Mana Conquest: Vengeance

I missed a few weeks in the middle there, but it's time for the weekly-ish update!

I've spent most of the last two nightshifts doing a bug seeking playthrough. Mostly a balance test, making sure the battles aren't too difficult now that the battle engine speed has been adjusted. Also checking to make sure that the skill leveling system is balanced, now that the skills are ranked up based on usage rather than number of battles fought.

I also had an interesting battle with fullscreen mode in windows 8. I submitted an article on it, perhaps it'll show up on the site sometime soon.

Also during this playthrough I'm streamlining the in game text. There are times where I previously used ***asterisks*** for emphasis in spoken dialogue, and other time when I used CAPSLOCK to the same effect. Also, inner dialogue has times where it's in (brackets), or in dark grey text. Mention of key items, or important places have set text colors in use. Overall the plan is to have everything look streamlined throughout the whole game.

The main thing I'm finding is that a lot of scripted events in which I moved the caterpillar events are messed up now, because I changed the caterpillar event structure.

The battle with the Mysterious Man in the Meridian Cavern has been modified, in an attempt to make the battle seem more urgent. If Hanna is KO'd by his attack, she is removed from the battle. If enough turns pass without Hanna or Eidan being KO'd from his attack, he will "enrage", Eidan will tell Hanna to get back, removing her from the battle. The end result is the same, but the individual dialogue is different depending on which of these two things happen.

The Worker ants in the cavern have had their 'Psycho Buzz' attack modified so that it only affects one ally, otherwise it was too much like the Cave Bat's Hypersonic attack.

Cave Rats have had their double attack replaced with a more fitting skill.

The first bug in the new encounter system was found and fixed - monsters that had to travel an exceptionally long distance before reaching where the hero was last seen would make their "give up" sounds long before they reached the destination. They would then immediately stop searching for the hero once they reached their destination. This has been repaired.

Fixed a bug where the music did not cut out as intended inside Meagan's house during her recruitment.

Fixed a bug where a box that used to be in Ruiga still had event code that could be ran if you inspected the tile where the box used to be, prior to the revamping of those interior maps.

Fixed a bug where leaving a map onto the world map, from a teleport in which an enemy had already seen, or would have seen you if it had respawned would cause the caterpillar system on the world map to be wonky, as well as cause the "danger" heartbeat sound to continue onto the world map.

I'm considering working the particle effects plugin into the game, though at this point it'd only see use in chimney smoke and other similar background things.

Also still working in the text plugin. A lot of early areas (read: Meridia) have some floating text in use to add to the immersion. When it's fully realized, it will add a lot to npc interaction in the game.

Removed the menu background images from the game clock plugin. The game menu now has a solid black background. There was a bug in it where it would always revert to the default image when the game was loaded, meaning that it wasn't saving what background should be in use at a given time. I wasn't making very good use of it (most of my backgrounds were just the battle backdrop of the area) anyway, so I switched it out.

The skills tutorial given by the sleepy soldier in Meridia Castle has been updated to reflect that skills get stronger by using them.

The options menu is outdated, and needs to be updated. The banter dialogue on/off option has no effect, and the world map minimap off/on option is probably unnecessary - if a semi transparent image on the world map is given your computer difficulty, the rest of the game is probably not faring any better.

I will be reducing the number of monsters inside the Jabar temple. I haven't play tested through the temple on my currently playthrough yet, however. The intention is to reduce the level you fight the boss at (making him harder), and also to ensure that you're not pushing level 25 by the end of the Temple events. There's a lot more game to go after this point, and that many levels is preposterous.

I may also revamp the experience curve a bit. Leveling up is a lot faster than I originally envisioned. Most of the stat increases in the game will come from "training" and equipment upgrades, leveling up should only account for a gain in hit points.

Speaking of hit points, on this last playthrough Hanna got completely trucked by Hui-Zhi in the forest - even after 3-4 Defensive Harmonies. I believe she was one level lower than my other playthroughs, as I skipped a couple of trash mob fights to make it harder. I can see why a lot of people complain about the difficulty of that fight now. I can't stress it enough - fight as many mobs as you can!

