"What would RPG Maker have been like if it had been on the Atari 2600?"

AltSoft presents
A Vacuum Made Game
A Plan Doubt Production

AltSoft Arcade Vol 1

Old fashioned wholesome family fun for younger players and older players who like short, easy games. Volume 1 of the AltSoft Arcade features four games.

Labyrinths!
Explore 8 levels of easy dungeon mazes. Collect treasures and useful items, duke it out with monsters when they show up, and find a key that unlocks the level's exit door to proceed to the next level.

Cavern Kingdom
Underground tunnels and spacious caverns are filled with valuable jewels, useful items, and monsters who try to get in your way. Find each level's white crystal and use it to power the teleporter that takes you to the next level. 8 levels of spelunking adventure.

Ghost Town
Bats, ghosts, and other creepy characters are on the prowl in 8 levels of abandoned ghost towns filled with gold and helpful items. Investigate basements, wine cellars, mines, and other underground areas. Find a lever that opens the town's main gate to make your escape to the next level.

Candy Capers
The denizens of Candaria love their candy. Lollipops, ice cream cones, and fruit flavored candies. The mischievous imps have stolen all the candy and scattered it about the countryside. Candy Capers is a mini-RPG. Shop for items and slushie upgrades, explore and search for the lost candies, and return them to the treasury in Skittlesville. Those pesky imps will try to get in your way, and they may have a few surprises of their own.

Features
+ Game Select - Choose to play an Easy or Normal game. Easy game has no monsters.
+ Choose your character from Adventurer, Huntress, Monk, and Elf. Each has different strengths and weaknesses.
+ No random encounters. All battles are non-repeating events.
+ Frequent save points.
+ Each game has its own puzzles. Find a way to move statues that block your way, interact with rotating rooms, and more.
+ Score big by finding treasures and useful items. Even defeating monsters is worth points toward your score. Can you get a perfect score?

Special Features
+ Unlockable secret character.
+ Change your character's name.
+ Change your character's portrait. Choose from Normal or Silly face.
+ Two fields are contiguous.
+ Every item and spell has a text description.
+ Game Manual included with basic game play information (text file).

~*~*~

I'm about a month behind schedule. Don't have any pictures yet.

Was hoping for a mid-April release like last year's games, but "Ghost Town" took the whole month of March to make, and I've run into a few other delays.

Just lettin' you guys know that AltSoft is alive and well.

That's an interesting concept! That might actually be a good use for RM3's limitations.

Looking forward to pics when they arrive.

Thanks for your support!

The first three games in the collection turned out very good.

The addition of the unlockable character and other special features has added a nice fun factor to it.

I've just gotten started on Candy Capers. Hopefully everything will work out well there.

Candy Capers is coming together nicely. The first field is ready, and the second one is in progress. The town is also ready.

The only concern I have at the moment is if there's gonna be enough memory available to squeeze this mini-RPG into Volume 1. "Ghost Town" and the special features devoured more memory than I wanted them to.

If there's not enough room left for Candy Capers, then that will mean two things...

1. Volume 1 will just have the other three games.
2. I've already gotten a good start on Volume 2.

Gonna keep workin' hard and see what happens.

Now over two months behind schedule. Good thing it's only self-imposed.

Been distracted by my sister's new PS3. First she was playing Skylanders for a while and then got tired of it. Then she was downloading free demos from the Playstation Store and buying a few cheap games here and there. Been watching her play Topatoi, Hoard, Blade Kitten, About A Blob, Might & Magic: Clash Of Heroes, and a bunch of demos. Got addicted to AwesomeNauts and was playing that fiercely for a while.

We also had a month's worth of home renovations going on, redoing the bathrooms. We had to move my computer to free up space for the renovations, so we packed it up and set it aside in my sister's room. When the renovations were finished, we found a new place for my computer, set it up, and... it's dead. Won't even start. That's the second computer of mine that has died since we moved in 2010. This time I didn't lose anything special (I think... maybe...). After all the computers I've gone through over the last decade or so and all the information and cool stuff I've lost to computers dying and lack of compatibility with saved data on CDRs, I wonder why I even bother with keeping important creative information and cool stuff on computers anymore. From now on I should keep all my important information the old fashioned way. Written on paper.

