Rescue Reidman IV

It's time for a huge update! A really MASSIVE one!!! Maybe even bigger than the update I made after the 8 year gap! I've added lots of new things and polished over most of everything currently accessible. This is the first update I'd say that feels "complete", so much so that I debated switching over the project status to reflect that (wouldn't that be something after all this time) but there's still a bit more in my roadmap to go for bare minimum completion so I suppose I can't really do that yet. This is definitely the best version of the game by far though and the first time where instead of me saying you should probably hold off until it's done I'll go ahead and say you can check it out now for sure.

If you're reading this and not sure what this game is then I'll try to sum it up briefly in this paragraph. It's a very difficult "open world" jrpg about an american website called starmen.net that I started working on over 20ish years ago made on a heavily modified version of an old rm2k engine. Open world is in quotes because it's not like skyrim or anything but I just mean there's a lot of different areas that you can explore. All the locations are connected organically (so no sprawling world map with tiny sprites sorry) and you can fast travel via gate crystals.

Not surprising but after so long there's definitely a lot more content at this point, most of my recent playthroughs have taken about 10-12ish hours to beat the "final boss" at the gift tower (not counting hardmode which I still haven't beat)
I'll start off listing some of the major new features of this update (Terra was in the last update but I'm including her here anyway)


NEW CHARACTERS - To use any of these new characters enter their secret code on the character select screen! All of the new characters have their own dialogue (I spent a bit going over their own game's dialogue before making any lines) and unique battle skill!


Terra is Godeg's alt and she also is a heavy magic user! Her special ability is Trance. Getting hit a few times in battle as Terra will allow use of Trance, which turns her into an esper and allows her to withstand mortal blows a lot easier! The more you get hit before using it the longer it will last, even through multiple battles! If she's at least level 5 then she also gets upgraded versions of spells that cost 0 mp to use!


Zero is Skulryk's alt and also favors swords. His special ability allows him to hide himself and then come out fully repaired at the start of the next turn! Hiding will prevent Zero from acting for a turn and won't actually prevent Zero from being attacked, but a successful repair will recover all of Zero's HP as well as clear any status conditions. Time it just right to avoid gameovers!


Daisy is Dragondyne's alt and shares his high attack power and tendency to speak bluntly. Her special ability is Cry, where she cries very loudly and will lower every enemy's DF stat! This special ability is comparatively much weaker than the other alts, but you're picking Daisy because you want to pick Daisy!

Moldyspore and Matrix don't have alts at the moment... but I have some ideas in mind.

You can also activate a new HARDMODE by entering 8008, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you've played this a lot before. It's mainly a mode I made for myself to have fun with so it's insanely difficult. Everything is a huge threat and a lot of enemies have additional moves or entirely new movesets.



Ability Training Center
There's now something called an Ability Training Center. The entrance is on a path to the right once you exit Starmen.net. Use the ability training center to learn special abilities that range from a passive MP boost to being able to hop over shop counters!


Monster Part Lab
Use this place to make use of all the monster parts you find. Here you can turn them into items, skills, clone them or even upgrade them into gold parts allowing you to fight extremely hard versions of enemies. You'll find all sorts of rewards in this place!


Silver Saucer
I've added a lot more stuff to the Silver Saucer, accessible via the giant springboard outside Starmen.net. In addition to minigames, a casino, a bank, and a lot more, now you can also find

Mach Pizza grand opening
Use the pizza oven here to bake pizzas that heal the entire party! Be sure to stop by for a free sample.

The Battle Arena
Finally the place that NPCs would vaguely talk about but never actually existed... now exists!
Fight consecutive battles in the arena to rack up BP and exchange for prizes! It gets exponentially harder but you can leave at anytime to keep the BP and there's no minimum level to enter.

In addition to all that stuff I also touched up a few other things too such as Brickroad's dungeon having checkpoints now and the Arcade now has two new minigames (Snowboard Dudes 2 and the DDR machine whenever it's not being used)


Tomato Help Line
If you need a recap on any game mechanics or just need to know where you're going then select "Hint" from the menu and call up Tomato who can help you out with any important questions.


Other new stuff
Certain dungeons have been heavily revamped/improved. The entirety of the Gift Tower (including blocks two and three) is now available and clearing it is now the "main goal" of this version of the game. The 2nd floor of the sea dungeon has also been completely revamped.

