We’ve now completed the mapping and mechanics of the White Mage’s prologue first dungeon – the Coastal Cave! This is one of our more ambitious dungeons thus far and features tidal mechanics where you must avoid the high tide to avoid getting washed back to the beginning of the cave. We also populated the area with numerous small animals such as crabs, fish, and seagulls. We’re slowly figuring out the most efficient way to create maps like this which will ...
Continue Reading → ShareCoastal Cave complete
Posted by: Andrew Walker
Victory Aftermath Menu Redesign
Posted by: Andrew Walker
We are continuing our effort to convert our draft menus into finalized designs. Our recent focus has been the Victory Aftermath menu which plays whenever the party is victorious in battle. It shows information such as EXP gained, SP gained, overdrive gained, and any enemy drops/gold.
The old design was purely functional and lacked style. It was also a bit cramped because it attempted to fit everything on a single screen which can be preferable when possible; however, in this case, ...
Continue Reading → ShareStatus Infliction Probability HUD
Posted by: Andrew Walker
As our development team continues to play other classic RPGs for inspiration, we realized that a key missing element in the Last Dream II battle system was showing the probability of inflicting status effects. It can be frustrating not knowing what the probability to inflict a particular status effect is and whether you are wasting your time trying to paralyze, blind, or confuse a powerful enemy.
We have recently added a new heads-up display element to battle that will show the ...
Continue Reading → ShareBattle Status Effect Popups
Posted by: Andrew Walker
While game testing, we found that changes in status effects during battle could be difficult for players to track. This is especially true of status effects that naturally have a chance to wear off at the beginning of each character’s turn.
This post shows a small video clip of the new status effect popup that we’ve added to battle to help track the addition and removal of status effects. The video shows the Knight inflicted with weakest variety of Blind (called ...
Continue Reading → ShareLast Dream II Title Screen
Posted by: Andrew Walker
Our graphic artist (www.twitter.com/unclebladey) has created a beautiful original piece of art for our title screen. This piece is a so-called “Yggdrasil Celtic Knot” where the roots of the World Tree Yggdrasil interleave to form a variety of celtic knot patterns. The tree does have an important place in the Last Dream II storyline, but we’ll save that for a later time.
For now, please enjoy the Last Dream II title screen video. Have feedback? We’d love ...
Continue Reading → ShareGame Demo Play-through Poll Results
Posted by: Andrew Walker
We’ve compiled the results of our recent poll on whether you would prefer to see our team play-through a prologue and release it as a post or whether you’d prefer to wait until you can play-through yourself.
75% voted for waiting until you can play-through yourself, so that is what we shall do. This means that we will prioritize updating our menus (which are purely functional at this point) so that they are closer to their final versions before releasing you.
In ...
Continue Reading → ShareCharacter Renaming!
Posted by: Andrew Walker
No RPG would be complete without the ability to rename your characters and we’re happy to report that this capability has been fully integrated into Last Dream II. The screenshot above shows the screen used to rename characters in Last Dream II after you’ve selected your party. There’s still a small amount of work to add some control labels and to allow direct keyboard inputs, but it’s exciting to see the renaming menu in action.
After you’ve finished renaming all of ...
Continue Reading → ShareWe’ve now completed the White Mage prologue cutscenes for the first half of the prologue. This includes the introductory cutscene as well as the one that plays after you’ve completed the first dungeon and guides the storyline toward the 2nd and final dungeon of the White Mage prologue.
Now that these cutscenes are complete, we’ve reached a major milestone in the White Mage prologue that allows us to start testing. We’re just starting to bug fix all of the interactable elements ...
Continue Reading → ShareWhite Mage Prologue Cutscenes
Posted by: Andrew Walker
We’ve now completed the interiors of all of the accessible buildings within Galice (the initial White Mage town). We qualify with “accessible” since there is an inaccessible Synthesis Shop during the prologue that hasn’t yet been completed. This means that we’re now ready to start the development of the White Mage Prologue Cutscenes.
We’re already well underway with the development of the first cutscene where the White Mage (Elizabeth) receives a mysterious letter from Saubarag. We hope to be able to ...
Continue Reading → ShareThe Galice Inn
Posted by: Andrew Walker
We don’t usually show map interiors, but we thought we’d make an exception this time for the Galice Inn. When playing, you get a somewhat smaller perspective and can’t (usually) see the entire area. That smaller perspective is important for dungeons so that some mystery remains as to the proper path. We thought it might be interesting to show the entire map of the Galice Inn.
Although Inns aren’t utilized much in the character prologues because of the opportunity to rest ...
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