Excalistia

Progress!

2009-11-14T00:56:00.003+03:00

I have this friend who goes by the nickname ramirez. He's the one hosting this website and for a long time he's been the person to ask if I had any technical questions. For years, I'd start conversations with ramirez by asking him to make my game. The answer was always no, so it was more of a joke rather than a serious request.

Yesterday I asked ramirez to make a game together, and he said yes. I thought he wasn't serious about it, but it turned out that he was. After I told him a bit more about Excalistia he agreed to help me in making the game engine. He started coding right away and already set up a source code control repository and submitted some initial code. Gotta love that guy!

Other than the fact that ramirez is smart, dedicated, and gets things done, I guess he'd motivate (read: shame) me into also doing my part and getting Excalistia somewhere. This is good news because by our estimates we should have something solid by early next year. Furthermore, the engine will be much better than anything I could have done alone, and ramirez has some wonderful gameplay ideas that will make Excalistia more seamless and fun than I ever intended it to be.

I'm really excited about this! Expect more frequent updates because there's actual progress now. Yes, progress! :D

Equipment System

2009-10-24T17:58:00.003+03:00

The mutant's limbs are replaceable, allowing you to equip different arms and legs. Unlike other games where equipment are used in fighting enemies, in Excalistia you use them in puzzle-solving and platforming. For example, you could equip claws to climb walls, kangaroo legs that allow you to jump farther, wheels that increase your speed, USB cables to hack computers, flashlights for dark dungeons, or axe-arms that cut through trees. This will require a large amount of sprites, but I think it'd be worth it in the end.

Below is your default mutant sprite, followed by a mutant with customized equipment. In this example he's equipping a drill in one hand, a rope in another, and flippers. This allows him to drill through rocks to make a path or mine for gems, use the rope to climb, and swim using the flippers. The possibilities are endless!

The equipments in the sprite are something I made quickly for this post. Hopefully they won't look so silly in the final version. :P

New Job

2009-09-24T01:27:00.002+03:00

I've been a bit busy recently. I've quit my former job as a developer and got a new job as a teaching assistant at my old university. This has little to do with Excalistia and more with my inability to properly balance fulltime professional work and school (I'm doing a Master's degree in Computer Science). I guess this means I will have extra time to work on Excalistia.

There hasn't been any real progress recently. I've been thinking more about this new game, particularly about some technical aspects and the scope of the game. I think I want to release it in small mostly-self-contained chapters or episodes; it's more manageable and makes it easier to produce deliverables. Even if I don't end up making the full game, the first chapter will have some sort of closure and will be at least 2 hours long.

The thing that might require a lot of work is producing all the sprites and animations needed for the platforming elements. I'm thinking of commissioning a pixel artist to help me with these sprites, but it's still too early to think about this. I'd rather not work on any additional resources until I get the basic engine ready, because you never know what happens until then.

Speaking of sprites, I've been modifying the mutant's sprite for a while. The initial concepts were too small on screen, so I tried making it bigger, but that only produced bulkier muscled sprites. With some guidance from TFT (the concept artist) I was able to improve the character and make it more comical. TFT still doesn't like it but I can't think of ways to make it any better. Feel free to leave any suggestions for improvement as comments. Here's the progress of the sprite:

Since you're still here, I thought I'd point you to some really good artists who are currently doing commissions. I've worked with all of them and they are heavily recommended and their work is definitely worth the price:

Ocean's Dream's pixel commissions

Nessiah concept art and sprites

TFT's concept art and sprites

Yeah, I know I just listed the three people who read this blog! But someday Excalistia will be very famous and fans will be digging through old blog posts looking for links to click. You just wait...

In other news this blog's host has changed from avalanchestudios.net to avalanchehosting.com, the transition was very smooth thanks to ramirez, the guy who pays for these hosts (he also pays for the domain name, excalistia.com). He's a great guy, so if you ever end up in finland and run into a guy reading a C++ book next to the same guy but listening to porcupine tree instead, offer the nerdier one a $5 donation.

