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Acra
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I got into game development in hopes of making friends and gaining some sense of self-worth.
Boy, that was the most foolish decision of my life.
I also do some written LPs of RMN games over in this topic. It's not as big as I like, but I'm busier than I like, too.
Boy, that was the most foolish decision of my life.
I also do some written LPs of RMN games over in this topic. It's not as big as I like, but I'm busier than I like, too.
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Acra's Playtesting Topic
======
Keeper of the Fog
======
Can't believe it's been over a year since I last did one of these. Only feels like a few months. I guess I got sidetracked. A lot.
Anyway, Fogkeeper. Or probably Keeper of the Fog. It seems to use both names. Knowing how short it is, I'm a little worried I won't have anything to say. I certainly had that problem with Princess Pri last Christmas. In a lot of ways, Keeper of the Fog reminds me of it, but I suppose that's not all that surprising; both very small-scale games made for contests, and set in buildings where you look at a lot of objects. Difference here is that there is at least a bit of a battle system, simple though it be.
While Atiya had also set up an .exe file, for whatever reason, it would always fail upon trying to install the very first file (audio, incidently). I suspect this is on my overzealous Antivirus, but even disabling it didn't stop it from failing. Ultimately, went with the .zip and found the RTP externally, so everything's fine, but nevertheless thought I should mention it. Probably nothing you can do about it, but I'll admit there was an odd feeling of catharsis that download problems are not strictly my domain.
It starts quickly enough, and--
This line really got me. It has the same energy as Toad's 'I forgot my bazooka at home' line from Mario RPG. Anyway. So the first real goal is finding a password. It's worth noting that almost every little object has some text associated. The one below gave an item, but most don't.
Maybe that's just... what you do when you make a tiny horror-esque game. Either way, the writing is pretty solid. Punchy is probably the ideal word.
Combat is entirely pre-determined, with no random encounters. It seems very 'tight', I guess. Things can quickly go bad. Numbers are low enough that you're frequently on death's door, so it feels tense. As a sucker for debuffs, I do suspect that Hawkeye is kinda bad, as it only lasts for one attack and takes away from your PSyche, which is also used to cast the far more useful Regrowth. Which can also heal out of combat. Something that didn't occur to me to try until after I beat up a haunted TV. We'll see if that botch-up costs me down the line.
Got most of the hints now. A short story, huh? Time for my complete and total illiteracy powers to kick in. CROAK? GREED? GROOM? BROOM? PROOF? ...Yep. Got nothing.
Never did find hint #2. For whatever reason, my brain just assumed... wait, BRAIN? No, not brain. Anyway. Assumed the basement would be after going up the stairs, but nah, I guess I coulda gone there after getting the mask. One fight against the Wall later, and I've used both my healing items. And then I find two more, so nevermind.
Again, very punchy dialogue. Unfortunately, none of the enemies are huge, so they don't have huge guts to rip and tear.
Found the last hints, which are pointing VERY clearly in the direction without just saying the name. Unfortunately, I don't know shit about Lovecraft other than the exceedingly unfortunate name his cat had, so this is wasted on me. Still, shouldn't be that hard to figure out.
...Okay, I'll admit I just googled it after a while. I only feel very slightly dumb for doing so. Was expecting something edgier. And I grabbed a ring down there, too. Which seems like some kind of failsafe so you've gotta go down there, even if you do guess the password, or know it beforehand. Normally, it'd be the kind of thing I'd test for, but I'm confident enough it works fine that I'm not going to.
Enter the password, fight one last enemy, and that's pretty much the end. Fight's pacing wasn't that different from the rest. I did use all my healing items in the end, but considering me trying out the Pistol and Hawkeye a bunch, it's definitely generous enough that a normal player won't have too much trouble finishing it. Basic + Regrowth + Shotgun seems the optimal set of moves for pretty much all cases throughout the game.
I suppose it wouldn't be fair to call it an abrupt ending, but I did kind of expect a full second floor to the house, for some reason. Game was almost exactly half an hour, but I suspect a fair bit of this was me standing around, writing parts of this. A lot (almost all?) of the assets were done by others, and from a LOT of different sources, but they all blend together quite well, so I'd seldom know if there weren't like twenty names listed in the credits.
What I think makes a lot of difference and makes it engaging is that you make little concessions that let you progress in other rooms, rather than 'find thing, go to next room, repeat x10 until game over' like other of these small-scale games. The combat was definitely fun enough and felt well-balanced for a survival horror game, but taking a step back, I suppose there isn't that much depth there, being really only a few options in combat. Speaking of, though, I never managed to get a stun with the Magnum, nor was I ever inflicted with Fear. Dunno if that's unlucky or no. Combat complaints are nitpicky. It's absolutely what it ought to be for this scope of a game and felt fun in-the-moment.
At the end, Keeper of the Fog is definitely solid for what it is. I know it wasn't exactly a deep-dive into a complex game, but I think it was a fair enough point to re-start doing these.
Keeper of the Fog
======
Can't believe it's been over a year since I last did one of these. Only feels like a few months. I guess I got sidetracked. A lot.
Anyway, Fogkeeper. Or probably Keeper of the Fog. It seems to use both names. Knowing how short it is, I'm a little worried I won't have anything to say. I certainly had that problem with Princess Pri last Christmas. In a lot of ways, Keeper of the Fog reminds me of it, but I suppose that's not all that surprising; both very small-scale games made for contests, and set in buildings where you look at a lot of objects. Difference here is that there is at least a bit of a battle system, simple though it be.
