Actually, SK's test playing through the game was kind of a spontaneous thing. We weren't going to buckle down on test playing till we finished all the balancing up to 18 first. But I'm really glad he did. It's saved us probably weeks of time. Recently we just talked out a plan of attack to finish the game up. Said plan is as follows:


1: This weekend, we should be able to finish up initial balancing on scenario 17 and 18. That will have the battle balancing finished for the main game with the main characters.

2: We need to make sure the stats for the other four party members are balanced with everything else.

3: From there, we need to do a lot of test playing. We need to play through the game with every possible combination of characters. And there's 8, so that's going to be a fairly long endeavor. That goes even doubly so since at a point in the game, we do allow characters to use their left hand. So we have to make sure the game is balanced to the point where players aren't just going to decided to dual wield weapons the entire time. (So far, I believe we've done a fairly good job of that. The damage you take from not having a shield by that point in the game is fairly risky... and using two shields and no weapon pretty much can negate physical damage.)

4: The optional dungeons we have in the game also need balancing. But we want to have a good idea of what levels and equipment will be commonly used by this point, so after a few test plays, we'll go through and balance the optional dungeons.

5: Test play until release. Lots and lots of test playing. At every turn we will be trying to break the game, find plot holes or grammar mistakes in the story, try to abuse the battle system to see if there's a super easy way around things that shouldn't be.


One thing SK and I won't be doing is having an officially set release date. If we did, we'd miss it. There are just things that would come up that we wouldn't anticipate, and that's just not cool. But we are aiming at 2015. It just depends really on how well test playing goes. Also, I took the time to update the very first post of this thread. Sorry I keep neglecting it.

Guys, I'm really excited to say that we've finally overcame our hurdles and are practically done. From the checklist above, we tackled just about everything. The balancing from beginning to end is now complete. The only thing we will do now is just make tweaks where we feel they are needed. It's all a matter of testplaying now. It's all down hill.


But that's not all. Over the past several weeks, I've been making some major changes to the game. A long time ago, I had a thread in this studio that was talking about the main characters of the game being SK and myself. I have always hated it, but SK never really saw a problem with it... at least until recently. He finally caved. So I've gone through the entire game and have re-named all the main characters to be their own, unique character. As stated in the thread, these character already had personalities much different than the real life counterpart they supposedly represented. But now they have those personalities as well as their own names. And after having spoke to a few Magonians, they all supported this change. I believe this is the kind of polish the game needed to be a truly great game. Besides, it just sounds really off-putting to play a game made by Jay House where you play as Jay House.

Though, when I talked to said Magonians about it, they mentioned that it would have been a little lame playing as the creator (to which I completely agree). I kind of wish that was mentioned years ago when the thread for it was posted. And if anyone has any other constructive criticism, I beg you... please let me know. I've poured a third of my life into this, and if I can make it better, I'd really like to know.

In other news, over the past few months, SK has played over the game with the initial test play. And he's found places he can cut and trim dialog and such. From his play through, he found enough stuff to change as to eliminate and entire scenario card (as in, enough stuff was cleared from two side-by-side cards that they could be combined into one even though that does mean recreating a bunch of stuff). So we're both glad to say that the game will only be 17 cards long instead of 18. I know it's not a huge deal, but I am really concerned that the number of cards in the game would turn people away from wanting to fool with them all. So cutting back on any of them makes me feel a bit better about it.

From here though, guys, there's not going to be much to discuss or post about. It's just going to be test playing until the game is as good as it is going to get. So this thread has just about ran it's course. So from here on, there's probably going to be radio silence from this studio. I expect that the game's test playing might take a year, though I've never been good with time frames... specially with this project. Anyways, thanks for all the support over the years, and hopefully in 2015, the game will be out and this will all be worth it.

I didn't find it a big deal. Partly because I don't think of you as "Jay House", I think of you as Lantis. Although knowing that you would use your real name in the credits, yeah, that would make the RL name usage way more obvious.

It's good to know that there are some people out there who wouldn't have found it a big deal, though for one ones that did, I still think this was a needed change.

