[RMVX] Era: Fated Renaissance

-Authors Note-
I will try to keep this post updated when I get some more stuff developed and I will post some new screenshots that are a little more up to date. I should be able to make a short preview video fairly soon and I will likely update the screenshots to some better in-game shots tomorrow. I actually like this title now  may still change it later if I think of something better but it works.

-Story Development-
Essentially the game follows 4 main characters although not always from one characters point of view. So in other words there is not one characters view with 3 companions, instead the story will alternate between the 4 characters with their paths crossing in different ways. I decided on this play storyline style because of the nature of how the story line would progress and to give a feel of the development of ideas between all of the characters while being independent of another characters opinions.

-Recent developments-
Finally have a name I like and completed title screen
Completed storyboard up through the demo
Finished composition of Lynn's Theme
90% complete with detail work in Western Europe

-Backstory-
Thousands of years after the fall of the world small surviving nomadic groups have started to come back together to reform civilization. The only memories of the old world lay in optimistic tales past on orally through generations breeding new ideologies and religions based on the vast power of their ancient ancestors, although as society advances and populations begin to encroach upon hidden areas of the world old ruins of the lost civilization begin to be discovered breeding new thoughts and ambitions among large countries. One excavation finds an old research lab for a project on human hibernation which finds a preserved living girl form the old world. As this girl wakes in the world to discover all that has changed she sets out to discover the truth about the old world and encounters not only threats from the major powers of the world but also disagreements and misunderstandings within her small group of companions.

Spoiler for -Characters-:

~Good~

Name: Lynn Ellington
Age: 15
Occupation: Wanderer
Personality: Very independent but can be smug when she is right. She is the most intelligent of the four main characters but often gets sidetracked on misguided tangents. At times she can be very pessimistic though she tries to not show it.
Story: Originally a young girl of the old world and daughter to a scientist she was offered up as a healthy test subject in a hibernation project to preserve people for disease treatment at a later date. she witnessed the stress of the old world but was in hibernation for the entirety of its downfall. Exploration of old world ruins brought her into the new world still unconscious aboard a ship headed towards the largest imperial country (Located in modern day Australia). An accident causes Lynn to be sent overboard unbeknownst to the crew where she washes ashore near a small oppressed coastal town. Eventually Lynn decides to leave the small town to find out what happened to the world.


Name: Alec
Age: 16
Occupation: Village Boy
Personality: Alec is the most ditsy of the four main characters and is often seen as awkwardly happy, although he is also very obsessive and puts all his effort into his task.
Story: Growing up in a oppressed small town he found a girl lost in the ocean and puzzled by her strange speech and stories obsesses over her and eventually decides to follow her to learn about her origins.


Name: Avery
Age: 14
Occupation: Elf
Personality: Avery is the most expressive of the four characters and very keen on holding and following through with grudges. She can also be very foolish and fickle.
Story: Met Alec in a forest while he was looking for Lynn and brought him to the elven village (descendants of humans that where isolated in the forests for many years) where she decided to join him on his journey so she can escape the confines of the forest.


Name: Kimi
Age: 17
Occupation: Convict
Personality: Though initially seen as very firm and strict she is the girlish of the four characters and often teased for her social awkwardness. Kimi is also the most logical and often resorts to blunt sarcastic humor.
Story: Traveled land in search of her parents until she ran into Avery in the capital city of the empire when she was being persecuted for murder. After saving Avery from a group of thugs she begins to fall in love with her and agrees to travel with Alec and Avery. During her travels she finds that she is the daughter of the "queen" Adenah and struggles with Enlil to regain control over the Emperor Ryan

~Neutral~
Name: Enlil
Age: 39
Occupation: Grand General
Story: Born as the prince of the empire but held distaste for the actions of his father which had tried to prevent him from being with Adenah so he worked with Ryan to oust the former king. After his father left the throne he rejected the crown and worked to give Ryan power and public so that he could stay with Adenah and now works as the head general under Ryan and willingly supports him only for the agreements for Adenah's well being. Enlil is commonly referred to as the most powerful man in the world due to his use of public image although he is also referred to as the do-nothing prince for his lack of actions. Enlil is motivated only for his love of Adenah and focuses all his actions on her.

Name: Adenah
Age: 36
Occupation: Tactician
Story: Abused as a child and growing up she eventually had a child as the result of being "attacked" and the child was taken from her and sold into slavery. Enlil met her and fell in love and fought to save her but in the chaos of events she was beaten and is no longer able to speak. Despite her disability she is extremely intelligent and works as the head military tactician.

~Bad~
Name: Ryan
Age: 45
Occupation: Dictator of the empire
Story: After ousting the former ruler he became leader with the help of Enlil and is regarded as a hero amongst the people of the empire. Although after the discovery of the ancient libraries and the reconstruction of the old religion he began to suppress the rest of the world in efforts of domination disguised as the salvation through the religions of the old world. Ryan names himself as the dual emperor commanding power over his empire and power over the holy land of angels (based off his misguided readings about the pope)

Spoiler for -Features-:

-Vast landscapes with lots to explore including in depth side quests that give a deeper understanding of the story
-Custom music (recorded and edited with Audacity) (Currently it is only with guitar but if i can get another cord I will add some violin as well)
-Story is told from 4 points of view

Spoiler for -Screenshots-:

Spoiler for Title Screen:

Spoiler for World Map:

Spoiler for Indian Ocean:

Spoiler for North America:

Spoiler for Japan and Korea:

Spoiler for Amazon River:

Spoiler for Himalayas:

-Credits-
Famitsu Character Generator
Moramonga's Faceset Generator
Grafikal - Tilesets

-Third Party Software-
Guitar Pro 5.2 (For composition)
Audacity 1.2.6 (For recording and editing)
Gimp 2.6.10 (Image Editing)


Any advice or comments would be helpful and keep in mind that there are still many undecided things at this point.

