Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Messages - Boulon

1
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
January 04, 2018, 12:56:35 pm
Happy new year everyone!

It's been almost one year since my last update, but no worries, I'm still working on it daily. It's always a little difficult for me to explain my progress in english but I'll do the best I can.

About the project progression, I would say that 70% is done (even if it doesn't mean a lot). For the first time after all these years I start to see the end of it. Sure it will still take at least 2 years to be finished but there's less and less work to do to made it!


Now, let's talk about new features and stuff.


New Aptitude: "Call Bird"



If the player learns this aptitude he'll be able to use a carrier pigeon to do some shopping even when he's in the wild. The only condition is to be in the open. Call the bird, do your order and it will be back quickly.

For each village the player go, the pigeon will be able to bring back new kind of items according to what the shops offer.

So does it mean the actual shops would be obsolete?
No, because you can only order medecine type items and not everything.
This is a good support aptitude when you're in a pinch in the middle of nowhere.


Simu-Com complete overhaul

It's been a while since it was planned but now it's in. The first Simu-Com menu was functional but far from perfect. Thanks to DynRPG this menu will be far easier to use for the player and will have more useful informations.



-The levels, types and visuals of the Simurions are now directly shown within the list.
-You can browse quickly every Simurion's pages by pressing left/right.
-You can change your team more easily by swaping Simurions.
-The stats of the Simurion are displayed on its page.
-A new description has been added for each Simurion.



It's winter time!

I've just finished a big part of the game that takes place in a snowy mountain called Kholony Peak. This is a barren area with a lot exotic gameplays where the player have to find its way to a hidden relic.


Snowstorm :

Kholony Peak is constantly subjected to a snowstorm. It will be difficult to explore, if your body temperature drops below 32 ° you will lose consciousness.


Keep an eye on your body temperature.


This region is very large and to keep track of your progress you'll need some landmark flags. For instance, you can put a flag in front of a cave you want to explore later, or the opposite, mark the places you already visited.


You can put a flag where you want on each map.



Slipping ground : If you walk on a splipping ground you'll slide on a straight line without being able to move. Watch out!


Pretty hard to progress in these caves but maybe there's a way to counter this...



Ice cubes puzzle : These blocks slide forward when you push them.


Stay cool to find the solution of these puzzles.



This is all for now, I hope you'll like the updates.
As for the  demo, I won't post a new one already since the game starts to be quite long to play but maybe later this year.

See you next time! ;)

2
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
February 20, 2017, 12:47:24 pm
Ok, so that's a good thing! That's actually the experience I kind of want.
Thanks!  :)

3
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
February 16, 2017, 11:15:39 am
Thanks!
I'm going to watch this!  :P

Oh, ys, 3rd arena can be very easy if you don't go to soon. Maybe I should make it a little more challenging.
4
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
January 02, 2017, 03:15:45 am
Great finds!

-Mushiba name and Anti-Burn description are now fixed!
-This tree tile, damn! :P (Update : Fixed)
-For the ------- hardware. It's more serious. It's either the unequip or after an upgrade. The Simurion is set to be an Hybrid but is a Genetic. I need to investigate which one is it. (Update : Fixed)
-Holon plain bug seems really bad, never seen this actually even when I tried to rebuild or upgrade a Simurion during sun or rain. Gotta check this. Do you remember which Simurion evolved?
-Oops, I missed to make Vessel Soul usable, you're right. That's to bad, the Simurion was actually playable. (Update : Fixed)


QuoteHow exactly does Soul Synch work? It feels so random at times. Whole team is getting 0%, then randomly one guy gets like 40%. Then it just went back down to 0% again.

It feels random when a Simurion is hard to catch, you're right. It should be better when you'll buff your Synchro rate with relics or items in the future, I guess. I've made a formula that is not random actually, it's in fact less random than a Pokeball in Pokemon games but luck is a lot more important when it comes to synch with harder Simurions or Simurions with HP, or both.

