulations on all the great awards - you really cleaned house 

Anyway, the updates look really nice Reives. One thing about the last screenshot. Reives looks like he is really tall His legs might be too long for him I think. That's pretty minor of course. Anyway, it's looking really good 

Yeah, minor. I didn't notice that until you said

I'm thinking of downloading this again, I played an earlier demo, and it still gets 9.95/10 (Always room for improvement).
And, as modern said, congratz on the awards

Ah good catch, I need to go fix that sometimes. Thanks for the pointer.

Oh and by the way, Rune, that demo in the post above is a system/tech demo - it isn't really a part of the actual game, but rather a preview of the transformation system and some extra-feature boss fight and whatnot (see video in the post). The link to downloading the actual game (chapter 1 to 6) is located in first post. ( The general consensus of the quality of the chapters are as follows: ~ 6 > 5 > 4 > 3 = 1 > 2 , somewhere along those lines. )


Here's a couple of the new fanarts that were particularly well done, so I thought I'd just share them here for fun:

Vikon by Makio-Kuta (Valentine):


Lunair by kiearaphoenix:


Many thanks to them for making it.

Yeah, I knew that Thanks anyway

Preview to a little mini-game thingy, not yet finished:


--> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v9sUzNpAus
[With recording lag, which lagged audio-video pacing.]

wow, that looks awesome, super fun XD great job.

WOWWWW this is amazing I beat the Demo Chap 1-6 IT was Awesome
The 6.5 chap was Incredible as well that new Transformation system owned!

I love the story,and This is my Favorite Rpg maker Xp game ever.
but its kinda Weird I have windows vista and I can play this game.....Maybe it has something to do with rpg maker vx,anyways the game is awesome.

Thanks. I did a little overhaul with the intro and whatnot again this upcoming release, so that should be improved.

Chapter 7 is coming most likely this weekend. It is over 2 hours; the longest chapter yet.


Now, I need some help, if any one would be kindly interested:

One copy of early-bird release available:

I am looking for one person to help with playing through Chapter 7 before its official release this weekend. This special early copy will be ready in the next couple of days. You won't need to take notes like a serious beta-tester or anything; but rather just play through it and tell me what you think in general.

However, I just need one person to help with it. So, if you are kindly interested, here's how this works.

Post a number between 1 to 1000 on the following linked thread (only!): http://www.quintessence-tbv.com/forum/index.php?topic=238.0

This .rar file:
http://www.quintessence-tbv.com/secret_number.rar
is password protected. When the guessing session expires, I will announce the password of the file there. Inside the file is a text file containing a number between 1 - 1000. The one who's guess is the closest gets it.

Thanks for your time! 

Chapter VII - Savior [Length: ~1 hour 15 min]
Chapter VIII - White Lie [Length: ~1 hour 15 min]

Download:
Chapter 1-8 package v1.0:
http://www.quintessence-tbv.com/Q_C1-8v1.0.exe

Dear returning players:
Please use the following save file, saved near the end of Chapter 6, to continue. Using your own old saves might result in glitches.
http://www.quintessence-tbv.com/Eo6_Save.rar



Chapter 7 and 8, in my opinion, are certainly higher quality than Chapter 5 (and hence chapter 1-4). However, it is difficult to compare with Chapter 6 due to the contrast in scenario. Compared with 6, 7 and 8 are somewhat "calm after a storm before another storm" or whatnot.



None the less, it has some of my favourite things in the series so far. Favourite cut-scene, favourite sub-story near the end of Chapter 8, and my favourite song composed by James Q. Zhang (also at the end of C8). Speaking of which, there is something extra after the Ending Music Video after the end of C8 this time; so don't exit right away!



The chapter also contains at least 7 new tracks added to the original soundtrack. [Also, while not included in this release, the ending theme Drift is to be performed by the extremely talented miss matcha (Laura Shigihara) in the near future. So look out for that, and check out her project with some of the coolest original BGMs around here!]