Eventually, after I've finished all of the contributions that I'd like to make here and at GameFAQs, I'd like to go off-line permanently and live a good old-fashioned internet-free life. Ah, yes. Something to look forward to.

Also, just finished playing through "Warriors Of Altos" to help myself get back in "RPG Maker Mode". So, back to work. God willing, I'll make some good progress with this stuff and get it finished.

Guess it's time for a progress update.

So what's going on, Xix? Where's this new game of yours?

The short version is: Lots of stuff happened in 2012 to delay my progress, much of which was my fault for being lazy and doing other things that are more fun.

The tl;dr version? Well, after all the stuff in my previous update, "Portal 2" happened. My sister picked it up for her then-new PS3, and we were instantly hooked, having all kinds of fun figuring out all those crazy puzzles. Awesome game! I loved the middle part in the deep underground sections so much, I played through it again by myself. Then I played it again.

A lot of stuff happened with my immediate family concerning my father (parents are divorced). Long story there, and he moved in with us for a while and drove all three of us nuts! (My mom, sister, and myself.) After a roller coaster ride throughout most of 2012, we finally got rid of him and got him a place of his own. There was much more going on than just that, but that's all I want to mention at the moment.

So I had to make two fields for the new game, and fields are usually such grueling work, so I put it off and did other things that were more fun. Finally got around to working on the fields and finished them. Also did some other sporadic work on other game features for "Candy Capers". The custom-made shops and a few town characters (this game does not feature the default shopping style because I'm using the player's Gold for something else; shops and inn have to be designed from scratch, which isn't a big deal. Just mentioning that there's more work involved than just tossing in default shops). And I've been having all kinds of fun with Legos and related stuff (if you haven't noticed all the activity in the Creativity forum). So July went by, then August, then September, with sporadic work accomplished at best. Then October with nothing done. Then I was hoping to be able to get to it and finish it up in November or December. Then I decided to just go with a 2013 release. Less pressure that way.

I apologize for taking so long to finish this. And it's still going to be "AltSoft Arcade Volume 1". I have enough ideas for at least a second volume. Given how easy these games are to make, it's absolutely pathetic that it's taking so long. When I'm finished catching up with my Lego pictures and projects, I intend to get back to work and finish this puppy up.

Candy Capers didn't turn out so well. It's still a playable game, but I had to remove some stuff for various reasons.

I was trying out something new with objects on a field to block off an area, and it didn't work. You can walk right around that huge flower, even when it's hemmed in by rocks. Those trees and flowers are so thin, they don't work as obstacles. So I had to do without that stuff, which turned out fine because we can only have 20 events per field, and I had underestimated how many objects I would need to have on each field. As it turned out, there wouldn't have been room for the flower and tree anyway.

So then I finished up with making the game, and the designers of RPG Maker 3 hit me up again with that "Transitioning Blues" bug that I described elsewhere in "the making of Raiders Of Lekunder". I've got two fields here, one town, and two dungeons (one on each field). Traveling through the warp event to the second field and entering the dungeon there activates the bug, which causes all things that transition in the town to stop transitioning when you return to the town. That affects... everything. The whole game. There's a custom-made inn, two custom-made shops, and the treasury where you have to store the treasures, all of which use the transition "GoTo" command to direct the program to other modes because we can only have 50 lines of code per mode. My poor game is broken. So the second dungeon had to go (no room for it on the first field, and I'm not redesigning a whole region of my meticulous work to fit it in there). The stuff in that dungeon had to be redistributed elsewhere.

For some reason, the bug doesn't happen when you go into the first dungeon that's on the same field where the town is. So my conclusion for now (until the designers of RPG Maker 3 kick me in the groin again) is that I can have dungeons on the first field where the town is, but not on a second or third field. Unless I have a second town on the second field, but still... I'd have to hope that the player visits the second town after entering the dungeon... because the stuff in the first town ain't gonna be working until you enter the dungeon on the first field. Yeah, I almost forgot, there is a way to fix it while still playing the game. Stepping inside the first dungeon on the first field and then leaving will somehow fix it, and everything at town is working again when I return. But it's pretty lame to ask players to do that in order to finish the game.

