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The SoulGate Saga - updated 13th July.

Note - this project is not dead, but I won't be updating this page for a little while yet. I've been busy learning to draw. - 12/2007

Updated 16th July with character portraits.

SGS: Where The Gods Weep

Once upon a time, there were stars.

And Man coveted the stars.

An impudent child, he demanded them, snatching at the midnight twinkles like a moth hungers for the flame.

But Man asked for too much, and the price was great.

Now, none who live remember the stars. Now, none who live remember the great empires, their triumphs or their failures – or Man’s final Exodus. All that remains are legends within legends, whispering of the great darkness banished beyond the silver-blue sky.

Now, the legacy of the ancients floats across the abyss of eternity, Man’s dream of conquering the stars less of a memory than the stars themselves. For the glittering jewels of the heavens have been lost to him, lost for countless ages, sacrificed to the great twilight Beyond.

Now, none who live remember Gabriel’s third and final trumpet call.


And so reads the brief introduction before you find yourself as a small, ragged boy, stifled by the stench of the many other sweltering prisoners packed tightly into the caged wagon with him. The slaving wagon is en route to Ur, a prominent trading city that marks the division between east and west, across a land only recently swamped by desert.

Overhead, hopping from rooftop to rooftop, would be their apparent rescuers - a motley crew of boys who although indeed intending to rescue them, do not intend it to be a permanent state once bestowed...

A short distance behind, a large, royal carriage lumbers along, and a young princess and her female friend and bodyguard have been having an odd conversation about how they will soon miss playing the roles they have for the past few years, fretting over the obligations of duty.

This introduces the three main characters - an innocent child, a heroic street rat, and a princess.

Except that the child is not so innocent, the street rat isn't heroic whatsoever, and the supposed princess doesn't have a single drop of blue blood in her veins...
Very little information here as most is revealed in game, and I have not yet designed the character sets (just a hundred portraits using FaceMaker2, examples of which are immediately below with obvious filenames). The character concepts are based on my writing over the past few years. Language has been simplified for easy reading (so little game terminology).

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b170/ ... MikSad.jpg[/img] http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b170/ ... riSmug.jpg[/img] http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b170/ ... 2Blank.jpg[/img] http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b170/ ... ter2No.jpg[/img] http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b170/ ... 2Laugh.jpg[/img] http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b170/ ... gAngry.jpg[/img]

Sam
A child among many slaves being transported to Ur by slave traders, Sam's background is a little unclear, largely because he has a poor grasp of the local language. The boy has paler skin than local humans, pale hair and pale eyes, somewhat albino in appearance, though when first encountered his skin is more of a red color, peeling heavily from massive sunburn and what would appear to be the early onset of leprosy. His appearance only furthers his feelings of distrust and alienation from society. Although freed by Mikael, he finds himself still in bondage because of his dependence on the older boy. This is worsened when early on in the tale a peculiar incident confers upon Sam seemingly wondrous abilities. Unfortunately, giving in to these will take its toll on the boy, and will make more rapid the change in his appearance and nature. Sam quickly develops a strong liking for the much older Aster.

Mikael
Although he first might appear as a heroic rescuer, Mikael is anything but. His primary talent is being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although his parents sought the best for him and sent him to the prestigious academy located in the bluffs above the city of Ur, he never truly excelled. Like most boys his age, he looked forward to the Naming - a ceremony where a child comes of age and has bestowed upon them the family name (for some, the gift of their genetic identity, for many children are sent to the academy at a young age anonymously that they might avoid preferential treatment) and his return home.

Only days before the ceremony, however, the fertile lands that were the Crescent Kingdom and the host to the military academy fell victim to a vast sandstorm. The desert had always lain but a few days to the north, but in an event local people called the Shift, the desert spread south, drowning the city. The very night of the Shift, shortly before the sands devastated the city, Mikael found himself in poor circumstances and responsible for the death of the head of the academy. Fleeing the scene by means of an labyrinth of passageways that spread through the network of buildings and the city below, he found himself penniless, in his nightwear and school jacket, with hundreds of miles of rock and desert between him and his home.

As the city was slowly rebuilt to but a shadow of itself, hidden away in the canyons beneath the academy, Mikael grew up with a crowd entirely different from the disciplined, educated life he'd become accustomed to. It is my sad duty to report that Mik did in fact take to the seedier, criminal lifestyle with much more gusto and in a far shorter time than his previous option, perhaps because he blamed himself for the events that had passed.

