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This was practically my first RpgMaker 2000 project. It is so old that the name I use in the credits sequence was my handle on a different Rm2k oriented site that no longer exists.

The player takes control of Cail Tyrik, who based on your actions in the first location will be revealed to have either been a Smuggler, a Slicer, or a Soldier. After accepting a dangerous mission from a troubled young woman, he finds himself pitted against bounty hunters, mercenaries, and a self proclaimed Dark Lord of the Sith. Only through learning the ways of the Force will he be able to stand against this newest threat to the galaxy.

Learn from up to 50 possible Force Powers and 12 Lightsaber techniques. Some of the force powers are awarded based on the player's interaction with the environment. Standing and fighting nets one set of powers while infiltration and evasion net another.

Party members usually gain improved skills through finding rare items. A gambler's Lucky Shot combat skills improve with each Deck of Cards that the player finds, while a droid's stats can be upgraded at a certain shop as long as the player has enough credits.

Many of these upgrade items are rewards for an ongoing sidequest. Once the player has a party member able to translate for them, they can begin trading with the Jawas that can be found in several locations on Tatooine. In exchange for 'Rare Parts', the Jawas are willing to trade anything from Robes, Decks of Cards, Blasters, and even Implants.

Based on the in-game chronometer item (which I don't believe tracks time spent in battles) the game weighs in right around five hours.

I was a big fan of KOTOR, but instead of just trying to reinvent what they did, I tried to put my own spin on it. I was always disappointed at how black and white they were with their morality system. Some of the best moments in the Star Wars expanded universe came out of how seductive the darkside could be. Their games never really allowed for "Doing the wrong thing for the right reason" and instead split it up as "goody two shoes" and "Just raped a herd full of Nerfs type psychopath."

For that reason, the dark side can be pretty sneaky in my game. Though some situations obviously lead to light or dark points, I never flash up a message telling the player that they had a net dark side shift or a light side gain. The only time the player is made aware of their standing is AFTER it is too late to turn back. I wrote the damn thing, and I was actually surprised during my last test play when my character ended up really dark by about the halfway point of the game.

Here's the kicker though. This game was conceived of as the first half of a duology. It presents a complete story and works as a standalone, but it does not resolve the ending's cliffhanger. This was one of my first exercises in writing for a game, and I did a lot wrong with it. My characters were all place holders until almost the very end, even the hero was referred to as Male Lead in the database until right before the original planned release date.

Due to the fact that the characters are all pretty thin, I don't really want to handcuff myself to this for a whole second game.

Instead, the plan is to release a new game that will basically be a remake (with 90% new content, and hopefully much better writing and characterization) of this game, as well as some of the content originally planned for the sequel.

So why release something which is outdated and will not be supported? Aside from a few issues I am very well aware of, I think that a couple of people out there might enjoy giving this a try. Any feedback that they might give might really help me in future projects.
- Trying to push this out for the deadline got me interested in actually completing it properly again, so disregard the 'unsupported' thing.

Latest Blog

Difficult to see, the future of this project, it is...

First of all, I thought I put this one on Hiatus a while back, so that little change may not be as much of a death knell as it seems like.

That said, I've realized how huge of a mess I made with this game. It was one of the first ten projects I ever attempted with Rm2k, and I've kept it going, working little by little, since 2003.

Nine years (and counting) is a long time, and this game doesn't have all that much to show for it.

It was a major mistake for me to attempt changing every battle in the game right before the release something event I was entered in. My game was set up so that once the first section was completed, the remaining ones in the middle of the game could be tackled in any order.

That means I needed redundant copies of each battle for different character level ranges. Trying to get the new resistance based system working with that turned into a huge headache, with the difficulty for some of the encounters swinging wildly from one extreme to the other.

I have wanted to move the game to Rm2k3 for a while now, especially with some of the newer patches and tack-ons looking really good. The problem is that I ran into my old problem of not being able to do things in the maker the way they happen in my head.

