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Progress Report

Ambition and More on the Remake

Yo yo yo, you know the deal. Matthew here dropping some mad updates on this game, yet again!

I'm only really putting these here as not many people are gonna check up on the blog, so this should be showing up on the main page for everyone to see!

As you all know, the Chapter 1 demo is out and being constantly updated (do be sure to download from here, and not GameJolt as this version is updated live). In the near future you should expect to see the addition of Chapter 1.5 and maybe even Chapter 2? Of course, though. I don't want to spend too long on it, as I should go into more depth about the future of the game.

As you all can surely tell by playing it, Konazi Island is not a traditional RPG. It has many... unique elements in the overworld and a bit more going on than one of these usually has. This is all because Konazi Island is an ambitious first project, we both have a lot planned for it and we plan to deliver, even if it does kinda take us a while. And a while it certainly took. This project begun all the way back in July of 2016, and in that time it has made rapid, slow, rapid, slow progress. Why is this? To be perfectly honest, the project is a bit too ambitious for our own good, and we're pushing RPG Maker 2003 to its limits here (hence why the game is like 300 MB). To be honest, it's getting pretty friggin' tiring, it has for most of its development time honestly.
A lot of it boils down to one thing: 2003 lacks any form of script support outside of dynRPG (which I'm not using, as I value animated pictures and the other options newer versions of 2003 allow over script support) and not much room for the more complicated questions. Honestly, it's taken quite a toll.


Due to all of this, we've decided to remake the whole game up to this point in RPG Maker VX Ace.

This is the updated title screen graphic of the game, and more updated sprites can be seen in the Discord server.

Honestly, we're just remaking it at this point so that our stupid ambition doesn't cause us to release the game 8 years from now (it would honestly be faster to remake the entirety of Act 1 than to continue from where we are now).
Worst part is, even with what we've managed to pull off in 2003, it can still
end up feeling choppy and not translate perfectly to the grid-based movement required.

At this point, all we care about is making the best game possible. The "wow" factor of being able to pull off cool things without the use of scripts isn't worth a potentially shoddy product.

Announcement

Minor Update and Discord Server

Wassup, Matthew again.
Demo will be releasing very soon, like in an hour or so. Me and Mason are gonna play through one more time, just to make sure everything works. Sorry it wasn't able to be released sooner, to say we've been working to the last second is an understatement.

However, this game also has a discord server. It's been pretty private beforehand but since we're getting to the demo now, I feel it's time to actually give you guys a link. Drop in and say hi!

Announcement

Major Update and Demo Release Date

Hey all, Matthew here.
First of all, I should say that the demo will be releasing tomorrow!
(or, well... later today technically.)
It'll contain all of Chapter 1 (and a tiny bit more) and will be updated to contain Chapter 1.5 in the future.

But besides that, we're sorry to say but the game is gonna slow down in production for a bit.
Trust me though, it's not for a stupid reason. You see, this game's been in production for about 2-3 years, and all we have to show for it is a 3 hour demo!? Well, no and yes. Currently, the game is... mostly completed up to Chapter 3, and that's when the original demo was gonna end. However, there was one big issue with the game: it sucked. Cutscenes lacked fluidity, graphics may or may not have been Mother 3 recolors, and some of those issues persist even in this version. Chapter 3 has been finished for 2 of these 3 years. What's been happening in that time? Polish.
Originally, the game was much shorter and had a much less smooth pace. The story we wanted to tell wasn't gonna be compact enough to be dumped on the player in Chapters 4-9, and we knew that the later chapters were gonna be much beefier than the first 3, so to compensate we went back and fixed up the game. This part isn't what took 2 years, working in RPG Maker 2003 is what took 2 years.
As you can see from the screenshots, there's not just wandering around until you reach the next cutscene. We got things like platforming, puzzles, overworld battles, and a lot of things not common in RPG Maker 2003 games. I'm gonna level with you here: these sucked to make. The turtles alone took what, 3 months? 2003 has no access to scripts (unless I'd want to download dynRPG, which I don't as it outdates the game version) and not much support in terms of the wackier stuff you can do with it. It's literally became an inside joke of ours that "if this was VX Ace it'd be possible." Worst part is, even after we managed to pull it off, it still feels like jank. Long story short, the grid based movement works for the Jump Pad puzzles to come later in Chapter 2, pretty much nothing else though.

So, what's our solution to this problem?
Simple! We're moving to VX Ace!

Yeah, it'll suck to have to remake the whole game again (and learn Ruby for that matter) but at this point, I legitimately think it'd be quicker than trying to make the rest of the game in 2003, especially since most of this time has been spent fixing up stupid things. Friendly reminder: I began working on this game when I was 14, and this was my first project.
It's been a long journey, and it's only gonna get longer from here. If you're reading this, thanks for stickin' with us up to this point.
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