COMPLETE! [VX] RTP Only Challenge- Astralis: The Breaking of the Ancient Seal

A short but satisfying venture into the Lands of Lore, Enarovia

The non-epic sized game is playable in just a few hours, or you can delve deeper into the land for several more minutes of immersive storytelling.

Features

Spoiler for:

A customisable party selection option. Choose the profession and gender of all your party members.

NPCs cycle through several responses, each telling a bit of the story. Less canned dialogue! Additionally, certain events occur that get specific characters to tell special stories.

The ability to rename your characters, up to six letters.

The maps will feel the passing of time. Don't worry, there's a clock for you to use.

Professions that not only get you unique Arms and Armour, but profession tools let you see your progress in that profession.

Other than that, it's pretty basic, buddy.

And a special surprise...

Spoiler for:

This is the zero point for a series of stories told with much better graphics, gameplay elements and a storyline that may have you awaiting the next installment with bated breath! Additionally, starting with the next installment there will be no need to start over every time a new chapter hits the forum- plans are in effect to implement a patching tool!

Credits

Spoiler for:

grafikal and Virusasa for allowing the use and modification of their event systems, and felicearcana for the base of the professions system. Thanks to Acolyte for the RTP only idea. Thanks to Queen yuyubaberabeus for what amounted to playtesting. Thanks to Strak for working on the event systems even though I couldn't use them. Thanks to my parents for telling me I'd never amount to anything so I could prove them wrong for the last 30 years.

This is actually only the second game I've even finished.
Blast away with your comments and critiques.
Get v1.3 here.

Well done M00s

Very cool looking! I'll be sure to check it out as soon as I get a break with the GIAW stuff. :p

Um.... I just was informed that despite playtesting, I missed a tic box on a switch and forgot to reset player start position. I'll fix that in the morning and reupload the compressed data.

My faux pas.

EDIT: Working as intended now.

Oh, and if I missed any bugs let me know here, please.

Thanks for reminding me!

Downloading now. B)

OOOOH! Neato! I'm a little excited, I admit....

Okay, I just played as far as I could, but I got stuck and can't quite figure out where to get the key to the dungeon. I think I pretty much cleared everything else in the game, too! o.o

Here's my notes of playing the game (organized in the same way as a scoring guideline):

Spoiler for Polish Notes:

Hearing that VX music again brings back fond memories. ;_; Totally unrelated, but in many ways, I find the VX music to be more dramatic than the Ace music.

The maps look nice so far. The amount of clutter works for me!

Neat day and night system! I like how all the shops are locked at night, too!

Spoiler for Gameplay Notes:

I like your character selection screen! Very snazzy!

Hmmm...not sure what I'm doing next. Time to explore!

I like how there's very little random encounters, but the few I do run into are pretty tough. o_o I've easily been wiped out a couple times.

Might need a bit more directions so I know where I'm going. I actually accidentally stumbled across the giant.

The game was tough at the beginning, but I quickly became way overpowered. o.o Now, I'm 1-hit-KOing everything. B)

Made my rogue dual-weild Scimitar and now he's waaaaaay OP. o.o

The demon is way OP. o.o I finally got somewhere with him when I paralyzed him. Whoa o.o that paralyze is epic. Kicked his booty now.

Spoiler for Story Notes:

Great use of voice with the characters! I didn't expect anything less. B)

So far, I'm really liking the game, but I tend to get lost a lot and I'm not 100% clear with what's going on, other than that the Reagent is a shifty dude. >_>

There's a lot of stuff to read, so that's pretty cool!

I love the villager dialogue system! It's a bit more complex, since it changes a bit when you talk to them.

Spoiler for Other:

I think you used a male sprite for a female character. o.o Interesting. I would never have thought to do that. B)

Junk punch? = Awesome B)

You really did get me with the "Does your name not suit you?"
I said "no" by default and then was redirected to change them again. D:

The innkeeper made me laugh! B)

Oh noes! ;_; Not the real estate agents! D:

I like the psychic girl. ;o;

Item descriptions are cool, but maybe could use a bit more information about healing spells especially. I ended up using the massive healing to find out how much it healed me and it blew through a lot of MP, when I could have just used the normal healing many times. ;_;

And finally!

