To Arms!

It has not been a good month for To Arms!. Besides the obvious, I just got some really terrible news from my (lol not rlly) composer confirming something I've known more or less since the delays started three or more months ago: the OST is not happening, leaving me with one (two?) finished custom tracks and a lot of public domain/stolen music. Which is alright, I actually REALLY liked the placeholder tracks I chose, an OST would just have been icing on the cake.

The silver lining in all of this is that the next build of the game, To Arms! Episode One: Deceive, Despise, and Murder Men Vanguard Edition v1.3 will be in all likelihood the final version (of Episode One). Besides some changes to the credits I have to make now that I am no longer waiting on an O.S.T., 1.3 will differ from 1.2 in the following ways:

*Enemy evasion decreased (slightly).
*Power of healing items and spells moderately increased across the board--it will definitely be noticeable.
*Large amount of healing and resurrection items given to player at game start.
*Limitedly repeatable random battles will be integrated into the world map travel system for players who would feel more comfortable with the ability to grind and wipe out their foes.

All of this should have the effect of rounding out the difficulty curve nicely and smoothing out the rough edges that may have made things difficult for unlucky players. As of the time of this writing, the first three changes have been made. That leaves only the fourth change (integration of random battles) and internal testing to be done. I anticipate that the next build will be released within the month. I hope when the time comes my reviewers will take the time to play the new version and adjust their scores accordingly and that everyone who has or has not played To Arms! before will give it a shot.

So To Arms! has had, relatively speaking, a good opening week. Got over a hundred downloads in just four days here on RMN alone. Not great, but certainly not terrible. I don't know how many we've gotten from Ghostlight, normally I wouldn't expect much but...

...for some reason we were blessed with being on the front page at HBGames! I have no idea why. Maybe they just liked the title screen. XD We're receding from that pinnacle of glory now, but witness it before it disappears entirely.

We also have our To Arms! gamepage at Ghostlight finally updated for the Vanguard Edition release.

On an unrelated note:
Early reports are in and they make me wish I'd remembered to fucking tell people that you can hold down the 'A' key and use the arrow keys to scroll up and down in the equipment shop window. Well, you can do that! So now you know!

Word on the sound track as soon as I have it (but maybe SS will pop in and tell you hisself).

There have continued to be snags in development, mostly related to my motivation (like a download that hangs on the final 1%) and the OST creation process (which I ought not to have ever let myself believe would be simple). The result is that the final version of To Arms! Episode One will be done when it is done.

HOWEVER! The game is functionally complete, missing only the final coat of lightmaps, original songs, and the nth degree of fine tuning to the battle balance. There is no reason people should not be able to play it.

I will be releasing the VANGUARD EDITION (more polished than a public beta, but not quite a final build) in, hopefully, about one week's time. It will be entirely complete and playable, and the main thing missing from it will be the OST...I will be using placeholder tracks instead. The full, final, or definitive version will be complete some point in the not too distant (but not too soon) future. For now, rather than being a perfectionist, my sights are set on the Vanguard Edition, and I hope to be able to deliver this time.

WEEKLY UPDATE

Beta testing is going much slower than anticipated. While I have had some positive reports and some not-so-positive reports from a couple of testers, and my lead tester has played the game through at least ten times now, I still need more feedback to fine tune the game before making a public release.

Right now I have made a few changes to make the game a little easier based on beta reports, and the version of the beta currently being tested is Version 0.4.



But beta testing has only been going on for a week. And that week was the final week of Game Gale. So I am not entirely surprised I am not drowning in bug reports yet.

Work on To Arms! Episode Two will wait until the first one has been released and had time to gather feedback.

OST Preview

You might have heard me bragging about the second draft of the world map track a few weeks ago. Well, this is the tenth draft and it is proportionately better. But don't tell Sir_Subtle I said that or he'll rewrite EVERY track seven times and we won't have the OST done until December. : P

Sir_Subtle would presumably welcome some C&C on these of course he is welcome to post here of his own accord.

To Arms! World Map Theme
The Mist (WIP)

The End of a (Brief) Era

Without further ado, here is the tenth and final class in To Arms!...the Recruit. First, but still least. That will wrap up the class blog posts. They never really got the level of attention I wanted but fortunately I will be able to roll the data from them into something practical and useful: the game's manual.



When the children of nobles enter their early adolescence, there are only a few short years before they must lead men in battle, and much to learn in that time. (They begin basic combat training from a much younger age than that, as young as seven or eight.) For that dire reason, they are made into squires for a period of at least a few years between thirteen and when they are deemed a man grown. For them, this is a step down from the power and privilege they are used to. They must serve and support a knight, perhaps one of lower rank than themselves, obey him and learn from him, and take his punishment when they have erred. But in learning to serve, they learn to lead. One cannot learn to run before one learns to crawl, and one cannot be a Knight without being a squire first.

