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"Where were you when the universe ended?"

I Miss the Sunrise is an all-new prequel to 2009's The Reconstruction. Featuring strategic battles, player-created weapons, and unique gameplay around every turn, I Miss the Sunrise is an RPG experience like no other. The full game is available as of July 22nd, 2012.

Version 1.51 released August 12th, 2012.

FEATURES
-No typical HP & MP drudgery. Instead, all battlers have Hull, Systems, and Pilot ratings that serve as both health and fuel for weapons. Reducing any of them to 0 means defeat, so spacefarers beware!
-Create your own pilot. Give 'em a name, then choose your gender, race, and customized personality, all of which determine how you interact with other denizens of the universe.
-Get to know your allies better through dialog interaction and performance in battle. But be careful: some allies may be less receptive to your chosen personality.
-Assemble your own weapons. Use salvaged components to customize and outfit your own weapons, name them whatever you want, and use their blueprint codes to share your creations with other players!
-Fast-paced, strategic turn-based battles reward careful positioning and targeting over brute force. Exploit your enemies' vulnerabilities while covering your own!
-Random exploration maps let you take part in battles and exploration any time you please.
-Customizeable AI lets you determine just how ruthless the enemy can be.

TV Tropes page available here! Spoilers ahoy!

Unofficial Wiki available here! Spoilers here too!

New! Fanfiction!: 1 | 2 (Spoilers, of course!)

Latest Blog

Out with the Old

Happy Nauruan Independence Day, everybody!

For anyone still watching, I've expunged my old site in order to concentrate on my new one (Sungazer Software) full time. Plus, I had a lot of insane rambling from 2009 or so that I didn't want hanging around, so it had to go.

If there were any posts you absolutely cannot live without, or if you object loudly enough, then I could be goaded into having a "greatest hits" archive left intact somewhere. Swayed, even. Until then, though, consider any links to Tilde-One.com to be defunct. (Actually they'll just redirect to the new front page.)

Good night, and keep watching the skis! Uh, skies.

Posts

Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Stuff!

Mahk will get his moment in the sun, I promise. Yeah, he's passive-aggressive, but he's a wuss too.

Minor things noted! I still have no clue how tiles work in RMVX so I apologize for strangeness. In TR, it's probably because I didn't know what I was doing for the earlier maps (I made the thing over the course of like 3 years). And as for capitalization, I just considered them proper race/nationality names, I guess. I think I leave them small-case when used as an adjective. OBSESSION!

Personal Trust caps out at 250, and you'll have more than enough instances to improve it. Merits increase it for everyone too, so 40 merits will add 120 in all (I think). The idea in theory is that you shouldn't be able to max out characters who don't jive with your chosen personality, but I am probably in over my head so we'll see how that turns out.

I relied too much on parallel process events for TR so it did end up rather choppy. Maybe I'll remake it in another engine some day. As for IMTS, You might hit some lag in one particular exploration map in Episode 1 (the one where you have to mark the crates of materials); if it's really bad, let me know, because I hacked out as many events as I could to get it to run decently on both my test machines. I could not get either anti-lag script I found to not completely break the game engine no matter how much I tweaked them.

Weapon crafting lags for you? Is this after the final confirmation? That's really weird, because it only pauses for a second or so for me, and I think that's from a Wait event. I'll have to look into it. Also, make sure you're hitting Enter again after confirming. There's a weird quirk with the menus that I haven't puzzled out yet.

Keep the input coming!
Ah, I see. Hope everything works out.

Thanks for the personal trust info. Won't stop me from obsessively save scumming to see every branch, though. :p By the way, major kudos on the writing; I'm taken aback by everything that people have to say, and almost every NPC appears to have had their dialogue updated after the *first mission*! I will look forward to seeing what cool things you have in store for later. I consider worldbuilding to be the most important part of storytelling, so that's probably why I like your games so much. :D Ros is masterfully written as well; I tried to make her personality as close to mine as possible (except I made her female because why not and strong female characters in media are good), and she does sound pretty similar to what I would do in such a situation. The dialogue branches don't impact much of the conversation, but all of them do flow really well.

