Well, another reason is that I don't use proper grammar in my poetry and to me Haven is like a prose I'm writing so I could just be doing it out of my writing style. I'm not trying to make excuses for it, just saying that that's my reason for it existing in the first place.
Seriously? You're trying to tell me that writing "your" for "you're" and "could care less" for "couldn't care less" are all part of your writing style? I don't want to be too harsh, but that sounds like bullshit. If you just want to say "I can't be bothered to fix up all those text boxes" then I wouldn't really mind. But please don't lie to me because you're really only lying to yourself.
Anyway, I played some more of the game and I'm starting to feel like it needs more... well, gameplay. All I'm doing is wandering around talking to people. I know it's intended to be a non-combat RPG, but that doesn't restrict you from including puzzles that are more challenging than just following simple directions from the mayor. Also, a lot of these quests seem like filler: For example, the scene where Cleril helps the old baker woman doesn't engage the player on a *game* level because you're just walking and talking, but it doesn't really seem to have any significance in the story either. So why is it there? Is it just because RPGs are 'supposed' to be long and have irrelevant sidequests?
I still think that you are making a mistake by casting yourself in the lead role. It's quite embarassing to see you write about yourself as some sort of tortured, misunderstood poet genius - not to mention that you can apparently charm the knickers off young girls just by calling them 'lovely'.
In geneal, I feel disappointed with the sections of the game that I saw in my second play session. The first jester sequence, and the monsters' play, were both pleasingly strange and ambiguous. In contrast, the missions given to me by the mayor so far have been quite boring and mundane, while other scenes like the poet's performance and the knights fighting each other were merely trite and cliched. In the poet's performance, your description of poetry as an uncontrollable urge came off as pretentious - in my experience, people who talk about writing or art in such a manner are more concerened with themselves as *artists* than they are with the art itself. And the scene where Cleril tells off the guard captain for fighting was just pointless moralizing. Saying that war is bad is like saying the sky is blue - it's true but uninteresting because everyone already knows it.
Nitpicks: The scene where the girl plays the piano for you goes on far too long - almost a minute of simply sitting and waiting for the game to give you back control. You should definitely give the player an option to interrupt it before then.
Having a pause menu which includes things like Dexterity and Strength stats and an empty 'skill list' seems very wonky and betrays the game's origins as an RPGMaker game. I think you should cut out all those stats if you can. Yume Nikki had this problem too, but the creator managed to circumvent it somewhat by setting all the player's stats to 0 except for HP, which would increase whenever you collected an item. Maybe do something like this yourself?
When I came back later to the square where I had first met the jester, he was there again and it seemed that I could do the first jester sequence all over again if I wanted to. Also, the door which vanished when I tried to open it had reappeared. This seemed like a glitch, especially after I had met the jester for a second time in the castle.
When you speak to Luis and he introduces himself, you can speak to him again and hear the same introduction, which sounds silly.
This feedback has been very critical, but bear in mind that I wouldn't bother to write so much about a game which I simply flat-out disliked. I see a lot of potential in some sections of the game. For example, I loved the surreality of having to throw the red ring into a fire to make it glow with passion. I like the amount of detail you've put into the game, with so many objects having a unique description (though I wish you would give us more of Cleril's bizarre comments such as "This could be a picture of his father, or his lover" rather than the inane ones such as "I quite like tea.")
Maybe I'm just making excuses then? This is the first game I've made, there's bound to be all of these problems and I simply do not have the will to go through everything and change it. That is, text boxes, not broken quests or something.
While I did not intent the Mayor quests to feel pointless I now see it as kind of a theme in the game. I promise you that after Mayor to Spare (when you visit the old castle) the quests get awesome. Cleril's Calamity is in my opinion the best quest in the game.
I never said Haven was a realistic world. I made Haven a realistic fantasy world. Real life physics exist but fake technology and having most everything work in Cleril's favor is the fantasy aspect. That's only the first girl, in Frostbite (the second isle) there are two girls that you can mess up wooing.
