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Aeons ago, four great beings stepped through a great breach in the fabric of space, claiming their new world and all its inhabitants as their own. They were heralded as gods, and under their rule civilization prospered for generations.

Now one man seeks to bring through a fifth being; one greater than all the others combined, one who would exert his dominance completely. He has resurrected a long dormant cult to help him achieve his aims, and now is only missing one thing: a certain disciple of the four extant gods, who is fated to be the key to his success...


Evoker is an obvious nod to the SNES greats. It features a huge and diverse cast of characters, a detailed story, and a bevy of secrets to find. Although it resembles certain games, it isn't a fangame, although its gameplay will be immediately familiar to anyone who has played the first six Final Fantasies. My goal was to make a game that felt as close to the original masterpieces as possible, with special attention paid to the smaller details. I eschewed custom systems to focus my time on creating more content, and as a test to see how far I could push the default systems of Rm2k3.

The game plays most similarly to FF4, looks most similar to FF5, and has a cast of characters as diverse as FF6. Owing to its FF4-inspired combat, a bit of preemptive leveling is recommended, and near the start of the game you'll be selecting "Fight" a lot. If these facts don't scare you away then feel free to subscribe!

Latest Blog

State of the Project [April '18]

I've been very quiet when it comes to updates for Evoker, and not entirely on purpose. Part of the issue is a lack of new screenshots- I've been consumed with filling in and fixing older issues that were either on the backburner or had been overlooked in the past. Small updates don't make interesting screenshots, which means I haven't had much in terms of visuals to show. There hasn't been a new post on the page in almost two years, and the last screenshot was more than a year ago (I think)! That might seem like a death knell, but... it isn't!

So what's going on with the game? What's going to happen in the near future?

I've been working on Evoker steadily and quietly this entire time, so fear not. Things are happening. Spells are being cast. Animations are being animated. Dialogue is being spoken. Backups are being backed up, just in case.

So what's different since the last demo (which was forever ago)? Here's a short list:
- A new dungeon was added to fix pacing problems, and dialogue has been added and tweaked to fix other related issues. Things aren't perfect and I still need to work on slowing down character progression, but strides are being made.
- The game is currently about 2.5x-3x as long as the demo was (thanks to new content after the scope of the demo!). A lot of the new areas use heavily custom graphics, and I think they'll knock at least a few loose socks off.
- The magic system has been overhauled. Spell tomes and scrolls have been revamped to be much more logical and strategic, which less vagueness about what they do.
- New skills have been added for everyone, and more are on the way. More monsters have elemental strengths and weaknesses, and I'm still working on this.
- Many monsters have more skills, and far more are planned to make fights more interesting.
- Almost all the dungeons have added interactivity. This is mostly simple stuff like switches and stuff, but there are a few very small puzzles as well.
- Even more secrets with better balanced treasure have been added.
- Numerous story revamps to better suit the scope of what I've created; this includes more and better character development, though it's mostly to do with world building. The introductory chapter has seen a pretty extensive overhaul.
- Lots and lots and lots of stuff too minor to note, to polish what exists and set the tone as I go forward.

So what's next? Well, sadly, I have no plans on releasing an updated demo any time soon, at least not publicly. I have a possible demo end point ready if I change my mind, but trimming a game down to have something resembling an 'endpoint' is a time-consuming task and I feel I'm better off pushing toward future goals. The game is approximately half done at this point, but I stand on the precipice of a very content-rich section that I don't want to leave out of a public release. A very closed alpha is probably the next step, to gather key feedback and learn what needs changing before I move forward.

I can say for certain that the game is 'shaping up' and that my vision is more solid than ever before. I'm excited to be moving forward toward my next personal milestone!

So, there you have it. Some information about the state of the project. I wanted to reassure everyone that the wheels are still in motion! I'd love any feedback or questions, so if you have any... post away!
  • Production
  • Kaempfer
  • PepsiOtaku
  • RPG Tsukuru 2003
  • RPG
  • 10/30/2014 08:34 PM
  • 05/12/2023 04:57 AM
  • N/A
  • 94732
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And if you're wondering about play time, I estimate it being around 7-9 hours. Also, since you're using DynRPG you might as well "invest" into this.
I've lowered the encounter rate, like, five times since the original beta. It's at 30 or greater for most maps. It's no higher than it was in FF5, and significantly lower than it was in FF4. The issue arises in the way Rm2k3 handled its encounter rate, because if I set it much lower you'll be able to cross many of the maps without getting into a single battle and it resets on the teleport command, meaning its possible to chain multiple maps without ever fighting. Then I'd have to rebalance everything! I'll probably lower the encounter rate (again), but no more than slightly

For what it's worth, I thought the encounter rate was just right. I never felt overwhelmed by random battles, and I was getting just the right amount of experience and feeling the right amount of "shit shit there's gonna be an encounter soon" tension.

