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Progress Report

A Wild IGMC appears...

We had high hopes at the start of this event about finally completing Dragons but I think that at this point it's looking like even a new demo isn't going to happen. The biggest challenge and unexpected development was the surprise return of IGMC, we resisted at first but after a few days the allure was simply too great. Reworking old things (5 years old in this case) isn't overly fun when compared with making something new. We still hoped to complete both games but if you've ever completed an rpg maker game for a content you will probably know the feeling of the crunch time that comes at the end, ours was for the whole last week of the contest and at the end of it we were both burnt out. On the second last day of the contest Indrah distributed an encrypted copy of the game to testers and they all reported horrendous lag on the first major puzzle map which we eventually traced to the encryption being the cause. This meant redesigning, re-implementing and re-testing (multiple times) the whole of that section of the game (and staying up to the early hours to get it out to american play testers - who are awesome by the way). For me this certainly took a lot out of me and after subtmitting Abyssal Shine: Nevermelt we agreed to take a few days off - which very easily turned into a week. At that point we knew there was no chance of finishing In Search of Dragons in the time limit but we both reiterated our desire to see it completed.

While we have only put a good week (and a few bits since) into Dragons there was good progress, on Indrah's front certain parts of the story needed adjustments to accomadate changes in the Arum world, the whole final act of the story has been re-written, new areas mapped ready for eventing. On the first day alone Indrah passed me a document several thausand words long to review with the story. On my front things were a little different, it's not so much carrying on as starting something new but with a few restrictions based on pre-exisiting content. I had started something once before the last time we worked on Dragons (and my first time) but it wasn't that far into development and it was akin to the systems you would find in In Search of Immortality and being as Dragons and In Search of Freedom are probably the last VX Ace games we're going to do, I wanted to create something more interesting and the opportunity won't exist in Freedom. So I have effectively started over again. There are two key systems I was working on, the skill system allows for you to level up skills in three skill trees (which I only started working on yesterday), then you have the rune system which has multiple parts. The runes are going to make up the majority of enemy drops and some key finds - and I can't be the only person who hates databasing an arbitrary number of equipment - so the vast majority of the runes are randomised and generated based on a few key aspects. The runes will come in different types; stats, skills, class and item (if I had time). Stat and skills runes are largely straight forward, class runes would level up several skills at once (effectively acting as a base class you could customise with the skill system), item runes haven't moved beyond the ideas phase so I'll skip them for now.

To create a new demo I would have to finish all the custom systems first before moving onto all the other parts that would need updating - enemies etc. While I think it's feasible I could get the systems done there would simply be no time for proper testing and it would require another crunch time just three weeks after the last one and I really don't think I have it in me. If I do finish the systems I might try and throw a short gameplay demo together which shows off the systems but otherwise I am afraid In Search of Dragons won't be completed in the next month.

I will just add that we both loved the idea of the contest and that it was just unfortunate timing with the IGMC, I personally would love to see the contest return soon - though I understand some people were upset at there not being the annual horror game (maybe the ressurection jam could become the spring cleaning event where you clean your back catalogue?).

Thank you to everyone who supported us through these last couple of months,
Fomar/Indrah

Announcement

October 2017, RESSURRECTION!

Well, well, well! What do we have here? A game that’s been through multiple revives already? Well it’s time to KICK THE SHIT OUT OF IT! With revival boots! Because it’s getting revived!
Boy, where to start. The easy part: me and Fomar0153 noticed the game revival contest for October and decided WHAT THE HELL LETS DO IT. Both of us haven’t done dev in a while (day jobs are exhaustion, I dunno about you but that shit is HARD. I only feel like doing nothing when I get home…) but felt like we wanted to, so since half the story of this game and all its maps are done, it should be doable.

The team:
Indrah Lady Potato as lead developer (original dev). Mainly fixing mapping, story and eventing.
Fomar0153 as GAMEPLAY LORD! (Seriously he’s doing ALL of it, the man is insane)
Reverie_Raven as OH DEAR GOD THANK YOU FOR HELPING ASSISTANT EXTRAORDINAIRE. She does general testing (extremely well), helps revise and patch up the story, and will be helping pinch hit with the eventing and general dev when time gets tight.

Or course, if anyone wants to give us a hand (doing graphics, helping to test, eventing, anything’s welcome really) they’re absolutely welcome. Shoot me a message or leave a comment here.

