Good evening fellow game devs!

I think about 3 years have passed since I created the last Dragonrise Demo. (Download 3rd Dragonrise Demo - Download Dragonrise Font "Bangle" and paste it into your WINDOWS/Fonts/ Folder) Through the last 2 and a half years I had no time to continue this project and decided to put it aside. But I made some huge improvements right after the last demo, the game system changed quite strong to a combination of action and rpg style game with a nice level system that allows you to develop the character as you wish.


Setting the stats after level up

However I was just able to create the start of the storyline so far, but it is playable in story mode. Further, to show parts of the features already implemented, there is a demo-level called "death maze" where there are some strong(er) enemies, you got nice equippment and some NPCs for saving and buying potions.
I provided 2 savegames to jump into the death maze or after the character creation.


the first boss in story mode... well I'm not the best modeller! ^^


Fighting burnig skulls in death maze with the earth-shaking war hammer

I'm quite sure there are still some bugs in the game, but I have no time for a straight bughunt atm, so I hope they are not too obvious.


Here you can rest and save in story mode


Some further information:
- Most enemies have a weakness to a certain weapon, just find out which one it is.
- Some enemies have elementary weaknesses, but I don't know whether one in death maze has one or not... *lol* I should know it?
- Your shield is able to block attacks, but be careful, not every attack can be blocked and you can only block blows in front of you!
- To buy potions you have to have an empty potion of the right size for the potion you want to buy.
- In story mode on the ship in the beginning you've got to talk to every one from left to right, during the flashbacks (past) you answer several questions which define in which way your characters stats develop. Strength VS widsom for example, the total amount is always the same, no matter what you answer.
- In the status Screen (Menu) you see your stats, your experience and the needed experience for the next level.


Default controls (redefineable in the menu):
WASD for moving
Q to shot an arrow (see the number on the avatar if you got some left) or cast a spell (must have equipped a magic staff).
E to open/close the menu
Space (action key) to attack (wait for 100% power, or keep the button pressed to charge your sword-blow), talk to NPCs, activate objects in the menu (if they start blinking you've got to press space another time to confirm)
Shift to run (watch your power bar)
F10 to take a screenshot



I hope I didn't forget something, well otherwise I'll edit.
Thus I hope you enjoy the new demo!

Wow. Going to download the demo soon but it looks great (using A6?).

Yea still the very outdated A6.31.4 that I use for all of my projects (I really like this version!).

the multiplayer project and this

SO MUCH WIN!

i like the game and character models(what's with the nued model?).

Didn't like the circular menu much, but dialogue system looks solid. I like the project overall 9.5/10

[usage of code/models allowed?]

Wow, where do you take all this time

Still looking great.

There's a certain "armor" for it, but I didn't put it into the demo, it once was planned as some kind of "secret reward".

The menu has always been a point of critique, maybe because the style is too old fashioned and nowadays easier to handle using the mouse, but I don't like slot-menus.

Improvement hints are welcome, maybe not for this one but for later projects. ^^


Well if you got use for it feel free to do so and show me the result!



Edit:
Good question firoball... I just try to be fast, so that it does not need too much time. xD

What I forgot to mention, you should have installed the font "Bangle" on your computer, otherwise some screens may look not right.
You can download the font here.

Menu is fine with me. I always enjoyed this kind of menu in all Tomb Raider games, no idea why but it feels so fun over the same old layout.

BUT, you should make everything controllable by mouse itself. I was pretty annoyed at how only few sections in the menus suddenly required me to leave the keyboard and turn to mouse. Or how to type the name I had to select a word (which makes no sense on a PC, it's console system purely) from a list instead of just typing my name while I am using the keyboard for everything anyway (unless there is a Gamepad only option this makes no sense at all).

The visuals are fine, though I found the textures to be too blurry for my taste, and lack of proper shadows (probably baked into models) on the ship. I think using normals/specular mapping will really up the visuals in this game (not that it doesn't look good, but it can be better).

Gameplay wise, the opening ship level reminded me of The Longest Journey. I got bored for some reason and the "training" part was so confusing. I didn't train anything, just selected few lines and poof, I was back on the ship, made no sense to me.

Personally I prefer to select race/skills/other rpg stuff in opening character creation screen in games like Baldur's Gate, or recently, Drakensang. It feels like less waste of a time than going through needless walking waking/walking and talking sequences.

To teach the player the control basics, you can always put practice dummies and a lot of barrels all over the place (ship felt way too small for so many warriors.. they are wearing that armor the whole trip? :P ). Everyone likes to break barrels and hit dummies when they are lvl-1.. and maybe find those stored apples.


I didn't progress any further than the ship cause it felt all too cryptic for no reason to me. But, it looks great, the controls are smooth (even though limited) and a choice of resolution in-game will help in the future demos.

@ortucis

if this helps understanding, evrytime you talk to a soldier, you have a flashback

Yeah I thought so.. but it felt like they were throwing me into the mysterious "ship dungeons" all of a sudden for a class selection.

Really though, it doen't feel like a flashback at all. Maybe simple skill selection screen is a better idea. TBH, if I was playing a commercial game, I wouldn't be walking around talking to different random NPC's since that's the first thing we have learned to avoid in such games since NPC's don't have anything interesting to say if they don't have an exclamation mark floating overhead.. *hint* *wink* *hint* :P