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This is a game 20 years in the making it's practically done now so please check it out!

Why have I been working on this for so long and what am I even doing? As I get better at designing and working with the (very old at this point) rm2k engine I learn more things and revamp older stuff to match the quality of my new stuff and it's a never ending cycle of coding/playtesting/and polishing. I do countless hours of playtesting though and it's actual gameplay from the EXE file so no dev cheats or skips (aside from the forum tutorial skip I made for myself) because if I don't want to play through everything myself why would I honestly expect anyone else to?

The game uses a specialized version of the default battle system. Basically it's the shell of the default battle system but everything is done via scripts through common events, this includes the algorithms and all that. The main benefit imo is that battle animations can play when you're attacked instead of just a slight screen shake and a damage message.

Status and what's left
The game has a beginning, middle, and ending at this point but it's still not complete. Right now the game ends when you clear the Gift Tower however you can choose to keep going and there is a lot of optional post game content. Future plans will include two more story dungeons before the game is complete and lots more side stuff like magic forests, a scary ghost ship, weird areas at starmen.net, and lots more!


I've usually been a bit passive about people checking the game out due to it's unfinished status but as of the latest update it's finally "complete" to where I definitely want people to play it now. It's designed to be played through multiple times so you can view future updates as like free DLC or something. I hope people enjoy what I've spent so long working on!

Latest Blog

the biggest update in 20 years!!!

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
4671
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
0000
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
9562
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

Posts

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masterofmayhem
I can defiantly see where you’re coming from
2610
Has this been completed, or is it still in development?
author=masterofmayhem
Has this been completed, or is it still in development?


It's got a ways to go unfortunately
Holy shit, internet timewarp. I remember playing the others when they came out.
Despite being extremely incomplete, it still looks pretty good so far. I've been testing it for a few days now when I get the time. A couple of things, though:

On the menu screen, when you choose "Options" and then choose "Nevermind", a message appears that says "GRAPHIC MAKING SWITCH, THIS SHOULD NOT BE VISIBLE. CONTACT GOLBEZ IF YOU SEE THIS.", so I figured I would let you know.

In SM.net, I have no idea what the forum hint guy means by "dancing" when talking about Xod's Mystic Bakery. Is this forum implemented, or incomplete?

Also, it says that you will get something cool if you master the Steel Knuckles, but they're grade L0 on the equip screen, and they don't gain any exp. Is this a bug, or have you just not finished coding this one? Just wondering.

If anything else comes up I'll try to remember to post it.
Thanks for checking it out! In regards to the graphic making switch, that's been removed now so thanks for pointing that out.

About the dancing thing, it's really a shitty way to open the door to xod's bakery and is so obscure I've been meaning to take it out for awhile but never could come up with another good hiding place. Basically just do a figure eight around the ferns in the middle of the room a few times, you'll know if you're doing it right.

Steel Knuckles is technically a grade 2 weapon, but all grade 2 glove weapons aren't implemented yet. You can only find up to grade 2 of any weapon so far and the gloves are the only grade 2 weapons that haven't been coded in yet so you shouldn't run into that problem too much.
Cool, thanks for clearing that up. After joining all the regular forums I found the Happy Note, but I'm not quite sure what it is. It seems like a number of spaces you have to walk from somewhere, but I have no idea where to start.

Oh yeah, just wondering, as far as those stairways, ladders, ropes, etc. around SM.net's entrance go, are those unfinished areas, or do you just have to fulfill some requirements to gain access? The same question applies to the fort to the southeast.

I also noticed that I can't get advice from or sell weapons to MogOfGlory as Dragondyne. I don't know if you just hadn't worked on that yet, or if it was a bug, so I figured I would go ahead and mention it, just in case.

Also, I can't believe I forgot to comment on how strange this game is. This is a bit of a strong point in my opinion, as lately I had been wanting to play a weird RPG generally filled with random whackiness, and I stumbled upon this. Just as an example, Mr. Spoon's little 80s synthpopesque video thing, although lame, was just bizarre enough to be funny. And that trippy little montage that wizmo induces was another "WTF, lol" moment. Hopefully there will be even stranger parts ahead. Anyway, I hope you can get at least a couple more areas in this game finished soon, so good luck on this, RPG Party, and anything else you may be working on.
Sorry for the late reply:

Happy note is some super secret way to gain access to the hidden forum. The embarrassing part about this is that it's so super secret and the way there is hidden across multiple events in the game that I've completely forgotten how to access it or what the Happy Note is even for. In fact I have no idea where to even find the note anymore, if you can message me where you found that thing that would be cool.