While Atiya had also set up an .exe file, for whatever reason, it would always fail upon trying to install the very first file (audio, incidently). I suspect this is on my overzealous Antivirus, but even disabling it didn't stop it from failing. Ultimately, went with the .zip and found the RTP externally, so everything's fine, but nevertheless thought I should mention it. Probably nothing you can do about it, but I'll admit there was an odd feeling of catharsis that download problems are not strictly my domain.
It starts quickly enough, and--
This line really got me. It has the same energy as Toad's 'I forgot my bazooka at home' line from Mario RPG. Anyway. So the first real goal is finding a password. It's worth noting that almost every little object has some text associated. The one below gave an item, but most don't.
Maybe that's just... what you do when you make a tiny horror-esque game. Either way, the writing is pretty solid. Punchy is probably the ideal word.
Combat is entirely pre-determined, with no random encounters. It seems very 'tight', I guess. Things can quickly go bad. Numbers are low enough that you're frequently on death's door, so it feels tense. As a sucker for debuffs, I do suspect that Hawkeye is kinda bad, as it only lasts for one attack and takes away from your PSyche, which is also used to cast the far more useful Regrowth. Which can also heal out of combat. Something that didn't occur to me to try until after I beat up a haunted TV. We'll see if that botch-up costs me down the line.
Got most of the hints now. A short story, huh? Time for my complete and total illiteracy powers to kick in. CROAK? GREED? GROOM? BROOM? PROOF? ...Yep. Got nothing.
Never did find hint #2. For whatever reason, my brain just assumed... wait, BRAIN? No, not brain. Anyway. Assumed the basement would be after going up the stairs, but nah, I guess I coulda gone there after getting the mask. One fight against the Wall later, and I've used both my healing items. And then I find two more, so nevermind.
Again, very punchy dialogue. Unfortunately, none of the enemies are huge, so they don't have huge guts to rip and tear.
Found the last hints, which are pointing VERY clearly in the direction without just saying the name. Unfortunately, I don't know shit about Lovecraft other than the exceedingly unfortunate name his cat had, so this is wasted on me. Still, shouldn't be that hard to figure out.
...Okay, I'll admit I just googled it after a while. I only feel very slightly dumb for doing so. Was expecting something edgier. And I grabbed a ring down there, too. Which seems like some kind of failsafe so you've gotta go down there, even if you do guess the password, or know it beforehand. Normally, it'd be the kind of thing I'd test for, but I'm confident enough it works fine that I'm not going to.
Enter the password, fight one last enemy, and that's pretty much the end. Fight's pacing wasn't that different from the rest. I did use all my healing items in the end, but considering me trying out the Pistol and Hawkeye a bunch, it's definitely generous enough that a normal player won't have too much trouble finishing it. Basic + Regrowth + Shotgun seems the optimal set of moves for pretty much all cases throughout the game.
I suppose it wouldn't be fair to call it an abrupt ending, but I did kind of expect a full second floor to the house, for some reason. Game was almost exactly half an hour, but I suspect a fair bit of this was me standing around, writing parts of this. A lot (almost all?) of the assets were done by others, and from a LOT of different sources, but they all blend together quite well, so I'd seldom know if there weren't like twenty names listed in the credits.
What I think makes a lot of difference and makes it engaging is that you make little concessions that let you progress in other rooms, rather than 'find thing, go to next room, repeat x10 until game over' like other of these small-scale games. The combat was definitely fun enough and felt well-balanced for a survival horror game, but taking a step back, I suppose there isn't that much depth there, being really only a few options in combat. Speaking of, though, I never managed to get a stun with the Magnum, nor was I ever inflicted with Fear. Dunno if that's unlucky or no. Combat complaints are nitpicky. It's absolutely what it ought to be for this scope of a game and felt fun in-the-moment.
At the end, Keeper of the Fog is definitely solid for what it is. I know it wasn't exactly a deep-dive into a complex game, but I think it was a fair enough point to re-start doing these.
RPG Maker games obscurity iceberg
The only three RPGMaker games I've ever heard of from outside this site are Corpse Party, LISA, and Yume Nikki. To me, those three alone should make the top two stratum, then a few of the more popular games in this echo chamber should be the third and fourth strata, and then the remaining four should be fused into one colossal strata, so completely full of names and in such small font that they're borderline unreadable.
Goaling it 2021
I've personally got two goals:
Finally release version 1.0 of Draug's Resurrection. At this point, this subdivides into three categories;
a.) Write the epilogues and branching texts to get into those various epilogues.
b.) Make hundreds of kinda-not-that-important but make-you-look-like-an-idiot-if-you-don't-do-them battle sprites and East/West facing sprites for NPCs.
c.) Just, the most bugtesting and balancing ever.
Do a playthrough of (and maybe review) at least two other RPGMaker games. I've been meaning to get back to this, but I can't play other games and focus on making my own at the same time; I lose focus when I try, and when you're guts-deep in code, it's not a good idea. The fact that nobody actually wants me to touch their stuff is also kind of a non-motivating factor. I don't feel like I'd be helping anyone by doing so, so I haven't.
Finally release version 1.0 of Draug's Resurrection. At this point, this subdivides into three categories;
a.) Write the epilogues and branching texts to get into those various epilogues.
b.) Make hundreds of kinda-not-that-important but make-you-look-like-an-idiot-if-you-don't-do-them battle sprites and East/West facing sprites for NPCs.
c.) Just, the most bugtesting and balancing ever.