EDIT:

Also, forgot to mention. You may want to consider replacing the default name entry screen of RM2k3 because... well. It's the 2k3 name entry screen. It's bad.

I know that there are alternatives on the site, since Dookie has made one (idk if he'd share that though), and there's an entire game page dedicated to a replacement naming system I think. I'd find it hard to believe that DynRPG wouldn't have a plugin for that as well.
@Noel_Kreiss:
I hadn't seen that! I will definitely add it to Evoker, thanks.

@Pizza:
Yeah, a new name entry is definitely on my list. It's a pretty intensive process, though, and I figured Rm2k3's garbage name entry would be sufficient while I figured out a replacement. As far as I know, DynRPG doesn't have a replacement screen yet, but it allows you to make your own much more easily. More research is required.
I've decided to take a bit of a fine-tooth comb to some sections of dialogue, so if y'all have any specific regions where you felt the pacing was too quick, let me know. Overall I feel the pacing is where I want it, but if there were any really egregious offenders, let me know and I'll lengthen the scenes. If you felt anything was jumped over too dramatically (like two points that felt disconnected), let me know about that, too. I'm not against adding a small cutscene if it makes sense, gameplay-flow-wise.
Not sure if it relates to dialogue adjustments, but I was kinda confused with skill-learning process. I think there was some vague explanation on that, but I don't really know how characters relate to skill tomes. From what I noticed, most of the characters with "Magic" command had access to a school of magic: Sun, Moon, Earth, and Fire, if I remember correctly. Does it somehow relate to who can use which tomes?
Yeah, that's definitely a fair complaint. I'm planning on putting in a beginner house (most likely in Ondar) to explain this. In all honesty, I just forgot that I wanted to include it in the first demo.

As a short summary:
A character will learn magic based on their affinity (so Lucan, being a Sun Knight, will learn Sun attack and Sun healing skills) and can further use tomes of any affinity to learn new magic in one school. Lucan, for example, can use tomes to learn any healing magic, but will only ever learn (through leveling) Sun-based attacks. Rowena, by contrast, learns attack and support magic from the Earth affinity, but can use read any attack-magic tome.

Other characters have more esoteric methods of skill learning and usage. Cadoc, for instance, learns new skills by visiting specific locations throughout the world (none of which appear in the demo owing to the length of his scenario). He is a geomancer of sorts, so his skills change based on terrain.

I intend to add in explanations in game as to what everyone can do, but I'm struggling a bit with adding them in naturally without interrupting the flow of dialogue and gameplay. "Oh, let's stop what we're doing so I can outline how I work in game, for a second..."

I'll be adding character bios to the gamepage soon as a stopgap solution to highlight how everyone works, since most characters work a little differently.
I think Lucan can learn some Earth skills through tomes. If memory serves me right, I used an Earth-elemental tome on him and he learned some protective ability. Although I may be wrong: I can't remember clearly now.

You could do explanations on how each characters work in battle in an actual battle. I don't think that would break the story flow much.
Woo, I'm all played out. Thanks for answering my plea, Kaempfer. That was pretty long for a demo too.

All in all, it was a great game. I like how the flow accommodates different play styles. There were a few times where I'd bee line through an area, skipping the new equipment and spells in stores, and others where I felt grind'y. It never stopped me in my tracks because I simply needed new gear and levels though, and that's one of the bangup qualities the SNES Final Fantasy's had.

I'm with Crash'n'the boys on the encounter rate, though. It gets f--king obnoxious at times, trashing a bunch of sissies, then having to fight the same batch again after 5 steps. I would suggest, as a rule of thumb, making the larger maps have a lower encounter rate. It doesn't feel so pervasive when it's 1-2 fights-per-exploration in the smaller areas, then 3-5 in the larger ones (as opposed to 1-2 and 8-12 currently).