At this point, there is no specific date that I'll be done with this revamping. As a result, I can't put a solid date on the new demo release. I'll try to update here some more as I go along.

That's all for now folks,


~Ramza

Greetings, and thanks for checking in here again today.

I have decided to make an attempt at regular updates.
I figure since I'm always working on it at least two days a week, I might as well provide updates concerning what I've finished for that week.

It's almost 6:00am my time, and my second overnight shift draws to a close soon.

Pretty much all that I've done in the last two days wasn't player facing content, a lot of it was ease-of-use upgrades to my existing system.

Caterpillar System:

• Modified the follower events so that battle animations could be called on them.

• Modified the follower events to that during a re-initialization of the caterpillar system, the follower events will walk to the hero's position, after being moved, meaning the screen doesn't need to be blanked every time an event moves the follower events, or your hero without the follower events following.

• Modified the follower events, and the caterpillar engine to no longer require the follower events to start in the same x/y position on every map

Banter system:

• Modified the banter system to run from the real-time clock included in the game clock plugin, instead of from the timekeeping system the game was previously using.

• Modified the banters so that they call battle animations on the follower events instead of the hero

• Updated some in game dialogues

Miscellaneous

• The in game item 'Pocket Watch' can no longer be used to show the in-game clock.

• Small bugfix concerning enemies that see you from really far away, having forgotten about searching for you before they finish getting to where they saw you.

I am starting to look into battle system plugins. I'm using Corti's right now, but it doesn't do exactly what I want it to do. The fights are dreadfully slow at low AGI values, and the disparity between a high AGI battler and a low one is too much for this to be a permanent solution.

Plans for next week:

• Figure out a way to work agility into one of PepsiOtaku's ATB modification plugins without making it completely broken.

• Use his Skill ID plugin to change the skill learning system around - rather than count battles, have it count the number of times a particular skill had been used.

• Finish implementing the text plugin for npcs on town maps.

• Sprites.

I think my intent is to release an updated version of the last demo, with all the plugins and system modifications running, but without any new content. I know that's kind of a dick move after like, three years with no updates, but I'd rather see a polished demo out sometime in the next few months, than see no new releases for a long ass time.

That's it for this week's update.

Later folks,


-Ramza

Hello everyone. I know it's been a long time since I've updated. With all the many changes going on, I guess I just didn't have much time for game development. I realize that probably does little to make up for the lack of updates over the last few years. I apologize.


Anyways, I've been away for a while, and have returned to discover dynRPG, and the marvelous world of rm2k3 plugins. The possibilities for these plugins will help me get some things in the game much closer to what I originally wanted, unhindered by engine limitations, for the most part anyway.

The first thing I've done with them is changed the monster encounter system a bit.

How it was:

• Enemies roam the maps randomly or in patterns

• If you come within a set distance of an enemy, it detects you, plays a sound and then chases you around the map forever, unless you leave the map

• If it catches you, a battle begins

• After death, the mob waits a set amount of time, and then respawns, and then returns to it's normal behavior

How it is now:

• Enemies roam the map in random or set paths

• Using the line of sight plugin by Kazesui Each enemy is checked constantly to see if it can see the hero - taking view obstructing objects into account.

• If this check comes back as true, the enemy is alerted, and moves to where he saw the hero at using the Pathfinder plugin by "anti-freak".

• Once the enemy finishes moving to the last spot he saw the hero at, a second check is made to see if he can still see the hero.

• If he can, he continues to chase, if not a timer starts, where after a set amount of time, he gives up, and returns to normal actions

• If the enemy catches you, a battle begins

• Once defeated, a dead enemy will respawn in a set amount of time.

Basically the TL:DR version is that enemies now have line of sight, and will not chase you forever if they lose sight of you. I still have a few more kinks in the system to iron out before I work it into the encounters in the game, but so far it's working pretty well.

I'm also using the Text Plugin (also by Kazesui) to add some immersion, but this is so far only in the planning stages.

I've got a buttload of graphics that still need to be made - battlechars for the next few NPCs you recruit are done, but battle animations for most still need to be done - which is a pain for me. I'm plugging away at it slowly. Coding is a getaway from graphics for me, so messing with plugins is helpful.

