GIZNADS'S PROFILE

author=dreadpirate
I did find that. I definitely must have misspelled when I entered the password. Hey, I love old school rpg's I never said I was good at them. Haha

Hahaha! I feel that, man! That puzzle's one of those "Okay, pull out the notepad" ones.

author=dreadpirate
cool, thanks for trying onix rift out man. It'll be some time before I get back to it unfortunatey.l Regarding the diagonal movement fix, what you described is exactly how it's handled in onix rift. I figured you'd just forgotten to turn the switch off and on during a few message events. Right on man, I'll be trying to finish your demo. I'm having trouble with the first pressure release valve password.

You can find the answer to the 3 tier release system written on a poster in one of the rooms.
But the codes are as follows
SPOLIERS:

author=dreadpirate
Hey giznads I gave this demo a rip. Really good job my man. The game looks great. Although I haven't completed the play through yet there was something I noticed, I only noticed it due to also using 8 directional movement in my project so I'm pretty aware of some of the obstacles I dealt with while eventing it within my own project. There are times during game play that I would walk up to something and press the action key, a message would pop up at the bottom of the screen, something like "just an old rusty pipe." now while the message is displayed the hero's movement is locked, you can't move up, down, left or right, however, before dismissing the message if the player presses both up and right lets say, the diagonal movement is still active and the player can still move around the screen in diagonal directions. I noticed it in multiple places so I just thought I'd give you a heads up. I am very impressed with your diagonal movement. It feels really good for tile based movement. I would like to know how you adjusted the player speed so well (dyn plugin perhaps, which one?) it's something I tried implementing but couldn't get just right. especially with the diagonal movement. Really great job man I can tell a lot of love went into it. All the hard work you've done over the years has paid off for sure. Cheers man.

edit: I just opened the game to finish the demo and I'm in the sewer, if I walk up to a piece of machinery it shows the message and I can't use any movement commands. If I walk up to a cocoon larva and press the action key, I get the message but my diagonal movement is still active. I just thought I'd give you an exact spot to check out.

Yo!
Thanks for the kind words, much appreciated!

I actually played Onyx Rift not too long ago! Loving what you're doing, VERY Secrt Of Mana! <3
Yeah, 8-way movement gets a little tricky. There's some spots in my game, where you can definitely keep moving diagonally while text is being read.
There IS HOWEVER a REALLY easy fix for that, I just didn't deem necessary enough to fix.
To solve this, create a common event, call it "Halt Hero" or whatever you wish, set it to "Auto Start" and tie it to a switch. No code actually has to go into the common event, just need the "auto-event" to stop everything for a moment while you're reading.
Next, when you create an event where you read dialogue, turn the switch you tied to that common event on before the message display, turn your 8-Way movement switch off, and then turn both the Auto Switch off and 8-way movement back on when the message is over. Boom, no 8-way movement during text.

I should probably go back through my game and add that to all the text, just for consistency's sake.

Thank you for bringing this up actually! It's now on my list of fixes.

author=TheRpgmakerAddict
done! Game is cool so far, I liked the difficulty balance (not too difficult if you know what to do, but still challenging), the story and setting. Only two things that left me puzzled:

1 - why just one save slot? It's a pity, anyway you can save anywhere so I won't complain about this.
2 - I like the portraits so much that I'm sad seeing that the dialogue box overlaps them.

Ok, anyway just a couple of details, for the rest no complaint at all! Game for some reason resembles Skydancer to me but I liked the combat system even more.

Hope I managed to address the save slot problems for you in my reply on the main page comments!

As for portraits, I'm still trying to figure out a way to place them in during messages so that that they leave some room for the events taking place on the map, but still show the off the artwork of the busts!

author=Megollyen
Okay, so I just finished the demo. First of all, it's much longer than I anticipated and that's a good thing because I really enjoyed what I played. It reminded me a lot of SNES/PS1 era JRPGs while also having a really unique feel and aesthetic. Visually it's a really cool looking game. The way you blended assets works really well. The environments are very detailed with cool lighting and tone. However, it sometimes felt kind of hard to navigate because there was so much going on.

Speaking of navigation, while I think the 8 directional movement is really cool from a technical standpoint for the engine, I honestly found it to feel kind of cumbersome and awkward at times. I mainly played the game as if it was 4 directions and just found the 8 directions would sometimes take me off course with where I'm trying to go. I just can't help but think the game would actually FEEL better to play if you stuck with the 4 directions. Not a deal breaker by any means, just something I'd point out, I suppose.

The combat and puzzles were really fun and engaging. Though, I do wonder if there's better ways to introduce some of the mechanics since I would often find myself not really sure what was going on with some stuff in the combat. But having the tutorials in the menu is a nice feature. Speaking of nice feature, the auto save is a really welcomed addition to a 2k3 game for sure. It would be nice to have more than one slot of the manual save, though.

I should also mention that the boss battle animations were so on point and I can't even begin to imagine how much time you've put into everything in this demo.

Overall it was a very pleasant and nostalgic experience for me and exactly what I was hoping it would be. Great work on this so far, Giznads! I'm really excited to play the finished game! :)

Yo! Wanna start off by saying thank you so much for taking the time to point these things out for me!

Glad you enjoyed the length of the game! There were many times I was pushing to get the game out ending it at different locations, but I wanted to give players a little more! Glad you enjoyed the atmosphere, and I'm sorry it was hard to navigate.
Can you give me some examples maybe in a PM where things were hard to navigate? Also, did you have way points turned on?

Got a few people that have said the same thing about the 8-way movement so far!
I'm thinking of making this an optional feature that you can turn off or on.
I personally perfer the 8way movement, but maybe I'm just so use to it now, BUT I can totally understand the fact the rm2k3 isn't based on pixel movement can lead to some odd feeling controls for people.

I'm going to find a new way to introduce battle mechanics as throwing the majority of the battle basics into ONE battle like I did was probably a bad idea. I'm sure people didn't want to read all of that in one go. I'm hoping that will clear up things a little more for players. Just a matter of figuring out how to implement it in-game.
Glad you liked the auto save feature, I'm currently working on a system to have multiple save slots and keep the auto save!
The 1 manual slot feature was strictly for demo purposes as I just never got the chance to put the fully planned features into the demo.

I'm really glad you appreciate the battle animations!
I did spend a great deal of time getting things looking as right as I could for battle. :D It was worth it in the end though.

Thanks for playing, my man. Compiling a list of fixes to implement into the full game itself.