New screenshots!

I'll be releasing a new demo soon. But for now enjoy these screenshots
showcasing some of the new features:

Cry of the Fox needs you!

Well even though my team is awesome, I could use some extra recruits to help me handle the things I can't handle.

The Game
The project is called Cry of the Fox, it's a project being one year in production.
The genre is that of a classic "Epic Rpg" though the classic rules do not apply to this one.
Both horror and humor get a central place in this project, as does the psychology
and the morally greyness of characters.

The plot is full of twists and turns and based around viewpoints, one moment you're controlling
the soldier capturing a young man for stealing something, the other the young man is under your
control trying to escape.

For more information or questions you can always turn to the Development Topic.

The Current Team
I am quite proud of the team I already have, they are all very talented and nice people and it's
a pleasure to work with each and everyone of them.


Map-Reviewing: Woratana
Proofreader: Solistra
Storyline Advisor: Enelvon
Spriter: The InkFox
Musician: RoelfMik
Face Artist: GyroWolf
Artist: Crimson.Echo
Eventer: Professor Meow Meow
Frankenspriter: Sevith
Photoshop Artist: Hirashin (aka. Namashi)

The Jobopenings
Spriter

Someone who makes charactersets and edits to excisting characters from scratch or
with frankenspriting and recolours. Being able to make poses is a plus.

Scripter

Someone who helps me with the everyday scriptingquestions and problems as well as taking the lead
to think of interesting ideas to use the scripts for. Being able to script yourself is a plus.

Mapper

Mapping out areas based on charts I made or improving the maps I made.

Databaser

Someone who has great ideas for skills, items and monsters and helps me set up parameters.

What do you get in return?
You get:
-Acces to the Development Forum where all other members of the team are.
-The chance to work with a very enthosiastic and awesome team.
-To be able to test out your skills.

How to apply?
Post in the comments your application with a sample of your work and
your experience with rpg-making in general. Or if you
want to personally apply you can always send an e-mail to the following adres:
sanderf90@gmail.com

Questions?
if you have any questions concerning the openings or the project
feel free to post them here.

Happy B-day to ...???

Cotf is not dead people, not quite!
It's exactly celebrating it's first birthday.

Yay..
Party hats all around and a big thank you to:

Thank you Aërendyll
Thank you Aindra
Thank you AmberDragon
Thank you Antares
Thank you Atra
Thank you BigEd
Thank you Boogie-Knight
Thank you Closet
Thank you Crimson.Echo
Thank you Enelvon
Thank you Grandma Deb
Thank you Gyrowolf
Thank you Halik
Thank you Hirashin
Thank you Inkfox 2.0
Thank you Kav
Thank you KGC
Thank you Mack
Thank you Macy's Hero
Thank you Mithran
Thank you Mr. Anonymous
Thank you Pine
Thank you Prof. Meow Meow
Thank you Pyro
Thank you Roda/Moururi
Thank you RoelfMik
Thank you Scherzo
Thank you Sevith
Thank you Shurite
Thank you Silent Backstabber
Thank you Solistra
Thank you Soruve
Thank you Supergodjesus
Thank you Techie
Thank you TouchFuzzy
Thank you Twin Matrix
Thank you Weem
Thank you Woratana
Thank you ZPU

and probably many many more!

World Map Madness

Hirashin our wonderful and ubernice, cool and very sympathic talented artist made for us this awesome, super icy cool and sizzling hot world map of Averta.

Character Spotlight: Marshal Lukas Xaver

I wanted to make a villain post out of this one, but I think his psychology
is complex enough to make him just a character, as he isn't the main villain (I'm
not even sure there will be a main villain though I have one now).

Name: Lukas Xaver
Age: 51
Appearance: Ginger hair, grey hairs scattered over it. Heavy built, muscular, an scar
covering his left eye.
Weapon of choice: Guardiansword
Talents: Strategist, weapon expert, leadership
Occupation: Marshal of the Askarin Guard
Hometown: Askarin.
History:
Born during the reign of the Duke Randolph. Lukas' father was a blacksmith, his mother was Colonel in service of the Guard. His mother Landel Verta soon became a symbol for many young women. His father, Lexan Xaver was concidered a weakling, someone that couldn't handle his wife. At the academy this idea also filled the head of the young Lukas.

