*says this coolly*

Hey, your loss, right?

At least Erika over here tries to be understanding.

there is an "easy" work around on this issue but its one youd of had to plan for. this solution depends on how you handle the game play. do you use a field map, is backtracking just for items or do you have stuff happen thats new ect.

you simply have a few towns on each card and leave much of the card blank to fill in with rich dialogue for return visits, have end switches to kill events from reoccurring. this way when you return to an area on another card it prompts a loading screen. its horrible to create a game this way as no one knows how much space you need for anything far into the future. i contemplated this myself and decided just to prevent backtracking. now im considering using an extra feature to warp players back to old cards to replay mini games or regain certain key lost items.

character freedom is the biggest bane of rpg maker 1. the more freedom you give, the less space you end up with to do new things. you simply cant tool everything for a huge cast of characters. each specific thing will challenge what party you have chosen and youd have to come up with idiotic amounts of event possibilities depending on the party (or just have the whole cast appear in scenes).


i think all of us will be satisfied with whatever end you decide to produce. any game with such a long production time and with this level of polish is sure to be a success.

watch it suck... >_>

I don't care! I've invested dozens of minutes into reading all these posts about the game so I'm entitled to the best.

Uhhh, sure, whatever you say, Ix.

*blows raspberry*

I've got some pretty exciting news, guys. SK yesterday, gave me a crap ton of work to do. And after I am finished with it and ship it back off to him, the only storyline bit of our game left will be just the final dungeon and the ending.

Yesterday, I spent about 4 or so hours and finally got the finishing touches on the party changing menu that was in the first video update. It's been years, but we've hit the point in the game where you no longer will get anymore characters and it is now complete and fully functional. I ALMOST hit the max limit of pages an event could have, which would have stopped me from making it... but luckily it wasn't so. For me, this is a huge achievement as this was one of the first things I wanted to do for the game... and now it is finished.

The only downside to all of this is that because the game got as big as it has, a lot of stuff had to be taken out in order to be all open. In Scenario 15, you will have access to the full party of 8 characters and the ability to manage them however you want. You will also be able to explore every last location in the game. Again, though, some places have been stripped of their puzzles or whatever to free up space to make this possible. It's a huge world and the limit in RM1 is pretty strict. I hope you guys will understand.

I'm not setting anything in stone, but I'm expecting to have the entire game (sans battle and test playing) finished this year. If we can get to that point, it'll all be down hill from there.

................................YES!! I almost didn't believe it as I was reading. It's good to hear you guys are making some progress on this. Congrats on finalizing the custom party menu. No one can blame you for stripping parts of areas when you go back. If you couldn't go back at all they'd complain about that.

I'm really looking forward to this beast of a game. Good luck with what you have left. It has to be a good feeling seeing the light at the end of this tunnel.

its good to see you guys are almost finished duke nukem fore.. er soe. if this game is released this year then the world will end. the mayan calender is actually the production date of soe.

looking forward to a finished project.

*Starts humming "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands"*

Minus that one night I was playing Borderlands, I've been dropping 6 hours of work in it a day (about 10 on Monday as I didn't have work... Labor Day and all). And It's turning out really awesome. The puzzles I've put together for these last few dungeons are by far my favorite. They might not be the most complex thing in the world, but they are definitely something I've never seen done yet in RPG Maker 1.

And last night I created Scenario 16. This card is going to be THE last scenario in the game. Well, assuming the ending doesn't leak onto a 17. It's possible, but for the most part, I am assuming that 16 is it. Just staring at that .GME file makes me giddy.

But again, there is a bit of downside to it all. Because of the lack of room... most of the final dungeons are going to be really short... like 3 rooms short. I'm trying my best to add artificial time to it without being unfair. I'm not going to resort to a crazy high random encounter rate, but I do plan to encourage backtracking for optional treasure chests and whatnot.

By the end of next week, all of this should be back in SK's hands. And once I get it back from him, I could very well be putting the final touches on the game. At least storyline wise.

fail.

Also, good work on the game, I can't wait to play it.

Is it a bad thing if I don't have good memory for Memorial Day? I guess I was just thinking about all the labor I was doing over the past week.

Hokay. After some seriously dedicated work, I've finished up everything left in Scenario 15 and have created Scenario 16. I think that 15 will be the best scenario in the game simply because the game finally opens up in full. It's a shame that it happens so late in the game, but with the limitations of RM1 and the sheer size of the game, I'd be extremely hard pressed to do any better.

And I did find out something else. I've been trying my best to fit the entire game on one system card. I don't want to do the system data card switch because that's a lot of extra work for the player... not to mention that I'm not sure if you can even do the switch on PS3 or EPSXE. So considering I had 4 blocks left, I wasn't too worried.... until I looked at how much actual system data was left. 3000. 3000?! Holy crap! This was a huge problem. And it took SK and I a lot of work to figure out exactly how to go about this (not to mention Erika suggesting combing the dungeons in system data with a fine-tooth comb to find off screen tiles). Luckily we have majority of all the items, monsters, and spells already in the database... just without any values. I was able to finish up the last dungeon in Scenario 15 (the last dungeon that'll use custom tiles sets instead of pre-made) with around 5000 system data left. And after some poking around, I found out a few things:

It takes 13 bits of system data to add random encounters to a dungeon/map.
It takes 52 per enemy.
It takes 40 per spell.
And it takes 24 per item.

