HAPPY'S PROFILE

author=meavor link=topic=3286.msg67463#msg67463 date=1237764585
What I have seen so far is great rei.
although I agree with the others about the text speed
an dialogue.

p.s. how do you get past the civilians in the third
car of the train?

Cheers!

And uh, by walking? >.< I don't get it how everyone is having difficult times with that. =P

The guy moving vertically is much slower than you so if you move vertically up and down, before trying past, he eventually can't catch up to the same vertical height as you. I guess I gotta make him still much slower!

And by the way, has anyone found the catcopter yet? =P

author=Fallen-Griever link=topic=3368.msg67427#msg67427 date=1237756946
Well, climbing across something isn't something you only do at certain intervals, so even if it isn't a bug it doesn't make sense. Why would someone ready to climb across the wires only do so once every x seconds..? Meh, whatever.

Well, the way it is now in the demo, you can do the climbing anytime. The exclamation mark just misleads probably, because it's an object (wire) interaction event, and you can do it anytime, so the mark just pops up and refreshes after a second or so. Maybe I should just make the mark not disappear if you can interact with it anytime. Or maybe I should change the colors of them for different event types? So people would know which one is in question! Or at least know they're different types.

This game keeps drawing me playing it. Is it just me, or are warlocks and shapeshifters really bad combo?

I think my wolfman just gave my summon a good beating. =(

Antilurker77: Yeah I'll have to take a look at the train battles again! Aaand the customization will be in there next time you get to play a new version. =)

Oh man, so many responses!

author=Little Wing Guy link=topic=3286.msg67261#msg67261 date=1237683097
So yeah. This is probably the best game I've ever played. I'd like to say some more but I'm still in shock at the moment.

I'm glad you liked the game!

author=Nightblade link=topic=3286.msg67286#msg67286 date=1237689529
Well, I must say that this was highly enjoyable.

An impressive, sometimes insane attention to detail in the sounds and visuals department, nice characters, and a good modified battle concept... Just, the train mini games; namely the stupid dodging heroic passengers needs to be toned down or erased from the face of reality.

Haha, yeah it was kinda awkward I guess. Was it better if I turned them into A.F. soldiers?

author=Darken link=topic=3286.msg67290#msg67290 date=1237690704
I'll admit this is one of the best looking games for RPGmaker, but also one of the most boring. Nothing really happens in the prologue, you walk around a lot, there's too much dialogue, really obvious foreshadowing, and I don't really get what's going on most of the time. I would say something about the battles, but I stopped playing after getting bored and realizing that one of the characters took an hour explaining that his spear had a name and that calling it a spear is an insult to him...

The prologue is pretty linear and all its supposed to transfer over to the player is a different setting and few things you will connect onto later in the game. I tried to spruce it up a bit with Action events and few silly NPCs to make it more interesting for what it lasts. What comes to the dialogue, you did pretty well pointing out the problems!

author=Neok link=topic=3286.msg67308#msg67308 date=1237695957
Well, I played a little bit of it. Haven't gotten to battles or anything yet (I'm only at the third save point). Here're my thoughts.

Good:
- Loving the setting and scenery! This is exactly the kind of world I've been hoping to see done in RM. Great job on this.
- You've also done a pretty good job on animating all the little sprites. Kudos to that.
- Gonna repeat the scenery point because it's awesome enough to take two bullet points.

Bad:
- WAY too wordy. EXCESSIVELY wordy. You have NPC's and PC's alike saying lines upon lines about pretty much nothing. It's honestly too much. Like, I would be sitting there talking to someone and they'll be going on and on and on. It's pretty much like they're trying to find everything they can say in that moment that you're standing there talking to them. And if you've read this bullet point all the way to here, you can see why that's bad, yah?
- Also, the dialogue is a bit awkward at times. And if you can, it'd be nice if you'd up the text speed. Normally it wouldn't be so bad, but see Bad point #1.
- Screen-shaking. My eyes can't handle it when graphics move in a certain way, which prevents me from playing FPS's and a lot of 3D action games (it gives me a pretty bad headache to watch continuously). RM's screen-shaking also triggers this, which means any area that continually shakes will pretty much have me blindly groping through the area in order to continue past that part. I remember from one of your videos that there's an explorable train section that shakes the entire time. Frankly I really want to continue playing this game, but I won't be able to once I get to those types of areas. This also apparently happens to YDS so you know I'm not the only one.