He soon joined the Guard to prove to his dad not all men are weak, when his mother was killed during a skirmish with some rebel mages his father and him alienated from eachother. Lukas was now a Sergeant and guiding a young Corporal called Trevor. They became friends and then the civil war came. During the attack on Askarin a mage tried to burn the eyes of Xaver, this resulted in a horrid scar covering his left eye. After this attack he fled from the battlefield and hid. This was leaked in the complete guard and for years Xaver was seen as a coward, the Marshal had died during this attack and due to his status of a coward it was Trevor who became the new Marshal. At the day of his retirement, a very soon retirement Xaver was appointed his succesor. He had a hard time coping with the idea of being second. When Toren Iscaroth, son of Trevor became Sergeant way too soon he had it very difficult to hide his emotions.

Xaver is married with Margret Melase and they have a daughter Annie, Annie is very popular with young men but Lukas protects her like a treasure. Trevor's idea to let Annie marry Toren made him furious.

Teaser #2

Teaser #2
Aargh! Where is the text?
Ah.. you got the font problem people noted to me.. just download the Font Fix.
Place the font in C:/windows/fonts

Why don't the faces fit the charsets?
The faces are placeholder, I have a faceset artist (Gyrowolf aka D-Pad) working on the faces.
You can see two custom faces in action in Teaser #2

Why are most custom charsets generated?
My spriter The InkFox and my frankenspriter are working to make
some sprites more custom, but a lot of the sprites in the game
will stay generated.

Why don't you have a custom titlescreen?
I will, but it's Work In Progress at the moment.

Why don't you have gameplay in the demo.
I'm trying to get all the gameplay systems on one line
and through that create a good experience. I hope I can release
a tech demo very soon.

Your game is crappy... why does it suck so much?
What exactly is crappy about it? Tell me so I can improve that.


I just released this small tibbit, not much impressive, it's basically to show off the custom faces I'll be using for my game.

Villain Portret #1: The Dandy

Name: Daniel Everhard
Age: 57
Appearance: Black hair, here and there a grey hair, bushy eyebrows, small brown eyes.
A very expensive suit that earned him the dandy nick name but is now torn and dirty, a belt of small daggers. A dusty triangle hat.
Weapon of choice: A dagger in quick combat, in duels a rapier
Talents: Knows his way around the seas, great leadership, a true strategist.
Occupation: Retired commodore of Demenor
Hometown: used to be Kalego, now it's here and there, whereever his ship lies anchor.
History:
Daniel became sailor on a ship during his young age, his father was a rich merchant earning his
money from the trade with Askarin. When Daniel was a sailor he saw a lot of the world
but never forgot his home, in service of the Duke of Topas he was made commodore of
the Kalegan Sea Fleet, a duty he furfilled for many years until the civil war broke loose.
He took the side of Demenor and was the person after the ships of Demenor taking the Askarin Harbour hostage. When finally Topas admitted defeat he returned home and became a hero.
Thinking he could spend the rest of his life free from any lord, he couldn't have been more wrong. He was packed with juwels and gold and a mansion on the coast of Jaragotta, an island in not far from Demenor. But he was bored, he didn't have the right to sail free anymore, neither did he have a ship. One day he stole a ship that was harboured in front of the coast,
he left the juwels and gold for the owner and started sailing his own way. But the Demenorians didn't let this happen just like this! They were angered and marked him a pirate. Captaining a stolen ship, or sailing without license is piracy. He was furious and outran many ocassions with the Demenorian Navy. He began sabotaging the trade between Demenor and the continent Pharion. When the navy and the merchants started fighting back so did he, and soon he forgot his glorious past and became what they called him: "A pirate"..

New logo, new artist

As you can see the COTF logo got a little pimped!
This was all possible thanks to this talented man:
Hirashin aka Namashi, you can visit his website here.

Wanderers

History
The Wanderers are a group of nomads, they
travel from city to city. They are one of the few people that
do not believe in the Avertian Religion, according to their fate the Gods
of Averta are evil and have banished the real Gods from The Halls to the Underworld, at Ragnarrok they will finaly take their spot back as true Gods of Averta.

The Wanderers first popped up in the far west of Ryo, in the Kerren dessert,
they lived by the Stear River and had their own tribemaster Razam,
as life continued around the delta of the Stear, Razam gathered his people
and announced he would soon die and be reïncarnated in his first born son.
Age after age a new Razam would take his place as economic, cultural and religious
leader.

