The Shining Source

  Hello,
I did not know there were still interest around shining games That's great to see!
In fact, it's Matt Bennion (ex Shining Force Online developer) who told me about this board

I'm Fonzie, main programmer & pixel pusher of a new Megadrive/Megacd RPG that will be released in 2008? ^^.

The game development is started since 2004 and we can see some light far away in the dark (bah, "end of the tube", but It's maybe a French expression, haha).
However, even if we already have four talented pixels artists (Namely 108Stars, Zable, Alex and Medicant) on the subject, the amount of work is just insane

Note : We have finished the storyline, 95% of the code, 100% of the toolsuite (map editor, item editor, fight editor...), the BGM is also in good progress. We just need now to make background gfx and assemble them into maps!

We need help around sprites (monsters, npc's) and backgrounds to finish and make the most exciting 16bit rpg ever haha!
If you're a maniac pixel pusher and want to support us, CONTACT ME!!! ^^

We will also need some help around maps at some point. So stunning map designers that want to push the Megadrive's layers to the limits are welcome too ^^

Thank you a lot

Sega-16 published a little interview about our Team lately :
http://www.sega-16.com/Interview-%20Tavern%20RPG%20Team.php

Any questions are welcome, of course
Thx for the interest (and thx Matt too)

Wow, great to see such awesome work is still being done on the Megadrive! I've made a post on the front page too, so hopefully more people will see it and you'll be able to get some good pixel artists. We've had a few here over the years, so with a bit of luck they'll still be lurking

Thx for the news Yeah, I really hope we will be finally able to complete all the gfx&map work
I'm currently programming the fight part of the game ^^... You know, enemy AI and all the funny stuff

Enemy AI is one of my favourite things to code. It's a real challenge, but it's always fun to see a programmed AI kick someone's ass. Sadly it was usually mine The GFX side of things has always been a pain, and even though I can do pixel art it's definitely not one of my strengths =/

Whilst I remember, we're always looking for RPG developers to interview, so if any of you or your team are interested in doing a quick interview for the site that would be quite cool

  Haha, yeah You're a game programmer too? That's great!

Because the fights are turn based, the AI is just here to take good decisions and feel like "thinking" a bit. It's more a matter of initial enemy HP vs team HP + some randomizations . There is no need of gigantic calculus like in a chest game or a Tactical RPG, fortunately for me, haha ^^. I'll try to do my best anyway .

Yeah, of course, we made an interview for sega-16... You're very welcome for making another one

Fonz

Awesome! I'm having a busy few weeks right now, but I'll come up with a list of questions and then PM them to you or something

I just heard about this project today, it looks to be coming along great kind of a Lunar/Vay feel going on there. I would love to help you out with any monster sprites you might need help with. I have created about 25-30 custom monsters for my hack of Earthbound and I think that I could be of some assistance. If you come message me back with some examples of monsters you need, I could show you what I can do.