• Add Review
  • Subscribe
  • Nominate
  • Submit Media
  • RSS
Alter A.I.L.A. Genesis takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. You play the role of a young man known as Leon, who seeks to survive in the harsh environment he is brought into.

Exploration is done mainly via a side-scrolling view. In certain areas, an exclamation mark will sometimes appear, indicating the presence of hostiles. Press Z when this happens to initiate battle, or wait to let it pass. Sometimes battle will be unavoidable. When walking, enemy encounters won't occur.

The battle system revolves mainly around each character's Abilities, which are a set of commands specific to that character. Abilities require AP and EX to use. AP is gained every time a character takes a turn. The default is 2. EX is gained every time a character uses an Ability. The default is 1. Note that this may change depending on the situation.


Trailer courtesy of Sum Gai. Thanks buddy!

"Controls"
Z: Action/ Confirm
Up: Interact with Above/Background
Down: Interact with Below/Foreground
X: Menu/ Cancel
Shift: Hold to walk/run
F4: Toggle Fullscreen
F5: Toggle 2x Size
F12: Reset to Title


"Known Glitches"
Due to the limited functionality of the RPG Maker 2003 engine, there are various glitches and bugs which are unfortunately unfeasible or impossible to fix:
- Sometimes during an action, the battle data of a character will be temporarily overwritten with another character's, causing them to not perform as expected for that round.
- In certain cases, player actions can be interrupted by the enemy or other character's actions. To minimize the occurance of this, wait for current actions to finish before selecting an action with another character.
- Using items and guarding doesn't trigger the code to check for enemy deaths. You need to actually use an ability, or let the enemies take a turn.
- Although not a bug, Active Mode should be changed to Passive Mode in the in-game menu to prevent enemies from acting while you are taking an action.

"Hints and Tips for Boss Battles"
- Don't expect to just be able to spam regular attacks until you can use your Exceed ability. You won't win an attrition war with the enemy party.
- Always target the enemy's weakness if you can. If you want, think of this as a Shin Megami Tensei game. :P
- Make sure to keep your HP up. The vast majority of bosses have pretty powerful high EX costing abilities that'll wipe out your party if you're not expecting it.

- That said, keep in mind, the enemy is subject to the same rules as the party. In other words, they're also gaining AP and EX, and they also need it to use their more hard-hitting abilities. So if you can prevent them from using them while still retaining the ability to use yours, you'll be able to beat any boss.
- You can tell how much EX an enemy's ability uses by looking at the name of the ability. Similar to your character's abilities, it'll show up as the number of squares on the left side of the name.
- Of course, the above passes quickly so isn't that reliable of a method. As a general rule, you can expect that:
- Anything that uses an element other than Force likely costs at least 1 EX
- Anything that does multi-targetting likely costs at least 1 EX
- Anything that hits everyone hard probably costs 2 or more EX
- Anything that outright kills someone from full health, or makes you swear "Bullshit! That can't happen!" is likely an Exceed ability.
- Chances are it'll also be very flashy.
- Obviously, there's going to be some exceptions, but for the most part, this can be followed.

- Don't ignore Field Effects either. Bosses don't, and the Field Effects they use generally stack things in their favor. It's not just about dealing as much damage as quickly as you can. A lot of times, it's also about controlling the situation.
- Modes, Field Effects, and Boost ailments all stack. If you're creative, you may be able to create a situation where you can pretty much negate everything the boss throws at you, while tossing out Exceed abilities every turn. Bosses won't stand a chance.

MAP SAVE FREEZE: If you're changing things in this game in the editor and your save file freezes on the world map as a result, press F9, go to switch 112 and 113, and turn them both OFF. That should fix it.

Latest Blog

Something I did

Heys all, I finished a new game and am trying to get it greenlit. There's a page up for it here:

https://rpgmaker.net/games/9075/

Check it out, maybe help me out?
  • Completed
  • Neok
  • RPG Tsukuru 2003
  • RPG
  • 11/03/2007 02:01 AM
  • 12/30/2023 06:42 PM
  • 04/13/2011
  • 1628278
  • 179
  • 27660

Posts

I'm having trouble in the underwater facility. Like, can you give me some sort of hints, i.e. a particular water level I need it to be when I go to a certain section of the dungeon.
Relative to the beginning of the dungeon, with the pyramid, I can't find a water level that let's me go right beyond that point. I almost always end up back at the area where you drop down two levels with the item on the middle island.

Thanks.
post=212342
I'm having trouble in the underwater facility. Like, can you give me some sort of hints, i.e. a particular water level I need it to be when I go to a certain section of the dungeon.
Relative to the beginning of the dungeon, with the pyramid, I can't find a water level that let's me go right beyond that point. I almost always end up back at the area where you drop down two levels with the item on the middle island.

Thanks.

In my first time through there, I spent an hour in the Underwater Facility thinking I was supposed to go to the bottom right of the pyramid. Turns out, you're actually supposed to go up in a different screen to collect an item.

If I remember correctly, if you get to the top of the area with a switch along with a X-shaped drop down back near the pyramid, you're supposed to set the water level back to high ( I think that's what you do ).

