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About the game
FADE is a direct sequel to my first game, BETA. The story picks up shortly after the ending event from the first game, and continues to build on the established main characters from the first game, as well as introduce new characters later on in the game. It is not required to have played the first game, though.
FADE stands for Fun, Adventure, Danger and Excitement. These are the 4 key-words that are the basis of my game.
  • Fun - The most important aspect of my game. It's supposed to be fun, and funny as well.
  • Adventure - The game revolves around the player going on an adventure. To explore places, and to meet people within the game world.
  • Danger - There will be villains. There will be treacherous locations. There will be challenges for the player to overcome.
  • Excitement - The game must offer enough variety in action, fun, story, everything to keep the player interested.


Planned features: - (subject to change)
  • A fun story, with lighthearted dialogue
  • Several different characters to join your party over the course of the game
  • A simple, yet deep, turn-based combat system
  • Equipment changing the looks of your character sprites and facesets
  • Several dungeons to explore
  • A variety of out-of-combat minigames, challenges and puzzles
  • Signposts readable from any direction!


Even though FADE is a sequel, it is absolutely not required to have played BETA in order to enjoy, or to understand what's going on in the game.
For those who have played the first game, there'll be an option before the game starts to fill in the actions and choices you have made in the first game. Those choices will carry over to stuff that happens in the second game. Example: If you got to befriend Eldin in the first game, she will be your friend in this game.



Plot & Main characters
PLOT

After helping the people in Beta town, Roth was rewarded with a huge airship, made by the scientist. Together with his li'l bro, Thieme, and his best buddy, Rage, the three of them have set out on an adventure! Not long after departing, they pick up Eldin, a friendly girl from Beta Town. She has lived most of her life in her parent's house, and has always dreamed of going on an adventure.

Suddenly, the Prince of Darkness appears! He doesn't appreciate the group of adventurers flying around that close to his home, and launches an attack on the party and the airship. The chaos summoned by the Prince of Darkness causes heavy damage to the airship, forcing it into making a crash landing. It is there where the real adventure starts... (dun dun dun!)

ROTH - THE THUNDERGOD

Roth is the game's main character. He's the leader of the Battler trio, and a pretty relaxed guy with a witty attitude most of the time. In battle, Roth controls the powers of lightning and electricity to shock his foes.

THIEME - THE KINGPIN

Thieme is Roth's younger brother. He likes to sleep, a lot. Besides sleeping, Thieme is interested in exploring the unknown, learning new things, and meeting people from other parts of the world. In battle, Thieme uses the power of earth to do his bidding.

RAGE - THE DRAGOON

Best buddy of both Roth and Thieme. Rage is a cool guy, a hothead, and has a heart of gold. He likes to act all big and bad, but everyone knows he has a soft side too, specifically for women. In battle, Rage likes to turn up the heat, using fire and flames.

ELDIN - THE LADY

Having lived most of her life inside her parent's house, Eldin has always dreamed of going on an adventure. Her time has finally come to do so. Eldin is a friendly person, with a positive outlook on life. In battle, Eldin wields the powers of light to smite her foes and to protect her friends.

PRINCE OF DARKNESS

The Prince of Darkness lives in the Castle of Darkness, located in the Shadepeak Mountains. It is there where he plots his next evil plan. Some of the things he dislikes are RPG Adventurers, people who mispronounce his real name, and finding hairs in his soup.



The current demo for the game is around 3-4 hours long.

Credits
As the game is still in development, and subject to change, a complete list of credits will be added once the game is completely finished.

Plugins:
  • Cherry
  • Cerberus
  • Dragonheartman
  • PepsiOtaku

Latest Blog

Rage's Skillset


Aura of Fury: Grants targeted ally Attack+ for x full turns and cures Sleep. Restores 2 MP to Rage.
0MP
A powerful Aura that is especially effective on allies with the ability to attack more than once per turn. The question here is, do you spend a turn buffing up an ally's Attack for several turns, or forget about it and just bash in the enemy's face with your axe?

Burn: Deals moderate Fire damage to target foe and has a chance to inflict Burn.
12MP
Slightly less effective than the elemental versions of his friends' Skills, due to Rage's low Mystic stat, but the chance to inflict Burn still makes it a strong choice.

