I did it it’s out… it’s here! http://rpgmaker.net/games/6594/ who wants to play the redone version? Audio guy’s run will be in 48 hours. Also expect a bonus episode of sailor moon AS Sometime It’s been busy! Finally… one more announcement! TODAY WE TAKE DOWN GANON IN ZELDA 1’S FIRST QUEST! See you later got stuff to do!
~LWentworth8567
It’s been a few weeks hasn’t it… About a month since I tried to hype GT Mythra… I have been watching feedback on a few sites and well… It’s time I address a few issues…
BUG FIXES!
Apparently the players who played it found more bugs than the beta testers combined! Note: Each review found was sent to the beta testers and well… there was a lot of oh boy… I will address them in a bug fix that will release on the 16th of August if all goes well with my Audio Guy’s LP of GT Mythra! (He works under my channel so don’t worry just look on my channel he will be there.)
Battles being too easy… Well excuse me but… thank you!… All my beta testers said that it was fine and I have been working on balancing them out so that will be in the re-release. I also read one review and it mentions “everything that isn’t an RPG standard is thoroughly explained.” I can explain this… in the beta test ALL MY BETA TESTERS GOT STUCK. They kept asking how do I do this? So I had to add that in. Also the beta testers said the mining system was ungodly hard so I put the monster drops in… in adverse effect I made the game to easy… Well.. the bug fix I’m removing the ore from monsters but leaving the improved rate. However I will give a small chance of healing items being dropped. Another bug fix and a big oversight that no beta tester looked at (with so many classes I needed more testers but no one came to the plate and all but 2 got pink slips for not even looking at the game…) “Luckily, I had a lancer in my party, and status effects work on bosses, so once I had an instant death ability, the game posed no challenge–including the last boss (I’m guessing this was an oversight).” I WILL be patching this…
Also I want to tell you guys something… The Bar in town is more than just a setting… There was someone there that tells you ALL about the floor monsters and some of their weakness. The bar did change every section.
I will add some changes to the dialogue and also make some things more clear in the bug fix patch. The one month rush got to me in the end and I admit the dialogue suffered.
Also… After the game is patched… I will be making a duplicate version… in VX… Why would I be crazy enough to do that? Well because I will be including it for free with the release of…
Hey look the timeline! And Look it’s in a different spot!
That’s right… the timeline is the series timeline in total! So the next game will be the PAST game! It will explain the main characters plight (hopefully). The discovery of “Exol” and “Aurora”. Also the start of their quest!
Each game is one point in the timeline! The official order will be Beginning (Prologue), Past (Game 1), Alt. Future (Game 2), Present (game 3), and Good Future (game 4).
I can’t show ANYTHING on the Past of Now as it’s still in early Alpha Phase but when I do well… you’ll know more! However People who play the competition or the Vmixed version WILL get a password with bonus scenes and a chance to rename their weapons!
Also for canon… BOTH GENDERS are canon and so will any player you played through with!
~LWentworth8567
P.S. The series is not going to have a Trolls II ending! I Guarantee! However, it will take a while and it will wrap up all 5 Games into a nice package in the end!
If your still with me… You have probably got a lot of facts… But there is one more out there I didn’t say… An Easter egg that you will have to hunt for… So A riddle I give when the rocks are at 4 and the doors are at 5… then someone shall arrive! NOW FOR THE SPOILER! Hit Continue Reading to see! Continue reading
So Today I am going over the release date!
On the 29th I spent all morning making sure the game was working and finely tuned. No bugs, no nasty secrets. Then I looked for a good place to stick it… I decided on Media fire (WRONG CHOICE!). So I went and hosted it then put it on the contest site! Then went to make a promo. It went well and smooth until the upload where the game existed… I went and looked at the tag and saw it was a real game… So after a quick re-pull and fix up (no one did anything to it in the hour) came the re-upload and fixes I said 2 ago. So after that everything was finished… A couple days after that I got a message from a friend pop ups were blocking some people from downloading the game… So I put the game up on rpgmaker.net and will be it’s hopefully permanent home after the contest!
Now I got some things I can give as it’s a short post today!
Mages are mostly useless to the final boss but can ride a party through the game.
Anything with a holy spell or ability can cause trouble… but ONLY when level 10 or above!
One of the graves mentions Cornshaq and ‘8 eyes” Refering to Taxan’s 8 eyes. Which he just lost the speed-run record again! Which is a joke to he will die for that record!
