Legionwood 2: Volume One

Saturday, 21st of April, 2012

It's finally out!

The first ever public release of Legionwood 2 (Beta Build 1.1) is now available for download. This release contains the entire first chapter of the game, which represents roughly 3-4 hours of gameplay time, with 4 dungeons, 2 towns and 5 bosses.

This release has been tested and as far as I can tell, all bugs have been ironed out, though balancing and difficulty issues may be present. There are also some small bugs that occur as a result of this being made in the Japanese VX Ace (namely that random squares appear in battle text and in the status screen) though these will likely be fixed when I port the project over to the English version.

That's great news! I'm downloading now.

Hi Seamus. Thanks for playing. There may still be some bugs (I had trouble with vanishing characters, due to working with a badly translated JP copy of Ace and not understanding commands properly, for one) so be sure to point them out if you find any.

The balancing may be a bit off as well. Some people have claimed to be able to blaze through the enemies really easily, so I may upload a new version with more difficult foes if that continues.

Just letting you know

Downloading now 

Hi guys, just letting everyone know that a new version is out (beta build 1.3) that fixes up quite a few balancing issues from the previously released version. You don't even have to download Legionwood 2 again, as I've uploaded it both in a full download and in a small update patch form.

Here's the changelog:
- Vanishing characters issue is fixed.
- Skipping the intro no longer prevents your characters from getting skills and items.
- Sub Classes no longer provide you with additional equipment options.
- Equipping a Sub Class now incurs a small statistical penalty, to attempt to balance equipping it.
- The Shield Earring no longer grants Attack. It now only grants Defense and Wisdom like it was meant to.
- The Swift Shoes now increase Agility by 20 instead of 50.
- There are no longer squares in the battle text.
- Enemies have had their Attack, Wisdom and Defense increased by 10%.
- The Curse Dryad is no longer encounterable in random encounters.
- Silencing now prevents Magus, Cleric and Rogue Techs from being used.
- Offense Ring, Mind Ring, Shoulder Pad and Shield Earring now grant percentage based bonuses.
- An extra cutscene has been added when the player enters the Forum in the intro.
- The description for the "Energy Bolt" item has been fixed.
- Battle items have been made slightly stronger.
- Inn fade out time has been decreased by half.
- Blacksmiths no longer ask the redundant "can I help you? yes/no" question.
- Various typos have been corrected.
- Shop scene has been upgraded to now show detailed information about purchases.

Sunday, April 29th, 2012

What Comes Next?

Well, initial reception of Legionwood 2 seems to have been fairly positive. The first comments about the game have been invaluable in balancing and refining the mechanics and story, and it's done a lot better than I thought it would.

Hence, I've been spurred on enough that I've decided to work on another Beta release that will become available some time within the next few weeks.

This new Beta (version 2.0) won't include Chapter 2, but it will be including about an hour of extra content beyond the end of the current release, as well as refined systems, cleaned up cutscenes and writing and more.

The second Beta of Legionwood 2 will allow you to see Chapter One: Emergent Enemies through to its thrilling end, as the story picks up with Lionel and the group coming to after the explosion in Ironrim Mine to find that they've been knocked into the Eternal Gate!
Now they've become stranded in a lifeless world of darkness and danger that exists on the other side of the Gate, and while they desperately try to survive in the wasteland of Westholm so that they can reopen the Gate and return home, they'll encounter a certain character from Legionwood 1 and start to learn about the nature of the Eternal Gates and why they pose a threat to Legionwood.

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

Ready for more adventuring?

As of today, the second public release of Legionwood 2 (Beta Build 2.0) is available for download. You'll be able to experience re-balanced gameplay, polished bugs and an entire hour of whole new content taking place in the world of Westholm, extending Chapter One: Emergent Enemies to 4 - 5 hours in length, with 7 dungeons, 2 towns and 7 bosses.

And, with that... I think that's it for now. I'll be taking a few months off Legionwood 2 in order to work on writing my next novel (since publishers give deadlines and all) and running the literary journal that I edit. Apart from updates for bug fixes and little gameplay tweaks, you probably won't be seeing Chapter Two for a while.

But it will come. Eventually.

Thanks for playing.

P.S You can resume playing the game using your old save file. To do this, just download the 2.0 build of Legionwood 2 and copy and paste your save files (Savexx.rvdata2) from the old directory to the new.

