Dance of the Immortals [VXA] - [ABS Chp1 Re-release]

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Dance of the Immortals

Play the latest Demo now!
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Post about bugs or problems in the Known Issues list!

Hello~
The Story~
Story Details~
Gameplay Details~
Style & Images~
Credits~

Dance of the Immortals was originally an idea I had planned to write out as a novel, simply to get the idea out of my head, however being more of a visual guy, I suck at writing!  So I decided to play to my strengths and bring the story to life via the medium of games, but in the spirit of the idea I had, make an effort to keep the game as "novelesque" as I could, thinking it could become an interesting element to the playstyle.  To this end, I'm focussing more on storytelling and narrative than anything overly groundbreaking in game mechanics, especially since I'm new to VXA and scripts are still pretty far beyond me.  Anyhoo!

I will update certain sections here with more screenshots or details as they come up

The dance of the world is choreographed by the Storytellers, ancient Immortals who bring life and give history to Averell with their wisdom in lores and their eternal warnings against an unholy temple containing the Hellfire, a power of unknown origin.   
However, it appears that after centuries of peace, the Hellfire is being sought by the Goblins, a race with which the humans have been at war with since the dawn of history, no doubt related to recent mumblings of the return of the Goblin King...

Some extra tidbits of information about the backstory of the world you're about to enter!

Spoiler for:

You

Spoiler for:

You are a Freelander who was captured and enslaved in the Imperials raid of the islands.  Shipped across the ocean in Fasdraal, one of the larger military continents, you manage to escape with a group of others.  After some amount of time hiding out as refugees underneath the city sewers, you suddenly have a paradigm-shifting dream, something that truly awakens you to your potential and inner urge to explore, to write yourself into the story of the world.   Not likely coincidentally, you are immediately presented with an opportunity to allow you to step outside the realms of your Hideout, your safety, and to expand your horizons and discover the world for what it really is.  Discover what's really happening, what the deeper story is.

Humans & Goblins

Spoiler for:

Across Averell, there are two predominant races; the Humans and Goblins, who have found themselves at bitter war for millenia, long before anyone but the Storytellers can recall.  The Goblin King is the most insidious, feared and dangerous creature without a face known to all the humans, and even a rumour of his return can result in drastic measures being taken.  After centuries of peace between the two across the 3rd Dynasty, things can only get worse as the largest war yet begins.

The Hellfire

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The Hellfire is an ancient magic, the powers it holds a complete mystery across the lands, but the warnings against ever finding the Temple it's held in are spread across all of the Storytellers lores, dating back longer than anyone remembers.  The Storytellers themselves are said to guard it, for if it is to be unleashed, then the world as we know it would cease to exist.  Is this ancient dark magic a real power, or simply a folk tale that escalated over time?

So what makes Dance of the Immortals so special?  Why should you play this game when you're surrounded by so many others?

Spoiler for:

• Piece together the history of the world and the puzzles of the Hellfire, Storytellers and the Goblin War as you play through the game, not only as your own personal creation in the story, but through the eyes of several other key characters involved in the plot.  As well as this, collect important pages from an ancient manuscript that reveal secrets into the past and even a secret level!
• Dynamic, innovative combat style, with bulky, stronger enemies slowly roaming the map as you get attacked randomly by sneaky enemies.  In caves, the rats run rampant, as the bats hide within the shadows and attack anyone who comes near!
• Build and rebuild your character as you advance, with a unique ability to return to the Hall of Changes where you can alter and update your character as you learn new information and find new methods of combat, even down to your sprite and name.  As well as this, find secrets across the world that unlock extra features and allow you to make yourself even more of a legend in the world!
• Information is power; dangerous treks and incursions need not always lead to some glowing weapon, but can reveal secrets and history.  In-depth narration at every turn, with an aim and goal towards the novelesque, nothing is short and brushed off!

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Want some screenshots to get an eyeful of what you've been reading about?

The Screeny Gallery in the DotI Blog has screenies from the cutscenes to the middle of the most action-packed maps and will be regularly updated as more exciting content comes out!

Now!  Want to play the game and see what all the fuss is about?!

Get the latest Demo and version history here!

This list, all the people who've helped me whether they know it or not.  Even if I don't use some of their stuff, I took it, it inspired me and it may get used at some point or another, so thank-you to all of you.

