Okay, we should decide on characters for the project. We may not use them all, but let's have them.

Character Name: (Duh, what you wanna call the character)
Graphic: (Use http://www.geocities.jp/kurororo4/looseleaf/ for XP design, and printscreen the results)
Type: (Hero/Villain/NPC. And What role do they have, as in are they a shopkeeper, a cute witch, what?)
Backstory: (Where do they come from, what do they want)
Personality: (Kinda self-explanatory)
Current History: (How does the party meet them. Possibly subject to change)
Powers: (Specific abilities, and also immunities/resistances)
Weaknesses: (For villains this is an actual strategy of defeat, for heroes it's mainly the drawbacks of their powers. NPCs might not have a Powers or Weaknesses section)

-----------------------

Character Name: Ambrosia Brahmin (from Oracle of Tao)
Graphic:
Type: Villain. (Former hero, now an evil shopkeeper)
Backstory: She used to be a hero that saved that universe on a mission from God. But, she kind of got bitter, and a bit crazy, after her journey ended and her boyfriend left her (her bf looks like Cloud Strife).
Personality: Sugar and Ice Personality. Why the heck someone like this is running a tavern adds to the strangeness.
Current History: Recently, she became the manager of a local tavern that sells items and beds. When the party asks her for information, she flips out and decides her former boyfriend has sent them to spy on her, and has a battle with them.
Powers: Sorta like a summoner, except she calls energy rather than actual summons. Her powers are strong but very slow to use (delayed effect). Alexander (light spell), Apollo (defense effect), Chronos (a slow effect), Thanatos (death effect, plus some dark damage), Lilith (dark spell), Four Gods (elemental damage), Michael (physical, plus some light damage), Aiken (does damage based on the same element that controls healing), Tao (yin-yang nonelemental damage to all targets, powerful, so takes several turns to cast)
Weakness: Besides the fact that her casting is slow (and some of it does no damage), she's got pretty low hp, and low defense. This is to make up for the fact that most of her attacks almost kill the party.

(Dang, missed my chance to start the thread )

Wait, are we just making up a character? Or are we supposed to make a character reflecting ourselves, like, one named after our account?

Okay let me try this

Character Name: MEands?
Graphic: I'm not very good a spriting, but I'll post this picture as a very rough idea of what I want his look to be. Click here
Type: He's not exactly a hero or a villain. He should be a playable character, but at the same time he should be a potential boss/recurring enemy in other character's stories.
Backstory: (Where do they come from, what do they want) MEands lives by himself in a forest area, miles off from the city. He only has a couple neighbors that take about an hour to reach. Lately he's been having an increasing feeling of paranoia. After a bit of gameplay (scary gameplay?), he finally decides to visit the city to get his mind off of these haunting feelings. In the city he meets some of the other characters. (I'm thinking this should go in layer 2 or 3, since they are the more realistic ones). In the beginning he joins up with the other characters, but separates at one point. After this, the hauntings continue, and he becomes almost positive something is following him. (I'm thinking this haunting character won't be the main villain, but an extra boss of some sort)
Personality: MEands is a pretty chill guy, he has a sense of humor and is pretty cheerful. However, his personality begins to darken as the hauntings become more frequent. Eventually, his paranoia takes over and he becomes hostile to the other players. Thus, becoming a villain.
Current History: I think I already explained that in his backstory. He meets them in the city. Later on after he's become more paranoid he might be following clues left by the thing following him. They eventually lead him to where the other players are adventuring.
Powers: MEands is a form of cleric. He isn't a mage, but he has special medicine to heal and amplify powers. He also has a few damaging chemicals that will poisen or actually inflict damage. His basic attack is a punch. His evasion is high because of his paranoia.
Weaknesses: His most obvious weakness is that he has a very limited amount of damaging attacks, and their damage output is very low. He also has low defence and health.

Here. (Couldn't get the coat right, and the shoes I just sorta random colored)
We can call him a Chemist. That would make his status based potential higher than a straight cleric, while not necessarily doing anything in physical damage.

Woah that's awesome! Thanks!
I like how it has differences from the picture, that way I'm not directly copying an anime.
I gotta get a better name than MEands though.

MEands THE HUNTER! Lol, yea I dunno. If I had to say for placement, I'd say layer 3. Layer 2 is realistic, but you still think it's real so ghosts and stuff aren't there. Still, maybe it should be there, since layer 3 revolves primarily around the programmers.

lol, I'm not the hunter, I'm being hunted.