Well, I looked at what I said and it doesn't seem like it's specific enough, so I decided to record how to get to the item container you're supposed to get to. If you're really stuck, go ahead and click it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEtXzUo3vCM
post=212345
post=212342
I'm having trouble in the underwater facility. Like, can you give me some sort of hints, i.e. a particular water level I need it to be when I go to a certain section of the dungeon.
Relative to the beginning of the dungeon, with the pyramid, I can't find a water level that let's me go right beyond that point. I almost always end up back at the area where you drop down two levels with the item on the middle island.

Thanks.
In my first time through there, I spent an hour in the Underwater Facility thinking I was supposed to go to the bottom right of the pyramid. Turns out, you're actually supposed to go up in a different screen to collect an item.

If I remember correctly, if you get to the top of the area with a switch along with a X-shaped drop down back near the pyramid, you're supposed to set the water level back to high ( I think that's what you do ).

Well, I looked at what I said and it doesn't seem like it's specific enough, so I decided to record how to get to the item container you're supposed to get to. If you're really stuck, go ahead and click it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEtXzUo3vCM


Thanks, I was not aware that if you keep on using the floating teleportation ball you go to another area...
Also, I love how you used the personal device to evade encounters, that was sick :D
post=212338
...

I do admit that Erin was kinda useless during the postgame bosses, though. She'd just sit there most of the time and do nothing. Replacing her with someone else probably would have been prudent, but I guess my traditional JRPG instinct of "OMG HEALER = VITAL" was preventing that from occurring to me.

And now that I look back at what I did, it seems like I'm doing more of a "video walkthrough with some commentary" than a "let's play". Seems like it's probably best if I change it.
Nah, I think those are fine. Not sure what other peoples' opinions are, though...

That's what I kind of liked back in AA...

Since there weren't any Stim fields, Erin was actually useful from beginning to end. You really had to choose whether you want area healing or more damage. I just fought Aila again back in AA, and I found out that Erin's First Aid was really helpful since then my damage dealers can concentrate on taking out Aila before she Extinguishes, while Erin keeps everyone's HP up so they don't have to worry about trying to Stim each other up from the damage per round, wasting precious turns.


I just think my commentary isn't "Let's Play" material, it's kind of hard since I already beaten the game, knowing a lot about it, and trying not to spoil anything. That's why I've stopped at Part 3 for now, should be enough material to show where I should I improve in the future videos. Of course, I do have more stuff to say about later events since I played through it more recently. Started from the last phase of the demon, which's why I don't remember a lot of stuff early on.

post=212358
...

Thanks, I was not aware that if you keep on using the floating teleportation ball you go to another area...
Also, I love how you used the personal device to evade encounters, that was sick :D

Yeah, heard a lot of people complaining about that, guess I should've mentioned it before doing the video to show the path.

And the personal device trick works well when doing a "no random encounter" run, Neok said it was partially intentional, so I'd use it if all you want to do is explore.
That is pretty clever idea using the Personal Device, I started doing that myself now. Great discovery Mr Missle. 8D
Looks like I got hit with another copyright issue:

Your video, Let's Play Alter A.I.L.A. Genesis - Part 5 , may include content that is owned or administered by these entities:

* Entity: Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society Content Type: Musical Composition

Thankfully, it didn't completely mute my video. The bad news is, seems like some parts of the world won't have access to it ( not that it matters that much right now ).

Speaking of which, I'm still open to suggestions on what to replace "Blast My Desire" with, and possibly other music tracks, before I get to late-game and post-game where this will start becoming more frequent.
You're having terrible luck aren't you? D:
Speaking of which, I'm still open to suggestions on what to replace "Blast My Desire" with, and possibly other music tracks, before I get to late-game and post-game where this will start becoming more frequent.

You could try this for starters. One of my favourite soundtracks of all time, and it's by an indie developer who lets you download it for free, so it might not be under copyright. To replace "Blast My Desire", I'd personally recommend "Demonic Timbre" or "Confrontation at the Mind's Core".
Arrrggghhh!!! Underwater Facility... 2!
Don't worry, the puzzles there are much less time-consuming. Do beware of the neverending maze, though...
post=212416
Speaking of which, I'm still open to suggestions on what to replace "Blast My Desire" with, and possibly other music tracks, before I get to late-game and post-game where this will start becoming more frequent.
You could try this for starters. One of my favourite soundtracks of all time, and it's by an indie developer who lets you download it for free, so it might not be under copyright. To replace "Blast My Desire", I'd personally recommend "Demonic Timbre" or "Confrontation at the Mind's Core".

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll take a look at them when I have time. Although it seems like you have to purchase the album to use it, so I'm not quite sure about it.

Now that I think about it, will this game still take .midi audio files? If so, do you think any of the Mechwarrior 2 tracks will fit? They're probably my most favorite .midi tracks, and although some of them may be a little too ambient.
1. What was your inspiration for making the twelve central characters of the original Alter AILA? Why did you make those specific personalities for your characters?