Magical Flame: Restores some of Rage's MP and cures Poison.
6MP
The same as Eldin's Mystical Light Skill, and essential if you plan on keeping Rage to continuously cast Spells.

Wildfire: Deals more damage to all foes when there are more foes on the battlefield, up to a maximum of 5.
15MP
Arguably the strongest multi-target spell in the main party's skillset. Should obviously be used on a field full of enemies.

Heat to Health: Doubles Rage's HP for x turns.
8MP
Rage already has the highest base HP of the main party, but clearly that's not enough for him. Doubling his health is Rage's way to survive powerful attack striking his face. Note: When sacrificing HP, the amount gets taken off by counting from Rage's base HP value, not his doubled value from Heat to Health.

Dragon Grinder: Strikes the target foe with the power of Dragons.
18MP
Simple and to the point. Rage has no need for fancy effects on his ultimate attack. Just hit the enemy with all your might and hope they die from it. Great to use as a finishing move.

For The Greater Good: Healls all allies. Cuts Rage's HP by 20%.
12MP
Rage's way to contribute to the party in a meaningful way that doesn't involve bashing in the faces of enemies. His allies will be healed for a decent amount, but Rage himself will lose 20% HP, and can potentially down him if you aren't careful. But it's all for the greater good!

No Pain No Gain: Cuts Rage's HP in half. Boosts Attack and Mystic by a huge amount for x turns. Can be cast only once per battle.
12MP
A mighty power-up that does inflict serious damage onto Rage himself, this Skill shouldn't be used without some pre-planning. The effect only lasts for several turns, so make sure to get the most out of it!

Fists of Fury: Fists of fire and flames. Can be cast only once per battle.
12MP
Rage's second Elite Skill, making you choose between this or No Pain No Gain. Much like Thieme's Blackrock Cannon Skill, this replaces the equipped weapon with a more powerful option. In Rage's case this makes his fists burn with flames of fury, making his regular attacks stronger than ever.

Rage is built to dish out large amounts of damage, but that doesn't mean it's the only thing he can do. Applying Fury buffs might arguably be even better than attacking himself in some cases, and with For the Greater Good, he can even assist Eldin in keeping the party alive. While his Elite Skills are both geared towards offensive play, one is for a big short term bursts, the other is better for long, drawn out fights.
Rage's weakness is the ability to keep himself alive. His HP is high, but he'll burn through it quickly with his mediocre Defences and when sacrificing HP for the greater good.
  • Hiatus
  • Milennin
  • RPG Tsukuru 2003
  • Adventure RPG
  • 03/08/2013 03:21 PM
  • 03/22/2024 03:30 PM
  • 01/01/2025
  • 137662
  • 29
  • 401

Posts

Yup, it freezes. Considering how few revival items you have, strongly suggest changing the KO condition from Persists to Ends. Trust me, the game is still hard.

A few problems here.

First off, the puzzle always seems to take too long and I get hit by too many fireballs reducing pretty much everyone to 1 hp. I wind up having to eat about 3 of my remaining grapes. Some sort of "Let's take a breather. (Y/N)" deal before facing the boss would be helpful. Maybe more exp/items if you opt to say no.

Second, the strategy is wrong, btw. I missed the dialogue the first time because I wasn't paying attention. I actually got farther by ignoring it. The problem is that your party is juggling healing, attacking the slimes on by one (the boss should be enemy 5, because if I attack slime 1 rather than moving to slime 2 with the claw attack, it goes straight to the dragon killing my chances of thinning the herd), and attacking the monster. Usually this is useless however, because the summons new ones too quickly and there doesn't seem to be much point to attacking the slimes anyway. They don't have any attacks to speak of, and regardless of how many slimes, the boss monster summons the comet anyway. Essentially, the strategy seems to be wrong because wasting time with the slimes increases the likelihood of death. Seriously, I was focused on the slimes, and barely even managed to break his shell.

Change Meteor Crash from No Precondition to Monsters Present 4-6 and yes, there will be a legitimate purpose behind killing slimes. Also, slow the summoning down! I was level 8 for everyone, and I still couldn't keep up with the summoning. Especially while trying to keep people healthy.
And the Game Over screen scenario wasn't triggering properly? In Tyranos' playthrough that got posted recently he got a black screen freeze, did the same happen to you?
I think Roth and Eldin died in late phase 1, so I was trying to (1) stay alive and (2) trying to charge up for multiatks to nuke hit the dragon and slimes at once.

