I watched the video. The menu looks really cool in the way it is organized, and the battle system looks fun and unique. Could you maybe include a demo that has the RTP? I cannot play the game without it, as I don't have VXA.
Damn TDS that battlesystem looks incredible, it reminds me of HalfMinuteHero :P, trying the demo out now
Spoiler for First off:Spoiler for Secondly:Spoiler for Last:
I'm just going to clarify myself here as you seem to, in my eyes, not get where I'm going.Quote from: LoganFSpoiler for First off:Spoiler for Secondly:Spoiler for Last:Spoiler for First off:Spoiler for Secondly:Spoiler for Last:
Honestly, when I see a game with five pages of backstory in the description before I've even downloaded the game, I'm far less likely to play it. You should experience the story and learn the history of the setting in the game, not in a text-dump of a post.I'm very guilty of doing that :o
EDIT: I love it, but the battles seem to take too long, maybe i'm just impatient XD
This looks pretty cool TDS. Downloading now~
Love the concept and video! Will download soon!
Spoiler for Game thoughts:
Spoiler for Discussion point: Escape as a strategy in random battles:
That said, I downloaded this demo and I liked it quite a bit (though I did die during my first battle)! The beginning cutscene is a bit long, but since you can skip cutscenes it really isn't an issue. The writing could use some polish, yes, but this game is far more about the mechanics, which are quite exciting (I loved the feel of Half Minute Hero).
I'm liking the screenshots, I've always thought that if a scripter was to make a game, it'd probably have more features and usability than other RM games, looks like I'll get to find out on this one :yuyu:
The yellow bar story-wise is the power that he gets at the start, it does a lot of things. It increases your critical rate, cuts down damage, increases your speed and a lot of other things. It's length increases during the story, depending on whether or not you decide to help people or not.
It's not really meant to be spammed to get the battles to end, it's more of a thing for emergencies or learning about new enemies. For example if you see a new enemy and you're not sure how strong it is you can save your "Battle Rush" to help you escape faster if the enemy turns out to be too tough to take out. You can also use it to quickly take out lower level enemies once your levels are high enough.
If you speak to the NPC's around the castle they explain a lot of basic things such as keeping in mind escaping as an option. You are not really required to run away and if a person wants they could probably win every battle they encounter, but they would just end up wasting items and time on a battle too tough to win at the time.
As for a system to customize characters, I decided against it because the game is very short. That is why equipment is also removed, I can't keep adding systems that are really not going to have much of an effect in the game when each character already does.
I see. That's an interesting use for it, and is something I should definitely keep in mind. It does help to know what it's purpose is, outside of seemingly speeding up fights. I think its the name "Battle Rush" that is (to me) easy to misunderstand. It's somewhat ambiguous. It's not a speed up, but rather a Rush of the Battle, like adrenalin. And that does have the benefit of making easier fights faster as a natural side effect.
My first question is... how do I save? I understand that you must be standing on something important before the menu actually allows you to do so, but I expected the field map to allow you to by default :\
Same as everyone else, I lose my first battle ;9
Will need to give it another run sometime soon.
However due to how short the demo is, there is no way at the moment to load your save files.Does that mean the save menu is supposed to have greyed out options and play a custom buzzer when I try to select a savefile to save to?
Then I found out that in a battle you had to keep pressing ctrl or enter to do that stuff... Then I played it all the way to the end of the demo!!!
Anyway. I like that your minimap shows threats but they go away if you kill one threat? Which I think is odd.
Also, what doest hearts do on the minimap? Since I let Satiel die a couple of times and the next battle, he was back with full health.
Then my final question to you: When will there be a next version of the demo? Or the complete game?
Anyway, interesting story inside the game. And I love the way Satial reacts when he meets the sage!!
Whoa, pressing F5 makes it toggle between the modes really quickly, I usually need to wait about 10-15 seconds when full screen toggling RPGMaker Games on this computer, so that's a pleasant surprise. After that, just out of curiousity, I used alt+enter to see if your game would auto-revert it back to windowed, it didn't and it seemed to have taken about 30 seconds before the screen displayed it this time, was fullscreen so I pressed F5 which had no effect and actually seemed to make the program bug a little if held; pressing alt+enter again put it back to windowed. Hmm... I'm well-aware that it's my mistake for doing that, but I just wanted to test it out, maybe you're interested in hearing that :yuyu:
I noticed the mini-map, so it seems to predict where monster encounters are, I guess I skipped the enemies.
Battle with a wolf was cool too, though I wasn't paying a lot of attention and lost the sage, but hey I healed Satiel in time :D
And that's where the demo ended.
