Author Topic: Hieros Gamos (Read 4506 times)

#1 • Dec 31, 2010

Hieros Gamos

Greetings, RMRK! I'm a former fakemon artist turned monster artist (you'd be surprised at the difference) here to promote a game I've been working on for about a month now, Hieros Gamos.

The project looks a bit... ambitious, even to me (I am the queen of ambitious projects. No lie), but I already have a great team of creature designers and spriters together, and I've had a few people show interest in sound effects/music and scripting. Want to join the team? Click HERE for info!

Game Info

Hieros Gamos is a 3v3 monster battling RPG similar in flavor to Dragon Warrior Monsters, Shin Megami Tensei and the newer Digimon games for the DS. The story is based in both the ancient practice of alchemy and the modern JRPG.

Story

In the world of Roeizek, alchemy has developed so much that it is the single driving force behind everything in the world. The form of alchemy used in Roeizek is homunculus based - most alchemists get by through summoning and binding powerful creatures to do their bidding. After they are finished with, these creatures get released into the wild, causing an influx of monsters surrounding towns and cities. This development called for a new breed of alchemist, one who had the utmost understanding of the homunculi - one who could bind any homunculus to their will.

You are the younger brother/sister of one of these alchemists. Your sister, Morgan, set off three years ago in order to study the Hieros Gamos, the ultimate breeding rite between two super-powerful homunculi. One year ago she was pronounced missing, and you haven't gotten any contact from her until now.

On your doorstep lays a small package. Inside said package is a large crystal - one homunculi are known to produce after they breed.

The return address is illegible, except for the name "Morgan".

The crystal begins to crack and glow. Out of it comes a small homunculus, one of the likes you have never seen before. It appears to be already bound to you, and talks to you as if it has known you for years.

Why would your sister send you this kind of package? What's up with getting a homunculus in the mail? What kind of homunculus is it anyways?

So would begin your long journey as an alchemist, searching for the secrets of your sister and the Hieros Gamos.

Features

EDITED: My friend neglected to tell me that the "512" number she gave me included the 4 ranks of each. So no, there aren't over 500 homunculi, unless you're counting ranks as seperate types. Which they really aren't. However...

-Raise, breed, talk to and battle with over 120 Homunculi in their 4 stages of growth
-In-depth "life stage" and "personality" systems give your homunculi a mind of their own
-Breeding, variety in homunculi, and post-story content give replay value
-Traditional, turn-based battles couple with elemental combination attacks for limitless strategy - think Pokemon Black and White's Triple Battles
-Difficulty about the level of a Shin Megami Tensei game on Normal - hard, but not impossibly hard
-Engaging story with multiple endings
-Homunculi designed by longtime designers of Fake Pokemon - we know what we're doing!

Team

Too see someone's artwork, look them up on Deviantart. Note - old work on dA may not be evident of current skills.

Creature Designers/Spriters
Mojanbo (that's me!)
Shira-Kaeru
BynineB
Mewchild
SphericalIce
KamDunbar
OrangeAipom
XiaPherix

HUD Designer
Bzuma

Music/SFX, Tile Spriters and Scripters are all positions in need of filling, but more creature designers are always great!

Special Thanks

Masquerain would like to thank the following people:
-Chris2Balls of tSR, for his amazing sprite critique
-Damain of PxC, for his great encouragement
-And all of my friends who believe this will happen!

I'm waiting until I get a scripter to make the basic needed scripts to make the game work before I begin even touching RPG Maker, besides for mapping. Thus, no screenshots at the moment. However, please enjoy this list of homunculi and the elements/planets they are classified by in lieu of pretty pictures (though I'd consider the sprites on our headers "pretty pictures")

Spoiler for Current Homunculus List:

Hope to hear your feedback!

#2 • Jan 1, 2011

YOU made those sprites? Damn, those are better than most sprites I see by professional developers at Sega, Nintendo, Capcom, etc.

The story and formula of the game sounds very interesting! And since i loved Dragon Quest: Monsters and Pokemon as a child, I think I'll be wanting to try this one out. However, I see no screenshots, demos, or even concept drawings of battles. There's not much for me to physically critique, since there's no physical content for this game yet.

Take all the time you need and such, but I, personally, just can't realy give a confident critique of this project yet, and this may be why others haven't. Good luck with this though! I always adored these kinds of games.

#3 • Jan 4, 2011

watching this, I'm highly interested.

