• Add Review
  • Subscribe
  • Nominate
  • Submit Media
  • RSS
The Curse of Cpt. Loveless is a nautical-themed cephalopod-pirate-based action shoot-em-up. Take on the role of the cursed former pirate captain Jeremy Loveless as he battles his way to the deepest depths of the deep in order to reclaim his soul, his human form and most importantly his precious hard-plundered booty!

Gameplay
tCoCL is a side-scrolling shoot/slash 'em up with elements of first/third person shooters such as the ability to carry/switch between multiple weapons, ammunition consumption and on-press slow motion (or "bullet time").

Production:
As it stands the game is currently a fully-functional engine including 7 different weapons, working ammo system, working bullet time, killable enemies and 100% custom, original graphics. The full extent of this game is yet to be decided but the working plan is that it will have a variety of levels, a wide array of different enemy types and bosses, a shop, level performance ranking and the possibility of additional game types - But all of this is currently still in planning.

Story:
Captain Jeremy Loveless, a pirate so reprehensible in his deeds that even his fellow pirate captains can't stand his company, is about to befall a tragic end.

Lovless' scurvy-ridden contemporaries have grown tired of his all-too-successful life of nautical crime, his conspicuous piratical conduct, his indiscriminate plundering, his disregard for the pirate code, his seemingly-supernatural good luck - and find themselves colluding for Loveless' timely demise at the hands of the merciless ocean. Superstitious as pirates are - they settle on a plot to have a curse be placed upon our jaunty protagonist so as to make his next voyage his last.

On the night of Loveless' final excursion everything goes exactly as planned. His vessel, the broken hourglass, departs from its dock at midnight and mere hours later is torn asunder by the winds and tides of the unforgiving deep. Captain Loveless goes down with his ship, his crew, and all of his precious hard-plundered booty - Never to be seen again. Or so his occult assailants assume.

Captain Loveless awakes to an endless blue-green darkness. Dazed, confused and reeling with a strange disembodied unease. Upon coming to his senses he comes to realize that he is somehow at the bottom of the ocean; breathing, conscious - not dead, at least somehow not quite. He gazes down at his body to assess any injury he may have sustained at the hands of the catastrophic shipwreck and discovers that he has befallen a fate worse than death...

He has turned into an octopus.

And all his booty is missing!

After waves of nausea and dissociation pass over his consciousness he determines that only a curse of the darkest magnitude could have found him in this predicament; transformed from a successful pirate Captain of the high seas to a lowly denizen of the murky deep. Taking up his hat, cutlass and pistol from the strewn detritus of his former vessel he embarks on a post-mortem quest toward the very depths of the deep to reclaim his soul, his human form and his precious doubloons from the only stinking nautical specter rotten enough to carry out a curse so aghast: The devil of the sea himself - Davy Jones.
------------


2nd Place
RPG-Atelier.net Project of the Month for December 2011.

Latest Blog

Tentacle-Related Action Available NOW!!

Hallor folks.

So as of a few minutes ago you can now download a demo of tCoCL for your ludic enjoyment. So please, do go ahead and download the demo and give it a whirl.

GET YOUR TENTACLE ACTION HERE.

A few notes about the demo:

* The demo consists of one level (the first) of the game.
* All relevant features are included in the demo (unless we add more later)
* Scoring is implemented, this means - We'd love to see screenshot of your score scrolls results!

So if you you manage to clear the level (kefka.wav) we'd love to see your results, preferably in screenshot form. So please post them up here on the game page if you play.

For the record we know that an S rank is totally possible so that's the rank to aim for it you consider yourself a true pirate.

Anyway, for the public demo we ended up including a few extra things (when compared to out closed testing version), one of which was facesets for the cutscene between the level boss and the player character. Now due to the fact that rm2k3 is limited to 256 colours per asset I thought I'd throw up a higher resolution/colour depth preview of that art here:



So yeah, play the game, post your screenshots of results. Please enjoy and leave any/all feedback you feel like. We've been working on this project for probably something like a year (not counting various hiatuses due to real life stuff) so we've love to hear what everyone thinks!

ENJOY!

Posts

Pages: first 12 next last
Newblack, some trivia for you.
Octopuses have no bones.
But the strongest bone in the human is the femur.
Source: Newblack
Ocean
Resident foodmonster
11991
I did not realize the download was up. OK, I shall give it a try when I can!
Yes, I had figured that the gun animation would be too common to make the recoil higher.
An equally good question why it would be so much better to just use RMXP instead?
What's the point of switching if you're already comfortable with rm2k3?

Also, the gun isn't powerful, hence only the small recoil. Bigger weapons have bigger recoil, as shown in the weapon roll trailer which you can find in our media tab.
Something that has been bothering me for a while..., why not just use RPGMAKER XP?
What makes 2003 and the other one so popular over XP?

And I'm not saying their is anything wrong with it.


Also, on a note related to the game, I'd like to see the gun recoil come back more to make it feel a little more powerful.
The full version have a shop of some kind, and probably ways of easier keeping track of the weapons you have yeah. It will also potentially be using a slightly different saving system than the current one. The fine details are yet to be decided there.

As for which title, our current conclusion is based on "whichever is cooler is the one you'll get" basis. I think pressing buttons to view several titles on the title screen could quickly feel clunky, but we might think of some alternative solution to it. Is also somewhat in the still to be decided in terms of fine details.

