Zikara Falls My New Game [VXA]

Zikara Falls My New Game VXA

I would like to start out by saying that I am glad that the Rpg maker communities are so nice, I would not of been able
to make this game without help from the users on these various websites.

My KickStarter is now live!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ferraics-entertain/zikara-falls-a-beatem-up-rpg

The demo for the game is at the bottom of the KickStarter

What is this game that I have spent the last two years making.

Spoiler for:

Well it is a beat'em up rpg made in rpgmaker vx ace.

I was inspired by 90s beat'em ups but still utilizing the rpg elements of rpgmaker.

The game has its own unique art style all hand drawn and animated by me, because I was trying to get as far away from default rpgmaker as I could.

All characters are large sized sprites that have 32 frames of animation per movement type.

Meaning that walking, running, fighting ex. has 8 frames per direction.

I have so far 149 frames of animation over 28 different animations per character. (not all the animations are 8 frames just the base ones)

The game has yet to be rated but it will be M in certain areas and maybe if the kick-starter supporters want it AO in certain areas
and only for certain copies that want that in it, but it will not be AO for places like steam.

So the general idea is that the main quest will not go to far into the adult area pg13 but really close to M in certain situations.

So people who do not want to see it don't have to, while if you go to areas that make sense to have adult themes, example the red light district, then it will have adult themes available to the player.

I will not force the player to view any content they do not wish to see even in the AO version

So now that the hard details are out of the way on to the story:

Spoiler for:

When I first started brainstorming this game two years ago I was influenced by a foreign movie called D13 U or district 13.

It helped me shape the story it is now as well as give me a direction to work off of.

Other things also influenced me but that movie was a major one.

The story starts off with a news broadcast about a man made island created off the coast of the main continent.

The island has been quarantined off after a recent nuclear explosion from the nuclear power plant went off; and the resulting event
has prevented all residents living on the island from leaving.

The resulting events have lead people to believe that the whole thing was a coverup for something else.

You are one of those people who believe that the events told by the media were a hoax used to coverup something worse.

The island was made by the local government to house the rich and powerful of the nation, as a way to segregate the rich from the poor.

Though this was the original intention of the island the local crime bosses found a way to live on the island and influence the habitats of the island.

So you are playing as an A.I.D. (Akeria Intelligence Division) agent who is investigating a recent surge of disappearances that has been going on for a while.

You believe that the events of the nuclear scare has something to do with the missing people.

So you decide to take matters into your own hands and you go to the quarantined island hoping to find answers, but what you find may not be what you were looking for.

The story is a dark comedy where it will have moments of gloom and despair but i will also have light hearted and funny moments.

The main character you play as in the story.

You play as Kathrine Aller a cunning and tough individual who always solves her cases.
Kathrine has always been a police officer having risen through the police force at a young age
Kathrine finds herself working for the A.I.D. but unforeseen forces are about to change her life forever.

Game-Play:

Spoiler for:

The basic game-play of the game is you are trying to solve an on going mystery, so puzzles and dialogue choses are used more often then the beat'em up part,
but the player has the option to play it however they want.

If you want to punch everything in the face you can do that, if you want to be more diplomatic you can do that to and any combination in between.

There are also stealth sections in the game that the player may choose to fight there way through or sneak there way through and take out enemies silently.

Yes I have programmed sneaking mechanics into the game, I am quite proud of them to be honest.

There is a karma system involved with the players actions so curtain events are only available to a certain karma level.

There are persuasion checks for dialogues to see if you influence them or not in the way you want.

There will be a romance system for followers.

I am planning on making mini games that the player can choose to do or not.

Combat is a bit unique in that you need to pay attention to the fight, you can button mash but it works better if you try to
fight a little smarter then that.

You can block incoming attacks and prevent damage.

Punching or kicking them has a chance to knock the npc back to allow comboing them.

All fighting abilities like punch, kick, block are all stamina based where if you run out of stamina you cannot fight anymore, and most
recover your stamina.

Blocking recovers stamina as well as the recovery animation when your stamina drops to zero.
 
Certain items also increase your stamina and hp, like typical rpg items for those things.

There is no game-over in my game, If you lose a fight you will be put in an area related to where you lost the fight.

You can move on from there and continue adventuring, meaning if you lose a fight in the back alley they will toss your beat up body into a nearby trash can,
which then you will get up and resume the game. (It's story related as to why they do this to you instead of other stuff)

Later on I will implement other events that will happen when you lose.

I just don't personally like game over screens they are boring to me.

Now the down side to losing is that your maximum hp will drop by 10 every time you lose, but will not drop below 50.

This is a balancing thing I did so the player can't spam dying, regain full health, and then beatup every body again.

It prevents the player from not caring about losing a fight.