#4 • Jan 5, 2011

Glad to see there are people interested!

Narwhals: I still don't have any super-concrete content yet (considering most people want to work on monster designs first), but let me see if I can explain a few things:

The battle system I'm currently using is the frontview, no battlers version of Battle Engine Melody by Yanfly. At this point I'm not sure if I'll be using a basic turn-based battle system or a press turn system to support the combination attacks afforded by the complex element skills.

At the moment I'm using an eventing system for monster capture. It works, but it only allows for a few homunculi to be made, as each one requires 18 or more actors for each homunculus, which is why we need a scripter ASAP.

Okay, I caved, here's an EXTREMELY basic, unedited battle test:

Like I said, it's a very basic and unedited Battle Engine Melody - this was just set up to show what format the battles would be in and how the sprites would be positioned. The facesets for the creatures were done in like 5 minutes in paint. :T

Once I get a few more assets and mess around with the Melody scripts a bit more, I'll post another battle screenshot.

Also, if anyone's interested, links to the game's new website and forums in my sig. (There was no rule against this that I saw - remove this line if it's against the rules)

#5 • Jan 5, 2011

I have to say that I like complexity of strategy in battle systems, so I'd go that route.

Edit: Also I'm a huge SMT fanatic, so...yeah.

#6 • Jan 5, 2011

Yeah, I love SMT too, but the issue is that the game could end up looking too similar to SMT if I had the Press Turn system, plus the recruitment.

I'm thinking combining my two ideas and having the element combos in a regular turn-based system.

The other issue with Press Turn is that sometimes the elements that a creature represents, and thus are weak to, would be more obvious in Hieros Gamos than in the SMT series.

Anyways, I'll think on it.

#7 • Jan 5, 2011

for "5 minutes in paint" those are some goddamn amazing facesets.

#8 • Jan 5, 2011

Quote from: masquerain on January 05, 2011, 05:13:43 AM

Yeah, I love SMT too, but the issue is that the game could end up looking too similar to SMT if I had the Press Turn system, plus the recruitment.

I'm thinking combining my two ideas and having the element combos in a regular turn-based system.

The other issue with Press Turn is that sometimes the elements that a creature represents, and thus are weak to, would be more obvious in Hieros Gamos than in the SMT series.

Anyways, I'll think on it.

I actually would say that elemental hierarchy was pretty obvious in SMT games.

I don't think it'll look too much like SMT just because of the battle system, but that's something to consider anyway. On the other hand, if it's just flat turn-based it'll look like pokemon, or DQM.

I don't think that's something a developer should worry about so much as just delivering a quality product. This is RPG Maker. Nobody gets bent out of shape with people for borrowing game mechanics from their favorite games. Hell, half of the scripts and script requests out there are for [x] feature from [y] game.

Good to see someone who puts thought into their work though.

#9 • Mar 12, 2011

Hey, sorry for the long hiatus but I'm posting to show that some work has been done on the game. It's slow, but we still don't have a scripter (hint hint) so that's the way it goes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT-DgPVB3WE&feature=channel_video_title

The above is a very basic preview of the battle and taming systems without any scripts besides Melody Engine.

#10 • Mar 13, 2011

I commented on the video, but I'll do the questioning here. What sort of reactions can occur from conversation with the creatures? Because it's very Persona-like, i'd expect that they would do things like: fleeing, attacking, becoming friendly and what not. Is it simply attack or tame? Also, do monsters of the same kind have the same questions? Meaning that if you found "Monster X", talked to it then finished the battle, then found another "Monster X" - would it have the same question? Unless there is only one of each monster.

#11 • Mar 13, 2011

Quote from: hiromu656 on March 13, 2011, 04:36:50 AM

I commented on the video, but I'll do the questioning here. What sort of reactions can occur from conversation with the creatures? Because it's very Persona-like, i'd expect that they would do things like: fleeing, attacking, becoming friendly and what not. Is it simply attack or tame? Also, do monsters of the same kind have the same questions? Meaning that if you found "Monster X", talked to it then finished the battle, then found another "Monster X" - would it have the same question? Unless there is only one of each monster.

1. Yes, they can flee, attack you, or ask further questions, like in the Megaten games.

2. I plan on having several questions for each type of monster, with some overlapping, however I can't implement this without either a ridiculous amount of eventing or a few scripts. So at this point it's only one per monster.