I apologize about the large size of this release; it is unavoidable as things build up. The entire game-play time is now approximately 7-8 hours. In the future, I will make audio-free releases, sparing the repetitive audio size.


This release also contains some revamping of earlier content; but sadly, due to time constraint, only intro was notably improved. Other things, such as in Chapter 1-4, have been slightly revamped in parts, but not nearly enough as I had hoped and needed to keep in par with the newer releases. Chapter 2 is still quite the drowner.

None the less, it might be a good idea to replay just the intro part to see the changes. Some of which is valuable to the plot and foreshadowing of future events. [From intro up to the beginning of Chapter I.]

That is it for now. All feedbacks are welcomed and greatly appreciated as always. Feel free to start topics on the main forum www.quintessence-tbv.com/forum about in-game contents! New userbars are coming in the near future.

Chapter 8 too? I thought just chapter 7 was coming out. Anyway, that's awesome. I am downloading.

Yes, it was a big surprise!  I played the new chapters all day and I am wanting more now... 

By the way, notice how much the music's quality has improved!

Also, there are some interesting discussions at the official forums right now, so you should check if you want to talk about the story without being afraid to reveal spoilers. 

I don't know if someones already pointed it out but in the first house (the one thats empty and has all the lettce) the barrel has a script error when i tried to interact with it. If it was already pointed out then i guess its my turn to comment.

Well up until the error a really good looking game i glad i decided to DL it, keep it going

Thanks Arwym!

And ah, thank you for the heads up, Yuki. I fixed it up now, the dl URL is the same as before:
http://www.quintessence-tbv.com/Q_C1-8v1.0.exe
[If you are using the older version, there's no real need to redownload; just don't check the barrels in Chapter 1.]


Here's a video of the mallet mini-game, someone asked about it somewhere else and I thought it wouldn't hurt to post it here for fun too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTGCiReX8LA

Lol, that Mini-Game sure looks funny. I even recognize some of the characters in it:). Which characters is from which games?

And ah, thank you for the heads up, Yuki.

No problem, I also found that the far left house has an issue the grass to the right right next to the edge of the hill allows you to walk onto the hill from the side going left. Sorry if I'm making this more like a game testing job but just trying to help you out a bit 

@Shadow:
Aye, the cameos are in the vid description. Here's the list:

Cameos:
Shroud - MotW
Stoic - MotW
Kix - Ethereal Dreams
Darin - Ethereal Dreams
Ryaena- Ethereal Dreams
A Leeble - The Blue Star
Enna - Interim

@Yuki:
Thanks! And no worries, bug/glitch reports are very appreciated. I have a growing list compiled thanks to you guys, and will get to fixing them when I get the time in the near future.

My apologies for double posting, but this made my month:



http://www.quintessence-tbv.com/Drift.mp3

Drift - <Quintessence TBV> Ending Theme
Performed by: Laura Shigihara
Composed by: Kan Gao (Reives)
(c) Quintessence - TBV

This is my first composition that involves singing, and actually sang (beautifully)! Needless to say I was very excited when she sent me the tracks; I immediately sat for 4 hours mixing it, heheh.

Anyhow, enjoy! You can find Laura Shigihara's pop music site here:
http://www.mybluedream.com/


So voila, here's to Quintessence's first performed track, and cheers to Laura!

Sounds great. Very nice song Reives.

O_O WOWS

I loved that

thats amazing, she's got a great voice, it fits the song so well >_>

*adds to itunes* XD

Thanks, modern and monkey!

Speaking of which, the song's link was updated a few times with minor changes since its first release. The biggest change I suppose is an added cello part during the instrumental part in the middle.


Chapter 9 is now in production.



Length: Approximately 45 minutes - 1 hour. (Subjected to change.)
Synopsis: . . .You wish. :p

This chapter will include game-play, via battles and possibly mini-games and the like. It is linear, and does continue from where Chapter 8 left off at. Primarily story oriented should go without saying by now.

Cheers~

I imagine it will be awesome as usual. I feel like playing all the way from Chapter 1 again in anticipation. You may have answered this before, but how many chapters are planned?