Sealed Gate A Lost Civilization - a first look
200https://www.patreon.com/ulillillia --- full description: https://pastebin.com/raw/8spc9Ng1
Links:
http://facebook.com/SealedGate - SG's page
http://facebook.com/platformmasters - PM's page
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Basement-Nick-Smith-ebook/dp/B018EU57F0/ - Secret in the Basement
Sealed Gate: A Lost Civilization, Sealed Gate or SG for short, is my role playing game I've had in the works since about September of 2006 at the earliest I can determine. That's before Platform Masters existed (which started April of 2009) and even before my first book was released (in 2008). 10EM used SG's systems as they were at the time, along with SitB, my other book.
This video describes the 8 previous mockup screenshots in great depth, set up in a slide show format. I've made a few small adjustments to the prior mockup screenshots, to correct oversights and account for a few recent changes.
As for the "overrun by frogs" remark, this comes from how the spawn algorithm works. Consider having a deck of cards. You have 20 green cards, 12 yellow cards, 4 red cards, and 12 blue cards in the deck. The green cards represent the biting frogs, yellow is the small snake, red is the pingus, and blue is the small fish. Since fish cannot spawn on land, only in water, that component is ruled out. That leaves 36 cards. If you were to draw one at random, you'll have a 5 in 9 chance (56%) of getting a green card, a biting frog. It's a 1 in 3 chance of a small snake and a 1 in 9 chance of a pingus. Past about halfway to Junacal and the small snake is set to 0 as you're outside of its habitat. This now means 20 green cards and 4 red cards remain. 5 in 6, 83%, instead of 5 in 9, 56%, are the biting frog. This is where the "overrun by frogs" remark comes in. Get farther east or a little more to the north, though not by much, and new monsters start showing up, mountain lions with a 6 and wolves with a 16. That now makes 46 cards so the biting frog is less than half of the spawns. A bit farther east or north and the biting frog stops showing up, being outside of its territory.
Corrections and clarifications: The story consists of 12 acts, each consisting of 500 level ups. About 70% of the story is contained in the first 6 acts and 90% is in the first 8 acts as, after act 8, huge dungeons are involved. Acts are referred to as parts, and scenes are referred to as chapters. There are about 100 total chapters - the story is about twice as long as SitB and 5 times as long as 10EM. Strengthening and repairing equipment is only available at equipment type shops. Guests cannot be controlled, but they are very rare and brief and often useful. Tax rates vary from 17 to 28%. Restore points also restore HP. The deepest water you can go in is limited by the character with the lowest level swim ability, or check deep if someone doesn't have it. Travel agencies also offer travel to nearby towns for a fee. Weapon, armor, and accessory shops are often combined, though accessory shops are often separated due to the sheer quantity of accessories. The active party is highlighted. That fancy gold chest is not a drop from a monster. Microseconds start being used once a unit has less than 20 ms between turns, by default, disregarding status effects. Kristin has more of a gown than a dress. The entirety of the span of the early game field navigation minimap is exactly one full pixel on that world map! Further depth with the government system is expressed in the story. SWbW is halvway between WSW and SW. Having many targets in a spell cast consumes more SP and requires a higher magic potency so you can't just use the maximums all the time. The number in the bottom right corner of status effect icons is the intensity of the status effect. Statues and mirrors can be rotated in steps of 45°. By the time SG is done, 8K displays will be as commonplace as 2K displays are today. Special equipment and accessories use 3 pieces of data instead of 2, greatly multiplying the quantity. The damage calculation doesn't factor in higher grade spells. There is a 20% gain with 4th grade spells over 1st grade, which comes from abilities not always being used so they can fall behind a little bit. I went rummaging through my old backups to find references to the things from 2004 and 2005.