Spoiler for:

Support, Help & Ideas
~RMRK~
Lauren <3
Amycha19
charas-project (2k3)
Phylomortis Resources (2k3)(http://save-point.org/thread-3528.html)
D&P3
Jack Attack

Images
Celianna & Lunarea (Some beautiful tilesets from these two, solo or combined)
Mack
Weliver
Indrah
Enterbrain
Desktop Nexus
MadMaX
grafikal

Scripts
Yanfly (extra thanks to him, for some very nice scripts that I'd been lookin' for)
Zylos
modern algebra
DoctorTodd
fyzzo
Trihan
prexus
Kread-EX

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I love the concept of a novel-based game.

Though, I'd like to read the novel before I even were to play a game (same goes for novels and films made from them) so maybe it's a good thing to include the name of the book (if it's different from your gametitle) and the author somewhere in your main post as well.

I would also like to see some screenshots as well, even if it's just to show what you've made so far. Even if it is to show what your characters look like! Visuals are everything!!

Oh and in your main post, use some spoilers. I know they are ugly but it gives people the opportunity to rest in between reading. They know which spoilers they have read and don't have to reread for something familiar... It also gives you a chance to also show your pictures as images instead of links

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Hope to see a demo soon!
SUPPORTING!

I love the concept of a novel-based game.

Though, I'd like to read the novel before I even were to play a game (same goes for novels and films made from them) so maybe it's a good thing to include the name of the book (if it's different from your gametitle) and the author somewhere in your main post as well.

Forgive me, I may not have been clear.  It's not a real or written novel, it's a story I've had in my head for years (that I devised, that is).  But since writing up stories in the form of a novel is a lot more difficult than one would expect I've been exploring different paths to bringing it to life, and a game seems like a good method to do so.  I'd want to keep it a novel-orientated game in concept since the story has been just a written imagining for so long, and thought that that'd make it more interesting as a game, too, if it felt like a visual, interactive novel of sorts.

I will be writing up the story at some point as well, but whether it's writing up a section then making the game for that, during or after the game section has been made I'm not quite sure.  Right now my fuel is inspiration so I'm just doing each piece in the order that feels right

EDIT:
Sussed the spoiler code; always the simplest
Hopefully the post looks more readable now.  If you (or anyone else) feels it could be prettified more so, just let me know!

Oh, now I get it...
I love reading books so if you ever want to make it into a real novel, please do!
I can even help you by reading it and editing it to what I think makes it easier to read or to the speed I think it requires, just as comments I mean

Your first post does look a lot better this way. People can easily see the art and don't have to go over each section of text. For instance, you've put the character info and the race info in a spoiler, and I find that perfect as I'm someone who likes to find out while playing it. Other people can have a look at it though...

Aye, I've had the idea in my head since high school and have dozens of increasingly updated copies of early chapters and storylines, plans and such.  Not touched it in years now (with college and all) and decided that the best way to proceed would be taking a different direction.  Being a game lover and viusla learner, this seemed like a good method to bring it to life.  I do intend to have it written down, but now this gives me some direction in which to do it; I can basically write it and build the game at the same times roughly.

I have a recruitment thread up that's being unheard, but the entire recruitment boards have been untouched since I made that, so maybe there's not as many people out to offer help these days?  Anyhoo, you're more than welcome to help out towards that end.  If you happen to have any ideas as to how to make it more "novel"-esque I'm all ears.  It's the more unique feature of the game so I'm trying to keep it a strong focus rather than just a half-noticed gimmick. 

Also, glad you think so about the spoilers.  When I posted it I didn't like the way it was, but couldnae find the big button that created spoilers that I used to use, so took me ages to find out how again QQ

One idea is Cutscenes which are perhaps a bit of movement, fadeout the screen and then some plain text. But don't overdo the text or the cutscenes...

Another one is maybe start your story with a page of a book having text on it. Zooming in on the picture in the book and there you start your game as if you just got sucked into the book.

As for chapters, give the player a break as well, pause the game and offer to save it as well. You know when reading a book you always take a deep breath when a chapter is finished and ever noticed that a lot of important chapters have at least half a page blank? Well, use that in your game as well

More ideas may come up but these are what I have up till now...