Do a playthrough of (and maybe review) at least two other RPGMaker games. I've been meaning to get back to this, but I can't play other games and focus on making my own at the same time; I lose focus when I try, and when you're guts-deep in code, it's not a good idea. The fact that nobody actually wants me to touch their stuff is also kind of a non-motivating factor. I don't feel like I'd be helping anyone by doing so, so I haven't.
Secret Santa Sign-ups 2020
Oh lord, I feel so bad for you, Marrend. This is at least your fourth time playing Draug's Resurrection by this point. I was originally going to ask Liberty to make sure you specifically didn't end up with me again, but ultimately deleted that part since it seemed rude. Guess I should've kept it.
I had a suspicion something was weird, as writing it in first person is either the work of someone who's trying to be coy and thinks they're smarter than they actually are (it's actually a bad perspective to take, as it prevents you from properly talking about mechanics), or someone exhausted with the game and wanting a different take on it. And the cadence matched yours. And it makes sense that by that point you'd want to generally avoid battles and have little to say about the mechanics. And also why the download count didn't go up when the Secret Santas went out; you already had it. Aaand I think anyone who wasn't familiar with it would make a point of how different it all is structurally than other games. I am, again, not blaming you. What you did is perfectly reasonable considering your extended history with it. It was just a really poor roll for you to get. Again.
The point against you was that you kind of just... forgot some of the workaround for quirks you previously knew about. All the bugging out you experienced was (probably) all due to it running out of available memory per session. It's... definitely problematic, but I think it's beyond my ken to fix. The upside is that closing and reopening the game frees up that memory, so it's not hard for a player to work around. Just annoying. It's probably machine-based and the time it takes to run out would vary wildly per person (my personal testing has it freaking at about 1400 MB of used RAM), but I wonder if it's not worth giving some kind of a warning message when the player has played for more than, say, 30 minutes. If you wanna test it quickly, walk back and forth between two field boards really quickly, and see what the Task Manager (Crtl+Alt+Del) has to say about it.
And while I haven't yet re-reached Whiterock Volcano to personally confirm in context, for the door in the volcano, the Progress Log and dialogue should both mention that the key is back outside the volcano, at a monastery close to town. I'll admit I was pretty worried about Whiterock, as I did some time-based changes involving Chizuru to it without really checking on it, but it seems fine when testing in isolation. The only way you could've really screwed yourself was if it attempted to run a one-time program, failed via lack of available memory, and then you saved.
I briefly considered having Chizuru straight-up block you from going to Whiterock without a third member, but I'm ultimately leaning towards no, as it's fairly difficult to do, as it involves walking right by Marcia. Still, maybe I should make the warnings about Whiterock locking you in a LOT more clear, and make Chizuru even more irate if you don't have a third member.
While I'm here, not sure what to make of a lack of remark from wombats or Liberty, as it's applicable to her, too. I made the mistake the other day of looking at some old comments and remembering just how hateable most people find my artstyle. Hopefully, they're not too deeply disappointed. But, all in all, a bit of a disaster all around for me. I think for everyone's sake I won't be entering this again next year.
I had a suspicion something was weird, as writing it in first person is either the work of someone who's trying to be coy and thinks they're smarter than they actually are (it's actually a bad perspective to take, as it prevents you from properly talking about mechanics), or someone exhausted with the game and wanting a different take on it. And the cadence matched yours. And it makes sense that by that point you'd want to generally avoid battles and have little to say about the mechanics. And also why the download count didn't go up when the Secret Santas went out; you already had it. Aaand I think anyone who wasn't familiar with it would make a point of how different it all is structurally than other games. I am, again, not blaming you. What you did is perfectly reasonable considering your extended history with it. It was just a really poor roll for you to get. Again.
The point against you was that you kind of just... forgot some of the workaround for quirks you previously knew about. All the bugging out you experienced was (probably) all due to it running out of available memory per session. It's... definitely problematic, but I think it's beyond my ken to fix. The upside is that closing and reopening the game frees up that memory, so it's not hard for a player to work around. Just annoying. It's probably machine-based and the time it takes to run out would vary wildly per person (my personal testing has it freaking at about 1400 MB of used RAM), but I wonder if it's not worth giving some kind of a warning message when the player has played for more than, say, 30 minutes. If you wanna test it quickly, walk back and forth between two field boards really quickly, and see what the Task Manager (Crtl+Alt+Del) has to say about it.
And while I haven't yet re-reached Whiterock Volcano to personally confirm in context, for the door in the volcano, the Progress Log and dialogue should both mention that the key is back outside the volcano, at a monastery close to town. I'll admit I was pretty worried about Whiterock, as I did some time-based changes involving Chizuru to it without really checking on it, but it seems fine when testing in isolation. The only way you could've really screwed yourself was if it attempted to run a one-time program, failed via lack of available memory, and then you saved.
I briefly considered having Chizuru straight-up block you from going to Whiterock without a third member, but I'm ultimately leaning towards no, as it's fairly difficult to do, as it involves walking right by Marcia. Still, maybe I should make the warnings about Whiterock locking you in a LOT more clear, and make Chizuru even more irate if you don't have a third member.
While I'm here, not sure what to make of a lack of remark from wombats or Liberty, as it's applicable to her, too. I made the mistake the other day of looking at some old comments and remembering just how hateable most people find my artstyle. Hopefully, they're not too deeply disappointed. But, all in all, a bit of a disaster all around for me. I think for everyone's sake I won't be entering this again next year.
Being in charge of your stats before the game even begins
I LOVE the concept of being able to build a character as you want, but it's frequently mishandled by a variety of factors. But this topic is kind of aaaall over the place, so let's back up.
