When Worlds Collide: The Linearity and Non-Linearity of Blackmoon Prophecy III

I don't have any pictures to show off today, or any progress to talk about, since yesterday was a day off for me from game work. Instead of showing off progress, I'll talk about the structure of the game and how Blackmoon Prophecy III is both linear and non-linear. At the same time.

Blackmoon Prophecy III is all about giving the player a story to follow, but being able to make as many choices as possible in how to progress it.

The first 1-2 hours of Blackmoon Prophecy III introduce the player to Aysha and Ronan, Kindred siblings from the Lenadian town of Daguero, and their rather mundane life that sees them protecting the town from monsters (mostly pesky goblins) that live on the nearby Great Plain. The first choice players will make when being introduced to these two characters is which one will take point in the party, or lead the party. Aysha and Ronan share the role of main character, but the game asks the player almost immediately, "Okay, they're both important, but who do you want to be the main character?"

When you decide who will lead the party between Aysha and Ronan, your chosen character will do most of the talking when it comes to cutscenes and events. Since Blackmoon Prophecy III by default shows your followers when you're in town/dungeons, the sibling that you did not pick as the lead character will pipe up occasionally during dialogue sequences to offer their input. How dialogue unfolds with some NPCs will depend on which of the two characters is the leader.

Shortly after going on a little rescue mission to a nearby cave, Aysha and Ronan are spirited away to the Esper World (which, trust me, is not a spoiler since in occurs practically at the beginning of the game when you examine the overall story that I have in mind) where they are tasked with assisting the Espers in trying to repel the evil and exploitative Ravello Corporation from their world. Aysha, Ronan, and the Espers learn that these two Kindred siblings can't do it on all on their own and thrust two Eidolon assistants at them named Godot and Xenon who are tasked with assisting Aysha and Ronan in tracking down allies to assist them in their battle against the Ravello Corporation. The Espers are basically Nick Fury and they want to put together their version of The Avengers. Sort of.

After Aysha and Ronan team up with Godot and Xenon, they are thrust back to Lenadia to find allies. This is where things get interesting. The entire Lenadian continent opens up to the player, and they can go absolutely anywhere they wish. Countless dungeons and towns suddenly beckoning to the player to come check them out. So what is the player expected to do? Journey across Lenadia and find allies! This is where the player is expected to track down Aster Daranouve, Bayu the Bold, Hide Pridewind, and Moguel and recruit them into the party. Where are they all located? All across Lenadia! The main story in the Esper World (which the player can return to at will) is basically put on hold until the player finds their new allies and returns to the Esper World.

So, Lenadia is literally completely non-linear. It's about as "open world" as a top-down retro RPG can get. It's basically as open as the World of Ruin in Final Fantasy VI, but you're trying to find new friends instead of tracking down your friends. I would say that there's optional content, but pretty much all of Lenadia can technically be considered optional! Maybe you don't even want to go find the other party members right away, maybe you want to go to the castle and meet Queen Teris. Maybe you want to track down a chocobo forest and go trekking around the map. Maybe you want to do an optional dungeon or two. You can literally do whatever you want.

When you have recruited the other four characters and return to the Esper World, the story picks back up and progresses in the normal linear manner you'd expect from a mainline Final Fantasy game. You'll progress from Point A to Point B, Point B to Point C, and so on. Things you do in the Esper World will also influence how "open" the Lenadia map is as well. Some things you do while progressing through the Esper World may allow you to enter areas of Lenadia that were previously inaccessible because, of course, there will be a few gated locations that require keys, or for certain events to occur, before you can enter.

So, when players are in the mood to push the story along, it's off to the Esper World. When they just want to mess around and explore or check out the world, Lenadia is where they'll want to be.

One last thing to mention that is worth bringing up is transportation and how each world handles it. With Lenadia being completely open to the player, they can find a chocobo right after returning from the Esper World and travel across Lenadia with it. I expect to make chocobos function similarly to how they worked in the first Blackmoon Prophecy in that they will be able to traverse across rivers and over rocky shallows (which I have not yet added to the world, but will).

