Sorry for the lack of updates everyone, I've been pretty busy! But it's not like I did nothing! I mostly worked on the animations for attacks and spells, and I'm sure that you'll like them, since I've been pretty creative. And to fill this blog post, here's a picture of the animation interface:

It looks more complicated than it is, actually. Aaaaand I worked on the character classes as well. Every unit you get has his or her own class. There's some useless trivia for the classes for those who like to read. Everyone else can click on the X on the upper right corner.

Take a look at this!! We finished the very first NPC... well sorta. There's still some shading to be done, but he looks nice, eh? This's how the sprite style in general's going to be, I hope you'll like it! I'm gonna show more later, I have to do the shading now. (Note: screenshot was cut down in size) See y'all~!

Lyla and... I mean my cousin and I were a bit busy with spriting and such. (the image on the right is not from the game!) We also had another discussion about whether making the battles team based or turn based. Team based means that there will be a phase for your allies where you may select any unit you like and let it move and/or execute an action. After the ally phase is over the enemy phase will start, which is pretty much the same, just for the enemies and without your control. The turn based battle system has your units' and enemy turns divided by their speed stat. We decided to stick with the Turn based system, since you can only place six of your 12+ units.
My aunt also got me a copy of Etrian Odyssey II out of the blue, and I started playng it. (Okay, that's been a week ago xP) I'm really liking it so far, the art and music are great! But be warned it's tough as nails and very old school oriented, that means limited inventory, lots of evil enemies, scracely placed save points and no real story. It#s still a fun game and will appeal to every hardcore RPG fan. See y'all~

This's part of a conversation my cousin and me were having yesterday, discussing if we want to make the game isometric or overhead. Enjoy~:

So, are we gonna use isometric battle fields or not? It would be more work, but it'd look much more professional.

Why does everything we create have to look professional? I thought it's freeware.

Hello? Freeware can and should look professional, too. Look at Yume Nikki! Or some of the RM games out there, a lot of them look professional and are made by amateurs.

But it's my very first project! I don't think that it has to look professional then...

Sheesh! It's not my first project, remember, it's our game, so it should accord to our visions, right?

Uuuuuh... Are we gonna use isometric maps or not?

...dunno.

In the end, we decided to use "professional" isometric maps. It might be more work, but it's just...more professional xP

Hi guys...
Bad news: My motivation for this project is at -99,9%. I opened the maker quiet a lot, but accomplished little to no advancement. I didn't do nothing though!
Good news: I finished all of the healing items, Lyla's skillset, the first set of weapons and fixed the damage formula! So don't tel me I was slacking off :P
Real life stuff: (Sorta an explanation for my lack of motivation btw) I've had a mental breakdown two days ago, my aunt fell down a staircase and hurt her back badly and her left leg. I wanna stay with her, but I won't stop to work on DS. See y'all~!

Hello everyone~!
Bad news: I removed the mouse support for now. Why? It was hella buggy! You could use it to move during the intro sequence and navigation was a pain, because it wasn't able to actually move the character to the panel you've clicked on. So for now, the mouse support has gone. I will reimplement it though, it just has to be refined. You can still use the keyboard or a gamepad to play, but I'm not sure how the controls with the latter work.
Good news: We realized that the default graphics of RMXP are overused, so we'll be drawing the character sprites and tiles from scratch! It may take longer, but it'll also look much better. The battle animations are pseudo 3D by the way, and I tried to be creative with them. We'll continue using the default graphics for testing purposes though, but fear not- the demo will already use the custom graphics. Oh, to discourage stealing we'll encrypt our files, because we don't want our hard work to get stolen by some random loosers who want their game to look shiny. That's it for now, see y'all!

So my cousin and me finally got our asses off and started to work on the character sprites. It's a lot of work, especially the battle sprites, but we want to make it as enjoyable as possible, so we'll put our all into the sprites. I've also been struggling about using character portraits or not, I'm not sure if they'd fit into the game. The one in the screenshot is only a placeholder, I just wanna know if you guys actually want these portraits or not. If no one relies I'll just cut them out, it'll spare me from too much additional work~! Also, isometric are a pain, you better stay away from them! You have to take care of a super-dee-duper annoying camera which fails to actually catch a character and of course plan out all this height and terrain stuff--my head might explode @__@
That's all for now, see y'all!!

Yeah, I realized that the old one looked to plain, so I decided to give the messages a more cinematic look. I just wish the engine I'm using wouldn't suffer from a three line limit, but I guess I can break it. We also applied a lot of smaller changes, like a new cursor and stuff. I'm also very sorry for not releasing a demo in time, and I can't promise that we'll release anything this month either. I am looking for testers though, y'know, people who can test the game for bugs and text errors. If anyone is willing to help then please contact me over Twitter, my name's Maryfourdee over there. That's all for today, See y'all!