Hey should we post the character bios on the first post so it doesn't get cluttered?

Like, have each bio in spoiler tags and next to it have a pending, an approved, or a needs edits depending on what it's doing in the game.

I have no idea on approval stuff. We're gonna mooch off of Staff people for that sorta stuff.

Ha okay. I still think we should organize the bios.

Probably a sticky? That would help more. Right here, submission of the characters is probably enough.

I'm finally done drawing my character.

I didn't want to just toss a generic jigglypuff in there, so I made it more of a self-insert than just a quirky pokemon girl. If we're doing the "different versions of the same people in different layers" thing, I can do character pics of her in the context of a different layer as well. I'll probably also be able to make the overworld sprite for her as well.

I presume the community are allowed to post characters and not just developers. If so, please reply so I can post information.

Yes. This is a community project.
Feel free.

Yes! Please! We need as much help as we can get! (that's mainly why I set up the submission thread; for those that don't have access to the dropbox to show their stuff that they want to put in the game.)

Anyways, I made an "other layer" version of my character. Still not sure if the different layers thing is officially a thing in this yet, but I decided to give it a shot anyways.

-edit-

This is what I came up with for Jiggly. Couldn't get the long skirt and the simple shirt because they were both on the same layer, so I had to experiment a little. And I couldn't really manage a jiggly hat with the editor.





That would be me. I'm proxy protected to keep viruses down.

Character Name: Alex Fren (From one of my games that isn't done)

Graphic: http://i717.photobucket.com/albums/ww176/Z...titled-2375.png Although, since I can't sprite, if someone wants to sprite a better version, here is the 2k3 version of him in medium to light armor: http://i717.photobucket.com/albums/ww176/Z.../AlexFren-4.png If you are going to sprite, maybe even sprite him in armor of the current time's guard.

Type: Hero. He is a stranger to this time, so he disguises as a guardian of a city.

Backstory: Alex Fren once was a combat-marine 37n squad leader. When he was a C-Marine 37n, it was year 2159. During mission 24 Alpha, he saw a guy. This mysterious guy teleported Alex Fren centuries back in time. Alex Fren is not in 2159 anymore. Alex Fren is now in the Medieval Times with all equipment gone! That means no guns, no armor, no anything, besides a cloth or two. He is trying to get back into his own time.

Personality: After what he felt, he has become near emotionless (Year 2159 is in the environment of post-apocalyptic. When he went into the Medieval Times, he tried changing year 2159, which is why he wants to go back) . All he cares about is to get the job done. He still expresses happiness, sadness, etc, but the feelings are minimal. Yet, in the Medieval Times, he felt disappointed and sadness that he is leaving, and almost wanted to stay (Able to get attached).

Current History: He has successfully gotten away from the Medieval times. Although, he has teleported within the year of events that have been happening to the heroes. He meets them within a city while he is looking around (in secret) for answers of how he can solve his problems (Maybe keep what year he is from a secret for most part).

Powers: He is an offensive brute. He wields a sword, and the sword he only uses. He has experience with a bow, but barely any. Even though he also learned some magical spells from wizards in the medieval times, he doesn't know them enough to successfully use them in combat. His main power is the power of close combat.

Weaknesses: Since he is powerful in close combat, he suffers in ranged combat, in which enemies out of reach will devastate him.

Is that good enough? I am willing to subject to change if need be, or if there are a few "either or" (can't decide) parts.

Thanks for the base sprites, bulmabriefs144. I changed some things to look a bit nicer and accurate. Is it okay that I added a visible mouth to the faces and applied shine dots to Jillian's eyes? For some reason it just didn't look right without them to me. I'll probably be done with the other facing sprites soon.

No biggie, I'm just amateur spriting. Btw, if you're gonna add that hat you should figure out how to add it for the side and rear views (or was that what you meant).

(zinx, here)



(We should also make a script that adds in the first weapon, which is changed to Unarmed, that can have the ATK points edited as weaponless, and can have the Hit animation. It kinda sucks that you can't really attack even if you're a brawler. Since otherwise, there's some sorta glitch that means you pretty much always do zero damage even if your strength is huge. I did something similar to this with a common event, but it's awkward and requires you add the item in question before equipping it)

Oh wow. Nice! Thank you!

Wasn't sure about spriteset 2, any better ideas?