I'm really looking forward to seeing how players tackle being able to shift back and forth between the two worlds, with one being linear and the other non-linear. I probably won't have a grasp on how players will approach it until testing eventually begins. Until then, all I can do is talk about it!

Current Progress Playthrough

Streamed Blackmoon Prophecy III progress last night.

So far, what's completed can be run through in 30-40 minutes by someone who doesn't care about equipment or leveling, and probably 60-75 minutes for those who take their time to buy new equipment and gain a few levels.

Pretty good length for the first town and introductory dungeon. Need to acquire some good mountain tiles next and prepare for more work on the Esper World overworld map, because that will be in use soon. Yessir, it doesn't take long for the party to wind up being spirited away to the land of Espers!

Kupo!

The MogNet GPS-Pad Service is, in my opinion, one of the core aspects of Blackmoon Prophecy's identity. I couldn't make Blackmoon Prophecy III and not include this.

Fun little change, the dialogue you get is randomized and chosen from the following possibilities:

• Kupo! Do you need directions?
• Here to serve, kupo!
• Are you lost, kupo? No problem!
• You'll always know where to go with MogNet!

Something that I introduced in Blackmoon Prophecy also returns. Moogles are back again to escort players out of dungeons that they have cleared. Hurrah!

The first boss fight is finished! So glad to finally have this done since I was working on database stuff instead of gameplay for ages. Feels great to have actual gameplay going on.

Bottomswell, the first boss in the game. I'm probably a level or two higher than I expect players to be when fighting this fellow, so he might provide a good fight!

First dungeon, Moss Cave, has finally been fully mapped out. As is tradition with unusual caves in Blackmoon Prophecy's settings, there are trees growing (reason for this is linked to the explanation given by denizens of the Underworld in the first game).

The dungeon is pretty straight forward and there's a healthy amount of treasure to collect. Battles will be interesting to get feedback on, as I expect them to be difficult for anyone who goes in at level 1 without any items. I'll need to get feedback from testing later on to get an idea of how difficult this place may (or may not) be for fresh level 1 characters.

Bombs Away! Self-Destructing Enemies in RPG Maker MV

Bombs are encountered as early as the first dungeon in Blackmoon Prophecy III, and they do of course blow up in your face if their HP drops below a certain threshold. This was a little tricky to get working in RPG Maker MV. A simple script allowed me to do it in VX Ace, and it was a built-in command in 2000/2003. In MV though, I hadn't the faintest idea what to do. It took a little digging around and combining information from THREE sources to get this to work, since no single method worked for me.

So, here's what I did to get self-destruct working as an ability in MV.

1. Nabbed Yanfly's YEP_BattleEngineCore and YEP_X_ActSeqPack1 scripts and turned them on.

2. Made my self-destruct ability. Set the damage formula, and everything. Only thing I did NOT do was set an animation, because the following took care of that.

3. The following went in the notes for the self-destruct skill:
<Whole Action>
animation X: user
wait for animation
</Whole Action>

<Finish Action>
eval: user.setHp(0)
eval: user.performCollapse();

</Finish Action>

For "animation X", replace the X with the animation of the detonation effect.

Battle Tests - May 16, 2020

Just doing some battle testing after I replaced several RTP animations with ripped stuff from Final Fantasy VI. There were a few other changes as well. Shaping up pretty well so far.

Exploring Daguero

Just a video update. Daguero is now in a finished state! I can now focus on the overworld encounters near the town as well as the first dungeon.

Bottomswell Boss Fight Test

Testing the first boss fight against Bottomswell, who will be found in the Moss Cave. I wanted Bottomswell to feel like more of a challenge than the first bosses in the other Blackmoon Prophecy games (Archareon in Blackmoon Prophecy, Ixion in Blackmoon Prophecy II), so I made sure Bottomswell could potentially be dangerous by having a poison attack and an ample amount of hit points. Players who charge into this fight and just use the fight attack command will most certainly not win at level 1 or 2, that is for sure.