Another aside - I have changed the gauge style system to use a translucent system window - which has had the side effect of making all dialogue boxes in-game also have a translucent system skin - which I can't seem to fix. I think the translucent window in battle looks good enough to warrant keeping it, but there needs to be an easier way to make the dialogue windows not transparent than to switch it before and after every battle. Help me out here if you can.

That's all for now,

Thanks,

Ramza

Just a post to inform those that are still waiting patiently that I am, slowly, working on the game. So, just to keep you faithful, here's an update that I changed a while back, but never bothered to mention or reference before now.

I have changed the battle system from alternative to gauge. For those who aren't quite sure what that means, or don't remember, because they've been using the newer makers, a demonstration is provided below:
I turned this: (I wonder why some of my screenshots are smaller than others?)
into this: (zomg he has leet hitpoints)

While I will admit the new system has it's flaws (namely that glaring command window on top of the monsters), and I did have to add some more descriptive status effect bchars to my in battle sprites due to not having a way to see status effects, (which was more work, yet again) AND a lot of the battle backdrops weren't formatted for full screen size (as in, they were rm2k backdrops, mostly), so I ended up changing most of those (editting them in most cases, although a few were replaced entirely). The one in both screenshots above is one I editted. I think it looks pretty good. The main reason I went with the change is to provide yet another opportunity to show off the sweet facesets ingame. I think the benefit of that far outweighs the minor UI problem it causes.

Anyways, tell me what you think of the change. I value your input guys.

Also, on a bit of a sidenote:
When I was redoing some of the bchars, I editted a few of the spell animations that were present in the first demo, to make them appear better overall. If you've played the first demo, you'd know that the first screenshot above is a perfect depiction of what Hanna will be doing for the first dozen fights she's in, otherwise she ends up dead. Well on a recent playthrough, the japanese standin voice I was using was really grating on me the whole time, and I figured that even if I found a voice actor to do her voices, I'm sure the sound (while pretty and custom) would still eventually get on the player's nerves, so I changed it so that the actual animation doesn't have the voice (so if you cast the spell in the menu as a heal you won't hear her spouting her non-related japanese nonsense talk), and I changed the casting animation for that spell, as well as defensive harmony, so that the sound were present there instead (and so that they look better too of course). I also shortened most of the voices. In the full game, when everyone has their real voices, someone wouldn't be spouting random crap for 12 seconds to cast a spell whose animation takes less than 1/4 that time. Most of them are one word now (although still japanese, and I have no idea what they mean, but they're just standins anyway). I think it's better overall, and it will be present in the next demo (whenever that will be).
That's all for now, folks.

Just a little side info for anyone who was wondering what I was up to.

For the past few months, I'd been sporadically remaking facesets for the characters (or making them for most of them). After I made one face for each character, Hanna's and Eidan's facesets no longer matched with the new style, so I remade them again. Everytime I redid Eidan's faceset, it came out looking like shit, so I kept redoing it.

Newest to oldest, the bottom right being the first one.
Eidan's original face was made by mooty, a wannabe mangaka who offered to make some doodles for me to color into faces. It turned out to look too much like Ichigo, so I told him to do it again. The second one was also made by him, and kind of looks like Kira (deathnote). This was the face I used during the first demo release, IMO it worked fine at the time, and matched well with Hanna's old faceset. When I started getting into making facesets myself, the new designs looked different than their old faces, so I made them new ones, Hanna's was good (and can be seen in at least one of the screenshots on here) but Eidan's came out looking kinda chubby (bottom left). I liked it, but everyone complained, so I redid it again, and got the upper right one, which didn't look much better, I left it anyway due to artists' block.
Yesterday I decided to try it again and came up with the upper middle face. Didn't really notice until it was shrunk to the proper size, but his chin is kind of big, making him look really old. Today I tried again, and came up with the newest one. It has some flaws, but I think I'm sticking with it now. What do you all think?

in the image we have from top left to bottom right:
"Big Nose Eidan", "Bruce Campbell Lookalike Eidan", "Goofy Sideview Smiling Eidan", "Fat Eidan", "Kira Eidan", and "Ichigo Eidan".