Dragon Tooth

author=El_WaKa
- Jumping with Maya makes her lose all his equipment

Well, that's an interesting glitch (at least it doesn't delete what she had equipped). I have to take a look at that. This is not acceptable. I think it may have something to do with the class switch. Since I can't get her to wait, I doubt I even need it, though (though even the slightest tweak in the code messes with the animation). I'll mess with it. I hope I don't have to remove it.

- Nobody can learn Holy

It's a priest spell. Alissa can't learn it, only Burns. In my haste in making the game, the difference between priest and mage hasn't been well thought out so not everything is clear. I figured that once the event was over and everyone had their makerscore, I could start cleaning everything up and making more specialized spells and abilities.

- You can move in some of the cutscenes

I really have to start using auto-start. It's just another mess I have to clean up. If these are the worst of my bugs, I'm really lucky. Quite a few of these games in this event are just flat out broken.

- Why use the Inn when you can heal for free with the crystals?

This is an excellent point. I think distance between save crystals and the inns is going to make the difference, and taking save crystals out of the inns will be important, too. I guess I didn't think that out too well, again.

- The mapping could have been better in some places

I'm still learning. Also, a lot of maps didn't turn out the way I wanted because of resources. I'd like to have broader access to tilesets per map, and once I've converted all of them charsets, I'll have that.

Overall... 2,8/5

Feel free to write a review. I definitely welcome that score, and any other observations you have.

EDIT: Yeah, I figured out what's wrong with jump. I'll fix it.

-Maya no longer loses her equipment when she jumps.

-All cutscenes are set to auto-start now, so you shouldn't be able to move.

-I've deleted a few crystals, but none in the dungeons.

-I fixed the missing switches for the cutscenes that repeat.

-The rogues vanish now.

-The problem with the Golem is that instead of just staying where I put him, his position resets. I could have just added a move event set to a parallel process so that every time, he moves out of the way, but with the save crystal there and another one in Maldolf's chamber, the golem's ability to heal you is kind of pointless, so I just had him disappear after the fight.

-Guards disappear, now.

-That glitch with being able to bypass the cave wasn't supposed to be a glitch. I had forgotten and left the grass there by mistake, but that cliff path was supposed to lead to an optional dungeon that I ran out of time for.

I haven't uploaded yet because I'm going through and looking for other issues. Maldolf is easier. If I decide to make a longer version of the game, I'll make him hard again. The elf, gives his endorsement at a rather high level. I've test leveled the weak Maldolf at level 10. He's hard (I wish could adequately make a game Nintendo hard), but not impossible. A hint: Regina's Spire is non-consumable and can be used as an item. If you choose to use it like that, it casts Sacriment 3 and each time, it hits Maldolf for 700 HP on average.

As for the Secret Grimoire...I hid it pretty well, didn't I? It's there. There's a hidden switch, but I didn't make the hidden switch or hidden entry visible. It would have been, since the graphic I used for the switch wasn't used anywhere else. I realized someone would think it was out of place and may try moving it, so I put more instances of it all over the dungeon. What's more, when you find the right one, you can move all around it, but if you interact with it, it's on a conditional branch and will only move react if you approach it from the correct side. I made it that hard because if you find it, you get the two best weapons and two best armors in the game, so it's not like I'm not rewarding you for the trouble.

Okay, sorry, I forgot. I was trying to promote exploration so I tied her to two events. You have to talk to the guy outside the inn first, the one who says, "You'll always find gamblers at the inn." Then you talk to the old man in the office in city hall.

Oh, okay, I apparently need to redesign the map around him or at the very least set a conditional branch to direction. Thank you!

Iddalai said, "This game took me some time to finish, I liked the story concept (specially from the start to the mid-game), I liked the game (or I would't keep playing it!) but the bugs and balancing issues made the experience frustrating half of the time. :/

It needs a lot of testing and polish.

Prepare yourself for a wall of text! :P

Feedback:"

Removing quotes since it messes with the hide

EDIT: I JUST CAN'T GET HIDE TO WORK. EDIT

- I played the latest version of the game, FYI!

Yeah, still working on an updated version. Thank you!

- Before uploading the game to RMN, please delete your saves.

Yeah, I mess that up from time to time.

- The title screen needs some work, the title letters are too small and don't stand out enough.