Story-wise, I see you're getting a lot of feedback on the amount of dialogue. I don't think it's so much a text quantity problem as a too-many-characters-at-once problem. You bring in a lot of people in the first 5-7 hours of the game and, unlike FF6 which flawlessly introduces them with bite-sized snippets of personality, you overwhelm players with introductions, banter, story elements, and occasional backstory. Too much infodumping.
As a case scenario, the pacing was excellent when Lucan was traveling with the two Ga's. Their individual quirks were shown off right at the start, one was developed over the course of a dungeon, and their joking was lively and fun. Then we had Ailla, Una, Blind, and Rowena all shoved in our face over the span of 20 minutes. Suffice to say, it was a change of pace.
Oh, and this is just a IMHO, I think Lucan should be a bit more of a tight ass. Sun Knight, and all. Particularly with Cassie when she's gambling. You're probably far too written-in to change him up though, so no biggie.

And for some smaller notes I made...
-Your dock tiling in the first towns is wonky. At first I thought I had to find a staircase. Maybe you could find a better transition from grass/dirt to dock rock?
-Victory animations should animate, even if it's just victory-pose/stance/victory-pose/stance. Stills just don't feel right.
-The mage shop in the shepherd's village doesn't work (2nd floor of the Inn)
-Why do trees attack with Tail?
-Ailla doesn't have an Escape command. I ignored it, until she became the party leader for a brief stint.
-How does Innervate work? I used it a lot, but it didn't do jack.

I love how Lucan gets "permanently injured" so he loses all his badassness and goes back to level 1. He even forgets his spells. Good plot device, if a little silly :D

And one last aside, infodumps at the start of jRPGs always suck. Yours didn't. Good picture selection, rotation, and the blah blah was kept to an extreme minimum. Nice job.


Are anybody else's keystrokes super responsive, or is it just me? The "A" button kept double-acknowledging, so I'd accidentally pick the wrong skill, target the wrong enemy, equip on/off new gear, etc.
I am currently lowering the encounter rate (which was already set to 35 on most large maps) by several steps across the entire game to keep the fights down.

Also, I've come up with a solution that should remedy the too-many-characters-all-at-once problem for the first leg of the game (focusing especially on the desert/forest), although after much deliberation I've decided the branching scenarios will remain the same for story balance reasons. I had a pretty awesome brainstorming session last night (by myself *foreveralone.jpg*) that should address some story concerns I had and that have been raised here, as well, as well as pacing issues for that section.

As for your notes, Dyhalto:
- I'll take a look at a quick fix for the docks in the first few (and subsequent) towns. I think I've got something sorted.
- I may have forgotten to include victory animations thanks to some extreme farting in my brain. They will definitely be included at some point.
- The trees were suppose to attack with Crash, which is almost identical to Tail, but I forgot to change it from its placeholder. Fixed now.
- Now Ailla has an escape command!
- Innervate SHOULD inflict a 1-turn status condition on Isolde that replenishes 1%+3 of her MP (generally this means 4-6 MP each time she uses it). It was riddled with errors, but they've all been fixed now.

Thanks for the feedback! The intro took a lot of work to get to where I felt it was just right, and boy did I have to condense the story down from its original iteration. It's difficult to balance the game perfectly with RM2k3's shoddy combat mechanics, but I like to think I did a reasonable job early on with equipment choices.

As an open question to anyone who has beaten it (or played past the first major dungeon) and a bit of a spoiler to anyone who hasn't:


Did anyone find the secret treasure room in the Library in the abandoned castle?


edit: It's a bit tricky planning clever secrets, since I have no idea if people are finding them (or finding them too easily) and they shouldn't have any idea, either (unless they're poking around in the project file like sneaky sneaks).

If anyone wanted to post the secrets they found (in hide tags please!) that'd be great! I could tell which ones are working well!
No, I didn't find it, but I noticed it in the database (RM2k3 games play on my laptop normally only during playtest, otherwise it's just errors after around 15 minutes OTL ).

Also, the abundance of secret staircases was a bit irritating for my tastes.

How do you put a custom font in the game? I tried a few times with various ways but with no success.
@Noel:
The number of secret stairways will remain unchanged, but I will endeavor to minimize their use in the future.


