Chocobo Time!

Kweh! Or wark, if that's more to your liking!

Took a bit of editing the default script files and finding a suitable Yanfly plugin, but I have chocobos up and running. Plan to make chocobo forests feel more dynamic by making a random number of chocobos appear. There will also be a very rare chance of a black chocobo appearing, which will let players run across mountains. Yes, black chocobos can be found as soon as you stumble upon your first chocobo forest. Since Lenadia is largely non-linear, being able to freely run across the entire continent is pretty A-OK from the get-go!

As for the black chocobo, I don't have it in the game yet, but here's how it will look:

A Trip Around Cornelia

Here's a little trip around Cornelia. The town's layout is, of course, going to be familiar to players of the last two games.

BGM is a nice rendition of Kids Run Through the City by Rebecca Tripp. You can download it here for free, along with other great tracks she has composed.

Level "Zones" & Planning Progression

I decided to sit down and chart which areas will be best suited for what level ranges in Blackmoon Prophecy III. Lenadia, being a little more open, can be tackled in a slightly less linear way than the Esper World. The player does most of the early game work in Lenadia (except for a brief pre-level 10 mini quest in the Esper World) which is, as I stated, mostly non-linear since it's just the player going around the kingdom to recruit new party members in whatever order they wish.

Outside of the area around Ikaros, the Esper World is level 20+. This is where the linear story progression occurs, and it's where the player will have better ways of traversing the world (ie. airship). There's more jumping around, and the areas aren't as interconnected as they are in Lenadia.

There are a few areas on both maps that are optional (level 50-56 area in Lenadia, 65-70 island in the Esper World). These are the only areas which optional overworld encounters. There will still be optional locations scattered across both world maps.

Melodi

After 2-3 hours of play, Melodi tags along as a camp NPC. Some NPCs that tag along will offer wares and various goods. Melodi does this, but eliminates the pesky need of having to pay for them since she is, after all, Ronan's girlfriend. She's not going to make her boyfriend and his sister pay for things, is she?

After Melodi shows up at camp, she proclaims that she has some items for you that you can take off of her at your leisure. These items are completely random, so you never know what you're going to receive from her. Initially, Melodi has three items to give you. As you progress, her "stock" will gradually increase. The number of items Melodi has to give away is simply controlled by a variable, and various things the player does throughout the game will increase that variable by 1. Do a side quest in a town? Melodi has an additional item to give away. Clear a dungeon? Melodi's got more goods. As a result, she will be a steady source of free items throughout the entire game.

Items that Melodi can give to the player includes:

Alarm Clock
Antidote
Arctic Wind
Bacchus's Wine
Boiled Egg
Coeurl Whisker
Darnecles Bhatoora
Echo Screen
Ether
Eyedrops
Green Apple
Grenade
Gysahl Toast
Hi Potion
Hillsdale Sausage
Holy Water
Hourglass
Ivalician Waffle
Megaphone
Miasma Pudding
Pep Pill
Phoenix Down
Phoenix Pinion
Potion
Power Coating
Shrrom Stew
Sleepng Bag
Time Stone
Tranquilizer
Vaccine

Testing Beginning Soon

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted anything on RMN about Blackmoon Prophecy III. I’ve quietly been working on the game off and on, having bursts of motivation here and there as well as 2-3 week long lulls from busy work weeks as well as me just being distracted by new, shiny games that steal my attention away from working on my own projects. I feel like I’ve made some decent progress lately, so I just want to give a few updates on the game’s progress.

First off, game length. After working on this current incarnation of the game since late 2019, I believe that the game is probably 120-180 hours in length at the time of this writing. With the game starting to have a bit of substance to it, I’ll probably be looking for anyone interested in giving the game some test runs soon. I would ideally like testers to be familiar with at least one of the previous Blackmoon Prophecy games so that they understand the world a little better and have more of a grasp on the actual setting than someone who would be wandering in without any understanding of what the Blackmoon Prophecy universe is like. I’ll likely look for at least one tester this month just so that I can get feedback/opinions from someone other than myself, so feel free to leave a comment if you’re interested in that.

The game is still lacking a complete intro, which is because I do not yet have a solid idea of what a specific location will even look like that will be featured in the intro. The complete intro will have panning shots with text similar to the intro in Final Fantasy VI. The location I do not have a graphical style for yet is basically the equivalent of Vector in Blackmoon Prophecy III, so potential testers should be advised that the intro is not complete yet.

Anyone interested in further updates, feel free to check out the dev log on Blogger. I also post lots of screenshots and small info blurbs on Discord!

Blackmoon Prophecy III SNES Box Art

Not a progress update, just something I decided to do for fun.