Hmm...maybe a color change could be in order. I'd have made a custom TS, but I was worried about the RTP limitations in the contest rules.

- In the intro the soldier disappears before getting to the door.

Yeah, for some reason I have this mental block about letting NPCs touch teleport tiles.

- The maps are too big and empty, some are also too "square-ish" in form, you can make smaller maps, so that they are quicker to traverse and easier to decorate with stuff, some dungeon maps have smaller corridors for the player to walk around but are still to big and look empty because of that.
Maps also lack decorative details.

This is a problem I definitely have.

- I can walk over beds and under them at the same time, I know what you were going with here (older RPG games), but you need to change the passability arrows to prevend the player from entering the bed from bellow and exit the bed from above.

Yeah, did them one way, didn't take the time to fix it when I realized I didn't like it.

- Some maps allow you to save from the menu while others don't. I personally would prefer to save anywhere, since it respects the players time. But if you go for save points make sure to remove the save option from the menu and add more save points since the ones available aren't enough.

Yeah, I decided halfway through to allow open save, but rushed at the last minute.

- Why does it take so long to save the game using a save point, I'm guessing you made some sort of effect but it's not working and so I need to wait 1 second before saving?

Well, there's supposed to be a jingle and a flash...I don't recall. I think it did something weird when I tried to just put the eventing down and I put in an extra wait command to make it look less strange.

- A small nitpick, when I exit the first room after the intro, the outside of the room isn't symmetrical, the door would look better in the middle of the windows, plus the other room on the left side is also different from this one.

Back to mapping issues. Okay.

- I found the text to be well written, the story starts out interesting but I feel that it was rushed from the middle to the end, the text also seemed lower quality in comparison with the start. Possibly due to the time frame, but I noticed this since the story was the best part of the game for me.

I didn't really plan the story. I wrote it literally on the fly, so the process was less making sure everything meshed and more putting down ideas as they entered my brain.

- Klaus also disappears after the first conversation with the King, a fade out would solve this easly. A quick way to make all the instances where characters disappear look better would be to add a fade in/ out.

I didn't even notice, I was so obsessed with making sure nothing broke the game.

- Aileen starts the game with a Long Sword and a Leather Armor, why does she find another Leather Armor in the first room? Klaus also comes equipped with a Leather Armor so there's no need for that item unless Aileen starts with nothing.

Yeah, I forgot to empty her armor default.

- The event to exit the Kings room should be 1 tile down, right now I can exit the room walking left or right instead of only down, this also happens on other maps, but those don't have the space to move the tile down.

Yes, I also a few spots where you can walk through walls because I forgot about the ceiling tile passability.

- I like how the merchants say something different when I talk to them behind the counter!

I've been playing with conditional branches! :)

- I like the NPC dialog (specially in the first 3 towns), it expands the lore and is well written.

Yes, I like lore!

- I liked the tombstone inscriptions! :)

My wife got me into that. Did you know that at until the early 1900s, cemeteries were the preferred spot for picnics? Cemeteries back then were more or less regarded as public parks. They still are public parks, but society doesn't so much view them that way anymore.

- On the left side of the first town if I open a door to enter a house the door of the other house opens too, this also happens in other maps in the game, but I forgot to note them down, sorry...

Yeah...I'm sure I have a few of those. Instead of making a boat load of variables, I was just recycling them.

- You forgot to add the "counter" option to the fortune teller table.

Actually, I didn't forget this one. The counter option just doesn't work on the fortune teller's table. Instead of realizing I could have evented it so that talking to the table initiated the event, I kept trying to get the counter option to work and then decided to stop messing with it and move on.

- The "item found" sound plays after getting the item sometimes, at least one box in the village does this.

This chime2, by the way. I don't understand. It doesn't always play?

- I like the arena concept but it doesn't offer much right now, only 2 enemies and too little money to make it useful or engaging.

Yeah, I completely forgot about the arena.

- I like to buy new spells at shops, I think it's fun, but I feel the prices need balancing, at the start they're too cheap, at the end they're to expensive.

About the actual idea of needing books for spells, you know, in any religious structure, you don't just automatically know something. You have to read about it and search out rare texts. I thought it was more believable. As for pricing...if I play the game through, I'll probably have a better idea.

- Good use of RTP music!

My sn is pianotm. I am very finicky about music.