Got pretty close considering I pretty much broke strategy, but then comet hit the big guy, and Thieme had like 0 mp and got killed by that wind.
Yeah, he heavily ramps up his damage output once he enters phase 2, at which point you either need to attempt to rush him down or find a quick and effective way of taking down the slimes every turn while putting the pressure on. I'll give a hint: Roth's Aura of Magic is extremely useful in this fight. As the regen buff grants 1MP every turn a character/monster moves, you can quickly refill a character's MP bar with the amount of slimes that show up every boss turn. If your party is at least level 6 you should have all the tools to beat this boss.
I did not manage to beat him. I managed to get to the armor break without trouble, and got within like 1/4 of kill, then everyone started dying because I had like no fruit left.

Hopefully when the new 2k3 airs, some of this stuff will suddenly start opening up.
author=bulmabriefs144
Killing fire slimes in the fire dragon battle should help out somehow (maybe 1 hp recovery per slime or explosion damage to the boss). I found this battle annoying because the party was low on health from figuring out the puzzle.

Also, how did you program attacks based on monster party? I've been wanting to do this.

I'm pretty sure that unless you're severely overlevelled the battle is almost impossible to win if you don't kill the fire slimes as they power up Burning Wave (which does AoE damage depending on the amount of slimes alive) and also heal the boss in phase 2. It's about finding the right balance between keeping pressure onto the boss and keeping his field clean while being able to stay alive.
Also there is a shortcut back to the blind guy's house from the crater you can take before you fight the serpent to fully restore your party at the dining table as well as take a bunch of Fire Grapes with you.
But you did manage to beat him?

For those skills you have to create multiples of the same skill and give them different damage values. Run a common event every turn that tracks down how many monsters are currently alive, removes every version of the skill on the character and then adds the one version corresponding to the amount of monsters alive.
The only weakness with this system is that it doesn't update after a move has been used, so if there are 3 monsters alive, then a character kills one of them, the next character still has the skill active that deals for 3 monsters (it takes one next character turn to update). I'm pretty sure that's impossible to fix in RM2K3 since events can only be run before a character moves.
Killing fire slimes in the fire dragon battle should help out somehow (maybe 1 hp recovery per slime or explosion damage to the boss). I found this battle annoying because the party was low on health from figuring out the puzzle.

Also, how did you program attacks based on monster party? I've been wanting to do this.
It seems like that part may not be clear enough to players, as you aren't the first one to get confused on where to go next. In the blind guy's backyard where you beat the rock slimes, there's a light spot on the ground indicating the fence gate where you need to go through to proceed to the volcano. I'll have to work on making that more obvious.
Not yet. Lost in the forest. I went to the blind guy's house and beat the monsters, now I'm not sure where next.
Thanks, did you make it to the end of the demo?
I'm liking the new game stuff. Seems to run more smoothly too.
author=Jparker1984
Hey man, did you get my feedback I sent you in the PM?


Yeah, sorry. I was away for a few days, but I'm back now. I read your PM and you provided some useful information and feedback. Check my reply to it.
Hey man, did you get my feedback I sent you in the PM?
Hey, lol I'm so sorry that I sent you the same PM like 3 or 4 times. I sent it at work and my work pc sucks. It started bugging out and was refreshing itself a bunch of times, my bad.
Oh that? That's the internal code of the game.

(If full party cannot move, and the condition does not have a time limit or %, it results in gameover BECAUSE the condition cannot resolve itself. After 100 or so turns even 1% is likely to resolve, as is something that has a set turn limit)

If you somehow got it to do otherwise, it would literally freeze your turn system, since you have to be able to move at some point, otherwise you have monster ending their turns, followed by moving into your turn phase, which is skipped BUT the monster can't begin another phase either. You'd have to either add that if the entire party can't move you change any required variables as if they all moved already, or gameover it. Btw, this is fine. Final Fantasy considers it a battle end condition, and rightly so. If the entire party can't battle, there's no way you can win, therefore, you lost.

