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Miscellaneous

4 Hours In

At almost four hours into replaying the game and adding battles, I have reached the boss of the ghost mission (4th mission). The combat is getting very enjoyable, which is saying a lot; because there is no fancy battle system (like a side battle system). Instead there are weather based abilities and abilities gained by what you have.

At four hours in, the strengths and weaknesses become more obvious. When a foe is weak to swords, you will notice that swords hit a whopping 350 more damage. Originally it was probably only 100 more damage when you first start the game.

THE NEXT VERSION WILL HAVE:

KING CREATURES

After passing a few ideas against the greatest test player there will ever be, he came up with king creatures. There is already a King Coyote in the game, but now there will be king creatures. The game keeps track of how many of each foe you have killed and once you have killed 100 of a creature, a king creature appears.

This leads to some quirky fun, because if you’ve been grinding to level up, seeing these king creatures will hasten your level grinding. Not that you ever really need to level grind. I have plodded through the game without side tracking and there is no need to grind.

The king creatures also leave behind unique treasures, some of which lead to quests and other treasures.

THE GREAT 108

Technically now it is 111, but there are 108 enemies in the game that now account for a percentage completed in the game. I personally have only defeated 58 of them I do believe. As mentioned before in the previous blog, these enemies are diverse from magic users, to combatants, to enemies that help their team with status effects or hinder your team with status effects. To top it off, each enemy has a strategy against it, whether that strategy is specific magic, being immune to weapons or being weak to a specific type of weapons like swords. It does keep battles thought provoking.

MIND BENDING BOSSES

Boss characters are certainly a stand out in this game. In fact there is a combat pit full of them. Battles against bosses are different and unique, but not because of their strengths and weaknesses, but because of what else they do. Some bosses litter the zone with their minions and call for new ones every chance they get, while others are monstrous enough to fight you alone. Before you know it, each time you fight the same boss, the battle is different.

Then on top of it is the weather related abilities. Each of the weather related abilities are meant to work as a team and each set of abilities has a different strategy. There is more than one strategy for each boss, but of course the trick is figuring out which strategy to use.

EXTRA EQUIPMENT

I have painstakingly gone through each “battle area” and littered it with unique items. Each area has a unique, sword, shield, knife, dagger, staff, rod / wand, club, claws, spear, boots, gauntlets / gloves and so on. This will have treasure hunters going for a while and it makes the equipment much more diverse than what you buy at the stores.

THE COLLECTOR

Like Dragon Quest games, there is a collector that wants to give you equipment for your achievements. He has always been in the game, but now he actually gives equipment. Once you have collected enough dwarf beards, he gives a net. Steal the king’s diamonds and the collector is the only one that will touch them. Not only is there a collector, but a hunter and a chef that do the same thing as the collector.

PURPLE CRYSTALS

These are simple, randomly placed in the “battle areas” and give you either positive status effects or negative ones. Poison, darkness, silence, confusion, HP up, MP up, blessing, Attack UP or Down, Defense UP or Down, Spirit UP or Down, Agility UP or Down and finally blessing. After each crystal is used it burns out for a minute, so before you know it, you can use them again. Of course if you still have a status effect, they will not turn back on until you have lost it. This prevents the player from waiting there for the good status effects.

DIVERSE TRAPS

For those who have played the game before, you know about the traps. Now the traps are more diverse, which lands you into some interesting combat situations. If you get silenced by a trap then fight a flock of shades which are immune to weapons, it does make the game more interesting. With the world of Caldonia, the status effects are only temporary, so you must endure their attacks or find a new strategy.

DOORS AND REWARDS

There have always been colored doors in the game, but now the colored doors are implemented into the houses, castle and other places. This restricts the new player from getting lost or treasure hunting each house only to be disappointed when there is nothing (although there is a clear warning in the game).

Now there are rewards behind the doors. There are treasures from the rare weapon and equipment to the more likely HP, MP, Attack, Defense, Spirit, and Agility raiser. The world is now littered with them to reward the treasure hunter instead of having a great big empty house.

MIMICS AND OTHER DEADLY CREATURES

Sure there are more rewards and treasure chests, but with enemies and treasures come mimics. Like all traps in the game, the mimics are visible to those that know how to see them. As for the other deadly creatures, there are gargoyles in the game that are designed for you to lose. Just like War Mechs of Final Fantasy, gargoyles are designed to win. Oh you can defeat the gargoyles and earn major experience, but chances are, your party will be killed off one by one. Also fighting against a monster made of rock is a very tedious experience.

