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Octopus royalty returns to torment the moogles!
The brave Mog, hero of the Narshe clan, must fight again to prevent the vile Ultros from taking over.

As Mog, your mission is to gather the Crystal Shards in order to cast a punishing spell at the octopus.
Be sure to avoid the enemy's tentacles! If you get caught, struggle to free yourself by mashing the arrow keys. Otherwise, you will meet a cruel underwater fate...

Use the various items to your advantage!
-The Teleporter can warp you to the other side of the arena.
-The Magicite can freeze tentacles for a while.
-The Kupo Nut makes you invincible briefly.

Ultra Smug is a short, light-hearted action game set in the Final Fantasy 6 universe and inspired by the old arcade classic Pac-Man.

This game was made for the 1.44 Floppy Disk Event

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  • Completed
  • Avee
  • RPG Maker 2003
  • Action
  • 04/17/2021 08:45 AM
  • 05/21/2021 09:16 PM
  • 04/20/2021
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Pages: 1
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
For now, I'm focusing on my own event project. But once the event is over I'll give this a whirl!

Been replaying FF6 too, so this hits close to heart.
I replayed through FF6 recently as a matter of fact :P
I'll be looking forward to your project as well!
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
Here's some feedback!

I love how the game skips a tittle screen and just starts into the level. Also the teleportation “Show Screen” was really well picked since it really makes it look like an arcade game booting up! It's these little details, man.

I also like the little jingle when each level starts, very arcade-y. I would have liked some background music though, I know it's hard to pick a good tune, since it may drown the other sounds, but even Pacman had a sort of background noise.
It's not a big deal, but waiting for the tentacles to move out of the way makes for a silent experience at times.

I was wondering, how did you make the “tentacles” AI? I noticed they have a sort of behavior and that's very cool for a rm2k3 game!

The graphics are very charming, the walls really remind me of this style of arcade game, as do the flashing colors (that change from level to level) of the pellets, the tentacle animation is very smooth and it's a very nice detail that you can struggle by moving around (oh! And you can even free yourself! I just found out about this in the Kaizo levels!).

Having Ultros in the center of each level even though we can't reach him was a good idea, since we always have a visual of the “villain”. Nice Pacman twist.

The teleports are a life saver, Hard stage 3 & 4 have no teleports and I could really feel their absence. They don't call it Hard mode for anything though :P

It would've also been cool to have a score show up on the right side, but... making that in rm2k3 is more work than reasonable (one cheap and easy alternative, given the event scope, is to just give the player 1000 score per each completed level, that way you just need to make images for “1” and “0” and place them on the screen accordingly), plus there was the event time frame, it doesn't really need a scoring system, I'm just pointing out that it would've been cool.

That lightning animation looks really cool. Also the magicite turns tentacles into ice-cubes! Useful but tricky to use since they block your path. Maybe a sound effect to announce they are about to break out of the ice-cubes would cue the player more.

The moogle looks really cute moving around. I was wondering if it would look even better if it constantly displayed the flapping wing animation.

Nice little Final Fantasy fanfare-like jingle after beating hard!

Wait, what!? There's another mode? Kaizo!? Wow, that's a lot of tentacles. I don't know if I can beat this. It really forces you to take more risks.

Kaizo stage 2, wohoo! Portals are back!

Ha! I'm the strongest Moogle! Once I figured you could free yourself from the tentacles, it made the Kaizo levels easier.

What does Kaizo stand for anyway?

It's a fun little game! I enjoyed my time with it and wanted to keep beating the levels until I reached the end. It nails the arcade look. Very clever way to reduce size and it's an achievement that it was finished in such a short time-frame. Cool!
Thank you for the detailed feedback!

I wanted to add BGM but couldn't due to the size of my compositions being too large, probably because of the software I used.

The tentacles' movement is simply set to Random. And they grab you when triggered by Event Touch. I use a few switches to stop the other tentacles from moving when one grabbed you. Nothing complicated, really.

I don't like the empty space on the right side, there's plenty of room to show Score and other things... but I felt that it wasn't needed.

Adding sound effects would definitely improve the game. Not only when the tentacles are about to break free of the ice but also when they grab Mog, giving the player an extra cue to start mashing those arrow keys.

I agree about the continuous flapping animation. Unfortunately I wasn't able to achieve it. It could probably work if the player controlled an Event Sprite instead of the Player Sprite.

The first jingle is loosely inspired by the Ultros fight theme at the Opera :P
I wanted both jingles to sound familiar yet different from the original in case streamers would get blocked by those insane Youtube bots.

Kaizo is a term used in the ROM hacking scene, usually to refer to extreme difficulty.

Thank you! I'm glad that you think that I nailed the arcade look and feel. That was my main goal :)
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
Thank you for the detailed feedback!


No prob!

I wanted to add BGM but couldn't due to the size of my compositions being too large, probably because of the software I used.


Yeah, I understand. Anything other than “midi” will take a lot of space.

The tentacles' movement is simply set to Random. And they grab you when triggered by Event Touch. I use a few switches to stop the other tentacles from moving when one grabbed you. Nothing complicated, really.


Wow! Really!? I could have sworn they had a pattern, because sometimes they would pursue me, but others they would stop pursuing. Just an RPG Maker programming quirk then.

I don't like the empty space on the right side, there's plenty of room to show Score and other things... but I felt that it wasn't needed.


For the purpose of the event, I think you made the right call!

Adding sound effects would definitely improve the game. Not only when the tentacles are about to break free of the ice but also when they grab Mog, giving the player an extra cue to start mashing those arrow keys.


Then again, sound effects take up a lot of space.

I agree about the continuous flapping animation. Unfortunately I wasn't able to achieve it. It could probably work if the player controlled an Event Sprite instead of the Player Sprite.


There's an easier way to make it work.
I did it in some previous projects. You make a common event that constantly changes the hero graphics with “0.1 second” intervals and make an animation out of that. All it takes is an additional “charset” file to work. If you want to release a new version of the game, then I can explain it to you in more detail, it's surprisingly simple.

The first jingle is loosely inspired by the Ultros fight theme at the Opera :P
I wanted both jingles to sound familiar yet different from the original in case streamers would get blocked by those insane Youtube bots.


I kinda felt I heard a similar tune before but couldn't quite put my finger in it!

Kaizo is a term used in the ROM hacking scene, usually to refer to extreme difficulty.


Oh, I see! I'm not too big on hard-type rom-hacks, so I never heard that term before. Thanks!

Thank you! I'm glad that you think that I nailed the arcade look and feel. That was my main goal :)


Don't mention it! It really is very arcade-y and I enjoyed playing through it!
There's an easier way to make it work.
I did it in some previous projects. You make a common event that constantly changes the hero graphics with “0.1 second” intervals and make an animation out of that. All it takes is an additional “charset” file to work. If you want to release a new version of the game, then I can explain it to you in more detail, it's surprisingly simple.

Thanks for the tip! I'll have to try it for other projects. I'm concerned that it might mess up other player animations or poses, unless I switch it on and off when needed, I suppose.
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