THE SCREENSHOT TOPIC RETURNS

This map took me around 2-3 days of hard work, but it's become one of, if not my best map so far. This is the underground prison beneath Gesallia Kingdom which will be rather extensive beyond this. Also, the reason for the highly noticeable lines making it seem like a folded piece of paper, and cut off of a few tiles..well, it's a problem with the map saver script I'm using, which can't be fixed as far as I'm aware. Other than that, what do you all think of it? :)

Damn Sana! I like it. Especially the bloody bits and the dark water.
Although I can't help to think how much better it would look without those lines, couldn't you just screenshot and piece them together? It's hard to enjoy it as a whole.
Also, this is nitpicking, but wouldn't prisoners have like rags rather than their fancy clothes they had on at the time?
Ignore this though, that's probably a lot of extra work.

Nice shot Sana, the pillar to the left of the bridge is missing its top however. Also try playing around with shadows they can go a long way in making your map pop out and look even more interesting.

If you took screenshots yourself and painstakingly assembled them in Photoshop, you could fix the misaligned tiles, but you couldn't fix the misaligned fog. So it's seriously not even worth it. It's just a screenshot, not the real game, we can imagine what it looks like in game from that.

I'm actually okay with the idea of prisoners keeping their own clothes; this is common practice in temporary jails, and also it's probably helpful for important characters to not change their appearances so that players will recognize them. I feel like the prisoner in full armor is over the line though, unless the player just watched the enemies capture him five minutes ago. Can his sprite be changed to someone with normal clothes?

The map itself is quite nice overall. Engraven angelic pillars in a cave are pretty strange, which makes me assume this isn't just a random orc den, and that the jail is run by some kind of high-class organization. Only mapping issue that strikes me as odd is that the ground, walls, and stalagmites seem to be made of three different kinds of rock. Can you recolor them all to that same shade of teal? The stalagmites are the most noticably different.

The Puzzle theme is an incredible idea with pretty much endless possibilities.

Do you have different shape puzzle pieces? One idea would be to have different shaped puzzle pieces that add stats, but the player can only use them if they fit into the puzzle they're already building. So a player could be potentially sitting on a bunch of stat bonuses but if they put the pieces together poorly, they won't be able to use them.

Wow, Itaju. This project is showing a lot of potential for sure. We have too few games which provide an interesting level up scheme. Do keep us updated.

@LockeZ:
I think that generally speaking the graphics of your game is improving. It used to be heterogenous before, with different elements picked here and there and assembled together.

It's much more harmonious now.

I think the barrels are too tall though, compared to the charset that is and the other elements of the map.

Also, have you given up on spriting? I remember you posting an attempt in the creation forum if I remember correctly. Because spriting your own sprites would certainly help give more personality to your project.

@Itaju: I don't like the dark yellow background color behind the menu on the left, but I love the menu itself. I do feel like the text on the character profiles is too big. A little whitespace would be appreciated there, so it doesn't all run together. What's that in the background behind the middle portrait?

author=Creation
@LockeZ:
I think that generally speaking the graphics of your game is improving. It used to be heterogenous before, with different elements picked here and there and assembled together.

It's much more harmonious now.

I think the barrels are too tall though, compared to the charset that is and the other elements of the map.

Also, have you given up on spriting? I remember you posting an attempt in the creation forum if I remember correctly. Because spriting your own sprites would certainly help give more personality to your project.

Thanks for the feedback. Good to hear about the graphics matching better. It's definitely an issue I've been working on, I wasn't sure if it was something anyone but me would be able to tell the difference though. I'll see if I can work on the barrels.

I am still trying to sprite at least some of my own stuff, and am forced to do so for the battle characters, but I am using the RMXP scale for the characters. I think everyone in the video except the colonel is just a frankensprite, but I am having to do most of their battle poses myself (a couple people helped me with a couple but that didn't last long). I'd love to roll my own 100% original sprites, but with all these battle poses holy shit sprites are already so much work and I keep getting sick of editing then and going back to working on my text-based game. But that's terrible and I get what you're saying.

I hate it when I can work on my project only a couple hours in a week... *sigh*
Oh well, here’s an updated picture of the cast (or at least part of them).

New demo live, grab it while it's hot.

Can you get that rock to that portal without the spikes smashing it, or you?

The Dream Palace.

WARNING if anyone downloaded version 1.02 of Monstrous Wars, delete it and replace with version 1.03, because version 1.02 is broken.