That's all for today, I guess.

Core Gameplay

2009-09-05T15:27:00.002+03:00

Excalistia is a 2D game combining elements from several game genres. The player controls one of two characters, but not at the same time. The two characters work together to advance in the game. What sets this apart from most other games where you control different characters to solve puzzles is that in Excalistia, the two characters work independently; they don't meet eachother, and they go through contrasting environments. You have a conman who can only work in cities and humanly populated areas, while the mutant is limited to exploring dungeons across the wasteland.

Gameplay-wise, the mutant segments emphasize platforming, exploration, puzzle-solving and minimal interaction with others. The conman's segments on the other hand focus on role-playing, he has to use his charisma and wits to inquire, convince, threaten, and scam others. The game's premise is that the dying mutant is trying to find a cure to his condition, but since he can't freely enter human cities (he can't even speak), he needs inside assistant. That's where the conman comes in. The conman's task is to learn more about the mutant's disease, and to find a cure; while the mutant is tasked with finding ways to get the conman between cities (the wasteland is off-limits for humans), and to find certain items that will aid the conman. You can easily switch between the two characters most of the time.

I want the experience to be seamless. Just because the conman and the mutant operate in different modes, doesn't mean that it will feel that way. In fact, the conman can still do things like climbing or jumping, but it isn't very beneficial in the city environment. Likewise, the mutant can't talk, and there aren't many people to interact with in the wasteland. Both gameplay modes are actually the same mode, but it's just more natural and useful for the mutant to climb, jump, and fight bosses, and for the conman to talk to people.

Speaking of bosses, the game has no battles in the traditional sense. The conman sometimes gets into duels using a simplified battle system. Duels are story-oriented and aren't about stats. The mutant also gets into some boss battles, but each of them is actually a puzzle where you have to figure out how to beat the boss. The game is very minimal and has no stats. You can still get money and key items, but those are story-related and don't have a real impact on the actual gameplay mechanics. One exception is the body parts the mutant could equip as his limbs fall off (e.g. equip fins to be able to swim), but I'll talk about that in a future post.

There's more to the gameplay, but I hope you now have a good idea of the core system, everything else is built on top of the basic elements I discussed here. It's a game where you control two characters to solve puzzles, but here the puzzles aren't as simple as "one character operates a switch, while the other goes through a door", it works on a larger scale to provide what I hope to be a fresh and entertaining experience.

The Conman

2009-08-31T02:40:00.003+03:00

A Vanalian conman and impostor. His real name is Aleris Fanfaron. He recently pulled a scam on the wrong person and is trying to get out of the city in one piece.

Concept art by TFT:

Sprite by me:

(Thanks to Ocean for shading/colors help)

The Mutant

2009-08-28T21:08:00.006+03:00

A sentient mutant who is gradually losing his humanity. He can't speak and his limbs tend to fall apart.

Concept art by TFT:

Sprite by me:

(Thanks for your help, Nessiah!)

First Post!

2009-08-27T17:24:00.004+03:00

Excalistia is a game that I started working on years ago, an RPG concept that evolved and went through several changes and platforms. Excalistia is the game I always wanted to make.

Excalistia is no more.

I've done quite a lot of progress on the latest RPG Maker XP version, enough for the game to materialize and be playable. I played it, and I didn't like it.

At its core, Excalistia tried to be a good RPG Maker game. That's not a bad thing, there is nothing inherently wrong with RPG Maker itself. It's just that many of its games strive for low standards, and they share the same 'RM Game' feeling. Take Exit Fate, a polished RPG Maker XP game (and yet another Suikoden rip-off). It's a very good game, but you can easily tell it's an RPG Maker game. It's little things like the way sprites move or how collision is handled, the limitations of the platform are not always visible but they are there. With RMXP you could virtually rewrite everything, something I was working on, but it makes you wonder why you're using RPG Maker in the first place.