Firstly, I wouldn't underestimate the importance of making choices actually matter. Telltale games and David Cage games (Indigo Prophency, Heavy Rain) are pretty much reviled for failing at this. As soon as you get the whiff that none of these decisions matter or becomes incredibly obvious that the decision was quickly undone, the illusions shatters incredibly hard and violently. People don't like being lied to, especially when that was the big selling point. As an example, In Walking Dead Season 1, you choose between saving two characters. They then immediately sit everything out for the next chapter, and upon coming back after that, they're immediately killed off. It becomes offensively clear that every choice isn't going to have any narrative weight and be undone before it can amount to anything. And it happens again and again and again.
But that's from a narrative perspective. From a gameplay perspective, well, you need only look at any given Roguelike to see how wildly different that can get. A playthrough where instead of getting a shortsword, you get a rapid-fire crossbow is going to feel incredibly different. And one is probably going to feel like absolute hell compared to the other.
Anyway, to what's probably supposed to be the meat of the matter; I'm not fond of non-combat skills in video games. I've learned not to trust them, or at least not until it's painfully clear if they're vital or not. Simply put, combat is something you're guaranteed to do, the most common thing you're going to do, and, presumably, the toughest part of the game is going to rely on this.
A lot of times, using a skill to skip combat is ultimately going to give you less experience than just rushing headlong in. Less experience means less building the character, means it's a bad decision. It's less about actually needing the experience, so much as it feels bad for leaving free money behind. Some games try to reward you experience for the non-combat options, but then the hilarious/stupid thing to do is then immediately turn back around and mow everyone down for the standard-route experience, anyway.
Some general/vague thoughts on these:
- Consider making non-combat skills some kind of mandatory either/or pick. Say, every 5 levels, in addition to a normal skill point, you can choose a non-combat skill. This way you're forced to pick up some, but not all, of those skills in a non-intrusive way. And this way, learning Swimming isn't directly making you weaker for the remaining 95% of the game's gameplay.
- If you don't want to do that, make non-combat skills cheap. I'm not gonna waste 10 levels to max out the Cooking skill (unless it's the be-all end-all form of healing, I guess), but I might pay 1 for it.
- Alternatively, tie non-combat skills directly to stats. Say, you learn Swimming at 30 Agility. Or alternatively alternatively, learning Swimming also gives +2 Agility. Either way, they're more 'along the way', and don't feel like as much of a waste.
This might be hard to describe, but unless I have strong feelings on the matter, I have a tendency to not build a character in a 'non-canon' fashion. Like, if the main character is exclusively shown with a dirk and a hooded cloak, I'm probably not going to turn them into a bastion of walking metal with a poleax. This is why I don't particularly like customization of pre-existing / pre-named characters. If they're an ill-defined entity, then that's an entirely different story, of course.
I might as well add here that I literally don't understand the concept of 'identifying' with characters. Period. In any media. I believe it's very much a 'me' problem, and I think it's something I can't explain well. It's less that I don't identify with anyone, so much as it's a completely flat line, regardless of circumstances.
When it comes to assigning stats, it's pretty much always the same regardless, as a lot of games fall into the same pitfalls, again and again. Speed/Agility is almost inevitably the best stat, then Attack. Resistance and Defense are almost certainly the worst. And investing in HP is going to be more productive than either of those, as it does both at the same time, and frequently a better job, too. Full offense and taking care of a problem before it can even act is far more favoured than weathering a storm. Building for versatility usually makes you weaker than just dumping everything into one stat/skill, even in situations where it isn't favoured. It's something that requires a TON of incredibly careful balance, and I don't want to undersell that, but I think the bottom-line is that diminishing returns are vital for preventing the worst of this.
If you want to let the player go back on level/stat assignments, a fair price is to have it cost them a few levels in the process. This makes it so you can't get stuck, but that throwing points around isn't something you can do on a whim. I guess making it somewhat expensive instead is an option, too.
Lastly, while I don't think it really applies here, but I've always preferred a party of characters with differing specialties over a single character who has to become an omnidisiplinary expert to overcome his challenges.
Firstly, I wouldn't underestimate the importance of making choices actually matter. Telltale games and David Cage games (Indigo Prophency, Heavy Rain) are pretty much reviled for failing at this. As soon as you get the whiff that none of these decisions matter or becomes incredibly obvious that the decision was quickly undone, the illusions shatters incredibly hard and violently. People don't like being lied to, especially when that was the big selling point. As an example, In Walking Dead Season 1, you choose between saving two characters. They then immediately sit everything out for the next chapter, and upon coming back after that, they're immediately killed off. It becomes offensively clear that every choice isn't going to have any narrative weight and be undone before it can amount to anything. And it happens again and again and again.
But that's from a narrative perspective. From a gameplay perspective, well, you need only look at any given Roguelike to see how wildly different that can get. A playthrough where instead of getting a shortsword, you get a rapid-fire crossbow is going to feel incredibly different. And one is probably going to feel like absolute hell compared to the other.
Anyway, to what's probably supposed to be the meat of the matter; I'm not fond of non-combat skills in video games. I've learned not to trust them, or at least not until it's painfully clear if they're vital or not. Simply put, combat is something you're guaranteed to do, the most common thing you're going to do, and, presumably, the toughest part of the game is going to rely on this.
A lot of times, using a skill to skip combat is ultimately going to give you less experience than just rushing headlong in. Less experience means less building the character, means it's a bad decision. It's less about actually needing the experience, so much as it feels bad for leaving free money behind. Some games try to reward you experience for the non-combat options, but then the hilarious/stupid thing to do is then immediately turn back around and mow everyone down for the standard-route experience, anyway.
