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KickStarter Wellspring: Altar of Roots - tactical RPG inspired by JRPGs (formerly Bevontule)

Namutree

Savant
Joined
Jun 3, 2015
Messages
250
The combat seems like a team based Quest 64 with a bit of Final Fantasy Tactics thrown in.
 

MTG_Derek

Multithreaded Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 9, 2016
Messages
105
I wish instead of a circle enemies would have a kind of masking effect that deformed the circle thus affecting your possible move.

Hey, can you elaborate a little more on this idea? I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean.
 

MTG_Derek

Multithreaded Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 9, 2016
Messages
105
The combat seems like a team based Quest 64 with a bit of Final Fantasy Tactics thrown in.

Funny that you mention that as Quest 64 was a game I played a lot when I was younger (hard as hell though.) I never really thought of it as being any kind of direct inspiration for Bevontule, but I can definitely see the resemblances. And yeah, there is some FFT inspiration as well. I think if you're making a TRPG and you aren't at least somewhat inspired by FFT, you're doing something wrong :)
 

MTG_Derek

Multithreaded Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 9, 2016
Messages
105
Here is a new shot of our protagonist and other graphical enhancements that will be present in the Pre-Alpha Demo 1.1 Release (coming soon)! We were happy to get rid of that bow-legged mother as well:

CoYpLIdWEAEqUXo.jpg
 

Filthy Sauce

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 26, 2016
Messages
614
250px-Aidyn_Chronicles-_The_First_Mage_game_cover.jpg



Reminds me of another N64 game Aidyn Chronicles- The first mage. Identical party based combat. I am the only person in the world whos played it though.
 

MTG_Andy

Multithreaded Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 9, 2016
Messages
6
Its funny that you bring that up; we had a friend claim that he was probably the only person to play that game and likened Bevontule to it.

I'm sad to say that I've never played it (or even heard of it before a month ago) but have watched a few videos and definitely see the similarities. I'll definitely have to try it when development slows a little. The game is probably the closest thing that I've seen to our battle system yet.
 

MTG_Derek

Multithreaded Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 9, 2016
Messages
105
Hi all,

We are still slated to release our pre-alpha demo update (1.1) in the coming days. In the meantime, we have been doubling down on some of our social media efforts. If anyone here would like to stay up to date on the latest Bevontule news (and be updated immediately once the new demo hits), please consider signing up for our newsletter here! It would be greatly appreciated!
 

MTG_Derek

Multithreaded Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 9, 2016
Messages
105
All right, I know we've been extra spammy lately, but we are extremely excited to roll out our new Pre-Alpha 1.1 update! As stated in a previous post, we have updated the ever-loving hell out of this game, taking many pieces of valuable feedback and integrating them into the development as much as possible. Many of you would probably be most excited (but not as excited as us) to learn that we have a completely different main character model! There are also another random million or so changes, but I won't bore you with those... (Hell, we even reduced the installer size by about 50 MB)

If you want to try out a tactical turn-based RPG with a combat system that you've never seen before, give us a download! We're always looking for any and all feedback and constructive criticism, no matter how sweet or salty.

Get the latest version here!
 

Keldryn

Arcane
Joined
Feb 25, 2005
Messages
1,053
Location
Vancouver, Canada
Looking pretty good! I'll download and try it out when I get a bit of free time.

Are you guys using ORK Framework, by any chance? ;)
 

MTG_Derek

Multithreaded Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 9, 2016
Messages
105
Looking pretty good! I'll download and try it out when I get a bit of free time.

Awesome to hear! Should keep you busy for a few hours if you're up for it!

Are you guys using ORK Framework, by any chance? ;)

Nope, never even heard of it until now. The only real third party assets we are using are graphical in nature and we're rolling everything else on our own. Do you have any experience with it?
 

Keldryn

Arcane
Joined
Feb 25, 2005
Messages
1,053
Location
Vancouver, Canada
Nope, never even heard of it until now. The only real third party assets we are using are graphical in nature and we're rolling everything else on our own. Do you have any experience with it?

Yeah, I have quite a bit of experience with it. The way your battle menus look and function in the demo video got me wondering, as ORK's UI features are very good at replicating that style.

I'm using any third party assets that will save me a lot of time (ORK Framework, Opsive's Third Person Controller, Behavior Designer, Dialogue System, etc) as well as artwork. But this thread is about your game.

I'll download tonight and spend at least a few minutes trying it out. Looks like it probably plays better with a 360 controller than keyboard & mouse?
 

MTG_Derek

Multithreaded Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 9, 2016
Messages
105
I'm using any third party assets that will save me a lot of time (ORK Framework, Opsive's Third Person Controller, Behavior Designer, Dialogue System, etc) as well as artwork.