Your story is downright spectacular (possible exaggeration). I began reading thinking it was just another one of those apocalypse stories, but you put quite a cool spin on the whole thing. The map really shows a good deal of determination. I'm hoping you go through with this because I'd love to see where this goes.

I wish I had some tips and ideas to hand over, but I've got nothing. Good luck sir.

EDIT: or ma'am.

Marvellous story, I agree. If you're looking for a better world map set, copy Tile B from grafikal's VX RTP+. I don't have the link right now, but I think it's on the first page of the VX Resource Database.
And, not to split hairs, but Australia is much more desert than what you've made - it's slightly less in the west and more east than that. Tasmania also needs to be more rounded on the east side. Also your Iceland looks a little big and should be further south-east. You should also consider moving Australia, Indonesia and Madagascar further south. These are all things that only people looking for errors would find.
I absolutely adore what you've done with Alaska and Africa. And the Murray-Darling. Nice Andes by the way. Overall the world map is fantastic.

Marvellous story, I agree. If you're looking for a better world map set, copy Tile B from grafikal's VX RTP+. I don't have the link right now, but I think it's on the first page of the VX Resource Database.
And, not to split hairs, but Australia is much more desert than what you've made - it's slightly less in the west and more east than that. Tasmania also needs to be more rounded on the east side. Also your Iceland looks a little big and should be further south-east. You should also consider moving Australia, Indonesia and Madagascar further south. These are all things that only people looking for errors would find.
I absolutely adore what you've done with Alaska and Africa. And the Murray-Darling. Nice Andes by the way. Overall the world map is fantastic.

Actually the size and placement of all the continents and large islands was based exactly on a map and put there based on how I made it. Basically the outline of everything was done by taking a large map cropping out the top and bottom edge to a spot that looked nice and then colorizing the water and land into black or white. Then I opened it in paint and copied the map EXACTLY pixel by pixel... that's why it is a sort of odd size (500x291). Afterward I put in all the details and stuff and edited some stuff to fix some errors caused by resizing the original map (the map took around 6 hours total to get to the point that it is at now). Although for playing I can understand moving things around a bit more to make it look nicer and more to what people expect to see. Also as for some of the climate details I put some changes in because the time is thousands of years past the present date which are loosely based of the book Six Degrees by Mark Lynas which outlines some possible changes as a result of climate change.

Also I did look around for a good tileset but eventually gave up and decided to go with as much rtp as I needed for now with the thought that I can always change it later.

Thanks for your guys input I am working on some more stuff *mainly planning and characterization* if I keep being interested and decide to take this project all the way I will probably look for some people to help but as of now I will still keep going solo till I know what I want to do. I'll keep updating this post with stuff as I develop more parts until I have a full grasp on the project. Also any more input would gladly be accepted. =D

I'm still wondering how you'll be going about traveling. Can you initially go around that massive map you've created? And will there be combat?

I'm still wondering how you'll be going about traveling. Can you initially go around that massive map you've created? And will there be combat?

I plan to add small physical or event barriers as the story needs it when I start adding the minor details to prevent to much exploration although I will likely leave parts of the story somewhat open so that players could go to different places to see different parts of the story. Also ports will likely be automated so free sailing probably wont be accessible until close to the end. As for wild encounters my only idea so far has been to make tedious good use of the areas system in rmvx. (I really wish you could make areas be abstract shapes X.x guess I would have to make a lot of 1x1 and 2x1 areas...)

Also as I'm already posting I thought I would mention that I made character sets and face sets with 8 emotions for the 4 main characters and updated the original post to add a brief description of personality along with 1 of the emotions for each character. (character sets and face sets were made with the Famitsu character generator and the Moramonga face set generator)

I've always liked the look of the faces made with that Generator, only problem is you can't really make older people too well with it.

Ya I have thought about possibly trying to go into photoshop and edit a face to make it look like like its older and stuff and see if there is an easy method, really I would only need a few with some possible color edits for npcs and the rare occasion of an older important character.

If your looking for faces ill make some for ya just tell me what you need

If your looking for faces ill make some for ya just tell me what you need

I really appreciate your offer although I want all the facesets to match in the same style so if I asked you to do them I would need face sets for EVERY character including different expressions for each face which would probably be extremely overwhelming.

Eventually if I am ready to do a complete overhaul to a more custom looking faceset set I'll talk to you.

O.M.G!!!!
I'm stunned looking at the world map and how detailed it is! Sure, a few changes to the tiles would be nice, but this is .... Must have taken hours and hours to finish a world map at this scale. Since I've attempted to make one myself for the never-actually-began Uncharted Waters fangame, this world map is pure epicness XD


The story is pretty interesting as well ~ I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how this game will turn out

Thanks for the compliment. =D The world map in the picture took about 6-7 hours combined time to get to that point and another 2-3 hours have been spent on fine tuning some of the detail works mainly in relation to forests near rivers as there is an unnatural buffer zone between them on the map I posted so I fixed some of that. Also I have spent roughly an hour on more fine details to north and west Europe to get the boundaries of area movement settled and looknig nice as well as doing events to fit the story and stuff. Unfortunately I'm not to great at graphical editing stuff so at the moment I'm stuck with bits and pieces form what grafikal put together for tilesets until I can get someone to help me get one that would work specifically for my game, but I wont bother with finding that till I get closer to having enough content for a demo.