LODEBAR'S PROFILE

I'm still making a futile attempt at an oldschool game on an oldschool engine. As I've been testing what's done so far, adjusting stats and exp and money, I started noticing I'm getting a lot of critical hits. Like, ridiculous amounts. The last dungeon practically every attack every round every battle was a crit.

As far as I can tell, crit rates are governed by a number on the Hero tab in the database. At 100 every attack should crit, and at 1 you'd only have a 1% chance of critting. Right? Or is it the opposite? Because I've had my characters have a 5% chance, and I'm flooded with crits. Well, there's one exception. The guy whose feature is supposed to be critting a lot. His % was 25, then 33, now 45, and he just won't crit practically ever. Meanwhile I've lowered the others to 2% and they're getting more crits than ever.

Is there something I can do to work around this or do I have to live with an apparent kink in the engine?

I played the demo a long time ago, finally around to the full version...

I see somebody in 2010 commented that the Kensai's Fightx3 isn't working. And here I am in 2014 with the same sad state of affairs.

Thank you very much for taking the time to play and write a review! As this is still a fairly early demo, I'm open for criticisms on all levels. Let me adress a few of your concerns.

Regarding characters joining the party at level 1, I should probably change Teucer's dialog so that he doesn't recommend you going to the forest right away or make it so you can't go in there at all with him in your party. Then Ryu wouldn't have any levels over Cybil. Debora joining at level 1 is for story purposes, as she's by all accounts a normal person and not an experienced fighter.

The "new party member" fanfare is directly from BoF1, and other than that reference it serves the purpose of distinguishing permanent party members from non-playables that join you briefly (eg. Caleb in Windia). I suppose I could make just a message appear instead.

As for random encounters, there are a few things to consider. Firstly, I mainly draw inspiration from BoF2 (my favorite game of all time) which is notorious for its encounter rate. Second, this is attempting to be an 8-bit game, and those tend to have greater encounter rates than the BoF series at large. Third, RM2k truly offers random encounters. Sometimes you get a single step, sometimes you clear a whole room. There is little I can do about it, but the next revision will have a slightly lower encounter rate. My aim is that you should never have to grind as long as you fight most random battles.

I will admit the story might seem banal from how frontloaded with exposition it is, but I intend to keep up the pace throughout. Lots of character development and such all throughout the game.

I hope you will amend this review as you play further. I'd like to hear thoughts on some of the later dungeon designs, particularly the dark room in the cave. You'll know what I mean when you get there.

Just got myself a new computer. Copied over all the old files, reinstalled the RTP, reapplied the font patch.

Was gonna get back to work on my game, but the title screen is blank. No music, no image, nothing. I tried the game for a bit, it seemed to have the right sounds, music and graphics in place.

I tried replacing the current title screen with RTP stuff, but those didn't show up either.

What should I do?

EDIT: This is Windows 7. Tried reinstalling the engine, but got a message saying the OS isn't supported. Is that it? Everything else works in 7 except the title screen?

Thank you for taking the time to play and write the feedback!

Regarding the encounter rate, I originally had it set to 35 steps. But I had a friend playtest and he got through two entire rooms of the first forest, clearing the first quest, without getting a single encounter. That's a sign of too low an encounter rate.
So in this demo it's at 30 steps. I could maybe decrease it to 32 or 33, no more than that. Any lower and it wouldn't have that authentic oldschool difficulty and quality. Then again, RM2k random encounters are truly random. Sometimes you take two steps, sometimes twenty before the next battle.

I could definitely add some text for when you search through pots and drawers. Good suggestion.