For the common folk, the taking of one of their children as the squire of some Knight-- even one of low rank, indeed even the lowliest hedge knight-- is an auspicious omen indeed. A commoner working on a farm field can never advance in society, but a squire who acquits himself honorably can earn a battlefield promotion and one day become a knight or even a Lord himself. Peasant youths of fighting age join infantry units as Recruits in hopes of earning the same rewards...and die by the score.

Both the squires of Knights (great and small) and the fresh-faced enlistees of fighting units from town and castle guards to mercenary bands are considered Recruits, in terms of game mechanics. A Recruit represents raw potential tempered by inexperience. A Recruit can become anything...if they survive.

VITAL STATISTICS
TYPE: None .
Recruits don't excel at tanking, dealing damage over a distance, or healing. They can however do a little bit of everything. Every generic unit STARTS as a recruit, allowing players to learn the ropes of basic, no-frills gameplay before they begin to specialize their units and get into the fancy stuff. This means it remains to be seen how much the Recruit will be seen outside of Episode One.
ATTRIBUTES:
Hit Points: Normal (1x)
Power Points: Mundane (0x)
Strength: Normal (1x)
Constitution: Normal (1x)
Intelligence: Normal (1x)
Dexterity: Normal (1x)
EXAMPLE SKILLS
Recruits have less skills than other classes, and they cover a very wide base.
Squire: Support another character, increasing their Strength/Constitution/Dexterity/Intelligence by 25% for around five turns. Can only be used once per battle. <Free Starting Skill>
Basic Aid: Cures one ally of poison, blindness, and bleeding. Three turn cooldown. <Cost: 150 JP>
Over Extend: Exhaust yourself (100 HP) to increase your attack by 50% for a short time. <Cost: 500 JP>
Fast Learner: Passive skill that doubles your EXP gain as long as you remain a Recruit. <Cost: 2000 JP>

PROFICIENCIES:
Weapons: Shortblades, Swords, Spears and Axes.
Armor: Leather and Chain. Hats and light helms. Bucklers and light shields.

That's all for now. Tune in next week!

WEEKLY UPDATE

It's a short one this week.



I have just sent out the PM with the beta to my testers, aprilschild, otokonoko, DE, edchuy, and Orpheus. The beta is in this case, actually a beta, i.e. a 99% complete build, not an alpha like most COMPLETE demos are. I have already tested it BUNCHES. But there are a few final coats of varnish to apply.

Beta Testers Still Wanted

I could still use a couple more testers. I have expanded on their "duties" that I talked about last week:

1. Testers
A. Tell me what you like about the game. What is working? If you can't think of anything, this needs more work than I thought it did. This is where you tell me what you thought of the graphics, story, etc. This is the easiest part, by far.

B. A list of any bugs...from typos through fatal errors...that you encounter. Since there are several skills I didn't get a chance to test, I am most interested in skills that don't work the way they are supposed to or don't work at all. (Many skills might work in a way that is quirky or counter-intuitive but still what I intended. But I don't expect you to be able to differentiate this from the above with 100% accuracy or anything. Likewise there is so much going on in To Arms! in terms of skills, combatants, and status effects that it might be easy to mistake something that is not a bug for a bug. For instance if your spells are always missing, maybe your Arcanon is blind. If your attacks are doing no damage, maybe your attacker has Strength down or your defender has Defense Up. But I'd rather get a dozen false reports and one real one than no false reports and no real ones.)

C. Try every possible combination of classes for the four generic characters. I mean try four knights, four archers, four arcanons, four engineers, four alchemists, four war priests. And then try every possible combination of mixed parties. Everything from a knight, an archer, an arcanon, and a war priest to two alchemists and two engineers. Play the game with every possible build you can think of, and compare how easy/difficult the game is to beat with each of them. None of them should be so easy it is automatic, and none of them should be impossible. In theory. Let me know how that works out in practice. Try to break the game balance as hard as you can. No class should be innately better than any other class.

D. For the classes you have (and the mains) use your earned JP to check out every possible combination of available skills you can think of. I really do need someone to check out all of these. I've tested 80% of them myself and they worked, but 60% of those were tested before I made other changes to the game, and 20% just have not been tested at all. Try to break the game balance as hard as you can. I need to know what is too powerful and what is not powerful enough. Some things that might seem like they are not powerful enough are plenty powerful in the right combos...likewise things that are balanced on their own might be too good in certain combos.

E. Send me a detailed report with all the info you can gather on all of the above.

Sounds like a lot, I know, but testing, like pimpin, ain't easy (b***h). Besides I am starting to believe some of my previous games were seriously undertested and I do NOT want to make that mistake again.

You can still sign up here, for another week at least.

Classy

You may have noticed I am a bit behind on my class blog posts. I will try to finish those up this week. Culminating in a preview for the 10th class, the "Recruit", which every generic unit begins the game as.

Finishing Touches

Sir Subtle is hard at work on the OST.

I have asked arcan to begin work on some supplementary sprite poses.

AprilsChild is going to complete a handful of lightmaps for some night time scenes.

And I will of course be taking feedback from beta testers into account and fine-tuning the game balance.

That's all for now. Tune in next week!