DRAKIYTH'S PROFILE

author=aprilschild link=topic=2678.msg51005#msg51005 date=1229492238
From beta-ing ETG, I know that Max's game also takes place in a "mystical" part of the USA, but I don't know if it would be a spoiler to say which state.

Unless you were serious about AZ being mystical, in which case, I'd say, no, it's not really. It's really nice in February and they have great oranges, but "the holy land" it isn't.

Arizona is heavily accompanied by many Indian tribes and cultures. The Indians are very spiritual and that is where you get your magical powers from in Aftermath. The spirits and everything else that is really deep. Also, Northern Arizona is home to the Grand Canyon which is a very mysterious place.

Everything is going to have some Sci-Fi in it when it comes to games.

No, trust me, uh, Everything Turns Gray is straight up Fallout 2 style post-apocalyptic. I should know, I uh, made it. It's pretty presumptuous of you to tell me what genre my as yet unreleased game is in and the same goes for telling me what genre that Vermicide, which you haven't played yet, is in.

Anyway, seeing as you properly KNOW WHAT SHADOWRUN IS I see we really do have a lot of the same inspirations.

I will check the game out sometime so I can get a real aspect on it and not assumptions. Yes, Shadowrun is awesome stuff indeed.

Wow it is interesting that we are both working on post-apocalyptic games powered by ALTERNATIVE ROCK. Small world! I am going to pay very special attention to this because our games are NIGH FUCKING IDENTICAL and that WEIRDS ME OUT.

Everything Turns Grey/Vermicide has a much different story then Aftermath. Aftermath takes place in a mystical part of the United States of America: Arizona.
Your game is basically a dirty/futuristic genre but hardly post-apocalyptic. Yes, there was a large scale war that was never explained but that was so long ago people would have rebuilt and there may be chances of some lesser radiation in heavy radioactive areas such as a crater or around it.

I will start with the positive: Your screenshots look very nice. Also your prose is fairly competent, which is of course, light years ahead of most writing in/about RPG Maker games.

Thank you. It's been hours of hard work on custom chips and making everything extremely dead and burned up looking. The maps are realistic to the burn damage of what an atomic bomb offers after detonation. Most of your outer regions away from the main cities would suffer some damage but not enough to wipe them off the map. Most human life if not protected by white paint on the windows or in a shelter of some kind would be burned and slain or suffer radioactive burns which could lead to death if not treated.

With that said, you will see some areas totally destroyed, or you will see some towns with heavy damage. Arizona is also littered with mountains
so that would take a pretty big part in deflecting some gamma rays as well.

However, some things are about to come UNDER ATTACK from Mr. McGee. I am being "ironical", of course. This is not an attack, just feedback. I hope you will not decide I am being an' assbag".

In the year 2032, North America lead an attack against Iran which caused major retaliation from Russia. This ultimately became a full scale nuclear war.

Realism alert! I feel that your political science kung fu is not strong, grasshopper. Let's start with the fact that NORTH AMERICA IS NOT A COUNTRY! I know that 2032 is in the future but it is not FAR ENOUGH in the future for me to swallow that as a likely scenario. You could act as an apologist for it by putting in lots of explanations and extenuating circumstances for why on earth we would nuke IRAN after all the places we didn't nuke in the 75+ years of the cold war and its aftermath (please see Vietnam and both Iraq conflicts for real life evidence of how America has dealt with such enemies using non-nuclear confrontations) but I think it would be better to radically alter the explanation for the war or skip it all together. (How the conflict spread from Iran, Russia, and the US to destroy the entire world is also unfortunately vague.)

I will give you a point on this for U.S.A/CANADA/MEXICO were never explained as a team going into war against Iran/Russia. You do understand that the possibility of nuclear war when attacking Iran is very extreme? Russia was the creator of Tsar nuke which was the strongest nuclear bomb of man kind. They are not really allies with the
united states and this sadly could even become a reality in a different time frame.
They are however best friends with Iran so things could turn very ugly very fast if
their small buddies were attacked.

I understand not having a story in your game and not getting into the political
parts of things, but that's where Aftermath gets a mature rating. It's a very deep
game with lots of controversy.