You could have two immobilize skills, one that immobilizes the party at 1% recovery (this gives enough turns that the party is actually skipped for the most part, and monsters can do their turns) or after a nonzero number of turns (0 is infinite, not actually 0) called something like Stop. And one for monsters called Paralyze that is 0 turns and 0% healing. These two are mutually exclusive, so monsters can't get Stop and heroes can't get Paralyze.

The thing what bothers me is not necessarily it going to the Game Over screen (although it really should not happen), but that I can't seem to find a way around preventing the game from marking a party wipe under some circumstances when immobilise (stun, paralyse) statuses are involved.
Basically the only way to 100% prevent it from happening is to not put immobilise skills on monsters at all, but that's too much of a loss to pass up considering the chances of triggering the chance of the game marking it as a game over is pretty small.

I do have a safe-guard that will disallow monsters from using immobilise skills when there's only 1 active (alive and not immobilised) party member, but the problem is that it can't activate mid-enemy turn; it only works if it's activated before the start of the enemy turn (if it activates mid-enemy turn it'll take effect on the next turn).
Example: if there are 2 active party members at the start of the turn in a battle against 2+ monsters with possible immobilise, and the 1st monster either downs or immobilises a party member, the other monsters are still able to use their immobilise skills until the end of the current monster turn, which will make the battle go Game Over if they do use the immobilise skill and if it's successfully applied.
I think you talked about the gameover. (At the library, since we're still on vacation)

As in, you have it go straight to it rather than load special gameover?

There's two ways around it. Goto conditions and turn Death to EndsAfterBattle. This gives you 1HP between battles and for the most part, this allows special endings (though it's a tad inconvenient for out-of-battle death events, since you have to special code for it. But, well, you have that anyway). Or you can make a switch event that gets turned on after the game starts (during the opening cutscenes presumably) that basically never gets shut off, and says that when the Hero is dead and/or when the Hero and everyone else is dead, revive the Hero. This allows someone to be alive so you can run any sort of cutscene you want.

If you also have a problem with revival, I'd recommend simply changing Death to EndsAfterBattle.
Oh yeah, 1 point you mentioned that I hadn't replied to; about getting lost on the map. This is kinda interesting, because the path to the tree boss is actually pretty linear, but with a bunch of smaller paths branching off, yet everyone I know who's played it has had troubles finding their way on the map. It's amusing, but at the same time not entirely what I aimed for with the map. The branching paths should be more obviously recognised as branching paths, instead of the main path. I can't believe you actually got your characters up to level 6 before the tree boss, I really expect the player to be far into level 4 or freshly on level 5 there.

By the way, what did you think of the squirrel mini-boss (you called it a bunny, lol)? Was it too easy/difficult?

1 more question; did you experience any noticeable FPS drops on the forest map?

I'm very curious what you plan on doing with the encounter inspired by my tree boss. Looking forward to playing that in your game.^^
author=Milennin
Wow, long post. Let's see if I can reply to your points while keeping it organised, lol.

...

Hidden enemies
Haha, I had the same reaction sometimes. I was just walking around minding my own business and then whaa, something appears out of nowhere haha!
I wouldn't change it if you feel like you want them to be like this, in fact It's just my take on it. The sort of surprise feel to them could work in your favour though :)

Enemies on the map
Ah, that makes sense. I just faulty came to the conclusion that the enemies would always act like this (which could lead to a slight irritation).

Fairies

Ah, so that's how they work! I tried to figure out how they were designed but all I could come up with was that they would deal more damage, depending on how many attachments I had on me (doh?). I never really used auto-attacks though (mostly buffed myself if I was low on MP). Something that could have had a big impact on why Eldin got one shoted so much though, might have been that I used the (god can't remember the name of it again, the spell that replenish her mana) which would end my turn with Eldin having a lot of MP. And in that case would be the reason for the high amount of damage :)

Revival
That would sort out the problem really well :)

Escaping battles
Yes, I did use one or two smoke bombs (when I found them) but since I failed a bit on finding where to go I encountered a lot of fights that I couldn't escape from. But it wasn't really an issue any way :)

Boss battle
The reason why I found this fight hard, might have been because I thought it worked in a different way. And since I didn't understand that I was wrong about it until I leveled up as much as to get the spells that I was talking about, it might have been the reason why I mentioned them. For some reason I thought that you had to kill the enemies in a specific order (The most recent one that spawned has to go down first etc.) and the longer the fight goes on, they will spawn faster and faster. So I do believe that it was a failure on my part, and that the boss wasn't as hard as I made it out to be.

