I know some of you have a short attention span when it comes to long posts, so I'll go straight to the point.

I'm reviving Slayers' Reign. I don't know whether it's gonna be made on RPGM1 or RMXP. I'm using opinions on the 2003 RPGM1 demo to decide. If you haven't tried it, please download it, play it, and tell me what you think (you should be able to post in this topic without being registered). Just click on the following link, and it'll take you directly to the game in the Mag's database.

http://www.rpgmmag.com/rpgm/listings_S- ... yers_reign

If you're worried that a demo would be a waste of time, don't be. The demo is two hours long, and it's as polished as any finished game should be. The battles are balanced to the best of my knowledge (I haven't recieved enough comments on them to know for certain), and there are very few bugs and typos. Yes, the story is left hanging at the end of demo, as is the case with any demo. But the demo covers the entire prologue, and the next scene takes place twenty years later, anyway. And though the demo is outdated by three years (it still uses the old title), it is still about 80% accurate to current plans. Here's some specifics about the demo.

* As said, it is two hours long. And that's how long it took me to play it just recently, fighting every battle, talking to all the townsfolk, and finding all the treasures. And there are a lot of treasures.

* Battles are non-random. They all look like ghosts outside of battle, and this is for a story-specific purpose.

* On top of being non-random, battles take place on a separate battle field, as opposed to how RPGM1 normally just dims the field screen for battles. (It still uses the default battle system.)

* Dungeons have puzzles and traps. For example, the first forest involves rolling logs out of the way to open the path. At the same time, some monsters are rolling logs back and forth, and you'll take damage if you bump into these logs. Most of the puzzles are pretty basic, but they help deviate from the mundane task of battling monsters.

* The story revolves around the dragon slayer, Mick, as he discovers a plot of invasion, and strives to destroy the evil that only he believes exists. It is intended to be an epic, somewhat serious story, with some comedic relief.

I have a Wiki article on it, found here:
http://www.rpgmmag.com/wiki/index.php?t ... s%27_Reign


If you're wondering about Jester's Hunt 3D, it's pretty much getting almost no attention right now. All my game-making focus is on Slayers' Reign right now. I'm sure most of you know how unreliable I am about finishing projects, and I'll admit to it. But I'm very serious about it right now, and hopefully I'll make some decent headway again. If I decide to put this on RPGM1, at least I've already got two hours of gameplay down.

_

Again, this is Dray, making sure that it is possible to post without being registered in this topic as well. BTW, the [game which shall not be mentioned by name] demo is on 2 memory cards. Has anybody tried playing it, yet? Right now, I'm switching back and forth between RPGM1 and RMXP. RPGM1 I created a half-hearted title screen (temporarily) fixed the world map a bit and fixed a few events and one piece of dialogue. RMXP, I'm more wasting time than anything else. Went and recreated some of the maps from the RPGM1 Slayers' Rein to RMXP [game which shall not be mentioned by name]. Too bad they don't port over too great in some cases. Even worse, there's no Panther monster graphic (among other monsters), so I'm gonna have to make my own.

Well, since I'm sure you've all had ample time to try it out, what do you think?

In all seriousness, the response this has recieved is disappointingly underwhelming. There has been none. And I don't know why. I mean there's a few possibilities...

Reason #1
It's 2 cards on RPGM1. Some people don't have RPGM1. Those that do probably already have their cards filled with an RPGM1 game they're working on. Or maybe people are too busy working on their games in general.

Reason #2
It could also be that it's a demo. Even though I already tried explaining that, even though it's not the whole game, I tried putting a whole lot of polish into it and the entire 2-hour prologue is covered.

Reason #3
[game which shall not be mentioned by name] is not very well-known at the Mag. All my old efforts on [game which shall not be mentioned by name] were at the Pavilion, and by the time I came to the Mag, I was no longer spending any real time on it. Not to mention many members have since joined that don't know about it or how big it's supposed to really be (it's my dream project, and has been since 2001). As it stands, everyone here knows me better for Jester's Hunt, and would probably be more interested in Jester's Hunt 3D stuff. Heck, I actually had one person download and comment on an incredibly basic and no real gameplay tech demo of JH3D.

Reason #4
It sounds cliche. Both the description in the Game Vault and the description in my first post above pretty much only say that there's an evil dragon that a dragon slayer must find, with world invasion involved. ...Oops.

I assure you that the story isn't that cliche and it gets more interesting. But that defense is cliche in itself, so a bit of reassurance is needed. The prologue (which, again, is entirely covered by the demo) is indeed about a dragon slayer who finds out about a dragon-made plot of world invasion, and ends in a dragon hunt. Sounds like the typical story where the main goal is to go after some evil dragons before they destroy the world or something like that, huh? In truth, the prologue is only meant to establish the history of the dragons' appearance and the birth of the dragon slayers, along with another important element or two. The main quest actually has quite a different focus. You're not fighting against dragons, and mankind is in absolutely no danger. There isn't even some Source of Ultimate Power (tm). So what's the real story about? I'm sure you'd figure it out if you played the demo.

