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[threesided]

Dude, don't worry about competing with other games here. You've got the style of the era nailed, and I seriously can't wait to play this one! Looks just like FFL3, which I played extensively as a kid.

Great work man, persevere, and don't be afraid to seek help should you run into more serious road blocks. I believe in you!

[t-recx]

This game is too cute, can't wait to play it :3
Nice cat too btw

[Kramlack]

Heard I got a mention on IndieGames regarding Soul Compass, so I thought I'd swing by here and see if you'd been posting your progress. Really though, wow, looks like I missed a lot. I'm so happy you're still chugging away at this, since this is probably the most faithful-to-restrictions game I've seen. As mentioned, I wouldn't worry about competing with other games, since this one is plenty bad-ass enough! I love what you've done with the battles (how they start, how characters interact in them, everything), and short of a couple boring tiles, this is really taking shape!

I'm always looking forward to hearing more about this game, and I'm still interested in getting this running on real Game Boy hardware sometime in the future, so maybe I'll pop back in sometime and have a long chat with you about that. Until then though, keep up the incredible work on Soul Compass!

[caou]

This game reminds me so much of 'Final Fantasy Legend 2' which I must have completed a dozen of times

[golemshaper]

I absolutely adore this. Looks fantastic! I can't wait till I can play it. 

[Chis]

This sure makes me wish I had a gameboy in my childhood. The graphics look amazing and the matrix mechanic looks really interesting! I shall eagerly wait for release 

[beetleking22]

I never owned an original Gameboy either. None of us in my family could afford one in addition to an NES Cry together

Same here   I had only Snes, Nes, Ps1 at the time..

Some of the world map. On the left is one of many battle sites, which you'll need to complete to expand your walking boundaries on the map. There are 3 fixed battles per site, and you'll need to win each of them once. Consider these the 'normal encounters' of the game, however they will be challenging.

I was originally planning to do this FFMQ-style with fixed paths, but felt free-roaming with expanding boundaries suited the game better overall.

I like the world map and the lovely colors <3 Does the water have animation?

[pluckyporcupine]

I meant to post on this, but man, this is looking great. I definitely admire the way you're designing it.

Keep it up!

[railslavegames]

WOW you sir , are a god amongst men for creating this . So authentic, love the enemy design .

[impulse9]

Just dropping by to say that this looks fantastic. Keep it up!

[pluckyporcupine]

World map graphics, options screen added

VIDEO (sfx but no music)

Looking great!

I don't really like the filters, personally. I really like the retro look, and it kind of takes away from that.

However, I really like the choices in color palette, seeing them all in quick succession like that.

Oh, and those battles looked a little quick?

[pluckyporcupine]

They are off by default, but in some scenes I think they produce interesting effects.

Can I get an example of one such scene, per chance?

Sorry, I had cropped most of that combat for the video.

Ahhh, gotcha. Yeah, given the enemies don't have health bars, per most old RPGs, it was a bit hard to tell.

Encounters will go anywhere from 2 to 7 minutes per attempt, depending on the difficulty. Most of the time, defeating the enemies in a single attempt would be a major accomplishment

I'm assuming that means I'll be reloading saves a lot?

[pluckyporcupine]

Here are some situations I thought the filters did something interesting, like shape out a face or building. They're really just for novelty, or if the game is in 4x (pixels stretched out 4 times) some people may find the smoothing effect more welcome

Okay, the portraits do look really nice. The text gets a bit hard to read and thin in places, though.

I didn't show it in that particular video, but all enemies' and bosses' stats/abilities are viewable by toggling a

during combat. I realized this might slow the pace of action, and although I wanted all the data to be available to the player, looking at their abilities mid-combat should be a last resort. Therefore all the townspeople, and occasionally mid-combat events, should hand the players the info they need to win in a more pace-friendly way. For players who want to head straight into battle and try their luck, most of these things are also skippable

Ahhh, I gotcha. Yeah, that sounds really good. I can think of a few examples of games that did the hints thing through townspeople and it was pretty interesting, what with the gossip being both relevant and useful.

The data mode looks really helpful, but it does look a bit like it slows down combat. Despite that, it is a necessary option, and people that don't want to use it don't have to.

Due to the difficulty and puzzle-like nature of each battle, I found it appropriate to allow players to try again from the start if they die- even on a boss. I think giving up should warrant a save file load, as the player will be unable to progress without defeating each encounter

I wondered if that was what you meant. That's really useful. Just the whole act of reloading a save and restarting the fight through the whole interaction that brought the fight up always felt a bit...I can't find the right word, just something with a negative connotation.

[Little Nando]

I love this. Wanna see more.

[Cthulhu32]

You should hop on the #tigirc channel so we can nerd out. I really dig your stuff so far.

[Udderdude]

Looking good.

[Quikding]

anything going on with this? looks great.

[DavidCaruso]

Looking super cool, I love how faithful to the restrictions this is! Though I kind of wonder if you could push the limits and make everything look less "grid-aligned" in the overworld areas? I don't know that much about GB restrictions but some NES games did this fairly effectively: [1] [2] [3] It still looks awesome either way, and I understand the nostalgic appeal/cuteness of the current style.

Also, to get a more or less full replica of the GB sound with Famitracker, just enable the Namco N163 chip with one channel, use 32-length samples with it, and don't use the triangle or DPCM. Those are the settings people on the Famitracker forums use to cover Game Boy songs, sometimes.