The Players Corner Archive

Before the light and before the dark...

Before existance of the Universe itself...

There was the Ultraverse.

Or that's atleast how the saying for my upcoming RPG game called The Ultraverse goes. Recently I have been focusing most of my time working on an RPG game not at all like Gemstone, but rather a graphical game with a preset story line. You play as three heros, Kranar the guardian, Kolderon the sorcerer, and Daariun the warrior and your quest, like most RPGs, is to save the world from an evil force.

A more indepth explanation of the storyline is that before the universe there was the Ultraverse, and it was held together by an object called the crystus. The crystus had 4 sectors, Uni, Omega, Contra and Omni... one day for mysterious reasons the crystus shattered into it's 4 seperate sectors creating subrealms.

Well millions of years after its collaps an evil being from the Omegaverse by the name of Inferno has decided for still unknown reasons to recombine each sector of the crystus to recreate the Ultraverse under his control. He has the omega sector, the omni sector, the contra sector and only needs the uni sector.

The only thing stopping Inferno from entering the universe and grab the uni sector is a spell cast by Jorex who is the most powerful and wisest mage around. But now that Jorex is old and tiring he can no longer keep the spell to refrain Inferno from entering our realm so he has called upon three heros to embark on a journey to discover the hidden mysteries surrounding the Ultraverse and each of its sectors as well as put an end to Inferno.

I will be posting the game engines when I feel it's ready to receive some feedback but for now I will post pictures of what the current state of the engines are. When all of the game's engines are up for testing I would appreciate feedback on the speed, the controls, the interface, the battle sequence and difficulty levels. It would be best to get as much feedback about the engines running the game before starting to implement the storyline into the game.

An example of a double door building.

An example of a house.

The info screen, you can check stats, configuration and stuff like that from here.

Character information screen.

What would an RPG game be without battles?

On a final note, the design and plan for the game will be an old school Final Fantasy meets Breath of Fire meets Phantasy Star meets Zelda like game. As you can tell Jorex, Kranar, Kolderon, and Daariun are Gemstone characters. I haven't used anyone's name who didn't give me permission and I will not use anyones name from Gemstone without their permission. I will try and post the engines soon.

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard

[This message has been edited by LordKranar (edited 04-12-2001).] reg

I think the most I can handle is the "non-action" Myst type games games though.. just mystery stuff that you walk around and find things, click buttons, open doors, etc.

But I wanted to say it's great to see a creative mind at work. If you need help with text editing for your help files, or pop-up windows, or website/manual stuff, give me a holler.

Roberta
reg

Oh! Oh! Use Nindy!
------------------
~Nindy
"Don't take this the wrong way."

[This message has been edited by Nindy (edited 04-12-2001).] reg

LOL! There are no empaths in Ultraverse, but I'll find a way to stick in a drunken half-elf somewhere in there...

<< But I wanted to say it's great to see a creative mind at work. If you need help with text editing for your help files, or pop-up windows, or website/manual stuff, give me a holler. >>

Thanks for the support! I'll keep it in mind for if/when I ever get around to working on a manual for the game.

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg

And for anyone else interested in RPG programming and looking for free and released resources check out:

http://neotokyo.pyar.com/

A really good place to pick and choose resources for your RPG game.

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg

I always thought it would be neat to have some sort of FE that was simple graphics set up. You could use it to play muds and that sort. You could make your own graphics for the types of monsters you encounter and even give generic character faces to the different races in the rooms. With today's fast processors I wonder what the feasability of it would be.

Wish you the best in the pursuit of your project.

reg

g reg

http://neotokyo.pyar.com/

Free resources and great links for hobby RPG programmers. Music, sound effects, tile graphics, RPG game theory, characters. If you know how to program tilemap engines and battle engines then this place has all the resources you need to bring your fantasy world to life.

Also decided to post the source code to the Ultraverse. It's been coded in C++ and is one hell of a long and big monster.