Anyway... Candy Capers turned out be a tiny game. Even with all the stuff I had to remove, it only ran my database up to 93.6%, leaving plenty of room for deco on the fields, which I added and then the fields had slowdown when my sister played the game, so I took all the deco back out. I'm laughing because of how pathetic all of this extra work is for a tiny game that you can play through in an hour and a half. If you knew how many hours of work and frustration went into this tiny game...

So in summation, everything has turned out fine. This was quite an experiment with much learned to file and store for the next installment. Hopefully future projects will go more smoothly. Got some more playtesting to do and make sure there isn't anything else in the "gone awry" department, then I gotta take a few screenshots and write the manual, and it'll be good to go.

Finished, posted, and ready for playing.

"What would RPG Maker have been like if it had been on the Atari 2600?"

AltSoft presents
A Vacuum Made Game
A Plan Doubt Production

AltSoft Arcade Vol 1

Old fashioned wholesome family fun for younger players and older players who like short, easy games. Volume 1 of the AltSoft Arcade features four games:

Labyrinths!
Cavern Kingdom
Ghost Town
Candy Capers

Explore easy dungeon mazes, underground tunnels and caverns, abandoned ghost towns, and a mini-RPG in search of treasures and magic items. Duke it out with monsters when they show up, and collect all the goodies for a high score.

Features
+ Game Select - Choose to play an Easy or Normal game. Easy game has no monsters.
+ Choose your character from Adventurer, Huntress, Monk, and Elf. Each has different strengths and weaknesses.
+ No random encounters. All battles are non-repeating events.
+ Frequent save points.
+ Each game has its own features. Find a way to move statues that block your way, interact with rotating rooms, and more.
+ Score big by finding treasures and magic items. Even defeating monsters is worth points toward your score. Can you get a perfect score?

Special Features
+ Unlockable secret character.
+ Change your character's name.
+ Change your character's portrait. Choose from Normal or Silly face.
+ Two fields are contiguous.
+ Every item and spell has a text description.
+ Game Manual included with basic game play information (text file).

Specs
+ 3 Meticulously designed fields
+ 9 Finely crafted towns
+ 2 Custom-designed shops
+ 84 Buildings and townhouses
+ 33 Dungeons
+ 81 Dungeon floors of exploration
+ 24 Levels of adventure and a mini-RPG

Like your Field pics.

Hey, thanks for commenting, Bo. I try to design fun fields.

They're much more intricate than what's shown here. Lots of mountain pathways that snake around, and a few gullies in forested areas. I tried to get pictures of some good vistas. Oh, and all of the screen shots were taken from positions that you can get to while playing the game. Give it a quick download and playthrough to see more. You can explore the "Game Select" field at the beginning and see the various entrances to the games (and a few special features). Play Candy Capers to see the other fields.

I'm hoping to do more field-heavy stuff on Volume 2.

Volume 2 of the AltSoft Arcade is underway. The first game is finished, although it took up more memory than I thought it would. Moving onto the second one, hoping to get this puppy finished before 2014 comes to a close.

Installed the special features, and the second game is ready. It had some very challenging parts to program due to its free-roaming game-play style. Did a little custom-made melody using a few sound effects for some special events that happen during the game.

Thorough playtesting will ensue, then on to the third title in this collection. Database is just over 60%.

Been doing a lot of playtesting of the two games and some polishing up of stuff here and there. This volume has two secret unlockable characters, which is one more character to playtest each game with this time around. Haven't gotten started on the third game yet. Might be a while before the next update, as the third game is going to require some heavy nose-to-the-grindstone work. Still hoping for a 2014 release.

Wow, it's been close to a decade!

After much thought and prayer, I am reluctantly closing up shop. I am unable to finish up the AltSoft Arcade Vol 2. I'm saying this just in case there's someone out there who was hoping I'd some day finish my work.