I've added new events and things everywhere too many to list in this update at the moment but I'll list a few down below:
*the battle system now tells you when you take magic damage vs physical
*the battle system now tells you when a status effect was avoided by chance
*added more movesets to everyone you can recruit, now everyone (including the hero) should learn something new every 5 levels (up to lvl 30)
*you can now upgrade your helpers at the new Ability Training Center if they have enough friendship points (and in some rare cases there are other pre-requisites)
*you can now steal two things at once in battles, set what you steal beforehand under Options
*you can now easily tell what forum you're currently in
*while exchanging points through the codec you can now easily preview all other forums by using the arrows at the top
*once you reach level 10 you can upgrade each forum individually from level 1 to level 2 by finding where it's physically located and talking to the mod to do the assigned task
*Tomato (and sometimes others) will sometimes call you while you're outside Starmen.net in regards to new events or features
*a lot of extremely old content I made that no longer fits in the game or is just too hard or confusing can now be accessed via random arcade machines throughout the game. I polished it all up a very tiny bit so it doesn't crash or cause issues but it's all mostly exactly how it was 20 years ago
*made sure to update a lot of the older content that was still accessible but not mechanically current (such as Gauntlet eating lunch)
*added a tiny bit more story to the last part of the introduction
*new enemies/maps/items/sidequests/superbosses/mechanics/lots more


Known bugs
As much as I try very very hard to catch and fix most gamebreaking bugs there's always at least one that will get by and I'll have to upload a patch for, so please save often and in multiple files if possible. I apologize in advance! I'll now list all of the current known bugs/detractions in this version that I either can't fix because it's too difficult or I just don't know how.

(in order of greatest importance/impact first)
-if you get into a battle too quickly after entering a new map or exiting the menu (as in under a second) then your weapon skills and/or steal skills may be temporarily missing
-the inventory/part system can become a mess of too many items, not sure how to fix this without having to dedicate several months to rearranging stuff in the database
-sometimes the helper visibly lags behind or gets lost (has no effect on gameplay)
-rarely the hero will be invisible when coming out of the menu or at other times, access the menu again to fix
-often need to hit ESC twice for some reason to access the menu
-Zero's sprite doesn't display in place of Skulryk's sprite in the Weapon GUI
-very rarely some NPCs may not activate when you press enter while facing them. Pressing the direction they're in then pressing enter again will usually fix the issue
-Scan doesn't work well with multiple enemies, the entry format isn't consistent yet, and sometimes it will say something has been added to a "database" that doesn't exist
-the very first battle in the game gives no FP
-status dodge message appears even if the person dodging it already has the ailment anyway


If the game is too difficult then check out some quick tips below:

*Enemies hitting too hard? Try to get damage mitigation such as AT Down and Protect (both from the SSBM forum which is the one you start in). Also there's a lot of different areas so if you're having too much trouble with one area then just try looking around a different place.

*Never have enough money? The VIP card perk from the SGPC forum will save you a ton of money and the interest from the VIP bank membership can give you rewards of up to thousands of $$$. Even without the VIP card just having a gold bank account is enough to get lots of money. Try to always keep a decent deposit amount so you can get more interest, depositing some of the bonus money you get from the loyalty rewards can be a good start. You can also sell some of the many items you'll be finding to the weapons shop at Waffy's House over in Winters.

*Two forum perks that you may want to get sooner than others are the FP+1 perk from PK Hack (for obvious reasons) as well as the first KO survival perk from Tomato's Insanity which can save you from a lot of surprise gameovers. Also I hate to say this but the Weapons+ perk from SSBM isn't balanced too well and if you have max level tier 2 weapons it can instantly give you a serious increase in power that can basically pop you right above Gift Tower level (but still before the current superbosses/gold enemies). I'll probably need to nerf it or gate it somehow but until then feel free to take advantage of it if you want.

*A powerful ally can make things a lot easier. Two particularly powerful people you can recruit right at the start at Starmen.net are Jonk (punches really hard and can meditate his MP back) and Kyosuke (starts with a move that can 1hit a lot of early enemies). A lot of people at golbez's house have unique skillsets that include making recovery items mid-battle.

*You can always try easy mode by entering 0777 at the character select screen. It reduces enemy stats and incoming damage a little bit as well as gives you a base 50% chance to survive any fatal hit. You will have a permanent baby NPC on the menu screen though.



One last thing to note- the engine this game was made with is ancient by this point and unfortunately has no options to resize the window and fullscreen stretches it out to hideous proportions. I find the best way to play this game is immediately exiting fullscreen (with alt+enter) and changing your own screen resolution to somewhere around 1280x800, then the game window isn't so tiny. Hope that helps a bit.

Thanks for reading!
I'll try to add more info to this post as I remember stuff I wanted to say but forgot. I'll also make a new post eventually with what I'm currently working on + a basic roadmap. I hope everyone has fun with the game! I spent a lot of time on it