Some general/vague thoughts on these:
- Consider making non-combat skills some kind of mandatory either/or pick. Say, every 5 levels, in addition to a normal skill point, you can choose a non-combat skill. This way you're forced to pick up some, but not all, of those skills in a non-intrusive way. And this way, learning Swimming isn't directly making you weaker for the remaining 95% of the game's gameplay.
- If you don't want to do that, make non-combat skills cheap. I'm not gonna waste 10 levels to max out the Cooking skill (unless it's the be-all end-all form of healing, I guess), but I might pay 1 for it.
- Alternatively, tie non-combat skills directly to stats. Say, you learn Swimming at 30 Agility. Or alternatively alternatively, learning Swimming also gives +2 Agility. Either way, they're more 'along the way', and don't feel like as much of a waste.
This might be hard to describe, but unless I have strong feelings on the matter, I have a tendency to not build a character in a 'non-canon' fashion. Like, if the main character is exclusively shown with a dirk and a hooded cloak, I'm probably not going to turn them into a bastion of walking metal with a poleax. This is why I don't particularly like customization of pre-existing / pre-named characters. If they're an ill-defined entity, then that's an entirely different story, of course.
I might as well add here that I literally don't understand the concept of 'identifying' with characters. Period. In any media. I believe it's very much a 'me' problem, and I think it's something I can't explain well. It's less that I don't identify with anyone, so much as it's a completely flat line, regardless of circumstances.
When it comes to assigning stats, it's pretty much always the same regardless, as a lot of games fall into the same pitfalls, again and again. Speed/Agility is almost inevitably the best stat, then Attack. Resistance and Defense are almost certainly the worst. And investing in HP is going to be more productive than either of those, as it does both at the same time, and frequently a better job, too. Full offense and taking care of a problem before it can even act is far more favoured than weathering a storm. Building for versatility usually makes you weaker than just dumping everything into one stat/skill, even in situations where it isn't favoured. It's something that requires a TON of incredibly careful balance, and I don't want to undersell that, but I think the bottom-line is that diminishing returns are vital for preventing the worst of this.
If you want to let the player go back on level/stat assignments, a fair price is to have it cost them a few levels in the process. This makes it so you can't get stuck, but that throwing points around isn't something you can do on a whim. I guess making it somewhat expensive instead is an option, too.
Lastly, while I don't think it really applies here, but I've always preferred a party of characters with differing specialties over a single character who has to become an omnidisiplinary expert to overcome his challenges.
Secret Santa Sign-ups 2020
That's kind of a short time-limit, isn't it?
Ideally, I'd like a review or some equivalent of Draug's Resurrection, but I realize trying to down what's a 30+ hour game in, uh, 12 days sounds like a pretty rough time. Liberty might not be pleased about it, but I'd totally be happy with a 'Working on a review. About 5/9's done. Like it so far.' if you can't make it under that time limit. Fanart I suppose is acceptable, too.
That's pretty much what I'll be doing in response, too. Review and/or art, in the style of DR (both battle and map sprites, probably multiple characters).
Ideally, I'd like a review or some equivalent of Draug's Resurrection, but I realize trying to down what's a 30+ hour game in, uh, 12 days sounds like a pretty rough time. Liberty might not be pleased about it, but I'd totally be happy with a 'Working on a review. About 5/9's done. Like it so far.' if you can't make it under that time limit. Fanart I suppose is acceptable, too.
That's pretty much what I'll be doing in response, too. Review and/or art, in the style of DR (both battle and map sprites, probably multiple characters).
Balancing Agility + ATB
RPGToolkit 3 doesn't even have a functioning default battle system, last I checked. There is a conversion of the TK2's (pretty basic) battle system, but it's so incomplete it just gets stuck in an infinite loop of errors if you try to use it. I don't think it's a central factor, but I don't think it did anything to slow down the engine's total death by 2009 or so. If you don't want to do everything from scratch, don't use the Toolkit. The board editor, for it's time, was miles ahead of where RPGMaker was, and it was also free.
Anyway, Recharge is really simple. Attacks/Skills/Spells drop your Charge by a number, say, anywhere from 40 to 300. You act if you're 100 or above, in order from whoever has the highest number (players go first in a tie). Once nobody is over 100 Charge, everybody's Charge goes up by their Speed until someone is over 100 again. There's not any particular penalty for being in the negatives (apart from, as usual, one particular skill to make a couple particular enemies more standout). It's more that as testing went on, I found things flowed better to have stronger skills give much longer Recharge times.
Anyway, Recharge is really simple. Attacks/Skills/Spells drop your Charge by a number, say, anywhere from 40 to 300. You act if you're 100 or above, in order from whoever has the highest number (players go first in a tie). Once nobody is over 100 Charge, everybody's Charge goes up by their Speed until someone is over 100 again. There's not any particular penalty for being in the negatives (apart from, as usual, one particular skill to make a couple particular enemies more standout). It's more that as testing went on, I found things flowed better to have stronger skills give much longer Recharge times.
Balancing Agility + ATB
Draug's Resurrection uses exceptionally low numbers, so keep that in mind. It also hasn't gotten any real testing outside of my own, so perhaps balance isn't great, but I haven't seen too many obvious issues. I'd also like to state that I don't know anything about RM2k3.
About 95% of the Speed values are between 12 and 40, with 20 being the 'average' at the start of the game. In a battle with 8 characters, you don't really notice when someone is acting twice or half as often as most other characters, especially with other Spells and Skill requiring varying amounts of recharge time. Bosses are going to need higher values to prevent them from being dogpiled, though.