Games That No One Will Ever Get To See

The AltSoft Arcade Vol 2

Puppy Panic

Dr. D. Zaster and his sidekick Steve have kidnapped all of the puppies from the pleasant town of Spanielburg, and the evil doctor is going to turn them into zombies! Fortunately, the troublesome puppies have escaped from his grasp. He has his minions out looking for them. As a newcomer to the area, your character of choice is eager to help out.

This is a mini-RPG sorta like Candy Capers. Explore the Kalupa jungle, a cave, abandoned mines, and Castle Zaster in search of the missing puppies. Return all eight puppies to the Puppy Play Pen in town to win the game. The town has an Inn you can stay at, shops, and you can buy upgrades to your abilities. There are a few monsters outside in this adventure, but most of them are inside the various dungeons where the puppies are. This game was completed in 2014.

Towers Of Phisbo

The wizard Phisbo has plunged the land of Priya into darkness, thunder storms, and fog. Three mysterious towers may hold the key to reversing the situation if you can unlock their secrets. Another mini-RPG. The town has an Inn, shops, and you can upgrade your abilities at the Training Hall. A free-roaming game, you can complete your tasks in any order you wish. This game features medium sized monsters, but there aren't as many of them as the small monsters in other mini-games. This game was completed in 2014.

Canyon Explorer

A traditional style mini-game with eight levels of canyons and reservoirs to explore. Collect treasures along the way, and face down medium sized monsters as you search for a mystical rune stone that unlocks the rune gate, opening the way to the next level.

The layouts of Levels 1, 2, 7, and 8 are complete, although no objects or encounters have been placed yet. I got a good start on Level 3, which I'd say is half finished. This is a field-heavy game, and I have had many problems with getting myself motivated to work with that field editor again. It is difficult and taxing on the mind, using an area-affect tool that is too large for the fine elevation work I need to do. I've also decided that the game just might be too hard with medium sized monsters. It definitely won't work with small monsters due to the limit on how many events you can have on a field. I also don't want to reuse the small monsters that already appear in other AltSoft Arcade games if possible.

Having ditched Canyon Explorer altogether, my thoughts turned to making another mini-RPG to possibly salvage the AltSoft Arcade Vol 2 with at least a third game. After much thought and prayer, God has remained silent on this issue. I need an idea for a good mini-RPG that features the large bird, ogre, basilisk (serpent), and troll. Most of the encounters would take place outside across three to four fields, with only one dungeon and town. I don't really want to do the "monsters have stolen all our treasure" thing again, as that's already been done in Candy Capers and Puppy Panic. Towers Of Phisbo has a unique idea (manipulating the weather and changing darkness to daylight). I need some kind of unique idea like that, and I just can't come up with anything. I'd also need an idea for how your character upgrades their stats in town (in Candy Capers, you do that by purchasing flavored slushies, in Puppy Panic you get flavored ice cream at the Ice Cream Shop, and in Towers Of Phisbo you can visit the training hall). Each game has a different way that you upgrade your stats. Actually, it's all the same, really. You pay money to upgrade your stats. But it's the presentation that differs from game to game.

Sojourn

Rounding out the AltSoft Arcade Vol 2, my first game that doesn't have battles. The great outdoors is a maze, and you have to find your way to the castle atop the cliff. Collect treasures along the way for points toward your score, and solve a few puzzles inside dungeons to progress. No monsters. No fuss. Just an uneventful "sojourn" from Point A to Point B. Work was started long ago on the map where this game takes place, although it's still in the early stages of development.

AltSoft Arcade Vol 3

Yes, there was going to be a volume 3! Three secret unlockable characters this time. And you can also assemble a party of up to three characters before diving into one of the games. Up to three character party, or take the solo challenge and go it alone.

Dragon Kingdom

The dragons have stolen the 15 treasures of the kingdom and also kidnapped the princess and placed her under a spell of sleep. Another mini-RPG spanning one town, a few fields, and one dungeon (the dragon cave). It would have all the features of the other games. Inn, shops, upgrade your abilities. Some kind of obstacles that you need to find special items to get past, and you need to find the ingredients for a potion that will bring the princess out of her sleep, all while exploring and fighting... well, dragons.

