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Looking for testers

Hello everyone,

Been quite a while, I'm looking for people who have time to beta test for bugs, glitches and grammatical errors. If anyone has time is appreciate the help. I also need some recommendations for where I can host the game file to send out.

Thanks to anyone who is available!

Progress Report

The Silver Lining

Well, it sure has been a while eh? I must admit that I've been out of commission for a while. I guess I don't have any other excuse besides life.
That's not true. In all honesty, I lost a lot of my ambition for game making. I had so much passion to continue this and it's funny how getting older can change so much. I never declared this project dead because it never was. I just never got around to it.

Then, something happened. A year ago when hurricane Irene hit the east coast (where I live) I lost power for almost a week. Everything, heat, electricity, internet, you name it. Now when hurricane Sandy hit I expected to lose everything again. But that wasn't the case. My job lost power. The roads closed. My internet stopped working. My cable was down. But miraculously, I still had power. I could charge my laptop.

And this is the silver lining.

Not to take anything away from how devastating this storm was, to me it was a blessing in disguise.
With power and no internet, I had no distractions around me. Like a lightbulb turning on, I opened up my RM and saw the light.

For almost a week straight I have been working on my game. Getting back into the groove of things and picking up where I left off. I'll tell ya, without distractions of the internet, you can get a lot accomplished.

So what does this mean for you, the loyal fan and rmn citizen?

It means I am back.
Carpe Diem is back.
And there will be a new demo very soon.

Thanks for reading. :)

Announcement

Spring Demo and Beta Testers

Hey everybody! It's been a while so I thought I should give an update on the game. I'm at the point now where things are looking up and I'm almost finished polishing and fixing everything I set out to do. I've estimated that I should be able to have a new demo out sometime this Spring. I don't have an exact date but it'll be soon.

Some things in the new demo will be:
-Fixing and speeding up of dialogue.
-Revamping and remaking of boss fights.
-Two new Chapters that will take you to the midpoint of the full game.
-Various modifications to stats and leveling system.
-And much, much more!!!

I'm also looking for two beta testers to test out all the kinks in the demo before it's released. I want to make sure this demo is as polished as it can be since I know I have a lot of people who have played the first demo and expected much more. If anyone is interested or would like to know more, feel free to message me or just reply to this blog.

Thanks for reading!

Announcement

Back and In Need of Some Help!

Hey everyone! I know I've been absent for quite a while, but I've had a really....challenging...summer. But most of it is in the past now and I'm back to working on my game and all of that good stuff.
I've gone back to redoing a few sections, namely boss fights. I realize I need some help in that department. I'm trying to create some interesting variations, but I'm not the best coder and they're not turning out as well as I'd hoped. If anyone can help me out, I can send you some screenshots of the events and you can offer some advice or tell me what I'm doing wrong. I'd really appreciate any help and this would allow me to get a new demo out asap.

It's good to be back!

Miscellaneous

Calling All (Or any...) Mappers!

Hey everyone,

So, I'm still working on the game, fixing up the early portions to match the latter ones. Turns out that it's a lot of tedious work, since I'm basically going through EVERY part of the game. I would really like to be advancing the game at the same time, but I'm just one person and it's a heavy workload.

This is why I am asking for some assistance while I tend to the rest of the game. It would be ideal if someone could me making some maps for me while I work on everything else. This way when I'm done with reworking everything, I'll have maps ready to event and therefore I can move forward with the game.

If anybody is willing to help, it would help me so much! The first map that I would need is a desert dungeon map.

I don't have much to offer in return, but I'll do anything I can to try and return the favor to whoever helps.

Miscellaneous

What's Been Going On...

Well it's been about 5 months since I've updated my page so I figure now is as good a time as any to let you guys know what I've been up to all this time.
Since I released my demo a few months ago, I've been working diligently on fixing up parts of the game that needed serious polish as well as doing a complete overhaul on battles and stats. It's a long and tedious process, what with constantly testing to see if things are done correctly. The main portion of the game that needed the most attention was Chapter 1, as it is the oldest part of my game, in the sense that it was made first. I'm almost done with it though and once I am I can move through the rest of the game much faster and fix the entire demo up. Here's a list of things I have done thus far and a list of what else needs to be done.

What's done:
-Editing and smoothing out intro scene. (Took out lots of nonsensical dialogue.)
-Re-mapped first village.
-Changed dialogue speed for non-cutscene text. Basically now all the text will be at "normal" speed whereas text during cutscenes will remain the speed it was. (This is me compensating with you guys.)
-Re-mapped all of Serpent Cave, added a mini-boss and a little time bomb event whenever you try to get a new item. (As in from a 'chest'.) It should help to change the pace up a but from just fighting monsters.
-Edited all monsters stats in the cave.
-Re-mapped Temeri. It looks much compact and town-like. I've heard good things from the people I've shown it to.

What needs to be done:
-Finishing up Temeri. (Smoothing out events and re-mapping inner maps.)
-Re-eventing Cargo Ship scene to make it less....cheesy.
-Go through the rest of the game to work out minor kinks and also redo text speed and monster stats.