- I liked the sewers, good concept, it's an RPG classic dungeon!

Yeah, when I was fixing the earlier version of the game, it occurred to me that I don't have an opening dungeon. It's optional, but at least people can go there if they want. I also like annoying mazes that make players run around dealing with random encounters to find loot, and sometimes getting locked out and having to find another entrance to go back. I like playing those kinds of dungeons, too.

- When the player is moving in the south part of a sewer map and can walk under part of the wall, some teleportation events are missing in those places.

Again, I think I have something of a mental block about teleportation tiles being on ceiling tiles. I'll have to fix that.

- I was confused by exiting the left part of the sewers into the world map, I'd make it a ladder to climb, plus it's frustrating having to repeat the sewers dungeon again to explore everything after exiting.

That was why I made sure you had all of your characters before letting you go into the sewers. I ought to just put a cave entrance there so you can go back in. It's a holdover from playing tabletop DnD. The DM always had exits that you couldn't reenter.

- Good use of RTP in the sewers dungeon! Since this dungeon is a bunch of small maps it's better to navigate than the others. The issue with this dungeon is that it's way too large, it's the largest in the game and it's boring having to backtrack everything to exit.

I kind of made this one in a hurry, so I'm happy to read I did so well. I just wish the RTP had things like drainpipes and spill valves. Would the size be less objectionable if I added more loot?

- Klaus learns skills and I can check what those skills are in the menu but I can't use them in battle, it's better to remove those skills so it doesn't confuse the player.

Oops! I tried to give everyone skills! I must have confused the categories.

- At level 3 most enemies in the sewers couldn't damage me at all.

I don't know how to fix that. That's actually a problem at all levels that I've noticed in RPG Tsukuru 2003. I think there's a plugin fix for that, but that would have been against the contest rules.

- In the first village the shop sells "Stimulant" twice.

Check.

- Treasure chests should have "fixed graphic" under "Animaton Type", otherwise the opening animation doesn't work when I open them from the sides or back.

Okay.

- The dialog before I got into the boat (and fight the boss) needs to be set to auto-start, I was able to move around.

I know. I've already fixed it. I also need to add switches there because the assassins keep coming back every time you enter the map.

- "Focus" is a nice idea for a skill! I'd improve it to increase a bit with each level.

I honestly didn't think about it. We shall start checking for levels! Thank you!

- After the Rogue boss battle a bunch of ninjas appear from nowhere and it doesn't look right, but the worse part is that you get a game over if anyone touches you! It makes no sense since I killed 2 of them easily! Plus I'd have to restart from my last save and you don't even have a save point in the pier, that design leads to frustration.

I didn't put enough thought into it. The whole point was to force you on the boat.

- I found an item that said "Teaches Bolt 2" but it teached Ice.

I was actually worried about that happening with one of the spell books.

- When the boat moves around the map automatically it hits a small island.

Well, that's easy enough to deal with.

- This goes for most "teleport" events, when the player changes map the hero should be facing the right direction, this is easy to fix since there's an option for this in the teleport event.

Okay.

- You forgot to change the "Event Layer" to "Same layer as hero" for almost every sign and message on the wall, so you can't read them right now.

I noticed on a lot of these.

- Maybe you should only find "Master Clothes" after having Burns since the player will probably sell them, only Alissa can equip them and she already has better by then.

Thanks. I'll fix that.

- The entrance to Town Hall in the 3rd village needs to stand out. it's easily missed.

I thought so.

- The NPC comments about having 5000 Gold stolen, that's a nice detail.

:)

- "Jump" is a cool skill that adds flavour to the battles, is it influenced by Maya status or by the enemy status?

Honestly, this mechanic gave me the most trouble! At the moment, it only takes off a variable amount of enemy HP based on the HP of the enemy, but I want to make it so it's influenced by Maya's power and levels. That has turned out not to be a straightforward endeavor, and the animation and character interactions were virtually impossible to get right. I probably shouldn't have even made it, but I became so obsessed with getting Jump right that I spent three days trying to get it to work. Once I got the animation working nicely, I just didn't have it in me to check for levels when after multiple attempts, the system clearly didn't want to understand what I wanted to do. It did NOT understand skipping turns. It did NOT understand checking for levels. It did NOT understand creature HP percentage. I actually can't figure out why setting a specific amount of HP for a creature to lose works, and setting a percentage of HP to lose doesn't. What the hell is so different about percentages that the system decides to freaking do nothing?!

