Venom Development's BYOND website

A Stab at Pixel art

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:16:04 GMT

As pixel artists on byond seem to get randomly kidnapped or disappear completely soon after working with me, I figured it was time to buckle down and learn the art of pixels...

My first attempt at Isometric architecture:

My first attempt at a face picture:

Edit of the face picture:

Tel'Bathor Changes to a Turnbased RPG, Pic inside

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 23:14:14 GMT

After a bit of deliberation and discussing with staff I've made the switch to making the game a Turnbased RPG instead of the traditional MMO-style... Why did I do this?

- I already did a combat system when I made Spectral Hearts

- This will run faster with a huge world, and will suffer less from any latency

- Game Balance will be easier to maintain

- Very few Turn-based RPGs (At least active ones) exist that are not final fantasy/Dragon warrior fangames, while many MMO-style rpgs are already thriving

Anyway, Here is a demo picture of how the battle menu will look like.

Key:

1: Monster area
2: Character Sprite
3: Health meter
4: MP Meter (Magic only)
5: Action Point Meter (Is MP for skills)
6: Main Action Menu (Choose between Attack, Guard, Item, Magic, Skill, Run)
7: Sub Action Menu (In the cases of Magic, Skill, or Item, chooses which Magic, Skill, or Item to use

In the case of the Action Menus, the up and down arrows chooses between which Action will be chosen, and clicking on the icon of the desired action will choose it. Targetting is as simple as clicking on the target desired

Tel'Bathor Survey, please post your opinion

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:23:52 GMT

Heres the thing with Tel'Bathor... Right now Tel'Bathor is a MMO-style rpg, the only problem is, I'm having issues with making mobs "sleep" when players are not near, which is neccessary due to Byond being Byond, and not a direct language like C++... Anyway, I figured I'd get the opinion of the masses if I should stick with a MMO-style game, or go for the other two gameplay options. Either way, I'm keeping the storyline, its just I'm a bit stressed with having 3 days of failure, and If I'm going to switch gears, I might as well do it now, instead of waiting for later...

Long delayed Tel'Bathor post

Sat, 31 May 2008 23:24:02 GMT

I have been pretty bad on updates recently, so here is basically a huge rundown of what Tel'Bathor is, and will be.

What is Tel'Bathor?

Tel'Bathor is an ORPG under development by Venom Development.

What Features does Tel'Bathor have

No Levels or Classes to speak of.
You eventually will have to pick between different skill trees, which could lead to some interesting character builds if one decides his/her path is not only in the healing arts, but also in assasination. Another factor is that your skills only grow as your use them.

Verbless Interface.

Most Byond games are starting to shy away from using verbs for everything, and for good reason. While verbs are great for text games, cutting them out means more room for text output and screen size.

Corpse system.

Instead of outright dying and respawning at an inn/church/graveyard, in Tel'Bathor you have the choice to leave your corpse on the ground and be revived by other players. Also, Enemies do not simply leave their items on the ground like in many previous Byond RPGs, they too have a corpse which can be looted by those in the party of the killer.

Party System

The Party System handles if you can loot certain mobs, if you can use certain spells on certain people, and in some instances change how a spell works on you.

Trade System

There is no manual Trade system in TelBathor, however in a certain city there will be an Auction House, where the players currently in the house can bid on it. The mechanics of the house work like a real Auction, not like E-Bay or any of the major MMOs, when the item is put up it is placed in a queue, and players can signal bids on it. If the item sells, the money goes to a datum for that player that can be redeemed when the player talks to the Auction Master, and the same thing if the item fails to sell.

Transportation

Right now as I'm trying to flesh out the Tel'Bathor universe, I'm planning on having at least three methods of transportation besides your own feet.

Carrage - Between some cities without any major obstacles seperating them, Carrages will be arrive and leave as a swifter mode of transportation.

Ship - At least one shipping route will be able to be used by players, and the possiblility of an attack or a catastrophe while players are on board is certainly a possibility

Teleportation Magic There will be spells that teleport oneself or others (With their permission of course), to certain areas. The catch however is that the areas will either be a decent walk from any town, or the regents to use the spell will be expensive.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to comment.

TelBathor Update

Sat, 03 May 2008 22:58:47 GMT

-Quest system Implemeneted. Quest items will not be accessable for people not on said quests, and certain npcs will act differently depending on your quest status.

-Event system Implemented.

