Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School

...okay, so it turned out the blob game mentioned in the previous post didn't hold my attention as long as I thought it would (though I do still have ideas for that one bouncing around and do still plan on making it eventually.)  Instead, in the past couple days I've gotten back into working on Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School, which is a game I've been (very slowly) working on since all the way back in 2008.

Though, in a way, it actually goes back to 2003.  Here's the full history...

Like I said just a second ago, FYS:AHS's origins can be traced back to 2003, when I was just starting my senior year of high school.  I'd been fiddling with the OHRRPGCE since its earliest versions (back in 1998) and had gotten a bit of practice with it, and after several fairly awful games that got finished (and several better ones that didn't) I had another idea for a game.  This one was to take place in my high school to start out with and then branch out to other areas (which turned out to be a big part of why it never got done--making the scale  too big didn't work very well, and the story ended up being pretty slapped-together and nonsensical.)  I did a bunch of graphics for the game, but never got more than a single school hallway into an actually-playable state.  I also made the mistake of letting people sign up to be playable characters in the game... of course, most of the people who signed up weren't people that really grabbed my attention in the "I could make a character based on them" way (it's hard to describe exactly what way that is, but some people just stand out to me in weird ways and ideas for characters based on them come to mind much more readily), so these sign-up characters ended up just being... the person they were based on, but with a sword! Or some other random weapon.  The characters I actually wanted to put in the game were still there (many of them based on actual people too), but there were a bunch of "extras" based on those who signed up, which made the whole thing kind of feel slapped-together in yet another way.  Anyway... I did a lot of planning for this game but not a lot of actual game-making, and it ended up never getting beyond the point of "one hallway with a Drunken Kangaroo boss randomly hanging out near some stairs" completion.  You could get one party member (picking from three available in the classroom you started in), but only one of them ever had any special abilities defined so when testing the game I always picked her.  Yeah... not a lot of this actually got done.  It DID, however, give me some of the concepts I used in later games--the Freaky Fungus enemies that showed up early on (based on an actual fungus I found a few times) reappear in FYS:AHS with a much bigger role, and FYS:AHS (like the 2003 Fnrrf Ygm Schnish game) starts out with the school experiencing one of its many sudden power outages.

The Australian science teacher tellin' it like it is.

Only two of the playable characters from 2003 FYS are still playable characters in FYS:AHS, and one of them doesn't stick around in your team for the entire game (though I won't post any spoilers as to why, or which character I'm referring to here.)  The others, however, still appear in the game as NPCs (or, in one case, a recurring NPC earlier on and a boss battle later.)  The power outage plot ends up being resolved very differently than the original version--rather than a demonic "Servant of Spongebob" (...yeah, I had Spongebob in the game as the "Lord of Moronism," or basically a guy who has power over stupidity and tries to spread it across the world as much as possible) tampering with the school's electrical systems in order to supercharge its own power, the power outage in the new game was a result of faulty wiring being chewed through (though I won't spoil how this is discovered or how it's fixed, of course.)

Anyway... onto the 2006 version.  After not getting far in 2003 FYS and eventually even deleting the game file altogether, I started on a new Fnrrf Ygm Schnish game in 2006.  This one, like the previous attempt (and the current game) started out in Alleghany High School.  Unlike the 2003 and 2008-to-present versions, it didn't start with a power outage but with a school dance... during which a couple students show up late and discover that all the other students have gone missing with no explanation.  This leads to an exploration of the school, and the character based on me briefly blacks out and has a journey through some bad places in his own mind where an evil duplicate of himself named "Edwin" is lurking.  After this, the two characters are reunited and go back outside, where they find a scary-looking dude in a Santa outfit calling himself "Blackbeard Santa."  He promises to "give the gift of Moronism" and then attacks.  If I had made anything beyond this battle, it would have been revealed that Blackbeard Santa was responsible for the disappearances, trapping all of the other kids inside his magical sack, and the dance proceeds as normal (the game would have faded out and skipped it, of course, but still.)  After that, things would have gone to a mostly incoherent story much like 2003 FYS but with a different plot that at least tried making sense this time.  Nothing past the point of Blackbeard Santa ever got done, though.  2006 FYS contributes a few things to the new game, too; some randomly-encountered enemies (like Possessed Mops and Roaches) have returned, as has Adam Nebozu and his awkward, random, golf-based fighting style, where he might unleash a powerful "Golfball Rain" upon whatever unfortunate critters he's facing or he might just hit a "Bogey" and end up smacking his allies (or himself!) with the ball instead.

Finally, in 2008 I started working on Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School--and this one, I'm not going to give up on or cancel.  Finally I've got a storyline that both actually makes sense and keeps itself fairly contained rather than trying to sprawl out across the whole world; in FYS:AHS, almost the entire game takes place within the school and surrounding areas.  The "branching out" occurs when you go into secret dungeons and cave systems under the school, which lead you to some more unusual places.  In the case of one line of caves, you'll be able to reach the outside, but only one mountain wilderness area is accessible this way--the important stuff is going on back at school (or below it, or in the sky above it...), so you can't just wander off down the highway or anything!

FYS:AHS has gone through some changes since I first started.  In early versions, the graphics were too bright and almost had a "pastel" look to them... which was completely unintentional, and a result of the old, worn-out monitor I was making the game on (which made everything look darker and bluer than it actually was.)  This has since been fixed.  The game also had some kind of awful-looking walkabout graphics in its earliest stages, and lazy battle graphics which were just "extended" versions of those walkabout graphics.  The character portraits (which everyone has this time around, not just important characters!) were pretty crappy before, too, but I've remade them to more closely resemble those in my other game Okédoké! La Leyenda Mexicana.  Here's some comparisons...

Eddie battle sprites.  Above: new version.  Below: old crappy version.

Old version walkabouts. Look how crappy they are.

And here's the newer and better versions.
Mouths! Noses! And no more big goofy eyes! Yay!

Old portrait graphics.  Some of these are seriously ugly.

And here's some of the new portraits.
Older versions than what's currently in the game, but still better than the ones above!

Anyway... it feels like my work on FYS:AHS is finally picking up steam.  The school's maptiles are all set up so that I won't need to make many new ones to finish up the classrooms and such (only for actual new areas, like the secret lab under the school or the outside.)  Just last night I finished up an area that was left half-done the last time I really got any work done on this game, and I've also fiddled around with the Cafeteria Dungeon so as to make it easier to avoid running blindly into battles with Yuckow Foods that burst out of trash cans and boxes when you open them (and these are very difficult to beat at this point in the game... probably impossible if you don't equip some items to give your characters poison resistance... so preventing people from stumbling into them without saving first and then losing all of their progress is a good thing.  If they were warned, they can't whine as much. XD)

And now, some more screenshots of recent additions to the game! Those of you who know me on Facebook will probably have seen these already, but hey.

New addition: use bathrooms to restore your HP and EP.
Female party members will use the girls' bathroom, of course.
If you're above 50% HP, the message here sounds a lot less urgent.

Nebozu apparently doesn't know the blue-haired ninja.
Either that, or he's just being a jerk.
...okay, yeah, probably the second option.

Fartbean Enterprises is a name that comes up a lot in my games, as you may have noticed.
FYS:AHS and Okédoké take place in the same world, and both feature Fartbean technology.
Fartbean is someone's last name--the company has nothing to do with farts.  Or beans.