I've started several different solutions to the problem, trying to get combat to work the way I want.

This was one of them:


I have two other approaches that didn't even work this well.

Also, I have a bad habit of letting outside influences color what I want to do in my own game.

When it began, the idea was a JRPG style Star Wars game. Skill progression came from training, in the case of Jedi characters, or collecting unique items/manuals ala Shadow Hearts Covenant. The gambler gained new moves by collecting Lucky Cards, the Assassin droid's stats improved through collecting spare parts for his weapons, and the Mandalorian bounty hunter had to keep a stock of Concussion Missiles and Stun Charges to make sure he was ready for anything.

The main plot had to do with rescuing a female character (not a princess, but might as well be), and defeating a grand evil that threatens the known universe (Star Wars boiler plate).

Another key feature was that I wanted the dark side to be seductive the way it is in the Dark Horse comics from the late 90's. I wanted a character to be able to fall without even knowing it, the way some of the characters in the SW universe have.

That was the battle plan for the game. JRPG style stats/skills/battles, a save the princess plot, a big bad out to destroy the Republic, and a seductive dark side. That's it.

During the initial stages of the Rm2k3 transition, I thought about creating a Dragon Age style opening. The main character could have all these different backgrounds that would effect things later in the game.

Then I figured, why not change the story so the character didn't HAVE to be a Jedi. There would be enough Jedi NPCs to join that I could still do most of what I had in mind, but I could view the story through different lenses, as say a Smuggler or Soldier or Combat Medic.

Then I thought back to Arcanum. I started working on a complicated stealth and encounter system, as well as allowing for a ton of background options that offered bonuses/penalties to stats and skills. At one point, I had up to thirty prospective party members, split between Light/Neutral/Dark alignments to accommodate the player's penchant for sainthood or devilry.

As a joke, I actually renamed the working directory "Starcanum"

Hell, my most recent psychosomatic aneurism, the addition of resistances that can only be dropped by certain weapons/skills, came right out of the later Mass Effects.

When I saw a video of FF13's demo (I think, still haven't played the thing) I whipped up a quick joke intro for the new version of the game featuring a female Jedi Knight and a Republic Soldier doing battle with a Basilisk War droid.

Sure, all of these things are interesting ideas, and might make for a bigger game - if not necessarily a better one.

I finally thought I was getting back on track with my Vignettes idea. Just put together some really good sections of a story, the parts that would be the most fun to play, and allow the player to transfer their characters from one scenario to the other without having to wade through the usual attending drudgery. Then a lot of things happened in my life and I just wasn't able to find the motivation to get that version off the ground.

Part of it is me just hating how bad I am at background art. Sprite work I can sort of put my head down and bull my way through, but backgrounds are another thing entirely. My brain doesn't segment things properly to put together a decent tile set!

In any case, I have one more tangent I'd like to explore. It would bring in a different gameplay style, shrink the cast of main characters from 40+ to around 10-15, and fix most all of the narrative problems my various rewrites/schizophrenic inclusions have caused in the past.

If it fails, then I'll just go back to brass tacks. I have the original version of the game backed up - I would just have to go back through fixing all the problems and dialog holes again, while trying to restrain myself from messing with the 200+ battles this time.

EDIT-
I realize it sounds like I'm saying I don't want to make an original/interesting game, that I just want to do a simple JRPG with a cliche Save the princess plot with a coat of Star Wars paint on top. That isn't really what I'm saying. When I started this, it was supposed to be a simple game. It was one of my first attempts, and I just kept tacking stuff onto it as I went.

I want to get back to the simple ideas. I want the game to be fun to play, to have enough plot to move you from place to place but not enough to bury you under an airdrop of textbooks, and to make you wonder if it is worth risking a few dark side points just to take the easy way through a difficult problem.

Clinging to my "original" (ha,ha,HA) story is also a way to fight back against the complex narrative I was trying to craft, especially since a friend of mine felt the need to point out that TOR beat me to the punch on three different plot lines I had in mind.