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg

-Lord Ganryu
Chronosoft, Inc reg

What I now need help with are potion/item names. I need a name for an item that will restore HP (health points), an item that will restore EP (essence points or endurance points for the warrior), an item that will restore both HP and EP, an item that increases attack bonus, an item that increases defense bonus, and an item that restores someone who is unconscious (you don't die in Ultraverse, you go unconscious).

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg

Um, do you want something like Potion, or Potion of ___, etc. reg

I partially implemented the following:

Sun Orb - Health Restore
Moon Orb - Essence Restore
Water Orb - Defense Bonus
Fire Orb - Offense Bonus
Star Dust - Essence and Health Restore
Silver Thread - regain consciousness

Then the same thing but instead of an orb it's a sphere, star dust becomes star quartz, and silver thread becomes gold thread. Helps give a better bonus or helps restore more health or essence.

Then the final item is a tanzinite orb, it will fully restore consciousness, give back all your heatlh, and all your essence points. Very costly and powerful.

Going to now stick in some rods and staffs, then work on implementing equipment, shove in a 20 minute mini-quest, and get as much feedback as possible.

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg

Did you use the earlier FF games as inspiration for yours? They share a very similar look, which isnt a bad thing. Good Luck.

Player of Chivalrous reg

Final Fantasy I baby for the NES! That game rocked. I downloaded the rom for an NES emulator and played it nonstop back in the day before I played Gemstone.

The style for the game is indeed old school Final Fantasy meets Breath of Fire. Both those games were incredible.

As for the Palm PC... never programmed it, and don't have the slightest clue how so I doubt I'd be able to port the source code over to Palm PC compatible.

Well back to programming I go...

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg

So far I have implemented swords like:

Crisis Blade - When you're at 1/4 your total health this weapon will deal 1.5 times the amount of damage it normally does.

Stunner Sword - This weapon stuns the target on every succesfull attack. The duration of the stun is based on the target's prone factor. This weapon really does about 1-2 second stuns at the most unless you're hunting something way younger than you, but the good thing is that the stuns are stackable so they can save you a few attacks.

Deuxxer Kitana - This weapon just allows for a 50 percent chance of doing a double strike.

I'm interested in implementing more weapons with neat abilities like you attack a critter with an electroblade and right after a lightning bolt strikes causing a double attack.

If you have any neat ideas on NON-MAGICAL abilities that weapons can have I'd be interested. If they are magical I'll listen to them, but I don't know how likely it is they will be implemented.

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg

quote:

---

Originally posted by Taernath:
You have to have a thing like the Atma Weapon in there somewhere...

---

My favorite weapon in an FF game.

Found in FFIII or FFVI.

Basically, it transforms to different phases as your character gains levels and HP. It starts out as a dagger or dirk and transforms into a very powerful and large sword. The more HP you have, the more damage it does and it wasn't affected by armor.

Example:

Loki does 1,200 damage to a very tough armored critter using the stunner.

Shadow could do 9,999 to the critter, even though the creature has incredible armor, if his health is high enough.

Hope this clears up any thoughts about the weapon.

Good luck with the game Kranar.

--Chaiden

[This message has been edited by Chaiden (edited 06-28-2001).] reg

Sonic reg

--Chaiden reg

Also, are there any female characters?

Your game looks great from what I have seen here. When can we try it?

Aerienne reg

Heh... it's been a real long time but recently I found some spare time to work on the Ultraverse and managed to finish off all of the core systems. Of course that means now I need it beta tested to catch all of the bugs, glitches, and errors and then revise the systems again.

<< Also, are there any female characters? >>

I now feel rather ashamed that the game doesn't have any females as part of the main characters. It was Kranar, Kolderon, and Daariun who were the main heros and Jorex who was their "teacher", and they are all hard coded into the system, but since I now realize how pathetic that is I'm going to work on replacing Daariun with a female warrior instead. That will take sometime to do but I definitely want to get that fixed.

