Swords and Sorcery, Peregrine's Song especially resembles M&M I, the secret of the Inner Sanctum.

30 levels to explore in 3D perspective, over 50 monsters including dragons, dark elves, undead, wyverns..., caves and caverns, cities, enchanted forests, cursed swamps, castles and dark keeps...



You can give it a try on Yoyogames (can now be played online, not just downloaded) or read the web page for more information / download.

SEE THE NEW VIDEO FOR A QUICK OVERVIEW AND TUTORIAL.

Note: This is NOT a fan game. It uses 3D perspective, like the above mentionned titles did back in the day. But just as Dungeon Master was not a Wizardry fan game, nor did the Bard's tale authors get sued for using 3D perspective when it had been done before, Peregrine's Song is an original creation.

Just thought I'd make that clear!

Some feedback to date (besides finding the video dull )

"it takes a strong willed developer to come up with great games like this." Thanks Beany! See full review!

This needs better graphics; I saw the video, and only one kind of wall?
Add variation before you release it; It's quite... dull, actually.

There's only one kind of wall in town, but then there are the caverns, the forests, the ocean, the mountains...

Concerning the graphics there are about 50 monster / npc images.

Thanks for that first comment though!

It's got a lot of heart but it lacks a bit of polish. It seems pretty detailed, which is good. Already I'm reading signs, interacting with NPCs and special encounters, and fighting rather threatening enemies right out of the gate. Had to restart a few times to get a foot hold. Since it's a take on bard's tale and might and magic, that's pretty accurate.

The interface is what bothers me the most. The labels telling you what keys to press are in different parts of the screen on different screens and some are in a smaller font than others. I had to guess to press "Y" when the shop keeper asked a question. The text is a little ugly. You need to have a text box or something. Put all your messages in one place and all the keyboard commands in another and keep them there.

Two options for attack is a little silly. If you're trying to make things easier this way, I would suggest instead having an auto-fight option and one attack option where you always select the monster you want to fight. Also the option of changing the battle message speed would be nice. Some sound effects (with the option of disabling them) would be good for fights too, since there's no graphics for it.

There are spell points but no spells? Or do items use spell points? Or have I just not gotten to that point?

With the exception of the walls, the graphics look borrowed, and this explains the bland, black background. Since this is a nearly finished product I think with a little more features you might be able to convince someone to help you with graphics. The graphics wouldn't seem so bad if the interface looked a little better. Get a boarder for the window, something simple. Text in boxes. Also free music is everywhere.

Hi JDD,
You've given me a lot to consider! Thanks for going deep into the game and giving me your impressions.
Interface: well I admit it needs some polishing, even if at first the idea was to give it an oldie atmosphere, I might only have succeeded in making it just old. Definitely something to consider for upcoming releases.

The Attack / Fight is actually borrowed from an existing gme, M&M I, which had the same principle. To be honest, I briefly tried to make a high speed fighting feature, it didn't work and I put it off to a later release.

Spell points! Well there's another. The main character is a fighter, and multi-member party was for later (henceforth spell casters).

Graphics aren't borrowed, I purchased the rights for the ones I didn't make.

The thing is, given the interest people seem to have in this game I'm wondering if I'll even bother with 1.07. We'll see I guess.

if you learned something that's the important part. There aren't a lot of hardcore rpgs in gamemaker. Plenty are started I'm sure, but few are finished. That's certainly accomplishing something. There's a lot of content here it seems, it shows you put a lot of work into making the game. I think you just need a little more time to make it look pretty. The problem with throwing a lot of high resolution graphics over something that's designed to look old is there's a lot of contrast.

anyhow, good luck with future endeavors.

Definitely has potential I think!

Hi Lokei,
Thanks! I'll be rooting out the 3D perspective old gamers one by one if I have to

This is pretty neat. Clearly a lot of effort went into it. I played Wizardry, Dungeon Master, and Bard's Tale back in the day, and you've captured the feel of those games pretty well. Jddgames has already suggested everything that I had in mind. In particular, the bit about the off-putting contrast between high resolution graphics and "retro" game play was very insightful. I think this game would be more enjoyable with more primitive graphics and more consistency in the interface and status displays. There is real potential here.

Wow, very nice game indeed. Very classic feeling, with a nice twist on the images. The combat system was... surprisingly fun xD. I guess I'm jsut used to playing DnD too much >.>. The rendered 3d looked nice, as well.

Anyways, this is a game I'll be keeping on my desktop, great work.
-Ramen

friendly greetings, donovan.

i first saw peregrines song a few days ago, just happened to stumble onto your web site..

i went and got a download manager specifically so i could get your 12 megabyte file (peregrine's song) ..i played it and died soon after, as another member has pointed out, this is not so much a problem because most rpg's require several restarts untill one gets comfortable..

the sprites were pretty good, but i think you should either go one way or the other (low res or hi res) merging both doesn't seem to work well..

moving in the 'maze' seemed 'clunky' ?? ..the maze (maps) works well enough, but the way it's drawn seems confusing.. like when i enter a room, it'd be nice if the immediate area in the room was 'explored' on my map - so i don't have to walk thru the whole room just to get it shown in my map (due to the way walls etc are drawn, i found myself resorting to the map quite often)

the gameplay was solid enough. everything did what it should do (from what i saw) the use of special encounters etc (such as the arena) is great! ..i hope to see more of that when i go back for more..

i was a bit let down when i saw functionality for only 1 player, though ..but because the combats were not too difficult etc, i'd be willing to give the game a go and see how it handles with a solo player (can't say i've ever seen a solo rpg before?)

other people have already said what i would say.. try cleaning up the menu's a little.. and stuff like 'at the game end' -- i could hardly see the 'press e to exit' (in small red font) ..for a minute there i was thinking, such a complex game, surely the developer didn't forget to include an esc or other exit game feature, hehe..

i first started on wizardry 1 back in the 80's.. and also currently developing a 3D RPG myself, so i know how much work is involved. (it's back a few pages on wip forum if you're interested)

keep developing the game.

i would be interested in collaborating with you at some time, it's really hard to find oldschool RPG GMC developers ..and if you can throw this together by yourself then i know you're pretty good at what you're doing.

finally, it was a real pleasure to play peregrine. and see your website. i was tempted to contact you thru your site, but dialup is so SLOW i keep putting it off.. but here i am typing to you anyway through a quirk of fate, so it seems like fate that i finally get to chat to you.

do a search in game creations for "warrior's tale" -- it's a bards tale type engine made by a gmc member.

Hi Everyone,

I haven't been around for a while and missed all the comments!

Thanks so much for the friendly feedback and advice

I'm itching to get back into development, and will as soon as I chop down the bulk of the work I have ahead of me. I won't make drastic changes to this one (like making it multi-character party enabled). Instead, I think a good old start over will be more fun and more effective.

In short, sequel!

I had tried multi character enabling but that takes a lot of looping and scripting. Changing how the game looks means repositioning all the text (ie, go to each quest script and make the changes line by line to both coordinates and where the # tags are positionned).

When I started Peregrine, I knew nothing of GML. I used this project to learn. Because of this the code is rather messy. Another reason to start from scratch, and this time focus on features like multi class (thieves, mages, priests, knights)

And if it is good enough, perhaps make it commercial. Believe it or not, Peregrine's earlier version was shareware, and it actually sold a bit. But with time I became less happy with it, apologized and thanked my customers and made it freeware. It just wasn't good enough.

I did try warrior's tale, it's too bad he went for a room for each square as there are better ways. Other than that it looks like an exciting project too!