Etheldia

Hippo

Welcome to the Etheldia thread, a devlog of sorts. Etheldia is a monster taming jrpg series developed almost entirely by myself.

Currently there are two games in the Etheldia universe, Etheldia Online and Etheldia Pepper.

Etheldia Online is a web based online game that has been in continuing development since it's release April 5th 2015. Currently updates are on hiatus while I save up for a new laptop but graphics are still being developed in the meantime and the game has a lot of content to be explored. More details on Etheldia Online can be found in the post below or alternatively go here to play!

http://etheldia.net/play/index.html

Etheldia Pepper is a stand alone pc game available on Steam! The game was released April 14th 2020 and although it didn't gain much exposure I'm really proud of what I've achieved with the game and I would definitely recommend checking it out if you're into the monster taming genre. I have plans for another update with post story content later this year before I finish working on the game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1274380/Etheldia_Pepper/

I have plans for the next game in the series but development is in very early stages with a general story idea and some animation practice. The game will be built on the Etheldia Pepper engine but with a much more involved story and more animations. Expected release somewhere around 2022-2023 at this stage with lots of Etheldia Online updates in the meantime.

Come chat in the Discord! https://discord.gg/6FsjDAy Follows on Twitter are also really appreciated! https://twitter.com/xHippo

Thanks for checking out the thread! Feedback is always appreciated and even a simple like helps motivate me to continue working!

Hippo

Introducing Etheldia Online, a free 2D pixel art online turn based fantasy RPG that's played through the browser. Etheldia is an ambitious project that I've been working on for over four years now. The game itself was released in a very basic form on this day three years ago and since then I've been steadily improving it with the help of some friends into the game it is today. While still lacking some polish I wanted to open the game up to more testing and start building a community, which is why I'm posting here today. Recent updates have seen improved graphics for the beginning areas and a basic story campaign to introduce new players to the game. Short term plans include more animations and mobile support, while long term I'd like to add player guilds and community events, as well as develop stand alone JRPG type titles to compliment the MMO. Etheldia is a magical place, hope to see you there! -Hippo.

Features: -Basic story campaign, to familiarize new players to the game. -Large open world to explore. -Advanced battle and experience system featuring 5v5 combat. -100+ unique character and enemy subspecies to battle and collect. -100+ abilities to be learned. -Class guilds which teach you abilities as you level up. -Advanced breeding system with inheritance and unique qualities. -Fusion system -Updates weekly!

Website: http://etheldia.net Discord: https://discord.gg/6FsjDAy

GIF

Hippo

v1.10 has been released.

Changes: -Zodiac system!

I've spent the last two weeks creating an original zodiac system for Etheldia. Each character has been randomly assigned one of twelve unique to Etheldia zodiac signs. Based on movements of planets in a simulated solar system, characters will gain elemental bonuses when planets occupy their signs. The signs are as follows: Himera - Dragon sign Solhana - Sunflower sign Kin - Gilded Mirror sign Eruma - Elephant sign Erinity - Unicorn sign Zyx - Rabbit sign Gerub - Frog sign Silix - Dove sign Tithe - Shark sign Laplace - Polar Bear sign Elveden - Poison Chalice sign Tendrashe - Phoenix sign

The planets are as follows: Cerinthe - Normal planet Eridian - Earth planet Minos - Water planet Adiri - Air planet Zar - Fire planet Chloro - Plant planet Annaheim - Gold planet Kain - Quicksilver planet

The in game effects of this system are probably not particularly noticeable yet, as elemental bonuses are set at 10%. This system though will be further expanded upon in future updates, particularly with the addition of breeding which I'll be focusing on next. Lastly for this week, the Ester event has now ended.

Hippo

v1.14 has been released!

Changes: -Swords Guild -New ability - Fighting Stance -Gift and birthright stat effects are now implemented -Breeding system tweaks and fixes

The swords guild is now open! Find it in the Fire Tribe. With the gift and birthright effects now added I'm going to focus on getting affinity bonuses to work for next weeks update. Get in touch if there's something you'd like to see in the game!