<< Your game looks great from what I have seen here. When can we try it? >>

As soon as I find a website to host it on I can allow people to give it a test run. Since it's still beta that means you can expect some slight compatability issues (I plan on porting it to Windows, either OpenGL or DirectX to eliminate all compatability issues but that too will take awhile) and don't be surprised if it crashes (although that's very rare).

Just need a host to dump the zip file and it will be ready to go. The game is complete up until the end of the first dungeon (a shrine where you have to retrieve an ancient artifact and fight a pretty hard wizard to get it), and that takes a minimum of 45 minutes but can take up to an hour and a half depending on how thoroughly you explore the game. One thing about CRPG games that can sort of get you down is that you spend a lot of time planning and working on every detail, secret areas, items, additional quests, treasures etc etc... and the player may not even experience or see a quarter of them.

It's ten times worse when you're the only programer working on it

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg

www.geocities.com/lordkranar/

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard

[This message has been edited by LordKranar (edited 03-21-2002).] reg

The only final fantasy I've ever played was the original one for Nintendo, and it sure was fun.

The first test version of the game should be up on Sunday.

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard

[This message has been edited by LordKranar (edited 03-22-2002).] reg

It's up and available for testing now.

Some things you will want to know:

Controls
--------

F1 enters the console, you can check stats, change the configuration, use items, EXIT the game, equip yourself and stuff like that.

F2 enters the save game menu

F3 enters the load game menu

F8 takes a snapshot of the current screen and saves it as a PCX file in the main directory. You can take up to 999 pictures, have fun

SPACEBAR is the trigger button... if you want to talk to someone, open a treasure box, check a pot or barrel for a secret, or select an option, SPACEBAR is the button to do it with.

UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT

Pretty obvious, the game does have free movement, so you can walk diagonally, unlike some of the older RPG games where you had to walk from tile to tile, the Ultraverse allows you to walk freely (this was really frustrating to implement!).

Battle
------

Battle is pretty simple... you have a powerbar and you wait for it to charge. You may perform a standard attack at any time, and as many times as you'd like to, but the strength of your attack is based on the power bar. You can charge the powerbar to white, which is the default, or charge it to blue which makes your attack two to three times as powerful, or charge it to red which makes your attack 4-6 times as powerful.

You will want to experiment with the powerbar as sometimes you may want one person to charge up to red, another to charge to blue, and another to charge to white and then attack, or other combinations depending on what you're up against and how powerful you are.

Some guys may seem impossible to hit or even if you do hit them it's doing next to nothing. This most likely only happens if you try hitting from them anything under atleast white. Charge up to blue and you will notice a reasonable difference or take the risk and charge to red and you will boatloads of damage.

Apart from the powerbar you can Use A Item For Restoration, Execute A Skill, or Run Away. Restoration will let you use one of the orbs, spheres, or threads to revive your characters, Executing A Skill allows you to make use of essence to cast a spell or perform an ability, and running away is for when you encounter a challenge you know you can't handle.

Tips
----

The game is set to be pretty difficult. If you run away too often from battles, then you will be too weak to handle the bosses, if you don't run away at all, then of course you may just end up dead. The Academy located in Nemesis is full of useful tips and information about the game in general, if someone advices you of something, take their advice... I of course wouldn't bother programing anyone to give a tip unless I thought it was important. Stocking up on orbs, keeping two saved games, levelling and getting more wealth by hunting outdoors before entering the Shrine... all will allow you to face the Shrine with minimal difficulty.

Technical Issues
----------------

There are known compatability problems which I'm trying to correct. For all I know it may not even work on your computer! (If it doesn't, let me know please so I can fix it Currently the sound and music management is very poor at autodetecting the sound hardware, and as of now there is no setup utility to manually detect the sound configuration from within the game so if the music sounds really crappy then you have the option of disabiling it at the beginning of the game and just listening to Winamp or whatever else.