On memory lane…
This gamepage was created in 2012. GEEZ it’s been 5 years? I’m not sure if it feels like a short or a long time. There are a ton of things I could say about this project and I honestly don’t know where to start.
It’s probably the first actual LEGIT game I did any considerable amount of development for. It started for a 2 week contest (I think?) and it very obviously went way out of time (it was presented as a demo that did just “OK” as far as I remember). A friend of mine who isn’t around so much anymore called Helel_Ben initially helped me with the gameplay, way before I knew Fomar0153 (I think? I have a shit memory tho).
The game got a good chunk done before I presumably got distracted and did other things. There were a few times I returned to it with mixed success, and even had a stint of proper and heavy development (all story) to put in there, but the game being considerably longer than I’m used to pumping out and with no real contest deadlines which usually force us to finish on time, it never went to the finish.

State and age of the project
This game is old. 5 years is a lot as far as my standards are concerned, and one of the big issues I have with it is that so much of it is a mess that has to be fixed. For now we’re focusing on revamping the gameplay (on Fomar’s capable hands) and heavily revising the story and stitching what was half-made and is usable into a cohesive whole. A bunch of stuff has to be scrapped that was meant to tie to games that never got made (pfft) and overall fix and finish to a presentable state.
I HAVE to say within the deadline there is no way we can remake everything to our current standards, meaning a lot of things outside of gameplay (which are being made pretty much from scratch) lots of messy story bits and (oh my god) clunky old maps will have to stay, as I simply have no time to start from scratch.
Our objective is to FINISH the game to a presentable degree. If we manage that, we will try to give it a tiny bit of polish. I for one still cringe at a lot of the old maps the game has, back when mapping was NOT my thing (can you imagine?).
Tl;dr the presentation of the game will be a bit inconsistent and the story will probably have a few rough patches BUT BY JOVE WE AIM TO PUT AN END TO IT.
I’m not even going to bother writing down our “to do” list because it’s almost everything.


Message from Fomar0153:
So after five years since first beta testing In Search of Dragons (was In Search For Dragons back then) we are making a serious attempt to finish it. We did try once before but back then I was going to try and work with some of the gameplay stuff which was already done; this time it's been gutted and is a clean slate.
We've decided to really limit shopping for upgrades you'll have to hunt down your gear and upgrade it with our new crafting system. Another major feature this time around will be runes which you can equip to your weapons and armour and also your class and items. I'll show them off more when the skill system is complete as they interact with it.
So far I've spent most of my time making rpg maker cope with having different numbers of columns per row, my next major job is the crafting system. The battle system will be the one we've been using (and improving) since In Search of Immortality and Sunken Spire.
I hope you're as exciting as we are to see In Search of Dragons finally finished, good job this contest is a month long, any shorter and we'd probably be finishing In Search of Freedom (can we do that next please Indrah please).

Progress for the week:
Indrah – A shitton of testing old versions of the project, wrapping my head around the story, making notes, notes, notes of what can be kept and what has to be scrapped. Escaping reality and fixing the map layouts (very minor stuff). Going back and writing the cursed new story plot flow, illustrated below (my brain hurts).



Fomar0153 – Scrapping the old gameplay in place, planning and scripting the systems to be used. Right now he’s fighting against the rune equipment system:



Reverie_Raven – Calming whining from Indrah, testing old projects for feedback, reading and discussing story beats and overall being great.



THAT’S IT. I don’t usually do dev logs, tell me if there’s anything specific you want me to include or mention. Please look forward to the game! x_x/

Also psst! Anyone here feel like giving me a hand with the gampage CSS or whatchamacallit? I have no idea how it works and it’s pretty bad.

Announcement

Back to work, and completed prequel

First of all, Fomar0153 and I finished the direct prequel to In Search of Dragons. It's very short (20 min or so) fun romp through the recent past of Owen and Keith, so be sure to check it out (clicky on image).



Cookies to anyone who catches what character will be added to the main game after this. Hint: Patience pays off.


That said, with my "no, i won't work on dragons because I must finsh the mystery contest" holdups are GONE (wheee!) and I'm back to work with a drive (I just spent like three horus on scene eventing, reworking the intro.)

I don't update here very often (I do it at my own blog) but here are some old and new updates:

-Maps for the last dungeon completed (this is just a sneak peek, the dungeon is enormous):



-Reworking the intro! It shoudl be longer and with more meat now.



-I will be hard at work adding sideqwuests: there are roughly (so far) three long sidequest arcs with custom characters.
When all the plot polishing and sidequesting is complete, I'll be back to work with gameplay: as in, make some. Encounter meters and controlled rates, a medicine mixing system, new skill learning process, etc.

Welp, let it just be said the project is back in full steam! Will see if I can post something substantial (I am not a fan of posting spoilery screenshots...) soon.