As you can see I've gotten a lot done but there's still a lot that needs to be done. My goal is to finish all these revisions by the end of the month and get a revised demo out so that anybody who didn't get a chance to play it can play it, and all those who already played it but were annoyed with many of its shortcomings can replay it and enjoy it for what it's truly worth.
For now though, I just wanted to give you guys some information and to let you all know what I'm working on and that I'm still working. I'll be sure to get some new screens up soon to show you my progress as well.
If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, please let me know! Anything at all is a real morale boost. :) Thanks for reading!

Miscellaneous

Impossible battles, balancing issues, and everything in bewteen...

Hey everyone, I figured now would be a good time to update my page and let everyone know what is going on.

Over the past few weeks, I have received a lot of feedback about my demo. Some of it was positive and some of it was negative, with most of the negativity all based around the same issue.

Impossible battles.

Thanks to feedback from here and other places, I have come to the realization that I have a serious imbalance of stats in my game. This leads to unbeatable bosses, long boring battles, and frustration all around. I have come to realize this, and the only reason I didn't realize it sooner was because I didn't have trouble when I tested my game. But...I am a master of my own game, naturally, so I should know the best way to beat any monster. This is not the case with everyone who is not me, obviously.
It is with this in mind that I have decided to go through the entire game and make sure every battle is the best it can be. I'm going to rework all the monsters' stats and make the regular battles interesting and the boss battles challenging but not impossible. I know what I need to do now.

Another point people brought to my attention was the text speed and auto-close feature that I have in my cutscenes. Some people say the text speed is too slow, some people say the text speed is just fine, but to me, the text speed is just fine. I hate when the text zips by because it just speeds things up too fast and especially if it's a dramatic scene, it just doesn't fit. So, I'm sorry but the text speed will remain the same, I'm not a fast reader I like to take my time while reading. As for the auto-close it's basically the same reason. I use it mainly for long cutscenes and I use it to create dramatic effect and when I'm trying to time the words with whatever music is playing in the background.

I WILL however, consider putting a "skip scene" option for long cutscenes that the player has already viewed. That way, let's say if you lost a boss fight and there was a long scene before it, you can skip to the battle if you already saw it. I'll consider this but right now my main goal is to perfect the stats and battles. I'll update again once things are going good. Thanks for reading!

Miscellaneous

Game Progress (and other various important things!)

Hello RMN nation! Linkforce here with an update on the game and all things relevant. I'll write this update in list form to make it more organized.

Game Progress: After I released the demo, I took a bit of a break. I worked on some things here and there, but nothing too major. As of last week I finally got back into the thick of it and am working now on Chapter 5. For those of you who played and finished the demo, you know that it ended at the end of Chapter 4, where Alkamar, Rayne, and Draight were crossing the border to continue on their journey to reach the World Alliance. Chapter 5 will pick up from the end of Chapter 3, where Skylar was taken away by the World Alliance soldiers, Haru was recruited to the A.Z.A.F. and Trance and Ledron were left on their own. A lot of main characters are now on their own in separate locations and Chapter 5 will jump start the main story of the game and the player will start to learn the core details of the plot.
Currently, I'm working on a scene in Chapter 5 that introduces the final main character in Episode 1, Zephyr. I won't give anything away about this scene but I will say this. It's a scene that I have played through my head over and over and over for years. I strongly believe that this scene will land my game a spot in amateur rpg making history. This isn't me trying to be cocky or anything, I just really think this scene will just be so awesome. At the very least, it'll have people talking about it long after they've seen it. But I suppose that's for the player to decide.
Anywho, I will continue to work on the game and will report on things as they happen.

Other important things:
I'm looking for some people who would like to be in my "You might also like..." section, and vise-versa. I think it would be a great way to promote my game as well as whoever wants to be promoted on my section. If anyone is interested or has an idea of who would be a good match with my game, feel free to write below or message me.

Also, I need some help in mapping. More specifically, I'm trying to make a "complicated" desert city map. I have the tileset, but for the life of me I can't make a half decent map. It needs to be a medium sized city and if you're interested you can just PM me and I will give you all the details. I would really appreciate the help and in return I'll help you with anything you need.

And that's basically it. If I remember anything else that needs updating I'll just edit the blog. Thanks for reading!

Miscellaneous

Demo Released!

Hey guys, the demo for Carpe Diem is out! Just go to the download tab and click the download link! I'm eager to hear what you all think about my game! Good or bad, let me know everything on your mind! All I ask is that you give the game a chance and play it through til the end. It definitely gets better as you play.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me! :)

Nandez's Reviews: Want to see a review of each chapter before you play it? Want to see a review of each chapter just for fun? Then watch Nandez's Reviews, courtesy of Nandez himself! Keep checking back here for updates and new reviews! ::SPOILER ALERT:: Just be aware that the reviews may contain a few spoilers, though Nandez tried to avoid many of the major ones.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Miscellaneous

Demo Release Date

Hey all! Just thought I'd let you all know that I have a release date for my demo. You can expect a demo here and only here on:

April 18th

If anybody has any questions, comments, concerns, or anything at all feel free to comment back. :]

I know I've been changing the dates, but this is finally the real one! Mark your calendars!!
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