- The party order is fixed in battle, but you allow the player to change the order in the menu, this makes the order of the characters graphics in battle different from the order of their names and HP/MP in battle, this is confusing! I'd remove the "order" option from the menu and make sure the characters are always in the right order in both the menu and battles.

Okay.

- Since you put the characters in the same spot in battle you can change the first "Jump" animation to "Global" (or make it target Maya) and make sure it visually works everytime.

Okay, I'll try that (actually very leery about touching anything having to do with that animation. It's really glitchy.)

- Werewolves in the desert and Sirens in the plains? These are some weird monster locations. They don't really fit.

Did I really put Werewolves in the desert? *facepalm*

- I don't know if this is supposed to happen but I use "Paralyse" on Rogues/Human enemies and have an easy win.

Oh, I hate that mechanic! Paralyze is one of RM2K3's basic status ailments. It's basically the same as petrify, a status ailment I hate with a passion. I had meant to alter it so that it wears off after a few turns. But yes, like petrify, if you manage to paralyze all of your enemies, you will win.

- In the tunnels under the church where we recruit Burns, we get to fight lots of Rogues randomly, they shouldn't drop "Attack Increase" everytime or I can farm them and break the game.

This means I forgot to copy them and give the new copies different drops.

- In the room where Burns pulls a torch to open a secret door, he disappears into nowhere and we can't leave the room if we want to since it's missing the teleport.

Oh, I see. And I know about Burns. I noticed it during Sacredlobo's LP.

- Remember when I said I felt the writing quality was decreasing? That started when we meet Burns. When Klaus reveals his plans it seemed too forced and I feel some of the things that were said should have been more subtle, it seemed like you were afraid the player wouldn't get it.

Maybe. I always felt like there should have been more that came first.

- I wasn't surprised that Burns was recruited since you add him to the party before I even rescue him from the cell. I'd add him only when you rescue him.

Good point.

- Why doesn't Burns have "Focus" or something similar? He seems underpowered.

Yeah, I didn't spend a lot of time on him. A lot more production time went into Maya's "jump" than I wanted to. That really ate up a lot of my time.

- There's a pause everytime I enter the map where we fight 2 rogues after the jailbreak.

That's system lag. I change the battle music here. The game doesn't like all of my auto-starts and parallel processes. It was really bad when I had multiple processes on one map. I can't remember how I fixed it.

- I used "Focus" in a random battle against 2 rogues after the jailbreak and it repeated "Focus" endlessly, I had to reset since I couldn't attack or do anything else. This bug made me stop using "Focus" since I didn't want to reset the game everytime that could possibly happen.

I must have forgotten to copy/paste a page.

- I liked the prison, it's another RPG classic!

Cliches! Cliches everywhere!

- The "Haste" status animation shouldn't be the same as a bad status animation.

It's default. I forgot to change it.


- In the prison I battled against 4 skeletons, the graphics for 2 of them were on top of one another, why?

Because there were only supposed to be three...

- I only noticed the save points healed much later in the game.

I'm probably just going to make them heal points, and let you save anywhere.

- Elf boss dialog "He's going to Nissara village. I don't know it is." should be "I don't know where it is."

Right. I type fast. I'm not 200 wpm but I'm over 100. I have a bad tendency to redact words. I go over everything I write with a fine-tooth comb, but I'm bound to miss something here and there. Whenever you see them, let me know.

- The inn in the 3rd village can't be used since you forgot the "counter" option and so we can't talk to the inn girls.

Are talking about Oberlin? Because I used the table tiles, which of course, can't be countered. *facepalm*

- When I got the airship I went straight to Nissara, usually I would explore but I was afraid I'd trigger some sort of game breaking bug by going out of order.

I don't think there was any order to Nissara. The only thing crucial to the game there is the cave.

- Sometimes I have to examine a door to open it, other times I just need to touch a door. I think it's best to use the same method for all doors for consistency.

Check.

- Falling in a hole in the ice cave should not be a game over, it's better to teleport the hero back to the map entrance.

I thought about that.