I have the hats grafted onto the other sides!

The transfer to the other girl should be pretty easy since the references are already there. And if anyone wants anything altered on their character's sprites, I can fix those up as well.

Oh my, that purple outfit is so cute with the Jigglypuff hat I should create a game just to be able to use that sprite!
Very nice idea!
Costumes are awesome in games - especially if you can change them often, or have the ability to wear certain costumes on certain characters, etc... so cool. ^^

If are referring to Alex, then here are some other armors I planned on featuring in my game that you could use:

From upper left to lower right: Future Armor, No Armor, No Armor With Sword, Light Armor, Medium Armor, Semi-Heavy Demonic Armor, Pegasus Armor, and Heavy Demonic Armor.

Whoops, noticed one small detail on the arms jiggly. Sleeves on the side and back, none on the front (that and the hair needs to match color). Nice fix on the shirt btw. (I'm not converting 8 whole sprites any time soon...)

I made this for fun, using the male and female facesets.

Because it's still up in the air about which maker will be use for the layer 1 stuff, I'm holding off from working on my layer 1 character. But for now, here's a random layer 2 kid:
Charles Travis "the pizza boy"

This kid used to get beat up all the time when he was in middle school. Nowadays, despite the "less hostile" company of high school, he still spends a large amount of his time cooped up inside playing video games. He has a part-time job being a delivery boy for Pizza Pavilion and thus is known almost exclusively as "the pizza boy" by his peers. He's used his pizza boy status to sneak into house parties a couple of times but most of them ended with him being tossed out. Despite his attempts, he still doesn't have a girlfriend. He's also interested in model airplanes, soccer, TV (mostly the really old show channel), and his pet goldfish, Sara.
He might appear to be a withdrawn softie at times, but once you get to know him, he can actually get quite talkative and genial; though at times just a little ornery.
Layer 2 stats:
Attack: Medium
Speed: Medium-high
Defense: Medium-low
SP Attack: N/A
SP Defense: Medium-low
HP: Medium-high

Online, he likes to type using "1337 sp34k" and often disregards grammar (especially when time is of the essence). He's usually charges into battle without second thought and thus sometimes lacks in strategy until he's been hit a couple times by the enemy. His weapon of choice is the Morning star (those swingy-spikey ball things) because "it just look c00l with all those spikes and stuff, okay?".
Layer 1 stats:
Attack: Medium
Speed: High
Defense: Medium
SP Attack: Medium-low
SP Defense: Low
HP: Medium-high

The background picture looked vaguely like a jester hat and I saw bells, so I came up with this.



I can change it if it's not to liking.

Name: Sharla Dean

Layer of origin: Layer 3
Age: 26
Level of plot relevance: very low
She works at (insert name for the facility here) where the stuff for layer 2 is developed. She specifically designs the layout of outdoors areas. They say that she hid several special "easter egg" areas that can only be accessed through special directions or through the completion of complex spacial puzzles. She often laments how she is one of the very few females on the team; sausage fests being a common sight within the realm of computer science. But despite having to work with all these MEN, she passionately labors long hours on her landscapes. She tends to be one of the slightly more fashionably inclined of the group.

Many of her co-workers would describe her as being somewhat reserved but very much tenacious. Also, she likes to watch various soap operas and sometimes will just not shut up about the latest plot twist. At home (which probably will never be mentioned or seen due to her lack of relevance to the plot), her aging mother has been staying in the guest room instead of at her own house for some reason. She really wants Sharla to go get a boyfriend or something, but she claims that "her only love is her work" or something like that.
Secretly, Sharla outlined some specs for an NPC in layer 2 that would be her theoretical "dream boy". She left the specs in a spot in the office for somebody to find, but this dream boy hasn't been programmed in yet. She can only hope and wait for that lucky moment to come when she can visit her dream boy in layer 2 someday. Then she would be able to practically be in her own soap opera, minus the soap ads.
(Note: If the dream boy ever does get implemented and interacts with Sharla, he will most likely reject his predefined purpose as a "solution to her problem" and dump her or something. No easy happy endings here.)

(Nice. But you could make it go either way, with some work, i.e. if she expects too much then yea, but if she later apologizes, and goes about it the right way, it may have hope. Also, the curly hair is extremely hard to do, so I had to improvise, as is the color of her skin, it looks too dark for me)

I'll see if I can get it by this afternoon.