It is for this very reason (and the one I'm about to discuss above) that the histories of the conflict in my game are never explained.

Twelve years after the war you and your family were running out of supplies and food which ultimately made you haveto leave the shelter and head into the wasteland.

I see your ACTUAL Science is even weaker than your political science. A mere 12 years after a large scale nuclear war like the one you described, anyone leaving a fallout shelter would die from radiation poisoning within a day, or simply freeze to death due to the cloud of ash and dust blotting out the sun, causing nuclear winter. Fallout's timeline of 200+ years is MORE PLAUSIBLE but is still, I feel, overly realistic.

Nuclear Fallout will be lethal for up to 15 weeks in the areas around the bomb. There is still radioactivity that can last 24,000 years or more but it's not in the
air unless you're in a very infected area like the inside of a blast zone.
You could absolutely leave a shelter after twelve years without experiencing anything you mentioned. Nuclear Winter will block up the clouds only if the bombs were some of the weaker version like the project: Trinity.

This nuke was so weak compared to say the "Tsar" from russia that it would only rise a few miles above land which is below/inside the clouds. Bombs going off in 2032 would be equivalent in power to the Tsar which rose 14 miles into the sky causing very little fallout in land since it passed the clouds. compared to the smaller nukes which pollute the earth like a mother fucker. Where the other particles would simply burn up in our atmosphere. They specifically designed the Tsar to limit the amount of Nuclear Fallout. This is not saying there was not radiation in land from that bomb far from it. But it is saying the bigger bombs pack a bigger punch with fire/crushing damage but lesser poison damage.

Here is some stuff to read up on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomb

Video is cooler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16cewjeqNdw

In my project, the wars are an unspecified period of time ago (several hundreds of years) so long ago that no one remembers their cause. The theme here- the futility and utterly temporary nature of any great empire- is like Shelly's "Ozymandias", in RPG form. The factions and nations that people thought were important enough to destroy the world over, no longer even exist, i.e. dark irony. No one remembers the conflict or even what caused it, and it is instead referred to as "The Burning Times" with almost religious airs.

Yet again, Dirty/Futuristic

Of course I am not at all offering this as a suggestion for your project, because it is already far too similar to mine! I would suggest simply upping the number of years drastically from 12.

The music in the TRAILER was Disturbed not Nickleback.

This is hilarious because they are both such patently fucking awful "bands" that there is basically no difference between them in quality. And yes, I know they sound different. And yes, you fuckers, I know this is me, in my glass house, throwing stones. :P

Total matter of opinion on taste of music. I like a lot of Disturbed I can hardly stand Nickleback and I like a lot of other music too. It's all opinionated and has nothing to do with the Aftermath/Vermicide projects.

Okay, seriously, I see only two things about your project I take objection to:

1. Way, way, way too much hype!
2. Seems too reliant on Fallout 3 for inspiration. There is homage (always acceptable, small doses), wearing your inspirations on your sleeve (which I am guilty of) and then there is outright ripoffery, which your game approaches.

When I get feedback from people it helps me continue the project. I love it, I eat it up I do this for people to have a fun free game which is hard to find sometimes.

Aftermath is a combination of Shadowrun and Fallout. Yes, you can learn spells and take over twenty pain killers in one battle but this is a fucking video game lol. You can only get so realistic in a video game. Just like in fallout 3 if you told your enemy to chill for a bit so you can inject yourself with stim packs. I added
the mysticism part because I did not want to make a clone of a game already out lol.

But I am going to hit your trailers and your demo and I all but garantee I'll have more feedback for you.

Sounds good. A play of the game should change things around a bit for you.

-Max

P.S. You should really, really, really give Vermicide a try.

It seems like a pretty cool project and I will check it out sometime.

EDIT 1: Video: Becoming The Seer:

A. The spirits are DICKS:
FIRST SENTENCE: "The spirits have told me you have done a horrible thing."
NEXT SENTENCE: "They say you are worthy for what you have done"
B. I (don't) like how your game is identical to every rm2k3 game ever right down to the use of TRADITIONAL MAGIC. This is a mystifying choice to me.