Another grave mentions Virlomi and Lord Cheesus. It’s a running joke in her channel.
These 2 have been supportive and have provided a lot of background noise so I could focus and both have the current version of the game!
A lot of the graves have references to video game characters but one… Elminster is big in the D&D community! This is a big one as Ed Greenwood is Judging the contest and he is creator of my favorite setting Forgotten Realms and Elminster himself! In fact I am a fan of the Harper plot in BG 2 because of that character showing up!
There are 31 different rock formations!
All beta testers who submitted a sheet (or did something special for the project) got a grave too.
I’ll save the final secret for Tomorrow! For now I got a lp to work on! Don’t forget I’m LPing this game in august you can check the lp on my channel or on the rmn site which was made for it.
~LWentworth8567
Sophia is well… One of those good and bad things… I had her idea sketched into my head at the start. She also has references to a future character if she I get that far. However, her existence was plagued with problems since the start…
Drawing the walking sprite…
I wish I could say it was hard… It wasn’t. I was given character maker hub for the humble bundle. After I fooled with it learning I went in and went to work. I looked at what I wanted and looked for the parts I wanted. It took 3 days and one redraw but She came out well…
I gave her all the directions in case I didn’t use them. Not a bad looking dancer and thanks to the char hub I didn’t have to do too much editing.
Drawing her Battle Sprite
THIS… THIS is where things went south… When I started her… I tried looking at a how to draw sketch… and modifying it to my use… I also begin to have the beta tester problem here. I would ask Nancy if every part of her looked right… At the end of the first draft… she looked like this…
Scream real loud… then compose
So I wiped her and quickly tried again with a new artwork…
I didn’t even get past the base line… Then came disaster… yesterday’s blog post came in and happened. between that and other work I couldn’t work on Sophia for near 2 weeks and each time I did I just felt sick and stopped… Then on Monday… June 23 I tried again by that Thursday we struck something decent. We had Sophia’s base.I was a little ecstatic but then came the details… Shading, fine touches, perfecting. I was at a point where I didn’t have much time and I had to do one more sweep of the beta. So I made Sophia what she was. I wasn’t happy with her but she would do.
Now you ask why I couldn’t just hire someone? Partially the reason is… I can’t promise to pay someone to do good work. Two if you saw how my beta went… WHY SHOULD I! Would I even get a design back in time? Third no one I knew would be able to draw for me that I know of… (if they can they hide it well). Plus I wanted an art style that would be close to the RTP and that would be a chore. Finally…. It’s good to learn how to get better at things yourself. So the end result is now below…
The good part of it is… I did improve! If you ask what the beta fail could have been for Sophia… She probably could have been en pointe but instead we got her… Hopefully, if this game gets a remake or I make another in the series we can do better or actually have someone to do this… Until then… I’ll let this sink in… Tomorrow will be me explaining the release date and a couple of secrets that I could show you!
~LWentworth8567
Today i’m going to go over what nearly killed the whole game… Beta testing… I was done early morning Jun 8th felt it was ready to be sent for beta. So I put the game on mediafire and got the link. I sent the link to an “expectant” couple of people that claimed they would and then posted it on Facebook. I kept posting it on Facebook because that’s where I had the most people. I did mention throughout High School I wanted to be a game designer… I fooled around with 2000/2003 of RPG maker and made a very shoddy version of an idea I had back then. People KNEW I wanted this… My yearbook somewhere senior year mentions it. So out came the beta knowing people would expect and help? I mean I even experimented with RPG Maker a lot and was given RPG Maker 2 and 3 for PS2 by my friends.