Sharla (I think)



Her dream guy (I figured between fantasizing about him and the fact that he's created from scratch, there's probably some underwear scene).

----------------------
I'm gonna do a programmer one for layer 3.

Programmer: Thomas Hooker
Layer 3 stats:
Attack: Low
Speed: Medium-high
Defense: Medium
HP: Medium-low

Programmer of the above barkeeper (Page 1), Ambrosia Brahmin. More than a bit eccentric, and possibly cackles maniacally saying "Soon it will be time..." Typically projected on layer 2 as an avatar using the opposite gender (as a maid working at a cafe), and likes cute things. Probably NOT a main programmer.

Maid: "Yuki"

Layer 3 stats:
Attack: Medium
Speed: High
Defense: Low
HP: Low

The layer 2 persona of this programmer. Acts very cute and submissive, and sells drinks to the main characters. The party of course thinks this an actual character, and is shocked to find out "her" true identity when arriving on layer 3. The males of the party all want to save her, before finding out the truth. They probably realize it, when the programmer serves them the same type of tea Yuki did. Uses broom as a weapon.



Thomas and "Yuki"

"The Father"
Layer of origin: Layer 3
Age: 47
He is the big wig behind this expensive project. Using the computer science (and a dash of business) expertise that he had collected over the years, he was able to start a small company to fulfill his dream of being self-employed.
Before Project Matryoshka was started, he and his colleagues worked on the back-ends of numerous online games, designing the framework for packet transferring, log-ins and log-outs, the handling of server-side details, and many other numerous things. They would get these jobs from separate gaming companies looking for some techies to make their multiplayer games work. As time grew onward, his company grew little by little and eventually started to work on their own games, instead of just being the grunts behind the machines of the other guys.
"The Father" once had a wife and child, but was always sort of distant to them compared to his devotion to his work. Despite these rough edges, he still cared for them very much, making sure that they had the "absolute best" available to them.

This all changed when the incident happened. It left his child in a coma with no hope of recovery.
In desperate guilt, he attempted to research and work on a solution to this problem as if it were just another puzzle to be solved. With the arduous assistance of his team, they were able to develop a virtual world with a method of "full mental immersion", which would essentially put the player directly into the world, instead of just letting them control a proxy, or avatar.

But this task was definitely not an easy one. He spent countless days and nights plugging away, never even returning home to his wife at any time between. His wife left him after watching him obsess over his project and his general disregard for the immediate members of his family and friends.

As perhaps imagined, "The Father" became fairly wealthy with his company's server work, netting him and his colleagues quite a bit of coin. It was because of this that they were able to stay financially afloat during the great grind of Project Matryoska, not to mention the power bills associated with the life support machine that they installed in the building for his child.

At first, the world that was the base for Project Matryoska was an older game that the team had worked on before, taking place within a modern suburban setting: supposedly perfect for raising a child. From there, they built unique landmarks, scripted numerous essential events, and programmed a great deal of realistic characters for him to interact with. They did not give the child privy to the world beyond the one that he now resided within. Instead, they watched from afar, using avatars to masquerade as characters within that world.

Now with the brunt of the hard work with Project Matryoska slowing down, "The Father" is starting to doubt himself a bit. Even though he saved his child from certain comatose doom using his company's technology and hard-working research and development, the fact did not change that his child was physically still in deep sleep, likely to stay locked within his virtual world until the day that they run out of resources to keep the child and the project's server in working condition. He feels that this "great distraction" is merely borrowed time, not nearly close enough to "the best" for his child. But even so, he continues, along with most of his team, working on Project Matryoska.


I didn't want to post this in the plot thread because I didn't want to double post and I wanted to draw somebody, which is sort of the thing that distinguishes this thread. I hope that you don't mind that I referred to layer 2 as Project Matryoska (since actually calling it layer 2 within the story doesn't seem to make that much sense.) Hopefully these details will mesh well with the existing outline. Also, feel free to add plenty of other details about this character.

I always imagined the programars as more mysterious and less personal.
But if everyne lieks this then I'll make a guy soon.