Spoiler for Bugs?:

After character selection, the screen fadeout was a bit weird and flashed for a second or something?

A small text cut off when talking to the guy that can't stop yelling about why he's yelling. ;o There's a couple more of these, but they're usually pretty minor and I can't recall where exactly.

When I tell the dwarf I have work for him, nothing happens. Maybe that's intentional? (Oh, wait, that's for the craft system. Perhaps he should say something special when you have nothing to craft with? =o Just a little suggestion~)

The guy with the red bandanna in town doesn't talk to me...

The envelope on the bed turns into a turkey!! o_O Might need to make it direction fixed! Same with the meal on the table in the family's house with the accent.

I occasionally have issues with NPCs blocking my paths with random movement. ;_;

I only attack one enemy when using Trauma Twitch, despite being supposed to attack 2. ):

Can use Eye Gouge from the menu and it wastes MP but doesn't do anything. Can use sound beating from the menu, too. D:

At night, I can still enter many houses (psychic girl and dwarf) and they are tinted the same as outside. =o

The door to the magic shop is completely gone at night!! Same with one of the houses to the very left of the map.

I slept at the inn so it would be morning again and the building was still tinted when I woke up. I went outside and it's morning again, though.

Okay, so not really a bug, but a bit of a cheat. Using Boarding School over and over again is a great way to keep a single enemy from doing any damage the whole fight. That's what I did when fighting the giant. ;_; It didn't seem to work on the demon, though?

The elf still talks to me about the giant, even though he's dead now. =(

Spoiler for Overall Commentary:

(The Good)
Overall, I'd say I quite enjoyed the game. B) All bugs were pretty minor or likely not even bugs at all. The dialogue was great (as expected ;o) and the skills were neat, the money given was pretty fair, and there was a lot of fun features added (crafting and the time system). The character selection screen was great and the mechanics were superb! You seemed to take the RTP beyond its four walls and quite outside the box!

(The Bad)
Since this is an RTP-Only, I can't quite complain about the annoying things that RPG Maker does wrong (such as random encounters and an awful battle system). Still, you handled the random encounters in a way that was quite fair~ I did have a slight issue with enemies being too tough, and then drastically too easy. Perhaps the biggest thing I can think of was my confusion over where I go next and what I do next.

THank you so much for your review, yuyu! Here's a hint or two:

Spoiler for:

There's a secret door on an East wall in Eaglerest.
 
The Dwarf needs a certain metal to do work for you. (I really ought to put some indicator of that in his response.)

Occasionally, Trauma Twitch targets one enemy... it seems to be related to the RTP's RNG and it was irritating as fuck for me too; I couldn't find a fix for it though.

There is one more big enemy: the dragon. He isn't in the north, though- he's in the east mountains. You'll figure it out when you see it 

 

Oh my... facepalm on me for not fixing the direction on all those events!

Of all the other things you mentioned, the guy with the red bandanna and the cut off dialogue are NOT working as intended, nor are the skills useable from the menu or the doors disappearing. No houses should be open at night either. I'll fix those bugs and reupload; the red bandanna guy has a profession item and a clock for you to buy. Oh, and I totally don't know why the Inn is tinting.... 

The male sprite for a female character... which one? If it's the male fighter, I honestly thought that was a dude...

The setting is a part of a larger mythology that is well established in my own head... and it was kept a little vague so the player could discover more in the next installment. I see that was a mistake. The game rewards the player who talks to EVERYONE several times. However, I will go back and make sure the player knows what his objective is even if they don't do that.

The difficulty was a little odd, purposefully. I wanted a steep difficulty curve. Perhaps not as steep as it turned out though. The Demon, Drago and Giant were supposed to be way tough, and now that I know their weaknesses, I can go back in and tic up their resistances.

So yeah, lemme fix all that stuff... Would you be willing to play through it again? Your review was fantastic, it really made me think about how I make games. That's a good thing; it can only improve from here.

The male sprite for a female character... which one? If it's the male fighter, I honestly thought that was a dude...

The character with the long blue hair (female priest in your game) is supposed to be a male. xD He does look like he could be either, though.

I will go back and make sure the player knows what his objective is even if they don't do that.

