So I have finally finished battle balancing for scenario 5. It took a while, but I'm happy with it. Of note, scenario 5 was the first scenario to clock over 900 hours of work. Others aren't far behind. I'm also a good ways in on scenario 6 as well... meaning we are now a third of the way through balancing. Also (and probably, most importantly) I was able to make back some system data. It's already lucky as hell to just not use any. But to make some back is a godsend.

Well, Lantis just found a nice little monkey wrench that RPGMaker 1 decided to include in its interface, and you'll see in just a second. He's making a video for it as I speak.


..... RPGMaker 1 sucks.

this is the first time I can say I am not looking forward to an update.


Hopefully posting your issue will help someone come up with a solution

It's kinda funny, it's hard to believe you guys are just finding out about this. I use it like this in S2, in a system I even had implemented back in the MagCon 2010 demo.

(go to 6:55)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEPG9LPE1XM

All melee weapons in S2 are not equipped on the characters, but you use them in the Item menu. I balance this out by having a percentage that they will break with each use.

It was kinda brilliant the way you wanted to do it, too bad RPGM1 once again shoved some sort of stupidity at you. I had it myself to where when the player swaps firearms, they will have to reequip all accessories because you can't unlearn spells for some awful reason (for each firearm, the spell "Fire"- as in Fire the weapon- has different strengths, aka, different spells with the same name).

So, since the Spade and Hammer weapons can't be equipped on anyone and you could still use them in that demo, I knew that was how it worked. But I never thought about any system like yours, and the complications from that.

So... I wonder...

When you set a percentage for the weapon to break, does it apply to equipped weapons activated in the DBS's Equip selection?

EDIT: And it does. Of course it does, what was I thinking?

I was going to suggest it be a one-time thing for all characters except for the one who can equip it. But that is a bust.

(P.S. While I knew anyone can use spells attached to unequipped weapons regardless of if its one they could equip themselves or not, I never knew that the Equip function worked like that. I always thought it was to change your equipped items in battle!)

I appreciate all the help that you and Dray have given me as I work around all of RM1's asinine limitations. There is only one real way to get this to work, and it involves very precise event driven rooms and cursed equipment. And genuinely don't have the room to make them. Besides, the custom method only works for storyline things and not so much for random dungeon crawling. So I'm rather screwed not matter what. Like, I wanted an accessory to have a healing spell tied to it. The problem with THAT is that it can be used, for free, any time outside of battle as many times as you want. It really is garbage how RPG Maker 1 just flat out breaks its self.

In other news though, SK was down this weekend and we hammered out a great deal of work. We went back over scenario 1 through 8 and tied up every lose end. Aside from any bugs or grammar, we are 100% done with half the game. It's been only five months since I've started battle balancing, and I didn't think we'd make this kind of progress. Despite all the setbacks we've had so far (and there have been many), we are making amazing progress.

If things keep this pace, I could be done with battle balancing (and generally everything) in another five months.

It's been a while since I've updated anything. And that's honestly because SK and I haven't really done much. For the past several weeks I was in crunch time with Ix getting V6 put out. That and with all the video editing for the race channel, I really just put this on the back burner.

But that has changed. With V6 finally out, I can dedicate a lot more time to start working on Arc Arath again. And that's what SK and I have done. We're now battle balancing for scenario 9. And, in theory, these should go faster as we get to them. Each scenario is shorter than the last due to all the previous data that needed to be carried over. So I can say for certain that battle balancing is over half way finished.

Lantis and I did all of scenario 10 this weekend. Somehow, with only about 10 hours of work, we got the battle pretty solid. It helps if you choose good stats for enemies on the first try, nei? Due to the world being entirely open at this time, scenario 11 and 12 contain really no battles at all (although now that I think about it, I could have fit the two into one scenario by making one scene like, just 5000 bits of data shorter), so we'll get those done pretty quickly. No more serious plans ruined since the Rudra Blade spell casting incident towards the top of this page, thankfully.

Closing in on the end of this year, and it looks as though scenario 13 is as far as we are going to get. We've only been battle balancing for about half a year, and we are through majority of the game. So as far as progress goes, we're doing amazing.

Though we finally have hit another snag. We've hit the part of the game where you are working with 8 characters at once. And some of the character that joined are a little low level. But they come in with a skill set, which previously they didn't have. The problem is that they learn all the skills incredibly fast. Much faster than they ever should. The ONLY way to fix this is to strip them of that skill set, force them into a storyline battle after giving them a boost in experience to match the rest of the party, and then give them back that skill set. The problem with this is that we had to quite forcefully shoe-horn this required battle into the story. SK and I aren't happy about this at all. I would have loved to just make an entirely new character that's a copy of the original, but all 15 slots are taken up. So that's not an option. These limitations are not easy to deal with.

Aside from that, there were a few other minor snags. But we spent pretty much the whole weekend trying to get everything balanced out. I knew we were going to spend all our time and effort on getting the balancing right, but it's taken a lot more work than even I expected. All this has taught me is that I really don't like RPG Maker 1...

Since the last update at the end of 2013, we're now working on Scenario 15.  It consists of four dungeons.  16 is all optional stuff, 17 is the final dungeon, and 18 is the final fight and ending.  Of all this, 15 is the largest sum of work.  So after this, it's pretty much all down hill.