That's all for now, keep checking back for more updates! -Hippo

aztecsensei

its amazing how much work you have done on it,how long did it take you to write the code and make the art,i guess problably years. keep it up.

emo10001

Nice! Keep grinding. You've done more than 99% of people who start out in indie game development (myself included..so far lol). Looks good.

-emo

Hippo

Thanks for the encouragement guys, it means a lot! I started working on the project right at the end of 2013 and except for some breaks during travel I've been working on it pretty consistently ever since. It's a massive undertaking to produce any sort of game and especially a combat driven rpg but I feel like I'm getting close to achieving some sort of success. The hard part now is to try and build a small community of dedicated people to play and test the game. I'll keep posting updates here so keep checking back! =)

Hippo

v1.15 has been released!

Changes: -New character - Axolotl <img src="http://etheldia.net/images/axolotl.png"> -Affinity buffs and debuffs determined by the position of the planets at birth are now supported in battle. -Fixed a bug with the Earth Tribe houses. -Fixed a breeding oversight where descendends only incremented for parents and not ancestors.

Still working on making breeding system stuff a bit more smooth. Thinking of creating some simple battle animations to help with new player retention. I've also been looking into supporting co-op gameplay and the ability to form a party with other players and explore. This will be a much longer term project as I've never done anything multiplayer related before and a lot of the code will need re-working to support it. Ultimately though I have some cool ideas for its implementation and I think being able to adventure with friends will bring a lot to the site!

Looking to create a community on the Etheldia Discord, come along if you want to chat about Etheldia, game development, coding, art, or just life in general. That's all for now, keep checking back for more updates! -Hippo

Hippo

v1.16 has been released!

Changes: -Battle animations! -Created a catch and release option for recruiting. -Fixed a bug with the Earth Tribe houses. -Breeding check to prevent inbreeding. -Fixed a bug that allowed teleportation from earth to water kingdom through the castle. -Earth tribe can no longer be randomly entered from the side. -Increased power of aoe abilities. -Caramilk chocolate bunnies can now equip shadow capes.

Big update this week! Battle animations will now trigger based on which main type of move you select. I'm hoping that steadily improving the visuals of the game will help with enticing and retaining new players. Still need to add the enemy animations, and I'm planning on adding some hit and buff effects for the targetted characters. The catch and release feature is a feature I've had in mind for a long time and finally got around to making. It means players can work on levelling up their taming skills without flooding their storage with bunnies.

aztecsensei

great work man! remind me of older final fantasy games. great stuff. B)

Hippo

v1.17 has been released!

Changes: -Updated Blue Wanderer sprite. <img src="http://etheldia.net/images/blue_wanderer.png"> -Updated Caelum sprite, credit of Rhisis. <img src="http://etheldia.net/images/caelum.png"> -Archery and Singing animations, credit of Rhisis. -Rabbits and Pink Rabbits can now equip night robe designs, credit of Rhisis. -Recruited characters are now properly assigned a zodiac. -Recruit abilities should now show up on the exp page post battle. -Fixed a bug where the bunny ears item dropped at a really high frequency in the desert. -Fixed a bug where battle would crash after recruiting and releasing the final enemy. -Fixed a bug with healing not working properly for characters born with gifts. -Fixed a bug where the Kasumi Village was unenterable following story mode completion. -Hopefully fixed a bug with energy following the defeat of a player character.

Mostly a bug fix update this week. Thanks to Rhisis as always for her contributions to the site! Been working on some character sprites for a new dungeon that will hopefully use the co-op multiplayer mode I've also begun to develop. Ideas and input on what to improve or work on next are always appreciated.

Hippo

v1.18 has been released!

Changes: -Fixed a bug where Overdrive speed and attack raises weren't carrying between battles. -Defense buffs now carry between battles. -Fixed a bug where you could shift target indicator during attack animations and kick your own party members off the screen. -New swamp grass tile, credit of Rhisis.

Small update this week as I've been mostly working on upcoming features and graphics for a new dungeon.