Ah, I see what you mean about weapon crafting, it usually exits out once I hit confirm. Odd; perhaps you should mention that somewhere. (Do extensions have weapon codes, by the way? I've only made one (Heat Insulator), but I didn't get a code for it.)

Still getting used to the visual style. I tend to like games where you play as the actual characters on a battlefield better, since I feel it personalizes them better than just a bunch of abstract spaceship images. In TR, I really felt like I knew the ins-and-outs of every character's stats and skills (the ones I used, anyway -- I usually just stuck to the same small pool most of the game, are you supposed to do that?), but here they all just sort of mush together. Since all health values are the same, it might be best to include defense stats somewhere. I prefer the full portraits to these weird half-portrait things, but I'm sure I'll get used to them.

I was also slightly disappointed that the only real non-human species were the lizard people this time around; humans are just so BORING! :( TR felt really diverse with the inclusion of the fih'jik. Even though the fortians were extremely similar to humans, I preferred them to just bland cyborgs. :/ I suppose that's due to a different focus of fantasy versus sci-fi, though. (Really, I should be more bothered by the fact that there are humans in TR at all, since "human aliens" makes the biologist in me cry.)
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Glad you're liking it! I was concerned about writing being dryer in general in sci fi than fantasy. It's a fun exercise to switch from one to the other.

I'll look into the weapon confirmation thing again. I haven't touched it in over 6 months. I think something in the back of my mind said "forcing the user to press enter twice will stop him from accidentally confirming" - it's not a bug, it's a feature! I'll address it somehow, regardless.

I thought the original was pretty abstract too, since it was set up like a board game. This was just a logical extension of that (see also: my crippling inability to draw). Defense stats will crawl along the bottom eventually, but for the most part each race is strongest with one weapon type and to one defense type (except for a few rounded-out weirdos like Tez). I may also replace the portraits with full ones, but I wanted to conserve screen space since the dialog boxes are dynamically positioned now.

I went with three (mostly generic) races for plot reasons which will come up eventually, and as you said, because of the sci fi setting (plus it matched up better with the whole A/B/C skill system). Also, who's to say the human aliens aren't just humans after all...?
Honestly, I think the graphics look fine (although maybe I'm just saying that because I don't know the first thing about pixel art ;_;). Anyway, what I meant was that it feels better if you can actually see the characters, instead of less personalized spaceship images.

Oh, and bug report: Just started episode 1, and it seems like my grappling hook weapon is gone! :'( I don't know what happened to it -- it used to be equipped on Mahk. Are boss weapons only useable in the episode they're obtained?

Also, who's to say the human aliens aren't just humans after all...?

Ooh, I suspected as much! Glad to see it's not yet another example of blatant biology fail. I will have to see how the story unfolds...

Edit: Oh, there's also a few cutoff erros with the dialogue boxes. At one point in episode 0, Tezkhra says "Sikho" instead of "Sikholon", and one of the NPCs in Hab Zero gets the "s" cut off when he's saying "systems". The y in "eventually" gets cut off in one of Mahk's dialogues, as well.

Edit 2: Woah, just found a weird bug. Entering all zeroes for a random map nets a black screen. Oddly, it seems to still work fine, I just can't see the map.

Edit 3: Scratch that, it bugs out whenever I enter a battle. Also, it seems that entering zero for anything nets the buggy zone.

Edit 4: Okay, it seems like trying to input a location code at all makes the random maps bug out. Agh. -_-

Edit 5: I seem to have encountered that dialogue box bug when talking to Rami.
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Uh oh. I can't think of why the weapon would get removed. It's supposed to be permanent. I know I plugged in a stat reset function to do some weapon re-balancing between episodes 0 and 1, so I'm wondering if there's a fluke in there that wiped it out somehow.

Well, seeing how the humans call themselves "SOL", one can only assume where they're from!

This random map stuff is scaring me big time. It sounds like it's not generating map data for whatever reason. If you generate one instead of typing it, does it work? And is everything else playable in the meantime? If not, you can send me your save file and I'll try to dissect and make it playable again.

That dialog box thing is driving me similarly crazy, because I can't figure out where the X/Y coordinates are flaking out. Argh, indeed.