Additionally I just rewrote some of the major game systems (just got em done actually) and haven't really checked them over for any bugs or glitches. If you catch any... just let me know so I can fix em.

This isn't Quake 12 or anything major like some ultimo 4D virtual reality world, infact it's not even close! It's just me having fun programming a project that I've had in my head for about 4 years and finally having the time and knowledge to shove the contents of my brain into the hard drive.

Test it out... catch those bugs and errors, comment on the gameplay etc, and try to have fun

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard
P.S - If anyone's interested in the beastly source code, just respond and I'll send it over.

[This message has been edited by LordKranar (edited 03-24-2002).] reg

Currently updated:

Battles now occur less frequently, and occur with a much wider variance instead of steadily occuring once every so and so steps.

Made walking around more flexible. Before if you encountered a barrier but were right at the edge of the barrier, you couldn't continue walking, now if you're at the edge of a barrier the game will automatically walk you either to the left or to the right and then proceed in the direction you were previously walking in. Just makes the controls less frustrating and smoother.

Rewrote the running away mechanics. Now in order to run each person in your party has to make a roll against each monster in the room. In order to fail running away, all members of your party have to fail against any one single target, but in order to succeed running away you have to succeed against every single monster you're up against. The roll is based on your level and speed against the monsters speed and perception with a random number thrown in there that can work for you, or against you.

The monsters in the shrine are now a lot easier. They will do less damage per hit and have less health points.

To compensate for the above, the Archmage Lord Smo (first boss) has considerably more health points and so the battle will last longer and will require you to use up more items like sun orbs and moon orbs etc...

To do list:

Rewrite the entire Item structure to allow for many different types of items that can do different combinations of things and then with that system introduce some type of alchemy. With the new item structure monsters will be able to drop ingrediants as treasure, and with skill and knowledge of alchemy you will be able to combine different ingrediants to create items that can restore your character... and maybe even cast spells.

Add onto the special effects that the system has. Currently it can just do transparent clouds, earthquakes, and fog. I want to add some more effects.

And of course... continue the storyline.

Thanks to those who have tested it out

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg

For me, Pressing "A" on the status screen, would cause all members of the party to gain a level. Additionally, Kranar's HP became a really long negative number around level 9 or 10. Holding "S" while on the status screen, and then moving the cursor would cause silvers to increase by increments of 10,000 depending on how long you held down "S".

This is as far as I got, before I was yelled at to get off the computer, so I'll check it out a bit more later.

Also, for fast readers, there should be a way to scroll the intro text when you're done reading it.

[This message has been edited by Exitialis (edited 03-30-2002).]

[This message has been edited by Exitialis (edited 03-30-2002).] reg

Heh yeah... those are all cheatcodes I put into the game to be able to quickly go through stuff.

I didn't take them out but I wasn't expecting anyone to find them!

Any other bugs you may have found? Pushing "W" allows you to walk through walls, and pushing "C" makes it so that you will never encounter battles and there are some really neat cheatcodes too but I'd prefer if those weren't used since they skew the test results. Once again those are intentional and put in there for debugging reasons, but if there are any other bugs, let me know please.

Could you save/load your game?

<< Also, for fast readers, there should be a way to scroll the intro text when you're done reading it. >>

Thanks for the tip. As it stands the intro will be entirely replaced so I didn't put much weight into changing it, but I may just make it so that pushing down spacebar increases the speed with which the text scrolls.

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard

[This message has been edited by LordKranar (edited 03-30-2002).] reg

Saving and loading works fine.

When buying equipment, you might want to add a confirm option. All you have to do is click space on something accidently, and you lose silver.

Positive things: Movement is very good, not too choppy. The graphics flow well with the movement. NPC's seem to have personality, as opposed to being mindless zombies like many RPG's. And of course, GS systems in the game. Though I'm not sure if they're anything like GS as I couldn't get in a battle.

