Fighting Robots Quest

Started by Boulon, June 26, 2015, 10:20:00 am

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ForeverZer0

I am just blind then, lol, disregard.
I am done scripting for RMXP. I will likely not offer support for even my own scripts anymore, but feel free to ask on the forum, there are plenty of other talented scripters that can help you.

Boulon

The demo was finished a little while ago but I wanted to be sure there was not major bug in it before sharing it to you, guys.
Here it is!



Fighting Robots Quest - Demo #2
Download Link


-The demo features roughly 4 hours of play time.
-You don't need RPG Maker 2k3 or the RTP to be installed on your PC to run the game.
-You cannot play this demo using your saves from the 1st demo. (Sorry, I tried but too many things have been added.)
-There's some documents in the .rar file that you may want to read (Game instructions, etc).


Have fun!
Hope youll enjoy it!  :)

KK20

Quote from: Boulon on January 04, 2016, 11:24:14 am
-You cannot play this demo using your saves from the 1st demo.

D:

I'll probably still play it anyways when I get the time. Glad you updated it :)

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Boulon

Yes, sorry about this I tried but so many instances where it didn't work quite well.

KK20

January 11, 2016, 01:41:33 am #24 Last Edit: January 11, 2016, 01:50:49 am by KK20
Spent most of my weekend looking through all the latest demo had to offer. Still thoroughly impressed with how everything is laid out and presented to you. The pacing of information is perfect. Mapping is still great, music is catchy, graphics mesh really well together.

Let's move onto game design decisions. Starting at the area right of Ventura Village, the difficulty starts rising pretty quickly. Suddenly I'm taking half health party attacks battle after battle, always running back to the repair shop and making that guy a millionaire. At least the grinding gets reasonable at this point--my bots were leveling up much more often and that "Is it gonna evolve? Will it learn a new skill?" anticipation is great to feel. But it's not fun that, especially in this area, I have to run all the way back to town just to heal up my team after a few battles. I found myself grinding for levels and buying a bunch of healing items with the money I'm finding. Sadly, it stays this difficult until your entire team has upgraded/evolved where the stats get a noticeable increase.

I loathe RM2k3's default battle system. It didn't look like DynRPG had a way to modify the algorithms at all, which is a huge shame. Normal attacks start becoming useless during/after the cave. I relied way too much on my skills to kill things as quickly as possible; I couldn't afford a wild bot to use a mass attack that cripples my entire team. Honestly, if wild bots didn't have such hard hitting party attacks, it would be manageable. Defense stat is a joke. It feels like the enemies are always getting the first move, even those slow rock-looking bots cast Regenerate before my 120+ speed bots get a chance. A the Row command is such a joke--from what I saw online, it only slightly reduces damage received and given for normal attacks only. It doesn't influence hit-rate and has no effect on magic-based attacks. Also I have to use "Wait" instead of "Active"; battles are just not fair otherwise.

Trading system is pretty cool. No idea how such a thing works in RM2k3.

Now for graphical glitches:
Spoiler: ShowHide

Areas are along the path east of Ventura Village, the cave, and the fisher's house. As you can see in the cave, the girl's hair (when facing up or down) on the left is a pixel too far. It's easily noticeable here, but it occurs everywhere.

For bugs:
- In the mountains north of Sun Coast, when you attempt to enter the cave before fighting Wein (I think that was his name), the message window didn't go away. Going into battle fixed this though.
- I know you're not a native English person so the spelling and grammar will not be perfect. I saw on rpgmaker.net that it says "Strentgh" in the menu, even back in the first demo. Be sure to fix that. Canon = Cannon, Genious = Genius, Usefull = Useful, Teached = Taught, Truely = Truly, Loose (opposite of tight) =/= Lose (opposite of win).
- Pogasus, upon upgrading, doesn't mention the equips are removed, unlike all the others that upgraded (yet it still removed my equips) EDIT: Might be that I just forgot to equip its stuff back onto it when I added it back to the party.
- Star Dust healing skill actually MISSED one of my members! He wasn't Blind and the other guy wasn't dead, so...WAT?!

Suggestions/Questions:
- Can you make it so that it automatically removes equips from simurions that we withdraw from the party? The equips still stay on them.
- Will we be able to reset the boosts applied to our bots? It's understandable that we can't have 2 of the same bot, but it's also not good that we can't undo these changes either.
- I haven't tried, but I'm assuming you can prevent an upgrade from happening, much like Pokemon's "Press B to stop evolving." If that is true, what can players do if they reach the max level and the bot needs a level up to upgrade?