-Buy/Sell fixed and reimplemented

Now the few people who've tested this on and off will be upset that Stat levelling, saving/loading, and the rest of the HuD bars haven't been added, but I promise that at least saving and loading is being put on hold for a good reason.

Aside from that, everyone is free to try the current alpha, since the current Alpha tester list is tiny.

Click here to connect to the current Alpha

Onedit: if somebody high up in the Byondrpg guild sees this post, I'd love for this game to be added to the guild.

Tel'Bathor Alpha Signups

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:08:32 GMT

Well, the time is soon approaching where there will be alpha testing for Tel'Bathor, and I figured getting a list started early of interested parties would be good.

To apply, just leave a message here, or on the Venom Development forums stating that you want to sign up to be a tester, and leave contact info so I can get ahold of you.

Specifics on testing
Once the game goes live, your saves from testing will be wiped.

For whatever reason, all saves may be wiped out.

Your status as a tester may be revoked for any reason.

There _Will_ be a bonus item for testers in the game once it goes live, though it will be more of a vanity item. (It won't help in combat)

Also, its a good opportunity to mention that we are still looking for good icon artists, so if you are interested in joining, feel free to apply!

Linear vs Freeplaying

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:23:43 GMT

This is just something thats been bugging me as I've been working on Tel'Bathor. Do people want a game where the story is incredibly detailed, yet they are stuck on a linear path on how to progress to the story, or do they want a game where you can go anywhere, as long as they can survive? My hope for the game was to have it be fairly free, but also to have some linearity so that the story could make sense to a player.

Anyway, I also included a screenie of the game so far, just to show what I've been working on in the last few days.

-Tech

Review of Naruto The Ninja Trinity

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 06:30:06 GMT

The reason that I'm even bothering to write this review, is that the previous reviews have been attacked by loyal gamers stating that you can't have a fair review without playing the game. I agree to a small extent, so I decided to put on my Hev suit and my crowbar and wade into the dark murky depths of yet another naruto rip.

The first thing that I encountered was the standard Naruto loading screen, with the minor change of featuring a sunset instead of the classically photoshopped naruto characters. Clicking the New Character button, I can see that the fanboys were wrong, and the previous reviewers were right, and that this is a blatant rip. Deciding to Soldier on, I create Deki of the Rock village, and in picking a random hairstyle for him, I get the most emo hairstyle imaginable, just my luck.

Anyway, after logging on, I see one of the previous defenders of the game is online, and ask him to take me on an expendient tour of the magical features that turn stolen code into original code. I recived no answer.

After playing for a few minutes of toying with the training system, which is so idiot-friendly that a monkey with ADHD could collect all of his clan's attacks (or Jutsu, for those who don't know, nor care) within the scope of an hour.

Anyway, now on to the real review.

Gameplay.

The only reason this sector gets a 1, instead of a 0, is that the simple fact that for the 6 or so minutes I played, nobody killed me, which I believe is a record for any rip, and I would promptly give them a trophy for their achievement, if the rest of the game wasn't so bad.

Presentation

Not content with simply changing the graphics of the first few screens around, NNT simply has a MSPaint screen at first, and uses the traditional NBotLS screens for charater creation. Add this up with the lack of original graphics, design, and the strange fact that many of the automated messages are all in caps, and you can see why this deserves a big fat 0

Originality

Its NBolTS with more expedient training, and if there were any features that could make up for this hideous fact, the game's community refused to enlighten me further on the subject.

Also strangely, I was told in the comments of a previous review that the game doesn't feature Training logs or P-Bags

Overall

The only way I'd play this game for any reasonable period of time is if my family was held hostage to lunatics bent on destroying me mentally, and I was commanded to play this to keep them amoung the living.

VenomDevelopment.com is Online, check it out!

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:17:50 GMT

The site for all Venom Development games is now online. Due to the fact that we are still in a recruitment stage, there is not much content on, but as our staff grows, and more games come out / go into development, the site will grow.

Even if you have no wish to sign on with Venom Development, feel free to explore!

Site: http://www.Venomdevelopment.com
Forums: http://www.venomdevelopment.com/forum

Also, we are looking for the following staff members:
Programmers
Graphical Artists
Music/Sound Effect composers
Writers
Testers

To join, apply at Venomdevelopment.com/forums

Venom Development is online.

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 16:28:31 GMT

This is the new Development team headed by me (Techgamer). Currently aside from me we have only a webmaster, so I am looking for people to join our team.

The only Current project is Rule of Might, a strategy RPG along the lines of Disgaea: Hour of darkness, but Hopefully we can get some more projects going