Another one is maybe start your story with a page of a book having text on it. Zooming in on the picture in the book and there you start your game as if you just got sucked into the book.

Cutscenes were already planned.  I was aiming to keep them relatively short, but fairly common and if at all possible, player driven.  Chapters too, being something I've always had in my projects.

The picture idea is rad, but I've never actually used pictures before and am already having troubles with it sticking to the top-left corner no matter what the coordinates are.  will try finding a tutorial of sorts and work towards that idea

Cutscenes were already planned.  I was aiming to keep them relatively short, but fairly common and if at all possible, player driven.  Chapters too, being something I've always had in my projects.

What I meant with cutscenes is not an automated thing happening because of the story but rather after important things happened, summarise what happened during the (previous) chapter.

For instance, take my game.
I start with having a "dream" where you are in the Outerworld, talking to Asrii (mother of elements) and you have your basis tutorial on treasure-hunting, puzzle-solving, resting and battling. Then you wake up in your own bed. You get the chance to walk around your room but you need to go downstairs. Then you get the cutscene where you and dad go to get breakfast and something terrible happens, dad gets killed and then there is the burial. After this all happens, the screen fades out and you see text. About 15 lines of text to say what had happened that day (dreamt a dream, dad got killed), what you think of it (Why did I have the dream? Does it connect to reality somehow?) and what you should do next (Say goodbye and travel for revenge).
Then the player gets transferred to the living room and the screen fades back in, time to start playing...

Now what you can do is make such reading cutscenes to (again) give the player some rest.

The picture thing shouldn't be that hard if you have a screenshot from your very first position... You should be able to event that sort of thing!!

Ah, with you.  Aye, I plan to have some sort of narrative surrounding the cutscenes, trying to fuse gameplay and novelesque together with that sort of feel.

The picture thing completely eluded me, with the co-ordinates refusing to move at all, however I took your idea still and just c hanged the method.  I've now got a panoramic picture with passable trans-layers at the start so the hero you begin with is standing on top of the text and can run around it and read, then upon walking into the picture get the option to begin the game.

Totally rad idea, and so far is looking nice.  Once I've finished up a few more things I'll post some screenies

Cool! Let me know if I can play a demo or something...

Cheers for all the enthusiasm and support; s'good to see at least one person excited as well

Have uploaded a link for an Alpha Demo (placeholders, short (about 30 mins) and possible bugs).  I'm using placeholders for a bunch of stuff, mainly art/animations until I get that sorted.  Don't want to halt progress because of problems with graphics, as I've foolishly let that be an issue before.

Once I have some help with the art and have got more running I'll get a full, real demo going and hopefully that won't be too long.  Since I've finished college now, this is my project so I'll have a fair bit of time to pour into this ^^

EDIT:
Also changed the OP yet again in an effort to prettify it.  Combined some images into single spoilers to try and make eveyrthin' look less cluttered and "too many spoilers"-y and think it looks much sharper and cleaner now.  Hopefully will attract more attention!  Have also added some simple screenshots from within the demo

Finally caved and got myself VXA.  I decided that if I was going to put the effort into this over the holidays and get as good as a project as I can, I'm better doing it on a better version than an out-of-date one that I can't get a team with.  And the best time to do that is before I get too far into the game.  The 2k3 progress will be halted and will shift my efforts onto VXA where I'll basically restart everything, but with a template and a nicer program I should be able to get things done faster (I hope!)
Altough I especially need help with this now, as I'm new to the VX software and will spend much of my time relearning the updated version before I can get fully started to catch back up to my 2K3 progress!  Anyone available, let me know

Did you get VX or VXA?? As I only have VX at this moment...

EDIT: I tried your demo, had to find an RTP first and played it. I looks great!!
Didn't find any bugs either.

Though, while searching for an RTP, I came across the full version of RM2K3...
I can help you, even though I'm not used to the program.

VXA; I was reading through the forums, looked up on the site and they've brought back a lot of older stuff, including this "generator" thing (that I'm yet to find D:!) to help me spit out some characters while I'm still learning how they all work.

I figured they'd still be mostly compatible, altough I've noticed that at least some maps won't be as there's a VX compatibility option. 