FACES

The talkers now have full screen faces, but only at the expense of an extra 8 MB of file size. This was always intended, but I was trying to keep the file size as small as possible. When the original file was 54 MB, the game was not getting any smaller.

Miscellaneous

Severe Battle Strategy

Since no one other than alpha testers have commented about the game, I think that I will make battles, enemies, equipment and abilities for the game. That way the great game will be more of a game instead of just a great story.

CREATURES

Yes with any battle, there need to be creatures. I am play testing 90 minutes into the game, which puts me at the start of the "Creature" mission. There are 71 creatures in the game and at 90 minutes, I have killed 21 of them. Fortunately there is a beastiary to list them all.

DIFFICULTY

Clear out 1 area and that is tough enough, but with this game, when you return, all of the creatures have "leveled up" to meet your level. There are SIDE missions that will send you back to places that you have already conquered. As usual enemies also have new abilities and attack strategies when your party raises its level. Such as gushers (slimes) will dissolve you when your party is at level 5. Once timmid enemies can become fierce foes once you have reached a certain level.

WHERE TO EQUIP THINGS

Instead of equipping things to a character's body, head and arms (shield), you now can equip things on your body, legs, neck, feet, head, hands (gauntlets) and arms (shield). Not just that, but instead of having a single slot for an accessory, you now have slots for your neck, undergarments, overgarments (capes) and an extra slot for an accessory.

INDESTRUCTABLE CHARACTER? EQUIPMENT POINTS

If you have so many slots to equip things, then you will probably have some uber character right? You should, but I am a mean person, so all equipment has an equipment point to it. Some weapons use 3 EP, others use 5 EP. Some boots use 2 EP, and others ues 3 EP. Each character has a limited amount of EP they can use to equip things. This is used to balance characters and will prevent any character from getting too indestructable. You will be forced to pick and choose weapons vs armor. accessories vs magic orbs.

LEARN ABILITIES / MAGIC ORBS

Instead of learning new abilities when you gain levels, each character (except 2 who are briefly in your party) can learn abilities from things they have equipped. A red hat will learn Fire for a character. The Fire Orb will learn Fire 3. Each character can learn several abilities at once. If the equipment is changed, then the character loses that ability unless they have battled enough creatures to have earned the ability perminently. Some skills require 20 creatures to be killed to learn them, other skills like Fire 5 require 200 foes to be dead before you keep it. Having these abilities learned from equipment gives a new purpose for having simple things equipped. Sometimes, you will give up a good piece of armor for a weak cloak that will teach you an amazing spell.

HOW DOES THE WEATHER IMPACT A BATTLE?

This is not fog of war or anything like that. After all, this is still a role playing game. There is a purpose to the weather patterns for each of the areas. Each character has a unique set of skills they can use depending on the weather and time of day. The rain skills seem very straight forward. The night skills are strategic. The daytime skills are defensive. The storm skills have an interesting strategy to them. All of these skills work well together as a team, especially against boss characters.

WEATHERMANCY

With the set of skills being accessed only durring certain weather, day and night times, there needed to be a weathermancer. Someone that could flat out control the weather and time so the characters could use the skill sets they want. Sure this character is not around forever in the game, but he has a big impact on the variety of gameplay.

ENEMY STRATEGY AND GOALS

Due to the unique characters of the game, such as one of them being the child of a god, and another character being a demon Halfling, the enemies have interesting goals. Devout foes like Paladins and priests will attack your party for having a demon in it, but then once the demon is dead, they will leave your party alone. As for enemy strategy, the foes are purposely intelligent about your tactics as a player. Ailing creatures will cure and heal one another. Silent or muted foes will attack, defend or run away without the use of their magic. Blind creatures will do what it takes to allieviate their blind woes. The characters are smart.

EQUIPMENT VARIETY

Characters are not limited to just one weapon or armor type. No one uses only bows or only swords. Each character can use three weapon types and have a variety of defensive equipment choices. That way you can turn a character into an archer, a swordsman or someone well balanced. Whatever you prefer.

EPIC BOSS BATTLES

All of these facets combine with the traditional RPG elements like water kills fire and make a more interesting game with plenty of strategies. The boss battles are big and multi phasic if not multi faceted. Each boss battle is designed to take around 10 minutes to complete, and the finish is defeating the boss. However, the path you take to get there is up to you with all of the variety.