Well, not a lot to say. I liked the Castle theme, that was pretty good. The Battle seems pretty cool too, it makes me feel more like a player; since without me these guys will die (unlike other RPGs where your characters on auto could probably take care of themselves as if you were never there). I definitely like the ability to skip cutscenes and the mini-map; The menu is pretty cool-looking too ;8
I'm sure this will improve, so I'll stick around for the next one. ;)
The hearts on the enemy radar are "Rest Points", when you touch them you recover some HP. They were supposed to be little tents, but people thought they were going to be fighting tents...
Just out of curiosity, is there any reason behind calling it a "Mini Map"? I keep calling it a radar, but people seem to call it a mini map even though it's not technically displaying a map. And yes, it's purpose is to allow you to evade enemies in an area.
The plant things are very, very tough. I get that the rush mode pushes the enemies back further, and that pushing them back...kills them quicker? Or when they're pushed back far enough its an instant K.O.
It's a cool idea, and I was really into it the first time. But the plants do too much damage and the only thing I was really doing was keeping the characters alive and occasionally holding ENTER to push the plants back further when the meter filled up. I understand about escaping and avoiding encounters, but I feel like battles shouldn't be set up just for the purpose of escaping them--at least, not in a way where the player is just constantly dodging enemies and hitting the escape command. The radar is cool and all, kudos for creating it, but it just doesn't feel like a fun gameplay mechanic. I get what you're trying to do, and this is just my opinion, but I feel like you could accomplish putting an emphasis on picking one's battles carefully, in order to conserve resources, in a more...engaging way.
So, I like it. I'd like to see how it works when it feels a bit more balanced. I don't think that a game should require you to use potions every five seconds to survive.
I'm afraid I had to find that humorous. Not because people thought that, but rather at the concept of fighting a tent. But, couldn't you think that hearts were also battles, and that something was going to happen similar to fighting tents? It's hard to think of a decent way of "iconifying" a rest point. A tent is a common RPG item used for resting it, and that's what I'd assume that to be.
I might give the demo a try, but I wanna know how long the demo approximately takes to finish.
@Milennin:
Thank you for giving the demo a try, and no you are not a noob because you died in your first battle, the battle system was designed to overwhelm you in many ways and people who die and try again seem to often enjoy the game much more than those who survive their first battle, who often have little interest in the game to start with and don't continue playing.
It's more animated in action, but that's hard to convey in a still image. Also this is just some of the information, in the tutorial there is a bit more.
If there is anything you or anyone else would like explained better in a tutorial please let me know and I'll add it.
@Dizturb3d:
For skipping cutscenes I think there are 2 scripts, one made by myself and another one made by Kread-EX.
Here is the one by Kread-EX
http://grimoirecastle.wordpress.com/rgss3-scripts/utility-scripts/cutscene-skipper/
And here is the one I made.
http://rmrk.net/index.php/topic,45074.0.html
My script was made way back when VX Ace was released so it's probably not as optimized as newer scripts. I usually update scripts based on how many people use them and when there's no visible interest in them they usually get no updates, but if you do decide to use my version let me know so I can work on it so it's as optimized as possible.
Thanks for trying the demo and sharing your opinions.
Here is a battle tutorial demo for those of you may want to try and comment on it.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/61337936/Demos/RMRK%20SH%20Demo/Tutorial%20Demo/TUT%20Silver%20Heart.exe
(It's not a full demo, it's just my debug map with the tutorial and the parts that are finished.)
To be fair, the game doesn't really leave you with much time to test things out and learn on your own.
The enemies tend to get up on you pretty quickly so you can only really use what you've currently figured out to either win or escape.
Honestly (even though I suggested that a tutorial would be nice) just a battle at the beginning of the game against a dummy enemy would be pleasant; I'm not under the pressure of keeping an eye on 4 different bars and can get the feel for things that way.
That said, I still feel like this is one of the few battle systems where I feel like I'm needed.
@Milennin:
Sounds like you're missing the font that comes with RPG Maker VX Ace, I think having the RTP installed should fix that.
@LoganF:
I already know most of what you explained, what surprises me is that a tutorial is needed because a lot of people did not even try to learn. Just like I suspected a lot of the people who tried the tutorial commented that and I quote "Good, theres a tutorial. I didn't bother trying it before because of that lol".
@LoganF:
Overwhelming was my goal and I've recently enjoyed a few RPG that have done that to me, but I think that may not be for everyone since only a few people have enjoyed it so far. The speed and the lack of instructions are a bad design choice if the person playing is approaching the game as a normal RPG and is not expecting to respond that quickly. Hopefully the tutorial helps more people be ready and the dummy battle allows them acclimate to the speed.