[vx] EpiQuest v2G [now with videos]

EPIQUEST

DOWNLOAD
http://rpgmaker.net/games/1986/downloads/1863/
91 MB

FEATURES
- 4.5 - 16 hours of gameplay (no cut scenes, just action)
- side areas that have secrets, and equipment exclusive to those that find them
- Branching quest paths with different outcomes
- Multiple recruits for your party (after the 1st quest)
- make your own party
- 16 playable classes
- Bestiary
- big and challenging bosses and mini bosses. diverse arrays of enemies
- Learn basic skills from equipment
- Skills branch off and become greater as you USE THEM
- Creatures have levels just like you do
- Chase down enemies, run from them or sneak past them
- ever changing battles that make you think and adapt
- Replayability (I have gone through the game 25 times with plenty of different parties and still felt it was fresh)
- Challenging yet forgiving gameplay
- mining, processing and forging
- become a vampire (or vampire hunter class)
- become an outlaw hunted by guards that will chase you when they spot you
- potion brewing
- codes / passwords that you collect in the game and then use them when you are done. thus adding to replayability


GAMEPLAY IS GOOD FOR
- Fragmasters
- Treasure Hunters
- Naval Gazers
- Tourists

SCRIPTS BY
Yanfly -> Majority of Scripting 50%
KGC -> Majority of Scripting 40%
Modern Algebra -> Tangeant Script
Modern Algebra -> Skill Teaching
Eternal Symphony -> Stat Increase By Job
Dangor -> Advanced Title Screen


SCREENSHOTS

Looks good, but jftr, the word is "bestiary", not "beastiary".

bestiality

Changed. I wonder why its Bestiary, because you kill beasts to add them to it.

For some reason every time I see this topic I think of an EpiPen lol.

Is this finished? I'm going to move it to the Projects instead of New Projects for now. If it's finished, let me know and I'll move it to finished.

Only two qualms with this so far... 1. is a bug (when you jump down the hole, if you lie to the kid with the broken leg, his face wont dissapear, even if you talk to him again) 2. is a graphics error (when you go through doors, the ceiling is below the player)

The first one can easily be fixed, but the second one can only be fixed by using images of the overhead door and putting them as an event that's over the player.

Cute dog Grafikal. It is finished as in, there is no plot, no story and it will go on forever and ever with periodic updates. Like a soap opera!

 -- 1. is a bug (when you jump down the hole, if you lie to the kid with the broken leg, his face wont dissapear, even if you talk to him again)

I cannot duplicate this error. When you lie, he just asks you again and again. Since you found it though, I will make a dummy proof thing, where it will remove the image a second time :-)

2. is a graphics error (when you go through doors, the ceiling is below the player)

 -- true. That is how it works. Sorry. Should I just make a hallway instead of a doorway?

Thank you so much for even playing and commenting :-) Comments always mean a lot!

60 downloads in two days. I am happy!

The game is coming along rather well. I will wait maybe a month to upload the next version.

I already have a beautiful mountain with a village ontop of it. It looks extremely nice. It stands out. I have a tunnel that leads from the first region to the second region.

Depending on how you dealt with the gold harp, you get bannished bannished from Eraki in the storyline. If you return to Eraki, the guards will chase after you. BUT the guards will need to see you first, when they notice you, then they chase you. It is a surprising amount of fun and I would incorporate the enemies to do it, but then the game would have too many enemy fights.

In the second village (Aereachi), the game gets better and a lot more diverse. Instead of having just a magician, you can then specialize to be a fire mage, ice mage, thunder mage, terra mage, the list goes on and on.

On top of the heap of new weapons, armor and items, in Aereachi, a witch will make you potions, a smith will forge you weapons.

There are cursed items and potions to uncurse them. I am an old school Dragon Quest fan that had cursed items.

Because the second village is an Elven village, they overcharge outsiders. So I also went back and made it so when you complete Creall's delivery, the armory will give you a 10% off discount. I also gave discounted items to each merchant, which makes things very interesting with all of the price differences. You get to shop around now. Including to see who will give you better prices for what you sell.

YERD's system modification script is also being used for the next version so you can change your dialog box color, change the volume and a few other things.

All of this stuff combines to make it a lot of fun. I am actually having a lot of fun playing the game, which is good that I made a game I actually have fun playing.

NO BEASTIARY, BESTIARY OR MONSTER'S BOOK 

Huh? There is one.

I think he complaining because you didn't fix the mistake Holk mentioned...

I fixed it, I am just not going to update the .exe file for that.

THIS GAME IS BASED ON RTP ELEMENTS 

Look out Captain Obvious! The sky is above you!