Though I mentioned radio silence, I think it would be at least worth mention how test playing has been going.

We've, so far, played through the game from beginning to end about 4 times total. The game will be approximately 30 hours long. SK and I can beat it a little faster than that, but considering how familiar we are with with, I thought I'd try and throw a ball park number that would be more accurate.

There have been a LOT of changes from those four play throughs as well. Even found a hand full of game breaking glitches. We'll be hammering away at it for quite some time before we can assure there won't be any issues. RPG Maker has been very difficult with us, but we're past the worst of it (knock on wood).

...actually, there was something recent that's happened that's made me remember just how much I hate RPG Maker. And it'll be really hard to explain, but I'm going to try anyways:

In RPG Maker 1, you have a database for your spells. About 230 entries total. As we were filling out spells, we didn't do a very good job of keeping everything in perfect order. As we thought of new spells and made changes to others, the database got a little cluttered. We didn't think this would be a big deal since no one will actually be in that list looking around. But we were wrong... very wrong.

So check this. Let's say I had 5 spells. But it happens that they end up in the database in this order:

2
1
5
3
4

So the second spell that character will learn is above the first in the list. And the fourth is under all of them. I didn't think that would matter, because I set the spells to be learned in a specific order from the main character spell level menu. They would learn them in the right order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

But no. RPG Maker 1 will list the spells in the character's spell list by it's database order and NOT the order in which they were learned by the caracter. So in the list, by my example, the second spell would be listed first, followed by the first, then the very last spell, etc. Does this break the game? No, but it looks sloppy as hell. And would probably drive OCD people insane.

So, how do you fix this? It's simple:

1) Copy all the spell into descending order in the database.
2) Delete the originals to free up system data space and eliminate possible confusion.
3) Go back to the main character spell levels list for all characters and reset the levels in which they learned them since that number is set to the database number instead of the actual spell.
3a) Boot up your copy of RPG Maker 1 on an emulator and load up the system data because when you deleted the original copies, it also deleted the levels in which you learned the spells that you didn't commit to memory and copy them over to the new spells for each character
4) Go through the entire enemy list and check every last enemy's actions to make sure that any spells they might have used from re-ordering them didn't get moved (a lot of them did)
5) Repeat steps 1 through 4 again for special attacks since they are listed the same way as spells.

This process took SK and I HOURS to finish. And it was all just to have spell listed in the order in which you learned them. WHY Agetech EVER thought spells should be listed by database order is beyond me. I seriously can't think of a single reason that would make more sense over listing them by the order in which they were learned in game.

Oh, and on top of that? We can't add any more spells to the game without doing all 4 steps again. The time you start learning spells after you have learned magic is a little stretched, so I was thinking of throwing a spell in the middle there to maybe fill it out a bit better. But I didn't leave spaces in the database for those. In fact, I don't have enough open spaces of the 230 to even do that. If I were to try and add a spell, I'd have to put it at the bottom of the database... meaning that spell would be out of order once learned. And the only way to fix it is to move every spell in the database down one to make room... meaning I'd have to do all this over again.

And you know what? I think I've been a trooper for putting up with RPG Maker 1's limitation all these years. But this? This is too much. If my game is going to be hurt due to the fact that spells aren't frequent enough. f*ck it. You win RPG Maker. You've broken me. It's just going to be that way. I'm done putting up with the BS associated with using this software.

I mean this from the bottom of my heart: RPG Maker 1, I hate you. I hate you so much.






Anyways, thanks for putting up with my rant. Progress will continue and the game will be finished sometime next year. I look forward to finally finishing this.

PC master race!

Damn, this sucks

dont worry that no one will play your game. no mater what i am doing with myself i still pop in from time to time to check the progress of this game. once it does make its way to the light of day, i promise to play and review it. i kept an old tv just for this purpose.

its a race to see if my dex will still be alive when this game finally comes out.

Hey, guys.

I just want to get this out.

If you play this game and end up finding a battle too easy or too hard, ... please blame RPGMaker 1 first, before me or Lantis.