DR has a weird quirk that multiple characters can reach 100% charge at a time, and they WILL get their turn, even if they die with 100%+ charge. It sounds weird on paper, but it makes it much more difficult to shut an enemy down before they can act at all.
While the player is allowed to choose how to spend their level ups, it's fairly restricted, as you're only given three stats at a time to choose. Speed is valued at 10 points, while Attack/Defense/Magic/Resistance are 5, and HP 1. While this works well enough for simplicity's sake, I will admit that I think it still undervalues Speed, and it should probably be 15 or even 20 points. But it's waaaaaay too late for me to change that. Oh, and Evasion is an entirely separate stat.
For buffs, Haste has much harsher diminishing returns than other buff spells, giving like 7 or so points to Speed at low values, but only 1 or 2 at high values. Lastly, while maybe random, the spells Vacuum Wave and Quicksilver are specifically designed to screw over those who try to invest exclusively in Speed/Evasion, as they do more damage the higher those values break away from the others.
About 95% of the Speed values are between 12 and 40, with 20 being the 'average' at the start of the game. In a battle with 8 characters, you don't really notice when someone is acting twice or half as often as most other characters, especially with other Spells and Skill requiring varying amounts of recharge time. Bosses are going to need higher values to prevent them from being dogpiled, though.
DR has a weird quirk that multiple characters can reach 100% charge at a time, and they WILL get their turn, even if they die with 100%+ charge. It sounds weird on paper, but it makes it much more difficult to shut an enemy down before they can act at all.
While the player is allowed to choose how to spend their level ups, it's fairly restricted, as you're only given three stats at a time to choose. Speed is valued at 10 points, while Attack/Defense/Magic/Resistance are 5, and HP 1. While this works well enough for simplicity's sake, I will admit that I think it still undervalues Speed, and it should probably be 15 or even 20 points. But it's waaaaaay too late for me to change that. Oh, and Evasion is an entirely separate stat.
For buffs, Haste has much harsher diminishing returns than other buff spells, giving like 7 or so points to Speed at low values, but only 1 or 2 at high values. Lastly, while maybe random, the spells Vacuum Wave and Quicksilver are specifically designed to screw over those who try to invest exclusively in Speed/Evasion, as they do more damage the higher those values break away from the others.
The blessings of the 108 are upon this game.
I can understand the merit in rewarding a player who discovers crafty little holes in the game's systems. But these aren't that. Party XP hyperfocusing and using magic at all are extremely simple concepts. Mina could basically wipe encounters with a single cast of her 2 MP spell (which is, uh, 7 MP on the lesser Water Rune?), something she could do, I dunno, about 20 times when you first get her?
I get Mina's a pretty big outlier, but with how easy it is to swap party members and fall back to heal (or just grind with Oharu's enemies, which, I now realize, are never fought elsewhere), MP is not particularly valuable in this game. Especially with a lack of bosses where endurance is something you need to keep in mind. One character losing a whole second turn is a much bigger penalty than them losing a quarter of their MP pool. I think, conceptually, your balances for Weapon Skills / Unities / Spells are fine enough, but the current numbers just don't align at all.
As for party XP softcap change, well, yes, changing the cap would require a complete re-balance of later enemies and likely shift the recommended endgame level way down. But that's only like a dozen enemies, so I don't think it's honestly that bad. Skirmish battles are also completely unaffected by level (as far as I could tell), so it wouldn't alter them.
I'm just gonna throw this out there, but do the physical runes have to be limited to a single action? Why not give them a second skill that takes MP, and perhaps have different properties? The staff's Pixie Rune is particularly worthless right now. As things sit, all physical characters are completely worthless by the time of Wal Pinnacle. On a similiar token, do all Unities (or at least all I saw) have to be physical offensive skills? Maybe some combos (like, uh, Mina/Ash or Mina/Olivia, I think it was), could just free-cast a pre-existing spell, or something.
Lastly, something came to mind re-reading your last post. While I'm not convinced it's a good idea, you could limit level 3/4 Rune spells to require TWO slots be filled with the same Rune to get access to them. That is, both the left and right hands need to have a Wind Rune equipped to get access to, um, whatever the level 3/4 Wind spells were. Sacrifice versatility for more power, y'know?
Acra's Playtesting Topic
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Bacylae Revolution: Session Final
=====
Starting off with another skirmish. Still not great. Took 3 attempts. Pretty sure it's all luck. Character level appears to affect nothing here.
While I'm sure this is supposed to emulate some aspect of Suikoden, in its current state, it just isn't very good. My personal thought, (and this is a very 'me' answer, because it's exactly what I do in Draug's Resurrection), would be each of the 3+ teams splits off and fights their own individual battle(s). Lose any one, and either you lose the whole event (simply have the other team leaders say they're getting overwhelmed and then the gameover cutscene), or, the more complex version, another team has to cover that front and re-fight those enemies. It gives some reason to use more characters. Though, I noticed several armies consist largely of NPCs (Natasha, Feroz, Hans, Zoe, other people I don't think I recognize), so some team makeups would have to change. Such a functionality of multiple teams might still happen later in the game, though, dunno.
Hm. Even the game seems to be aware how mad OP Mina. Going to the Duke's keep in the north. At his castle, recruiting his goons (7 of them) before even talking to him.
Oh. This duel of a few elite units against the Duke is... another army skirmish fight. Isn't this literally the opposite of what we were asked to do? Thankfully, there's no crit-happy Archer Unit this time, so it only took one go-around.