I think a good idea might be to have the player carry around a journal (common event) that updates as they quest to remind them of what to do. B)

Also, of course I'd be willing to play again! Always happy to help!

 I was sure that was a girl.... how embarrassing!

Hmm, a journal... interesting idea, and totally do-able with eventing. I dunno, though, I wanted the player to have an experience like the old nintendo RPGs... you know, slightly frustrating.   Seriously, I didn't include that feature because of all the "extra" stuff that the player could find, and then feel like they discovered something really cool. Now that you mention it though... I just might throw that in. I might.

You are a wonderful human being, my friend. I'll have the revision up sometime on monday or tuesday.
*offers gesture less informal than handshake but less invasive than a hug so as not to be creepy or invade space*

* Queen yuyubabe hugs because she's an invasive jerk.

You go on and be invasive!

And, here is the fixed file, (well, at the top,) ahead of schedule!

Spoiler for Changelog: Spoilers within:

All doors should now work as intended.
The Inn and bar will no longer be tinted at night.
The Shady merchants will now only appear at night.
Combat skills are now unusable in the menu screen.
Enemies have become more resistant to stun and paralyze.
Dialogue was reviewed; some was fixed. Be warned that you must speak to most if not all of the folk several times to find your way.
The secret door in Eaglerest is less hidden now.

Downloading the new one now!

*edit*

Ooooor as soon as it starts working for me. ;_; says my network has an error. wut

I'm playtesting right now, but I ran into the same issue that I had to start with. ;_; I can't figure out how to get into Eaglerest at all.

Time for another set of notes! Boom. More focus on the bugs this time, since I already commented on everything else. B) I still dropped a few extra comments, though.

Spoiler for Comments:

-Just a suggestion: I think it might be neat if you give them all preset names. =) Whenever you go to set them, it looks a bit strange to see "Male M" for the male mage. =o
-I really like the lower part of the dungeon. ;_; It's quaint.
-The psychosis puts me to sleep waaaaay too much. D:
-It really does help to talk to everyone. ;_;
-I really hate that "Fry" move that those will-o-wisps keep spamming on me ;_;
-I neglected to use "Flare" on the will-o-wisps, due to them being made of fire themselves, but it turned out shockingly well. o.o
-Hmmm...junk punch did more to this skeleton than light magic. D: That sounds painful, though.

-Aaaaaaaaaaaand, done! I wonder what happens to them? :,(

Spoiler for Bugs:

-Still just a slight fadeout issue after I select my four heroes. =( The screen fades out, and then for a second it reappears and then fades out again. D:

-Uh oh! Missing door on the Fyre house at night! Same with the old man's house!

-The screen still tints when it turns night and I'm indoors. )= At least, it did as I was talking to the dwarf.

-The screen was dark for a second as I entered the pub, but then returned to normal. It's not really anything huge, but here's what I like to do when I need to change something seamlessly with a transfer event: (Fadeout Screen, tint screen, transfer event, fadein screen). =)

-No face picture for the gnome? ;_;

-Now I can't find the bandana guy at all No shady vendors, either.

-While looking over the editor to try to find the key to Eaglerest, I noticed that the dwarf only crafts on his first event page. O_O

-Couldn't find the key, so edited the door to not need it. Sorryyy. ;_;

-Really dark in eaglerest at night o.o

-Spasm of violence only attacks 2 foes, instead of 3. =(

-Game freezes if you light the barrel while standing between it and the door. Probably due to movement route interference. D:

-There's a gold bar on the other side that I can't pick up. NOooooo!!!!! (there's alson one that I can't pick up in the secret room D: and a pile in the room outside the secret room)

-If you go into the lower part of the dungeon and then return, the music doesn't change back to the normal dungeon. =o

Hope it helps!

I'll go back again and polish it up. There are a few things I'm still confused about, though...

Spoiler for Shit that confuses me:

-The fadeout issue. I have no idea why this happens.

-The shady vendors are tagged to appear only at night through their events page. It's supposed to work with a switch... I wonder what I did wrong there?

-The multi-hit skills are properly tagged in the database, so I can't see why they don't work as intended. I have encountered this myself.

And then there are things I missed, yet again...

