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[deddragon]

Legacy of Nod Episode Zero: Your Imminent Demise

The World:
Legend says that Nod was once an ordinary man. He dabbled in music, robotics, magic, combat, anything really. It's said that he was never really good at anything but had a passing knowledge of just about everything. Until he learned that he could combine various skills to do pretty much anything he could imagine. So he imagined a world where he was a god, a place where everyone looked up to him. He created an ever-changing landscape and creatures to populate it, and then invited his friends to play in it. He borrowed people and places from other worlds (it's just borrowing if you put them back when you're done with them.) And then he gave them the Gift.

Nod's Gift is like an affinity for certain kinds of spells or skills. Also, it isn't. Each person native to Nod has a Gift, though some take a lifetime to find it. A gift needs no training, no books or prayers, no mystical reagents. It is what it is and each person has one that is just a little bit different. For example, say I can shoot a green ball of fire out of my finger that explodes on impact killing everything within 30 feet of it. Okay, now let's postulate that you also can shoot a fireball out of your finger, that it is also green, and it kills stuff too, but that it only explodes if it hits a palm tree. Then let's further this ridiculous example by saying that your mom can shoot green fireballs too, but they fire out of her bum and only kill her guests' appetites. I think that you can see which of the three of us is more Gifted and much more likely to be handy in an adventuring group. Not to mention a dinner party.

Story
As our story begins, a small group of mages are attempting the impossible (not to mention unethical): building a portal to Nod's homeworld, Bliss. The portal has been built, the glyphs have been prepared, and tonight is the night for the ceremony. Complications arise when one person's pet slimes get loose in a magical library...

Spoiler:

Every 1000 years, Nod dies. It isn't really optional for him either. The first Nod built this safeguard himself, just in case he got greedy or lazy or something. Each Nodfall, as it is called, a few spectacular people are born into the world who have the potential to take his place. These people must quest to find Nod, gain the power to ascend to godhood, and then complete the ritual that seals the deal before the old Nod dies. This is all complicated just a little bit by two small facts. Firstly, that no normal person knows anything about Nodfall. And secondly these people have no idea that they are a potential god until the time comes.

As a potential deity, control four Mages as they fight their way through their own village. Destroy the slimes and find the real source of the problem before night falls, when your big portal-opening ritual is set to take place. Experience the dangers of an Infernal Invasion; fight to save the Archives, the Mage Tower, and the entire village; and enjoy an immersive (though brief) storyline that is meant as a prologue to my longer, soon-to-be-released, Legacy of Nod Episode One: Children of a Greater God.

The Cast

Spoiler:

Ivanionaliskan
Age: 337
Race: Elf
Master of Chronomancy and Chairperson of the Mages' Council, Ivan is the first of our protagonists. Ivan's Gift is for controling time, and he has been using his long elven lifespan to perfect his magic and create specialized spells by bending time to his will. He works on the Bliss Portal Project under duress, believing that mortal beings are foolish to attempt to approach Nod. Ivan is an intellectual who has written several books and is currently attempting to build a functioning time-machine. Because what would you do if you could control time?


Seraphim
Age: It's not polite to ask.
Race: Elf
Ivan's wife Sera is a Master whose Gift is for Life Magic. Sera is a teacher in the Mage Tower, showing the students how to distil potions and brew antidotes. While Ivan is the brains of the couple, Sera is the common sense.


Rayfield
Age: 40
Race: Human
Ray is the master of Translocation, a man whose magic deals with portals and drawing power from other planets and alternate dimensions. According to Rayfield, the Bliss Portal Project is the penultimate form of Translocation. If he can only build a bridge to Bliss, he can prove to the world what human beings are truly capable of. Ray's wife, Shelara, is an elf who recently discovered that she is pregnant. Soon afterward, Rayfield discovered that he would be willing to do absolutely anything for his family...


Clay
Age: 16
Race: Dragonkin
Clay's family are flyers, those rare Dragonkin whose wings are strong enough and large enough to propel them into the air. Born with small, vestigial wings, Clay has always felt like the odd man out. He spent his youth at the forge learning the ways of the armorer and swordsmith until the fateful day he learned that the iron ore responded to his will. Seven years later, Clay is the GeoMaster, commanding the very earth below his feet (and those of his enemies) with ease. Clay is also a fine swordsman and teaches any of the Tower students who have a will to learn self-defense.

Screenshots

Spoiler:

Title Screen (My son took that picture with his watch!)


Nod


You can't leave town, this is just the Prologue!


How about a before and after shot...

Before


After


Time for some shopping!


Of course, there are some things you don't need to buy.


Here they are, all together.


Here are the kind of things you can do with Chronomancy.


Ray's magic is a little flashier.


The first mini-boss is approaching! Wait, no. It's leaving already.


Androids can be mages?


Ray's wife has him by the seat of the pants.

Thanks and Apologies

I'm afraid this is actually more of an apology than a credit section. When I first started this project I knew absolutely nothing about RPG Maker, and I still know quite a lot of nothing. My point is, I went online and "borrowed" resources from a lot of different locations. This game was just for my own personal pleasure, and I didn't think that anyone else was going to see it. Then a good friend of mine got very excited about it, which in turn piqued my enthusiasm. I didn't end up using a lot of the things I downloaded, but I did use a picture or two, a few character sprites, half a dozen pieces of music, and a tileset.
So if I "borrowed" your material or if you know someone whose material I included here, please let me know. I would never intentionally take credit for another person's work, so let me know who you are and I will be happy to give you credit.

In the mean time, I hope this will suffice: I didn't design any of the individual pictures, sprites, tiles, sounds, or character portraits in this game. Any such material included here that was not originally included with RPG Maker VX is someone else's design and should not be credited to me in any way. Everything else, including all the events, the town and character names, the storyline (continued in episodes one through three), this long long long game description, was all me.

Here are the few that I could nail down for certain. Thanks to all of you for the incredible work.
All Non-RTP Music is part of Isumi's Fantasy Music Pack.
Some character sprites were created with Character Creator VX Net Edition Created By Damian666 (http://damian666.110mb.com)
Some faces were made using CompulsoryHero's Face Maker Version 1.0 (dcoinformatica.com)

And lastly, the actual game (because I believe the credits should ALWAYS come first.) It's only about 2 hours long and it doesn't use any fancy scripts, but I think I did alright.
Legacy of Nod Episode Zero: Your Imminent Demise

This post has been edited by deddragon: Apr 8 2012, 08:51 PM

[deddragon]

Oops.

I just realized I accidentally included the entire graphics library for Episode One. Removing the extra junk shrank the file to about 3/4 of its original size. Not that it was very large to start with.

I also fixed a minor glitch with a sprite or two at endgame as well as an errant stairway.

If anyone comes up with anything else, please let me know.

deddragon

This post has been edited by deddragon: Apr 8 2012, 08:53 PM