As for the rankings, the requirements for them will be based on a level to level basis and will most likely be very intimately linked with my performance on said stages. Harder levels should cut you some more slack, but S will still remain quite hard to get.
haha Of course, I would space out and not realize I can just press F12 >.>

About seeing the weapons, it saves everything from all the times you've played. So maybe I'll play a week later and not remember which weapons I have. While not a big deal, it would be good to have. Maybe later as you upgrade stuff it would be more useful too. Or maybe there is an upgrade screen that would refresh your memory. I always prefer having access to information as opposed to not having it.

What about an option to see more than 1 title. If I use only the sword and only kill the bosses, which one do I get? I'm sure sometimes multiple ones apply, maybe press a button at the results screen to see them. Just a thought.

I think that for S ranks, less importance should be placed on Damage Taken. In later levels I can imagine that it would be a little frustrating to go for S rank. S rank should be a hard goal, but I feel it's a little too strict.
Haha, nice. I had a feeling you could do it.

and yeah, there might be some unknown bugs related to the harpoon.
A weapon cycling button might just be added as well. Not sure if I'll do both directions though.

as for the number of tiny questions
- the ink bomb does approximately as much damage as the cutlass, i.e. not very powerful though hitting everything onscreen, and killing enemy bullets. Also, yes it's hurting the boss
- A full bottle has 100 hp, yes
- No, the timer does not count during cutscenes, so you can spend as much time as you like reading the messages without it affecting your level time
- A pause button would have been nice, but also rather difficult for a number of rm2k3-ish technical reasons... unfortunatly
- There is one (mostly cuz I forgot to remove it). Hit 8 and you quit the game. For a quick restart I'd still recommend just hitting F12 though, which should work just fine for the demo. Any additional weapons obtained remain obtained even after you quit or restart the game, so need for worries there.
- Might be implemented later @weapon bar

we probably won't add any ranks for special feats, but we're likely to add special titles for feats like that. Kill no enemies except the neccessary ones should earn you the title "Pacifist" at some point.
:3



Finally got S rank after about 2 dozen tries. I played it last night until my thumb got sore. I have a video but just my luck the video flickers :( I'm going to upload it anyways.

The harpoon is interesting. It seemed like sometimes it should have killed an enemy but it didn't. And when I was out of ammo it kept shooting blanks instead of just going 'click'. Like, it looked like I was shooting a bullet but nothing came out.

I would suggest having a button for "next weapon" and "previous weapon".
What exactly does the ink bomb do? Does it kill everything small onscreen or does it do high damage to everything? Is it hurting the boss?
How much HP is a full bottle? 100?
Does the timer continue to count during cutscenes?
Can there be a pause button?
OH, but definitely have a quit button, or a restart button, or both xD When I'm trying for S rank I have to force close the program to start over.
It would be nice to be reminded of what weapons I have. Maybe some kind of bar that shows along the top at the start of the level and hides from view after a few seconds.
It would be cool to get S rank for not attacking anything except the bosses xD Or have some kind of challenges where it's got different requirements to get S rank.
Adon237
if i had an allowance, i would give it to rmn
1743
This was definitely a great demo, I am impressed that this was done in an rpgmaker, let alone 2k3! Congrats you two!
Hoooly shit, Link_2112, you're a machine o_o

Thanks a lot for the videos, it's cool to see how another person approaches the game.

Looks like you'll be our first S rank ever (other than Kazesui).
Videos even, lovely!
And urgh.. yeah, figures I'd forget something. Those red boxes should obviously not be there, as their purpose is just that of debugging. Simply forgot to remove them.

As for rank getting, damage taken is usually the category preventing people from getting higher ranks. To get a S rank, you'd need 7000+ damage dealt, 30- damage taken and a time below 6:06. As you might notice, time and damage dealing isn't as tricky to score full on, so one can concentrate a bit more on not getting hit at the expense of the other stuff.
From the looks of it though, it doesn't seem beyond you to be able to get a S rank, so good luck!
(And thanks for the videos)
Just played the demo, it's very smooth gameplay. Great visuals. I had a blast playing it. I'm determined to get S rank >D I got A rank and had a pretty good run on my 3rd attempt, so I can see you made the benchmark pretty damn high.

I recorded my entire playtime and it's up on youtube. I'll add it as media. There seemed to be a few times a bullet hit me and I didn't take damage and when the bosses die there is a red square that appears behind them before they explode. No other issues.

Looking forward to more ^.^

author=Happy
I tried to play but I got some "direct draw error"

This is an error that seems to clear itself, from our experience. Try again? (Maybe later, after restart)

author=Ashes of Emerald
HEY I played this! This by far is one of the best and most impressive pieces of work I've ever seen done with RPG Maker. Great job. Also, the way you coded everything was incredibly intriguing and genius.

:D Thanks a lot man!
HEY I played this! This by far is one of the best and most impressive pieces of work I've ever seen done with RPG Maker. Great job. Also, the way you coded everything was incredibly intriguing and genius.
Happy
Devil's in the details
5367
I tried to play but I got some "direct draw error"
HOW HAVE I NEVER SEEN THIS! This looks incredible! Subbed.
Whoa, all this time I didn't think it was on RMN hahha
At the moment rather slowely, lot thanks to more busy days on my end.
Also, a lot of the engine was rewritten to utilize the DynRPG SDK for increased performance and other possibilities, so that added up a little on the development time as well.

As it stands now, most basic functions are fully functional, and a rather large part of the first stage is also done.
Soon enough, it should get haunted by the Final Bass. I'm looking forward to that bit
Pages: first 12 next last