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Announcement

Updated: Demo v1.2

EDIT:
Updated to v1.2 as of 17/02/13.

Demo's out now! Everything's a lot more polished up than in the Alpha Test and the final dungeon of the island has been finished, and a Boss Rush mode added at the end of the demo.

I'll just link to my other blog for details since I don't wanna have to type everything up twice:
http://pixelbrady.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/wee-hero-demo/

Can be downloaded here on RMN or through the Mediafire mirror:
http://www.mediafire.com/?h7i4jk3nit7yi09

Progress Report

Demo will be out soon~

Just a quick wee update:
The final dungeon of the island is now finished and all the expositional NPCs are done. The four Midnight Monsters have been planted and there's finally at least some flavour NPCs in the villages. There have been a number of smaller database changes as well in an attempt to improve the flow and the final act of the island seems dramatic enough.

Shouldn't be too long left; just polishing up as much as possible so an official Demo release won't have to be redone over and over to clear up bugs every day.

Miscellaneous

Well then; flavour time!

Well then, since I've had fairly few comments on things to change about it so far, despite a few dozen downloads, I figure that it's either so bad that no one plays past the intro or there's fairly few problems as far as balance goes.

Either one pretty much just means "fire away" as far as adding some flavour and such goes. NPCs being the primary thing that it needs, what with villages being completely empty (except Mobliz) of non-essential NPCs.

So, will just layering on some flavour and extras so the world feels a bit fuller. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions of anything that could be added to improve (in any way, really; mechanics, flavour, other) then just let me know!
This is still a creativity experiment for me, so I'm actually having more trouble with the "mundane" things like flavour NPCs than I am with everything else; go figure!

Announcement

Download finally went through.

As title really; the download finally worked and went through, so there's a link directly through RMN now for those who don't like as much taking files from other sites.
Will keep the mediafire link up anyways though, just as a mirror.

Request

Alpha Demo ready for Testing (hopefully!)

(I tried uploading it directly to RMN, but after an hour and half a dozen timeouts, I've given up. I'll try again tomorrow but for now, Mediafire will have to do)

Second Wave Alpha Testing Demo.
This is aimed primarily at checking the material collection and making sure enemies are balanced as well as general game progression. This demo includes no flavour NPCs or item name/icons yet but should all still run well enough.

For further details, check here:
http://pixelbrady.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/second-wave-alpha-wee-hero/
Direct download link via Mediafire:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ae4unvqqq0qka12
Page for known bugs during testing phase:
http://rpgmaker.net/games/4763/testingchanges/

Progress Report

Database Makeover Done: Quick Update List

I'll just write a quick list here. For more details, check the main blog here.

  • Materials have been reorganised into three tiers.

  • Weapons and armours correspond to those three tiers.

  • Material pickup events have been completely redone.

  • Monster attack events have been mostly redone.

  • Eventing bugs and glitches have been cleaned up.

  • Added some new skills, including a teleport back to home.

  • Stealing script is now available, as an alternative material collection method.

  • Battles are prettified with Yanflys ACE scripts. Coolio.

  • Enemies level with you script.

  • Boss Cards make an appearance before boss encounters.

  • Game overs have been removed and replaced with "back to bed", although bosses have more sever penalties for defeat!

Progress Report

Database Cleanup & Mechanics Overhaul

So after several tests where the difficulty curve proved extremely erratic, based not on where you went, but what gear you had (and there was a few options, so it varied pretty wildly) I decided to basically scrap the database and start again fresh on the current maps and events. Since everything else was already made and it was just the database getting a reboot it actually went pretty smoothly; the two of us just cleaned up completely and rethought out the mechanics for the crafting.

Instead of a seemingly random assortment of weapons jumbled together next to each other, with little distinction as to which is actually better other than the mats required, we decided to structure it more and went with a "tier" system. There's now three tiers of equipment (each split into three separate mini-tiers) and three tiers of materials that go with that. So now there's a nice wide selection of balanced armours and weaponry that fit alongside each other nicely and are appropriate to the materials required to craft them.

With that change, we then went on to alter the elements system. Now it's essentially forced upon the player to participate (there's no "generic" element anymore) but there's also notices in-game that describe the elements of upcoming enemies, so you know to equip yourself accordingly. And there's not just one weapon for each element (otherwise that'd basically be railroading your weapon choices), but there are in fact two versions of each and every weapon with cycling elemental properties. The idea is that you carry, let's say a Wind Dagger and a Fire Sword, so that you're never at a disadvantage as you go from area to area.

Made a good few other small changes (such as a boss stats window before you fight and setting a better common event for material pickups) but focussed mainly on making sure weapons, materials and enemy stats are all balanced according to each other. Coming along nicely. Won't be long before I can get back to finishing off the last dungeon of the island before it's ready for Second-Wave Alpha testing.

Progress Report

Second Stage Alpha Testing Soon

So, as you may have seen from the Summary, this game is meant as a simple, fun experiment with exploration and fundamental RPG decision-making gameplay (as opposed to most mainsstream JRPGs, where the characters and stats level up independantly and you have little to no control over the actual experience).
To allow this game that basic RPG feel, I chose to open the whole world up and really let the player choose what to do, where to go and how to respond to random events and situations. There is a degree of linearity in which the monsters get progressively stronger, but there's nothing stopping you skipping those areas altogether, or doing them in the order you want. Plenty of mini-areas and random events are around the place for you to do whenever you feel like: Wee Hero is basically an exercise in side-questing.

But opening it up also leads to balance issues. Discovering the hard way that this cave is too high level, or accidentally finding rare materials and crafting a badass sword to mow down everything you find. Things like that can negatively affect the playing experience, and I'd rather it be open-world and free, but that every path you can choose is (fairly) equally balanced, or at least playable. We don't need that one exploit path by sneaking past the super-baddy for his goodies.

Saying that, my tests have gone fine so far. The difficulty curve does seem a touch erratic but that seems mainly dependant on whether or not I saved up materials for a higher weapon to craft, instead of taking it one step at a time.

Regardless; the first continent is not too long from being finished, and is at least an hour+ of gameplay (and I've not added in any flavour characters/text yet, either) and think I should probably make sure that that's balanced off before jumping across the pond into the next section.
If anyone's interested in Alpha testing a game around crafting, exploration and a bit of light-hearted fun, just let me know :)
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