Divine Arms Revival, Updates, Battle system demo.

Alright, loooong post incoming. Finally out of the cave. Apologies for the lack of updates, I have been doing nothing but those, I assure you. But unfortunately there are still a ton of stuff to finish, but hear me out here a bit.

A few months ago, I mentioned that every weekend or free time I have, I go back to the very first Divine Arms game and tried to 'fix' it still. It was no easy task and I've met again the design and engine problems of the project.

The good thing is, I was able to stomp them all and actually rebuilt it from scratch. I, of course kept the things that work and fixed everything that was shitting it up.

And for the last 3 months, that was what I was doing. Reviving the First Divine Arms since its engine and potential caught up to Origins.

Divine Arms: Origins has been on hold. Anyway, this was not a hard decision to make, because assets, system and resource-wise, the First Divine Arms, as I calculated it will progress and finish sooner than Origins.

But that does not mean DA:O is out. In fact I am in licensing deals with Pinoytoons for Origin's animation this quarter. And I am also in talks with Alya to do the manga for Origins as well. 

So let me tell you further why I steered towards this decision.

First of all, up to now, I still get emails and messages saying they prefer the top-down view and system of the First  Divine Arms. And I am sure a lot of you agree to it.

Second. Regarding B-Spike, our current animator.
I gave him a chance and was able to do two lewd scenes for Origins.

But as you can see above, the finished loop for Aramus, our bootleg babe was done by me.

B-Spike is an amazing animator, but I noticed from whence he came, there have been a fuck ton of bad habits that he was able to drag in to this project. 

That, and his inexperience on doing lewds showed so bad that I had to take over. His output was just not visually satisfying. Not to mention his output just won't run so well in game. He had like 200+ layers and symbols that slowed the fuck out of Adobe Animate.

So I reviewed and realized his workforce is for baked videos and not for dynamic instantiations like game development.

So I sent him to do sprites. And boy, you'll see all the good stuff he has for us. I am glad I found his place for the project and our chemistry has been an ease.

So, if you have not, there is an attached EXE included in this post to see the new gameplay and system for the revived Divine Arms.

Meet the Legendary Relic: Celestial Gear 

Later renamed by Mahalai as CG, then Siggy, is a legendary relic she found with Sigurd some hundreds of years ago. She is part flesh, part unknown machine accelerator that has been evolving since found.

Aside from the CG Relic, Mahalai also discovered another legendary relic called the Marionette Drive. A weird contraption with buttons on it. It is as if the two relics were affined.

Enter the Paperbag Man. An outlander who happened to have died in his home planet, only for his material information to have ended up in Mahalai's Possession.

She then tasked him to control and further evolve the CG Relic by going on endless missions.

(Fact: the paperbag was supposed to be a placeholder for a later planned character face creator, but custom character creation is just not possible at the moment. specially when the lewd scenes are traditionally animated.)

So, I also figured, i keep calling it First Divine Arms, but seeing our 'HERO' is from earth who died and got him self revived in Maribolgka, I guess I'll unofficially rename First Divine Arms as Divine Arms: ISEKAI (LOL)

Anyway, so how it is different from the First Div-- ughh

PLACE HOLDER SPRITES INCOMING:

Basically, you control CG and she automatically follows you around. 

You target with the mouse, just like before and CG does the shooting for you. 

However, because you are controlling CG's actions, Paperbag man will face CG whenever he gives her special commands like attacking. This may alter your movement speed, so remember that the bullets come from CG and you mind your movement speed.

If you notice the energy bar, that is Paperbag man's reserve. Every special action like shooting or casting spells will deplete it. If you control your clicks, you may preserve energy better or do hold the button to rapidly spend it all to kill enemies. 

CG is an immortal relic. She can get attacked, get hurt or be stunned, delaying her attacks, but there's no way for her to die. 

Paperbag man, however will be more than welcome to show you the game over screen. Make sure he does not die and roll out of danger with the [Spacebar]

CG can now equip and swap between different weapons relics! (up to 5) 

Before, we have always been stuck with one damage property and limited attack types for spells. Now, you'll be able to choose some good combination of weaponry and swap according to your current adversary.

Each of these weapons have randomized stats and elements and spell types, so the rapid fire you saw above may become a charged spell instead. Some weapons may even have longer swap time so you decide if its worth to keep. But yeah, we will have a fuck ton of spells. 

 --------- ABOUT RELICS AND LOOT --------- 

CG, as I mention will be able to equip weaponry and other stuff she finds in battle. 

Back when I was supposed to do WItch Hunt 2, I already made a loot table and system that will finally be used for Divine Arms: ISEKAI

Of course it will be nothing as crazy as the stats shown in these images, but I've already planned a decent balance for elemental and loot tables for the relics you'll find in the game.

 --------- ABOUT MAPS --------- 

This have been the saddest and most infuriating culprit of DA.

Making the maps. And making them in the FLASH IDE.