Those spirits are pure evil because Analynne the woman in the middle is a neutral shaman who respects the ancient spirits and gives you the choice of learning how
to become a Shaman or Seer. That path I made for the video is the evil one. There is of course the path of Shaman which you have to see in another video if I make it or if you play the game and go the good route.

I was hesitant on adding spells in Aftermath at first but I thought it would be really cool since there is lots of Indian/Ancient things buried in Arizona.
I won't spoil it for you, but the atomic bombs have a lot to do with unleashing
things on earth that were never seen by mankind before the war.

C. I cannot criticize your use of FMV from other games (I used the same trick in Iron Gaia: Virus) but I imagine others will, and so I encourage you to use it sparingly.

I currently only use 3 videos and they are pretty short and fit perfect for the scene.

D. Dude, I am basically an expert on/obsessed with guns, and I am 90% sure there is no such thing as a .22 short sub-machine gun and if there is, it is a curiosity.

.22 Machine Guns are rare as hell but I thought why not since every other game starts out with 10mm or better. .22 short/long rifle could be made into a SMG pretty easily. It's just a pretty weak SMG so who would bother with access to better? It's the same principle of starting a character out in a horror game with a butter knife/letter opener. Something that could kill somebody but barely since it's a beginners gun.

E. In one fight, you have enemies heal before being damaged at all.
Questionable enemy AI.

Haha good eye. I will be doing a readjustment to their AI.

F. I like some of your music and sounds.

Thanks much, I make sure shit sounds good and the ambiance is just right.

G. Why is your ammo system not being shown off??

Try making a system that not only tells what you have equipped but what your main hand/off hand weapon is + ammo and make that into a picture based ammo system... umm headache much? It's simply a waste of time for a little fluff. If I have nothing else to do I might implement it someday.

H. Default 2k3 skills like Constriction?

If it looks and sounds cool go with it.

I. Your battle music is pretty sweet.

I use two of my favorite tracks from Apokalyptika. Ion and Burn.

J. I also have an item named adrenaline shot. : ( At least they do different things.
K. Gameplay seems way too reliant on go go drinks. I hope they're cheap and plentiful, at least.

I needed an item that gave you a rush of motivation.

I was simply showing the GO! GO! DRINKS! off. You can get a gadget called the "Speed Enhancer" that improves run speed and Seers and Shamans have spells that increase it if you decide to go down the magic path which is optional.

L. I like your looting "System", especially the sounds. I see our games also share the ability to attack non-hostile NPCs.
M. What are you going to do when you run out of that cave chipset? It is already getting monotonous.

Thanks.

Depends on the situation.

Edit 2: "Official" Trailer:
Your game is an obsolete RM2k3 version of my RMVX game. :P

Yeah, I really can't do this point for point anymore. I can't give any more feedback without it just degenerating into comparisons with my game. Uh, I'll play it when I get around to it, definitely.

Thanks for the feedback. Play the game and have fun if you can.

TUPAC THE PIMP - RUINS OF WINSLOW







NEW VIDEO OUT! BECOMING THE SEER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsnV_FN9l-4


RUINS OF WINSLOW -
Poor Winslow got hit hard by a nuke unlike Toyota which only got some damage. This town will be available in the next content update. Damages of places you will see in Aftermath depends on where you see craters on the world map. Winslow is very close to ground zero.






TIPS OF THE WEEK:


Always remember to scroll down in shops. Players might miss very cool things they can buy.

GO! GO! DRINKS! will greatly increase walking speed for 30 seconds. Scroll down to the very bottom of Sam's shop.

There is some powers you can learn later on - I won't spoil it for you that give you 1 minute faster travel speed.

You can get the speed enhancer later on that goes into the gadget slot and it increases speed.


Since you get a ton of money very easily I give the player a ton of **** that can help them. If you have some spare money and don't know what to spend it on get some GO! GO! DRINKS! which will help you earn money faster if you like collecting bottles and stuff.

author=TooManyToasters link=topic=2678.msg50327#msg50327 date=1229006002
Did you really have to take Fallout 1's tagline word for word?

I'm not sure what you're talking about? Explain a little more.