Posts

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Yes, I have been waiting for this profile.
SupremeWarrior - This is a remastered edition of the old one I briefly released back on GW, with the game breaking bugs and incredibly frustrating parts corrected. The new one is still in the works.
I could really use some feedback about the overall difficulty so far. My plan is to get the rest of the game re-balanced for the new damage types over the weekend, so it would be a big help if I could hear back about the battles that are already in the demo.

Also, thank you for downloading!
It runs till the first fight with the greedo dude. then it shuts down. I had to put my own exe file in there to run it as well.
I'm going to assume that my previous save file won't work and I'll just start a new game then.

EDIT:
Enjoying it so far, I love the innovative use of force powers as the puzzle element part of the game.

Spoiler
I played for about an hour and a bit then got stuck, currently at the part after Cail and co get owned by Darth Ruin and he's found by Jal. At the force telekinesis theres three bridge pieces but for some reason I can't make a way across.


A few bugs to report:
- The menu can be opened during and before dialogue.
- The droid shop teleport event doesn't teleport at the entrance, it teleports some spaces to the left of the entrance.
- The force powers are a big bugged sometimes and telekinesis the cursor can sometimes move out of the screen so I try not to get too out of the player's view. Also I find it really hard to control the telekinesis as moving bridge pieces sometimes move more than one tile at once, there was this one instance where I used it to move a bridge piece in place and let go of the piece then it moved to the left all by itself.

I think you should consider changing the font to the one you used in your title screen for that sentence "The Return of the Sith" and change the system set, the one your using seems pretty generic and your game would look so much better with a system set. I've made one for you and sent it to your PM.
author=Brain_Dilemma_studios
It runs till the first fight with the greedo dude. then it shuts down. I had to put my own exe file in there to run it as well.

This is something completely new! I think it might be caused by miss-matched files. I created the game in Rm2k, then I switched to the Italian rtp so I could use the enter name function as an archive search in game. Then I upgraded to the Value patch, to try and get the use of the Shift key in game, but it wrecked my fonts. I'll try to replicate the exact crash you described to figure out what is causing it.

What version of the .exe did you use? I'll have to see if I still have any calls for Value functions in, because with a regular .exe they would just be garbage.

Solution to the problem described in the spoiler tag-
I thought I'd fixed all of these. Well, this is another little glitch I am still trying to track down. For some reason which I haven't been able to track down in the eventing yet, one of the planks will randomly become un-passable, and will not let the player land on it with a jump.

You should be able to make it through that part of the test cave (if I've got the right area in mind) by moving the left most plank into position one chip above the middle one. Jump to it, walk down, and then you can make your jumps to the platforms on either side. Since that middle plank is apparently one that makes it self un-passable now, I might just remove it and put a section of platform there for the next release.


- The menu can be opened during and before dialogue.

I'm fixing the menu issues for the next release. I'm having to go back through every conversation longer than a single dialog box and turn a switch off at the beginning, and back on at the end. Fun!

- The droid shop teleport event doesn't teleport at the entrance, it teleports some spaces to the left of the entrance.

Fixed!

- The force powers are a big bugged sometimes and telekinesis the cursor can sometimes move out of the screen so I try not to get too out of the player's view. Also I find it really hard to control the telekinesis as moving bridge pieces sometimes move more than one tile at once, there was this one instance where I used it to move a bridge piece in place and let go of the piece then it moved to the left all by itself.

I still have to work on it. When an object is grabbed, I set it to pass through even un-passable tiles, so sometimes it hitches and delays/repeats the last movement when that is turned on/off, like going over the water.

I think you should consider changing the font to the one you used in your title screen for that sentence "The Return of the Sith" and change the system set, the one your using seems pretty generic and your game would look so much better with a system set. I've made one for you and sent it to your PM.