Anyway, I already grumbled about this in the past, but basically, flash just hates its users. From crashes, to bloats to just simple object dragging has been a hell to develop in.

In Divine Arms, map creation has always been MANUALLY done. From designs to events to collisions, I do them all manually.

Collisions like the red highlights above needed to be done precisely or Siggy will clip through  a wall, enemies get stuck, loop freeze bugs... you name it. Tho this is a smoother collision gameplay wise, the effort to do this cost most of my energy, having to save every minute just because fuck you says Adobe. 

So I took a week off to learn an alternative and ISEKAI will now use tile array maps.

Basically, they're drawing maps via array and labeling your map with walls or floors.

example:

Imagine every 0 in the table is a wall and every 1 is a road the player can run to.

That is how you basically make an array map room.
(lol the above example is missing one complete row of 0's but you get the idea)

So since we're using tile maps now, it may not fully be as smooth as before, but it will be flawless and error free. 

That said, this is how I plan to make you do adventures in DIVINE ARMS ISEKAI:

Each new quest you go to will now be completely random.

The objective is simple: Explore, find the keys needed and defeat the boss.

Maps get bigger as you progress and some quests will need you exploring more than one map to beat the boss at the later map levels.

Again, the one above are RANDOM MAPS. Each tile of those is a designated ROOM and ROOMS are also RANDOMIZED:

To help you understand icon legends:

If you notice, most of the rooms are wide, that's because I want more action this time and less to no puzzle like in the old v1.96. Sure, we'll add some of those up but one huge mistake I did was that the flash IDE is already a pain in the ass and I included puzzles that early.

Also, a little later on, I will be finishing a special ROOM EDITOR, so not all rooms will really be random. Once its done, it will be a Mahalai Tier reward, you can submit me your creations and the map when it loads will have your credits pop up on them, even a special custom message from an npc.

Its currently for project purposes atm, but as soon as I'm done tweaking it for patron version, I'll send it and make a discord section for submissions and approval.

---------- ABOUT LEWD SCENES  ---------

All winning votes from Origins transfers over to ISEKAI.

If you were a DDD Supporter before, message me because you will have special priority for request. Currently I am doing ALBEDO BOOTLEG.

I've learned from the past and this is how it is going to be done now:

All bootleg or DDD girls will be done in its loop version first!

Aramus will skip its cumming scene for now til I finish all the rest of the girls.

After all the loop is done, we start the list again and work on Aramus cum scene.

This, I believe is the better way to do things and progress faster and all vote winners get their suggestions sooner.

However, as soon as the campaign gets extra funding, I will hire another animator to do ASSISTANCE WORK. Never again will I let an animator touch the main scenes. They cause nothing but problems and delays.

 --------- ABOUT SPRITES --------- 

So this is how I do it now. I draw and color the sprite, add some sketch animation for reference and B-Spike does the rest or fills in the gaps. And Look at how beautiful these damn things are!!! 

(some of CG's sprites are still in WIP so some of her arms may be missing)

 (old sprite for comparison) 

Spell cast and idle: 

Gun Arm shoot and idle:  

Swords? of course we'll have swords!  

The slower attack will have a slash wave projectile while the faster one is close range oriented.

PAPERBAG MAN SPRITES:

With M-Drive:

New enemy sprites:  

This is Goombio. He will have a green alternative brother later.

This is a Luntia. She hates trespassers and will heal and revive Goombios

This is a Toagre. Miniboss.

Speaking of bosses, here's a mockup for the ALBEDO Bootleg boss.
I couldn't add it in the battle system demo because its still a wonky mess, but it is basically done. Never needed to walk anyway, so it should be finished soon. (placeholders) -- But this should give you a good idea. Also if you look behind, we are gonna be using the existing assets so it will be much faster in production.

Old enemies will also be returning, so the Ganker and Bloodhunter will be there. 

I may be able to have some use for this scene after-all:

-------So this may all sound good, but when? ------- 

To be honest I could've pulled it off sooner, but personal stuff, holidays, storms and health issues have been a real challenge. For the moment I hope the promise and the battle demo will suffice, but here's where I am now in the project:

All of the stuff I mentioned above are completed 80-100%.

The random maps, the systems, the loot tables, etc... it is enough to make it to a demo.

I just need to fuse and wrap them all together, because they are all done in separate source files. This is just how I do things now learning from previous mistakes, but it is going to be done. After it is done, I will still need to add sounds and sound effect moans.

(SFX are prepared, existing will be reused and I also bought new sfx stuff so I don't have to mix them myself manually.)

It is not easy but the progress has been systematic. It has been working for months now and there is good steady progress. However I will need a few more weeks to deliver the whole thing. Working, playable and has juicy sounds in it.

For those who are still here supporting me, please hold on a little longer.

I've gotten everything back in my hands since and in full control. We will see this game finished!

Thank you and -kReig out!

EDIT PS: YES SHE WILL BE LEWDED