So I pimped out the link for a part of the week and also worked on another part of the plan that i’ll REALLY go over tomorrow. Well… I checked my E-mail for it 4 times a day for a small form I asked people who tried the game to fill out. There were 2 one being if there was an error the other for their thoughts after 1 hour. No E-mails came by the end of the week. At this point it began to slide. Week 3 was going to be HORRIBLE for working. Saturday I was helping someone move, Sunday getting ready to install a new fridge at home, Monday new fridge, Tuesday pick up a used TV that someone we knew was getting rid of as my mom’s just died…. Wednesday clean up old fridge and by the end of the week…Friday the kitchen would be happy and set up… So I made a small tech demo and unlisted it on Facebook and pushed that.It took 7 days where one of my final testers (and the ONLY one to finish) got the game… As soon as he did… I had an E-mail… The installer didn’t fully install…
I asked the personal friends who would test it… “oh it’s fine!”, “Yea, I played it… it was good.” all the generic answers… I asked them about the installer as I KNEW they didn’t have RPG maker… They had no trouble… I asked Nancy to install the game… You need the RTP from RPG maker’s site… I looked into why it wasn’t inside the installer by default… No one told me the installer didn’t work… they didn’t fill a form. In fact I checked media fire… 2 Downloads.The other tester and I put it on Nancy’s so I KNOW one download was me! I went up to each one and confronted them… then proceeded to MASS FIRE all of them. Now I was at a point I was working on something and beta testing on the final week. The night before I was to upload June 29th (so it would be up on time) I prepped it and all nighter pulled it to set it up. I get the file up and go to Youtube the release trailer… Did you know your game title already has a tag… NO ONE FACT CHECKED IT! So I had to pull it down… fix it… put it back. Then my pro beta tester told me that the file was broken again. So I fixed the file one more time and he told me fixed and that’s the game that sits up there now.
Those 3 weeks were very impressionable on the project. At this point I can say after pouring my heart and soul in the game… If the game fails I know who to blame and if I release GT Mythra: The Beginning of the epic (Past)… I have a huge list of people kicked out of beta testing EVER again!
Tomorrow… I talk about Sophia and how her design got cursed from lack of development time.
~LWentworth8567
This episode we go over a little bit about monsters and bosses. When I first designed the dungeon I was thinking 3-4 types per floor each having a different weakness set up. You can see this on the first floor with the water, electric, ice set up (among other elements). I did this so each char had a chance to shine and the parties were balanced. Now having 12 basic enemies was not to bad. The problem was how do we make bosses and make them stick out. The first one wasn’t much… but on the concept of vengeance… we made the second one the mother. There diving a small conflict hopefully of “was it really dangerous?” Meanwhile the 4th character is losing sanity… When you meet Wingnut you find out a lot more about the cave and that the “object” you desire is beyond him and that he caused the chaos a couple of days ago. Or you would have… I’ll explain why it may not have happened in tomorrow’s post but to go on…
The final boss is a piece I set up not telling the beta testers why i “ignored” one change. When you get to him… you’ll get why. Once I had them thought and written out though it came down to “attacking”. That was easy… once we had everything checked… the database cleared we put them into groups… Now came the “fun” part… Battle testing! At a proper level I wanted regular battles to end in 2 turns the average for most RPGs I play. Now once we set that up… the bosses… How do I make an interesting boss that is different that won’t party wipe… First of all we all should know a boss would suit up and buff itself asap to be ready for the onslaught. Unless your brain dead like Wingnut who is working on planning his next meal which is foil wrapped adventurer under hammer… Second I made them at a stronger level so they wouldn’t wipe the intended party in a turn but gave enough where if you were playing blind or badly… I feel sad for you… But we also made sure that they would have the same. The final boss though… Again I can’t say anything but… if your a mage… I feel bad for you… He probably knows how you just horde clean and is ready to stop you.
He’s also the biggest shock in the game… When you meet him I hope you REALLY enjoy him.
After came the easy clean up and early bug testing really it was just make sure all the set pieces worked and people would move/ vanish on cue then make it pretty…
TOMORROW I will bring up the part that went wrong and nearly (and possibly did) destroy GT Mythra… The first beta…
~LWentworth8567
P.S. I’m writing these in a very hot room and my brain is scrambled so if some doesn’t make sense until you play the game well… I’m sorry blame the humidity!
Today I’m going over the database and all the changes I did…
First of all was making each Character… I wanted the player to experience their game in their own eyes. Some people like magic some like swords… So I wanted to make sure the player could be satisfied with any choice they made. So I wrote down the classes and made sure each class had a strength and a weakness. For instance the Mage… Strong magic but when resisted has no defense and barely a means of attack. Now This means that a couple of monsters could be trouble… So if someone tried an all Mage party… There would be trouble and possible riots!
Sophia is one of my 2 road blocks on that. She has a special Bard class and is explained in the story why. This means there is always some form of minor healing in the party. She also guarantees that later on she becomes a huge factor in buffing and de-buffing bosses! (YES the buffs and De-buffs work on bosses! Some if you don’t de-buff in play testing would just rip you in half). I made sure no matter what before you entered the mine she would be in the party. She has decent attack and defense so she is more of a balanced player to suit anyone playing the game. We also added two more characters.