SKILLTREES

Skill trees make the game go where you want it to, depending on how you play of course. There is a rusty sword that can be brought back to its former glory. Once it becomes a thunder sword, Barbarians, Heroes and Greys can use it. Why I mention it is because it can use a thunder slash, once you use thunder slash 50 times, you gain a thunder spell. Use the thunder spell 50 times, you earn Thunder All and after another level up or so times it becomes Thunder II.

The Scan skill gets better with time when you use it too. So does heal. Healing branches out into giving the user heal, Heal II, Heal All, Weapon Bless, Cure and so on. The more you use a spell, the more you learn. To learn Heal III, you will have needed to use Heal II a lot of times.

Your character becomes your own. There are heal orbs, staffs and wands that will let you temporarily use the spell until it becomes YOURS. So the Healer, Hero, and Grey can become characters that specialize in healing.

In time, you can turn your average Magician into a Fire Mage, Ice Mage, Dark Mage and so on. A Grey can become a dark magic using healer, or a holy mage with a side of dark magic. You can make a thunder Barbarian or a healing Hero. Why stop there? If you want your Magician to know every elemental magic in the game you can do it. Start with a fire wand, learn the fire spells, go to the terra wand and go through the terra spells.

BECOME VAMPIRES
There are cursed items in the game, equip them and they are stuck on you until you uncurse them. There are certain equipment that give you vampire abilities (or other abilities). With the skill tree for vampires, you get added strength, power, speed, and intelligence. You also gain the vampirism skill. Use it 20 times and you gain the chill ability (ice) and follow that skill tree. Use Vampirism 50 times and you get the Evil skill (dark magic) and follow that skill tree. You will also get status magic like sleep, paralysis and so on.

This would of course lead to an uber character if there was not a catch. You need to keep your vampire alive. You are weak to holy magic, there is a good deal of slip damage and the vampire cannot have any status ailments. No bonuses like ATK up.

There are great bennefits to having a vampire character, but only if you can keep them alive. The churches can make vampirism cures, but it is never easy or cheap. Once the character is cured of vampirism, the skills are kept, except for the vampirism skill that lets you drink blood.

Imagine a healing, thunder crashing Vampire Hero... Or a holy healer that can cure, suck blood, chill and use dark magic. I am having fun with this just playing it!

There is a four step process to forging equipment:

 - get a pick axe
 - mine for ore
 - process the ore
 - forge the equipment

So far there are three minerals to mine for. Copper, iron, and steel. Deposites are everywhere, and they replenish themselves after a good amount of time. You need a different level of pick axe to mine for minerals. A copper pick axe can mine for copper, but not iron or steel. A steel pick axe can mine for steel, copper and iron ore.

HOW IS IT FUN?

It becomes a mini game, because you do not just get ore. You find items like potions and pork chops. Yes pork chops, you find them in the wall like Castlevania.

WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE?

Because all enemies are lively in the game and can chase you, the party will need to mine, and get out of there quickly so you cannot wait around for the deposite to replenish. There is also a risk of breaking the pick axe you are using, but it is only a 1 in 50 chance.

There is another catch too. Mining is work! Anyone ever try to mine something? Its taxing on your body, especially before drills! Depending on what you are mining for, your party will take damage. Such as steel ore, your party will take 20 HP and MP damage. But at that point your party will have 400 HP.

2 ORES ROW A BOAT!

They do, but that's oars! Once you have all the ore you can collect, take it to a forge and they can make 2 ores into 1 processed mineral.

FORGING

Once you have processed minerals at the forge, you can have the forge make equipment. All the standard equipment that the shops sell, but later on in the third town of Thedona, they can make you better equipment than the shops. The forges can even restore ugly weapons to their former glory, making them more powerful and useful! They can even combine weapons to make a better new weapon, like combining the chain whip and a mace will make the morning star!

MINING IS STILL NO FUN FOR ME...

For those that do not want to go mining, you can buy processed minerals, but at a higher price of course! Forging your equipment is slightly cheaper depending on what the merchant has it priced at.

BARGAIN HUNTERS

I may have mentioned this, but most every shop has their own prices. The elves have a high markup, meaning their prices are more expensive. Thedona's prices are very expensive for weapons, armor and magic that Aereachi sells. Kind of like they want you to go back and get it elsewhere.

Each shop has its own bargain bin, usually potions or inferior equipment that is sold for cheaper than it would normally be. Like the elves sell copper equipment for cheaper than they do in Eraki Village.

The next version will be up this Friday (April 23, 2010). The game is done and I am currently play testing through it. No matter how many bugs I kill, there will always be some, just because there are so many classes, combinations, skills and branches in the storyline that drastically change things.

Speaking of the storyline... there is one now. It still branches, and I doubt any other RPG has a storyline like this.