I'm not certain this belongs in Substantial Projects.  Since the transition into VXA I'm basically having to restart all game-related progress, the only things that carried through are some system images, titles etc and ofc the story.  The demo I have is of the 2K3 version which is now halted, and serves mainly as a....well, a demo I suppose!  But I'm on catch up with myself; thus far I'm yet to remake the first map due to the fact that VX tilesets are surprisingly hard to find.

Saying that, I'm not a moderator so if you feel it should be here then cool stuff.  Just making sure you know the full story, is all

Got the first couple of screenies up now and am working towards gettin' a proper demo out, since the Alpha was in 2k3 and pretty messy.  This is already running a lot smoother, more involving and there's a lot more at work too, should be fun

Redone the page completely in the name of updating versions.  Got shorter, more succinct descriptions and hopefully more interesting and exciting at that!

Added cool new screenies and finally got round to adding a demo.  Demo lasts around 40~50 mins for a decent play through, includes two characters to play as with an optional third minion, two secret character costumes to unlock for your main character and ends at a nice open-ended under construction map where you can save/heal and run around fighting enemies and even challenge a mini-boss if you're up for it

v1.5.6 demo linked.

Was makin' a new gamedisk for testing purposes, figured that enough has changed (albeit not much has actually been added as far as content goes) that it would be worth throwin' the link up.

EPT: 1 hour+ (assuming you play for real.  By ignoring dialogue and skipping battles etc it can be finished in far, far less).  No RTP.  Impelemented a lot of new scripts, making the entire combat system look, feel and play nicer as well as moderns Quest Log. Have updated and (more or less) completed the Hideout level and am prepping for the next area, so now includes one boss monster that's a bit too easy still.

http://danceoftheimmortals.wordpress.com
I will no longer update this threads OP with ...well, updates.  Instead, all my changes, updates etc will be getting posted on my blog page.  I'll make quick posts here about anything major, such as demos.  Come by, have a look

http://danceoftheimmortals.wordpress.com
I will no longer update this threads OP with ...well, updates.  Instead, all my changes, updates etc will be getting posted on my blog page.  I'll make quick posts here about anything major, such as demos.  Come by, have a look

Why not just post all of the updates on the thread?
 

It was getting a bit stressful updating several threads on different forums at once, and was putting me off wanting to make small changes to the OP since I knew I'd have to hunt down my other threads and make the same changes.  This way I can have a nice central hub to make all the updates I want and post all the crap I feel like without ever double-posting, spamming or breaking any rules and such, it generally just works out better for the sake of keeping an up-to-date thread of the progress.

I won't be abandoning this thread completely though, I'll still post when there's updates, changes, new demos and such and still give a link directly to the Demo when the Chapter1 Demo is complete.
I just won't be making small changes about bug fixes, version history, story/character changes etc anymore, as I'll have that all complied on the blog

Also, this thread got accidentally moved to Sub.Projs just after I switched out to VXA and restarted...now that I've come out with hour long demos and plenty of content, I'm still in New.Projs D:! 

I strongly suggest updating your forum threads with updates and screen shots etc. regardless of having a centralized page.    I can't speak for everyone but I know that there are people like me who won't bother checking a website for updates when I could just go to the places that I am actively signed up to and see an update on a project when I check for unread posts.

Och aye, totally.  Maybe I'm not being clear, but I was updating the thread with very small things, like noting down when I discovered or fixed bugs or when I made any kind of updates.  I'd go and update it every hour or so, and doing that three times each wound up taking longer than it needed to.  I'll still be leaving this as it is in the foundation and updating it with more major things like screenies and demos, but smaller or unimportant details will be omitted and left on the blog.

Just trying to reduce some of the workload while at the same time keeping the most up to date thread I can

Incidentally, have updated it with a couple more screenies (well, one new one and a redo of the Dark one with Khas' awesome script) and some supportive banners ^^

http://danceoftheimmortals.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/chapter-one-demo-chapter-two-plans/

Chapter One Demo out now, finally! 

Give me all the feedback you can and let me know if you find any bugs, I'm looking to have this as polished as I can and I need feedback for that.  Hope you enjoy! ^^
Post about bugs or problems in the Known Issues list!

I'm going to try it soon... right now, still in "vacation-modus" over here!! Exams are done and I need time for myself!