All in all, still a very fun game. I will always love this and await the next demos/full game!
4 hours? I at least spent 8 :D

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Boulon

January 11, 2016, 10:30:19 am #25 Last Edit: January 11, 2016, 12:26:21 pm by Boulon
EDIT : Can you tell me the Simurions you used for fighting against Alexander (2nd boss) and Wein (champion of the 2nd arena), please?
For the difficulty, I realised after writting all this that it's surely the Active mode with the addition of DynRPG faster battle plugin. Sorry about that. ^^'

QuoteStarting at the area right of Ventura Village, the difficulty starts rising pretty quickly. Suddenly I'm taking half health party attacks battle after battle, always running back to the repair shop and making that guy a millionaire. At least the grinding gets reasonable at this point--my bots were leveling up much more often and that "Is it gonna evolve? Will it learn a new skill?" anticipation is great to feel. But it's not fun that, especially in this area, I have to run all the way back to town just to heal up my team after a few battles

Mmh, that's too bad. :s
I didn't plan to make it so difficult. The first thing I can suggest you is putting the battle mode in "wait". Since I speeded up the battles it can be tricky in active mode if you take too much time to select things, I guess.

It's a shame it made you backtrack that much. Did you mean that while you were fighting against the trainers in Dabulu Woods? Or after that, against roaming Simurions later in the woods and hills?
For the woods, I made a little shortcut with the trunk on the water pool. It can still be anoying so I made an item seller at the end of the area too. For the rest of the woods/hills, since you can switch your Simurions when you want, I think you can just take another one if one is K.O. It's a mecanic I wanted the players to do to advance without the need of an "inn".

I'm sorry for that, especially if it feels boring to backtrack that often.
Can you specify, how many times you backtracked to the repairman to finally access the Lily Cave, please? Thanks.


QuoteNormal attacks start becoming useless during/after the cave.

I tried to make it not that useless. In fact, when I tested it, I use normal attacks most of the time, saving my MP for the boss. Or maybe use one skill to kill quickly a stronger Simurion, like Denelect. And I do this without any farming. That's a shame you felt that. I'm pretty upset with the results. ><
If one day you can do a let's play, tell me! It's much easier to analyse problems watching people play. But since some people told me it wasn't that hard, I can't exactly know what make your walkthrough such a pain. You could say, I can put more healing items on the way, or debuffing enemies stats but it was this way before and people told me it was too easy. It seems harder than it looks to tune things well. (I had, maybe 10 versions of this cave before).

Anyway, you can suggest what you want, I take notes.


QuoteIt feels like the enemies are always getting the first move, even those slow rock-looking bots cast Regenerate before my 120+ speed bots get a chance. A the Row command is such a joke--from what I saw online, it only slightly reduces damage received and given for normal attacks only.

It's possible enemies strike first, especially the trainers' Simurions. But it should be the case with normal battles. The Simurion that can heal itself, (Rockiwa?) it's pretty slow. If it healed itself before your strike it's because all your Simurions attacked at almost the same time while it was almost ready to fight, that's the only way I could understand that.



QuoteA the Row command is such a joke--from what I saw online, it only slightly reduces damage received and given for normal attacks only. It doesn't influence hit-rate

Are you sure?
What I read about it is that it doesn't reduce damage, it only reduce chances to get attacked. So if you put a Simurion in the back row, the enemies should attack it less that others. But the difference is minimal, it's like a 10% chance. Still it's better than nothing but kind of useless, yes.

QuoteAlso I have to use "Wait" instead of "Active"; battles are just not fair otherwise.

Since I speeded up the battle gauges with DynRPG it made the battles much harder in Active mode, indeed.
I plan to make the game in Wait mode by default but I don't know how to do it. In fact, I think the issue is really about this. Active mode, with the addition of DynRPG speed up is hard mode. I should have notified the players about that! I wanted to speed up the battles a little because some players told me they were slow. So they are now 50% faster, but it really feels fast in Active mode.

I will search about making the game in Wait mode by default, and maybe just make it impossible to switch to Active mode.

Sorry about that, I guess if you played all the demo in Wait mode your issues wouldn't have been that big. :(


QuoteTrading system is pretty cool. No idea how such a thing works in RM2k3.

Did you try it with someone? If you know nobody playing the game, I can send you a Simurions of your choice if you want. :)


QuotePogasus, upon upgrading, doesn't mention the equips are removed, unlike all the others that upgraded (yet it still removed my equips) EDIT: Might be that I just forgot to equip its stuff back onto it when I added it back to the party.

It's not a bug I think. This message doesn't show up after it showd up 3 times, if I remember correctly. It did this to not bother the player with redundant pop up messages. But maybe it better to let it every times?

QuoteStar Dust healing skill actually MISSED one of my members! He wasn't Blind and the other guy wasn't dead, so...WAT?!

This skill can miss, it's 90% accuracy. That's one of the reasons it can't be used on the maps. It's a "plasma" skills, so I wanted it to feel like something else than a normal healing skills.


QuoteCan you make it so that it automatically removes equips from simurions that we withdraw from the party? The equips still stay on them.

YES! I plan to do this since a long time, now. After playing for a while I realise it's not useful to keep hardware on a withdrawed Simurion. I guess it will be done in the next demo.


QuoteWill we be able to reset the boosts applied to our bots? It's understandable that we can't have 2 of the same bot, but it's also not good that we can't undo these changes either.