I use a program called "Rm2kFontChanger" by Cherry. It's in German, but it's very simple to use. I've uploaded it to my locker, you can get it here. I've also included an English translation of the instructions I made in the rar. Once you've extracted the .exe, select the path and click on the button in the bottom right to install. It's a tiny program, only about 500kb.
Hey guys! I'm planning on releasing an updated demo with some addition content. It'll mostly be for people who haven't played it yet, but it will add a new dungeon to the desert region as well as a rewriting of that area to flow better.

I'll also be adding a beginner house in Ondar (to address understandable confusion about the magic system). The dungeon is finished, the beginner house isn't (yet) but when it is, the demo will go up. The encounter rate has been lowered, also.

Is there anything else you guys would like to see in a major update? This'll probably be it for the demo (after which I'll go back to putting all my focus on new content), so speak now!

edit: owing to lack of interest I am going to shift focus to new content instead of an updated demo release.
CashmereCat
Self-proclaimed Puzzle Snob
11638
Screenshots for this look great. What % finished would you say this is?
Hey. I haven’t played all the way through yet, but I really liked what I did play. It feels like it’s influenced by old school Final Fantasy games, but not copying. I have lots of other positive thoughts, but I’ll leave the negative ones since they will actually help you.

- 500 GP from Cassie was kind of a slap in the face. You get 800+ GP from just fighting regular world map monsters. If Cassie gave a bit more then I wouldn’t give into the urge to farm GP outside of town. Since all the items get taken away, it really won’t matter if you’re generous in the prologue.

- Would be nice if Garrett learned a skill at little bit earlier than level 5. It’s not a big issue, but until that point you just spam attack. His standard attack is the lowest once you gear up Lucan, and he feels like a blank state.

- I initially didn’t have a problem with encounter rate, but once I reached the Abandoned Castle and walked around the courtyard looking for any secrets, it did become a little bit annoying. I’m a player that very rarely escapes from battles though.

- Taniara says a line something like “as my father did not long ago” I think it should read “as my father did, not long ago” with a comma added. Almost sounded like you were saying her father DIDN’T die. I don’t know. I’m pretty bad at grammar.

- Any building that isn’t important or sells something seems locked. When I see a door, I personally expect to be able to go into it - or if I see a “Locked” message I then expect I’ll be access it at some point in the future, or I just need a key. I think it’s definitely better to lock a house than having an empty one just for the sake of it. I don’t think you NEED to do anything, but that’s the sort of player I am.
I didn't get notices on either of these two posts, so I apologize for the two-month lag in responses! Oh nooo!

author=CashmereCat
Screenshots for this look great. What % finished would you say this is?
About 25-33%, I'd say. Like most SNES RPGs, the beginning is more linear and so it has a lower playtime to worktime ratio. As the game goes on there is a bit more open-endedness. I can make new areas and fill them much faster than I make cutscenes, which means that despite the higher potential workload, later areas will go more quickly.


author=Little Wing Guy
- 500 GP from Cassie was kind of a slap in the face. You get 800+ GP from just fighting regular world map monsters.
Good point! I'll up the amount significantly, although not enough to make people think it'll be worth their time trying to grind up to the equipment there.

- Would be nice if Garrett learned a skill at little bit earlier than level 5. It’s not a big issue, but until that point you just spam attack. His standard attack is the lowest once you gear up Lucan, and he feels like a blank state.
He is kind of underpowered, you're right, though he should have the highest defense. I moved all his skills to be learned slightly earlier (the first being learned on level 3, since there's no reason he can't get in on that early).

- I initially didn’t have a problem with encounter rate, but once I reached the Abandoned Castle and walked around the courtyard looking for any secrets, it did become a little bit annoying. I’m a player that very rarely escapes from battles though.
The courtyard was an egregious offender of the high encounter rate. I had it set really high initially, but now it's down to 35 (which is lower than average). I also added a little secret to reward you on future playthroughs for searching for one (fruitlessly) on your first run.

- Taniara says a line something like “as my father did not long ago” I think it should read “as my father did, not long ago” with a comma added. Almost sounded like you were saying her father DIDN’T die. I don’t know. I’m pretty bad at grammar.
I fixed this, thanks for the heads up.

