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me and my freakishly green hand 

just an update to let everyone know that, yes I am still working on the game and yes, the demo will be out soon. 
It is just taking longer than expected to iron out a few things. Mainly, the difficulty level:
It is turning out to be very hard to make the fights balanced: Not too hard, not too easy; the monsters handing out a fair amount of experience points when killed, how many points needed for a level-up AND working out how much your characters stats should increase by with every level-up etc... It's a slow process of testing, testing and more testing  : In the meanwhile, here's a screenshot of one of the new monsters in action.

Okay. Quick update:
- The battle system is fully working
- The intro has been finalised
- The first few missions have been implemented.
- The characters are also now able to equip and unequip weapons (which helps  ).
I'm working on the shop menu at the moment ( buying/selling GUI  is a pain to implement but I'm getting there). Once that's done, the demo should be ready for release (after extensive testing). So in other words, I'm hoping to get the demo ready for next week-end.

...New screenshots

The town menu in all its glory


the pub owner has a job for you

let's not forget classic japenese shoot-em ups:

http://www18.big.or.jp/~hikoza/Prod/
http://nagoya.cool.ne.jp/o_mega/product/ddd.html

My favorite is Warning Forever, basically one giant Boss battle. Extremely cool.

5.25 mb without music
music.vox is 4.02 mb (very good atmospheric music from my dad actually)

are any of the cheap ones any good? Or am I gonna have to pay through the nose :p

Then I'd better make sure I do finish it  The game is going really well and a demo should be out very soon. All I need now is a reliable host. Any recommendations?

Thank you everyone for the words of encouragement,They really help me motivate myself. I have worked more on the game in the last 2 days than I had done in the last two months :p A demo is also underway. All I need to do is tighten up the battle system and iron out a few bugs. So keep checking in

just finished updating the battle system

New battle system in action

the story is based upon Tao beliefs of God as divine energy and the nature of consciousness (all battles happen within the people's minds and the monsters are not corporal per se). So it seemed fitting to name the land after Philip K. Dick's novel which while set in our world very much touches upon these concepts.

thanks for the confidence boris  and monkey, don't worry I already have done all the anims for the monsters, the hard part is making a human walk but i'll gte there.

okay. Here is a mock-up of how I want battles to look like.



the menu items are:
- Attack > self explanatory, deals damage with your weapon
- Absorb > similar to pokeballs in pokemon: allows you to absorb the soul of a weakened monster into a chalice. once 5 monsters have been absorbed, an upgrade crystal is formed. What that crystal can do depends on which monsters have been absorbed
- Chakra powers > similar to magic attacks, which powers are available to you are determined by which chakra you have set your character with. At the beginning of the game, you are given one chakra affinity by your master from a choice of 4: earth, air, water or fire. You then need to level-up both your character and his chakra abilities to gain access to other chakras. Once they become available, chakras can be assigned to your character but only between battles. changing affinities during a battle can only be achieved using an expensive and rare item.
- use item > self-explanatory.

any ideas, thoughts, questions welcomed

Good eyes there monkey  I'm still working on my own sprite (walking anims from semi top-down view is bloody hard).
Anyway, here's more screenshots:

A town


A full-colour monster


Now I'm still debating whether to use this kind of graphics for the battles or to keep the monsters in Black and White. Any ideas/opinions/sarcastic comments welcome.

just two quick sketches.



sorry about the pencil lines, I couldn't find my rubber :p

Thanks for the replies.

Stickieee: The battle system is fully working but I am still not happy with  the GUI. The graphics still require a lot of work too. The rest of the game is about 30% done but it is considerably easier to do Time wise I have been working on it on-off since November.
Web spider: So far, the sketches are here to stay. I might change my mind at a later date but I think they're pretty cool that way.
Ozzie: I understand what you mean by different style, it's something I'm still working on. Suffice to say, the battles are gonna look very different when I'm finished. As for the clash between the map screens and the rest, I'm influences by japanese RPGs which always have a very stylised and cutesy map view but realistic close-ups.

here's some more screenshots:

Duvall has a heated argument with his master



sketch of a monster


another monster

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edit 06.04.13
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CaptainD raised the question of whether Valis was still in development. I can confirm it is! I've started a wiki/lore book with backstories:

https://valis.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W10

whenever I get bored with coding, I'll be adding entries in there to keep my creative juices flowing.


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edit 01.09.10
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a new demo is now available from:
http://www.agsarchives.com/gamecard/475/valis.html
http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/valis-chapter-1-demon-hunters/download/3402/

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After months spent creating my game and lurking in the forums, I thought it was about time I introduced the project I've been working on: VALIS.

Valis is going to be a RPG in the Final Fantasy mould. Now, I know AGS is not really the obvious choice for such a game, but so far it's been going surprinsingly well. The game features a world map, towns where you can visit bars, guilds, shops and other places of interest. You can equip various weapons and accessories to your characters. You fight monsters in turn-based battles and level-up your characters and their abilities (called chakras in the game).

The Story:

The story is based on the Hindu mythology of Kundalini. Kundalini is a condensed, primal force which lies dormant in us all. When released, it creates a vertical connection between 7 chakras located along our spine. Each chakra has a different property which in the game represents different powers for your characters (earth,water,fire,air,sound,light and thought). In the land of Valis, an evil force has released physical entities who use the Kundalini powers to steal human souls. They are called the Tamashii-seishin. Only those who have trained in their chakra powers can defeat them (the Ruahs). You play the role of two Ruah monks who are trying to restore order to Valis. This won't be easy because not only are the Tamashii very powerful but most Ruahs are corrupt. Knowing full well that the rest of the world depends on them, they have formed a guild which now controls everything and they are not about to let you ruin it for them!

features:
- turn-based battles
- non-linear quests with a reward system which gives you money and items depending on how well the quest went.
- town to town trading system in the Elite mould
- 12 towns to visit each with unique locations
- upgradable powers: choose how you spend your experience points Do you improve an existing power or do you save up for a brand new one?
- 7 different types of monsters and each of them with varying levels of experience to match your own strength so battles are always a challenge.
- 4 playable characters
- a gripping storyline with tons of dialogues

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edit 24.08.10
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Yep, that's right. Valis is the game that just won't die  :o It's still going and below are the screenshots to prove it.

new screenshots:

world map


battle


trading system a-la Elite


Entertaining the locals


Exploring underground caves


Story: 100%
Graphics: 100%
Music: 100%
Scripting: 80%
Testing: 30%

ETA: March 2011 (it'll only be 5 years late)

thank you, that worked ...That must have been the only thing I hadn't tried as well

I have been using AGS to make my game for months now, and have been lurking in the forums reading everything I can about this wonderful program....But now I'm stuck and I need help  I want to share a struct and no matter how hard I try, AGS won't have it. This is what I have:

*********in global script*********

struct type1
{
  int level;
  int exp;
  int chakraname;
  int power[5];
};

struct type2
{
  int str;
  int powername;
  int on;
  int type; 
};

type1 chakra[7];
type2 powers[20];

....

export chakra;
export powers;

*****in script header******

I have tried either

import int chakra;
import int powers;

or

import int chakra[7];
import int powers[20];

and even

import type1 chakra[7];    >>>>AGS doesn't like that one
import type2 powers[20]; >>>>at all 

*****In local script*********

int tempstr=powers[chakra[1].power[1]].str;

but when I compile, I get a message that says:

"str is not of type int"

now, I know why it's telling me that (powers and chakra are not imported as struct but as one-dimensional ints) but I don't know how to fix it. Can anybody help?