Balancing has become a very difficult challenge.  It's really tempting at times to just let something be too easy and just move on.  But really homing in that difficulty where it's challenging but not too hard isn't easy to do at all.  In fact, it feels impossible at times.  Specially when enemy percentage attacks not EVER feeling like they match up to the percentages they are supposed to happen.  This alone has been the biggest hurdle.  And it's one that is entirely out of our control.  We've had instances of bosses spamming a spell at 35%, and dropping it to 30% results in them NEVER using it.  I honestly thing that there might legitimately be a glitch in the software.

Oh, and another thing I found out about RM1 that screams stupidity.  When you hit level 21, the status screen for a character says "Next level at 0."  Meaning that RM1 was designed so that you never pass level 21 despite the fact your characters can level to 99.  The way it's going, it looks like the needed level to beat Arc Arath may be around 30 to 35.  So you'll just have to guess how far you are to your next level.  It's sh*t like this that has made me come to hate RPG Maker 1.  There are just too many instances of inconvenience and having to make sacrifices where there shouldn't be.  But come hell or high water... we're finishing this.

It's nice to see someone else struggling with limitations and other bullcrap that these RPG Maker programs dish out. Not that I take pleasure in seeing someone else suffer while trying to bring their vision to life, but... I've heavily documented my own travails with RPG Maker 3 on RMDH, and I guess I thought I was the only one having problems.

I feel your pain and understand what you're going through here. It's really heartbreaking to put one's heart and soul into a project and then slam head first into a brick wall. The worst brick walls there are stuff that's wrong with the RPG Maker itself, and you can't do anything about it. In the final analysis, your game won't be that 100% professional piece of work you wanted it to be, but hopefully you can come pretty close. That's the best I've been able to do: a close approximation of what I wanted to see.

This game looks really interesting, and I hope to play it when the full version comes out.
One thing to say thought. Can you guys make it so the game only requires 2 memory cards to load, so I can play it on epsxe?

Already done, actually. There is a sprite card that has a short intro scenario card on it. So that card along with the system data card will be all you need to get the game going. From there, it's just a matter of loading up the next scenario card up before the end of the current one.

Also, welcome to the site. I'm humbled that your first post is used on our little game.

Thank you, Lantis
Althought I did actually chat in the chatroom and post a few comments in the RM Vault, but yeah, this is indeed my first post in the forums

Also... How much time do you expect is needed for the game to be finished?

I think that we'll be able to finish the game this year. Though I don't think SK or I will actually be willing to release it until we've played it through enough times to be sick of the thing. At the latest, it'll be 2015.

That's nice and all, but...

when is the release date for the Secret of Everyone?

Never. SK and I considered Secret of Everyone a botched game years ago. Actually, SK doesn't think it's THAT bad. But I legitimately hate it. It will most likely never see the light of day. Nor should it since Arc Arath is a complete remake of it.

Actually, there's a lot of news on that front. SK and I have been working on it pretty hard lately. And because of it, we're now balancing scenario 17 of 18. We are VERY close to being completely finished with the game. This means we'll be able to move onto the final part: testing. Lots and lots of testing. A lot of people who make games will actually stop after maybe running through their finished product maybe once or twice. But SK and I are probably going to play through it enough times that we'll hate it in the end. We've got to try and get through the game in every possible party combination and setup. As well as purposefully try to break the game at every corner.

Proper testing is probably the most important part of this, and we aren't going to take it lightly. Just a few more months and we'll be there too. It honestly feel kind of weird that we've made it to this point. But here's hoping.

But back on the balancing front, SK and I have a bit of a problem. Up until scenario 15, the party was mostly static. Making bosses really easy to balance since the average level someone is would be fairly constant. But now that multiple party members are introduced, this created party members that would fall behind in levels from not being used. Calculating how many bosses are left and the general experience they could pick up on the way to the final boss, the difference in levels could be as great as 10 (like maybe level 22 to 32). And this is going to make balancing the final fight an extremely difficult endeavor. The stat growth per level shoots up dramatically the higher your level gets in RM1. The curve is so steep, that it's hard to balance enemies to even deal decent damage to characters with maybe four levels higher than what would be recommended for enemies at that time. How on earth we would be able to balance a boss fight for a difference more than twice that, I have no clue. Though if I had to pick, I'd rather the boss be too easy instead of impossible. So worst case scenario, we'll have to go with that. Just wish us luck when we get there.

That's some dedication! :D

I'd read last month through most of the threads and reports on AA that had been made throughout the years, so now that it's on top and I wouldn't be bumping someone else's game off of the front page... just wanted to say the effort, time, and thought you guys have put into this is super-impressive.

Don't let it get lost in (re)development hell - get through the testing, make the final touches and make your dream a reality! If you can get it in PS3 format, I'll definitely give this one a try.

Woo! Just finished the first real test play of Arc Arath (up to the final dungeon, anyway; to my knowledge Lantis and I will be doing that next weekend), and despite all of the proposed changes, I think it went fairly well. Nevertheless, adjusting enemy stats to a party whose attack and defense range can vary most widely at this point in the game, especially with a party of more than the static four, this will not be easy over the remaining several months. It tuckered me out a bit just test playing ONCE over a period of three weeks. But hey, I got through it. Viva la France, as Joan of Ark would say, or something.