I tend to agree with that for the most part. We have avoided them mainly because a.) we're poor and b.) we're control freaks. That being said, time = money.

Looks like it probably plays better with a 360 controller than keyboard & mouse?

If you have a 360 controller, I would suggest using it. You lose some of the flexibility of mouse/keyboard, but it works well enough in its own right.

Need to be a member for a year, or pay some money to our Codex lord and savior.

Typical religion
 

Keldryn

Arcane
Joined
Feb 25, 2005
Messages
1,053
Location
Vancouver, Canada
I tend to agree with that for the most part. We have avoided them mainly because a.) we're poor and b.) we're control freaks. That being said, time = money.

I've got two young children (ages 4 and 6) and I work full-time, so time is generally my most scarce resource. :)

Your battle system is pretty cool; I had something similar in one of the prototypes I built using ORK (although I had a Move command). The wolves seem to be a little too strong for wild animals in the starter area though. I found that in combat, it was a little difficult to see the party members against the terrain. Especially with the default camera zoom level... all the shades of brown just kind of blend together. The trees also look really washed out (especially from a distance). When I get up close to them, they have more of a hand-painted look to the textures that doesn't really mesh well with the rest of the terrain textures.

Your lighting also seems rather flat (I know it's an early preview); it looks like just the one default directional light in the scene. You've got some nice lighting in the image on the title screen -- you should get some of that into the game too. (I'm using Tenkoku for outdoor lighting).

And I may have been wrong about ORK Framework, but I recognize the 3D Forge village kits anywhere. :) You've got a few other buildings in there that don't hold up as well visually (looks like Aquarius Max maybe?).

I'm curious, what did you use for building your terrains?
 

MTG_Andy

Multithreaded Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 9, 2016
Messages
6
Two young children here as well (3 & 1) and I definitely concur about the time.

Your battle system is pretty cool; I had something similar in one of the prototypes I built using ORK (although I had a Move command).

Thanks! We've been planning this battle system out since we were teenagers so I'm glad to hear that you like it. And our initial build had a move command, but it wasn't well received (it was too easy to end your movement out of attack or skill range). We actually released a battle demo in April with the move command still implemented if you want to torture yourself with it.

The wolves seem to be a little too strong for wild animals in the starter area though. I found that in combat, it was a little difficult to see the party members against the terrain.

We agree that the wolves (and probably just about every early enemy) are too difficult. We're in the process of weakening them to make the battles a little shorter (there will still be longer, much more challenging boss battles of course). As for the colors we are still fidgeting with the grass, dirt, and sky textures as well as the lighting. We've done what we could to purge all old images from the interwebs but we believe that the direction we are going is correct, we just haven't yet reached the destination (again, we are two programmers and one of the main reasons we keep coming back to this forum is because everyone here is honest and helpful and with your feedback we hope to be able to get the art where we think it should be).

The trees also look really washed out (especially from a distance). When I get up close to them, they have more of a hand-painted look to the textures that doesn't really mesh well with the rest of the terrain textures.

Big point of contention; neither of us like the tress. One of us tolerates them and the other threatened to "Office Space" every PC and server that has stored the game. Needless to say they will eventually be replaced.

I recognize the 3D Forge village kits anywhere

Yep! Because of 3D Forge I hold other assets to extremely high standards. Not only are they beautiful, but they are optimized and atlas'd. Would definitely recommend to anyone.

I'm curious, what did you use for building your terrains?

We, uhh... took the low road (or whichever road coincides with the bad and/or stupid choice). All terrains were made with only the Unity Terrain System. We've been looking into RTP for months and will probably invest in it shortly, but honestly I'm just excited to get back to programming so any terrain updates will probably be put off for a while; we have an expo in October that I would love to have some updated terrains for, but implementing the skill system, crafting, or any number of other systems we have planned would probably add more pizzazz. Or at least I'm telling myself that to get away from the art side for a while.
 

Keldryn

Arcane
Joined
Feb 25, 2005
Messages
1,053
Location
Vancouver, Canada
Two young children here as well (3 & 1) and I definitely concur about the time.

It was around the time that the kids were 3 and 1 where my free time almost completely dried up for a while... :) Finally started to be able to reclaim some of it over the past year.

Thanks! We've been planning this battle system out since we were teenagers so I'm glad to hear that you like it. And our initial build had a move command, but it wasn't well received (it was too easy to end your movement out of attack or skill range). We actually released a battle demo in April with the move command still implemented if you want to torture yourself with it.