The boy still clings to his old academy jacket, however, ragged and filthy though it may be, as all he has left of his life before. His hair is an unwashed, filthy brown, his skin burnt to a healthy brown by the past few years beneath the desert sun. Indeed, Mikael is rather plain and normal in appearance, compared to Sam.

Aster - Nature.

Sigfurd - Faith.

Edit: I am tired, and I am not too comfortable talking about my story instead of just showing it to people, so I will get back to work at this point. I can fill in detail here later.
What if they too stood here,
gazing at the heavens
watching the ancients come into their infancy
still dreaming within the suns

What if they too stumbled through here
lost and lonely, following the stars
always wandering, always wondering
clueless of what was yet to come

What if they too dreamt of glory
of holding the constellations in their hands
fingertips snuffing out the twinkles of the night
with the softest of touches

Where are they now?
Their long forgotten dreamings
now faded into the dark and broody nights
lost within the folds of eternity

We watch them, as we gaze at the heavens
as they dream within the suns
their silent celestial ghosts
still a comfort to the lost and lonely

Some day, we will take their place..
guiding our forgetful children over the oceans
across space,
and through time

For someday, we too will fade away to oblivion
leaving only our scribbles in the dust.

...

For now, we can only wonder..
And dream of following in their footsteps
step by faltering step.


Philip 'Ezekiel' Keniryth, Scribbles in the Dust
Not many yet - keep rebuilding maps, edited tilesets are always in progress and I haven't taken many yet. These are draft shots as I get placeholder graphics in, simply to indicate capability, etc. If you think something looks out of place (i.e. volcanos, where intent is to have mountains that spew mist, wheels, shitty lights) that's because it's a placeholder graphic, so offers to help improve such would be fantastic.

Actually all shots here this far are me testing out to see what things would look like - experimental tileset changes and attempting to deal with very difficult-to-create-decent-lighting effects, which I then have to animate somehow (and no, I don't want to use pictures, I'm going for a lot more lighting than that - but if you have pictures that might work to share, please, let me know).

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b170/ ... shadow.jpg[/img] http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b170/ ... window.gif[/img]

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b170/ ... rriage.jpg[/img]

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b170/ ... elater.jpg[/img]

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b170/ ... pthumb.jpg[/img]

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b170/ ... ntains.jpg[/img]
Medieval fantasy with a tinge of Arabia (whatwith being set in the desert for much), slowly sneaking in a tinge of industrial steam era / vague steampunk. Metal is not found in its natural state on the planet, so the ruins and wrecks of man have to be scavenged and melted down for basic needs.

As technology is frowned upon for historical and religious reasons - and magic is practically an unknown - this leaves mining such sites to the scum of society, and the punishment for greater crimes tends to be being sentenced to serving your penance beneath the mists of the mining colonies. This sentence tends to be terminal - melting down metals, plastics and working in volcanic regions tends to not be particularly conducive to a long, healthy life, what with the ash shredding ones lungs, among other things. The choking fumes that encase the main mining colony are known as the Mists of Sin - as though the sin of man was expelled by hard labor.

Two orbs light the sky - various religions dictate that these are the eyes of God looking down upon his creation once more. Once more, that is, for it is well known that for hundreds of years they were without any sunlight at all, as God turned away from his sinful creation in despair and sadness. There are no stars in the midnight sky, simply a silver blue ripple that sometimes runs across the dark heavens instead. In some areas aurora borealis effects are plentiful.

I'll leave the summary at that, it's basic well known information in the game, and I'd rather not get into what isn't quickly apparent.
A short intro for the moment, rather than going into a deep history of things which is far more interesting if learnt along the way, as the player learns about the world he has awoken in. Really, the bit about mankind's eventual decay is mostly irrelevant until much further in in the story, as it is about the struggles the three kids have, initially fleeing an enemy only to find that once they have the strength to face that, the real enemy is within each other. The three come together, only to eventually find themselves each on three opposing factions - and this is all before the little voyage through the afterlife. ^_^

I always liked the idea of a fantasy turned sci-fi story beginning with the traditional fairytale style (once upon a time), particularly when it's a fairytale gone horribly wrong.

