Ballad of Thuriana: a Shining Force inspired Tactical RPG

[jdoolin]

Well folks, I've been at work for about a year now on a game I've been thinking about for years. I always loved the Shining Force games on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive, and while Fire Emblem is fun, it doesn't quite scratch the same itch. So I'm making my own Tactical RPG called "Ballad of Thuriana".

Like Shining Force, it will be turn based battles on square grid maps, characters from a variety of classes that can be promoted to others, magic, special attacks and so forth. The story is inspired by ancient and medieval history, as well as a good bit of medieval literature, especially that of the King Arthur legend (although the Arthurian elements are hidden under a thin veneer). I've also got an excellent composer creating a magnificent OST.

https://youtu.be/vlUiHsYfJ_g

There's still a way to go, as I need to build the combat system and of course add lots of content (maps, battles, characters, weapons, etc). So I'm looking at releasing it later next year at the earliest (gamedev is currently my hobby). I'm just about finished with the Exploration half.

I want to thank this community for helping me. You've answered a lot of questions on the forums, often without me having to ask (finding that somebody else had already asked).

The best place to see screenshots/videos is to check out the Instagram page. I upload to there regularly.

http://www.instagram.com/doolindigital/

Thanks for looking in and once again, thanks for such an excellent framework and a great community.

[randomnovice]

Looks great! Good luck with it all.

Looking forward to giving it a try!

[jdoolin]

I should probably include a few screenshots here rather than requiring people to head to social media.

[jdoolin]

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Main Menu

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[jdoolin]

Item and Equipment Menu

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[CaptainMaelstrom]

Looks really cool! I saw from your instagram that you picked up the Jesse Schell book. I love that one. Very insightful.

Best of luck on development and I hope to try this game one day.

[jdoolin]

Looks really cool! I saw from your instagram that you picked up the Jesse Schell book. I love that one. Very insightful.

Best of luck on development and I hope to try this game one day.

Thanks! Man, that Jesse Schell book was a huge help. I'm good with the programming part, but that book and those other two definitely helped guide my actual design decisions, and still do.

That October demo is actually looking pretty realistic at this point. I'm hoping for at least two battles to be ready.

[jdoolin]

Now that I'm off for the summer (I'm a college teacher) I can get work done faster. This week has been all about the Item Shop. One of the challenges here is that each character has their own inventory, as well as a party-wide Item Box, so purchasing Items is a little more involved (such as choosing which character gets a piece of equipment). Another challenge is the number of characters in the force or battle party, and showing how equipment affects their stats.

Overall, I wanted to improve the UI and flow of the Item Shop from the Shining Force games, particularly the GBA version which was already an improvement on the Sega Genesis games.

I haven't gotten to the "Sell" menu yet, which will be different, but here's what I have for the Buy menu so far:

-Price tag graphics that are a nod to the early Shining Force games
-Muted text colors in item descriptions for items that are too expensive to buy
-Character list filter for equipment items with stat indicators (+, - or =)
-For consumables the indicator shows how many each character is holding

[CrimsonGuy]

Im liking the animations and transitions in your GUI, did you use a GUI library or did you code it yourself.

[jdoolin]

Im liking the animations and transitions in your GUI, did you use a GUI library or did you code it yourself.

Thanks!

I did code that myself. I posted in the Libraries topic a long time ago about the intent to share it, but it's still not fully decoupled from my game just yet. I also think the API still needs some work. It supports a variety of different transitions, such as push, wipe, scale and fade, and if you use the right Tween function, you can get cool bounces and such.