I began working on my game for the mag contest. It will be a sequel to Series 1 (like that wasn't going to be too obvious...
![Razz :P](./images/smilies/tongue_emote.gif)
). I'm going to try to make it so there is the eqivalent of two games in one. Meaning, when you start, you will be able to choose if you want to play the continuation of the good ending of Series 1 or the evil ending. Each section of the game will be drastically different, and each will have its own unique game mechanics and play style.
I began working on the "evil" section of the game last night, after not having worked on RPGM in close to 3 months. As it stands right now, the evil storyline is going to be comprised of minigames, of which the goal is to conquer all the other lands, be it through force or diplomacy. There might even be a minigame involving crops/resource management. These minigames are all going to be contained within events, as they were in A Series Aside. Meaning, they are mostly going to be text-based. As of right now, there will be one "minigame" that will include normal RPGM3 mechanics, which means battling, but it will be a very small portion of the game.
As for the "good" storyline, I'm planning on having it revolve around spreading the goddess Alluria's word to the people living in the surrounding areas. This storyline was already alluded to in my Series 4 teaser. I believe the idea I had that I was initially going to incorporate into (originally, the only game of) Series 4, which was astral projection, will fit in nicely within this scenario. Basically, the good storyline is going to be completing quests for people in order for them to pledge their allegiance and belief in Alluria. I think how I'm going to have it is, you will have to collect ingredients for a potion in order to astral project initially. During this time, you will be encountering/completing some quests. Once you drink the potion, you will be able to go to any church and astrally project at will. In doing so, some parts of certain quests that seemed uncompletable before will now be opened up after "talking" to and "listening" to people in the spirit realm. That's all on that for now. Oh, and there will be no battles.
As for what I worked on last night, it's a minigame based on the 3x3 grid that I used in both of my text-based games in A Series Aside. In this case, though, you have an army of 100 men, with a strength of 100. In each of the nine areas, you can fight an army stationed there, or if you choose to, you can go to any of the other nine squares and fight the army stationed there. Basically, depending on the strength of the army you are fighting, you will lose a certain amount of men from your army. If you drop below a certain amount of men, your strength will go down as well, meaning each enemy at that point will deal more damage to your men. The goal is to defeat all the enemy armies. The trick is, though, that if you just randomly fight enemies, you might not be able to solve the minigame, as your army might be fully depleted by the time you get to the end. In other words, there is one or possibly two different ways (orders) in which you need to fight the enemy armies in order to survive to the end.
Long story short, this minigame is basically going to be a strategy game mixed with a puzzle game. That's all I have laid out so far. This mingame, between brainstorming, programming, and playtesting, took probably 12 hours to complete yesterday. And I used event transitions for the first time (I needed to in order to program everything). As of 5 in the morning yesterday, though, it is fully playable with no bugs (debugging this monstrosity was a bear). I'll update this thread after I make more minigames, or make something in the "good" portion of the story. Thanks for your support.