Lastly, I'm sorry to say importing save files will not be avaliable with the compelte version. Due to new features and scripts the saves are incompatible, sorry.
On the other hand, there will be so much new stuff to get and find that should not be a real problem, hopefully :D

Progress Report

Set download and progress ahoy

Someone called me out on not having updated the main download, so there it is >I
Demo3 ready. (The link was avaliable on the previous blog post in any case)

I've also been convinced to change "In search FOR dragons" to "OF dragons". Tho changing the images is going to be a pain in the ass OTL

What else...progress.
The waterfall cliff plot events (that would be the next dungeon after the demo) are done. At the moment I'm finishing up the next area, the Yonelmi Temple maps for the main quest, since that place also works as the optional puzzles areas later on.
Once that's done, the gross of the eventing (which happens at the temple) will take place, and after that, there's only the last dunegon left!

...And all the secret stuff and subquests. Ahahaha, I am so going to die~

Announcement

Set the Setting contest and demo v3

So, yesterday I finally completed my submission for the Set the Setting contest...and today a player already found a bug that prevented the completion of the demo. Wonderful OTL
Anyway, that's been fixed and the demo should be clean (I hope. Please let it be clean!).

Basically it’s one extra dungeond and a LOT of cutscenes. New gameplay should be around an hour. The full demo should be somewhere between 2-3 hours, not sure.

I will freely admit I didn’t test the battles myself so much, so they may be a bit iffy, but at this time I am so far gone I give 0 fucks. If any trouble comes up I will fix it as needed.

Anyway, for those interested, here's the download of Demo3(fixed):



If you had an old save from Demo2 it should work just fine. Just plonk it in the game folder.

I won't be uploading it as the main download until I'm REALLY, REALLY sure there's no other major bugs, since demo3 should be the last release before the final build.

Announcement

Wohooo! (And new demo)

WOHOOOOOOO!!! GUESS WHAT! GUESS WHAT!

In Search for Dragons got second place in the VXACE NUGGET CRASH COURSE!


There are no words to describe this glee. And this pride. And this...fuck I need to go dance some more. *does some more happy potato dance*

Right, glee aside, to celebrate (sort of) the results I uploaded a new demo. For those that have already played the old one...THERE IS NO REAL EXTRA CONTENT.
That is, there IS, but nothing critical. Mostly I uploaded this so new people trying the game from seeing the contest results wouldn't see the old and bugged (sorta) version :)

Demo version 2:
The game content has not changed much, this is mostly an impoved and fixed release of the first demo.
-Bug fixes (mostly item database)
-Changed intro scene
-Added extra scene at the end
-Added extra emotion faces
-Added skits and campfire scenes
-Added extra items on the field
-Greatly lowered random encounter rates
-Added rest points before both bosses
And a bunch of other stuff you probably won't care about. Enjoy :D

Note: The encounter rate right now is QUITE LOW, so you may not have many encounters if you move along fast.

---

What else, what else. I'm going to TRY and get a dungeon or two more done this week for the Arum contest, but not sure I'll make it >I Will try anyay OTL
I...can't really think very clearly right now so that's it. Sorry I'm not making much sense at the moment XD. Off I go to do potato dances some more Posted Image

Progress Report

Progress report

Nobody's really asking, but I will rant on anyway.

So what have I been doing for a month?
...Well, nothing very much to be brutally honest :/

I've mapped the cliffs (next area) and part of the temple (next, NEXT, area, it's the really plot important dungeon, look forward to it). You can get a peek of what they're like in the new screenies >3. Been touching up the demo, changing things: the intro, adding skits, scenes, playing around with items....

The horrible truth is that there is absolutely no way I'm going to finish for the end of april :I Not the whole game. I will try to have at least a "part two" sort of game holding the next two dungeons, but even that may be a bit tight on time...If i manage that that means the new version will have 4 dungeons in (two added) and will ahve 2 dungeons (and the secret areas) left to do, plus the ending.

By the way, I said in the demo that a save file would work from where you left off, but...well, do forgive me, that won't be possible m(_ _)m

A new script (the silly imagefix thingmajing) somehow doesnt like continuing old game builds, so you'll have to start anew T-T On the other hand the intro has been remade a bit, there will be more items to find and there are now skits and more character scenes (hint: check them rest points!) so it should make up a bit for the annoyance. A bit.

If someone REALLY can't tolerate going through the first two dungeons again I'll send em a new savefile or something OTL

Well, back to the grind I go. With some luck I'll get the second release done for the Arum contest at RPG Maker Web's forums >I

Miscellaneous

A few bugs

The demo is out and already some players have found pretty derpy bugs, mainly related to items. (nothing game breaking so far)

-Some Key Items can be used, and if you do they will be lost forever. Just dont try to "use" them. They still do their functions.

-The Wolf's Bracer will greatly decrease attack instead of increasing it, making it useless (sorry, it was a secret item and all OTL). That can't be fixed from the current version you have, so just don't equip it.

-The Red Pendant has the same bug as the Wolf Bracer but with magic. Simply don't equip it (if you even find it >3).

Will add any other bugs as I find them. Hope you enjoy the game!
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