Hippo

v1.19 has been released!

Changes: -Horses! <img src="http://etheldia.net/images/misc/horses.png"> -Updated water slime sprite, credit of Rhisis.<img src="http://etheldia.net/images/water_slime.png"> -Updated sky slime sprite, credit of Rhisis.<img src="http://etheldia.net/images/sky_slime.png">

Horses can now be found in the farm area south west of the Earth tribe. There's sixteen different horse designs to collect of various rarities. Planning on a future feature for human players to be able to mount horses and effectively fuse the two characters. Fused characters will have increased base stats and retain the abilities from each character. Thanks as always to Rhisis for her continued work on improving Etheldia!

Hippo

v1.20 has been released!

Changes: -HP now displayed as a fraction of maximum player HP. -Candlestick and campfire animations, credit of Rhisis. -Barn added to farm area. -Dialog box and text updated for NPC above the air tribe. -Spelling error in Normal Guild fixed.

Spent a lot of time this week working on the fusion system and finished all the backend code and testing for it. Should be able to finish the sprites and the front end code within the next couple of weeks. Thanks as always to Rhisis for her continued work on improving Etheldia!

Hippo

v1.21 has been released!

Changes: -Goats! -Fixed a breeding bug caused by a missing bracket. -Increased the success rates for breeding across most tiers.

Still working on the fusion system, knight sprites are all ready to go and barring major disaster it should be up next version.

Hippo

v1.22 has been released!

Changes: -Fusion system!

After several weeks of work the fusion system is finally up! Humans can now mount horses to become knights.<br> To get a knight, take a human character and a horse to the barn in the farm area east and south of the earth tribe and interact with the stepladder. You can mount and dismount as many times as you'd like, swapping horses and riders. I've put some more detailed info on how it works on the about page on the website The UI for the fusion system is pretty bad atm even for my standards so I'll work on improving that for the next version.<br> The pinnacle of what the new system currently allows: <img src="http://etheldia.net/images/misc/goat_horse_fusion.png"> Now I've finished the fusion system I'll get back to new animated map avatars and general progress.

Looking to create a community on the Etheldia Discord, come along if you want to chat about Etheldia, game development, coding, art, or just life in general. That's all for this week, keep checking back for more updates! -Hippo

Hippo

v1.23 has been released!

Changes: -Seagulls now appear in the Water Kingdom at a 10% rate. -Fixed a bug where random text would appear in the Spirit Shrine. -Fixed the exit location upon leaving the Spirit Shrine. -Fixed a bug where the inventory arrows would sometimes remain on screen.

Spent this week redesigning Map16, which is the one to the north of the air tribe. It's still a work in progress and some strange things might happen atm if you try to run down the mountain side, but it should be a cool effect when finished. Next up maybe post battle UI and visuals? Still procrastinating on animated map avatars...

Hippo

v1.24 has been released!

Changes: -Camels! -Sand magic and spells. -Fixed a bug where Map16 would just crash the game. -Updated post battle page.

Spent most of this week working on the new post battle interface. There's still a lot more I want to do with it including animations and a background but it's functional for now, simply click on a card to view the one underneath. On a whim I added camels and created sand magic spells that they'll learn upon levelling. Everyone one loves camels right? Map16 still needs some work. Still procrastinating on animated map avatars...

Hippo

v1.25 has been released!

Changes: -Animated post battle page. -Cards can be shuffled through. -Updated fire rabbit sprite.

Didn't get a whole lot of time this week but I'm really happy with how the post battle page is coming along. You can now use the up and down keys to flick between the characters, and the right key to progress back to the map. Still got a bit more to do before I'm finished with the page, and hopefully I'll get that done over the course of the next week.

Hippo

v1.26 has been released!

Changes: -Post battle page background. -Post battle page navigation arrows. -Fixed the offset caused by levelling up.

Post battle page is now complete! Pretty happy with how it turned out, now I just need to get the rest of the site up to the same standard. Working on a new dungeon set in the sky among other things. As always let me know if there's anything you'd like to see development of prioritized.