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Announcement

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
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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
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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
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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

Progress Report

PATCH 0.111622

hi, i've updated the game! i'm extremely sorry about all the bugs thank you proffessor_buglean for reporting a few of these and everyone else who played! if you're updating the game from an old patch all you have to do is move your save files (the .lsd files in the main folder) from your old version to the main folder of the new version you extract, then you can delete the old version.


PATCH 0.111622

added/changed-
*after beating the demo and receiving the BETA KEY you can now toggle between level 1 and level 2 forums via OPTIONS in the menu
*updated chest contents in the ghost ship and made them compatible with new banking mechanics
*changed smnet bookstore (added scan book, temporarily increased runes on other books until they are balanced appropriately)
*updated silver saucer prizes and a few of the random events
*updated a few of the dragon badge prizes
*implemented teddy bears
*live chickens in your inventory will now (loudly) sacrifice themselves if you take mortal damage while wearing a chicken shield (might eventually cap this at 1 chicken per battle actually so in the event you accidentally run into something too powerful you wont lose all your chickens as they all run up single file to sacrifice themselves for no reason)
*added bees in the gift tower
*a lot of misc stuff i forgot to document


fixed-
**vastly improved audio quality for most audio tracks by reverting to the old harmony.dll and reverting most audio files back to raw .wav format (quality still isn't the best to conserve space but a lot better than before) file size of the game has increased by a bit but i guess it no longer matters in year 2022
*fixed weapons completely ruining stats upon reaching certain levels
*fixed a bug where you would get perpetually haunted in the ghost ship
*fixed broken switches for 2 dragon badges
*fixed a bug that incorrectly altered battle sounds when entering the hell cave
*fixed bug where certain people would not leave after disbanding the party
*fixed bug where certain people got recruited incorrectly
*fixed forum skill items that did not teach the appropriate skill correctly
*did my best to fix a bug where you can't recover the last bit of your HP/MP outside of battle when equipping gear that boosts your max HP/MP (the gap where you can't recover should now be much lower and will only appear if you equip 3 or more gears that raise your max HP or MP at a time)
*did my best to fix an extremely rare but awful bug that crashes the game sometimes when accessing the menu (should now be even more rare but who knows because i still can't reproduce it)
*a lot more misc stuff that wasn't documented


known but not fixed yet-
*as of right now tier 2+ weapons cannot gain levels or be viewed on the WEAPONS menu option, though you can still equip them and use them normally in battle and they also still allow you to use their innate weapon skills
*sometimes the screen tint may be incorrect or too distracting, going to the menu will fix any screen tint issues
*monster parts obtained from places only accessable via BETA KEY do not list any WXP amounts in the item description and don't give any when used
*if you get too much interest in your bank account before redeeming your loyalty rewards then you will receive them in the wrong order when you do eventually go to redeem them
*third party member is not visible outside your party (who knows when this will be implemented)
*there is sometimes an added sprite (of xodnizel) that appears next to who your weapon is equipped to on the weapon info screen
*at fobby racing the hero character becomes invisible as soon as the race starts for some reason, they become visible again when the race is over
*round 3 of the shooting game has no audio track
*brick road's dungeon sometimes gives incorrect GP after winning and there should also probably be checkpoints added
*despite what luna says you dont actually need to scan the enemies to fight them in the bestiary as long as you have a monster part
*the doom status ailment doesn't count down from 4 when cast by a lesser imp
*skatterbug's fast hit "gimmick" is slightly disrupted by the dodge mechanic
*probably more


known and fixed with a downloadable separate patch-
*the devil wand will ruin your DF stat when it reaches level 2
*when purchasing then using AT Down from the SSBM forum you'll receive AT DownOLD instead, it functions the same but cost 2 more MP than it should


TODO list-
*implement tier 2+ weapons (*done!*)
*finish gift tower floor 11-30 (*currently working on this as well as dialogue revamps/additions*)
*finish more dungeons
*start/finish the buyable house (might possibly put a chicken farm there too)
*plot
*make the process of leveling weapons with WXP via parts less tedious
*come up with/implement more uses for monster parts
*implement sidequests to increase the levels of each individual forum (instead of leveling automatically with the BETA KEY)
*add mp requirements to the item descriptions of forum skills
*fix all the times i spelled "received" wrong
*do more silver saucer stuff (mach pizza, polish up brick road a bit)
*get the page for this game more up to date (remove outdated screens etc)
*maybe make it so you can steal anything at any point in battle as opposed to setting it before the battle (this involves very sloppily copy/pasting 16 pages on every battle unless i can figure out a better way)
*REVAMP SMNET!!! i finally have a really good idea for it that preserves the nostalgia but gives it a great new series of functions and mechanics that wont even take forever to implement
*obviously lots more!



i don't plan on making more than 1-3 more major content patches before the game is complete unless there are any more bugs that need immediate addressing but hopefully not! thanks everyone!