Spoiler for Shit I missed cuz I was rushing:

-The doors. The effing door graphics.

-The indoor locations keeping their tint at night. I fixed the inn and totally forgot about the rest of the places.

-The movememnt with the barrel. I should have checked the conditional box, or set all the interfering objects to passthru, or set the move route differently.

-I had not anticipated players returning throught the castle after the dungeon, and I should have. Thus, I should have set the BGM to aouto-switch.

-The key ought to have been in a chest in the sekrit room. If it wasn't, then I didn't put it in. Duh on me.

-I had originally intended to make ALL the gold bars collectible. Apparrently, I threw in a few as placeholders and forgot to event them. 

And the gnome has no faceset because I didn't want to recycle the dwarf!

I'm kinda disappointed in myself. Granted, I didn't take nearly enough time to find all the bugs myself, but the sheer number of them makes me think I'm not that good with the software. Well, I suppose I'll go back and fix what's left and chalk this up to learning.

It is only my second game, after all... but that sounds like an excuse. Anyhow, thank you very much for going over it for me TWICE and pointing out the flaws! Next time there will be much better playtesting.

Balls. Okay, now it's good.

Those bugs ain't nothing compared to some of the bugs I've let slip through my fingers in the past. Not to mention all the games I had to judge in GIAW XI. Trust me, you don't have that many of them. Nothing really destructive, either. Mostly just little itty bitty ones.

Did you figure out the ones that were confusing you? If not, I'll go ahead and post some possible fixes.

Spoiler for:

-Strange fade out bug:
This one was a bit tricky. I eventually added the fade in to occur by parallel processing in the tavern instead, but then it would replay the "Select these four heroes" part. I finally found a way around it!

The fix:
On the selection map (one of the parallel processing event), right below where the transfer to the tavern occurs, get rid of "Fade in". Replace it with "Erase Event" (must be under the transfer event). Next, go to the tavern map and under event 15 (right after 400 gold is added), throw in that "Fade in" event. :-) This should work!


-Nighttime shady sellers
The events with the nighttime dealers should be working correctly, too. o_o You did everything perfectly, so I think this is a fail on Enterbrain's end.

The fix:
I tried switching their event pages, to where the first is blank and the second is where they appear if the "Night" switch is on. It looks like that worked. Though it should have worked either way. Darned RPG Maker.


I think I was wrong about the skill being a bug. o.o I think what might have happened was the attack damage all stacked up on only two of the enemies, and it was considered to have attacked one of them twice or something. You're right - it's perfect in the editor.

That really means a lot to hear that. Thank you! I just wanted... I dunno... perfection. Unattainable, I know.

Spoiler for bugfixes:

I'm going to leave the game the way it is now, but woah... nicely done on the tavern cut-in! I never would have thought of doing that.

I did, however, switch the pages on the shady sellers and it worked. It was the only thing I could think of to try.

Yes, it's disappointing to see a multi-skill only work on one bad gai. *shrugs* But how to fix it? It's an Enterbrain faux pas. As long as net damage is the same, yeah?

Oh, and the key to the throne room is in a chest in the seekrit room. Was it not opening the door? I playtested it and it worked for me.

Welp, I know what kids of things to fix for Rise of the Dark Army, at least. Which, by the way is in process of having an engine installed. I suppose you deserve a small, tinuy little mention in the credits for... you know... being helpful or whatever...

Oh, right!! I forgot to say...

I had no problem finding the secret room or the key to the throne room. :p The key that I was not able to find was the key to unlock the door to enter the dungeon in the first place. I think it's just called "Eaglerest Key" or something. xD

Oh... okay. I forgot where I put that...

Oh right! It's hidden.

Spoiler for:

Behind one of the Imperial Banners in the second room.

It was supposed to be really hard to find, but perhaps I hid it too well.
Unless I was an idiot and locked the very front door too... I'll look at that when I get home.

Ohhh! I would have never guessed that, honestly. ;_; I checked one of the flags, but probably the wrong one.

Meh, it was one of those things that you couldn't possibly know unless you turn over literally every rock. I tend to put in things like that.

SO? did I find a bug or a very annoying NPC.

That guy in from of the PUB/Hotel.
Dosen't say a damn thing