My primary concern with the demo are the battles. The only feedback I recall getting about the battle system was that the battles were too easy. But that was an older demo, and I upped the difficulty when I released the current demo. And I was told that some battles had some nice strategy (for RPGM1, at least). But I'm still concerned about it. Is it still too easy, too hard, too boring? I don't know.

I'd also like feedback on the story and puzzles. But I'm not too worried about those. I mostly want feedback on those to feed my ego. Actually, it might do me good if there were flaws in those pointed out as well, since I think that I've done so awesome on them. But the battles really are what I need feedback on the most. As it stands, it's the newest RPG anything I've released, and I was still getting the hang of balancing battles at the time.

Still up in the air whether this'll wind up being finished on RPGM1 or RMXP, by the way. Oh, and just to make it clear how important it is that I finally finish [game which shall not be mentioned by name], if it doesn't get made, no game of mine gets made. To give up on [game which shall not be mentioned by name] would be to give up on making games altogether. It's been way too long, and while the extra time has allowed me to get newer and better ideas for it, I want to finish it once and for all.

I will be playing games next week, pending any tests. I will play this for sure.

That's cool, Ixzion.

Draygone, it seems like you really are serious about getting some stuff done on your game. That's awesome. I would play it, but guess I fall close to Reason #1. I don't have a Dex Drive (not to mention that my PS2 doesn't play PS1 disks anymore).

Having mini-games in your game to break up the monotony of fighting is a great idea in my book.

Having comic relief is a great perk too, especially if the humor is quirky.

Speaking of which, I haven't recieved any comments on the comic relief either. As long as they're not annoying and help deviate from the otherwise serious story, I guess. I mean, they call it comedic "relief" for a reason. If it doesn't make you laugh, it at least eases the tension.

Having puzzles and mini-games during the quest was something I found necessary early on. I couldn't help but notice how bland it was having nothing to do in dungeons beyond fight your way to the boss at the end. I'll tell you one thing though, coming up with fresh puzzle ideas is pretty difficult. So far I've been able to come up with a new puzzle/obstacle for every dungeon (though both fields require crossing a stream, they're both solved a bit differently; one you fix the bridge to cross, the other you have a person pull you across after finding an object to reach over with). There's already six dungeons in the demo, including the two fields. I don't know how long I'll be able to keep that up, though.

I am almost out of school now. I am making a game queue, and I will have [game which shall not be mentioned by name] in it.

hey dray i'm playing slayers reign as i post this

Any specific comments like balancing/challenge/interestingness of the battle system or potential edge-of-your-seatness of the story? Or maybe easiness-yet-distracting-in-a-good-way puzzles and mini-games?

So, um, how many of you would be able to play an RPGM1 game that required four memory cards on boot-up? Yes, four. Unless I only wind up creating six custom monsters, I'd need to make use of two Anime Maker cards instead of the usual one.

If the requirement of so many simultaneous cards alienates too many people, I'll probably just go with RMXP.

not me...

1 out of 1 people agree; it's probably a bad idea to go with two anime maker cards at once.

Anyway, I've been trying to come up with a logo for the dragon slayers in [game which shall not be mentioned by name]. Something simplistic. I'm having a little trouble, though. This is the best I can come up with so far. Take a good look at it, remembering that it is a concept design for the logo for the dragon slayers.



Alright, now that you've seen it, what do you see? Can you see the S mirroring itself? Can you see the S and R? Can you see a resemblance to wings? And, finally, were you able to see these things before I pointed them out?

An alternate design was putting a sword between the two halves. But then it resembled a Christmas bow to me. Could just be the season we're in, but that's not something I wanted regardless. It also looked like a crown when I adjusted the hilt of the sword higher.

I've been working on [game which shall not be mentioned by name] a decent amount. Though work is restricted to fixing and improving what was in the demo. I'm at the moment not working on it, but that's because my grandparents got the Deal or No Deal DVD game for Christmas, and, while they have a DVD player, their remote for it is total crap. Thus, I'm letting them borrow my PS2 to play it until they get a new remote.

I'm going to be putting up some screenshots of it later on. I don't know whether to do it after I finish improving the demo, or after I get through the first card. The demo already takes up more than half the memory card, so I figure I'm maybe two hours off (gameplay time) from the end of the card. I know what screenshots I want to take, though. Gonna need them if I want to get more peoples' interest. Some screens that'll make people go "Oh, this looks interesting. Looks like someone's actually putting effort into this game. Maybe I should try it, even though it's a demo."

Anyway, this'll only be of more interest to those who have actually tried my game, but here's what I've done so far with [game which shall not be mentioned by name] since it's revival.

* Slightly changed the intro pub scene. I figured the bartender and Sarah would be more specific about what's appeared in the forest, which would give Mick a chance to reconsider his assignment up there instead of assuming that he's dealing with "fuzzy woodland creatures". His decision to go up there occurs after resting at the inn for the night.

* Added a new log puzzle in the first forest. Used to be the only log puzzle was in the first section of the forest.

* Instead of having a sign that says "Jahova's Hut" in front of the old man's cave (it isn't really much of a "hut" anyway), I have the panther seen walking into the cave when you enter Mt. Shela.