Name:Luxis Oswell(Luxferre de Oswell)
Graphic:http://imageshack.us/f/6/luxis.png/
Type: A katana-wielding Airship captian of the Sahgahin Fleet.
Backstory:Luxis comes from a wealthy family, but after his big brother Secil left then he decided it was time to live his home, finally finding a new living he commands the Sahgahin Fleet to achieve his dream of facing his brother with his newfound strength. Everything has been according to plan until he met the programmers.
Personality: He is serious in front of royalty and nobles, but when he is with his freinds he is funny, loud, and is protective of women.
Current History: He now is stuck in his new home waiting for the next call.
Powers: He can call upon the powers of the Muramasa and create dark waves of energy, doppelganger and he fights with his scabbard as well.
Weaknesses: If he uses this power too much he will "overheat" and go beserk.

I picture that at first they would be seen as mysterious, but then their personal life would slowly trickle out, showing that they are just regular people and not supernatural beings.

Shanatto to display pictures, click on Embed and Forum. Copy and paste that.



(and remove "the uploaded with" line)



Oddly enough, Father looks like my uncle.

Gelanda

Layer of origin: layer 1 (avatar of Sherry)
Age: 20-something
Class: wind mage
Title: "Sky Princess"
Gelanda is the self-proclaimed ruler of the sky (not that there's very much to rule over up there). She has the ability to fly in high altitudes using her wind magic (so this means that she can't use her powers to hop over obstacles or barriers). She tends to be somewhat bossy towards nearly everyone but her closest friends or other wind mages. But despite this, she's actually quite reliable as a party member, if you can catch her at just the right time to get her assistance.
Spells:
Boosting breeze: Ups party's speed slightly.

Twister barrier: Raises def slightly, changes into fire twister if hit by fire, changes into liquid twister if hit by water, activates Debris Fling if hit by an earth attack (2x damage if debris was metal-based), changes into static twister if hit by lightning, some other types of attacks like dark/light/neutral magic, psychic/ attacks, and other non-tangible types of attacks do not interact with Twister barrier or any elemental off-shoots. Also, any said off-shoots can not be changed to another. Only lasts 2-3 turns.

Debris fling: A bunch of light debris blown towards an enemy by the wind.

Disorientation: Enemies with long unrestrained hair/other floppy thing near eyes 's accuracy lowers greatly due to the wind blowing it around. More effective on enemies with both hands full.

Erosion: Light debris is rushed around an enemy for 2-3 turns, making them lose small amounts of health.

Whisk away: Removes light enemies from the battle

Great stone twister: A large barrier of rocks whirl around the party. No elemental changes. Whole party is protected by most physical attacks. Direct attack attempts from either side causes damage. Ranged physical attacks may either fail, succeed as usual, or be redirected at a random battle participant for x2 damage (most of the time towards an enemy). Tangible elemental attacks are diminished but not prevented. Most effects work against both parties. Only lasts 2-3 turns. Costs quite a bit of MP.

Sherry Marlow
layer of origin: Layer 2
Age: 14



Sherry is an avid fanfiction writer who enjoys watching various anime. She belongs to an upper-middle class family and doesn't really fit in with the other kids at the private school that she goes to. While she's not writing or doodling, she is usually daydreaming. When she heard about a particularly popular online game, she was extremely excited because there was a class of mages that could fly and wear wavy cool dresses. Despite how disconnected she is with her parents, she always seems to be able to weasel them into buying her what she wants. Thanks to this attribute, she has become quite spoiled and will often spend entire weekends watching entire box sets of her favorite anime shows.
Most people that happen to read her fanfiction will find that often she finds some way to shoehorn her self-insert into the story to become the protagonist's main love interest. Because of this, her fanfiction often ends with her kissing the protagonist for five hours straight or something equally ridiculous and/or slightly romantic.

As it can probably be seen, she does not have a boyfriend yet. Then again, she's been so wrapped up in her fantasies and anime and poorly written fanfiction to be interested in finding one quite yet.

I like this. I like this a lot. I also like the sprite of him.
Kudos all around.

What do you think of Luxis, you guys?

He seems like someone that would fit fairly well in layer 1. Personally, I'd like some slightly more personal information about him. Also, is he a layer 1 native or is he an avatar of a layer 2 character? and if so, tell us about the layer 2 controller behind him.
Remember to give juicy details that would show us multiple sides of the character.

It's a fairly good start, just add some more stuff about him.

Well would it be okay if his user was a High School student techie nerd that helps the programmers?

Only if you could elaborate more about him and take great care to craft a backstory that melds well with what information has already been given.
I'm sorry if I seem like I'm being a little pushy, but I want the characters to be compelling and interesting without becoming Mary-sues.