(Edit 1) Hey, I just tried the all-zero thing and it broke for me too! That's really weird. Okay, uh, nobody do that for God's sakes.
(Edit 1.5) I hate myself. Left out the "screen fade-in" events. I have a feeling another patch is on the way very soon if you keep helping out like this!
Glad to be of service. :) And yes, it does work if I generate a map instead of select one. Everything else seems fine, I've actually been doing a ton of random maps.

I really hope you find out what's causing the problem with the Rami dialogue, because I don't want to continue since I'll skip it. :(

It's supposed to be permanent. I know I plugged in a stat reset function to do some weapon re-balancing between episodes 0 and 1, so I'm wondering if there's a fluke in there that wiped it out somehow.

Oh dear. Forgot to mention this last time, but the personal trust gained from the end-of-episode-zero dialogues seems to reset when I start episode one as well. Is that intentional...?

Well, seeing how the humans call themselves "SOL", one can only assume where they're from!

Oh, yeah, I figured that out. I meant the humans in TR.
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
The Personal Trust reset wasn't intentional either. I really screwed the pooch there! It was part of the stat rebalancing thing; I must have inadvertently created all-new objects for every potential party member starting with Mahk, which explains the missing weapon too. Episodic content is a bitch.

I have figured out the thing with Rami, I think. It's where he starts walking toward you, right? Looks like he walks one step too far and I accidentally left "wait for completion" checked so it hangs. I'll try to get a patch cobbled together for you (and the person who told me about it the first time) tonight.

(Edit) Oh and to answer a question way back; you don't get weapon codes for X-Types, no. The game would be rather trivial if you could clone something that boosted AP, after all.
Another bug report: During the next mission, when I entered the ruins, I encountered that dialogue bug with Tezkhra! Fortunately I managed to get past it by mashing Z, but now I have no clue what I'm supposed to do. I've marked all four containers -- is there anything else you have to do?

Edit: Okay, figured it out, though it meant I couldn't complete the mission in four turns. >_< Anyway, another bug: During the next dialogue with Neff, he says a string of symbols in place of a comma.

Oh, and a minor gameplay thing: Though I can understand you using the D&D style "level ups are scarce and don't give that much" system, why are you only giving a bonus every three ranks? Making empty levels is pointless. It would make much more sense to make every rank grant a bonus, but require 3000 valor to increase.
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
You just have to return to the starting node to complete that. Also, that damn bug. Grrargh.

And I don't have a good answer for rank-ups! It was originally more of an analogue to favor/rank in TR. Stat increases were more of an afterthought, except for the major upgrades you get after every ten ranks (like wiping out a vulnerability or increasing AP). I will consider implementing something to make it more rewarding.

(Edit) Whoa good morning. That string of symbols is probably an RM macro for inserting a pause or color change and I used the wrong slash. I've been known to do that.
Two more dialogue typos: One of Mahk's dialogues about his father is missing the first quote mark, and during the Chac sidequest, Sorenson's dialogue is missing a space after a question mark at one point.

By the way, who's the third recruitable character? Chac is obviously one, but I haven't seen anything that points to another.

Edit: Tezkhra's dialogue has a backslash in it, too. Also, I can't seem to continue in the Chac sidequest; I believe I'm supposed to talk to Rami, but he's just spouting his normal dialogue.

Edit 2: Post-next-mission-dialogue; Sorenson says "me" instead of "mean" at one point.

Edit 3: Question I just thought of: does using higher-level properties and types have any effect on Extensions? (I haven't found any recently, either -- are they only in Splice 0?)
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Thanks for finding all the dialog glitches. It's hard to test for every possible dialog permutation when it's not out in the wild.

Check your Typelog entries; you might stumble upon a clue for the third party member. (It won't open up until a decent way through the episode though).

What part of the sidequest are you on? If you've gotten the materials, try talking to Mahk first.

Not for resistance ones, nope. You can use the crappy ones for that. Although, adding minor bonuses in addition to the resistance could be a neat gimmick; I'll have to think about that. Higher level properties and types are more common in Splice 1 and 2, which you have to pay to unlock. They should also drop in story missions, but splice maps are your best bet for farming.
Materials...? Do you mean getting Rank 3 and the Still Alive merit? After that, I talked to Sorenson like the quest told me, who then said to talk to Rami. However, he doesn't say anything new.

