The Shining Source

You may have heard of a little game called Minecraft which is apparently quite popular these days. It may be a all the rage, but how could it be made better? With Shining Force textures, of course!

Mythra13 has released a texture pack for Minecraft that makes everything more Shining style, so now you have no excuse for not recreating the entirety of Granseal in block form.

This texture pack includes plenty of changes, including dirt and grass textures, as well as a rather cool Max skin for the main player. Check out the forum topic for more screenshots and videos of it in action.

Source: [16X] [1.7] SHINING FORCE V1.3

Note: We originally attributed this texture pack to another Minecraft user who was taking credit for the work of Mythral13. Our sincere apologies to Mythral13 for this error.

Shining Force Centra’s Mandrew posted some information about his new Shining-Style MMO project:

The goal is to create a browser based tactical RPG in the style of the shining force games for the Sega Genesis. As the leader of a powerful army, called a force, you’ll travel the world fighting enemy hoards, discovering lost treasures, and fighting epic boss battles. You’ll be able play the game with your friends by chatting, trading in the auction house, and fighting both with or against their forces.

You can read more about the project at the SF MMO homepage. There’s information about the game world, as well as how the class Shining Force mechanics (such as gold and resurrection) will work in an MMO setting. There are also some shots of the WIP map editor. Definitely worth a look!

Source: Shining Force Central – SF MMO site/blog launched

Shuni from the Shining Force Central Forums has posted some exciting news:

Anyway, i’m currently working on something I would call a toolkit to creating shining force game using actionscript (Flash). I’ve offered my help for the community project but a lot of things are going on regarding the Game Engine there so I’m not sure I’ll be useful, and even so maybe some other people might like this.

I’ve got a solid tile engine running and i’m working on the things that matters most, the tools that goes with it, namely a map editor / animation editor / item database etc …

The project can be found at Google Code (shining-fluff-devkit), and contains some important bits and pieces for Shining developers including:

• System and text fonts
• Game state management
• Tile maps and sprites
• Menus
• …and much more!

An example project is also available so you can see what the engine is capable of, and even at this early stage it is looking impressive! It’s well worth checking out if you want to make your own Shining game.

Source: Shining Force game development toolkit

Yesterday saw Shining Force Central updated with a brand new redesign. Not only does it look fantastic, but there’s a lot of updated content to be found too.

It’s great to see that Shining fans still have reasons to be cheerful, and it really shows how strong the fanbase is. Now stop reading this and check out the new design!

Shining Force Central

I already spread some stuff on the forums, but now I feel I’ve been working on this sufficiently seriously to put this officially on the map.

BABS 3 is officially in development. It will be a heavily re-engineered and refactored version of the BABS 2.5 engine, which should allow people to make much more interesting games without a lot of additional effort.

Things BABS 3 will support for sure include:

– A vastly improved SMEE editor, with a more intuitive interface (I might throw in a resolution increase too).

– Support for arbitrary tile sizes and resolutions (so finally you can use those neat 42×42 tiles for your Hitchhiker’s Guide fangame ;)).

– Improved performance and responsiveness of the overall toolkit.

– Severe enhancements in the roleplaying department. This will evolve as I work on it, but for sure I’m going to add interactive dialogues and a personality engine. The latter will ensure that the responses of NPCs  will match the way you roleplay (so no more mr. NPC Nice Guys when you start behaving like a murderous idiot :)).

What it will for sure NOT include:

– Kickass graphics (there are other games for that).

However, I might write out a graphics contest or two to improve the visuals of BABS 3 and its corresponding game. These contests will include some kickass prizes and I’ll let you know more about it in due time.

BABS 3 will also get its own game, which actually is the main reason why I’m working on BABS 3. Also, it will remain open source and supported by the lads here at the Source (yes, that includes me too, despite my near-decadal hiatus :P).

If there are any things you’d like to see, or you’d like to help in the graphics department, feel free to let me know by posting on one of the forums!