Oh, awesome! Will there be a CSE version when the project is done?

There will be a "CSE" release. As in a technically supported port of the game using the mono2color project. By that we mean if there is lag/slowness we really wont try to fix it. It will be what it is. We will make sure its stable at least. With that though the game is meant to be played on the B/W models and that is where the best experience will be.

Minor update.

Battle system sets up and displays fight scene. Player actions are selectable for each character (but does nothing yet. Didn't get that far)



TODO: Get the options to push actions to battle stack. Get enemies to do the same. Parse and display results of stack processing.

Whooooa! How did I miss this thread?

That'a really cool overworld feature too! And the vehicles!

Update.

The "Attack" and "Flee" commands now process. Battles can now be completed by way of either killing all enemies or running away. The following are implemented as part of the Attack command:

* Dual-wielding or 2H fight individual damage adjustments made.
* Dual-wield second attack or enemy-flagged double-attack support.
* Being able to actually damage the enemy.

What isn't yet supported in the Attack command:

* Elemental attack/resist calculations
* Critical hits
* Poison/sleep/KO status effects
* HP drain effects
* Counterattacks, including Second-Wind trigger abilities

TODO:
* Implement post-victory awards (gold, items, "exp", leveling up), storing relevant stats back to your character profile (HP, MP, etc).
* Implement Magic, Item, and Parry, and character-specific commands

So, here's a screenshot demonstrating a rather one-sided fight.



Note: The lack of automatic retargeting was a design choice. It's not going to be implemented. We felt that it added to the challenge and encouraged players to pay more attention.

that airship in the overworld gif looks just like one in final fantasy 3. i love it.

Update.

* Fight command fully functional (save for second-wind counterattacks)
* Magic mostly implemented.



We have most spells coded and correctly functioning as of this post, and some of what we have is demonstrated in the above screenshot in one of the game's more difficult optional dungeons (The Underdeep). When I did the initial testing, I was quite surprised at the sudden difficulty ramp now that they are able to use magic. I mean, I kinda sorta expected it but it really hit home when I actually went there and started a fight and tried (and failed) to keep Maya alive. Going into that place unprepared, even with almost all max stats (and a few above max), is basically a death sentence. Worst part is, it's possible to accidentally stumble upon the place relatively early in the game. Guess this is why you get two save slots, huh?

What hasn't been coded yet is MP deduction in casting (testing purposes), four spells, enemy and guest NPC skills, special command abilities, items, and a few flags. Almost all of this can be tied into the same piece of code that runs all the magic.

Animations are planned, but only if there's nothing else (we (really) need/want) to do. Not much else to say other than that there's a small debate among the team about just *how* we're going to accomplish animations and with what.
I've also recently found UNDERTALE. I have now become UNDERTALE trash. Please send help.

Update.

* Map-to-map, and standard battle entry transitions were added.
* Magic, skills, and second wind mechanics are fully implemented. Battle system is basically done.
* Basic battle animations implemented.



TODO:
* Magic and special battle animations.
* A way for the cutscene script system to take control of battle progression.
* Specialized transitions
* All. The. Cutscenes.
* Title screen and ending credits.

Official TI-83+ support has been withdrawn for now. I needed the extra space, but you can still probably load the game onto that calc if you don't mind not being able to use the archive anymore.

Wow the bells and whistles are starting to appear! Looking very slick team!

Update
* Most magic animations are now complete.
* Additional content added to Underdeep. It's now its own story arc.
* User and script-adjustable typewriter effect.
* Other things.

Demonstration of typewriter effect and some of the magic.
We have more down but I don't want to spoil too much.


Notes
Battle animations would've/should've been done sooner, but some of these things take a while to animate in a way that satisfies the whole team. There's still a few things left to animate, but it won't be long now before it's all done. After that and a few visual/bug fixes we get to do...

Cutscenes! Geekboy1011 is hard at work at the moment putting all the cutscenes together between the time you choose the "New Game" option to the time you gain control of your character for the first time. When I finish the battle animations and find myself satisfied with the system as a whole, I'm going to be jumping in somewhere in the middle to get the game's story stitched together. Zera/Escheron mentioned that the cutscenes he's been working on as of late are encroaching into Golden Sun-length territory. This could be a good thing.

There's also now no way in hell we'll be able to fit this game onto a normal TI-83 Plus without modifications. There's just too much content we want to add and compression we have isn't doing a good enough job. I mean, it's doing a fantastic job so far, but we just have so much to put in. I'm entertaining the idea of creating a miniature OS that contains just the basic calc functions so I can reasonably distribute this game as an OS update instead of an app. Something that would, on the surface, look just like the TI-OS until you try digging into the menus and realize they're all empty. While I do want people to play this game, I also want their calculator be usable as ... a calculator. This is planned after a release for the TI-83+SE / 84+(SE) monochrome calcs.