Edit: Examining the left computer in the weapons lab turns makes all other text itallic until another object is examined. Guess you forgot to turn a switch off or something.

By the way, no offense, but the game doesn't seem to have been tested very thoroughly... Should I beta test the next episode? I don't usually volunteer for such a thing since I prefer to play through games instead of analyzing them for bugs, but I'll catch the obvious ones at least.
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
I'm looking through the sidequest now. For some reason, the event handling just ain't there now, even though I specifically remember creating the "materials list" item and putting it into the player's inventory. I also know I played through this one in testing and it worked at some point. I'll see if I can recover it from a backup and get a working version out for you. Also, I hate my life.

I'd appreciate all the help I can get. I work full-time so I get maybe an hour a day max to work on it, and I conned myself into going for a faster release schedule since I decided to split it into episodes.

(Late nite edit) Fix in place! Life status: still rueful.
Gibmaker
I hate RPG Maker because of what it has done to me
9274
Do not hate your life. Your skills are awesome.
^ What he said.

Finally recruited Chac, yay! His recruitment scene was very heartwarming. I'm replacing Mahk with him since Mahk is way too much of a Glass Cannon for my liking. Also because Chac's stats are awesome.

I found bugs, though: During Chac's dialogue, if you say "{The colours} should have been standardized", the response to "I prefer the grays" pops up midway through, complete with additional PT. Is this intentional? Also, since I had to do a bunch of random maps and got him late, he's rank 4, which means he missed out on his first stat bonus. Again, is this intentional? If not, there should really be a way to gain stat bonuses for party members that join at high levels.

I am still clueless as to the third party member, though. Is it Legarto? That's the only thing I thought the TypeLog articles could be pointing to... (I did find out that Chac's wife was part of the Mixcoatl crew and that "The Futility of Ubiquity" was written by Chac, though. Ouch. Poor guy.)

(Speaking of, though, that raises an odd question: Why do females still adopt their husbands' surnames? If anything, society will move away from sexism in the future, not towards, and that rule isn't even ubiquitous across Earth.)

Edit: Oh, and to clarify a point I made way back about defense values; I meant for enemies, not allies. Unless you meant you were planning to make them scroll when you selected a scanned enemy or something...?

Also, this is a pretty minor point, but since you're keen on gameplay and story integration, I was wondering how you would try to justify how characters don't die even when their health drops to zero? It kind of stands out, since it's pretty much the only thing you don't address. In The Reconstruction, one could just say they were being knocked unconscious, like in most other RPGs, but how exactly does one survive in the void of space after their ship's hull has been disintegrated? Or if they've been blasted by an electrical beam directly or however Pilot damage works? (How does it work, by the way? It's kind of hard to picture anything other than a Pulse or Luminous weapon directly targeting the pilot without going through the rest of the craft. Plus, if there's a way to bypass all of a craft's defenses and kill the squishy pilot, wouldn't everyone use that since it'd be so much quicker?)

Edit 2: Okay, this is really weird. I've done tons of random maps, but I haven't found an Extension shell since episode zero. I really hope I'm not bugged out of ever getting them...
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Thanks for sticking with it! I was afraid I'd scared you off.

Chac is indeed awesome. As for the dialog choice, sometimes they do overlap (I didn't think anyone would play through more than once to notice though, whoops). Not too often, mind you, but if I'm watching a particularly engaging episode of 30 Rock at the time then I might copy/paste and move on. I'll definitely tweak them when I go through and hunt down these dialog errors (they're hard to find since the guide arrows and preview box only work for the default text window size).

Don't worry about missing a minor stat boost; his starting stats compensate for his "experience."

You should have gotten a Typelog message with a distress call and some coordinates. Although if that's bugged and didn't show up then I will probably kill myself.

A valid question, assuming space marriages are even a thing. Or maybe some old habits die hard.

Nah, enemy stats are up to the player to keep track of. When you highlight one after selecting a weapon, it tells you the estimated damage, so you can always go off that.