However, there is a small caveat: it appears VX Ace handles events after saving differently than VX. In VX, upon game load, the events present on the map will continue as they have been programmed, whereas in VX Ace, the events that were running when the game was saved will play first, even if those events no longer exist. Thus, loading a save taken at the very end of the last release will simply take you back to the title screen. You need to reload a save that was made at any time before the Brennus fight to be able to continue.

I'm aware of the bug now, and have carefully designed the end of this release to allow maximum save file compatibility.

Hey everyone!

If anyone's stuck, you can check out a video walkthrough of Chapter One made by Michaelkur. It goes all the way from start to finish and shows the sidequests, too, so it may help if you don't know what to do next. Find it here: http://rpgmaker.net/...3811/media/455/

In other news, Chapter Two is going along smoothly. I'm not far enough to set an exact release date yet, but I estimate that the next release should be done by August or September. Chapter Two: Aftermath and Alliance will add another four hours or so of gameplay to the game. The story sees you journeying out of Trevelle into Entoban to try and establish an alliance with the barbarians and find out who opened the Eternal Gates. There are two new towns to visit, five new dungeons, 20+ new Techs to try out and 2 new classes (Barbarian and Ranger) and a new character that you'll be able to unlock as you go through the story in this chapter. This chapter is also more non linear than Chapter One and will have multiple side quests to complete, as well as branching scenes and scenarios that are dependant on the moral choices you've been making in the game so far. You'll be able to face one of three distinct bosses at the end of the chapter, depending on Lionel's morality.

I'll bring more news as I get more done

Hi, everyone. I'm not sure whether it's safe to necropost in this topic with a post that doesn't really add any new content, but I wanted to pop in and let people know that the development of Legionwood 2 is still progressing nicely, and the next beta with the entire second chapter of the game will be available soon. I've taken on board some of the feedback that I've received in this community and others and the next release of the game will a lot more enjoyable than the current one. If you're interested, keep an eye out for it and be sure to provide me with lots of great feedback so that I can improve the game even more.

Here's the official update post, copied from my blog:

Hail, Legionwood fans! I've got an update for you:

As of this week, I'm resuming full time work on Chapter Two of Legionwood 2. Previously, I had university assignments as well as admin and publishing stuff with my novel to take care of, but I'm happy to say that I've got a few weeks coming up where I don't have any other matters to attend to, and I want to use this time to really push myself to work on the game and get the Beta 3.0 release closer to being in a playable condition.

At the moment, Chapter 2: Aftermath and Alliance is roughly 30% complete. I was aiming for a late September release of the new version of the game and if I can still meet that, it would be great. On the other hand, I'd like to continue working on the game at my own pace, and take my time making sure that the new content I release is properly tested and worthwhile instead of rushing it, so please don't hold me to that release date. I just wanted to post and say that yes, Legionwood 2 is still being worked on, and I do still have plans to finish this game, and I want to make sure that you guys get the best game possible.

Some info about what you can expect in Beta 3.0: Chapter 2: Aftermath and Alliance will see Lionel and the party travelling out of Trevelle into the neighbouring nation of Entoban to try and establish a peace treaty with the invading barbarians before full scale war engulfs the two nations. They'll also try to enlist the help of the king of Entoban in the quest to find out how to close the remaining Eternal Gates and discover more about who is behind the plot to infect Legionwood with the Darkness and their motives. Meanwhile, Lionel will continue to cope with the loss of Clara and forge bonds with his new friends. They'll race to stop the enemy from opening yet another Eternal Gate and, at the end of the chapter, one of the party members will die. In addition, you'll get to play with two new classes (Barbarian and Ranger), 20+ new Techs, and experience the consequences of Lionel's moral choices, with certain side quests, dungeons and bosses being sealed off in favour of others depending on the path you've chosen.

I've also overhauled many of the game's systems. The battle system has been optimised and no longer crashes, there are now turn cooldown periods, alternate costs for skills, new buff/debuff rules, and more.

Beta 3.0 is out!

Well met, Legionwood players! The third public release of Legionwood 2: Rise of the Eternal's Realm, Beta Build 3.0 is now online and ready to download. This major update includes the first half of Chapter 2: Aftermath and Alliance, adding around 2 hours of new content, including new locations, new Techs and one of two new classes (Ranger and Barbarian) to play depending on your morality, as well as numerous tweaks and bug fixes to existing content. In this release, you'll finally start to get to see your moral choices come into play as dungeons, treasures and quests change depending on the decisions you've made, and you'll need to play through the Beta twice, on both moral paths if you want to see it all.