I'll go into details if you're interested, here's how it works:
-Synchro should be equal to 100.
-First, a roll is done between 1 and 100.
-Then it adds +20, +40, +60, +80 or +100 more depending of how many stuff you have to buff synch rate (the Add-on Leaves of Harmony is one of them). For most of this demo, you don't have any of these buffs, so it's mostly +0.
-After this, for each type of Simurions it adds or removes to the result depending of the "synch difficulty". For instance, Mushiba has a +50 and the most difficult Simurion of this demo has a -50.
-Finally, it takes the current HP of the target, divided by 5, and removes the result from the total. And this, is the Synch rate.
-If you are below 100 and try again, the result won't be reset. It carries over the next try by adding itself to the next result. So you have chance to increase turn by turn your synch rate but if you have bad luck and the first random roll is very low you can reach 0 and then all progress if gone.

Concrete example, if you have a Simurion with "synch difficulty" of +10 and current HP is 75:
-Let's say you roll: 50
-You have no synch buff so it's: 50 + 0 = 50
-Synch difficulty is +10 so it's: 50 + 0 + 10 = 60
-Simurion has 75 HP remaining, so it's: 75/5 = 15 ; 60 -15 = 45
-The synch result is 45%.

If you try another time, with the same exact roll of 50 at the begining it will be 90%. And you'll get 100% at the third try.


QuoteWill there be more hints regarding what stats evolve certain simurions? The Flybot one was nice.

Yes! For now, since it's a demo and a lot of things change I don't give a lot of hints. I'm also curious to see if people manage to find without the hints in the first place. But in later versions there will be more hints like this, maybe not early in the game to let people find for themselves. Also, for now, the Simu-Com pages don't have descriptions like the Pokedex have. I plan to gives hints in these pages too. (An update of the Simu-Com will be made this year, it's the final big menu change I plan. The Simu-Com is OK now but since there's a lot of Simurions it would be better is it's more user friendly to use.)

QuoteAre there any simurions in this demo that don't have their evolved forms implemented yet? Mainly asking so I don't waste my time

Yes, you're right to ask this, in fact, a lot of later Simurions don't have their upgrades yet in the game.
I'll give you the full list of upgradable Simurions for this demo in spoiler...
Spoiler: ShowHide
Mushiba

Denger

Chichou

Torio

Ponuma

Dokurass
Dokurant

Nezunen

Sirocean

Tengel

Larveak
Stoicoon

Hion

Flybot

Tetrapog

Takron


Some can upgrade but maybe it's hard to find how (like Takron). If you want to know, just ask, it's not major spoiler imo. ;)


Thanks for the feedback! :)


EDIT : Oops, sorry, in fact Takron upgrade is not possible in the demo. It's available juste after that. My bad.
5
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
December 31, 2016, 05:59:28 am
Thank you very much! I have to say that you guys are really great giving feedbacks and you've followed me since quite some time, here, I'm very grateful! I'm also very happy to see that all the work had payed and the game is fun and, now, quite robust. Sometime, when you work on something for years you can't really tell if it's still good. :)


By the way, I realised that it's impossible to have compatible savefiles through demos because how RM 2k3 works. A lot of the database is written on the savefile at the very start, so, let's say, if I change stats or skills of a Simurion it won't update correctly if you use old savefiles in newer demos. That's a shame. So for the next demos, don't feel forced to play them each year lol. Since the game is now quite long and you did the begining at least 3 times. Just wanted to tell you that. I'll update the version maybe each year or each 2 years but since it won't be finished before 2020 it's ok if you don't play each new versions. Anyway, thanks for playing!!

QuoteOne bug that I experienced (not sure if intended or not, but seems weird) after you reach the 3rd arena boss and lose, the steam in area 3 never shuts off. That means you have to walk through it to get to the final boss again, which starts you off blinded if you dont have antiblind items or skills. Just wondering if its a bug or intended to make it a bit more difficult.

Oh no, it's not supposed to happen. It's a bug indeed. Thanks for that.

