DREADPIRATE'S PROFILE

author=Kaempfer
Alright, I played up to the crystal caves where I had to stop because the crystal enemies kept stunlocking me and then just bashing into me over and over until I was dead.

Here are my notes from my playthrough:

• It's spelled eyrie or aerie, erie is the name of a lake

• There is no indication that you're near a save point, maybe make the player glow or something? Also, add a confirm when you select "menu", because it's very easy to hit the wrong key and quit immediately

• The interior of your house is broken, it shows wonky HP values and the second time I entered I started swinging my sword over and over without any button presses

• The dog cutscene didn't trigger the first time I entered the map, I had to leave and then bump into him over and over for it to play

• The hurt animation is too slow. You just sit there for way too long every time you take even minor damage.

• The edge pan is too close to the edge of the screen. It makes it hard to see where the heck you're going

Here are my general notes:
The combat is pretty cool and I love the animations that are everywhere, and the custom movement is a nice touch even if it is a bit janky sometimes (around map teleports especially). The mapping is OK, but there is very little contrast in most areas so they are very monotone in general. For instance, the tops of the cliffs and the bottom of the cliffs are both green, so it's mostly just a field of green with little grey bits (the rocks and cliffs) indicating the borders. The combat felt pretty good for the most part and the guy's movement with the sword is cool and quite fluid. The game felt a bit aimless (at the least the part I played). You're in an area outside a town, and you need to get the power on, but none of this is hinted at or mentioned except by one NPC. It also doesn't seem to serve much of a plot purpose; you need to turn on the power to get the sword, so the kid won't block your way. Why not have an obstacle you can only remove with the sword, or a bridge that won't lower until the power is on, or something? Tie the gameplay with the story. Time fantasy graphics can be pretty desaturated, I actually really liked the colours on the test2 map a lot (yeah, I poked around in the project; it's pretty funny that you left the whole old project in there!). The opening cutscene was really cleverly done and looked great.

Overall I'd say you've got a pretty fun base for a game, I'm surprised at how good the movement and combat was, custom Rm2k3 systems don't usually feel so smooth. The story needs a bit of beefing up, namely how the player fits into it. If you work on making it more clear what the player is supposed to do (especially tying plot and gameplay together) and work on refining things, I think this could be a real winner.

edit: I should note I played this on the second version you uploaded

Awesome Kaempfer. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to play as long as you did and give me your feed back.

• Thanks for the spelling correction, it will be addressed

• The save point stone actually flashes white when you are within the save radius, however now I know it is not obvious enough and I will indeed re write the event to have another indicator that is more obvious.

• The house serves literally no purpose at this point so I paid little attention to it before posting the game. That was a mistake on my part as I should have taken more care to check for bugs in the house. It will be addressed

• The dog scene is a new one to me. It is a parallel process so it won't trigger until you are right beside the dog. If you leave the map before the dog exits to the following map it will reset and you will see the scene again as to make sure the player doesn't miss the event. I have never experienced a problem with it so I will definitely investigate this issue. Thanks a ton for bringing it to my attention.

• Hmm, the hit animation. Believe it or not I never considered it would be too long. This is great to know. I have some new animations to draw it sounds like.

• I will play around with the screen pan a bit. I took a few cues from secret of mana when I first started the project (along with treasure chest animation which is something else I'm probably changing as to make it more unique.) that I personally really liked but I anticipated people not being crazy about the screen pan.

The map contrast issues I have also noticed myself. I will put some thought into this, however it is not too high on my priorities as I am doing my best to move this along and at least get this thing to a finished state... some day haha. It is noted though and I appreciate ALL your notes.
Edit: actually I just had a look at that test2 map and that's a pretty simple solution that helps. I just might follow your advice and adjust maps to fit that template. Good on ya.

That's a really good point of interest about the power task. I really like your idea about the bridge as well. That would probably fix the entire beginning tying it all together. You the man, Send me the invoice and you can just write for me! haha.

I'm glad you checked out the project, I'm more than happy having people checking out my work. Dude, that's pretty astute of you to notice the entire old project haha, that's awesome. So pretty much there is the entire dungeon after you get off the eagle aerie (Notice the correct spelling.) That dungeon is in those older maps, they just have to be updated with certain events and graphics. I was learning the engine and those old maps have all sorts of systems that I reference when implementing certain things into the game so I often bounce back and forth between the OG project and the current one. If I ever complete the game everything will be cleaned up. Thanks for the props for the opening scene. I hoped people would notice the effort.

A couple questions for you if you ever read my reply;

• What level were you when you entered the caves? Leveling up is pretty quick but I think level 3 is minimum right now for going into the cave and surviving. I'm not against changing that balance which is why I'm curious what level you were when you entered the caverns.

That's too bad, the cave has the first official boss of the game I would be excited for you to check out. There's also some monsters after the cave I would be happy for players to encounter as I am pretty proud of them.

• Did you get a chance to use any Skills or did you never get to learning any of them?

I think if you were pleased with the combat so far the skills feature is where the combat system really starts to shine so that's another feature I'd be really interested in someone's take on.

I can't thank you enough for the time you took out of your schedule to play what you have and giving me your thoughts of what you played is more than I could ask for. Thanks a ton, I have some stuff to work on it sounds like. You da man. Cheers dude

Side note on the custom movement: one thing I've learned implementing the 8 direction movement is a touch event will not recognize the hero is there if he moved onto it diagonally. This is why I've made teleport events as collision events. It still has it's problems. You picked up on them pretty quick lol

author=dragonheartman
Yay it's here! Congrats. Hope to make some time this weekend to try.

Dragonheartman, cool you're still with me, haha. Awesome. Im probably updating the download again tonight as a few more graphical issues have been ironed out that were bothersome to me and I'll be much happier people playing a more on point project.

Ulevo, dragonheartman, thanks for having a look at my simple game page. I think tomorrow's the day I'll post this bad boy on here.