The original plan was to have all of Chapter 2 available in this release, though this wasn't possible due to time constraints. Much of the time I spent working on this release was used to make sure the existing content is stable and free of any remaining bugs. I've updated all of the game's scripts and overhauled the engine  while also tweaking the game's art style a little and implementing some more non-linear elements to the game in both of the chapters. All of this extra work unfortunately meant that I wasn't able to complete all of Chapter 2 as I had planned, so I decided to cut the chapter in half and save the rest for the next Beta.

So, if you've been itching for some more adventuring, download Beta 3.0 of Legionwood 2 and tuck in. This Beta contains over 6-7 hours of old-school RPG gameplay with more than enough content to (hopefully) keep you busy until the next big release. Players who are continuing from the previous release of the game can simply copy and paste their save file ("Save01.rvdata") into the Beta 3.0 directory to continue from where they left off, while new players can feel free to start right from the beginning and experience all of the new surprises that the revised Chapter 1 has to offer.

At the end of the Beta, remember to retain your save file for use in the next release, and please don't forget to report any bugs or issues that you find so that they can be fixed up.

Well, that's it for now. Please enjoy the new additions to the game, and stay tuned for news about Beta 4.0 and Legionwood going commercial (possibly), when it happens.

For those too lazy to scroll back to the opening post, get the Beta here: http://rpgmaker.net/games/3811/downloads/3435/

Awesome.

I've never heard of anyone getting F12 errors in VX Ace before. That makes me very curious as to how it's being caused. I would like to help out if I can. Would it be possible for you to create a new project with all your scripts in it and upload that so I could take a look?

If you grab the editable "game" file from any Ace project and insert it into the project folder and open it in the editor. This might be a better option than simply uploading a blank project with the same script, because the Stack Errors appear to happen at specific points in the game (we've tracked them to two specific battles) where they will happen pretty much always without fail - so long as F12 has been used to reset the game. I've had issues with Yami's CTB battle system (it was crashing a lot until I rewrote a few lines of code to disable one of its functions); this may be the possible cause.

Any help from a scripter would be very much appreciated

Will do. Which battles are they?

The Wind Elemental boss fight in chapter 2 (about 5 hours), occurring in the round when he removes one of the actors from the party, and the Vampire boss fight (around the same time in).

Update![/b]

Beta 3.2 is now online, which offers a few tweaks, bug fixes and small additions to the game.

Changes to Beta 3.0 and 3.1 include:

- Donation trays at churches are now fully functional. Donate 10 Kyphers for a 1 in 4 chance of getting a morality boost, or donate 400 or 800 Kyphers for guaranteed morality boosts (1 point for 400 and 2 points for 800).
- The Rusty Helmet in Dead Mountain (as part of helping the Revenant) can now only be picked up once, instead of an infinite amount of times.
- Most stealable battle-use items (such as Silk Sack and Eye Stone) and rares (such as Hannelores and Malt Ciders) have had their sell price reduced to 1 Kypher. This is because they used to sell for thousands of Kyphers and some players were farming money by stealing them over and over, which was breaking the game's balance. General items and sellable loot items (Chitin Scale, Wolf Pelt) have not been changed.
- The intro area now teaches new players how to save, and reminds them to do so often.
- Selecting "no" when asked if you want to watch the game's intro now actually skips it, as opposed to going into an infinite event loop.
- Tweaks have been made to several classes. The Defense and HP of Gunners, Rangers and magic casting classes has been slightly increased, and Magus and Cleric weapons (ie. Gold Sceptre) now grant a small Defense boost as well as Intellect and Wisdom.
- The Focus Headband and Shoulder Pad grant 5% more HP now. This is to offset the 5% penalty that equipping a sub-class gives you, which cancels out the effect of equipping these items.
- The Gladiator Blade has had its chances of inflicting statuses lowered and is now a 2 handed weapon. It also gives the user a 10% Defense penalty. This is to counterbalance the fact that it inflicts 3 different status effects.
- The Northern Keep dungeon is now fully operational. A chest and switch that were inoperable because of impassable tiles have now been fixed, and the quest can be completed. If you have good morality, you'll fight the Garuda boss, and if bad you'll fight the Dark Dragon boss.