Sadly, no. I think it won't be possible. The system is a little too big already. What I plan is, maybe, making a way to reset the potential to 100% one time through to game. But reseting the actual stats seems too hard to do (because this system is not the only one that change stats).

Why do you want this? Maybe I can find something else.

QuoteI haven't tried, but I'm assuming you can prevent an upgrade from happening, much like Pokemon's "Press B to stop evolving." If that is true, what can players do if they reach the max level and the bot needs a level up to upgrade?

No, you can't stop an upgrade. But you can still levels a Simurions to max without make it upgrade. Let say, a Simurion that need good health to upgrade won't upgrade by with levels. If it reaches max level it's ok since upgrading doesn't need any level gains. You just have do to a battle to upgrade.

For instance, a lot of Simurions can upgrade based on their stats (not levels). Ponuma upgrades when its System stat reaches 48 iirc. So you can boost its System stat with items without doing any battles. But if it's 48 or more and do 1 battle it will upgrade even without the need of gaining a level. Hope I explained it well.


QuoteAll in all, still a very fun game. I will always love this and await the next demos/full game!
4 hours? I at least spent 8

Thank you so much! I was waiting for your test!
Sorry again for the fustrating difficulty. I think it's really the Active mode that did that.
Thank you for the bugs reports, too.
8 hours is really big! Hopefully, after that the game story will start to really picks up, so I hope you'll enjoy the rest of the game, next time. (But it will be a long wait, I guess, ince I have to integrate the exploring aptitudes, fully).

:) :) :)

Zexion

Quote
Can you tell me the Simurions you used for fighting against Alexander (2nd boss) and Wein (champion of the 2nd arena), please?

I played this along with kk20, and got pretty much similar results. My party at the second boss was just the first four with (i believe) bediba evolution. Most of my party was relatively low level though I can't remember the exact level I was at. Honestly this battle might have been a bit easy, but you have to keep in mind that I already had to go back to get tons of "potion", so it wasn't a threat because of that.


Quote
Can you specify, how many times you backtracked to the repairman to finally access the Lily Cave, please? Thanks.

At this point, I had gone way ahead of kk20. He was looking at every detail while i was busy trying to lvl up and get new simurians. I warned him about the later part of this area getting harder so I think that's why he kept backtracking to be safe. I, on the other hand, did not back track at all. I went right through it and eventually a wild encounter just rekt my whole party. I believe it was the bird with sacred wind. At that point i just had to stock up on potions and it was easy to get through the second time.

QuoteNormal attacks start becoming useless during/after the cave.

I'm going to have to agree with this. The lady bug bot misses almost every basic attack, Denger is almost always dead or dieing, and Ponuma feels completely useless until it evolves (and gets the best ability in the game :D) Basic attacks only feel okay on wild encounters where there is a single bot. If there are 2 or more, just use skills. Basic attack is completely useless on bosses because they either miss, or do no damage.


QuoteTrading system is pretty cool. No idea how such a thing works in RM2k3.
Did you try it with someone? If you know nobody playing the game, I can send you a Simurions of your choice if you want. :)

We exchanged a bird that I didn't catch and a plasma type I found in the mountains. It's pretty cool :o

Quote
Sadly, no. I think it won't be possible. The system is a little too big already. What I plan is, maybe, making a way to reset the potential to 100% one time through to game. But reseting the actual stats seems too hard to do (because this system is not the only one that change stats).
Why do you want this? Maybe I can find something else.

Well, I personally had no idea what any of the stats even did, so I randomly spent them. That being said, it kinda sucked that I couldn't remove them and place on another bot because it was such a waste. XD


So for my final review, the game is awesome. The wild encounters feel somewhat balanced, though they tend to get really strong towards the second gym area. (Might not be a bad thing. IDK) The battle arenas are pretty cool to get through, and the bosses do feel threatening (though less so for me since I had the electric type xD) Overall, I feel like the most taxing thing on players is the need for some kind of heal. At some points you constantly feel the need to go back and repair, and at others it's fine. When the ladybug learns heal, it becomes really useful, but now SP becomes very important. If you plan on adding more options for restoring sp later on, this will actually balance out fairly well, otherwise you should sell sp for less chins in the shop.

Side note: What were the sugar and hot springs for?

Boulon

Thank you Zexion for your feedback too.
It makes me happy to think of you two guys playing it almost together. That's the kind of things I wanted to happen.
Btw, did you choose differents versions of the game? (Time or Space).


Quotebelieve it was the bird with sacred wind.

Oh, yes, bad luck... it can be something if they spam this skill.
Maybe I should add something to prevent them doing it twice in a row.

Quote
Normal attacks start becoming useless during/after the cave.
I'm going to have to agree with this. The lady bug bot misses almost every basic attack

Yes, its attack is not that strong (Rediba is more a tank than anything) but in this case it's more an accuracy issue. It's because Rediba is very slow and accuracy is based on speed. So slow Simurions are not good normal-attacker most of the time. Maybe I should add some weapons that gives 100% accuracy if a player wants to avoid this.