One to be the old woman at the start of the game. The other to be the relationship. It’s just a placeholder to call you a brother when referenced. They are just there for the story and nothing else.
The second and one play testers complained a little about but I have my reasons is the final member to join the party. I can’t explain WHY that char will be random each game (that would give away the story!) However, I made sure by silently monitoring the beta reports that parties could not have 2-3 the same member. This member should switch to an unused class before pick up.
Now there are 10 listed classes in-game. Miner is an unused default class. It’s there just to be a fill in the blank at the start until you actually get a formal class. I made sure you can never enter the mines as a miner and cause a huge bug. The other class is a duplicate bard class JUST for Sophia. It is the same as a regular bard except for 1 big difference. She does not learn the blade or barrage dance at level 1 but has a cure spell. She also does no’t learn Sabic dance but learns a revive spell instead! Other than that the remaining 8 classes are playable by the hero. The bard class though because of Sophia makes the chars a wild card. So if you put 2 bards in as your main characters your fourth char could be any of the other 7!
Next comes the skills. All skills have their flavor text explain their function! Element names are interesting though. I looked at common words for the element and created a mix of 2 to create them. (example cure + heal = cueal) Some words actually use a different language! Items were a little just random naming but trying to be different.
Weapons remain relatively unchanged using the 4 levels (in fact I designed the mine around those elements!) I only added the pickaxes to be a placeholder for mining in game! Armor works the same way only adding at the end what I needed. I’ll save enemies and troops for later. For the status effects DOWN is pretty much another way for out, ko or whatever. Same with the other statuses you can pretty much guess the effect.
Common events were the big item. Having it was the way that we could make the mine work. For each floor a switch would turn on when you mine a rock. It calls that floor’s “Script” to run and pick an item. Then after it ran if it found something you would have a chance for a bonus. Then the script would self turn off, Meanwhile, the rock would be “mined” with it’s own script and change to a new form. That is how the mine worked!
Finally the system… First we made sure the lady at the start was the ONLY actor in the party and also the leader so she would show. Then we just used commands to make your team. Currency was an interesting idea for the name. I was watching a Red Sox Game (Shut up I live in Massachusetts) and Nancy asked what happened to Saltalamacchia (he played last year for them). At that moment… I got Sal and then birth of another ore and the coin of the town. Everything else is just another word for the category.
Tomorrow i’ll go over the foe making and everything left on the first week of the beta!
~LWentworth8567
When I saw the weekly humble bundle at the start of the contest (Literally I saw it May 29th) I knew I had to take this chance. So I started planning an idea. I looked on my desktop and saw Minecraft and said what if I made instead of chests… I made ore be the chest as your a miner in a mine that would be very logical… Then I thought with 1 hour your not going to have long so having one dungeon be the mine fit in. To make it more fun I decided to make the mine randomize what door exits the floor and what rocks appear. Then we had the idea!
Next day Nancy_Drew_Sleuth_85 A.K.A. my girlfriend sent me an E-mail with the humble bundle code… She knew I wanted this and I was happy to finally have that shot! So I redeemed them quickly and got to work! Using one note I quickly jotted down what needs to be done and set a valuable time table to help figure out where I need to be by the end of the week.
Now As I set the tasks down I began to work…
The map design was going to be easy and was my first real task. That took no time at all then came the flow between maps and the mining mechanic at the same time. It wasn’t too bad Once you set one it’s a copy & paste job. I also made sure to document all the rock’s location and maximum sizes. That took longer than it probably should have but the mines were built! Then came the town I knew we needed a house so the Miner’s Shack became that house. Then we made a small area for a small town. It’s a mining settlement after all. We got our in, our armor shop, weapon shop, item shop… and an extra building… All these would come into play later! Tomorrow, I will go over the database changes and everything as that’s the next thing for the next 3 days.
~LWentworth8567
If you haven’t noticed I released a brand new game! It’s right…
http://contest.rpgmakerweb.com/game/view/id/301
There!
I will try to update the Blog once a week for the next 7 days providing details and facts about the game and development process so stay tuned!
For today’s quick fact about the game…
There is a special guest character in the game if you get a certain pattern! If you get lucky you will meet him!
Quick promo video:
The Somewhat Infrequent 3.0 