Haven is meant to tell a story about the isle and to introduce Cleril, not to fully expose his character. Cleril is slowly learned about through the course of the game, while the world around you is immediately known. There is a sequel, Haven 2 (Haven Haven) planned that will contrast greatly to the story aspect of Haven.
Ian (the guard) apparently didn't. Why? His parents raised him to think that war is okay and it should be his life. The message Cleril is subtly telling Ian is that his parents did nothing more than manipulate him, as that's what parents do.
The door reapearing is meant to happen, I haven't updated the game in a while so my version (not yours) is fixed and meant to be whatever it is. The Jester quest (the first one, there are three) is not repeatable. Go ahead, talk to him, you'll see.
I've heard a lot of people complain about Laura, I'll work on it, thanks.
Luis has been fixed, you currently have the 200+ hour Haven, I've worked on the 220+ hour Haven.
The main quests get better in my opinion after Mayor to Spare (the old castle). After that is Cleril's Calamity, the best quest in my opinion (longest too).
Thank you very much for the feedback and for being in-depth.
I gave True RPG a try. A few questions, bugs and miscellaneous problems (aren't I positive?):
- Selecting any enemy from the vampire-reaper-woman's dialogue menu gave me a bat. That same menu seemed to have controls inverted- Z was cancel, X was confirm. (This seems to happen on-and-off, randomly. I'm not sure why.)
- Would it be possible to cut out the unused resources from the download file? Downloading a ~50mb file to find out that you used maybe 5-10mb of resources was pretty irritating. You also seem to have included the "Audio" folder twice.
- Without more content, it's very hard to gauge how balanced the game is. Balance is relative, after all; when new items are introduced is going to be far more important than how objectively powerful they are. Right now, there isn't much we can say by playing your game that we couldn't also say by seeing a list of numbers and damage equations.
- The "Incapacitated" alert sounds like a status effect more than a death indicator. Since the enemies will vanish directly afterwards, it seems a bit redundant.
- I was once attacked by an enemy during the pause between killing it and the "death fade" animation. If this isn't a bug, some kind of "counter!" alert might be helpful.
- The messages in battle were often missing spaces after the enemy names (for example, "Slimedealt 18 damage!")
Again, sorry about the negativity and nitpicking.
Don't know why the controls are switching around, never heard of that problem. The controls should be A - menu, Esc - cancel, arrow keys - movement, and Enter - action/buy/sell.
It would but then you'd need the RTP to make the game run. When an update is released for the game and said update is more true to the game it will be the same size. The unused resources are just monsters I haven't worked on yet.
I'll either remove it or edit it, I never touched it I think.
I'm no programmer so having a counter alert isn't possible for me. It might just be the turns going by fast, but I can't fix it to my knowledge.
I should be able to fix the space issue, thanks for telling me.
Excuse all of the hate in the previous posts, I've just never been part of this type of community. By type I mean a bunch of professionals.
Yeah I think I have to agree with everyone here, you need some polishing(is this a word?)
You said you were in game developement for 7 month, maybe you could have used like 4 of them to make Haven, so you can change all those grammar faults (haha I'm the one talking) and maybe make something more consistent. It does look like you are just writing your game along when you have to know where you going with your story, and how! Write everything down on paper, don't hesitate to change a lot of thing, and accept critisism
Good Luck!
200+ hours with Haven, every other game is below 40 hours. I've written things recently so Haven is just wonky in quality all over the place. The other games remain consistent to my knowledge. Thanks for the luck and the tip.
Wow, this thread is a real car crash.
I know, right?! I can't take my eyes off it!
Anyway, more seriously, take a chill pill. The guy is making forays into game development, everyone else is experienced already. Cleril, there is a long road ahead of you still, but you are making steps already, which is what counts. You've got to deal with the feedback of any kind. Don't expect much positive feedback from those further down the road - they know what they are talking about (mostly).
