Late last week, I picked up Blackmoon Prophecy again after letting it sit for two months. Instead of just pumping out new maps and lengthening the game, I looked back at the demo I put up in December and thought to myself, "What were the biggest complaints that people had?"

I made a lot of really substantial changes that have altered the game a lot, so I had to test the game from start to finish for the billionth time. Pretty much all of the changes are from feedback that the RMN crowd gave to me, so hats off to you guys for making me improve upon the early parts of the game that were sorely outdated! Here are the major things that I have changed.

1. INCREASED WALK SPEED!
People were telling me to increase this since the dawn of time (which was sometime in 2004), but I refused to do so. I wanted Blackmoon Prophecy to emulate the walk speed of the classic games with absolutely no exceptions. Well, after December 2010 when it felt like EVERYONE was on my back about the walk speed, I have increased it. As a result, the flow of the game is much better now. Tedious areas no longer drag on and on. Overall, this was a great change and even I am very happy with it.

2. Altered Beas... Er, Graphics
I went through the rips that I am using and decided that some of them just wouldn't do, and that the rips perhaps made the game feel too much like Final Fantasy 4. I have replaced a lot of FF4 tiles while others have just been given a little bit more detail.

A fraction of how much better towns look now.


3. Remapped Bad Areas
Some of the locations were simply awful. Branch Castle was in serious need of changes. A lot of people used to say that they were getting lost in the castle, but it wasn't until watching YDS getting lost in Branch Castle that I decided to give it a complete redesign. Some of the maps are the same (such as the shops and the dungeon) but the castle exterior and the main hall have been redone. Even a monkey would have a hard time getting lost in the castle now.

This is the new main hall of Branch Castle.


4. Smaller Music Folder
I was originally going to ditch the mp3 soundtrack because it was taking up 140mb, but after a tip from NightBlade, I was able to get the mp3s down to a much more reasonable size. The music folder has gone from 140mb down to about 36mb with barely any loss of quality.

5. More Concise Directions
Some folks were getting lost on the world map and sometimes not knowing where to go next, as instructions from NPCs were often too vague. I have fixed this problem by making NPCs give the player very explicit directions so that not knowing what to do next will be a thing of the past. Also, I have put tiles on the world map that, when walked on, will act as road signs and tell you which locations are nearby and what directions they are in. This was added after someone wanted me to add road signs.

Getting lost on the world map will now be a thing of the past. I hope.


6. Fixing The Dialogue
This is an eternal struggle for me, since the game has bits that were worked on from as far back as 2004 in it. The variation in quality from one location to the next in the game can be very extreme. I'm still trying to bring everything in Blackmoon Prophecy up to my modern level of quality, but with so many lines of dialogue throughout the game, it can be time consuming and easy for me to miss lines that need to be fixed. Grammar is the biggest problem, as having dialogue from my late teenage years looks pretty hideous with characters spouting the most juvenile or unbelievable lines imaginable. This is continuously being addressed and improved upon. The other big problem is my overusage of ".." rather than "..." early on. I can't count how many times I had made that mistake, but I'm trying to address that as well.