Ikamono: The Anger Ikamono: The Anger is a 2D isometric RPG created by ShoeString Games. It has currently been in development for over two months. It is being built using the Flare 3.0 engine, the same engine Morning's Wrath is being built with. Here is some detailed information about the project. Game information: - Random Battles In most games that allow you to see the enemy it takes away the element of danger, the element of suprize. If you can see your enemy 20 feet in front of you it gives you the chance to either avoide it or prepare for battle. If you were the player there is a good chance that there would be no time to prepare for an attack, making it so that you have to keep yourself on your toes. - Turn Based Combat In my opinion I prefur to be able to think about my actions and stragitize my combat, rather then button mash my way through battle. Also we are going with turn based instead of waiting for turns, it gives you the ability to move at your own pace and not what the game allows you to. - Unique story "You are the chosen one, take this sword and kill the root of evil to save this world. The princess is counting on you..." Yea, everyone has heard that one to many times. We kind of pride ourselves not just on our story itself but the way we tell it. We try to take the player into the world and let him experience something he/she hasnt done before. Im sorry to say but we dont rely on princesses and elder mages. - Custom/Set stat growth What that basicially means is when you gain a level you have the chance to either put your atribute points where you would like them to grow, allowing them to form the way you want them to be or you choose to let them grow the way the story indends them to. Basicially it opens up the game to both number crunching dice rollers or the not so diehard stat freaks. - Flare 3.0: Not only is it doing great things for Morning's Wrath but great things for Ikamono: The Anger. Our game is currently being build using the Flare 3.0 game engine. Making our job easier and our game prettier, you have to love Flare 3.0 Development team information: - Programmers - Primary: Mark St. Jean - Artists - Primary: Brandon Walton - Designer - Primary: Mark St. Jean - Secondary: Brandon Walton - Supivisor - Raymond Jacobs (EDIGames, not a member of ShoeString Games) ShoeString Games (formerly WASTEDink) is a secondary development team of EDIGames. We currently have full control over the entire project although Raymond Jacobs (aka EDI) has full supervision to make sure everything is not only done right, but enjoyable for the player. For the last two months we have completly written the story, started building game mechanics, build our team structure, assigned jobs/work, worked hard, and ate alot of lunch. Our current residence of development is Leeds, Massachusetts. We live and work soley on fast food and Raymonds soda. We work full time on Wednesdays and Saturdays and part time the rest of the week. You can see the evolution of our game purly from the screenshots below. Evolution of game: First Screenshot Second Screenshot Third Screenshot Current Screenshots: Title screen Gameplay shot If you are interested in the project please do comment here. Website will be up shortly, more information will be available as time goes on. Check back here for more news. Thanks you very much. *All artwork can change at anytime. Nothing has been marked as final yet. [Edited by - ShoeStringGames on May 16, 2005 4:21:27 PM]

Hey,
Im going to change this to a weekly update on the progress of the game, atleast until I regester as a GDNet+ member and post this in my journal. Anyways I will be updating this every Thursday with some information on some changes we have been making. I want to keep you all informed with the project and im going to kick things off now.


Changes:
- We are taking the move to get our final 3d artwork done for Ikamono. So far we have started to remake some basic items into the new style. You can check out the changes made so far in the links here:
-Potion
-Foci Potion
-Ring
-Ruby

- We are working on getting the main character artwork into the game next Wednesday.

- On the programing side of things I am rewriting the inventory system. We ran into a few bugs working on making the inventory and equipment useable. Apparently the way we were trying to code the functions it made duplicates of the original item. So far we can swap them, drop them, equip them, and destroy them, the problem is that when an item is taken away the whole row of items shifts over into the first square, not very pleasing. We will have that fixed on Wednesday.

On our plate now is to write our conversation system, with a nice feature involved. I will come back with more details next week. Thanks for looking at the new, I appreciate your time. If you would like to comment on the new look of the items it would be greatly appreciated.

the game screenshot look pretty cool.

Thanks for the comments. Your opinions not only change the progress of the game, it helps give us something to shoot for. I want to please as much people as I can, I can see so far were doing a good job. Our artist is just starting on 3D, so far hes doing very well.

Allow me to answer that =)

As some of you know, I live in the Northampton, MA area.
A few months ago I discovered Mark on GDNet, and noticed that he was from Russell, MA (which is very very close), In an effort to further my connections with local game developers, I proposed that we meet.

After a few meetings it was decided to to make thier current game development group (consisting of Mark(programmer) and Brandon(artist)) a subsidiary of EDIGames.

They took a new name 'ShoeString Games', and a new project, Ikamono: The Anger

We(EDIGames) have been looking to diversify the genres that we do, and get more use out of our existing game engine.

So, here is the exact arrangement:

SSG(ShoeString Games), has complete control over thier own Intellectual Properties, and I have very little say in what they develop. Our main interaction is that they get free use of the Flare 3.0 game engine (which Morning's Wrath uses) and it's tools, to develop their game with.

We also meet in person once a week, where I give them guidance on how to keep thier project on track, and tips on using the engine.

We also have an exclusive publishing arangement that EDIGames will sell the games they make.

While EDIGames (specifically Team MW) focuses mainly on adventure games, It seems that SSG will focus more on RPG games.

In this begining phase of thier game it is likely that you will see some cross-art from MW in their pre-alpha shots, they are working to remove it.

So, in short, ShoeString Games, is a second development team under the larger, EDI Games name, though we don't try to micro-manage them.

Ikamono: The Anger, is likely to be the next title we release, after Morning's Wrath, but remember it is not being produced by the Morning's Wrath team.

It is my goal (As head of EDIGames) in time, to have three development teams under EDIGames.

All which produce games of different genres, we are thinking that number 3 might be of the RTS flavor, but things are still up in the air.

Hope that answers your questions =)

I like seeing this kind of coordination happening on such an indie level. And locally, to boot. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Or maybe that's just the coffee. Very cool.

Hello,
Another week another post. We got some valuable stuff done this week. Heres the list:

- Time based movement - With this new engine update we now doubled our frames per second, now pusing 60. Also it will make it run the same on high end machines and older peices of junk :)
- Working inventory system - Now once you pick up items you can now swap them with other items in your inventory, drop them on the map, or use them at alter stats. Giving items life brings use to stats, which are there for a reason.
- Updated artwork - Now that we are working on finializing our maps we came alot closer. No longer are there walls blocking of sections of a field, now we actuially are capable of having forests.

Now on our agenda is to get our conversation system working, that will be fun. We are planning to impliment a few cool things with that. Hopefully by next Thrusday I will be able get that going. Also we are going to try and finish with our first map, saving us the trouble of having to come back, giving us more trouble by having to move onto inside the building (that you can see in the screenshots). Our new website is almost finished, I let you all know when the .com is up and running. Until then, please feel free to give us some comments, I would love to hear what you have to say.


New artwork
Forest "NOTE: the red tiles temporarly make future event spots"

[Edited by - ShoeStringGames on May 26, 2005 9:05:04 PM]