I don't mind making RPG Maker games, I've done it for years. Recently however, I've had very little free time. Between work, school, and other things to keep me busy, the time I have to work on Excalistia has greatly diminished. It has become a task, something you do not when you want to, but when you can.

Excalistia was a really big and ambitious project. At my pace, it would have taking a lot of time to be ready. I have little free time now, and I don't want to spend it making another RPG Maker game for the next few years. I don't even want to spend it making RPGs. I didn't like Excalistia, not because it was a bad game, but because it didn't seem worth the effort. If I am going to spend my 'precious' time working on something, I want it to be something better, something different, and something that wouldn't take as much time.

In the end, Excalistia is the RPG Maker 2000 game I wanted to make in 2001. It has changed a lot over the years, but it was still the same concept viewed differently. The focus gradually shifted from being a traditional RPG to having less focus on statistics and more focus on exploration and puzzles. I make games that I would like to play, and I don't really like RPGs anymore (ironic, Mr. RPG). I'm sure many people would have liked the current Excalistia if I did release it, but I wouldn't.

Excalistia is no more. I am working on something new.

I've never been so excited working on a game since I first started working on the old Excalistia. I'm writing down ideas, making a world, sketching concepts. I really love this new game, and I really want to release it.

The new game shares a lot with Excalistia. It will look mostly the same as the screenshots you've seen, it'll use the same resources, and it might even keep the same name (still not sure about that, I'm bad at names). The new Excalistia is a natural progression of old Excalistia's evolution. Make no mistake; the new game is very different.

I will tell you everything about it in future posts, but here are some brief facts about the new game:

Will use a new open source multiplatform OpenGL 2D engine written in C++ and Ruby, I will still reuse a lot of the Ruby code I wrote for the RMXP version. Once that engine is ready, others can use it to make their own games.
Excalistia is now an adventure/puzzle/platform game with some role-playing elements (compare to the old Excalistia, an RPG with some adventure/puzzle elements).
The game stars a zombie that is falling apart, and a sleazy scammer trying to make a living in a post apocalyptic world ruled by trolls from outer space.
The focus is on gameplay instead of story. I still want to make a realistic world with deep characters and interesting twists, but making a fun game comes first.
The game will be short; it will also be small in scope. I know this is not a feature, but it means that there is a higher chance of it being released.

What will set this game apart is the gameplay, I could tell you all about it, but there's so much to discuss and it would need another post to explain in detail.

The new Excalistia is still in the planning stage. I want to plan and design the entire game before I start developing. I also want to make sure that I have the skill to realize the vision I have for the game. You might think that this will push the game's release date farther, but I believe that it might be the only way to ensure that it will be released at all. This is a serious project, and I really want to do it right this time. I will not give any release estimation or promises. I do hope to have something solid and presentable next year, but nothing is certain.

Excalistia was never my project alone, and I'd like to thank everyone who contributed over the years. I know I wasn't very good with getting things done, and I apologize for that. In particular, I'd like to thank Robert Aaron Eason (Willow) and Shannon Mason (Pongball), two great composers who worked on the game from the very start. There's also Cesar Rendon (Ocean's Dream) who did the incredible job of producing all the game's tilesets and some sprites as well. Finally there's that guy who made faces and was working on the intro cutscene, he's a jerk so I won't mention his name here. Like I said, the majority of the old resources will be used in the new game. The gameplay and some story parts might have changed, but the game's spirit is the same. I'm hoping to continue working with these guys, and perhaps some new people as well. This time however, I'll do my share of the project first, and only then ask others for help... I've learned from my mistakes!

This blog will be regularly updated, and by regularly I don't mean the way the old Excalistia blog was updated. As you might have noticed, the old site is down; a blog is more manageable and I can expand the posts into a full site later. If you linked to anything on the old site (including the blog), make sure to update your links. You can still access the old site here.

*cue comparisons with Duke Nukem forever*