- Burns and Alissa can't use any healing spells like "Restore 2" or "Revive" or "Curing 1/2" or "Recover 1/2" in battle! I believe this was a mistake on your end? The only healing magick (you Crowley fan you! :P ) they can use in battle is the weakest one.

I see the problem. It's another category problem. Another complaint I have about RM2k3 is the fact that it uses multiple categories for the same thing, and then skills will only work when set to those categories.

- Burns doesn't really have a believable motive to stay with the party.

I agree.

- I liked how I can equip Regina's Spire! Awesome!
- It was a nice touch to teleport the party outside the ice dungeon after beating the boss! :)

I never liked having to back track. Did I do that for the fire cavern?

- In Khol I can cross the "swamp/purple river" by foot, maybe you should change that?

The reason for the bridge was because I thought it was mean to have damage floor blocking your path to a hut/house. I think I should change the overall shaping of it so it doesn't look like a river, or get rid of it entirely.

- I checked the game in the editor and noticed that in Nissara you can't examine barrels and other suff because the layer is set to "below hero", maybe this happened in other places too.

Yeah, I've caught a few of these.

- After the ice cave there's an economic spike, everything is much more expensive than it should be.

Some tweaking is in order.

- I can land the airship near the cliff saouth of the 2nd cave entrace directly south of the vulcano, I can skip the fire dungeon like this if I want to.

I've already fixed this.

- No one explains I can jump over lava so I didn't know about it until I checked the game in the editor...

Maybe a cutscene with everyone wondering how to get across...

- Why are there Ice and Water spells? They're very similar elements and I didn't notice much of a difference in enemy weaknesses.

I wondered about what spells to use.

- I was lvl 8 when I beat the Golem and felt the battle dragged on, he wasn't hard, he was barely damaging me, it only took a long time because he had a lot of HP. I'd make his stronger in physical attacks and spells and give him less HP.

Goes towards balance. Sooner or later, I'll be competent at this.

- Inside the library in the village to the south of Nissara, the door to the left part of the library needs to stand out, I didn't even see it the first couple of times I visited so I didn't know someone was looking for the secret grimoire.

I think a floor mat might help.

- The library is too big, do you have enough interesting information to fill it all in? You can use what you already have and change the size to distribute it.

I had wanted to tell more story, but with a deadline, I ran out of ideas. The library was an afterthought.

- The strongest weapon in the game damages Madolf for about 250!? It's not worth it when I can do much more with spells.

Stronger weapons. Check.

- I beat Madolf with lvl 9/10, with no party healing spells or any healing spells stronger than the basic one, I spammed Ice 3, Holy 3 and Jump, items were useful since there were no healing spells...

I had complaints about him being too hard. I didn't weaken him by very much. Higher defense and magick defense for Madolf with higher HP for the player, do you think?

- The last boss was harder once again due to the lack of healing spells, but I beat him on my 2nd try, I didn't grind and had only lvl 10/11, his party hitting spells were hard to manage with limited healing capabilities, I spammed Fire 3, Holy 3 and by luck beat him almost dying.

Again, what do you recommend?



- It's hard to evaluate the battles balancing since there's bugs like the healing and Focus repeat, but you'll probably have to balance it, some battles are too easy and some are too hard or long, plus I shouldn't be able to beat the last 2 bosses with so many spells unavailable.

I'm working on maps for Xenomic atm, but I'll do what I can to fix this game up.

- I enjoyed the story concept but as I said I started losing interest from the middle to the end where I believe the writing lowered in quality. This was probably because of the time frame, you got a lot of good dialog for 1 week, though!

Thank you!

- The graphics need some work, make smaller maps and it should come together, check other RTP RPG Maker games and notice how they build the maps. There were also some tile errors, like walls missing the side tiles.
- The game encourages exploration and that's great! I liked the sewer stuff, even if the dungeon was too big and overstated it's welcome, also I noticed there's an inaccessible part of the sewers, unless I missed something?

An inaccessible part? I can't find it. The sewer should be fully navigable, except where you exit the castle or via the church.

I liked the other kind of hidden passages to get loot, too bad there were issues with some barrels and stuff so I couldn't explore more.
I liked getting lot's of money that allowed me to buy lot's of stuff.

I do all that stuff because it's the stuff I like in games.

Thank you so much for this very thorough rundown. I really didn't catch a lot of this stuff and this is really, really helpful.