All the ladders around SM.net are for show at the moment, but I have plans to change the layout of the outside of it to make it a bit larger so you'll be able to run around outside the castle and whatnot.

Sorry about the MogOfGlory bug, I just noticed what you were talking about and it was something blindingly simple like forgetting a switch. It only affects Dragondyne at the moment, so sorry about that :(
Just an FYI, but your dl is down do to MegaUpload's demise. You might want to upload to a new site, though from your blog it seems you were planning a drastic update and may not wish to re-upload until it's done.
i should prolly mention in my related blog post that the latest download isn't just the same download from two years ago. i've actually done some work on it since then (SURPRISE) although to be honest it's mostly QoL improvements and tweaking but there's a whole damn lot of it at least.

the demo you'll find on the download page is most definitely the latest version you can get as of june 20th 2014 now to just wait until somebody finds a gamebreaking bug in the first two minutes and i'll reupload another one tomorrow
Awesome! I was starting to worry that you might have given up on it. It's great to hear from you again and to see that you're still at it. Well, it seems that a few files are missing, since right at the beginning, when Reidman looks outside, it immediately shuts down with the error message "Cannot open file don_collection_2". Also, it has all 15 files saved in various places with various characters, and they either cannot open "don_collection_2", "blue", or "red_future". Good luck with this, and I will try it again on the next upload!
author=golbez
now to just wait until somebody finds a gamebreaking bug in the first two minutes and i'll reupload another one tomorrow


haha totally called it. sorry about that, i'll fix it ASAP
okay i got it all fixed now! i just moved all the rtp files into the game folder which i should've done a long ass time ago, it's not like a whopping 5mb is going to make a difference at this point
Well, now a few music files seem to be missing. Most notably, the "Forest Maze" theme from Super Mario RPG no longer plays at the beginning, and neither does that song that plays when the protagonist is first selected and crashes the car into the tree. Neither of the 4 songs that Skulryk plays will play, either. Also, it seems that in the window skins, only half of the files are there, as the skins "blue", "bubbles", "ff2", "ff3", "lightbluesystem", "lufia2", "mint", "red_future", "purple", "ogre_battle", "lines", and "incomsys" all crash the game with their respective "Cannot open file" messages.

Also, when you choose "Options" and then "Nevermind", the message about the graphic switch and to contact you if one saw it is still there. :P
gah well this is embarrassing. the music issue i think is probably related to the modified disharmony.dll

i'll get it sorted and see if i can test it on an external machine (since this all works fine on mine) so that people don't have to be rm2k guinea pig. sorry about all that!
OKAY sorry x2 for all the issues but I tested it out on a PC that had NEVER RUN RM2K before and now it runs! you don't even rtp! it plays music! it dances! the only issue is that yet again I forgot to remove all my testing save files but that's low priority so i'll leave the download up while I go in and reupload it in a sec.

THE ONLY KNOW PROB: for whatever reason some of the mp3s sound kinda shit, like 90s flash game shit real muffled or whatever. it's not vomit inducing but it is noticeable and I have no idea how to fix it since it only effects SOME mp3s but not others and i've tried every single conversion method known to man to no avail so maybe another day
oh and i keep forgetting about that graphic switch lmao i dont even know why that's there
No problem! I'm glad to be able to help sort things out.

Well, further tests show that getting a Game Over crashes the game, saying it cannot open "Map1256.lmu".

And Gauntlet in the Ninja Forum has an option to buy stuff from him, but he doesn't say anything afterwards. And it seems that Dragondyne still can't sell weapons to or get advice from MogofGlory.

Also, I noticed that the encounter rate is much higher than before, like "every few steps" higher. I was just wondering if that was intentional.

Lastly so far, I distinctly remember getting to that barrel in the bar in SM.net before, and getting the "Super Scissors" from it, but it disappears as soon as I gain control of a character that can recruit Jonk to get him out of the way. Whatever happened to that thing?

author=Proffessor_Buglean
Also, I noticed that the encounter rate is much higher than before, like "every few steps" higher.


Really? I think I had the opposite problem. It took forever to trigger battles in some areas. That's strange.

Anyway golbez, I forgot to mention how nostalgic this game makes me. So many sm.netters that I completely forgot about, too. You can definitely see that there's a lot of love put into this game, it's pretty inspiring in a way.
Man how is it that you're still on this? it certainly looks good. Are you working on it again now?.
author=NNOIZZ
Man how is it that you're still on this? it certainly looks good. Are you working on it again now?.


yeah i stopped working on it for a few years (oops) but the past year and a half i've worked on it almost everyday. it's still p fun and i enjoy working on it so i figure why not!! i'll finish it eventually lol
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