Also, characters can actually walk over NPC's. While not realistic, I think this is excellent. It prevents getting stuck between buildings and NPC's that won't move the way you want.

Updated: Tried again to play, didn't crash this time. Managed to get to a battle sequence. First attack, Kranar received a huge negative number of damage and died. I managed to kill off the rest of the monsters. I run back to town couldn't find an inn, or a place to heal, so I bought a few healing items, revived Kranar and ran back out to win another battle. I received Negative 2.1 some odd billion silvers. Same as the amount of damage Kranar took.

A like the combat system and messaging. Sort of a cross between Secret of Evermore for SNES and Gemstone. Once you get the huge negative number things fixed, I'll definitely run through it again.

[This message has been edited by Exitialis (edited 03-31-2002).]

[This message has been edited by Exitialis (edited 03-31-2002).] reg

<< When buying equipment, you might want to add a confirm option. All you have to do is click space on something accidently, and you lose silver. >>

Good idea... will do.

<< First attack, Kranar received a huge negative number of damage and died. I managed to kill off the rest of the monsters. I run back to town couldn't find an inn, or a place to heal, so I bought a few healing items, revived Kranar and ran back out to win another battle. I received Negative 2.1 some odd billion silvers. Same as the amount of damage Kranar took. >>

This is very interesting!

I've never seen this glitch before and so I'm at a loss as to where it came from.

Does this error occur if you play the game without the cheatcodes? The cheatcodes are NOT meant to be used, infact I should have taken them out but it's a real pain to take them out, then put them back in, then take them out etc... ...

Otherwise this is one heck of a serious problem and I'll need to find a way to reproduce the problem.

Thanks for letting me know.

I will upload a new version of the game that allows you to skip over the introduction and get right into the game later today.

Additionally as it stands if you want to run a new game and skip over the intro what you can do is select the load game option and select the game with the picture of Kranar right outside of his house. That will be a fresh game from right after the intro, try testing it from that point and let me know if you get those whacky errors.

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard

[This message has been edited by LordKranar (edited 03-31-2002).] reg

Once you got to the top of the tower you had to fight this extremely powerful boss that could cast very powerful magic. After a pretty tough battle, you'd realize it was well worth it, because the Gem Box allowed you to cast the same spell 2 times in one turn.

As for the Economizer, you had to travel to the NE most island on the world map and fight until you encountered something called Brachosaur. The Brachosaur was the strongest creature in the game, stronger than the game's final boss I think. After beating the Brachosaur there was a small chance it would drop the Economizer; when equipped, all spells would require 1 mana to cast.

There was also a spell (Quick?) that gave you 2 extra actions during your turn, so you could have a seemingly endless chain of Ultima flying around if you had good speed...And there was always GoGo to mimic it afterwards...

Nothing compares to casting Ultima 8 times in one turn for 9999 each time. :-)

Kranar, you have to play FF6. Thats the one RPG no gamer should be without. reg

I have a spell called Simustrike, and another one called Shadow, which seem pretty close enough to these concepts.

Simustrike allows you to burn 50 essence using one skill. So you can electrobolt one target 50 times (since electrobolt is 1 essence point), or you can Cold Flare something 12 times etc etc...

The economizer seems pretty damn power, I don't know if it would fit in nicely with the Ultraverse but you never know.

The Ultraverse will have characters that have up to 1 million health points, so I'm allowed to go absolutely crazy with the numbers.

One spell I'm thinking will be cool will be sort of like an Elemental Storm type spell. You know how in these types of RPG games you have the overworld, and when you engage in battle the overworld fades out and you enter battle mode? Well for one skill, after you execute it, the game goes back to the overworld and the screen will shake and I'll have some neat looking storm type special effects, then the screen will go back to battlemode and all hell will break lose.