Beating him gave another four characters. Of those 11 new units in the past 5 minutes, 8 are combatants, most of them being classed as Thieves. Including the Duke himself, oddly. They're all level 44-46. So, it's official then, we were indeed supposed to jump straight from level 20 to 50 in the span of about one area.
Sounds like an incoming invasion from the Mainland. So I guess we really are on an itty-bitty island, after all. Back to Wal, get 4 more allies; all combatants. A reminder that that's a solid dozen new characters joining without a single battle in between them (especially since I can use Okiku to warp around for free).
Um, so I'm going through the Timberlands, and, as per usual, Mina dominates, other spells are doing about a third of her, and attempts at physicals doing about a tenth of that. Enemies do about 1 damage (except to Kerry, who is still level 35, who takes about 80, or 1 damage if blocking). Cockatrices and Ogres drop about 7000 xp (really low); Werewolves drop 200,000 xp. Why did recruiting Noel bring like seven other people? The game was getting better at at least having recruits exist on the map as individual units. Not that many of them got enough dialogue to make them feel like they had sufficient reason to join. Then again, we control 2/3rds of the island, maybe they're just afraid of us.
Okay, now, this doesn't really matter, but here's some enemies with WAAAY too wide sprites being stuck on top of each other. Battles are pretty much a haze. Actually, I think in this section, things are getting a bit better. Balance is still odd, but I'm used to it by now. Enemies are starting to use magic, so they can sometimes do meaningful damage again. What is fun is Sarah having a passive Silence rune on her head, and having her mass-Silence the enemies via Best Friends. Which, yeah, I think that's what should be noted about Unities; they can be completely stuffed if one of the members dies first. So it makes sense for them to be slow, but high-reward if nobody dies.
Random aside; it only now occurs to me now we haven't fought a single boss. And also, honestly, I'd hesistate to call any of these locales 'dungeons'.
One more awful Skirmish, and Hillary, the would-be main villain joins with very little fanfare. Sitting on 106/108 characters. After a while of wandering, there's someone I missed on Wal Pinnacle. They want money to join, so I guess it's time for excess Blackjack. 100,000 GP later (which, by the way, I started with about 10k GP after selling all the excess equipment/runes I've had piling up, so getting them is NOT feasible without Blackjack abuse), I've got everybody.
Oh yeah, so here's what the equip screen looks like now. As you can see, that's a fairly stupid number of characters. And I'm sure that's not even the full list. I'm not even sure it's half the list. So, the question is, what separates any one character or class from another? Fairly little. Class determines what equipment they can use, and characters within a class can have pretty random stat distribution. So I'd say it's classes being the same that's the bigger issue, as equipment means fairly little. I'm sure I could come up with some very rough ideas to make them more distinct, but I don't know if there's much point in changing things at this point. The game isn't really designed around battles, so it'd be a lot of effort for very little payoff.
The grand finale consists of yet another skirmish battle (which I dominated because most teams have Rest now), then the game's sole boss, who couldn't even hurt me through Canopy Defense. About eight Final Flames later (which was doing ~1700 from Sarah/Mina/Olivia, while Luxaren Allure was doing maybe 150), a few more words are said, and it then whisks through all 108 characters at quite a pace. I could definitely see it being too fast for some people to read.
It then lets you save, but trying to reload the save just boots you to the title sceen. Odd. Might be standard VXAce protocol. Not that important.
Total time was 4:04:53.
-----
It's fairly clear there's a LOT of little things wrong with numbers, ratios, scaling, and balancing. Magic damage needs to be reduced, Weapon Runes need to be improved, enemies probably need to be more HP, less defense (so weak units can contribute). Offensive equipment needs to do more, and there should maybe probably be a shop update sometime before claiming the Imperial Palace. The good news is, I think the majority of this can be made much better with relatively little effort.
What's more complicated is finding a good levelling curve, because right now, the fact I can (and sure seems like should) get a character from 30 to 50 in about 2 battles via Party XP is absolutely ridiculous and stupid. I don't think, in theory, Party XP is a bad idea, but could you softcap it so you can only raise a character up the the party's single highest level? Which is to say, if Aurelie is level 34, anybody else could use XP to reach 34, but no higher, and Aurelie herself cannot use Party XP until someone else surpasses her. I don't think there's a lot to do about the torrent of characters. Taking them out feels silly at this point, but all the same, they're genuinely clogging down some menus with the sheer mass of flesh under my command.
...And that's kind of the big thing. There's no sane way a four-hour game can properly sustain even 20 playable characters. What's here is the framework, if that, for a much bigger game. Battles and regions pass in the blink of an eye, once you understand how to exploit the battle system's holes. It's conceivable you could re-work each section of the game to be much, much longer, the battle system more fleshed out and balanced, areas to have their own gimmicks (such as something like slashing/thrusting weapons not being allowed on Wal Pinnacle, a home for monks), making characters/classes having their own virtues/flaws, but, by that point, it might as well be a completely different game.
Bacylae Revolution: Session Final
=====
Starting off with another skirmish. Still not great. Took 3 attempts. Pretty sure it's all luck. Character level appears to affect nothing here.
While I'm sure this is supposed to emulate some aspect of Suikoden, in its current state, it just isn't very good. My personal thought, (and this is a very 'me' answer, because it's exactly what I do in Draug's Resurrection), would be each of the 3+ teams splits off and fights their own individual battle(s). Lose any one, and either you lose the whole event (simply have the other team leaders say they're getting overwhelmed and then the gameover cutscene), or, the more complex version, another team has to cover that front and re-fight those enemies. It gives some reason to use more characters. Though, I noticed several armies consist largely of NPCs (Natasha, Feroz, Hans, Zoe, other people I don't think I recognize), so some team makeups would have to change. Such a functionality of multiple teams might still happen later in the game, though, dunno.