In other news, Legionwood 2 will soon be going commercial. However, there will still be one more release before this comes to pass: as promised, the next release of the game (Beta 4.0) will become available very soon, adding the rest of Chapter 2 to the game and rounding off the first 10 or so hours of Legionwood 2's gameplay (roughly the first half of the overall game, which will be 20 hours long like Legionwood 1).

This Beta 4.0 build will be the final build of the game available for free (subsequent Beta builds will be released for registered beta testers only), and, following its release, the full game will begin retailing under the title of Heroes of Legionwood at the usual RPG Maker game portals, and Beta 4.0 will be replaced with the typical 1-2 hour commercial demo. At the moment, the price has not been set, but it will likely be no more than $9.95, and there will be plenty of opportunities for loyal players and beta testers to get their copy of the game for free. The full commercial release is currently slated for mid 2013 (still a long ways off) so, until then, please continue to consider Legionwood 2 to be a freely available RPG Maker game, and have fun.

Happy adventuring!

Update

Greetings once again, travellers! I'm back with a small update on the progress of Legionwood 2 since we're nearing the end of the year now. While I've been working ever so slowly towards Beta 4.0 over the last two months (and there's only a little more left to do until the release is ready, save for beta testing all of the new content), I'm announcing that I've made the decision to put Legionwood 2 on temporary hiatus for now.

The reason I'm choosing to suspend work on the game for now is because the release of my first novel is looming just over the horizon. My book Sun Bleached Winter comes out on December 2nd, and I'm going to need to spend whatever free time I have focusing on this (doing things such as last round editing, proof reading, sending copies to reviewers, promoting the novel from my end etc) and, as much as I'd like to work on Legionwood 2, I just plain won't have many chances to.

As such, Beta 4.0 is on hold for now, though I intend to resume work in the New Year and spend my holidays doing as much with the game as I can. Beta 4.0 off what's left of Chapter 2 (the Entoban section of the story) and takes you into Chapter 3. After that, there isn't too much left to do, with Chapter 4 being the final chapter, so the good news is that the completed version of the game should be ready not long after I resume development.

I've also made the decision to not release Legionwood 2 commercially after all (based on the fact that many loyal players have supported it as a free game, and I don't want to undermine that support) and so Beta 4.0 will be followed by a release of the completed game for all to enjoy. I'm still quite interested in commercial game development (spurred on by my recent experiences with the One Night games on Desura, where they're been received fairly well) and at this point I still want to try my hand in the professional arena, but I figured that it's probably best to start with a brand new IP, instead of a sequel that many of my fans have been expecting to get for free.

Well, that's it for now, I guess. With all of that news safely put into blog form, I'm officially retiring from the RM scene for a little while to focus on more literary pursuits. Keep reporting any bugs you find in Legionwood 2, and I'll see you with some more news in 2013!

Update!

I haven't been active around here for a while, but I thought I'd drop into the thread and let everybody know that, as of today, Legionwood 2 will be resuming active development. Depending on when I can find a few hours and how much I procrastinate, I'll be picking it up again either today or tomorrow, and from this point I intend to devote as much of my spare time as possible to working on it. My current plan is to get at least one map done each day (a typical Legionwood map, including mapping from start to finish, creating any database items associated with it and eventing cutscenes generally takes me between 2 and 3 hours) and, while this isn't exactly rapid development, it'll allow me to make steady progress, which is what the project really needs at the moment.

The next release of Legionwood 2 will be Beta 4, which will include the entire first half of the game (and perhaps a little more, as well), as well as various bug fixes and engine tweaks over previous versions. At the moment, I'm looking at late March/early April for the release date (don't hold me to that). Beta 4 is to conclude Chapter 2 of the game, and will see the party venturing into the barbarian nation of Entoban, where they'll attempt to forge an alliance with an old enemy and finally uncover the identity and motives of the one responsible for opening the Eternal Gates, as well as the true nature of the Darkness itself. At the end of this chapter, one of the party members will die, with the specific character being decided by your morality, and Chapter 3 will continue on down one of two branching storylines as a result. You'll also get the chance to recruit a new friend (Khan) and unlock new classes and Techs.

I'm also happy to announce that Legionwood 2 is to benefit from a custom soundtrack created by a talented composer who has offered his services to the project. Several tracks have already been completed (including a new boss battle theme), and you'll get to see some of them for yourself in the next release.

