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... ). 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.

Why are you posting info about your contest ideas? I don't think this is a good idea for either you or anyone who wants to compete in the same contest.

And why is that? I kept the Pav posted on my last contest entry, A Series Aside, so I don't see why I should treat this contest entry any differently....

Because now you're trying to create the same game as another one or two people.

Not that I'm saying you should keep quiet, of course. I'm just saying.

I didn't really read your post, except enough to see that you are posting ideas, but if someone does read it, they might be inspired by it. Are you unofficially "reserving" ideas? Now if anyone is inspired by what they read, they have to second guess whether or not they are being original, and if they do decide to use a concept, if it ends up being close enough to yours, you can always claim that they are stealing your ideas

So, with the contest over, what happened to this game?

Meh....due to MANY upheavals in my personal life, I'd pretty much lost all interest in RPGM in the year 2007. I did make four "garbage" games for the Pav's contest, which honestly was like a breath of fresh air for me. I had already posted about so many ideas for really interesting, "groundbreaking" games that I wanted to work on (and started work on most of them), that, looking back, trying to keep up with these ideas and fulfill what I had promised in these forums became more of a chore than an enjoyable activity. Couple that with my old job position, where I came home every day stressed out and not wanting to do ANYTHING (and when I say anything, I mean anything....even watching a 2 hour movie or playing a video game-not RPGM-seemed like too much effort).

So as for your question, I hope once I get back in the groove of making games again (I'd like to dedicate 2008 to getting back into the creative aspects of the community), I either might try to finish this game up, or just use the one REALLY good aspect of it...the strategy/puzzle minigame...in another project.

Right now, I have 6 PS2 memory cards, all filled with RPGM3 games, either completed or partially finished. And that does not even include the four garbage games....I think I got rid of those, or at least some of them, once they were submitted. I needed room on my memory cards for other projects. So I do have a bunch of stuff that is only partially completed that I would like to polish up and release at some point. This includes the demo for Series 3 (the farming/dating sim) that was previewed in the mag a LONG time ago...I'm just waiting for some feedback from someone I sent the file to.

But as for ongoing projects, as it appears this thread has now become a "forum update," I'll post separately about something I'm going to work on in another thread.