QuoteI also feel bad that my sister's sim was so weak XD i woulda liked to see her do something with it haha. I feel that it would be harder if she recieved atma instead of dholly but even then, her bot only has around 200 hp and my pony 1 shot it lol.

Mmh, true, I will work on this in the future.
I didn't want to give it a big HP boost like other bosses since it's a forced battle and you have no way to level up (because you're stuck in the town) I didn't want to make it too difficult, but since you need to finish the 3rd arena to get there I guess it's ok to buff it a little. :)



6
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
December 30, 2016, 03:40:38 pm
You guys are awesome! Thank you!

QuoteThe difficulty really hits hard after the second tourney--especially with a lack of healing items. I probably should follow the story line first and unlock new abilities. Went to the hideout and got trashed on by the boss there.

Yeah, it's kind of open at this point, you can technically do the differents "scenarios" in the order you want. I've seen players doing this hideout first by forcing through it multiple times. But, you're right, if you do other stuff first you'll level up naturaly and have more Simurions to tackle harder dungeons.

QuoteStill says Strenght in menu

Oh thanks, I missed the most obvious one. :P


QuoteAnd does Survival even do anything? I haven't seen anything happen on-map after battles yet.

Mmh, Survival is a little hard to understand I guess.
In fact, when you do battles, the Survival percentage increase from 0% to 99%. The more battles you do the higher the percentage becomes.

To use the aptitude, you need to go to Aptitude/Use and choose Survival. (You'll see the percentage there).

You can only find stuff in "dangerous areas" (when you can have random battles that is). Try to search when you have 99% to have the best chance to find something. The item you find depends of the type of area you are in (forest, mountain, cave...)

Basically, in any dungeons or places where you have battles in the wild, you can do several battles (between 1 to 10) there search for a free item.




By the way, save regulary, there's still some rare and random freeze in the game, that I couldn't fix yet.
7
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
December 24, 2016, 03:10:38 pm
Merry Xmas everyone!  :hi:

Fighting Robots Quest demo 3 download link : HERE


This demo features twice the content of the previous one.
Roughly 40 characters to play with, a world to explore the way you want, new story elements and 12 hours of gameplay.
Hope you'll enjoy the game!

Note : The save files from the previous demos won't be compatible.




8
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
November 29, 2016, 10:28:01 am
Actually, the demo was not compatible with the last saves, so no worry. ;)
(If you tried to use old saves the game will run but there will be database bugs so it won't be a good idea anyway).

But what you already did won't be completly the same, I've added new things and polish so I hope restarting won't be a chore.

You guys already played a lot of this game, I have to thank you for this, even doing videos of your playthrough which was really useful.
You rock!  :D
9
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
November 25, 2016, 04:44:58 pm
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! :)
10
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
May 10, 2016, 01:04:44 pm
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.


11
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
February 25, 2016, 06:20:26 pm
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!  :)



12
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
January 17, 2016, 09:50:39 am
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:


13
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
January 14, 2016, 09:34:59 am
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.
14
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
January 12, 2016, 09:03:14 am
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
15
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
January 11, 2016, 05:33:34 pm
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.


16
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
January 11, 2016, 10:30:19 am
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).

:) :) :)
17
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
January 04, 2016, 02:31:38 pm
Yes, sorry about this I tried but so many instances where it didn't work quite well.
18
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
January 04, 2016, 11:24:14 am
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!  :)
19
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
November 13, 2015, 04:07:39 pm
The demo has been posted july 21st. :)
20
Projects / Games / Re: Fighting Robots Quest
November 13, 2015, 12:11:20 pm
Hello!
Maybe you wondered where is the new demo. It was supposed to be available in october but I couldn't finish what I wanted but I put a deadline for this december. I want to for the begining of the month but at the very least it will be  before 2016!

Just to give you some news, I work amost everyday on the project. Even if it's slow I'm making progress... :)

Here's some screenshots, thanks for your patience and support ! (They're from the demo #2) :

Spoiler: ShowHide




(And maybe this thread can be put in the "advanced project" section? Just asking.)

See you!  :D