Edit - The PM hasn't come through yet, you might have to send it again. Just got it

There is an unused system in the file folder I used during testing, but when I made it, I messed up and didn't color the text right, so it didn't differentiate between skills & items a player could use, and ones they couldn't.
Alright I got a bit further ahead.

I loved the fight scene against the Dark Apprentice and Jal Ekaan really nice and well done, although the animation was a bit too fast I thought all the choreography was great!

Another few bugs I encountered:
I tried to use telekinesis after I defeated the Dark Apprentice and I got a message saying "27" and my sprite changed to the force charset and stayed like that, so I reloaded and didn't use my force powers.

I think you did very well in balancing the boss battles, such as the one against Grik and the Dark Apprentice I did feel quite challenged when facing these two.

On the subject of attack and weapon skill attributes I think they were done very well, I mean after the first few battles you remember that certain enemies are weak to certain weapon skills so you just take advantage of it. I understand thats what you were hoping to get feedback from for this demo so yeah it was done well, no need to change anything in that area.

Thanks for pointing that extra message out. I thought I'd removed all of the stuff I threw in to help me test things out, I guess that one slipped through the cracks.

I'm going to try to get the remaining areas balanced out in time to put up a more complete version sunday evening, so anyone else who finds bugs/glitches before then, either tell me in a post or a pm so I can try to adress everything.

I'm also working on something for after the game. Once the credits roll, I'm going to give the player the option to make another Clear file which will convert all the skills/items/equipment/levels into raw variables so it can be used to import the character into any later version of this I make without causing any database conflicts. Of course, since a couple of the revisions I have in mind will also effect the early game, I'm leaning towards letting the player use their Clear file to start a new game, but with some bonuses based on their accomplishments.

That might not make it into the next release though, since I'm trying to focus on getting this one right before I start adding anything else onto it.

Brain Dilemma Studios - I still haven't been able to replicate the crash after the first battle. Could you pm me a copy of the .exe you used so I can test it out?

EDIT - I found a major error in the demo release that occurs if you choose to go ahead into the content that has not been re-balanced. Sometimes a glitch happens that causes your ship ID to change, in effect giving you back the ship from the intro. This will prevent you from leaving the current planet. This will be addressed in the next release, which will have the "roped off demo area" restriction removed.
You know what, lol I was trying to play it with RPG Maker 2003. I'll give it another shot with 2k. :D
You might need to re-download it. If you opened it in Rm2k3, it saved when you did the test play and probably wiped out all of the character's stats.
I've been waiting for this game, but my computer won't let me download.... Aargh! Can anybody help me?
Metros brought a couple of big problems to my attention which will be taken care of in the next update.

Right now, the biggest one occurs in the training cave. I made a mistake while I was editing the map with the bedroll. When I made changes to the events on the bedroll that allow you to rest/meditate/generally progress with training, I deleted all but one of the old events...and then forgot to copy and paste the new event back into the open squares.

As a result, the meditation/rest option will only trigger if the player is standing in the right spot.



Also, about half of the non-training and non-mission dialog between Cail and Jal is missing, with only a couple of options available. I managed to get two versions of the project open in two versions of the editor, so some of my additional flavor text was added to the back up version instead of the actual project. *Headbutts a wall*

Another important note. If you are stuck in a certain boss fight for more than four rounds, when you only have one character left able to act, you'll need to reload and play the battle without using any Stun attacks. While I was adjusting the enemies, I must have slipped up and allowed someone you're not even expected to defeat to become vulnerable to the stun status again.

Minor Spoiler that clarifies exactly what Boss I'm talking about:
The first appearance of Darth Ruin is meant to be impossible. After the party beats Grik, Ruin arrives and is supposed to wipe the party out in three turns, ideally before they are able to waste healing items.


I apologize if anyone who has downloaded the game got stuck on either of these parts. As always, these issues have already been fixed as of this post, so will not be an issue anymore after the next update.

Please feel free to PM or post any other game breaking problems that slipped by me in the first release so I can address them in the next update!
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