NEOPHYTE'S PROFILE

author=TFT
my bro ghost trolled ya'll hard. got fat cash, then left ur mum with the bag. stay mad m8s.

lol dude please come and chat with us.

Anyway, I've known Ghost for years now. He always had a good vision on things, even when we battled on old forums about meaningless things. This kickstarter is literally a replica of a 2006 screenshot topic, except people now throw money at your face.

Even when we constantly chatted, I would tell him that I knew the project would fail. I would be half joking when I said it, but it always held some truth. I was not a good supporter! Still, if you never had a working demo of your previous projects out... with thousands of ripped tiles from every SNES game out there, as well as thousands of music files to import into your rpgmaker project, then of course a project like this would fail. That's why half of the update rant in the rainfall post doesn't hold up. Even with all of that content made, it wouldn't have mattered much.

He knows he messed up, but at this point it is a little too late.

"mo money, mo problems" - Notorious B.I.G

author=chana

author=Neophyte
There is a lot I have to say about this, but I agree to an extent. I can't speak for the other projects listed, but my game has almost 300 maps and about 4 hours of gameplay. Half of that could only be played if you hopped around in the editor. It crashed and burned because I spent too long making it. Ideas changed, concepts and designs were altered, and was just a huge mess! It was a failed experiment, but it was something I learned a lot from.

I'm very happy to read this, I have very longly wondered why quite a few of the funnest, prettiest, most innovative and inspired rpgs I've played were demos, I now have at least one explanation : in a way, too good for the engine...

A lot of times demos can be a death wish. Most people are fueled by that "first time" release of their product. That's why screenshot topics are so popular, creators need a way to release a little bit of whatever they're working on to fuel themselves. Once you release a demo though, there's a lot less fuel you can go on. Based on feedback and hype level afterwards, this can lead to a lot of people giving up their game, regardless of how good it is or can actually be.

author=Tau
@Neophyte - Woah, didn't expect to see you pop up. I have more screenshots of that particular version if you're interested? Also your story is exactly like mine with my last project. It was a mess in the end but was oh so pretty and ambitious.

Haha, no I don't want anything to do with that version. I am glad it is dead.

author=hedge1
Luxenith
You made me sad Neophyte! I, too, had hope you'd complete your game and it was one of the major reasons I periodically return to these forums! Ah well, at least we all know now. I have to ask though: how did the battle system end up? Is it playable? It'd be really fun to have a short demo just showing off the work you did in that.

The battle system was playable. I had 5 dungeons done, 3 of which were complete with battles, puzzles, story, etc. But the battle system...ran into a plethora of issues. I might possibly do a video of what I had done.

author=TFT
i remember neo showing a screenshot of the battle code once and it was literally 300 pages of events. it was pretty bonkers.

Well, RM2K3 is terrible. No human being should be forced to do the amount of workarounds needed to create a stable battle system in that engine.

I started off creating the project when there were no RM2K3 patches. So a lot of the animations were done using battle animations and a lot of the code had to be done through battle events. Cherry came along and created this great thing called the picture patch, which reduced the amount of work I had to do by 99%. It changed a lot of core mechanics of the battle system. But at this point, my game already had a lot of gameplay done. I would have had to literally remake the entire game (which I started to do, and quickly conceded) for things to work again.

A lot of it though really came down to how RM2K3 was constantly fighting back at every little thing I tried to do. I was a defender of the product for a long time, but even I have come to the conclusion that it's terrible. The default battle system doesn't even work correctly if you have 3-4 party member or set it to ACTIVE. Not to mention it can't even do basic math correctly. I think Neok said it best after he finished AAG and talked about the frustrations he came across in RM2K3 and ambitious games in general.

RM2K3 evolved into an experimental type of engine years ago. What people do with it now is just to 'wow' a person who thought something wasn't possible in 2k3. If somebody wanted to make a full game with it, it would have been done before the year 2007.

This plugin fits right in with that niche. Nothing wrong with that. :)

Actually, a new development has come to light.

Nightblade has, unfortunately, left Meridian Dance and will now be posting Phantom Legacy on Amaranthia. We tried contacting Nightblade for a response to this, but it appears he has blocked all communications.

I think most of the mistakes came from miscommunication between you and the players. I don't think anybody understood the mummy puzzle, and there were issues with the barrier boss. You gave hints, but finding the hints were a puzzle themselves. You have to be a little more upfront about certain mechanics. But like Darken, I still really enjoyed this. Expanding into other genres would be interesting to see from you as well, though!