QuoteDenger is almost always dead or dieing, and Ponuma feels completely useless until it evolves (and gets the best ability in the game :D) Basic attacks only feel okay on wild encounters where there is a single bot. If there are 2 or more, just use skills. Basic attack is completely useless on bosses because they either miss, or do no damage.

Mmh, yes, I think it's true. But I use it, again, a lot of time in the second arena, and without doing some leveling. For instance, Hion have an ability that makes it attack twice in a row, it's powerful.
But, maybe it's not enough for the others. I'm agree Ponuma or Denger feel weak before their upgrades. But I wanted it to be like that. My vision about the game was that the players would want to change his team frequently. So I made it this way : a Simurion starts ok then become stale after a while but if you levels it or take it back after a while it can become powerful.

Anyway, the attack issue after a while is kind of reversed. In fact, after playing the entire beta (more than 15 hours) I saw that attack power was so good that I could beat entire enemy groups only with normal attacks. That's because weapons get better. I didn't want that either... Well, that's a long puzzle for me to tweak that well.

I guess, for the portion of the game you've played, without changing anyting in the whole balacing, if I add a good unique weapon or a Simurion with very good normal attack it can be better.



QuoteWe exchanged a bird that I didn't catch and a plasma type I found in the mountains. It's pretty cool :o

Perfect!


Quote
Well, I personally had no idea what any of the stats even did, so I randomly spent them. That being said, it kinda sucked that I couldn't remove them and place on another bot because it was such a waste. XD

Mmh, maybe I should explain the basics of the stats... but the game right now is already full of explanations. Maybe I will put this in the instructions document instead, for now.
But, in fact, even boosting randomly the stats is good, not perfect maybe, but still better than nothing.


Quote
So for my final review, the game is awesome. The wild encounters feel somewhat balanced, though they tend to get really strong towards the second gym area. (Might not be a bad thing. IDK) The battle arenas are pretty cool to get through, and the bosses do feel threatening (though less so for me since I had the electric type xD) Overall, I feel like the most taxing thing on players is the need for some kind of heal. At some points you constantly feel the need to go back and repair, and at others it's fine. When the ladybug learns heal, it becomes really useful, but now SP becomes very important. If you plan on adding more options for restoring sp later on, this will actually balance out fairly well, otherwise you should sell sp for less chins in the shop.

Thank you!!
Ok, I noted that.
Btw, Denger/Denelect will learn at level 10 Overcharge which restores its SP but makes it paralyse itself.
But, you're right, I can let a little more SP recovery on the road, especially in closed zones where you cannot change your party.


Quote
Side note: What were the sugar and hot springs for?

A nerd in the arena explained it a little but it's for genetic types. Some of them need to be healthy to upgrade (kind of like the happiness system in Pokemon). Doing battles, giving them food and washing them (especialy with soap) increase their health. You'll have a message saying so if you do it.



KK20

January 11, 2016, 09:26:47 pm #28 Last Edit: January 12, 2016, 04:05:41 am by KK20
For starters, I set the battle mode to "Wait". I was already aware of this feature having used RM2k3 many years ago. If it were possible to make this the default (and thus remove that command from the menu), I would have always set my games to that.

QuoteCan you tell me the Simurions you used for fighting against Alexander (2nd boss) and Wein (champion of the 2nd arena), please?

I chose Diasky as my starter. For Alexander, I think I had Denger, Hion, and Rediba. For Wein, Denelect, Pogasus, and Rediba. Can't remember the levels I had for Alexander (though Hion absolutely destroyed him with his Fireballs) and all my guys were 12-14 for Wein (was grinding everyone to see who would be best on the team). Battle was pretty much dominated by Denelect using Thunder Fist every turn, Diasky using Plasma Fist (and Anti-Gravity when ready), Rediba using Venom, and Pogasus using Star Dust. The bite attack was only used once (and hit). Wave attack did 40-60 damage. I knew that my team was overkill at this point. Zexion made it sound harder than it actually was, but that was only cuz he didn't have a fully upgraded team.

QuoteDid you mean that while you were fighting against the trainers in Dabulu Woods?

The trainers, if I can recall, weren't TOO bad (that Zyx...too stronk), though it was pretty obvious they were getting a lot stronger after each battle (unlike in Pokemon where they're roughly the same difficulty). It was mostly the random encounters that got terrible. As Zexion said, the Torio with Sacred Wind was an absolute nightmare. It just wasn't fair at the time that they have this skill that does (I think) more damage than a normal attack and hits everyone. And especially at lower levels, 2-3 of those can take out my entire team. Can't recall if Hions were just as bad or not. I was so paranoid I refused to use normal attacks since they seemed to miss a lot. And since they always moved before me, I was pretty much taking heavy damage every battle.

And yeah, Zexion was complaining a lot about how hard the forest was. Told me to not go in deep until I was stocked with healing items. So I grinded until I had enough for like 12 of everything. But yeah, I had to use items almost after every battle.

QuoteFor the rest of the woods/hills, since you can switch your Simurions when you want, I think you can just take another one if one is K.O. It's a mecanic I wanted the players to do to advance without the need of an "inn".