We're trying. We are honestly trying to make this a fun, beatable but challenging RPG. We really are. But it's almost a crapshoot whether you're going to end up having a really easy time of the fight or it will impossible because of this - as the AVGN would probably say - freaking HORRIBLE battle system. I cannot believe how completely off the percent chance occurrences of attacks and spells are in actual battle. Seriously. I know Lantis or I or both of us have griped about this before, but I have to say it again. It SUCKS. It's hardly ever anywhere near close the percentage you set an attack to. And it is really starting to get my goat.



Like, here's an example. I'm test playing through right now and since last night I've been on this one stretch of scenes where you fight a boss battle with one of the main villains, just trying various strategies to make it through the battle on repeated attempts, right? In this battle, we gave her one spell that hits the entire party, at about 50 HP of damage each. It's supposed to be pretty fearsome, seen as her best attack, at this point in the game. So of course, we can't set it at too high a percent chance of occurring, lest the player eventually crumble under trying to heal back the damage every turn and then some. We set it to 18%. .... Guess what? She did about ONE THIRD of the time when I tested the battle with her last night. Also, another spell of hers that puts a status effect on all we set to just 27%, occurred ONE HALF of the time, literally an average of every other turn, for a good 30 turns total.

Now that's pretty screwed, right? But no, guess what. Knowing how the system of chance is screwed, I dared not mess with the percentages too much before trying the fight again. I decided to leave the all-attack spell at 18%, and nudged the other one down from 27 to 25%. This time? Oh, the woman NEVER USED THE ALL-ATTACK SPELL AT ALL FOR OVER 20 TURNS TOTAL OF THE BATTLE. And yet used the one now set at 25%, that status-affects everyone, just 7% more frequent than the all-attack one, at least 40% of the time. This, of course, made the battle a complete joke in terms of difficulty, as she now barely did any damage overall, never coming close to KO'ing a party member, yet you also had the added annoyance of having the battle drawn out because half the party is inactive for a turn or two every time she had to use the status spell SET TO OCCUR 15% LESS OF THE TIME THAN IT ACTUALLY DID.

But, oh, next time? Without messing with the chances? I'll bet she does the all-attack spell every other turn, making the battle seem way too difficult to keep up with. And when this kind of crap happens to those of you who have graciously been waiting to play the finished product, it will seem like Lantis and I just didn't care that much about making the effort to create a game that's fun in the battle department, ... unless of course you're already anywhere near as sexually-intimately familiar with RPGMaker 1's craptastic system as we've unfortunately become by this time, ten years later. But by this time, on the third test run (or is it four) through the entire game (probably at least ten on every individual boss battle), if we mess with the percentages at all any more to compensate, it'll only make things just as bad or worse, so we have to let them stand officially at some time.


I know we've both said it before, and you guys have indicated that you understand, but, please let me say it again. We're trying. We really are.

And yet somehow, as of very late, these frustrations have only driven us both to work on it all that much more frequently so as to get it done faster, just to get through it. Right now I'm tackling this b*tch like Bill Goldberg laying down The Spear on a 9 year-old girl scout.

The saga continues:

If you scroll up a bit to this post, you'll see that SK and I went above and beyond to do something simple. To have each player's spells listed in the order in which they learned them.

Even going to that length wasn't enough. Our recent playthroughs, a lot of the characters started popping up with "New Magic" magic spells in their list. Checking the spell database, there are absolutely no magic spells that aren't named. It took me a very long time to figure out what the deal was, but it turns out to actually be a glitch in RPG Maker 1. When we copied a magic spell from one place to another, and then deleted the original, the player would STILL learn that spell even though it has a No Data null value. And what's worse is you can't change the level in which they learn a No Data value since it's not a spell. To fix this, I had to go into the spell database, create a spell of any kind just so it wasn't null anymore, then go back to the character list, scroll down through the spell list, and THEN I can set that spell to not be learned. And only after that could I go and delete the spell.