(Even though an dated draft of Sherry was called Mary-sue for the sake of a fanfiction pun, she has flaws in her personality that make her dynamic enough to be at least somewhat believable as a wistful, bratty otaku. Please prove me wrong in a succinct manner so that I can revise her to be suitable for quality control.)

It's difficult to not make Mary Sues when you have powerful characters. But the other trap when making compelling and interesting characters, is to make them too compelling and interesting.

A Mary Sue is not defined as someone much more beautiful, powerful, and interesting than other people. Mary Sue can be none of those things in fact, for what universally defines a Mary Sue is story hijacking, a character either as a side character who takes the spotlight away from the heroes, a villain that takes it away from the heroes, or even a hero that suddenly grabs all attention away from, well, basically everyone else. The Player for instance, as in the earlier idea, would qualify unless the story shifted away from them to the other characters in the layers.

Rasquel, emissary of the Exiles
Layer of origin: Layer 1
Age: 30???

Rasquel came from "the village of the Exiled ones" and for many years was an aimless traveler, visiting every town that he could to try and change the opinions of the masses with regard to the ones of his hometown, which was originally a wasteland where those who had chosen the twisted path of dark magic were all exiled to by the order of *insert powerful political official here*.
He attempted to tell them that over the generations, the exiles had forgotten their old ways and were no longer a threat to society. But, of course, nobody would listen to his words, assuming that he was lying or something.
The soot black skin of an Exile is said to have been a curse mark passed down from the original exiles, who accepted it in order to pursue greater dark powers, not knowing or caring that it was hereditary. But not many commoners knew this and assumed that Rasquel practiced the dark arts as well. Many times he was ostracized and kicked out of places simply because of his origin.
One day while he was sitting in a secluded pub, a cloaked individual approached him. He had heard of the adversity and strife that Rasquel had faced and presented him with a curious looking box.
It was made of a sturdy wood and had a relief carved into it that looked like a rose. It was also gilded at the corners and had a peep-hole at the top. The cloaked one got him to peer inside. What he saw was in glowing letters: "Persuasion". He was told that he would get what he had seen if he opened the box up. He didn't particularly believe the cloaked one, but he was also very desperate for a solution. When he turned to accept the box, the cloaked one was nowhere to be found, leaving the box behind.
Rasquel took the box with him to an abandoned alleyway, feeling power emanate from the cracks. Hesitating first, he slowly opened the box. What happened next was unknown.
When he woke up, it was dark and he was lying in the mud, still in the same exact alleyway. He peered back into the open box, and saw nothing inside, just ordinary wooden walls with no decoration. He then closed it, picked it up, and started walking towards his camp site. Why would somebody just give away a box like this? And why would it knock someone out? Had something escaped?
As Rasquel was leaving the city, a drunkard jumped him, barely able to hold the knife in his hand in his perpetual stumble. Tonight this poor man was going to be a hero and take out his financial frustration on an unarmed kin of the Exiles. Rasquel was grabbed by him before he could turn to run. The man slowly weaved and wobbled his knife towards him with a satisfied look on his face, glad to finally bring justice down on the one who had done nothing wrong. As the knife closed in, Rasquel yelled "STOP!" This caused the man to immediately halt the trajectory of his blade, accidentally tearing his own shirt with a miscalculated back-swing. Amazed at what had just happened, Rasquel yelled "LET ME GO!", and sure enough, the drunkard released his grip, just sort of staring at his arms as Rasquel scampered away.

Some days passed and he had already mastered his new found gift of persuasion. It didn't exactly work the way that he had hoped it would, but it still was very useful. It could not change thoughts directly, but it could cause others to act through his own will, via the power of suggestion. Not all were susceptible to it, but it did work on quite a few. He utilized this ability to band together some allies to protect himself.
There were many who were wary of his company and his intentions and plotted against him. His mighty lackeys disposed of any who conspired against him.
Not all of his recruits had to be persuaded. Some of his more powerful associates had ulterior motives and there were some that joined in order to try and warn him about the nature of his abilities. They were ones that had previously obtained the box in some fashion. All of them needing something, got something, lost control, and eventually lost everything to their name.
Rasquel had abandoned the exiles who did not follow him to establish a kingdom of his own, not that far in the east. In that mountainous region, his vast army of mindless drones trained, awaiting the day that the land that had forsaken him would strike back.

If you guys find any details that need to be changed, just post them.