Miscellaneous

Download arMaiageddon V 1.1

I do not want to abuse the blog system into spam, but I have uploaded V 1.1. It is an important download, or else I would not have uploaded it in the first place. The reason why it is important is because it fixes a bug that does not cause you to dash as fast as you should.

Considering that in this game you can dash anywhere but the overworld map, this is very important. You should download it if you have V 1.0.

If you still want more than that, I have included 11 clades in the game for explorers to find. They are strewn about, but more imporantly, you will need the codes to each treasure chest they are locked in. If you do not have the code, you do not get in. Do not ask me what the codes are, the game generates them.

With the clades you can use one each battle to cause some extra magical destruction. If that does not thrill you, then you can use your clades to turn them into equipment with the Plainsboro enchanter.

When you download, make sure it is V 1.1

Miscellaneous

Download arMaiageddon V 1.0

For the "Release Something Day VIII" I have come up with a download of the game that I am now calling arMaiageddon. There have been 24 previous versions for alpha testers, but now it is available for the public to play.

FEATURES

- Rich story with memorable characters
- Great mapping, not just from me, but other top VX mappers
- Mutating dungeons that change the second time through
- So far there are hours of game play (alpha testers have spent 4-7 hours one spent 12 hours), despite not having any enemy battles (yet)
- Score system that keeps track of how much you have done in the game
- Quest log, so you do not get confused
- Two modes of play. The first follows the story, the other allows for free form exploration of anything and everything
- Puzzles and plenty of them. Shutter doors that force you to complete a puzzle to advance, push rocks, switches, and things that are more out of the ordinary
- Rewarded for exploration, even though this is still an alpha, there are plenty of cool things to find
- Epic dungeons! Sure in the start of the game there are some easy dungeons / caves / mines, but as the game goes on, they get epic
- Weather patterns, not that they matter or affect gameplay, but there are weather patterns for areas
- Traps, yes there are traps, but you can see them, so it is your own fault if you step in them. There are no cheap traps that you MUST get hit by.
- Day and night, with NPCs recognizing both with their greetings.
- A lighthearted approach with humor. Sure there are serious things in the game, but not everything is deadly serious. Nor is this a comedy game or parody game.

SELECT SCREEN SHOTS







Everyone has a photo of their title screen, but mine moves

WHAT THE ALPHA VERSION DOES NOT CONTAIN
- NO enemies. That is right, no enemies at all, because this is only the alpha.
- Barely any NPCs. Like I said, it is an alpha. Many of the non important NPCs have pertinant information that they randomly tell you.
- No classes, no character development. Just maps.

WHAT THE ALPHA VERSION DOES CONTAIN
- A whole lot of maps. More maps than you can shake a stick at!
- You can play either "Play Test" that lets you go anywhere at any time
- You can play "Follow the Path" that will guide you vaguely through the game.
- Storyline goes halfway through the game, but you can still complete the game, there is just no dialog for the second half of the storyline. The quest log will then guide you.

WHY YOU SHOULD PLAY
- You are bored, you want to see what my first project in a year is.
- You want to find bugs and laugh at them AND REPORT THEM.

WHY YOU DO NOT WANT TO PLAY
- It is an alpha. Not a beta, not a demo, this is an alpha.

Miscellaneous

You know the score

Everything is ready to go for tomorrow. Two of the alpha testers have gotten as far as the story goes in the game. You can actually go further and complete the game, there is just no dialog to follow. Some alpha testers made it to the end of the story in 4 hours, another made it to the end in 7 hours. That alone is crazy, considering there are no battles! I can make it to the end in 80 minutes.

There is now an elaborate scoring system to the game now that I have painstakingly put in place. You can keep track of your score for whatever kicks you get out of it.

For the version I am releasing tomorrow, here is how the score will be judged:
- legendary items collected
- game progress (quests)
- keys collected

Simple enough.

Miscellaneous

49ers

The game is now 49 minutes long... with no battles / enemy encounters. That is 49 minutes of me speed running to perfection. Each place that I test is tested at least 10 times before I get it right. So everything is perfect.

If I add enemy encounters,49 minutes will balloon to 3 hours and this is only 4 quests so far. Let alone given the time people have to figure out puzzles.

As it stands right now...

4 of 10 quests are completely done.
All of the maps are done, but of course I am still adding more maps like the new secret dungeon in Oxendale.

I also want to add that there are 5,000 page views and I will be posting a demo at this site on September 18.

Miscellaneous

Alpha V . 15

Technically the game is longer than 34 minutes, I just have not played longer. Keep in mind, there are no fights yet. No enemies to even fight. This is just me doing everything.