Bottomswell is originally a boss from Final Fantasy VII. I wanted to use an established boss from one of the main games that was still "kind of" obscure, but could be identified by loyal fans in a heartbeat. in Final Fantasy VII, Bottomswell is fought after rescuing Priscilla in Junon. While the original version of Bottomswell focused primarily on water attacks, my Bottomswell is a deplorable cave-dwelling creature that emerges from the stale waters to try and poison anyone who disturbs it.

Status Conditions

Blackmoon Prophecy III will feature a long list of status conditions.

KO: We know what this is. Reach zero HP and you're out.
Blind: Physical attack hit rate reduced by 90%, cannot inflict critical hits.
Blink: Increases evasion by 25%. I may increase this further.
Berserk: Become uncontrollable and attack enemies at random. Increases attack power by 20%.
Bravery: Increases hit rate by 100% and critical hit rate by 15%.
Confuse: Become uncontrollable and attack enemies and party members alike at random.
Curse: Greatly lowers resistance towards all elements.
Discord: Cuts all stats in half.
Empower: Increase magic power.
Fever: Take increased fire damage and become highly susceptible to poison.
Flu: Take increased blizzard damage and become highly susceptible to poison.
Frail: Lowers maximum HP by 25% and reduces physical defense to 1.
Haste: Increases speed by 25%.
Osmose: Lose 10% of total MP each turn.
Poison: Lose 10% of total HP each turn.
Protect: Increase physical defense by 50%.
Reflect: Redirect all magic abilities at enemy.
Regen: Gain 10% of total HP each turn.
Shell: Increase magic defense by 50%.
Silence: Cannot use special abilities or cast spells.
Sleep: Put to sleep. Cannot act for a few turns or until struck by physical attack.
Slow: Decreases speed by 25%.
Stalwart: Increases maximum HP by 25%.
Stop: Become immobilized and unable to act for several turns.
Zombie: Become highly susceptible to holy damage, HP and all stats are lowered. Cannot be KOed.

All status conditions will have animations that play over the affected targets. I will not use the SV overlays, as I feel they don't fit the aesthetic of the game. Here's blind and poison in action:

When blinded, a dark cloud covers the character's face much like in the 3D Final Fantasy games on the original Playstation. For poison, the character glows green and poison bubbles drift upward from them.

Enemies will also visually show their status ailments more clearly than in the past as well. Here is the first boss of the game, Bottomswell, enjoying being poisoned by Aysha's Granaldo summon.

Looking forward to doing animations for all status conditions (though some will just be glows/tints applied to the characters). I'll post more in the future when I have a good number of them completed.

Tent Item & Camp Scene

I will never forget taking some heat for not allowing tents to be used on the world map in the first Blackmoon Prophecy since I only permitted them to be used at save points. Blackmoon Prophecy II did away with tents entirely, replacing them with sleeping bags that can be used anywhere as long as you're out of combat.

Blackmoon Prophecy III sees the return of the tent item, but with a twist. Anyone who has played Breath of Fire games will know of the camp scenes in those games, and should immediately feel right at home with what's being done in this game.

Players will receive the tent item just before they leave the starting town of Daguero. This item may be used on any overworld map to travel to the camp scene. Here's what you've got on the camp scene and how you can interact with everything:

• Party Members: Everyone that you have recruited will show up on this map and will just be chilling around the camp. They'll usually pipe up with plot-related bits of dialogue. I'll probably permit some other form of functionality here as well that I haven't yet thought of. Flirting with the idea of being able to rename party members here and change their attire slightly.
• Non-Playable Characters: Some NPCs will come along with you for your adventure. Some of them. like Ronan's girlfriend Melodi, will just be along to offer moral support. Other NPCs will be able to provide goods and services.
• Music Player: Players can change the camp scene's BGM whenever they want by interacting with the record player by the tent. Whenever the player cooses a new BGM for the camp scene, that BGM will play whenever the party uses their tent item.
• Quest Journal: On a table to the right of the tent is the quest journal. This exists to remind players what their current objective in the game is.
• The Tent: The star of the camp scene, obviously! If you enter the tent, you may use one sleeping bag to fully restore all HP/MP to the entire party. This makes sleeping bags valuable items since, outside of the camp scene, they ordinarily only restore 50% of each stat to one party member. Sleeping bags will be useful when deep in a dungeon, but will be supremely powerful when the player is on the world map and able to access the camp scene.