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg

Kranar's damage seems to be normal. But I still get -2.1 billion silver after some battles, Usually one out of three. Interestingly enough, the status screen doesn't show that I have -2.1 billion silvers, it still says I have 0.

Also, upon gaining a level, Kolderon's HP became -2.1 Billion. I also sent you an E-mail with an error message I received when attempting to load the game I had started yesterday. Maybe it will help you determine what's wrong. Hopefully the E-mail I got from here is correct.

Also, on more than one occasion Kranar's damage redux has been displayed as "NaN", not sure what that means.

I don't have a gamepad or joystick, but if there's anything else you want me to test out, let me know. reg

-2.1 billion is the smallest signed number a computer can produce, the NaN would indicate either an overflow, or something isn't initializing properly.

What computer are you running it on if I may ask? Just need to know the processor and operating system.

But why it's generating these numbers make no sense.

The biggest problem is that I can't reproduce the error on any of my computers at home, so it's pretty hard for me to fix the problem.

I suppose all I can do is wait until I have the Windows/DirectX version of the game available and then get you to test it. Once the game is in Windows there should be no compatibility issues whatsoever (Yay!) and it should fix a lot of technical glitches in the game.

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard

[This message has been edited by LordKranar (edited 03-31-2002).] reg

This error is on my end, just wish I knew what it was. At any rate I hope to get your bug fixed and some other bugs reported to me fixed and will have a new version available sometime within the next 2 weeks.

Thanks for testing it out once again.

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg

No more tedious and very complicated compatability issues to have to try and work around, if you have a pentium class machine, Windows 95, and DirectX, then the Ultraverse will work.

Hopefully this will also fix the errors you reported about the NaN and 2.1 billion overflow, although this isn't something I can be certain of.

Additionally... The Ultraverse now has a setup program that must be run once before you play the game for the first time (meaning you just use it once and never have to use it again). It's very easy to use, simply run it, click on Autodetect, click on test to test the sample music and sample sound. If the music and sound is good, then choose Save and Exit and run the game, otherwise you can choose from a list of compatible sound drivers and select the one that sounds the best. Generally this isn't needed since DirectX is pretty smart at figuring out what configuration works best.

Apart from that, I've basically just increased performance issues and rewrote some minor routines here and there to make the game smoother. Joystick support has been implemented for those who have one, I personally prefer playing the game with a joystick than without one.

Oh... and the cheatcodes have been disabled, so now if anything unusual occurs like you get extra silvers or health... it should be noted down as a glitch.

Hope to hear from you guys again...

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg

I get an error about not being able to read keyboard.dat and language.dat when I use the locale command in the setup.

The game opens up in a REALLY small window that can't be resized or switched to full screen, I can hardly see a thing.

I closed the game, switched display settings to 640x480 so that I could see better, and it wouldn't run at all, it just gave me an error about performing an illegal operation.

Using my multimedia one touch keyboard to raise or lower the volume while the window was active would cause the one-touch program to crash, followed closely by the computer itself.

Finally, the intro still can't be scrolled.

[This message has been edited by Exitialis (edited 04-06-2002).] reg

That's more for people who use an international keyboard to play the game, not for the typical U.S keyboard. Delete the ultra.cfg file, run setup and just autodetect everything and verify that the music and sound works fine.

Apart from that, modifying the resolution doesn't help the Ultraverse. It's run under DirectX so it's independent of your other Windows settings.

As for the intro, simply load a game for now. I did make a fix that allows you to quickly scroll by the text by pushing spacebar, but I will release that along with a bunch of other fixes and suggestions I've received sometime next week.

So try it without the locale and let me know if the game works. So far I've had it tested on 20 different computers and all worked fine, hopefully it will work on yours as well.

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard

[This message has been edited by LordKranar (edited 04-06-2002).] reg

Pretty much means that until I am happy with my 3D engine... the Ultraverse will be on halt.

Thanks to everyone for testing it out!

- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg