I am happy to announce that the Scene Editor is nearing it’s completion. It will never truely be done, as I will always add new features to it, but as it is now, I can create any part of the game.

I have begun writing and storyboarding some scenes and outlining the direction for the upcoming alpha release. It will include multiple scenes, to display the capabilities of the engine as well as to introduce some of our characters. It will also include a playable part, which will be very important for testing the mechanics of the engine.

[To the left] you can see part of a scene. It takes place in an underground cavern and shows a bit of back and forth between some of the antagonists of our story. Please note, that the character sprites are still placeholders. These are sprites from Final Fantasy Tactics and/or custom sprites from the FFHacktics community. I specifically chose sprites that resembled my idea for the actual characters they represent.

The effect seen is one of many effects I was able to gather/edit/make with the program Effekseer which is an awesome particle effect editor that allows you to export a spritesheet. The effect above is a water sphere combined with some lighting behind it.

[To the left] is another part from the same scene. It shows one of the antagonists teleporting into the cavern much to the surprise of the other. Something I have been using a lot, to help tell the story, are emotion bubbles. The “!” and “…” are just a few of the emotions I made to help give more feeling to the scene. These emotion bubbles would not have been possible without the amazing work done by Game Dev Alliance on OGA. They created some great animations that I worked off of to create the effects you see above.

The teleport effect was an interesting combination between two effects. I wanted your standard teleport “swish”, but I also wanted something more sinister, so the dark purple lightening worked perfect. Combine this with some timing and “acting” and you have yourself a scene!