Most of the characters came from using the Charas Gen program to create rm2k3 field sprites. I mostly just attached personalities based on what 'felt' like those characters. AA was a more dark and grimy RPG that eventually became more light-hearted and casual once you got to the 4th route, so the character personalities were developed to reflect that.

For AAG, I went with a much more casual and fun storyline despite the relative dark and moody environment. So to accomodate that, I changed each character's personalities to better fit this setting. Of course, there's exceptions such as Dread and Hawk. I couldn't really get Dread's original personality to fit, so that never really came to be. As for Hawk


I know a lot of ppl liked his original 'heart of gold' personality, but I couldn't keep that for AAG with its linear storyline, which doesn't let me include the twists that go with having multiple routes and endings. Instead, I ended up giving him a more fallible and human-like ending, to stray away from the selfless stereotype.

Personally, I really liked the old Hawk (White from AA) as well. I feel kinda bad about giving him that kind of ending, but it's already been done, so...


2. What inspired you to make the setting a post-apocalyptic sci-fi one?


I've always wanted to do something like this, especially considering it's not too common in RPGs. It's not too difficult to write for, and it's something I'd like to see in more commercial and indie RPG's. I'm planning a more modernized setting for AAV, but it's a little bit more difficult to write for (in terms of it being a game instead of just a story)

3. Which came first, the character or the title?


Characters. The original 9 (outside of Gray) were part of a test ABS shooter called "9th Life", that was super short (10 min max) and not really all that interesting. Later on, I used the same characters for the original AA, and then AAG.

4. Will you continue to use a linear plotline for Variant, or will you go back to using multiple paths to choose from


I'm considering a mostly linear plotline, with the possibility of multiple endings depending on what you do over the course of the game. For example, if you save a character from dying or not, then his/her life/death may have an effect on the later parts of the game.

will this game still take .midi audio files


I don't think you can change file formats. So a .wav music has to be replaced with the same file format music. I'm not too sure about this though.
Hey Neok, is the glitch at about 5:15 of ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huEEP4Gza9Q

...known? It didn't appear in the Readme (doesn't seem like any other character was doing their turn), and it's pretty annoying so I thought I'd mention it.

Oh, and I found this rather ... strange glitch with Erin during the battle against the Round 1 team:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bu4vAJSVcU

at about 8:25.
Woot guess I finally beat Aila after the 3rd attempt...the 1st two attempts were fails because I just notice I didn't have an elemental weapon that can take down one of the spheres...

Basically the party I used consists of Leon, Erin and Celia! Yeah, the same team of Blue, Green and Black that I used in the original :p I was pretty much using Celia's Ex for when the 3 spheres are alive, and then using Leon as my main attacker. It's then just rinse and repeat until Aila is down :)

Overall great final battle and great game. The ending cutscenes were unexpected and definitely catch me off guard. And I guess the ending is pretty much open-ended...so many questions yet to be answered and can only be so in the sequel...Guess I'll be waiting till then :) In the meantime, I may write a review when I have the time.
Thanks for the suggestions, I'll take a look at them when I have time. Although it seems like you have to purchase the album to use it, so I'm not quite sure about it.

Normally, yes, but you can buy it for free if you set how much you want to pay to $0. Some music artists using that site will allow that.

Oh, and if you haven't figured this out already, eplipswitch, Violet + static damage sync (like GUARDIAN) + Chaos + EX Facilitator = win game. Every Shooting Star deals 9900 damage, regardless of enemy defenses or crushes. And with Chaos + EX Boost, she can dish it out every other round. O_O Very powerful.
Chao+EX Facil. is an over-kill combination. (Unless you plan on reviving Violet every couple of rounds, that is.)

Pulsar+HP Facil+Excession is much more enduring, and in fact I think that is Violet's ultimate setup. Wonder Wings, another sync (possibly her ultimate weapon), Minerva, HP Facil, and Pulsar turns her into the fastest character in the game, and usually she deals 900+ damage the first 8 hits of Shooting Star plus 2k damage at the end, which is 9900+damage, more than with GUARDIAN, doable every three turns without Excession or EX booster.

Chaos+Zero-System goes best on Gray, allowing him to do Buster Cannon the same three turns w/o any buffing, then recovery, burst, load cartridge, rinse and repeat.. You gotta balance out Team Awesome, man!
Gray is pretty sweet too, I admit. He was actually part of my postgame party. I usually give him X-System instead though, since Zero-System is BRN, as is his ultimate weapon, making it redundant element-wise. X-System is FRZ, allowing him to cover the three main elements.

If you've seen Missileboater's vid on defeating the fully-powered Behemoth, though, you'll see that Leon is capable of dealing 45000+ damage with Blast Revolver. O_O Requires CRIT and ATK boosts, as well as the Demon King Cradle, to pull off, however.
Strategy-wise, if you give Gray Chaos Mode, Zero-System works better since his attack increases as his HP goes down, which happens very quickly in Chaos mode. Toss in an Attack booster and watch him wipe out entire chunks of an opponent's HP every three turns.

There's also Scott who, in Breaker mode with an AP Facil, can rack up steady damage with Focus Shot EVERY turn.

Damn, so many combinations!