Problem is that I would have to train them all equally just to even stand a chance in a battle. And at this point, it was already hard enough just to keep my higher levels alive. If the system was worked to have your guys not in your team heal up a little at a time while walking around, then that'd be nice.

Really, most of the difficulty is when you don't have a team of upgraded simurions. The stat boost (especially the HP) is huge enough to turn dangerous wild encounters to grinding fodder. For Denelect and Eagleat, normal attacks become reasonable, but I prefer using the 100+ damage skills to end battles quickly and avoid excessive damage to my team.

QuoteIt's possible enemies strike first, especially the trainers' Simurions. But it should be the case with normal battles. The Simurion that can heal itself, (Rockiwa?) it's pretty slow. If it healed itself before your strike it's because all your Simurions attacked at almost the same time while it was almost ready to fight, that's the only way I could understand that.

Yeah, it made no sense that Rockiwa (who has a speed of 90 something when I made one) was moving first before my Eagleat and Pogasus (120-130 speed). Again, might be the fault of RM2k3's terrible formulas, but it just doesn't make sense.

QuoteWhat I read about it is that it doesn't reduce damage, it only reduce chances to get attacked. So if you put a Simurion in the back row, the enemies should attack it less that others. But the difference is minimal, it's like a 10% chance. Still it's better than nothing but kind of useless, yes.

Did some quick Google searches, and this is what I saw: http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/15503/?post=545882#post545882
In the other websites I visited, no one mentions hit rate at all. This only applied to later RM versions (XP+). I wonder if it mentions it at all in the help file.

QuoteIt's not a bug I think. This message doesn't show up after it showd up 3 times, if I remember correctly. It did this to not bother the player with redundant pop up messages. But maybe it better to let it every times?

I think it would be best to remind the player anyways. If simurions don't lose access to their equips upon upgrading, might as well just transfer the equips over.

---
Bummer on the boosts. I kinda figured it would be too hard to reset it. If this was all done in RMXP, Zex and I would have loved to provide help. First thing would be to rework the battle system--there's only a few things wrong with it, but they're so huge that it just makes the whole system terrible.

But Zex and I plan on doing another run. Hopefully we can record both our games together. Though, now that we have knowledge of the game, I'm pretty sure things will be a lot different.

EDIT: We started. 1.5 hours of footage and we're both near the cave entrance. I was right--second time is making this much easier now that we know what to prepare for.

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Boulon

Thanks for the "Row" analysis thread!

Quotethe Torio with Sacred Wind was an absolute nightmare. (...)
I was pretty much taking heavy damage every battle.

I see. I will nerf Torio A.I, which now spams its wind attack as often as possible.
Beside, it makes this version a lot harder than the other with Chichou instead of Torio.

I'll try to tweak the area again to avoid the backtracking that can be a pain for some players. I need to think about that because I don't want it to feel to logical or obvious. But my guess is making the Pemikian cave (with the yellow portail) a little longer, adding some old capsule in it that can restores at least HP for free. So it will do the job of a safe net.
Plus, I'm currently adding set pieces of story in the game so it can be a good place to expand a little.


QuoteProblem is that I would have to train them all equally just to even stand a chance in a battle. And at this point, it was already hard enough just to keep my higher levels alive. If the system was worked to have your guys not in your team heal up a little at a time while walking around, then that'd be nice.

You have a point. I think I'm too much used to my own game and almost never need to grind or anything, knowing exactly what will happen helps a lot. (I even think that if you replay the game twice you gain this knowledge, the first time you play you always are afraid of what's coming because you don't know).

I think this system can work better later when you have changed your party serveral time and have good hardware which could make a lower level Simurion still fine.

Maybe I should buff the starting level of the new rebuilt Simurion s, at least for the begining.

I have to think about the HP refill. I planned to do that before but I stopped, don't remember exactly why. Maybe because it seemed to obvious you can exploit the mecanic in safe zones. What I could do instead is making the Simurions in the Simu-Com restore a little HP after a battle. This way it's harder to exploit.
It can be a game balance changer so I have to check this out. But thank you for the suggestion.


QuoteYeah, it made no sense that Rockiwa (who has a speed of 90 something when I made one) was moving first before my Eagleat and Pogasus (120-130 speed). Again, might be the fault of RM2k3's terrible formulas, but it just doesn't make sense.

Indeed. Especially because I keep the stats (almost) the same between "wild" Simurions and player Simurions. This Rockiwa should be 90 in speed. I'll check this.


QuoteI think it would be best to remind the player anyways. If simurions don't lose access to their equips upon upgrading, might as well just transfer the equips over.

Yes. I changed this yestarday night after reading your post. ;)
I thought it was not that often and agreed it still a good reminder. Thanks!





QuoteBut Zex and I plan on doing another run. Hopefully we can record both our games together. Though, now that we have knowledge of the game, I'm pretty sure things will be a lot different.

EDIT: We started. 1.5 hours of footage and we're both near the cave entrance. I was right--second time is making this much easier now that we know what to prepare for.