I know I've said it before, but this software is literally the worst. It goes above and beyond to make everything as difficult and complicated as possible, and I hate it from the bottom of my soul. SK and I are trying really hard to get this game done in 2015. I am so ready to be done with this. In fact, it really makes me sad to go over this thread from the beginning and seeing the optimism and over all positive aspect we had... only to see it degrade to this. I just hope it'll all be worth it by next year. Just know that SK and I are doing the absolute best we can with the resources we have.

Shame more devs don't put in the attention to detail into games that you guys are putting into yours.

So, i guess once you finish the game, you'll never work with RM1 again, huh?

So I keep finding new ways for the game to hate us. There's yet another glitch that has spawned from us just wanting spells in order.

So let's say you had a character set to learn a spell at level 30. You end up moving that spell to a different location. And in it's old spot, you put a special attack. Now, special attacks CAN NOT be set to be learned at a level. They can only be learned through skill sets. This has always been a big problem through development as getting the rate at learning techs was not easy and required knowing exactly when to change skill sets in the storyline without the player noticing.

Well, apparently, I didn't need to do that. Because on my recent playthrough, I noticed characters learning special attacks that they weren't supposed to. I'd check the skill set and nothing was there out of the ordinary. What happens is since that slot in the spells/skills list was, at one point, a spell AND set to be learned, even after you change it to a special attack, they will STILL LEARN IT at that level. Going into the spell list for a character, it'll be grey'd out, but sure enough, has a level they will learn it at... which, of course, you can't change.

The only fix is to go into the spells list, change the special attack to a spell, go into the character list, set it to not be learned at all, and then go back and change it back to a special attack.

Lucky for anyone else who wants to use this f*cking awful program, you now know how to set special attacks to be learned at levels instead of through skill sets.

f*ck RPG Maker 1.

At the very least, science was done.

And next year the work begins on its VX Ace sequel!

.... No, and don't even kid about that, Insulta. Because right now I am at that point where Id is about to return and overtake Sarah's Knight and start making some serious blood sacrifices after a few hours a day of working on RPGMaker 1 enough should anyone so much as jokingly suggest doing more RPGMaking work any time in the near future. Even if it is VX Ace, which must be so much better than 1.

Just want you guys to see proof that this is actually happening:



This is the list of spells a character is going to learn. They ones that are grey'd out are special attacks. But as you can see, they still have levels associated for that character to learn. This should be impossible.

I've spent all morning getting this fixed. And it's taken even extra longer because once you change a special attack to a spell, the cost resets to 0. So I've had to document every one I had to change. Then I can go back to the list in the screen shot above, and they won't be grey'd out anymore, so I can set it to not be learned... go back into the spell list, change it back to a special attack, and set the cost to whatever I wrote down earlier.

Super fun times.

Personally, I'd rather hear about the progress you guys are making and less of the complaining. RPGM1 can be a pain to work with, I know, but it's been nothing but complaints lately. Could you tone it down a bit, because I'd rather hear about your game.

I didn't know 5 negative posts about RPG Maker 1 in the past 8 years of production was so upsetting to you. It wasn't my intent, buddy, lol.

I totally like these negative posts. They tell about, not just limmitations, but frustarting limitations and bugs about RM1. It's interesting to know them. It also helps people understand just how hard it was for the guys to create this game.
Plus, it's a really good way for them to let the anger out.
So, I say, if you ever run into more problems like this, let us know

Thanks, Alicia. The support is much appreciated. And so far, no more serious limitations have hindered progress. Though I'm sure RPG Maker 1 will find a way before too long.

On that note, I can promise that Arc Arath will be finished this year. 2015 will see Arc Arath's release. For you guys it's all, "about time" which is completely understandable. But for me, it almost doesn't seem real. I've sunk a third of my total life into this (God knows why), and to see it almost finished is surreal.

That said, SK and I have a lot of work ahead of us. We've both played through the game multiple times, but we keep finding things that need to be adjusted or fixed. We haven't found any game breakers in a good long time though, so knock on wood. We can blow through the game in under 30 hours not doing any optional stuff, so a single playthrough does take a lot of time. 100% for us takes closer to 45-ish hours.

I won't be able to give exactly WHEN this year it'll come out, but it will.