[Campaign] (Unfinished) Legends of Etheria - Darkest Star in Brightest Light

[Sonicjumper]

Legends of Etheria
Aster: Darkest Star from Brightest Light

Summary
[spoiler]
    In another dimension, the magical lands of Etheria, a young girl by the name of Aster will begin her quest that will change the nation forever. Etheria is a large continent, split into seven kingdoms to represent the seven elements, which are currently at peace with each other. Lady Asteraceae Calmette lives in Radiant Castle, located in the Light Kingdom of Solus, with her father, Luca Calmette, a retired, but honorable, knight from the legendary Amber Guard. Aster much prefers adventuring and training than her duties as the Lady of Radiant Castle, and she is skilled in both magic and sword.
    Our story begins on the dawn of Aster's sixteenth birthday, when a person celebrates their "Coming of Age" ceremony and officially becomes responsible for themselves. Aster's mother lives in Kol, the Dark Kingdom, and Luca has never let Aster leave Solus for her own safety. Now in charge of her own life, Aster and her friends Cynthia, Vadden, and Uriel will travel to Kol in search of her mother, and will encounter plenty of resistance along the way.
[/spoiler]
Telepath Tactics
[spoiler]
    Now that I've given a brief introduction to the story, I'll explain what it is I am doing and why I've chosen Telepath Tactics as the engine for my story. Legends of Etheria is an original concept created by myself, a magical world of seven kingdoms and seven elements, filled with forces of evil and good, set in a medieval type era. "Darkest Star from Brightest Light" is the story of Asteraceae Calmette, as she travels with her friends from Solus on a seemingly small adventure to the neighboring kingdom of Kol, but encounter much greater troubles along the way, changing the history of Etheria. I am only a few weeks into the writing of Aster's quest, and as such not all of the story is ready for public viewing, not that I want to spoil anything anyway.
    I am using Telepath Tactics as a way to tell this story because I like the strategy and storytelling potential of the game. As this game mostly focuses on storytelling aspects, don't expect too much of a challenge through the main storyline, though I plan to include many special levels that are for the players looking for a difficult challenge. I think the modding environment of Telepath Tactics is easy enough to learn, yet flexible enough to do what I want, and once Craig works through all the suggestions and bugs of the system(easy install for custom textures with mods?) then it will be a great delivery system to anyone who wants to enjoy my story.
[/spoiler]
Progress
[spoiler]
    I may come back and periodically update this section with the status of this project. Like I said above, this project has only existed for a few weeks and I haven't yet created much publicly viewable content that won't spoil the storyline. Currently the greatest support anyone could give me is a comment on what they think of the project and if they are in favor of it, I need to know my time isn't wasted. If anyone is artistically talented and would like to help, please leave me a PM or send me an email with your offer.

Update as of 6/24/15:
Backstories almost done, storyline almost written, I'm extremely excited for this and I want to get something simple out soon so that you can test the mechanics I'm adding and things I'm trying to do with the campaigns. I'm really trying to make the story the best part of the campaign, and that takes time to make good.

[/spoiler]
Gallery
[spoiler]
I'll post my very few existing pictures of the characters here. Note that these are only very early concept ideas and don't reflect the final version of the characters. Concept art characters drawn by Kat, a good friend of mine and good artist as well.


[/spoiler]
    Helpful critiques are welcome! Questions about campaign design and mechanics are also encouraged, as I may draw ideas from what you ask about.

[bugfartboy]

I'm afraid I don't have much to offer in terms of artistic ability, but if you're looking for beta testers/coding support I'd be more than willing to help! As for the idea, I'm definately interested to see where this goes. It's nice to see custom campaigns sprouting up. I've got one I'm working on as well, but I'm not ready to announce it until I have all of the basic mechanics written and screenshots and such done. I'm subbing to this thread for future notifications!

[Sonicjumper]

I'm afraid I don't have much to offer in terms of artistic ability, but if you're looking for beta testers/coding support I'd be more than willing to help! As for the idea, I'm definately interested to see where this goes. It's nice to see custom campaigns sprouting up. I've got one I'm working on as well, but I'm not ready to announce it until I have all of the basic mechanics written and screenshots and such done. I'm subbing to this thread for future notifications!

