MALADROITHIM'S PROFILE

author=prexus link=topic=685.msg9056#msg9056 date=1203013698
Probably a Q4 2009 JP release and Q1-2 2010 NA release, imo.

Actually some rumors say that it might be December 2008 in Japan.

author=demondestiny link=topic=664.msg9014#msg9014 date=1202938694
Is that a surprise. ;)

(jokes)

Dude you're a jerk :'(

author=demondestiny link=topic=679.msg9011#msg9011 date=1202938180
I never read what major game sites review all these games. To me, i will buy the game if i myself like it, not what others think.

How do you know if you will like it unless you read reviews? You can't honestly expect press releases to be fair and balanced in their assessment of their own product.

I played a couple hours of this game lastnight and holy shit it's so amazing. It's basically everything I was hoping Blue Dragon would be. Little details that I love:

- The game hits the ground running and throws you into a battle and a short dungeon before any long exposition. This is excellent pacing because when you first boot a game up you don't want to watch a long cutscene.

- The battles are really fun. They are challenging and move pretty swiftly. The animation and camera work is really cool and definitely feels like a violent melee sometimes.

- The skill-learning system is extremely novel and pretty bizarre but works and I like it. It basically amounts to a class system of sorts or maybe a materia system where the materia are underpowered party members and once you learn a skill you never forget it. Anyway it's fun.

- Graphics are excellent of course <3

- Random battles suck ass but the encounter rate is pretty low and the random battles are somewhat challenging so you don't get bored.

- You have a run button that lets you fly across the screen if you are say in a town that you have already explored and just want to get to the fucking train station

- The game is full of short story segments that you can optionally read. They are not grand literature but they are competently written and have cool text effects and nice music and impressionistic art in the background. I like those sequences a lot. You can skip them when they come up if you are illitarate. They claim to explore the main character's backstory, but really all they do is repeatedly justify why the main character is so morose; the past 1000 years of his life have apparently been a neverending string of tragedies and disappointments.

- Unlike Blue Dragon the game doesn't hide useless shit under every rock and tree stump in the entire game so you don't spend half of your gametime mashing the A button on everything so that you can get excited when you find Nothing.

- Unlike Blue Dragon you won't finish the game with an 80-hour file like I did and only have 30 achievement points (I already have 150!).

Things that I have noticed that I don't like:

- The loading times in battle remind me of Final Fantasy IX. It's not completely obnoxious, but the game definitely takes it time slowly sweeping across your party and then the enemy group while it's secretly loading things off-screen. You will notice but you won't have time to make a sandwich.

- It's kind of confusing the you press up/down to cycle between enemies displayed on screen left-right.

- Much of the character design is ridiculous and lame. For example the main character always has a strand of hair in his eyes and I HATE IT. Also he's definitely a fag. Both of the two people in your group at the start of the game look really stupid actually.

- After the explosive beginning there is a long string of outrageously boring cutscenes. I took this opportunity to get a light workout in front of the TV while politicians argued about a war full of names of countries I could never possibly be expected to remember. Political intrigue is cool, but the writers of this game don't understand that you need to start small and expand outwards. Final Fantasy Tactics is a great example of political intrigue in a game that starts small and expands outwards, and the result is that you manage to keep track of everything.



But seriously guys, this is basically Final Fantasy X but the depressed main character doesn't bitch about his problems like Tidus did which is awesome. It's one of the best Final Fantasy games I've ever played!

author=ShadowFox link=topic=682.msg9029#msg9029 date=1202963306
Okay... yeah. I understood it perfectly, and got it working...... sort of. After testing (my sentry just goes up and down), It doesn't work when they're facing up, but it does work when it's facing down. And I copied down everything to your exact specifications... unless I screwed up somewhere...

To troubleshoot I'll just explain how the system works so that you can figure it out on your own. I don't have the program here so I can't really test it myself.

Remember that RPGMaker takes place in the fourth quadrant and not the first (like you would expect) using the cartesian coordinate system.



II | I
___|___
|
III| IV



However, making this more complicated is that RPGMaker uses absolute value of Y and not actual value of Y (I think this is because Japanese people read down). This makes it a little weird to figure out x,y positions because the Y value is not what you would expect it to be. (0,0) is at the TOP LEFT and not at the bottom left like you would expect and GOES UP as you move down.



(0,0) (20,0)
_______
| |
| |
| |
|_______|
(0,20) (20,20)



So the way the script works is by comparing the relative locations of the sprites.


^ = Sentry
o = Hero
_______________
| |
| |
| |
| o (5,15) |
| |
| ^ (5, 18) |
| |
| |
|_______________|



Our sentry is at (5,18) looking up, and the hero is at (5,15). Now we do the math.

Hero y = 15
Sentry y = 18
18 - 15 = 3

0 < 3 < 5 ?? Yes

Hero x = 5
Sentry x = 5

5 - 5 = 0

-3 < 0 < 3 ?? Yes

Since both answers are yes, the sentry should detect the character.

When troubleshooting, make sure that your greater than/less than conditions are all correct and that you are looking for the right ranges of values. I have reviewed what I gave you and it should all probably work, so good luck. Here are the big things I can imagine happening:

- Greater than/less than checks are wrong (for example they are reversed)
- Coordinate checks are wrong (You have the wrong coordinates entered to check relative locations)
- You are performing the wrong math (you are subtracting sentry x from hero x for example)
- You have performed a series of errors which has accidentally caused half of the script to work but not the other half

author=donline link=topic=682.msg9035#msg9035 date=1202966862
make an event box

Well this is the first method I described where your guards are not modular and are not very robust. With the second and more complicated method, you can specify whichever movement route you want and your guards can move around. You can also paste them into new maps without having to change any code at all, since their AI bit is modular. You could make them a common feature throughout your entire game or give all normal enemies wandering around the map basic abilities to detect and chase you or give you the ability to attack them from behind.

.... also ....

.... I have taken your children hostage ....