But soon the Emperor of Ryo, Druk the fourth, demanded immediatly that the tribe of Razam would convert themselves or leave. Some converted, but Razam and thousands of faithful followers left the dessert and started to wander around Averta.

They didn't find a home anywhere, authorities of other countries refused to listen and they were banned from almost any land. Soon they began to travel from place to place staying out of authority's way and trying to stay long enough to survive. The constant traveling made them popular with the people living outside the civil world, the ex-prisoners, fugitives, orphans, even mages fleeing from the Inquisition sought some form of protection with them.

Wanderers soon became ignored by major authorities, under the rule of, "they leave me alone, I leave them alone" but the stealing and illegal hunting still aggrivates the public.

Falling part of the Razam Culture
As the reincarnations of Razam led the people from place to place, soon a problem occured,
Razam had become the father of an identical twin, as it was unterminable which child was born the first, they both claimed to be the reïncarnation of their father, some people followed one of the twins, others followed other influenceable people and soon the once great Razam People had falled apart.

The Guards

Provinces of Topas
Ages before there was talk of a civil war or even a unified Topas, each city had their
own kind of army. When finally the cities of Topas united under one banner
the country was devided into several provinces:

The Island of Demenor
Askarin and surroundings
Port Jazema and Ortaliaz Harbour
The Ramas Vally
The Island of Harim
Capitol Zone (Partino and surroundings)

Each province got to keep their own flag, their own smaller capitol and a governer
and ofcourse their own Guard.

Ranks of the Guard
RECRUIT
The recruit is the lowest rank of the Guard, they have to go through a period of 6 months of trial.

SOLDIER
A soldier of the Guard is a recruit who did a fine job for 6 months. They are in almost
any other way equal to a recruit.

CORPORAL
After 3 years of service (or an act of extreme courage) a Soldier can apply for a Corporal's exam.
If the jury decides the person has the capacity to be a good corporal they
are allowed to live with the rank of corporal. Corporal work directly under a Sergeant, and they command a group of 4 soldiers. The longer the Corporal is in service the more soldiers they
have under their command.

SERGEANT
There is no sergeants' exam, a sergeant gets to be appointed by the Marshal or the Colonel and has to be at least Corporal. A sergeant commands a group of corporals, at least 2 but it can be more. They also take decisisions together with other Sergeants and the Marshal.

MARSHAL
There is only one Marshal in a Guard, he can lose his rank when he decides to resign or when he is pulled out of service for other reasons. When he resigns he can appoint his succesor from one of the Sergeants. When he is pulled out of Service the Colonel decides it. A Marshal is the leader of the Guard, they take the important decisions and do the paper work, some Marshals do some field work but not too much.

COLONEL
The colonel is the little connection between a Province Guard and the Army,
he is appointed by the Seat and doesn't interfere too much with the Guard's working.
A Colonel can pull a Marshal out of Service if the Guard doesn't work like it should.

The Inquisition

A flaming blue T, symbol of the cleansing of Topas, the mysterious Inquisition.
Excisting out of priests, nuns, soldiers and ex-convicts alike they were for several
years the bane of every non-human in Topas.

When the young Azemar was taking hostage by Pecurias Valtimez, the household mage, priest
and oracle he lost both eyes in a flaming attempt of escape. When he eventually
became Duke, he punished Pecurias, aka Azur of the Cult of Esiaphot, for constantly
hypnotizing and manipulating his family with death by burning.

Soon disturbing visions reached the Oracle of Averas' daughter, visions of a destroyed, post-Ragnarrok Topas, to stop Ragnarrok from happening too soon he demanded more details
and heard of a rebellion of lesser races, a last war. So he decided to banish what for him was lesser: elves, dwarves and mages.

The elves and the dwarves were driven out easily by the army
of Topas, but the mages who were able to hide themselves in the human population,
so to find these Hidden Ones, he started a small group called The Inquisition.

Officially they work for the church, but there true loyalty lies with the Duke. Soon the Inquisition were able to find and burn several mages before and during the Civil War until suddenly a strange accident happened, they were found every single one of them death by stabbing yet no sword was in their presence. It was later found that this was one of the last and most horrible ritual by the Cult of Esiaphot.

The group was disbanded until a few years after the war: Duke Ector decided it was needed again.