Game Over
Ah I see, I hope you will find a way to get rid of it. Even though it's not that much of a big deal, in a small sense it would sort of be reasonable to have it go 'game over' there.

Book of Combat
Ye, I'll see if I can find a way to get it to work. I do have books ready that I control with switches and variables so far, but I might work it out by using the cursor and location common event that I use for my traveling system (Might work I havn't tried yet.)

Inspiration
Ah, that's cool to know! I'm glad it inspired you since it ended up as the battle system that you use now (Which is so kick ass, not just the sprites).

Haha! Your trent fight inspired me to make a boss fight where you have to kill the enemies in the order they spawn (the most recent one that spawned must be killed first, and so on) and then during the fight they will swap places, and if the player hit the wrong one they will be punished in some way. (It might be hard to set up without being frustrating, but It's certainly something that I will try).
It came to my mind when I accidentally thought that your fight was designed this way haha.

Final
It was a real blast to play, and I'm glad that my input helped you out in some ways! I'll ceratinly give feedback again when you release new content!
Wow, long post. Let's see if I can reply to your points while keeping it organised, lol.

Hidden enemies
They are actually visible on the map, but I agree they're very easy to miss if you don't pay attention (sometimes they scare the crap outta me when I playtest my own game and forgot their spawn LOL), and I will also admit that I placed like 2 of them in mean positions (1 in front of a berry bush, the other at the 3rd journal page). I'm kind of considering changing their graphics to something a little more easy to notice.

Enemies on the map
I did intend to make the enemies difficult to avoid in this area. Mainly because the area counts as a dungeon, which means the monsters are more aggressive towards the player. In field areas the monsters will be slower and much easier to avoid.

Fairies
The fairies were sort of designed as an anti-autoattack unit in the way that they deal damage equal to the amount of current MP on the target. It really does punish using auto-attack a lot, while possessing little threat if you keep using Magic. But I agree there's a lack of animation when the hit lands.

Revival
I see what you mean by getting stuck without a way to revive, and I can't believe I hadn't thought of that, so stupid lol. My aim was for there to be no game-over, but I see how it can mess up a party with a downed member and no revival items. I'll fix that so when you get defeated every member in your party will be revived with some health.

Escaping battles
Just a quick question, but have you used Smoke Bombs to escape from battles? I'll agree that there's quite the amount of battles in the area, but that's what I hand out Smoke Bombs for.^^

Boss battle
Hm, I didn't think the tree boss was designed to be that difficult. I've playtested it for hours with my party at level 4 and 5 (without the stronger spells), and succeeded on every try. The idea with the boss was to test the player's skill to identify threats as they randomly appeared during the fight and to take out high threats quickly, while having a breather on turns with low threat monsters around.
The enemy spawn rate is balanced around the HP of the tree, although it'll make sure to always have at least 1 monster on the field. At above 50%HP the chance of it spawning an additional monster is fairly low. Between 25-50%HP it's a moderate chance, and below 25% a high chance (to put pressure on the player the closer he gets to winning).

Game Over
Yes, that's a bug. I've tried for ages to find out how to get rid of that, but there always seems to be one situation in which it will happen.

Book of Combat
This will be a very useful item once I get to update it. It'll also make some parts in which you had trouble easier to deal with, because it'll let you read on what skills enemies posses and what exactly they do. So if you find yourself having a lot of trouble dealing with a certain enemy you can read on what it does.

I made this thing with just switches and variables, and it's complicated up to the point where I don't understand how it works anymore after having not worked on it for some months, lol. I've decided to just leave it alone for now, and completely update it again when I have all my monsters done and balanced. But to be honest I wouldn't bother making something like this unless you can find a script that lets you do something similar.

Final
I'm very glad that you liked it a lot. And also that you pointed out some important things that I'll need to look at, and some things that I'll get to fixing. That's really useful stuff for me. Exciting to hear that some parts of my game inspired you to use in your game. I don't know if I had told you before, but your game was actually a major source of inspiration for FADE before I had started working on it yet, lol - especially the combat (convinced me to want to use side-view).