Overworld Minimap

Blackmoon Prophecy III wouldn't be complete without a minimap. Having a miniature map on your screen telling you where to go is, after all, Final Fantasy tradition. I wanted mine to have a little more functionality though.

Before I mention how the minimap is setup, let's look at this:

When players are standing one tile away from a location, the name will appear on screen. If the location is a dungeon, or contains hostile encounters, a suggested minimum level will also appear on the screen (though I may remove this). When the player activates the event that shows the location name, it then interacts with the event that controls the minimap to tell it, "hey, the player has visited this place or at least knows that it exists so please make it show up on the map."

This can be seen in action in the following video:

So, whenever the player brings up the minimap by pressing the "page up" key, they will see all locations that they have discovered. Towns and neutral locations are marked with white dots, while dungeons and hostile areas use red dots (will change the hue so that they stand out more). Pressing the "page down" key will dismiss the minimap.

Though not implemented yet, MogNet GPS pads will also return to help guide players around the world of Gaia.

Equip Screen

The equip screen in Blackmoon Prophecy III looks almost identical to the previous game's since I am, of course, using Yanfly's menu scripts again.

Window skin and renamed stats aside, the equipment list is probably the most curious part of this screenshot. Weapon, shield, head, and body are obvious and don't need any explaining. Relics are exactly what you'd expect, the standard Final Fantasy accessories such as goggles, hyper wrists, and ribbons. The last option may be a little more mysterious at first glance, but the "stone" equipment type is actually very straight forward. They're magic gemstones!

Stone will increase your maximum HP/MP, strength, and magic. Many of them will also have offer 25% resistance to negative status conditions, and a majority of stones also have neat little effects like increasing hit rate, reduces MP costs, or gives a little resistance to certain elements. Stones will not be hard to come by, and there will be no hard to find/rare ones. All stones will be able to be purchased.

There is one further equipment type that will appear at the bottom that will be called "Augment" and will function similarly to the augment system in the first Blackmoon Prophecy only without the pesky adamantium ore requirement to use them. In Blackmoon Prophecy III, all you need to do is find an augment and equip it to gain a special ability from it. All characters will likely have three or four augments in total, and they will usually be rewards for beating specific bosses, clearing optional content, or hidden away in treasure chests.

Complimentary Breakfasts

I've been taking little steps to try and add character to parts of Blackmoon Prophecy III where there normally isn't any. Last night I decided that I'd add a little bit of fun to inns since, after all, they're usually so straight forward and uninteresting. Go in, pay to sleep, wake up, leave.

I decided that players would get a little extra something in the form of a complimentary breakfast. This is by no means a significant feature, or anything worth bragging about, I just thought it would make inns a little bit more fun.

After players pay and rest up, they'll awaken the next morning and receive a complimentary breakfast from the innkeeper. This item is randomly selected from a list of "breakfast goods". The innkeeper in Daguero can give the player the following items:

• Boiled Egg
• Green Apple
• Gysahl Toast
• Hillsdale Sausage
• Ivalician Waffle

I'll shake things up and make innkeepers in other towns offer slightly different items. While these items don't do much in the grand scheme of things, I just thought it would be a fun little feature and can keep the player guessing what item they're going to get each time they stay at an inn.

Portrait Update

I recently touched up some portraits that Avee had made for me for my cancelled project, Shattered Wings, and threw them into Blackmoon Prophecy III. Aysha and Ronan are pictured below.

Slightly older portraits by Avee that went unused are also being franken-edited by me to fit the cast of characters. From left to right: Aster, Bayu, Godot, Hilde, Zenon.

The eighth party member needed a different approach. No portrait made by Avee fits a moogle after all! So, I had to open Paint Shop Pro and have at it. This is what I ended up with:

I'm pretty happy with Moguel's portrait. I don't draw faces, or much of anything, so this was a pretty big success for me.