I'll edit my post to put a little more in my progress section, but first I'm putting together a small testers campaign with unique skills, classes, characters, maps, etc. which I would be glad to let people have and test with. That should be done in the next week or so if things go according to plan. Though like you, I don't want to reveal much until I have the mechanics in place and some more design done, which is why I only wrote a little on the subject.

[Kletian999]

I'm very excited to see the prospects of custom abilities/classes.  I also love the elemental kingdoms trope and am curious to see how yours plays out.  Curious, how would you manage elemental magic that isn't "damage typed" in the engine- TT supports fire, light, dark, cold, mental and 3 physicals.  Would you repurpose blunt and piecing into new magic types?

[Sonicjumper]

I'm very excited to see the prospects of custom abilities/classes.  I also love the elemental kingdoms trope and am curious to see how yours plays out.  Curious, how would you manage elemental magic that isn't "damage typed" in the engine- TT supports fire, light, dark, cold, mental and 3 physicals.  Would you repurpose blunt and piecing into new magic types?

Excellent question Kletian999. Currently the modding engine will let me give any element name to a skill, but if it doesn't exist, like "Lightning", then it won't have any effect on a character's resistances, damage, etc. If Craig does have in mind implementing the ability to add custom elements that actually work, or he already has and I haven't noticed, then that is the route I will take.
However, if not, then I probably will not end up using/repurposing TT damage types, but instead implementing some sort of generic element cycle that will apply to every character. Think of Pokemon, and how Fire type attacks are always super effective against Grass type Pokemon. This system will still give the player the ability to plan their strategy around who can resist certain enemy attacks better and who can damage the enemy more, which I like a lot about the TT play style.

[CraigStern]

Moved to the Campaigns subforum. I think the (Unfinished) tag in the thread title should be sufficient to tip people off that it's not done yet.

[bugfartboy]

I think I've asked Craig in the past and he had no intention of allowing custom elements. While his plans may have changed since then, I have an idea for handling your different types. It'll depend on what Craig thinks of my idea as to how scripts in Atk tags could be implemented.

[Sonicjumper]

What would be amazing if Craig just implemented the ability to rename character attributes, such as "Psy Power" to "Magic Affinity" or something, so that the lore of my story works a little better with the engine. Of course, I have no idea how complicated that may be or if it's a hardcoded value, so I'm not demanding it, it would just be a nice feature. Maybe someone in the community can make a mod that does something like that; there's endless solutions because the game is open to modding.

[bugfartboy]

While the game is open to modding, there are some things that would require a hard modification of the game's engine itself (which would be in violation of the EULA for the game). With regards to renaming attributes, I think they're hard-coded but I have no idea how difficult/easy it would be for Craig to allow changes to how that data  is displayed in the various tool-tips. If he allows that, you could get your 7 new elements just by renaming Slash, Pierce, Crush, and Mental to whatever you need while still using the original names in everything else (such as the element property in Atk lines).

[LightningLord2]

Let me guess - the darkness element belongs to the bad guys?

[bugfartboy]

I'd like to see Light Is Not Good and Dark Is Not Evil make an appearance at least once. But that's just my feedback.

[Sonicjumper]

Let me guess - the darkness element belongs to the bad guys?

I'd like to see Light Is Not Good and Dark Is Not Evil make an appearance at least once. But that's just my feedback.

In short, no one element is the "bad guys". I'm not giving anything big away, but don't expect cliche "darkness is bad and light is good" themes. If there's one thing I hate it's unoriginal ideas. Etheria is split up into seven kingdoms, and they have small fights or political power struggles every once in a while. There is a greater power that keeps the balance, which I also won't reveal, but pretty much anybody can be the "good guys" and anybody can be the "bad guys".

[Sonicjumper]

Update 6/24/15:
New image added, these images are likely to be similar to what in-game characters may look like. Art style doesn't really match with the rest of Telepath Tactics, which is why I'm trying to make whatever I can custom art(which takes freaking forever).

Storyline is being worked on, still no spoilers to give out but maybe expect some backstory campaigns for you to play/test the custom mechanics/attacks/characters/etc.