- Any building that isn’t important or sells something seems locked. When I see a door, I personally expect to be able to go into it - or if I see a “Locked” message I then expect I’ll be access it at some point in the future, or I just need a key. I think it’s definitely better to lock a house than having an empty one just for the sake of it. I don’t think you NEED to do anything, but that’s the sort of player I am.
This is much less of an issue later in the game (locked doors after the introduction will always have a key, although they're not all unlockable in the demo). All those locked doors early on (especially Estra and Tular) can be chalked up directly to laziness: I didn't want to make maps for the interiors, so I just slapped a locked door on the front. This won't be an issue going forward, I promise. As a hint: The locked door in Ondar CAN be opened in the demo.

Thanks for the feedback! I hope you continue playing through to the end.
I'm gonna be honest, but I got bored with the game by the time I got past the castle. The dialogue is really dry and I really don't care about what's going on. You put a lot of effort in making it look like a squaresoft SNES game but it doesn't really feel like it.

Even from a technical writing standpoint something like this bothers me. You have a very minor character giving a very simple instruction, and yet he gives you 4 different thoughts in a single message box. Things like "I run the shop for him" is very useless. Either you need to cut it down or break it up into separate message boxes. There are a lot of things that could have been done by just letting the player talk to an NPC again to get further details.

exhibit b Ironically this guy is very quick to move on already just before adding more exposition that doesn't really need expositing. The whole game is like this where every message box feels like a forum post without paragraphs. This is something the player should look for, not something fed in giant spoonfuls.

The game also lacks any sort of charm. There needs to be more jumping, nodding, laughing, falling, hitting, stuff that the SNES FF games were really good at. Even just breaking up message boxes with more movement helps. A lot of people don't like FF5 for it's story, but it was definately good at cutscene direction and pacing, something FF6 shares as well https://youtu.be/Z0RtcAi94bQ?t=45m18s In this scene something is revealed about Faris that isn't even directly mentioned. But you can tell what the characters are thinking without them saying anything. It's not an oscar scene or anything but it works really well and it's memorable.

So far my complaints have really just been about execution, but an overall writing thing is that there really wasn't a hook. Give me a reason to care about the gambler girl getting kidnapped. I especially don't feel anything is really at stake. Add some kind of chemistry between Lucan and Cassie, maybe a mystery about her that feels needing to be solved. These are just suggestions and it's easier said than done. But it's really disappointing to play a very consistent 16 bit era looking game only to be very dry on the inside with nothing to play for.
I'll be sure to go back and add some more poses and animations to the characters to include non-verbal communication, which is definitely lacking.
I haven't really made any progress updates, but here's my first:

I've redone almost all of the cutscene dialogue from the introduction to the end the first linear section. I think I've addressed all the worst sections and unnecessary info dumps by offloading less important information onto background NPCs. It's probably still going to feel a bit rushed in sections, but I've got a lot of dialogue to go through and I'd like to focus on moving forward sooner rather than later. Next up I'm going to be working on the party split cutscenes to make sure they aren't infodumpy. The intro (pre-Lucan waking up in Ondar) has received special attention, and the relationship between Cassie and Lucan is now a more personal one.

I've also added poses where they were appropriate to the action for the cutscenes in the same intro/party split sections. None of them received major overhauls in terms of action sequences, but they all look better now.

There are no more permanently locked doors anywhere in the game! From now, if you find a locked door there's a key SOMEWHERE.

I did a complete overhaul of the desert section, adding a whole new dungeon and rewriting the narrative to correct major pacing issues.

I added an "Preferences" item that can be used to change the system graphics. Hopefully there will be sufficient choices to make erryone happy.

Numerous grammatical/continuity fixes.


I'm not planning on a release anytime super soon, but I've been getting a lot done and I thought I'd share with y'all via double post.

edit: This is in addition to a bunch of new stuff well outside the scope of the original demo, but information about that will be contained in a separate post, probably.
Adon237
if i had an allowance, i would give it to rmn
1743
I saw your screenshots in the Screenshot Survival topic and came straight to this game page and subscribed. This looks great! Good luck!
Thanks! I plan on updating all of the old screenshots on the game page eventually, since they're mostly out of date. Don't play the current demo unless you really can't wait, the gameplay has been majorly overhauled for the second, forthcoming demo.
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