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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

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
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.
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
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.
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
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!
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
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...?
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
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!
I've been playing episode 0 for a while. So far, it looks great -- I really like the ability to have optional chats with party members and whatnot, it really humanizes them. I also like the little TypeLog articles. I'm a big fan of little details and worldbuilding, as you can no doubt tell. :p I was also shocked at Mahk's introduction and the description of the Sikholon. I suspect that the entire Sikholon force is going to be destroyed, leaving Mahk the only survivor and horribly traumatized, provoking his extreme change into the Mahk of The Reconstruction. (By the way, Mahk is listed as "slightly conservative"? o_O He's bitter and passive-aggressive and haughty!)

Anyway, bugs: Game looks solid, I only found a minor graphical glitch in the Ring 2 storage room. One of the refrigerator-like things is right next to another refrigerator-like thing, and you can walk one tile into it. I guess you missed a blocker or something. Oh, and after the first mission, the info box says that the "After the End: A Powerplay" article is added to your TypeLog, but it's there from the beginning.

Also, not so much an error as a minor nitpick, but it seems like you can't go under some objects that you normally can in RPGs, like the desks, chairs, etc. It feels really awkward to see what looks like a good full tile of space that I can't walk over. It also makes some passages kind of restrictive. I noticed you did a similar thing in The Reconstruction (especially with trees, which was very jarring due to their height), but seemed to allow it later on in the game.

One more thing: though I have not found any typos, I did notice a major pet peeve of mine: species names (i.e. "Lacertian" and "Human") should not be capitalized. (Same deal with The Reconstruction, really, don't know why I didn't point it out then. Guess I'm more used to it in a fantasy setting...) I'm assuming you actually know this, though, since I notice you capitalize "human" as well, which makes it much more tolerable.

Anyway, going to do some weapon crafting now, I'll make another post if I find anything.

P.S. Just wondering if I should be extremely obsessive about Personal Trust or not -- do you need to do every dialog interaction perfectly to get it to max, or are they not a limited resource/do you have some wiggle room? As an obsessive 100% completist, things that can be lost forever make me really nervous.

Edit: Oh yeah, unlike TR, it doesn't lag to unplayability on my laptop, which is good. It takes a very long time to complete weapon crafting, though you probably already know that and don't know how to improve it.
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Hey stranger! I've watched Yahtzee every week since he did Psychonauts (which I subsequently bought because of the review). I have watched a few Extra Credits but that voice drives me bonkers.

Hope you like it (and really hope you find another dozen or so bugs for me to fix)!
Yay! I will probably play this later today with great anticipation. I loved The Reconstruction and I'm sure this will be even better. I kind of liked the small numbers and lack of misses/criticals, but I'm sure this'll still be great. (I'm Fool from the RRR forums by the way.)

Oh, and with a name like "I Miss The Sunrise", I am already guessing that the story is going to be very sad and depressing. I will have to wait and see...

P.S. Like the new site renovation, I'm reading all of you articles. By the way, have you heard of Zero Punctuation and Extra Credits? The former is a series of reviews of games and the latter are a group of professional game developers discussing ideas and current events relating to gaming, though Zero Punctuation does a lot of that as well. I would highly recommend watching both.
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Thanks for the feedback! Since the input handling speed seems to be such a common issue, I'll probably implement a way to let the player manually adjust the sensitivity.
This is one of the most unique and promising VX projects out there. The futuristic atmosphere is fantastic, thanks to the detailed original graphics and original music. Intentionally or not, it's similar to Mass Effect (this is a good thing). And the gameplay is great, too, though the info that the (visually awesome) interfaces tend to throw at you can be a little overwhelming at first. There are a lot of cool features and mechanics in this game, and they're mostly well-implemented.

As a small complaint, I wish the sensitivity of menu navigation in battles was toned down; I was a little annoyed when it made me occasionally pick the wrong option. Anyway, please keep up the excellent work.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
You're welcome - I certainly don't mind having innovative RM* games around (well, if you don't count this as The Reconstruction with more spaceships)!

Sorry I yawned so much. :<

EDIT: Regarding the text, I think a lot of it being intimidating/confusing is fine, but there's a lot of dialogue. Notice how my first video is twenty-five minutes and the player hasn't done anything but walk around yet! I knew it was going to be interesting and fun so I persevered, but a player totally new to one of your games is going to be put off, most likely. (Even a Bioware-style "just get to the important part" dialogue option works.)

My biggest complaint about the wordiness is the battle tutorial. Put all of that in the tutorial logs - give the player a much briefer description. I think during the first or second battle I summarized it in, like, two or three sentences. I only understood because I played TR!
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
I watched the whole thing; thanks for sharing it!

Thanks for taking the time to point out those issues. Both of my test computers are kind of old, so I didn't think to compensate for the menus being out of control. I will boost the delay time between key reads for those.

I didn't think the nose shading was that noticeable. Must be my monitor. Also, I've added signs over all the doors on the ship in the next episode so you won't get lost as easily (I hope).

You also managed to stumble upon the "Set Fleets" prototype screen which I was positive I had buried. I must have re-enabled it at some point. Oh well.

I went with permille over percents so I didn't have to deal with floating point math (plus I like big numbers and esotericness). I'd hoped it would have been obvious that everything was out of 1000. I'll explain that better to new players for sure (it's kind of deeply engrained in the battle system as it is and I don't want to risk screwing it up).

I'll cut back on the words in places too. I'm a wordy guy. I went overboard with the technobabble mostly to set a mood and instill confusion (see: all the purple prose in The Reconstruction).

Sorenson is just a name I picked; Sikohlon is probably what you were thinking and they had a very big part in the last game. It was very long and very wordy so I don't blame you for not finishing (though I have had my share of folks who've emailed me and liked how the story played out). Spoiling yourself on the TV Tropes page might help with the connections a bit.

I like the idea about not advancing out of the green zone during a rush, and I will be implementing that for sure.

I will also tone down the first boss quite a bit (though I laughed my ass off when you missed the killing hit on around turn 16 or so). Spreading the secondary weapons would have helped, of course.

As for skipping the dotted line in the menu, something used to be there and I took it out but left the dots in as a divider and didn't even think about it. I'll fix that too. The other minor UI stuff I'll consider but will probably forget about.

Thanks again for the nitpickiness and I'm glad you enjoyed it otherwise!

(P.S. I never got to play Mass Effect since I'm a PS3 owner, so my first experience will be in a couple of weeks).
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/7477/?p=1#posts

I Let's Tried this game - watch the videos to get a fresh player's reactions blow by blow.

I am pleased. =D
i miss the sunrise too. :(

Loved the game!