Another thing that is in early development is cutsenes.

There are not going to be many of them both due to the fact they take a while to make, and also because to many cutsenes pull the player out of the game.

The dialogue for when you talk to an npc of importance will show the characters with there full body images talking to one another,
kind of like how a visual novel does it.

You can drive cars in this game to, well they are a little odd right now, but I still think they are cool.

I am the only one making this game the help I received has been by me downloading the scripts below and figuring out how to use them for my game as well as my brother.

I have bought music from the rpg maker store and also I have made my brother draw some environment related items when I was overwhelmed with things to do.

So its been rough to say the least, I don't recommend anybody to do it on their own though the experience was well worth it.

I have contacted and received permission to use the scripts utilized in my game that were made by the talented scripters.

The specifics of the scripts and the authors of those scripts are below:

Scripts

Spoiler for:

Yanfly Engine Ace
Falcao Pearl ABS Liquid v3
IBG Flash Screen/Skip Title V2.0
Connected Maps
Connected Maps Area Maps
Galv's Character Animations
Extra Movement Frames
Basic Game Time + Night/Day v1.6.2
Galv's Variable Timer Functions (used for appearance)
Yanfly Engine Ace - Ace Save Engine v1.03
Yanfly Engine Ace - Move Restrict Region v1.03
Yanfly Engine Ace - Button Common Events v1.00
Eliminate Game Over EX
Word Wrapping Message Boxes
Text over events
「Menu DE common」(ACE) ver1.0
「Picture menu」(ACE) ver1.2
Basic Climate System v2.1.3
Yanfly Engine Ace - Event Chase Player v1.00
Quest Journal [VXA]
DT's Difficulty
Wyrelade's Simple Mainmenu
CATEGORIZE ITEM SCENE v1.0
Custom Equipment Slots
Custom Icon Sheets
Falcao Map Drop version 1.1
Game Resolution 1.1

Authors

Spoiler for:

DoctorTodd
Falcao
Fomar0153
Galv
Hime/Tsukihime
KilloZapit
MGC
modern algebra
Nana
Nelderson
Seiryuki
Soulpour777
SYDONAY
Vlue
Yanfly

I have plans for all sorts of cool and weird things for this game, so if it is sucessful on kickstarter I can implement them.

When the kickstarter goes live I will post a link to it, moderators let me know if I can post a link to kickstarter.


So when is the kickstarter going up:

I will let people play the demo to see if its the type of game they would like to play or not.

The game demo that you guys can play when the kickstarter goes up takes about 1 hour to complete.

I plan on finishing the video and other stuff for the kickstarter by the end of next week.

Stuff about me:

Spoiler for:

I am mostly an artist and animater, with three years of visual basic experience.

I have dived into animation and mesh creation on the cg side, but not as much as the other two.

I am hoping to be able to make cgi movies in the future.

Making this game has taught me a hell of a lot in animation, art, and programming.

I have grown so much in these two years that I have spent on this game, even if I do not succeed at making anything for my efforts
off this game at least the experience is well worth the effort.

The main reason I made this game is to help me acquire the funds I need to get asobe flash, and if I do really well autodesk maya.

My dream goal as a career is to become a professional animator for movies I want to make and game designer; Though much smaller games then this one.

Side Notes

Spoiler for:

I would like to help out other people like me who are making games for kickstarter to try to reach there goal.

I have a deep respect for anybody who puts the time and effort into making a game and I believe they should all have
a chance at success.

So what I was thinking was that while my kickstarter is public I would also go to other kickstarters
that are related to mine and help them out by letting the people who help me out know about them to.

Kickstarter has a bad rap when it comes to rpgmaker games on there, most people do not give it the time of day
and I can understand why.

There are alot of shovelware out there in regards to kickstarter where most don't try and hope
to make big.
 
Even though this maybe true, there are also people out there who put their heart and soul into their work.

So I may be broke now but in the future I plan to help out as many of them as I can and this kickstarter is just the begining of
something much more, and I hope you will give me a chance.


I have notied that when play testing this with friends and family they can do some real damage to my game if they tried.

What I mean is I had both my friend and my uncle open the save files created by rpg maker using notepad, and they were able to change
the variables of my game.

I mean everything is stored in those save files, triggers, custom script data, ex.

What I am asking is if there is a way to encrypt those save files when they are made, so the user can't edit them.

The ini file that comes with the game, when I compress the game data it does not store the game ini, which has the name
of my game and runtime dll location in it.

It just leaves it there to be edited by anybody and they can change the title of my game to whatever they want.

Thankfully it's not game breaking but still annoying.

If you know the answers to these problems let me know.

Screen Shots

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Thanks for taking the time to read my big post about my game.
A special thanks to Kitten for teaching me how to do this.