Yay progress
It would be awesome if you could get a open demo out by next september, good luck!

Update.

* Fight command fully functional (save for second-wind counterattacks)
* Magic mostly implemented.



We have most spells coded and correctly functioning as of this post, and some of what we have is demonstrated in the above screenshot in one of the game's more difficult optional dungeons (The Underdeep). When I did the initial testing, I was quite surprised at the sudden difficulty ramp now that they are able to use magic. I mean, I kinda sorta expected it but it really hit home when I actually went there and started a fight and tried (and failed) to keep Maya alive. Going into that place unprepared, even with almost all max stats (and a few above max), is basically a death sentence. Worst part is, it's possible to accidentally stumble upon the place relatively early in the game. Guess this is why you get two save slots, huh?

What hasn't been coded yet is MP deduction in casting (testing purposes), four spells, enemy and guest NPC skills, special command abilities, items, and a few flags. Almost all of this can be tied into the same piece of code that runs all the magic.

Animations are planned, but only if there's nothing else (we (really) need/want) to do. Not much else to say other than that there's a small debate among the team about just *how* we're going to accomplish animations and with what.

I saw this in IRC yesterday. It's really looking awesome! Great work on pulling the battle engine together!

Is this build on the secret build distribution website? I'd like to try this out

Seems like it is! It's not built for the CSE atm though. So black and white only for now ^^

That's freakin sweet Iambian! Sadface about the TI-83+ support for the moment. 

Yea, that's pretty much what Iambian was saying in IRC the other day.

Could you try compressing some of the code/data? A big lag occasionally is probably better than not being able to run the game at all.
(without reading the previous posts, I am assuming that size is the problem)

You *should* read all the previous posts. Almost all the compressible data is already compressed. What isn't is either unworkable or we don't have the RAM for a destructible copy of it. As a point of reference as to what's compressed (as obtained from the build process):

Units in bytes.
Tilemap in: 60262, out: 20101
Tileset in: 4112, out: 2772
Enemy spriteset: in 3072, out 2582
Text 0 in 1259, out 843
Text 1 in 4077, out 2382
Text 2 in 2661, out 1386
Text 3 in 567, out 277
Text 4 in 1268, out 622
Text 5 in 5977, out 3404
Text 6 in 2759, out 1724
Text 7 in 5950, out 4241
Default save file in 386, out 152

Admittedly, a fair chunk of the bloat is from awful programming, but that's not something we can deal with right now. The most important thing to do is to get a game released.

EDIT: Console output from just the main build:
Brass Z80 Assembler 1.0.5.3 - Ben Ryves 2005-2006
-------------------------------------------------
Assembling...
Pass 1 complete. (3550ms).
Font Table Size: 928
Routine allocs: 12, total memory allocated: 14893 of 8811 max exec.
-------
Page 0 bytes 15934 used of 450 remaining.
Page 1 bytes 16172 used of 212 remaining.
Page 2 bytes 9056 used of 7328 remaining.
Page 3 bytes 15833 used of 551 remaining.
Page 4 bytes 15637 used of 747 remaining.
Page 5 bytes 15618 used of 766 remaining.
VERBOSE_OUTPUT not defined. To show more info, define it.
-------
Pass 2 complete. (3454ms).
Writing output file...
Errors: 0, Warnings: 0.
Writing list file...
Done!

Double post, because why not?

I've been working on some mockups of how the animated title sequence will go, although its implementation may be a ways off. Iambian and Geekboy1011 seem rather superstitious about rendering the title screen until the game approaches release state. Something about other projects ending up development hell. Anyway...



The in-game rendering may differ slightly, but this is the general idea. I may do a further mockup including the "New game / Continue" screen that follows, then additional mockups of the opening backstory text that proceeds any in-game cutscene rendering.


In related news on my part, I'm working out a few ideas to expand upon the Underdeep. Currently, the dungeon consists of nearly a dozen pseudo-random floors that all follow the same theme. What I plan to do is have the dungeon randomly select a few static floors that will be interspersed between the pseudo-random caverns that account for most of the dungeon. These static floors will have fixed positions where treasures can randomly spawn, and in some cases, the system will select groups of NPCs and mini-quests to be present on these floors. The execution is going to be similar to the bonus content found in the "Dawn of Souls" version of Final Fantasy I.

Due to some existing concerns about space constraints, I decided to orphan one of the maps and event sets from an optional area that was planned to appear in the game. Personally, I felt the area was superfluous and didn't really add anything to the already numerous side-areas available. The quest is nonetheless going to be integrated (in a slimmed down form) into one of the Underdeep's static floors, so it's not actually cut from the game after all.

"Yeah, yeah. That's nice. When the fuck is this game going to be released?!"

We're actually not that far off from release state. What's left? Iambian and Geekboy1011 have the groundwork for battle animations implemented, and are working out details in regard to the actual animation sequences spells will use. After that, we have to finish rendering the rest of the cutscenes in the game, balance out character statistics versus those of enemies, slap a title screen onto the game, and presto! Everybody will be playing Escheron in all its glory.