* Few people know that I have a boulder trap in the first section of Mt. Shela. If you walked up to the chest from the side, a monster would drop a boulder on you. But if my own movement is any indication, most people don't come up to the chest from that side anyway. So I placed a rock on the ground to sorta guide the player to the trapped side of the chest, and lowered the cliff the monsters were on since they were too close to the top of the screen to be noticeable. Along with that, I added two more boulder traps later on.

* I slightly changed the positions of a few locations on the world map. Now Rockford is northeast of Mick and Seth's cabin instead of being to the southeast. So I partly mirrored Slayer Road, reversed the monster order, and started the player at the other end of the road so that they'd be going northeast.

* I took all the dragonites and made them transparent. They are ghosts, after all.

* I'm trying to rename a few areas, especially so their names would fit in the textbox in the world map. One such name change is the Mysterious Woods, which for the time being is renamed to Beshel Wood.

* Anybody that has played [game which shall not be mentioned by name] probably remembers the scene with the old man on Mt. Shela. You walk in, sit down, and almost have nothing but text, aside from one instance of a special effect. Very uninteresting. So now it's depicting the old man's experience in an interesting way. Since this is already taking place in a flashback, I couldn't logically have another person's flashback within the flashback directly. So the old man gets out of his chair, the screen scrolls over the cave wall, and on the black space over the wall, it fades in and out characters as he reminisces, changing who is shown doing what as he goes along. It's a rather neat effect, but it was the hardest cutscene I've made yet. I've got a cutscene that had very few events and maybe one Take Over, suddenly boosted to a lot more events (and their duplicates) and I believe around 60 Take Overs. Needless to say it got real confusing at the end. At least debugging wasn't too difficult.


So yeah, I've been putting some work into it. I'm not quite done with improving the demo, yet. For starters, there's another scene that's like what the old man scene was. You go in, talk to the boss in Rockford having almost nothing but text, and you're done. I can't do anything as fancy as the old man scene (thank goodness), so I figure I'll be having Seth get up midway through the conversation and grab himself some more water.

I'll also be completely revamping the opening sequence. Currently it starts out with a starry screen with calm music, while some text scrolls up talking about dragons being depicted as evil, mythical creatures that have mysteriously remained well-hidden, "at least, until now". During which, the screen changes to the sky and then some scenic mountains. Well forget all that. Now it's gonna open up on a darker tone, telling how dragons were driven out of this world in a war long ago, and how it would only be a matter of time before they would try to return. During which, some shots are seen of a couple running through the stormy forest as monsters are chasing them, ending when they enter the cave, and a cool sound effect as the screen scrolls up, just revealing a dragon as the screen suddenly blacks out and a roar is heard, and the title is displayed. Then we see it raining at Mick and Seth's cabin, then it cuts to the scene of Mick and Seth. During this scene, I'll be adding a couple instances of thundering outside, which will help fix how quiet the scene is.

And a few other smaller things. But that's the extent of it.

So, here's the old intro:

This was okay for a while. An improvement over simply starting off with the quiet cutscene like before. But it puts dragons too much into the side of peace. So, I'm opting for something darker:

Or that's the plan, anyway. It's still a work-in-progress, but hopefully it'll be as cool as I'm envisioning it.

WOW! after reading that I think I should redo my intro... that sounds awesome!

Well, that blueprint was certainly enticing. I could really get a feel for the culture and what's about to go down.

Well as long as it's still brought up, I had the intro reworked a while ago. Definately as cool as I envisioned it. I'd like to upload a video of it sometime, but I wanna finish editing the demo and make some brand new progress before I do that. So far I'm only halfway through editing the demo. There hasn't been a single cutscene so far that hasn't undergone some sort of change, big or small. Unfortunately the more changes I make, the more I worry about memory. I've only got a little over 40,000 scenario memory left, so I'll be cutting it a little close when I reach the end of the first memory card. Which, incidentally, would catch me up to the point that [game which shall not be mentioned by name] reached when it was an RM2K game way years ago.

So in case nobody's figured it out by now, [game which shall not be mentioned by name] is definately staying with RPG Maker 1. Assuming the memory issues don't, well, become an issue. 37,000 MEM left. Still editing the demo. I can tell that memory is going to be a constant worry as I make this game. Not just with scenario data, but with system data as well. I'm really worried that I won't have enough memory for all the locations in the game. But it's too early to tell how close I'm going to cut it. I know there's a trick to adding an extra system card, but it's really inconvenient for the player and wouldn't allow for the whole game world to be open at once.

Anyway, progress from here on is going to be kept mostly secret. I'll tell you when I'm ready to release a new demo (whenever that may be; still a ways to go), but I'm no longer gonna give specifics.

Yay! I can't wait to play the new demo when it's out... (Assuming my DexDrive doesn't think it's an N64 file again...)

It'll be a long wait. June at the earliest. Since I'm not 100% certain if I'll have enough memory, I'm gonna wait and decide only once I finish the third card, which will be the largest story card (the last card will be biggest, with the whole world open, but the story is restricted to the last couple dungeons). I'll definately be able to tell if I have to worry about memory by then.