And it's also just nice to have something that plays differently than the usual tactical turn-based game. The more structured approach to movement can work really well, but in many games your positioning doesn't really matter much beyond determining if you are in range or not and moving characters around just becomes tedious. Your approach to movement is a bit like when I'd be DMing a tabletop game and would just tell players to eyeball movement. "Sure, that's not too far away, you can move there and attack."

Big point of contention; neither of us like the tress. One of us tolerates them and the other threatened to "Office Space" every PC and server that has stored the game. Needless to say they will eventually be replaced.

I have found that you can dramatically improve the performance of Speedtrees by creating your own prefabs for them and deleting some of the colliders. The sample Broadleaf one in the Standard Assets package, for example, has a number of sphere colliders placed all around the upper branches. For this kind of game, you can probably get away with deleting almost all of the branch colliders, as other than the trunk, the only think you need colliders for on the tree is to help the camera avoid them. Speedtrees looks pretty good, and if you watch for a sale on the official site, you can get the desktop package for Unity at a very reasonable price.

Yep! Because of 3D Forge I hold other assets to extremely high standards. Not only are they beautiful, but they are optimized and atlas'd. Would definitely recommend to anyone.

Yeah, I've long said that the two village kits are probably the single best value on the Asset Store, period. It's mind-boggling just how much stuff you get for the price -- and it is all of extremely high quality. I've got a nice selection of textures from GameTextures.com that I want to try to use to create an alternate set of wall/floor/roof textures for these kits.

We, uhh... took the low road (or whichever road coincides with the bad and/or stupid choice). All terrains were made with only the Unity Terrain System. We've been looking into RTP for months and will probably invest in it shortly, but honestly I'm just excited to get back to programming so any terrain updates will probably be put off for a while; we have an expo in October that I would love to have some updated terrains for, but implementing the skill system, crafting, or any number of other systems we have planned would probably add more pizzazz. Or at least I'm telling myself that to get away from the art side for a while.

Have you looked into Gaia? I cannot recommend it strongly enough. It's right up there with the 3D Forge village kits in my top tier of Unity assets that I would give 6 stars to if I could.
 

MTG_Andy

Multithreaded Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 9, 2016
Messages
6
I just started my three year old on Banjo-Kazooie, and even though he literally has everything to learn I can definitely see good times ahead replaying all... uh, watching him play all of the games from my childhood.

Sppedtree is nice, and we have used the three free trees they have on the asset store for a couple scenes and demos, but we are currently working on this game full time (and have been for over a year), so needless to say we have been very frugal during the whole process. However, now that confidence is rising we will definitely start looking into some more third party assets. I'm still just a little skeptical of the efficiency of Speedtree trees (I've only the three trees to looks at, but they aren't conservative with their polys).

I've looked into Gaia as well as Terrain Builder and am impressed (if not absolutely terrified) by the both of them. Again, we'll probably invest in some third party assets here soon so I'll chalk this up to a Gaia recommendation.

Thanks again for playing the demo and for all of the feedback. Your recommendations alone are invaluable as I'm always skeptical to take some random review to heart but you seem to know a thing or two.
 

udm

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 14, 2008
Messages
2,752
Make the Codex Great Again!
Just so you guys know, Avast detects it as FileRepMalware. I'm guessing it's because of the fact that it's not "known" to them yet. Maybe have it in archive form rather than installer as well?
 

MTG_Andy

Multithreaded Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 9, 2016
Messages
6
Interesting. Thanks for letting us know! I guess we'll have to look into getting different versions up.
 

crpgnut

Augur
Joined
Dec 11, 2002
Messages
337
Location
St. Louis,MO,USA
Oh hey! I forgot about the new demo. I have a few days off at the end of the month and I'll be sure to give it another run.
 

MTG_Derek

Multithreaded Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 9, 2016
Messages
105
Sorry to revive this old ass thread, but I wanted to share the newest Bevontule pre-alpha update! We received a lot of great criticism and feedback from this forum and were wondering if anyone would like to go in for round two (or one, whichever.) We've directly addressed certain criticisms including the graphics, combat speed, environments, particle effects, enemy and character models, skill refinements and way too many other things. While we didn't add an insanely large amount of features this time (again, mainly tuning and visual refinements) we wanted to show a more 'finished' graphical style and UI. Note that the demo does make use of some placeholder graphics and as such, can be subject to change. Here are some screenshots and whatnot:

HNKFZhWh.jpg


PtqupcBh.png


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RJA7D3Lh.png


More information can be found at our GameJolt page, where you can also download the free demo. Once again, we'd love any and all feedback we can get and will be happy to answer any questions!
 

cpmartins

Cipher
Joined
Jan 9, 2007
Messages
501
Location
Brasil
Cool. I'm downloading the demo, let's see what it's like.
Is there a steam page I can go to if it interests me, or are you guys not yet at that stage?
 

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