Click here to play the alpha engine test
Read bottom of post for details. Also, I don't know if it's just me, but for some reason it glitches the first time you open it, but then works fine if you close it then reopen it. It might just be my failure at trying to embed it into a page.----------------------------------------------STORY GOES HERE, TL;DR DOWN TO THE BOTTOM IF YOU DONT CARE---------------------------------------------------------The main storyline goes as follows (so far):
Gensokyo. The land we all know and love, the land of fantasy mixed with reality. Several years have passed since the main Touhou continuity line, and things have changed. The Kappa have instilled new technology into many things, things people wouldn't even think of - plants, stumps, gates, trees, rocks - all in good nature of course. These technological updates to things aren't so abundant that Gensokyo has lost its magical flair - however, they are clearly noticable as almost all of Gensokyo has been divided up via their special markers in attempts to build a sort of positioning system that would allow them to find things easier - a GPS if you will, the G standing for Gensokyo. (The above explaination would be why there are doors in the game, even outside.)
Cirno has been living life with her friends, Mystia, Wriggle, Daiyousei, and Rumia, in her newly-built Ice Castle. It's not extraordinarily large, but it serves as a nice clubhouse and base of operations for their antics. Cirno is fed up, however, of everyone thinking that she is a mere child - she's the strongest after all. In an attempt to assert her true power over Gensokyo and rise through the ranks of Fairies and Youkai alike, she attempts to lead a crusade of power. She does so by attacking helpless Yukkuri. In her mind, Cirno believes that if she can dominate the species of the Yukkuri, that she will prove to Gensokyo that she truly is the strongest, as she has control over an entire species, and that has simply not been done before. Obviously she is wrong, but she doesn't know that, so she goes on with her plan.
After eradicating a good number of the helpless creatures, some of the bigger powers in Gensokyo DO take notice, however - namely, Remilia Scarlet, Utsuho Reiuji, and Marisa Kirisame. They all have their own yukkuri-related reasons on why they begin to care about Cirno's actions - Remilia enjoys the harmless antics of Yukkuri and keeps a few as pets, Utsuho overheard Satori talking about how it was a shame that yukkuri numbers were decreasing and wished to make her master happy, and Marisa....well, Marisa heard that some youkai was making trouble, so of course she wanted her nose in this. The yukkuri population as a whole was not irriversably damaged - however, prices for domesticated Yukkuri have definitely gone up, and wild populations appear to be slightly more rare. Simply a bother to most, but a bother enough to warrant action...
After a hard day's work of taking care of the Yukkuri, Cirno is convinced that she has killed off every last Yukkuri in Gensokyo. At first she feels remorse for ending the species, but she quickly asserts that it makes her all the more powerful. (In reality, she killed off all the ones around Misty Lake, and scared the rest away.) However, she finds a lone koyukkureimu in a nest, softly crying for her mommy. Seeing how she could take advantage of the situation, she decides to take the small yukkuri to her ice castle and keep it as a bargaining chip.
Behind her back, however, Remilia, Utsuho, and Marisa are all heading for Cirno's Ice Castle, and meet up with eachother somewhere along the way. They plan and plot against the small fairy, and come up with an amazing plan to show her that she's NOT the strongest.
Cirno heads out the next day, going to scout out to make sure she had truly taken care of the last Yukkuri. She hardly gets anywhere past the shores of Misty Lake, however, when a smaller insignificant fairy rushes toward her and alerts her that some suspicious characters were heading into her Castle. Seeing this as an opportunity to prove her strength, she heads back to the castle. When she arrives, however, she finds that the main room everything has been ransacked. Furthermore, she sees her friends bound and being carried off by Remilia and Marisa, while Utsuho stays behind when they notice that Cirno has arrived. Instead of capturing her as well, though, Utsuho gets excited and begins to attack - thus melting the Ice Castle. The two are forced to escape to avoid being crushed by huge ice chunks, and Cirno looses sight of the Hell Raven.