Organized Slime

The Slimefather and his goons have been running a racket in the kingdom, and it's up to you to hunt them down and put an end to their nefarious doings while recovering the kingdom's treasure that was paid by the people to the slimes (in exchange for not getting slimed). Fight up to three slimes at a time. Another mini-RPG with all that usual stuff. Inn, shops, upgrade abilities.

Manticore Mayhem

Yet another mini-RPG. Not sure what this game was going to be about, really. I just wanted to have a game where I can square off with the manticore character without having to play Raiders.

Mimic Mania

You're inside a dungeon, and there are treasure chests galore. Woo-hoo! Lots of loot! Except that some of them are alive! This game would have up to four versions to keep you on your toes, always guessing which treasure chest will contain the next monster.

AltSoft Arcade Vol 4 and beyond

Yes, there was going to be even more! An entirely new cast of characters to choose from.

Labyrinths! Deluxe

This sequel to Labyrinths! was going to take place inside one large 20-floor dungeon.

Advanced Labyrinths

Another sequel to Labyrinths!, this one would have a world map for you to explore as you visit labyrinth levels to obtain rune stones to unlock rune gates so that you can progress on the world map.

Ghost Town 2

I'm getting way too ambitious here with an idea for a game where each of the eight towns has a "nether" town that you can visit. Using a magic item that you find, you can transition between the real-world town and a "ghost realm".

Sojourn 2

An idea as good as Sojourn just screams for a sequel, doesn't it?

Full-Length Games No One Will Ever Play

Defenders Of (something), or Serpentoch

Monsters vs monsters!

The good monsters have been forced to live underground as the goblin and orc hordes have taken control of the surface. You play as a lizardman, birdman, and wolfman. An elderly tree-man tells stories of the Serpentoch, a race of dragons who had the ability to engender peace in those around them. Venture to the dangerous surface, exploring jungles and facing random encounters with goblins, orcs, and other monsters. For each battle you win, your guys gain "experience points" that they can spend at the training hall back home to upgrade their abilities and learn magic spells. Visit different regions in this free-roaming RPG, boldly entering castle strongholds and discovering underground outposts where other good monsters have taken up hiding. Search for clues about what happened to the Serpentoch.

In this game, each region deals in a different currency. I'll use gemstones for a point of reference. You may visit a region where rubies are treasured and diamonds aren't worth hardly a thing. Then visit another region where diamonds are prized and rubies don't have much worth. Each region has a trading post with its own trade rates. You can trade your rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and emeralds to get the most out of the currencies you have.

Heavily game-play driven, free-roaming. Go anywhere and do anything you want, and upgrade your abilities the way you want to, with no limit on how buff you can make your three guys.

Champions Of (something)

An attempt to create a tactical strategy environment with RPG Maker 3. Yes, you read that correctly. Instead of focusing on moving individual characters, which isn't possible, this one would focus on moving parties. You play as the king of the kingdom, which has come under assault by the monster kingdom. Spend resources to recruit a stout party leader, then take control of him and recruit members to his party. Outfit the party with equipment and send them out to attack an enemy stronghold. The enemy controls resource producing locations such as sawmills and mines, and they also control towns. Choose a place to attack and fight the monsters who defend that area or town. Then get ready for the enemy's counterattack. Back at "home base", have the king recruit another party leader, outfit him with a party, and send them out to take control of an enemy stronghold. After you have moved all of your parties on the map, it's the enemy's turn, and they counterattack at locations you have gained control of. Then it's your turn again, and resource generating locations will produce resources for the king. Maintain your front line of parties, capturing resource producing locations and towns, and decide which ones you can leave undefended. Recruit more parties as you can afford to.

Resource management, party management, and strategy. Push your way toward an eventual victory at the enemy's base.

Reign Of Terroth

Sequel to Warriors Of Altos. It's been three years since Terroth and his valiant party defeated Lord Thelgor's monster army. Rumors of Lord Thelgor having somehow survived are circulating, and rumors that he controls an army in a foreign land. Meanwhile, King Terroth of Vivengard has gone missing. Raine, Sethe, and Brells reassemble to visit a foreign land in search of their lost friend.