The entire story is jotted out in notes over a hundred (virtual) pages here and many, many more scattered note books, but why spoil the fun?

Some of the themes explored are the fallacies of believing in fate/destiny or 'duty', cloning/genetic engineering, what defines a soul, religion (as always), the after life (an actual voyage into the realm hereafter, rather than mere speculation), and rather than simply talk about a wonderful infinite power source, an exact understanding of it and why the abuse of such power has destroyed each civilization before mankind. And, of course, the nature of existence itself. Along with many other things.

Oh right, and love. So easy to forget the largest of motivators that undoes us all!

That's overall, though, for the entire story - I'm not sure how much will make it into the first game. It depends on how quickly things progress.

I understand that many stories explore the above, but just because something has been done before doesn't mean that it can't be done again -but differently. Primary inspirations are probably the Dune series, Xenogears, the City and the Stars, and The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren. I do not intend to rip anything off.

I don't have custom artwork for the characters, as I'm not an artist (or a scripter - a mapper and a writer, really, and a bit of a perfectionist). I mainly put together this post so I could have somewhere to mention my progress, and so that I could make a list of things I'm after and gradually get them done.
As much of this will depend on scripts, I'll need help merging them eventually.

* Idle state script/events, so boats (etc) can be animated while floating steady.
* Basic enemy AI, rather than simple collision battles.
* Lighting, reflections & shadows.
* Portraits in messages.
* A rather different 'magic' system, for magic and technology are both outlawed in different areas.
* Several heavily edited tilesets - some new graphics, but mostly modified RTP to have a little more 'range' in what can be done with it. And bits and pieces of other tilesets (such as Inquisitor's world map, edited).
* A bloody good story. ^_^
* Other things are possible, and would be nice, but will be additions rather than core material, and will depend on resources and talent available (things like taming your own steeds, improving your mechs for those who use them (probable later game installment), a wind system that has to be navigated to sail your ship across the sands, etc.
Once a battle system has been settled on, I'll need help merging the scripts (reflections & shadows don't work with dynamic footprints as is, for example).

* Very basic enemy AI script I made OR Near Fantastica's View Range script
* Dubealex's Advanced Message Script, unless another SDK compatible version can be found with similar features.
* Reflections & Shadows - as seen in Rataime's demo.
* Destruction Engine? Might be useful.
* Dynamic Footprints (by Wachunga)
* Anti-lag script by Near Fantastica, edited by SandGolem
* SDK script (seems required)
* View Range + Pathfinding by Near Fantastica
* ccoa's weather script (modified for desert winds, etc)
* A day/night basic calendar system - only basic changes with seasons, nothing major (at least for the desert area, which takes up most of the first intended game) - may be event based instead.
* Customized menu - sliding windows.
* Custom battle system - depends entirely on resources available.
This is the main reason I made this post - so I could list the things I need and eventually bother various people for them, then remove them from the list. I've already found/made several pieces I needed (side-doors, stairs, carriages, etc).

* Lighting as events. An arc/ray of light that can be modified as a character set, avoiding a need to use pictures for lighting. Kraft is hopefully working on this.
* Help merging scripts.
* Artwork would be awfully useful, but I'll just continue scavenging if needed.
* Various rather unique character sets I've not seen done about the place - such as scarabs larger than horses that can replace them as steeds. Berserker is currently working on this. :)
* Possible help creating early steam-industrial era addons for tilesets, and small steampunk-styled cities for Inquisitor's World Map.
* Possible help creating the appearance of one character set being 'infected' by a crystalline lifeform, as it spreads throughout his body.
* I've got a pretty good chance of grabbing some original music for this from various musicians I know, though I'll not leap into that straight off, and instead I'll stick with midis I've not seen used about here at all - original enough. :)
I'd prefer people didn't rate this post as it's not intended as something to be rated (yet), it's just somewhere for me to note things down and seek some basic help, eventually.

Smatterings of bits of the story can be found in more traditional writing format at BeyondOmega.LiveJournal.com, though that is very much first draft stuff from some of the notes I have scribbled about the place, and you should expect that to be subpar for not being edited etc yet.

Better to get something DONE and polish it afterwards, then to never get anything done at all, hm? The only thing that is slowing me down is a lack of resources and my own lack of artistic talent, which means very, very slowly, I get my resources done. It'd be far faster with a spot of help - which I've been able to get bits of here lately.

