ICOVOC'S PROFILE

I'm a novelist, and working on a commercial RPG called The Pale City under my real name. (Kyle Muntz)

Some of my favorite RM games:

The Way
Dhux Scar
Seraphic Blue
Star Stealing Prince
Wine and Roses
The Logomancer
The Reconstruction
Master of the Wind
To the Moon
The Grumpy Knight
Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden
Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle
Space Funeral
One Shot
Lisa
Dashbored

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Blog 22: Latest update to Seraphic Blue Progress

So glad to hear you guys are so far into it. Can't wait.

The Logomancer

Glad to see this on the front page! I still think it's one of the best games made with RPG Maker, and it definitely deserves any attention it gets.

X-Noir Near Completion

I'm definitely pumped for the game. Looking forward to playing it whenever it's out; really curious to see the different directions you two have gone in since Master of the Wind.

Concept: Advanced RPG Maker - an eZine

This is great. I love the idea of an RM ezine; the editorials are nice, and the game features seem like a good choice. Awesome job!

Border

For sure. I think the big open areas would be great if there was more in them. It's a difficult approach (lots of work on your part, haha) but an interesting one.

I definitely like a lot of the ideas in the combat system. Will be great once it's balanced, even if it's not quite there yet. The guard mechanic is particularly nice; looking forward to playing a later version so I can properly figure out how everything works.

Also I totally get it about the battlers. Each of them had a ton of animations, and it makes sense that would take forever. It might work to do palette switches and create teams of similar enemies who specialize in different things, but it's impressive to have all those animations to begin with.

I'd agree with you about the story/setting. They seem fascinating enough I'd play the game even if the gameplay was totally generic, so it's even better that you're attempting all of these different mechanics.

Border

Hey Grayborders, finished the demo and I like it quite a bit. Because this is a very early project I'm going to focus mostly on criticism, but I just want to say I think your goals are very relevant and important for rpgs as a genre--dropping cliches, remaking dumb systems, and (of course) the ambitious scale of the storytelling. Also the music and visuals were great (especially that tileset for the forest, and the battle sprites).

On the other hand, I think the maps were probably too big for their own good, and it might be better to try more intuitive layouts rather than big patches of blank space. Also, though I like what the combat system is attempting, it still feels really uneven (though not in the more obvious sense, since I like that the characters were actually at very different levels). The main thing is each character seemed to have multiple moves to do the same thing, but a lot of them weren't very useful, and I think it might be better to focus only on abilities that have a clear use. Also having so many copies of the same enemy in each dungeon makes the fights a little monotonous, and I'd say there should either be more variety or fewer fights. One other thing is the town at end glitches really bad--there's a missing chest image at the top, as well as a missing song in one of the houses, and each of them crashes the game.

"Realism" is always a very general principles in rpgs, but I think you do a good job moving in that direction and introducing new mechanics. There isn't a lot of story yet, but the glimpse of mana technology and the setting in general is fascinating.

Anyway though, I can't wait to see how this project shapes up. I'll definitely buy it whenever it's out; or if I have money I'll probably contribute to the Kickstarter. It's great to see a game that tries to do its own thing--even with the early mechanical problems at this stage, I think your general idea is interesting and fresh enough it makes the game really stand out.

The Reconstruction Review

I really agree with this review. (Though the story is good enough I'd bump it up to 4.5, plus Dhel is just the most interesting protagonist ever.) I'm playing I Miss the Sunrise right now, and gameplay wise almost all the problems are fixed--in particular the battles move a lot faster and the stat/menu problems are gone. The Deltree awesomeness continues.

Games Using Victor Sant's Scripts

Yeah, the thing I've noticed about Victor's scripts is they tend to be really dynamic and great, but require a lot of care. I've got most of them working already, and they've done really great things for my game, but by this point I go in expecting a steeper learning curve.

If there's an issue, it's probably that using Victor's more specialized systems means you have to stick to his battle scripts almost exclusively for compatibility reasons (whereas Yanfly, Yami, and Kread are constantly being patched to work together). There's nothing wrong with that either, especially considering how complex it is to make a script and his are very interdependent on each other, just that I've noticed because there's an "either-or" element it's rare for people to go with Victor as a base for their gameplay rather than Yanfly or Yami, and I'm curious to see a few games that do.

Games Using Victor Sant's Scripts

Thanks for the info. I'll make sure to check it out whenever there's a demo.

Games Using Victor Sant's Scripts

Hey all. This falls between topics a little bit, but does anyone know of Ace games that use Victor Sant's battle engine exclusively or almost exclusively? The system seem to have a lot of potential, but I've noticed mostly because of how difficult they are plus compatibility problems, people tend to primarily use Yanfly, Battle Engine Symphony or something else, and just a few from Victor (usually the animated battlers), and I'm curious to see a few where Victor's system is used as a base instead.

I'd be especially interested to see a few that didn't use Yanfly or another core engine at all.