You guys are awesome!! Seriously. :)

And yes, I thought it was that. But this issue is still there. Players are not confidents because of some things.
I will add a safe net for the players to feel more condident and make the Torios less hardcore.

So, did you record it? I interested at watching it if you did.
Thank you for all the time you took for the project. It'll help!  :D

KK20

I'm planning on posting the videos until we have completed the demo. No commentary btw, we're not good at that stuff (plus Zex is camera shy).

QuoteI see. I will nerf Torio A.I, which now spams its wind attack as often as possible.
Beside, it makes this version a lot harder than the other with Chichou instead of Torio.

Zex and I switched versions this time. I'm not sure if he's struggling a bit more or not. But toning down Torio would be appreciated. The only difficulty for me so far are Hion Fireballs. Thankfully you only find them one at a time. I'm still finding myself using a skill every battle just so I don't get the chance of being hit hard.

Quote
I'll try to tweak the area again to avoid the backtracking that can be a pain for some players. I need to think about that because I don't want it to feel to logical or obvious. But my guess is making the Pemikian cave (with the yellow portail) a little longer, adding some old capsule in it that can restores at least HP for free. So it will do the job of a safe net.
Plus, I'm currently adding set pieces of story in the game so it can be a good place to expand a little.

If you just made that farmer guy let you heal your team, I'd be fine with that. Extending the Pemikian caves to have more of a story element to it would be interesting. No need to make it a dungeon or anything with random encounters.

QuoteI think this system can work better later when you have changed your party serveral time and have good hardware which could make a lower level Simurion still fine.

Maybe I should buff the starting level of the new rebuilt Simurion s, at least for the begining.

Nah, I don't think you have to do that. Training low level Simurions is one thing--relying on them to be able to pull their weight for the "main" you replaced is COMPLETELY different. It's ultimately the player's fault for not having a strong reserve of Simurions. If all their strong Simurions are out of commission and all they have left are low-level pre-upgraded Simurions, then they deserve to lose.

QuoteWhat I could do instead is making the Simurions in the Simu-Com restore a little HP after a battle. This way it's harder to exploit.
It can be a game balance changer so I have to check this out. But thank you for the suggestion.

If you want, you could add that feature later in the game, which will give you more of a reason to make battles a lot harder. At this point, we can assume the player has collected a lot of Simurions that are roughly the same level. This will, hopefully, encourage players to not be devoted to a specific team and rely on this auto-heal instead of items. Of course, just make sure that in areas where Simu-Com use is disabled, we're not having to revive a Simurion after every battle.

---
Also are you able to do test battles in the editor or are there so many little things that you add onto the Simurions (boost items, trophies adding stats, skill disks, etc) that it makes it difficult? Has most of your testing just been playing the game fully?

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Boulon

January 14, 2016, 09:34:59 am #31 Last Edit: January 14, 2016, 01:42:51 pm by Boulon
Quote
I'm planning on posting the videos until we have completed the demo. No commentary btw, we're not good at that stuff (plus Zex is camera shy).

That's awesome. It's good to to have video without anything else than the actual game. Can't wait to watch it. :)



Quote
Zex and I switched versions this time. I'm not sure if he's struggling a bit more or not. But toning down Torio would be appreciated. The only difficulty for me so far are Hion Fireballs. Thankfully you only find them one at a time. I'm still finding myself using a skill every battle just so I don't get the chance of being hit hard.

Torio is indeed harder tha Chichou as an enemy.
In fact, I looked at its A.I the other day and saw that he only use its wind attack when he is half his health. I made this to avoid him using it at the very begining of a battle since he is fast.
But, if a player use Ponuma and his Rush skill on a group of two Torios, it will damage the Torios and lower their health to half. In this case it was very common to see double wind attack in the same turn, then over and over until their death.

It's better to keep the 4 Simurions to attack only one of the Torios and kill it. In this case it's almost impossible he could use his wind attack.

Anyway, the change I made is : Now, if you battle 2 Torios, if one do his wind attack, the other won't, until the next turn.
Not sure if it's enough but we'll see. If it's still too hard, I will make the wind attack less strong dor this specific case.

I can also nerf Hion fireball. I have to check this out.
In fact, it hits me : maybe you have more problem than me, because you try to grind a little then you have to stay in the area for more battles? Because when I play I make like maybe 6-7 random battles for all the Dabulu Woods/Hills. If you explore a lot and try to grind, it can be more challenging because you stay more and have more battles.
I'll try to make like 15 battles next time to see what happens.


Quote
If you just made that farmer guy let you heal your team, I'd be fine with that. Extending the Pemikian caves to have more of a story element to it would be interesting. No need to make it a dungeon or anything with random encounters.

I prefer to avoid making to many edge cases. I want to keep the rules logical. There's only on ething that heal completly for now, in the game and it's the repair man. It's logical because he is one of the fea people that knows about Simurions. A farmer should not be able to do this.

I won't make it a dungeon, no worry. But if I can make it something a little more interresting, I will.