So I'll be stealing help from spriters and scripters about the place until I have a demo, and then I'll be able to show off enough to form a proper team.

Regarding the battle system - I am no scripter, and I am no spriter. Fortunately a battle system can be fitted in at a later date. I would like one similar to that seen in Xenogears: side-view, where different series of button presses eventually unlock special moves and skills, providing you are at the right level. Rather than blatant magic vs technology, the theme is closer to faith vs technology, with nature magics being the third faction. I'll provide more details on this later, but worst case scenario (me, alone) I'll use the closest script to it available at the time.

Unofficially recruiting scripters, spriters and concept artists, but will officially make a request when demo is out in a few weeks.

Not that it matters much, but poetry/writing/story concept/characters © Scribblette aka Shakil Ahmed, no unauthorized reproduction of any of my writing in full or in part without my explicit permission.
 
Wow how long did you take on the story. In my opinion it's so good that you don't get the generic feeling that "oh this theme has been done blah blah".

Can't wait.
 
Heh. It started in 2000 as just a character idea for an online D&D text game. Then I took over as Game Master and found myself telling the story, writing for 6 hours a day for over 20 players. A Norwegian girl I dated at the time told me about a story she read by Jostein Gardner (I think, that or the person who wrote Pippi Longstocking, if they're not the same), about two brothers - oh wait. I should look this up. *googles*

Right! The authors name was Astrid Lindgren, and the book was the Brothers Lionheart, though this is the movie link. The best part of that story, mind you, is the ending, which I won't put here - and that's what really inspired me.

After she told me about that, that very night I had this mad, mad dream which was very different yet pulled from the named inspirations, and the world I was writing about changed drastically. I stopped writing it as a game for other people and began writing it as a book - and I've been refining the story for the past five years. I wrote a small encyclopedia on the world setting and the history of mankind - I wrote so many notes on the story that I forgot how to write just plain story! So I've been making it as a game, to practice things like dialogue, see how it shapes, see what it can teach me, and everything.

So in short, thank you, very much, for saying that it doesn't sound generic, because I've worked very hard to make sure it's not. :) You shoulda heard the sigh of relief. Heh.
 
It's nice to see some thought out projects come along. The mixture of fantasy and religion seems to be a good one, although it's becoming more and more frequent. The shots you provided look promising, although as said it's the story that looks like it may make this game a good one. Lots of luck with the project and I'll mark the topic and keep checking.
Again, it sounds great.
 
Yes, I was a bit disappointed as well to see fantasy and religion so interwined in many other games that have been talked about here. Religion is always made out to be the big bad wolf, as people pay homage to Final Fantasy games and the like. It's also a reflection on the lack of good books that touch on the subject - most sci-fi and fantasy available in the west are in that traditional western style we've come to know, and there's a hunger for this sort of material. At least in book format now.

Really, though, when you have a world isolated for so long, after traumatic events and being without sunlight for a long time, it can only be expected that religion takes a hold of people. It's ever pervasive. Still, the focus isn't on religion being the big bad wolf here, as explanations arise, and an actual journey into religion (albeit a construed one) isn't something I usually see.

The shots were merely my experimentations with the tilesets, and I'm hopeful that once I've made an alpha release I'll be able to get help from spriters and scripters to fill in features to make it worthwhile in every aspect.

Thanks anyway :)
 
You're using inq's world map in very interesting ways(which was the point of it being so big) so kudos on that. This could be interesting, I'll keep an eye out for it.
 
His tileset is splendid, but it sorely lacks in variety for the sands, and I wonder if the deserts shouldn't be brighter. Sure, if they're the white RTP styled ones they'd be too bright on the eye, but as is, hm, I'm wondering if they're just too dark. If they're brighter, though, that makes the solid red rock/base tiles even more of a big contrast, though, so I'd have to do a whole bunch of fiddling there... so I'm leaving that to the side as something that can be tweaked once more is done and artists are interested.

As too am I leaving more city designs to the side... and fixing the 'volcanos' there. Heh.

I'm fussy enough to make sure it doesn't look like crap meanwhile. :) I'm struggling with alpha transparency around the edges for light effects character sets at the moment - I can create the right shape, but I can't seem to erase effects softly enough. I keep forgetting I'm not a spriter.

Anyway.

*back to it til he nods off*
 

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