It is impossible to see the entire game in one playthrough. The game is meant to be played through multiple times, and there is plenty of incentive to do so. Codes that you find as the game goes on, plenty of party combinations and a big diversity in skills and tactics.

After this release, I am going to take a break from making the game. I will still fix errors and upload the fixes.

If anyone would like to donate a cave to add to the game, I would gladly accept it. There are 2 places for caves that have nothing to do with the storyline. They would just be extra places to explore. Do not worry about enemies or anything, but if you would like to write a list of what kind of enemies are in the cave, I would love to add the list!

Sounds cool. I am looking forward to the release!

Thanks Modern :-) I used some of your scripts :-)

ok V2 is now up! A lot more content and good stuff has been added.


edit: V2B is up!

version 2B!!

UPDATES since V2
 - Mining twice in the same spot does not freeze your game for 30 seconds!
 - Mapping credits in the credits note in the game.

UPDATES since V1
 - 3-13 hours of new content (3 if you just run through to the end)
 - enemies level up as you do (improved leveling up)
 - new bestiary
 - new menu
 - new status screen
 - 4 new classes
 - become a vampire
 - codes / passwords system!
 - mining, processing & forging equipment
 - brewing potions
 - 2 new towns
 - 1 new tunnel
 - 1 new tower
 - many new caves
 - 2 new mountains
 - larger world map
 - 2 new equipment teirs and plenty of rare equipment
 - plenty of fixes and improvements

I made a pair of videos.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR8BRU2v7JI" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR8BRU2v7JI</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8HB5x6k_6w" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8HB5x6k_6w</a>

V2D is now active. The only real change is in the grey mine southeast of Eraki village.

Now that you’ve had 4-16 or 21 hours to get familiar with your party and Epiquest, I am going to make it more interesting. Most RPGs have you searching to find your lost father or relative, I am going to make this about finding your lost party. There are 19 playable characters (some are hidden), but there can only be 4 members to party, so the rest of them just collect dust.

There will be a major party and a minor party. Although both parties do become major, but your original party of 4 will search for a way home, while your new party of 4 will search for the original party. You can flip between both parties.

To get the player’s feet wet in this concept, the original party will temporarily be divided and given 2 new characters. So it will be 2 parties of three, before they rejoin. The 2 parties will help each other with switches that open gates for their counterpart.

Once the original party merges again, they will be stuck a great distance away, and it is up to the player to make both parties find one another. You can either play party A the entire way to get to party B, or play party B the entire way to party A, or play both parties halfway and have them meet wherever you want.

Each party has its own recruits, items and so on. It will be beautiful and an epic odyssey, going far away from home, and or coming back.

Looking pretty interesting. I'll definitely be giving this a try.

And hopefully 20 days later you played it :-)

just starting now, sir or madam

p.s. Upload a version that does NOT have the RTP included. It'll really save on filesizes. That way it gives those with VX an opportunity to get to the game faster.

edit:  I'm going to help you reduce any bugs I see.

1: Remove the SE from the cat on player touch and make it only if player activates. It's annoying as hell when you touch or push into and it plays like 4 times in a row. Mega echo.
2: Fix the very very first door in the entire game. You can walk over the ceiling tile. Just make that tile an event and place it above the player so that the player can only walk under it.
3: Fix the dog just outside of the house for the exact same reason as #1. Just don't do that.
4,5,6+ : Just fix all your doors and animals and anything that does stuff on player touch.
...
132: Hah, you have way too many people in that pub to begin with. There aren't even enough houses in this starter town for all of them + everyone outside.
133: Turn ON direction fix for the event of the woman playing the piano in the pub.
134: haha, You die instantly if you use Hide in battle and you have no party members. Ought to fix that asap.
135: There's no one in the pub corresponding to that note that's tacked on the wall outside of it. So no way to actually get a job there...
136: Your indoor maps dim way too much, I don't see why they need dimmed at all, it doesn't add a single to the player's experience in your game.
137: Mapping errors on the map at that Tent Camp thing on the world map just west of the starting town. Look at the trees.
138: Your day/night system is way too fast... like 2 minutes between dawn and dusk...
139: Your BGM continues to play after exiting the 'secret' inn tile in that forest area on the world map south west of the starting town. Fuck. It continues to overplay on top of EVERYTHING.


I stopped playing. You can't do anything without a weapon - there's no quests, you don't start with a weapon, you get money anywhere to get a weapon, you die before you can actually do damage to anything because you start with shitty things. There's no direction in the game yet either. More bugs, but this midnight/twilight/sleeping music from that inn on the world map is getting very annoying.

Read wall notices for quests. They will reveal everything.

I've heard compliments about the midnight music, but whatever. I will check the other bugs when I get a chance. Someone on a different forum painfully and maticulously went through a lot of the bugs.