QuoteNah, I don't think you have to do that. Training low level Simurions is one thing--relying on them to be able to pull their weight for the "main" you replaced is COMPLETELY different. It's ultimately the player's fault for not having a strong reserve of Simurions. If all their strong Simurions are out of commission and all they have left are low-level pre-upgraded Simurions, then they deserve to lose.

You have a point here.
Question for you: did you changed your party a lot or tried to stay with a fixed team as soon as possible?
I know there's really two type of players for this. In Pokemon, for instance, there are players that always change their team to try every Pokemons, but there are players that prefer to keep a fixed team.
I one of the (few?) that love to change a lot. So I wanted to make it fun to change Simurions a lot. I made it possible to change them on the go and wanted them to be -almost- at a good level when they are rebuilt.
If I make them 1 level more after a rebuild I guess they won't be too strong but maybe more players would try to play with them since they are at an OK level. I really not think the game about grinding for levels, but ever players grind when they play, haha!



Quote
If you want, you could add that feature later in the game, which will give you more of a reason to make battles a lot harder. At this point, we can assume the player has collected a lot of Simurions that are roughly the same level. This will, hopefully, encourage players to not be devoted to a specific team and rely on this auto-heal instead of items. Of course, just make sure that in areas where Simu-Com use is disabled, we're not having to revive a Simurion after every battle.

Yes, indeed. I will!

Thank you for your answer. I'm sorry I'm so talkative. I guess there's too much passion. ><


Quote
Also are you able to do test battles in the editor or are there so many little things that you add onto the Simurions (boost items, trophies adding stats, skill disks, etc) that it makes it difficult? Has most of your testing just been playing the game fully?

I tested a lot the game both ways. But, yes, in the editor there's a lot of things that aren't there. But I took so much time to test anything that it can be depressing to see that some players can have really hard time while playing. :s
That said, I'm ok with a version being harder that another at time, I'm ok to make a game with some difficulties but I don't want to to be frustrating in a bad way or stressful.

I'll keep you updated about the changes I made. ;)


EDIT : finally I made several changes on Torio and Hion attacks.
Made Sacred Wind and Fireball less powerful for all the Dabulu part. Also, now Sacred Wind has less accuracy and Hion won't use Fireball two times in a row.
On a weak party (no upgrade, low level) Torio made 12 damages on everyone, Hion made 30 on one with their respective skills.

What I realize, also, is that maybe you tried to lower their HP before trying to synchronize them. Which is, at this point, not that useful. The synchro is still easy to reach 100% even without lowering their HP first, beside they start to use their skills when they are weaker.

Anyway, I think I'm done with this.
Next thing will be to add a unique weapon that never misses. I plan to put it in Lily Cave. It's not that powerful but slightly more than the first weapon and have the bonus of perfect accuracy which could help for a while, at least for all the 2nd arena and after.

KK20

Alright, here's the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAEjqmJVlAs&list=PLf51VodFDNTwrYRHsthVG51d4WF7qsc92

The nerfs are much appreciated. You have to understand that this is still fairly early in the game. Back at the first arena, wild battles are easy due to the lack of damaging skills and only encountering one Simurion at a time. We're still nudging the player along to understand how to use their party correctly. You have to assume your players aren't entirely aware of RM2k3 mechanics. With that said, the thing about "they use their skills when low on HP" is something players are never going to know (I didn't until you told me), especially at this point in the game where battles are relatively quick and little can be observed.

And yes, I do like to do the grinding so I can see what new skills and upgrades my Simurions can receive. And then you throw me new Simurions to build. And now I go "Does this guy get anything cool? Time to grind." In Pokemon, there's already a bunch of strategy guides out there so it's easy to figure out what Pokemon you want in your team. Plus, it's a well established franchise--you already know the rules and game mechanics to make early judgments on what is "good or bad." I typically have a plan as to what Pokemon I want to catch and use. By the time I finish my game, I think my Pokedex is only at like 30-40 Pokemon. Since Simurions is just a giant cloud of mystery, there's really no way to know this stuff without either looking at the game's data or you writing an in-depth strategy guide. If you watch our playthrough, you'll see we throw all our System Ups on Ponuma just because you said it upgrades when it's 48. Again, not something that is truly obvious to the player, especially since they get ONE chance to ever upgrade a Ponuma and they can't even look at its stats to see what could have possibly triggered the upgrade. So because of this mystery, there's more of an incentive to experiment with different Simurions.

That repair guy though...how is he able to set up a shop in every town and move quickly between them? SUSPICIOUS.

But don't feel bad about talking of your game. It's great that you are! :)

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Boulon

Cool I'll watch that. Thank you!  :D
And yes, thanks for all the comment, you're right!

For the mysteries in the game about how to upgrade Simurions. I plan to make it moe friendly with time Let's say by adding infos in the Simu-Com file (like in the pokedex but more useful). And I didn't really expect the players to find how to do upgrades easily, for instance Ponuma will upgrade at one point, of he is Level 15 at the very most because of natural stats growth. But I added easy ways for people that replay the game or try things.

