03.23.2009

Well, I’ve finally sat down to write about what I’m doing with this game. This is the first entry in what I hope will be a long, interesting, and most importantly, money generating diary. I never thought I’d get an opportunity to write one of these myself.

Anyway, enough bullshitting; you came here to hear about the game (or by accident while searching for “catchy name for newspaper”). I haven’t quite thought of a title yet. The (very tenative) working title is Navaratna (for some reason, things named after Indian concepts fail at least 100% of the time). The game is about the  legend of the Nine Unknown Men. An ancient organization referred to in Sanskrit myths and related by 19th-century author Louis Jacolliot (or possibly just completely made up, scholars in the 19th century were careless assholes),  the legend goes that, around 270 BC, the Indian emperor Asoka the Great had a change in philosophy after a horrible massacre in a battle intended to unify India, in which over 100,000 men were killed. After converting to Buddhism, Asoka took it upon himself to do everything in his power to prevent mankind from damming itself with advanced technologies (in some versions of the legend, his motivation for doing so was also influenced by the tales of the Rama Empire, a legendary Atlantis-esque Indian society with incredibly advanced technology that was ravaged by its own progress). In this spirit, the Society of the Nine was formed. For the past 2000 years, these nine men (or, presumably, their descendants, unless they live forever, which is also possible, I guess) have gathered knowledge they consider to be dangerous to mankind if allowed to reach the wrong hands. Nine books were made, each entrusted to a different master and each concerning a different topic. These topics were (direct quote from Wikipedia, for I am lazy):

So, now that you know the legend (or, alternatively, now that you’ve wasted 10 minutes reading about something you already knew), I can talk about what it has to do with this game. Navaratna is set in a world that isn’t intended to be any particular time period in reality, as evidenced by the fact that the skies feature both airships and planes, an impossible scenario that could never happen in reality.

Hindenburg

The Hindenberg Disaster is an example anachronistic impossibility of airships and planes sharing the skies. As a result of this paradox, the ship simply ceased to be.

In addition to being completely original, this setting also allows me to write in whatever anachronisms I want, from swordfights with guns to riding a horse to a laser rock show. Additionally, it makes it slightly more acceptable for me to use everything in the RTP (for those of you not familiar with RPG Maker, the RTP is the set of components included with the program, and releasing a game to the RPG Maker community using only the RTP is like going to a fashion show wearing only Hefty bags).  If I ever find someone who’s good at designing tilesets at the very least, then hopefully it’ll look a little bit more unique. (Anyone who feels up to the job can feel free to submit an example to me at ninjapocalypse@catchynamenews.com. All I really need are tilesets.)

I don’t have everything created yet, or even tentatively laid out (I just don’t work that way) but here’s an example map I’ve made, from the first town. Again, it’s still tenative, so don’t freak out that it doesn’t have a river running through it or whatever:

Please note that there aren’t a bunch of completely random placements of grass and flowers. Despite what the community seems to think, I think randomly laying out a bunch of flowers and tall grass to make it look less planned makes the town look like it’s filled with garbage. More realistic? Perhaps. But considering I’m making a town in a video game and not bringing up from the Earth a town created in my own image, I don’t think it’s that bad of a problem if I sacrifice a little realism for the sake of superior aesthetic value. I kept it looking a little random, but just planned enough that it doesn’t look like I just took the tile brush and waved it around randomly. So there.

I’m also not totally finished with the characters, but I have finished the Nine…

Pretty cool, no? What? You want to hear more about them? Too bad. Wait until next update. Or the one after that. I pull the strings here. ಠ_ಠ

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