I'm guessing that the random encounters won't take up more than a grand at max. And seeing as we already have majority of the enemies in the database, I don't think we'll be adding any more than 40 more max, which is another 2000. Just about ALL the items are there, so that'll only be a few hundred max. And majority of the spells and skills are also, accounted for and only guess that it'll take a few hundred as well. So considering everything... it shouldn't take any more than 4000 to finish the game system data wise. And if it does, we'll just have to trim back on some maps somewhere. It takes freaking 17 bits of system data PER TILE! Freaking crazy.

So that's where we stand. Hopefully we have system data squared away. We've got all of Scenario 15 complete and all that's left is Scenario 16 (which includes all the rest of the optional missions and such and the final dungeon), and Scenario 17 (which entails the ending for the game and whatnot). So it's back off to SK. It'll probably be a while before this thread gets updated again. I should probably go back and touch up the first post.

Pshww, I got this right now. And why not? We just got a lot of stuff settled on this morning.

... If Lantis wants to, he can probably update that progress bar to at least 90%, in terms of story and cutscenes.

I've been moving pretty quickly through scenario 16, at least in comparison to how long 13 and 14 took, so at this rate I expect to have my part in it done in another month, two at most.

As we've planned for it so far, right now the only major parts of the game that need dialogue are the optional dungeons, the final dungeon, a long scene before heading off to the final dungeon, and the ending.

A week or so ago, we even came up with a pretty sweet idea, I think, for the fairy village that you must visit before taking on the optional dungeons in the area.

But let me say it, too; system data can go eat a bag.

Actually, I did away with the progress bar a long time ago. I did away with that the same time I gave up on sticking to any specific year as a release date.

Soon our fight with memory consumption with scenario data will be all over. And then the struggle for system data will begin... as SK suggested. Last time SK was down, we went over a bunch of things and found ways to clear up some system data by substituting bland maps with pre-mades. We may have to utilize this a time or two since dungeon data by far takes up the most system data. But I won't sacrifice a custom map if it's genuinely good.

But I hope you guys understand just how big this game is. The limitations of RPG Maker 1 are so great that SK and I firmly believe that Agetech in no way thought someone would try to make a decently sized game with this software. In our last conversation, we were talking about the original. He played it not too long ago for a laugh and said it turned out being 9 hours long. I completely don't remember putting that much into it, and Arc Arath is leaps and bounds longer. I wouldn't be surprised if just playing through the game as fast as possible will most likely result in about 30 hours of gameplay. So we'll see. Playtesting is going to be a nightmare. We both plan on playing through the completed game multiple times before releasing it... of nothing than to make sure it is Erika proof (A term that should be trademarked).

Anyways, I think we have more steam now than ever as we seem to be going through these scenarios much faster as SK has pointed out. We are on 16 and there should be no more than 18. So we're getting close.




As a side note, I've been working on a little game on my own. If you've been in the Magchat, you probably would actually know a good deal about it. But it's a custom battle system (CBS) on RM1. One fight ended up taking 30,000 bits of scenario data... which translates to 2 blocks on a memory card. I uploaded a unlisted video of it in this thread if you want to look at a rather earlier (unfinished) version of the battle system. I plan to release the full version on the same day Ixzion release V6 of the Mag. So I hope you guys will look forward to that in hopes of at least giving you SOMETHING while SK and I chip away at Arc Arath.

Whether I find bugs in your game or not, I expect to have an awesome time with your game.

yea this is still going to be epic and makes me want to get my game out too. i dont think its likely ill put out my next card till after i move, but who knows. ill be playing your game the moment it comes out just to see what all the fuss is about. you could have just a single line of text in it that says we tricked you and it would still be a success.

Damnit, SK... he's figured us out!

You ruined it, Karr!!!

just have it say the princess is in another castle, er i mean the game is in the other download and you should be fine.

its been two months. how is the progress coming? did your dog eat your memory card? did you run into some time management issues? is the game secretly finished and your just making us wait to be mean?

Actually, it's funny you bumped this thread. Because SK and I just started on Scenario 17. That means only one more to go. Though even after we finish 18, we then have to go back work out battle, balancing and all that junk... and then loads and loads of test playing.

But now that we are at the end of the game, we are trying to tie up everything. You know like optional side quests and dungeons. We've hit a few snags, but we are ironing them out as best we can. And here's a good example. Once I noticed how many cards this will be, I was genuinely concerned that by the end of the game, there will be so little data left for the actual progression of the story due to the size of the world and all, that we'd end up with cards that would be like only once scene and then need another scenario card. And well... we kind of hit that point. Scenario 17 will have only one mandatory cut scene and then it's on to scenario 18. There's of course a the optional dungeons and, you know, stocking up getting ready for the final dungeon, but the fact remains that there's only one cut scene, and it actually starts at the beginning of that scenario too. Honestly, the game couldn't be any bigger. Any larger than it is, and there would be a good chance we wouldn't have enough free space to make even a whole cut scene on a new scenario card. And that would be horrible. But it looks like we are going to be able to do everything we wanted, so lucky us for scraping by like that.