I think it's mentioned somewhere that the ships are self-preserving first and foremost, so when one of the health values (or the pilot's status) reaches "critical" levels, it takes over and aborts the engagement. Part of the setting is how sheltered from death the whole of civilization is. The fancy explosions are just a stylistic choice.

Pilot damage can be from causing discomfort to targeting life support systems specifically. Use your imagination! (Mostly though it was the best analogue for "Soul" that I could think of.)

Extensions are pretty rare, but they should be out there. Higher-level Splices will be more fruitful. I think they're buyable starting in Episode 2 too, but that doesn't help you just yet.
Don't worry about missing a minor stat boost; his starting stats compensate for his "experience."


True, but what about other characters that don't have awesome starting stats, or ones that join late in the game, therefore missing multiple stat boosts? Do you have a contingency in mind for those situations?

You should have gotten a Typelog message with a distress call and some coordinates.


Ah, yeah, I didn't get that. Don't kill yourself though, I'm sure it'll be simple to fix! D:

I think it's mentioned somewhere that the ships are self-preserving first and foremost, so when one of the health values (or the pilot's status) reaches "critical" levels, it takes over and aborts the engagement. Part of the setting is how sheltered from death the whole of civilization is. The fancy explosions are just a stylistic choice.


Ooh, interesting. Maybe it was mentioned offhand in episode zero, I don't remember. Thanks for the clarification.

Ah, forgot about life support, that would make sense. Wouldn't that be part of the ship's systems, though?
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Catch-up shouldn't be a problem, since everyone gets Valor for every mission and it's skewed so characters with lower ranks get more. Future characters will mostly start at rank 1 anyway since they're technically new additions to the crew.

And I'll be god damned. I got bit by the "arrays start counting at 0, not 1, dumbass" bug. Here's the contents of that message since it's short anyway.

AUTOMATED DISTRESS BROADCAST
Origin:
Splice 2
Superspace 06
Subspace 49
Point 53

---CRAFT INCAPACITATED---PILOT STATUS: STABLE---


I guess that means another update tonight!

Technically it should be the systems, but I was considering the ends over the means with regard to attacks (like overloading the sensors to tax the ship's processing abilities, and similarly breaking the power lines to the air conditioner or something).
Catch-up shouldn't be a problem, since everyone gets Valor for every mission and it's skewed so characters with lower ranks get more. Future characters will mostly start at rank 1 anyway since they're technically new additions to the crew.

Hm. Shouldn't everyone start at rank 1, then? Might be a bit annoying, but if they can catch up fast like you say, it shouldn't be a problem. I notice Luke starts at rank 1.

Speaking of which, Luke kind of sucks. His offensive stats balance out to zero, and his only above-average defensive stat is Pilot. (Also, I noticed that he is not only proficient in C weapons, but unskilled in A weapons, which is very interesting for a SOL. Hm.) Is there a specific battle role for him or is he intentionally weaker than the other characters? It would fit him, I guess.

Anyway, yay, thanks for the help. I will eagerly await episode 2! :)

By the way, something I noticed: So far I'm already getting quality 5 items from splice 2, and it's only episode one! That means we'll start getting maximum level components by episode four at the latest, yet you say IMTS is planned to be ten episodes long! Will we hit the "level cap" for weapons, so to speak, by the mid game, or do you have something else planned to fix the balancing issue?
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Luke was put in as a favor; he's a character from my friend's book-in-progress, so, yeah, I probably didn't have a grand plan for his stats. I did that a couple times in TR too. And the C-type weapon is an interesting quirk, indeed!

He might get better, though; starting in Episode 2, you'll be able to do sidequests to improve your characters' permanent weapons when they reach certain trust milestones.

I was afraid you'd notice that. I'm actually only going to do 5 episodes in all; I had planned for ten initially but I decided to cut out a lot of filler stuff and also I shudder to think that I'll still be working on this thing when I'm 30. Plus I've already got ideas for the sequel proper and I tend to distract myself by scrawling out design notes for that.

Also, the fact that you grind enough to find a decent number of 5-quality items kind of means you earned them, to me.

Thanks again for all the input and bug hunting! I'm sure I won't let you down in Episode 2!