Hm. Even the game seems to be aware how mad OP Mina. Going to the Duke's keep in the north. At his castle, recruiting his goons (7 of them) before even talking to him.
Oh. This duel of a few elite units against the Duke is... another army skirmish fight. Isn't this literally the opposite of what we were asked to do? Thankfully, there's no crit-happy Archer Unit this time, so it only took one go-around.
Beating him gave another four characters. Of those 11 new units in the past 5 minutes, 8 are combatants, most of them being classed as Thieves. Including the Duke himself, oddly. They're all level 44-46. So, it's official then, we were indeed supposed to jump straight from level 20 to 50 in the span of about one area.
Sounds like an incoming invasion from the Mainland. So I guess we really are on an itty-bitty island, after all. Back to Wal, get 4 more allies; all combatants. A reminder that that's a solid dozen new characters joining without a single battle in between them (especially since I can use Okiku to warp around for free).
Um, so I'm going through the Timberlands, and, as per usual, Mina dominates, other spells are doing about a third of her, and attempts at physicals doing about a tenth of that. Enemies do about 1 damage (except to Kerry, who is still level 35, who takes about 80, or 1 damage if blocking). Cockatrices and Ogres drop about 7000 xp (really low); Werewolves drop 200,000 xp. Why did recruiting Noel bring like seven other people? The game was getting better at at least having recruits exist on the map as individual units. Not that many of them got enough dialogue to make them feel like they had sufficient reason to join. Then again, we control 2/3rds of the island, maybe they're just afraid of us.
Okay, now, this doesn't really matter, but here's some enemies with WAAAY too wide sprites being stuck on top of each other. Battles are pretty much a haze. Actually, I think in this section, things are getting a bit better. Balance is still odd, but I'm used to it by now. Enemies are starting to use magic, so they can sometimes do meaningful damage again. What is fun is Sarah having a passive Silence rune on her head, and having her mass-Silence the enemies via Best Friends. Which, yeah, I think that's what should be noted about Unities; they can be completely stuffed if one of the members dies first. So it makes sense for them to be slow, but high-reward if nobody dies.
Random aside; it only now occurs to me now we haven't fought a single boss. And also, honestly, I'd hesistate to call any of these locales 'dungeons'.
One more awful Skirmish, and Hillary, the would-be main villain joins with very little fanfare. Sitting on 106/108 characters. After a while of wandering, there's someone I missed on Wal Pinnacle. They want money to join, so I guess it's time for excess Blackjack. 100,000 GP later (which, by the way, I started with about 10k GP after selling all the excess equipment/runes I've had piling up, so getting them is NOT feasible without Blackjack abuse), I've got everybody.
Oh yeah, so here's what the equip screen looks like now. As you can see, that's a fairly stupid number of characters. And I'm sure that's not even the full list. I'm not even sure it's half the list. So, the question is, what separates any one character or class from another? Fairly little. Class determines what equipment they can use, and characters within a class can have pretty random stat distribution. So I'd say it's classes being the same that's the bigger issue, as equipment means fairly little. I'm sure I could come up with some very rough ideas to make them more distinct, but I don't know if there's much point in changing things at this point. The game isn't really designed around battles, so it'd be a lot of effort for very little payoff.
The grand finale consists of yet another skirmish battle (which I dominated because most teams have Rest now), then the game's sole boss, who couldn't even hurt me through Canopy Defense. About eight Final Flames later (which was doing ~1700 from Sarah/Mina/Olivia, while Luxaren Allure was doing maybe 150), a few more words are said, and it then whisks through all 108 characters at quite a pace. I could definitely see it being too fast for some people to read.
It then lets you save, but trying to reload the save just boots you to the title sceen. Odd. Might be standard VXAce protocol. Not that important.
Total time was 4:04:53.
-----
It's fairly clear there's a LOT of little things wrong with numbers, ratios, scaling, and balancing. Magic damage needs to be reduced, Weapon Runes need to be improved, enemies probably need to be more HP, less defense (so weak units can contribute). Offensive equipment needs to do more, and there should maybe probably be a shop update sometime before claiming the Imperial Palace. The good news is, I think the majority of this can be made much better with relatively little effort.
What's more complicated is finding a good levelling curve, because right now, the fact I can (and sure seems like should) get a character from 30 to 50 in about 2 battles via Party XP is absolutely ridiculous and stupid. I don't think, in theory, Party XP is a bad idea, but could you softcap it so you can only raise a character up the the party's single highest level? Which is to say, if Aurelie is level 34, anybody else could use XP to reach 34, but no higher, and Aurelie herself cannot use Party XP until someone else surpasses her. I don't think there's a lot to do about the torrent of characters. Taking them out feels silly at this point, but all the same, they're genuinely clogging down some menus with the sheer mass of flesh under my command.
...And that's kind of the big thing. There's no sane way a four-hour game can properly sustain even 20 playable characters. What's here is the framework, if that, for a much bigger game. Battles and regions pass in the blink of an eye, once you understand how to exploit the battle system's holes. It's conceivable you could re-work each section of the game to be much, much longer, the battle system more fleshed out and balanced, areas to have their own gimmicks (such as something like slashing/thrusting weapons not being allowed on Wal Pinnacle, a home for monks), making characters/classes having their own virtues/flaws, but, by that point, it might as well be a completely different game.
Games - Tester
Games - Other