They may seem condescending and elitist, however consider yours and their point of view. You are another newbie game developer who uses one of those click-and-play game creators (RPG Maker VX). Every day, there are newbies strolling onto forums such as this one, full of enthusiasm and little will for actual effort. "HAI GUSY I HAS GREAT MMO IDEA I NEED ARTISTS, PROGRAMMERS AND A CUTE GIRLFRIEND". Well, you get the idea. Luckily, you've already created games on your own. However, your enthusiasm is on the familiar height.
Don't get discouraged. What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger. We all went through the same phase, ridiculed, criticized and pelleted with tomatoes.
One thing is certain - you are getting ahead of yourself, starting a "company" that features RPG Maker games. Sorry, but that is silly. You should only consider a brand name for yourself when you feel you are getting serious.
But answer those questions: have you worked in a team? Have you worked with an artist, a programmer? Have you got any teamwork experience? Because that is the next step on your road of game development.
You've pieced games together, although in RPG Maker. Nothing wrong with that, you are still a game designer. You have ideas, you can embody them. Don't worry about the negative feedback, you will get better with feedback.
What is important is that you already have made the difficult first steps. You know what is it like to make a game. Now you've got to experience the next levels of game development.
Some say teamwork. Others say refinement. It is entirely possible for one man to be a studio in oneself - artist, programmer and designer in one. Can you make your own art? You are using the one supplied with RPG Maker, so I assume not. Sorry, but that won't really do if you plan on becoming anything more than "another RPG Maker user".
You want to distinguish yourself.
So, a good idea is to draw art by yourself - or collaborate with an artist. There are excellent artists around here, if you can impress them with your proposals, they will become your partners in crime.
Still, it is RPG Maker. Even though it support scripting, it feels like the same old jRPG that many of us detest by very nature. It is... limited. It doesn't really allow one to show their potential. You might want to someday make the game you truly desire - to give breathing room to your ideas. That is where programming steps in. Script yourself or get a competent programmer.
Then you might be able to migrate away from RPG Maker into your own environment that you and your partners can truly control. Now THAT is the real Indie Team. Of course you can achieve it all by yourself - refine the art by yourself, delve deeper into scripting and customize the RPG Maker engine to customize the game so much nobody would recognize RPG Maker in it. That, too, is a great feat in itself that earns you true respect.
In any case, all the above involves effort. You've shown effort - you can make a game in RPG Maker. You've shown that. You want to become serious - you'll have to prove that, but you will have to go further than you already are.
Good Lord, I've given another lecture that you most likely didn't want. Oh well. Consider this an advice from someone who's been swimming in the shark pool, taunting the said sharks for a while. Well, those sharks aren't all that bad, they mean you well. They've all gone through the same thing before.
Swallow your pride in presence of your elders. Learn from them. Then unleash your pride, for you will need tenacity to persist on the road you've chosen. Don't let the criticism get you down, learn from it. Don't take offense to anything told to you, whether be it well or ill meant. Chill, take a deep breath, observe, study and learn.
Experience is such a wonderful thing. You've just been showered with it in this very thread - appreciate it and don't give up. You've made a game, that is more than most would-be game developers could ever dream of.
Right, enough of the pretentious pep talk, those guys are looking at me funny now... Ta!
A personal opinion: Should you decide to start collaborating, it is not your game alone. It is the game of you and your partners. Please, oh please do keep that on your mind... nothing destroys the teamwork more than self-centered "bosses". I do heartily suggest some kind of teamwork, however, if only to have someone proof read your work as well as test it thoroughly. Polish your work, add detail, spit onto it and polish some more until you can see yourself in it. The more effort you put in, the more it is appreciated by everyone.Erm, I appreciate the lecture but I never ever wanted to stay indie or make a company. Cleril Calamity Studios is just an indie name for myself, there's nobody but me working on any of these games. I plan on joining an established company, perhaps making freeware like this on the side.
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