PS: if you're interested in the updates that were made from 8 years ago to the patch i uploaded about a month ago i'll do my best to document the major ones:

*revamped the gift tower 1-10
*added a few misc side quests from various NPCs
*made a lot more NPCs recruitable
*added unlockable third party member slot under certain conditions
*vastly improved the battle system and changed a few algorithms
*added a dodge mechanic to the battle system with an algorithm based on your agility
*there is a now a very small chance to survive KOs based on a hidden stat called guts
*revamped the entire status ailment system (you thaw if you're frozen and hit with fire moves, you wake up when hit if sleeping, etc etc)
*revamped the entire forum system, added extremely powerful forum perks that work as passive bonuses
*revamped the draw system and made it into the steal system that now activates on the same turn you use it on
*revamped a lot of skills to work on the same turn as opposed to delayed turns
*added a monster part system you can use to level up weapons and also fight monsters using the parts in the bestiary
*revamped the entire weapon leveling system
*finished the ice forest in winters and added connecting ice cave system
*added very difficult enemies to the upper floors of starmen.net
*added a late game ghost ship at the bottom of the sea floor
*changed the boss of newb plains
*added a bank in silver saucer that you can use to deposit money that will get interest and loyalty rewards
*made terra playable (i plan on adding secret alternates to all the heroes that can be unlocked)
*added lots of new treasure chests (some hidden by the forum perk)
*added icons to a lot of different items to help mitigate cluttered inventories
*rebalanced a lot of stuff to be more uhhh balanced
*lots more that weren't documented


Game Design

finishing a game after 20 years

What do you do when you've worked on something so much and for so long that it's completely lost relevancy? An rpgmaker fangame about a website that was at it's peak over 20 years ago made in an engine that's been made obsolete by more than 3 different iterations? A game so old that even the people it's based around don't know/forgot about it?

WELL, this post isn't meant to be a guilt trip or even a proposal to play it but more of a way to understand this project and it's goals. I'm completely OK with the fact that very few people will ever play this game from this point on because for one it's not done and two it has an extremely small demographic, essentially people who like extremely challenging oldschool jrpgs with lots of "f u" moments.

However, even that small demographic is even more diluted by filtering out people who are fans of that genre but have no idea who reidman is or what website it's even based off of. What do you when your life's project seems to be sorta confined in a narrative that most people are not going to understand or care about? Then for the people that do manage to check it out while having no knowledge of the game's subject (which really isn't needed) they have to get past the janky introductions that were made when I was like 15-20 years old. It's not a super long intro but it's certainly a few minutes until you get to your first battle and that really isn't enough to hold people's attention these days. I'm not saying that in an inherently negative way, but there's just a LOT more content now then there was even 10 years ago. You got myriads of free games you can download in an instant that have DAYS of content!

With all that said it's really not right to expect people to dedicate the small amounts of freetime we get these days towards checking out something that isn't even finished and full of bugs which made me realize how totally amazing it is what some people can do by themselves in terms of coding and art assets and really just everything involved in making a game. Rescue Reid 4 barely has any of it's own assets, it's all borrowed from my favorite games and content which is one of the main reasons this will never be on steam or sold for any amount of money-- but even without having to make my own assets after 20 years all I've got is an unfinished game with a demo that's about 4-5ish hours long (or umm 10ish hours depending on what you do) that is in desperate need of polish.

How do people do it? How do people get these giant finished games they make themselves with custom art assets and giant anime pictures alongside text boxes and they do it within months? How do you make something without having to redo all your mechanics because a dungeon you made 5 years ago no longer fits the intended gameplay balance? I'm not exasperated but just astonished at what people can accomplish now that I've tried my hand at it over a 20 year period and only have this game to show for it.

To make one gameplay system takes like weeks upon weeks in itself to get the mechanics planned out to CODE the ridiculous thing using rpgmaker 2ks by now extremely archaic coding system while using your own picture files and variables to move things around and people just... get that shit done? In a reasonable time? Like seriously how do you do it lol

However, none of this is meant to be negative or anything because I love working on this game and I like what I've done so far. I do feel like I finally have a target I can reach now after all these years p much everything about this game has now been outlined by me and I think I can really finish it soon. Once it's finally finished then I feel I can maybe start working on revamping a few things here and there and giving it that polish I really want to give it but can't justify since there's so much else about the game that is unfinished.

Anyway I just want to reiterate none of this is meant to be guilt trippy or enticing anyone to play my game or do anything that they don't want to do because time is precious. It's more of a vent on how frustratingly long and tedious game design can be. Thanks for reading and take care!

Miscellaneous

secrets

you can play as terra from ff6 in this demo normally you gota find the SECRET CODE but since you're here reading this.....
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