QuoteThat repair guy though...how is he able to set up a shop in every town and move quickly between them? SUSPICIOUS.

Haha, yes, I know that. :P
I was thinking it's something every player can notice as an inconsistency and it's one of the things that you "accept" in games. But I also thought that it would be funny to justify that later one... you'll see.  :haha:



Boulon

For a long time I didn't write any update but I wanted to change this for 2016.
So here we go, first project update!



PROJECT STATUS

The project is doing well, I'm working at least one hour per day but I try to do 2 or 3 hours each day. It's by working regularly that you can accomplish long projects such as an RPG. I'm kind of proud to see how I'm sticking with the project for 7 years and never really lost motivation since then.


I finally arrived at the stage where the first Simurions we found in the game are going to upgrade! It was one of the long term goal I set from the start of the project. From time to time it felt like I wouldn't make it. But I eventually did... after all these years, haha! :D


[size=10]The dream team...[/size]




STORY

Since the demo #2 I worked a lot on the polish for what comes next. Before that, there was not a lot of events or story. But I wanted to add some to drive the adventure a little more. I think this can be a good motivation for some players.
I tried to keep the "lonely exploration feel" I wanted for this project so integrating these stories was not easy. I had to find the good timing for adding them without doing too much.








APTITUDES

Exploration aptitudes are the next big thing I'll tackle soon.
What will the player will choose first? To cut bushes? Clear the rocky roads? Or see in the dark caves? Even for me it'll be a surprise.

I want to reward the players for exploring and I plan to add a lot of story in these optionnal paths. The player will discover more about the past by finding pieces of informations such as documents and old video logs of the Pemikians. But the players will also be rewarded with gameplay items, rare hardware, new Simurions, short cuts and useful NPC advices.

It'll be long but I'll tried to make it for the 3rd demo which, hopfully, will be for the end of 2016.



Cheers!  :)




Boulon

Hello, Robot Masters! :)

Recently I added a new system in the game. It will allow players to fuse 2 accessories together to create a newer and stronger one.

For instance, if you mix 2 of the same accessory which protects 50% against a status, you'll end up with a new item preventing this status completly.

Another case will be to fuse two totally different piece of accessories and combine their effects.



The Soldering System will be available in the next demo coming later this year.



Spoofus

That is a cool system, it will give players a reason to collect all the accessories, to see what the outcome is when combining them.


My Blog site I am working on: http://spoofus.weebly.com/

KK20


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Boulon

Hello everyone, it's been a long time since the last update.
But no worries, I'm still working hard on the project, almost everyday day for at least 1 hour.

So let's see what's new.



The exploration "Aptitudes"

This feature was locked for a long time, and I needed to work on a lot of different stuff to finish it but now I can proudly say that the system is in! The next demo will feature the new Aptitude Menu.




Quick reminder, the Aptitudes are talents the player can aquire which help him to explore the world even more.
Remember the bushes that blocked your way in the first demos? Now you can dispatch them!

Each time the player will finish a side quest or achieve something important like wining at a battle arena or rebuild a number of Simurions... he will gain Adventure Points (AP). Aptitudes can be learned with AP.

The best thing is that the player can learn Aptitudes in any order he wants! So be prepared to explore the world like no other one.


-You will be able to slash these bushes with Cut.
-Scotopia will make dark caves a little brighter.
-Rock Sweep will get rid of the rocks.
-You could find random items in the wild using Survival.
-By learning Treasure Hunter, you'll gain extra AP for each treasure you find.


-Finally,Quest Memory will be an useful reminder for every side quests.





Police Quests

Most of the side quests are about helping villagers but I decided to make some more action oriented quests too. When the player starts to become a well known robot master, the Police will ask for his help. You will have to  go to the scene of the crime, locate the culprit and finally face his Simurion in a battle.



Five Police quests will be available through the game.






Learning the backstory piece by piece

The main story of the game is told by set pieces but there is also optional story telling elements the player can find by exploring the world.

I wanted the players to have a deep feeling of discovery so I choose to let them search for information about the Pemikian history by themselves.

There are several computer wastes from the Pemikian era located in the world. If the player discover one of them, he may find a memory card with some information on it. Like a page of an history book, piece by piece, the player could bring all of the information together and learn the secret of the Pemikian history.




New Tools menu

With the time, the game had a lot of differents key items and I wanted to make it easy to access all of them. So the idea of a "Tools Menu" came to me.

You can access the Tools Menu anytime by pressing SHIFT.







Next Demo? When?

The next demo aka "Demo #3" will be released in the middle of december this year.
It will feature twice the amount of content the previous demo had. Playtime wise it should take at least 12 hours to finish.

The sad part is that previous save fils won't work for this demo. Sorry... (Since a lot of stuff changing for the balancing). I'd try to make the next demos compatible with the demo #3 though.

Anyway, see you soon for the release! :)

KK20

yissssssssss

Glad to see you're still working on this. Can't wait for the demo :D

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