I like the way you said it overall, I just have a couple things to point out that might need some debating.

I really like what you did with them being exiled for using dark magic, but when I think of a mysterious group of people I just don't picture them in that costume. It's a cool outfit, but I picture the exiled clan to wear things like cloaks and hoods and long flowing robes. I don't know, it seems more mysterious and more of a thing that would be worn by users of magic.

The secluded pub sounds a lot like Diablo 2

The persuasion power is a cool concept, but how are we going to work that into a final boss fight? I feel like the player would be frustrated if the boss's attack was to make the players harm eachother. Perhaps we could make him use illusions or something possibly. I don't know, my thought on the box is kinda different. I just imagined that he was given immense power and he was able to oppress them all into equality by force. That seems to make him seem more villain-like, persuasion seems more confusing and might make it harder to show that he's the main villain. In an mmorpg the main villain is usually very obvious.

But that's just my take, whatever we decide on in the final cut is what it'll be.

personally I quite like the outfit.

What if the Persuasion power isn't always fully effective?
25% of attacks will be 'stopped' or something to that effect. Maybe it even harms the player too?

I sort of pictured the persuasion power in-battle to be able to summon henchmen and maybe sometimes, if the player has a low enough IQ stat or something (could use magic defense stat if IQ stat isn't a thing), they get temporarily put on his side, though there will probably be at least one party member who is immune to it completely.
Also, it could be made to be somewhat easy to block if your mage character happens to have learned the deflect spell by then (most likely by level-up or taught by an NPC in a certain town).

As for the outfit, keep in mind that most of the exiles don't even practice dark magic anymore, it was their ancestors who were hardcore about it. If you guys want, I can add a hood to the cape to make him look a little more mysterious.

I'm glad that you guys are giving some solid feedback on this stuff. Keep tossing ideas onto the table if you think of any.

Actually I'm starting to like this. They've abandoned their evil ways so they have no need to dress in dark cloaks and such. Actually, if they're exiles you might think they'd be in rags or something, they don't have much connection to the rest of the world so they can't obtain quality materials.

I was thinking perhaps, that when you fight him at the end he should be wearing a king's robe, since he has persuaded the people to follow him. Maybe the robe could resemble the robe's that they used to wear when they practiced dark magic, symbolizing his return to evil.

It seems like you guys are liking the idea of the persuasion. In my opinion, when main bosses send out enemies to fight for them it seems like a dissapointment. You've traveled all the way, you want to see the villain's power and you want to show him that you can defeat him yourself, not his minions.

I like the idea of the deflect spell and the use of IQ being a defense. The only thing I worry about is that he doesn't seem, "powerful" enough. But perhaps I'm just looking at it from the wrong direction.

(Sorry i'm being picky, i get a little bit defensive of certain ideas sometimes)

Here's a working model for Rasquel. I'd need help with like the spikes, and feathery gauntlets.

He's looking good so far.
So I'm assuming from what I've seen so far that we're going to be using the more round design of the xp characters, not the standard rtp shape. Clashing the two usually looks unprofessional. So we should make sure we stick to one type.

Ummm, I dunno. I think this works better for general. I'm just doing it because it gives a detailed sprite design.

Conceivably, we could use the VX-style characters for the layer 1 game, and use XP style for everything else. Right now, I'm just taking the designs and using this char maker to create easy characters. Lemme see if I can make it on VX Ace. Holdon...



The faceset is altered some, but I wanted him to have a more drawn, weird look, much like Gollum.I generally don't like VX munchkins.

Hmmm, aren't boss characters usually drawn with better graphics than the heroes (i.e. Kefka in FF3 for instance)? I don't think it would conflict.

VX does look a lot more like an MMO for its cartoony characters and more fantasy game look. The only problem is that the graphics are kinda lacking. It might just be me, but I'm much more inclined to play a game made in XP than VX just for the look alone.

Also, I like the kinda weird look you gave him. It shows his insanity, the way his eyes aren't really looking at anything in particular.

And boss character can look better than the characters, but usually human characters are drawn the same, while monsters and superhumans get the good graphics.

I agree with MEands on the face. It makes him seem blinded to whatever is happening. It's the face of someone who can justify a horrible act by looking right through it.
It's spooky.

I think VX would work for layer 1, but I'm no specialist on this stuff so I'll let you guys hammer out those details.
If we could find a way to make VX look graphically good despite it's cartoonish nature, would that be good?