So to pad the game, I added a mission that involves the combat pit in Beaverton City. This is where you will get someone added to your party. Once the time is right and after you have fought a few rounds in the pit.

Because the Yosaris Mine Mission was a little short, I expanded it with someone's submission. I added torn pages from a journal, skulls, miners and now once you defeat the creature, you will need to smash all of its eggs. All 54 of them. Sure finding every single egg would be dull and boring, but once the creature is defeated an Earthquake rearranges things to make it a lot easier to find the eggs.

The Yosaris Mine is now closed off until you are ready for the mission, although if you use free play, you can still get in at any time.

At that point, your party will have 6 people in it. 6 people that can fight.

There are more quirky things in Beaverton City for you to find. Animals and other details have been added to each map. Someone detailed Iherno Fort, and I corrected the error with the sleep script that would freeze the game when you saw someone zzz...ing.

Oh and now you can get past certain game stoppers.

Miscellaneous

Inn Need of an Inn

I need interiors of inns for the following places: The grand wooden city of Beaverton, the humble farm village of Oxdale, the wooden village of Plainsboro, the bustling pirate place known as Port Teeming and the happy island village of Angler's Perch.

If anyone would care to do those interiors.

If you cannot think of anything to do for these, but still want to participate, here are some ideas:

BEAVERTON CITY INN
This upscale, fancy inn cators to the rich and is priced accordingly. Warriors, mages, dignitaries come to stay in its big beds. The hostess of the bar is gorgeous and all of the warriors try for her heart or body. The Inn Keeper is her angry father.

PORT TEEMING INN
This is a shady place, full of pirates, drunken fishermen, and whorish dancers. It is dirt cheap, grungy, unclean and has a number of rats. The innkeeper lost his eye years ago when he was a pirate. The piano player is secretly an assassin working on her next target.

OXDALE INN
A quiet place, with barely any guests. It is a place to get some great rest, but there are a limited amount of rooms. It is a bed and breakfast owned by a family that cator to their guests every whim.

PLAINSBORO INN
An average place owned by an elderly woman who has been bed ridden for a decade. She has the greatest room, but her grand daughter is now the innkeeper that warns people not to go into the big room.

ANGLER'S PERCH INN
This inn is small, delapadated, and needs fixing. There are always plenty of workers in here to fix it, but no one can seem to do the job. The workers are bumbling, noisy and anger guests. The innkeeper is a happy former fisherman that loves to smoke.

Miscellaneous

News you can't use (Alpha V.14)

Now you can go from Mt. Peek to the mystery quest, to the beast in the mine quest, to the farm quest. There is dialog for each of the quests, but 80% of what I would like to have. The beast quest is still missing some dialog, the end of the mystery quest is still missing some dialog after you finish it.

After Mt. Peek comes the mystery quest. It is the mystery quest, because it was not originally intended to be there. The mystery quest will remain a mystery, but in every game that I have ever made, it involves what the topic of the quest is about.

The quest in my opinion is awesome, it involves a short new "battle area." Not that there are any battles. One of the few reasons it is awesome, is because you are thrown into the situation, you do not get a choice. Sort of like if aliens just kidnap you... that is not your choice.

There is something at the end that I find particularly fun. This mystery quest adds a whole 5 minutes of gameplay (for 6 hours of programming). That is with me knowing where everything is and doing a speed run over and over through the area.

Once you get through it, then you are taken to a secret area that I feel is fun :-)

This will not sound like much at all, but so far playing the game I am 22 minutes into it and that is with no battles. There are no battles yet. Nor is there any need to wander around. I just go from point A to B, doing exactly what I need to do. I hope there will be 40 minutes of battles at least. This is really only "mission 1."

Miscellaneous

Winchester Widow was told to Build

There is a legend about the Winchester Widow being haunted by everyone that the winchester rifle ever shot. She was told by the ghosts that she needs to waste all of her fortune. So to do this, she hired people to just build, build, build to her mansion.

In this game there are plenty of great things to raid. A lighthouse, caves, mines, tunnels, a volcano and so on. So great that the alpha testers get let down when there are normal buildings. Take for instance the necromancer shrine. it is great, but it is humble and because it is in the middle of no where, three of the testers want more.

So I'm gonna give it to them. Not just that, the fortress needs a big labrynth in it too :-)

But what will the Necromancer shrine have in it? What should the necromancer send the player off and into when a portal opens up and swallows the party?
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