The Underdeep will have static floors interspersed between randomly generated floors which will also be randomly, but not repeatably, chosen where fun events can trigger and backstory can be told. Yes. The Underdeep now has its own story to it which further enriches the world of Escheron. I'm not privy to all the details for the same reason I'm not looking too deeply into the scripts for the game: I want to be able to enjoy playing this thing without too many spoilers once we finish coding the game.

TODO
* Remaining skill/magic animations
* Cutscenes
* Specialized transitions
* Update the Underdeep mapgen scripts

That meteor attack looks awesome. This project continues to come together with some serious polish.

Nice work as always .

I sill can't get over how neat gravity works I'm not really sure it would be worth it to make a TI-OS update; but that might just be me. Keep up the great work guys!

The Idea for the Ti-OS update is more of a we don't know what else todo. The game is currently to large to fit on a 83+ Calculator, Even though it is completely designed around it the only limitation is we run out of flash space for it. So by making it a hackjob OS we can bring it to that platform as well. Even if its the loss of some functionality.

After 9 years of development, I hope that Escheron will finally come to fruition soon (it suffered from 5 or 6 restarts/rewrites so far >.<). It definitively looks like it from what I could see so far, though, and glad to see real magic animations in the game (those are rare in non-BASIC calculator RPGs).

Update:
* Physical attack animations added
* Slight UI adjustments (text line height is now 8px)
* Started work on a PC-side cutscene editor

The following demonstrates dual-wield claw, single staff, and dual-wield sword attack animations.
The Quality Assurance Dragon, as seems to be the trend these days, ends the fight with a bang.


The GUI for the app we have so far. The bright colors are layout placeholders made during testing.
The map is of the Celestial Spire, generated from the actual CalcGS tilemap/tileset files.


Notes:
Work on the app has been a bit slower than I'd have liked it to be. I wasn't originally going to do standard attack animations but you can see how that turned out. Second-wind and certain skill animations still need to be put in, but I think we can safely ignore those for now.

For cutscenes, we decided it would be better to code a graphical PC-side editor and build cutscenes using that. We're using the Python GUI library Tkinter and the imaging library Pillow to drive the graphical UI side of the editor, with everything else being written in Python.

So far, things are looking good for the app. Geekboy1011 comments that this app is already better than CalcGS based solely on its ability to allow decent window resizing despite the fact that the app literally does nothing else besides allow resizing and quitting. I truly wonder about that but maybe it's just frustrations of the team bubbling up to the surface? Anyway. I'm almost surprised at how fast this is coming together despite myself spending just a couple of days using Tkinter. Fun stuff.

Python++

TODO:
* Second wind and skill animations
* Cutscene editor
* Cutscenes
* Stuff

You might try mono2color. Or could the file be too big for it to parse?

There actually is a mono2color port already (which that post said)! We are having some issues with setup and tear down of the application and some space management issues due to the larger fastcopy routine. That being said it runs quite well bugs aside, albeit a little slower. It will just not be our main focus. So I wont be touching it again till a later time in the project.

Update:
* Minor tweaks, bug fixes, and other updates
* ECE (Escheron Cutscene Editor) can now allow navigation and creation of main scripts

The GUI for ECE so far. Many of the elements you see
are fully functional. Still can't load or save, tho.


Notes:
Aside from easily implemented fixes and updates, work on Escheron itself has stopped in favor of getting the editor up and running. Most of the stuff that's been updated in the app was done Zera (artist/author) which includes adding new tiles to the maps, use for those new bookcase tiles (game lore), and the addition of consumable spell(s)-in-a-jar. The actual programming remains my fault so feel free to blame me for everything.

The cutscene editor (which we've named ECE) has been what we've really been working on for the past month or so. It turns out that making editor software is a hell of a lot more involved than previously thought but progress with it is steady enough. The framework necessary for adding elements to a script and executing it is in place along with most of the interface needed to edit those scripts.

TODO:

* Escheron:
-- Everything.

* ECE:
-- Finish sprite select/edit panel
-- Add viewport window to simulate what the player would see
-- Add text object handling/editing
-- Add scriptable map change and transitions
-- Add a way to edit more than one script?
-- Save/Load projects
-- Export a project to something Escheron can actually use

I just can't get over how great the graphics look. Fantastic!

Creating editors to develop maps, scripts, etc. for games is one of my favourite parts, although yes, it can be time consuming

This is absolutely professional work. Never seen tools of such scale being made for such a tiny game.