But yeah, even though my Bad points section is three times as big as my Good points, this game is definitely worth checking out. It's just easier to talk about bad stuff ;)

Sorry about the screenshakings! I'm just kinda drawn into using it for moving objects like vehicles and elevators, to enhance their effect. Hmm..
What comes to the NPCs, they're pretty unrelated information-wise, because the setting changes pretty much after the prologue. The prologue is supposed to be pretty linear and quick, but then again as you can wander around and stuff, there could be problems like those, which you pointed.

What comes to the text speed and the dialogue display, I'm most likely going to speed it up, as it's been pointed as one of the most major problem what prevents enjoyability of the game!

author=Blindmind link=topic=3286.msg67319#msg67319 date=1237698041
I've only been playing this for about twenty-five minutes, but I'm thoroughly impressed with the presentation and ambience here-- and that pretty much never happens. The atmosphere is so wonderfully done that it's almost surreal... this is one of the few games in the past six months that's compelled me to play through the first ten minutes, and that says quite a lot in its favor.

Thanks Blind, I've tried to put some effort in the atmosphere, yeah. =)

author=Neophyte link=topic=3286.msg67339#msg67339 date=1237713532
This is good. Very good.

Definitely the best game I've played this year. I love the atmosphere and setting, and the beginning was almost perfect in executing the type of world it was. Obviously, the main thing that stood out were the animations. This is a CLEAR example of what animations can do to a game, they do so much to keep things interesting. The battle system was decent too.

Now for criticism! Your favorite part!
Like Neok said, this is way too wordy. I didn't mind it too much for NPC's since they're optional to talk to, but the cutscenes are too much. Everything is needlessly long, especially the train scenes and the ones afterward. You're trying too hard to build character development with these characters, and it's actually hurting your game more than it's helping it. That coupled with the slow text speed, and it gets annoying.

This brings me to my other point. This game isn't friendly to the average game player. It's fucking beautiful, yes, but that appeal wears off after a certain time. There's no gameplay in sight for the first 45 minutes other than some action event things. You even named them something like "Option interaction action event" or something (name it something simple)! The story did a decent job, but the last part of the prologue kinda took away the experience. Moving from one specific setting to another is good, but when it takes 45 minutes to do so, it can turn a lot of players off, even if the story might get good later. The fact that you even jumped from the prologue to the gameplay section kinda seems like you know that this is an issue. My guess is you were trying to show both sides of the coin here (storyline in the first part, gameplay in the second). I think the gameplay section could have been more about the gameplay, where the core mechanics of the game would come out. Unfortunately they haven't yet, other than some DBS battles. Though it would pain me (and you as well) if you took out certain parts of the prologue, because it really is well done. There needs to be a way to engage the player more than just relying on your graphics.

Also yeah, the screen shaking on the train wasn't too good. It especially hurt my eyes when in battle and opening the menu screen (incredible animation here). The last thing I want to say is that while the battles were decent, they weren't...fun...I guess. Maybe it's because I only have one character at the moment, but it just isn't that engaging. Unfortunately I can't pinpoint the issue here, but hopefully I can soon. Awesome music, by the way.

This was very entertaining overall, your animations alone kept me interested to keep playing. I was always wondering what you would pull off next. I'm not quite finished with this demo yet, but I guarantee you that I will finish it. This really is an incredible game, I'm just trying to help you improve on it. There are certain parts in this game where you will literally say something out loud because of how detailed things are.

Thanks for the big chunk of criticism here, straight out, I can't think response to everything, but...

After the prologue originally comes dungeon, which is just pure, simple, gameplay. Puzzles, battles, and character customization, which doesn't exist in this demo. That's at least what should make the gameplay around battles more interesting. You also have two characters on that dungeon.

After the dungeon would come the train scene, and the scene following that. They were not meant to be the other side of coin and present the actual game play in this demo, they were just "complete" enough to be included, unlike the dungeon.

But despite that, the wordiness and slow dialogue still is a problem. I'll increase the speed and display, and what comes to the writing itself... I'll see what I can do. But if the prologue already was troublesome to play through, that's going to be a problem, because it's supposed to be complete already. I'm talking about the time you play as professor. If there's a problem in the prologue already, I'm not sure how to fix it yet, other than speeding up all the dialogue. I hope that will help.

So in conclusion from what I understood:
- Speed up dialogue.
- Limit the screenshaking a bit.
- Next time add a dungeon in too, so player get the idea of the actual gameplay!
- Make the dialogue less wordy!

Right?