With noting but her wits and will, she sets out into Gensokyo to recover her friends, and find out what happened to the small yukkuri that has presumably escaped in the chaos...
STORY END Basic Mechanics of the game (as of 10/21/10):The game will play like a Metroid game obviously, with there being several areas such as Misty Lake, the Scarlet Devil Mansion, the Forest of Magic, Former Hell Blazing Fires, etc. Powerups will mostly be spellcards and such, simply to avoid confusion on why Cirno would be able to do most of the things she'll end up being able to do.
Doors in the game will be explained as Kappa Inventions and enhancements to the surrounding environments, e.g. thick vines in the forst of magic that can be untangled and retangle themselves.
Spirit will facilitate the use of special attacks, such as Icicles that Cirno can shoot (which can be thought of like Metroid Missiles). Spirit is upgradable like health would be, via hidden (some more than others) items.
Many bosses and areas have been thought out, as well as the plot development of the game, however, those are classified as of now, as not to ruin the game for others~
Details about the Alpha Engine TestThis is the very very very first release of Touhou Yukkuri, and as such, there isn't much as far as extensiveness goes. However, this isn't the point of having the alpha test - It's to test out the main engine. The way the engine of the game has been built, to build more rooms all I have to do is build it like a lego structure - everything fits together perfectly and will work, no matter where I stick them. Thusly, this core engine test is extremely important.
Please excuse the art, I am at a lack of an artist. However, this alpha should hopefully prove that I can do a little more than just talk - I have written what I have from scratch, scratch being a 100% blank file, no copypasting or modeling, and therefore I understand it all beautifully, and are extremely apt to built more onto it.
The functionality of this test ranges through the following:
-Basic movement (walking, jumping, crouching, aiming)
-Killing of simple enemies
-Simple AI in said enemies
-Being killed by enemies
-Obtaining powerups and health/spirit refills
-Having to obtain certain powerups before moving on (thus keeping the game world open, yet certain parts closed off to those who have not played long enough. Think in scale of a full game - can't go to area 2 until you pick up _______, but the door will always be there to taunt you until you do.)
-A conversation/cutscene (short, but functional, also autocorrects if you're jumping/ice balled at the time)
There are also countless coding achievements I have obtained, but they're mainly on how the engine is self-correcting and mostly unbreakable. There may be a tiny glitch I looked over, but that's life - nothing is perfect the first time through.
As for Cirno, some may wonder why you can walk off platforms and she'll float for a few pixels out, with her feet clearly off the edge, and THEN fall. Well, if you look closely, her wings are still over the platform, and that is where I coded her hitbox into. Cirno is technically a 50x100px square, but by the time I was done BSdrawing the sprite for her, I didn't want to redraw it, so I just put her in place, and dealt with it. It is simply an art issue, with her sprite being slightly too small. I'll say it again - I'm a terrible artist, and take no pride in my drawings really. What you see here is about as good as it gets.
Now although this isn't exactly super fun and life changing, this test should show that the game is indeed a reality and not just some fancy idea I had and are simply wishing until something happens about it. I am hard at work trying to make this happen, but things simply cannot progress to the final stages without a proper sprite artist. The more I'm forced to have placeholders, the more the artist is going to have to be constricted to what they draw (meaning exact poses for things), because I'll already have collision detection put in for everything if I continue. Moral of the story - the faster I get an artist, the more freedom and artistic liberty they'll be able to have.
Realize that 99% of the time working on this was not trying to get rooms to work, but instead physics and core functions that would work in tandem with the rooms, meaning adding new rooms is simple, I just thought 3 was enough to test it for now. With further updates to the engine, more rooms will be added to test out more functions. The 3 rooms I have currently test every possibility that I would have needed to test given the items and abilities currently given to Cirno.
I hope that everyone enjoys the short little bit I have done. Feedback is much appreciated, as is telling me if anyone finds a major bug. I -think- I covered everything in this message, but I'm a bit forgetful at times, so bear with me.