As I stated in my last update, I've decided to keep Legionwood 2 a non-commercial game, and all future releases will be freely playable as they've always been. This decision was made mainly because the original Legionwood was a freeware game and I'd love for fans of the first game to be able to follow the story through into the sequel. If you'd still like to pledge your support to the project though, please consider buying a copy of my book (available through my website -- see my sig), as I intend to use a percentage of my royalties to purchase additional assets for Legionwood 2.

That's it for now. Stay tuned for more news closer to the release date!

Update

Hey everyone, I've set up a small forum on my website specifically for discussing Legionwood 2 and my other games in a dedicated setting. If you'd like to get the updates as soon as they become available, or engage with me on a regular basis (since I'm not very active around here anymore and may take some time to get back to questions left in this thread), please feel free to drop by: http://legionwood.freeforums.org/index.php

Stay tuned for more news. Beta 4 release date coming soon!

Beta 4.0 is finally live!

It's been a long time coming, but the latest release of Legionwood 2 is finally online. I fully intended for it to be out a couple of days ago, but due to all the new graphics and sound files I've added to this release it ended up having a massive file size and was taking literally forever to upload.

In any case, this new release (Beta 4.0) adds the second half of Act II to the game, along with a whole bunch of small additions, tweaks and bug fixes to existing content. Battles flow much more smoothly now several of the class combinations that were too similar in previous builds have been considerably reworked. All up, there's about 11 hours or so of gameplay in this release, and plenty of branching storylines and morality dependent events to experience.

Players who'd like to continue their save files from the previous build can do so by copying and pasting their saves into the game folder -- Beta 4.0 will detect older save files and run some brief calibrations to make them compatible with the updated scripts when the save is first loaded. On the other hand, those who'd like to start again from the beginning will find a handful of new surprises to behold, but I won't spoil them here.

Now, with all that out of the way, I'll be taking a well deserved break for a month or two to catch up on university homework -- announcements about the full release of Legionwood 2 to follow when I've recovered from everything

Hey everyone. I haven't been around for the last couple months, but I thought I'd update you on the current status of Legionwood 2:

Ah, it almost brings a tear to my eye. After almost three years of development, the first “full version” build of Legionwood 2 has entered the beta testing phase, bringing a final commercial release ever so much closer.
 
Some of you may remember ages ago when I mentioned the possibility of Legionwood 2 becoming a commercial project and then a few months later when I said it most likely wouldn’t happen. Well, the time has come for me to decide once and for all how the game is to be released, and some may be disappointed (or happy — I’m not too sure) to learn that I’ve made the decision to release the full version of Legionwood 2 commercially after all.
 
Originally, I had every intention of keeping all future releases of the game completely free to download and play, but — to be frank — I’m no longer in much of a position to do so. As I’ve now finished university, I’m finding myself with less and less time to develop games. Up until now, I’ve been developing games in lieu of a full time job (in between working on my writing projects, of course), which simply isn’t possible any longer. As such, I’ve come to the decision to turn game development into something that can sustain itself — if I can make money from selling Legionwood 2, I can support myself and justify the considerable time I devote to these projects each and every day.
 
And so, the details: Legionwood 2: Rise of the Eternal’s Realm – Volume One will be retailing for $4.99 USD from February 28th. The first of two volumes that make up two halves of the Legionwood 2 story (think Half Life 2 and its episodes), Volume One features a lengthy 12+ hour quest, an all new soundtrack (with some tracks exclusive to Legionwood 2), full mouse support, an overhauled side view battle system and an emotional non-linear story.
 
In terms of content, Legionwood 2: Volume One contains everything that’s already in the available Beta version, with a few little enhancements and additions. As such, it probably won’t be an essential purchase for players who can’t wait to see what happens after the show down at the volcano, but it does include an extended ending scene that adds some closure to the first half of the game and shows you the consequences of the choices your party made throughout the game. There are also a couple of new sidequests, including one that hails the return of Legionwood 1‘s antagonist Terminus and details the origins of the mysterious Darkness threatening the world.
 
Of course, many of you guys have been fans of Legionwood since the very beginning and, until this point, have been under the impression that it wouldn’t be going commercial any time soon. Please don’t fear — the most loyal among you will have the chance to get your copies for free, with thanks for all of your support.
In the meantime, you can play the free Beta version of the game here. Closer to the release date, a free demo will become available, allowing you to play with all of the cool new features.