Paradox

In the best tradition of text adventures of older times... John Riggs is a fighter pilot for the Coalition. During a fierce battle in space involving many fighters and capitol ships, John's ship is chased out of the combat zone by a relentless Vrushk pilot. During the chase, he enters some kind of distortion field, then an entire planet appears out of nowhere. Plummeting through the sky out of control, he crash lands on an island.

You wake up on the island a good distance from the smoldering wreckage of your ship. An ominous plume of smoke can be seen in the distance. The enemy pilot crashed as well, and he could be out there somewhere... hunting you. Encounter numerous paradoxical things on the island, such as a hurricane that comes and goes whenever it feels like it.

Having barely survived the hurricane, you make it to an ancient structure of some sort that houses a sentient computer named Jenna. She informs you that she was created by Dr. Harding to monitor time paradoxes as he conducts his research into time travel on the island. Something went wrong, a time paradox was created, and Jenna erected a force field around the planet so that the rest of the universe would not be affected by the time paradox. Unfortunately, the presence of the time paradox has made it possible for other paradoxes to exist on the island, such as the hurricane that exists and also does not exist at the same time.

You will need to create time paradoxes in order to progress in your quest to discover what went wrong and how to fix it. Jenna doesn't have all the answers. She was only created to monitor time paradoxes and protect the rest of the universe. She can detect time paradoxes, but she doesn't know what they are or where they are on the island. Visit three different time periods. Past, present, and future. As you search for a rhyme and meaning behind all of this, you will create more time paradoxes. You must keep track of everything that you do, as one little slip could create a paradox.

You'll also need to deal with that enemy pilot, who is stalking you. Use time travel to your advantage and set a trap for him. When you finally discover the first paradox that started it all and fix that, you will have to fix all of the paradoxes that you created along the way.

This game would've been incredibly difficult to beat, sporting mind-numbing puzzle situations just like the text adventures of old.

Decay

My magnum opus for storytelling gaming, an epic adventure of discovery with a twist ending that no one will ever see coming. The neighboring kingdom of Ryasia is building a fort a little too close to the border between the kingdoms of Olabon and Ryasia. The king Of Olabon is enraged and on the verge of declaring war. Meanwhile, a mining and excavation operation at a mountain has unearthed a lost treasure. From a markings on the walls, they believe it to be the final resting place of the Chalice Of Kukamunga (working name), an ancient wizardly artifact that is rumored to make one invulnerable in combat. When news of this discovery arrives at Olabon, Princess Alathia immediately embarks on a quest to retrieve the chalice, accompanied by her personal guard, a man-at-arms in training, and Holnan the court sage, who is of the people of Esilar, who were conquered years ago by Alathia's kingdom and taken from their homeland as slaves. Holnan serves the king as a sage because he has an uncanny ability to interpret dreams.

Arriving at the unearthed shrine before the forces of Ryasia do, Alathia's party finds the chalice, and she grabs it from the pedestal where it rests. On the journey home, they notice that quite a few things have changed while they were in the shrine. Landscaping is different in places, and it has the surreal feel of another world. Arriving home, they discover that the landscaping isn't all that's changed. Townspeople hold different occupations than they once did, many of the buildings in town have been moved around, and worst of all... The king says that they already brought back the chalice yesterday.

A quick search for the chalice reveals that it has gone missing. The king is befuddled as Alathia holds up the chalice that she and her party retrieved from the shrine.

Many things are different from the way they were before. Even time, it seems, is different. Our heroes theorize that they have somehow entered an alternate reality where everything is a little different from the home they left when they began their journey.

Travel from one alternate reality to another as our heroes try to solve the puzzle of what is going on and why. But nothing is as it seems, and it turns out that almost no one is as they seem, either...

~*~*~

There are probably others, but that's the main bulk of what I wanted to do. By the way, I'm not leaving the Mag. The last time I announced that I was unable to finish a project, someone got all upset and said I was leaving the RPG Maker community. Anyway, I'll still be here doing more Youtube vids in the future. And if anyone has a good idea on how to salvage the AltSoft Arcade Vol 2, I will consider anything thrown at me.

Thanks, everyone, for your support over the years. And I thank you for your time.

(This post contained information that is no longer relevant to the discussion.)