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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

it's not just zelda1 though -- even recent 2d zelda games like the minisch cap used it:



note the top part of the rock cliff is an inverse 3/4 perspective, whereas the rest is 3/4 perspective or top down, and the player sprite is upright.



again, upright sprites, the rest 3/4, and the bridge is top down.



again, notice how the bottom of the walls in dungeons use an inverse 3/4 perspective, as if the player were fish-eyed and could see both the bottom wall and the top wall from the same angle.

i think you're underestimating how often even modern 2d games mix perspective.

[CiroContinisio]

You know what: you are right! I underestimated that. I didn't remember that this happened so blatantly in a commercial game like Minish Cap.

However, I still don't like it, the rocks can be ok (because they can be slanted towards to bottom actually) but that bridge is terrible. Still, it's a personal opinion.

[rekcah]

I agree with Paul here on the perspective thing, but not only that.....

I noticed the mixing of perspectives in Zelda games as well but, while the game is in motion its not really a big deal. Its only when I'm studying a screen shot that I'm like "LOL thats weird!". Zelda isn't the only game that does it. The old 2D Final Fantasy games did it. The Tales series did it as well. The list goes on.

@CiroContinisio:

Earlier you were quick to say Zelda games never mixed perspectives in the same scene. Again, I think that's because when you're playing the game your brain still understands whats going on despite the mixed perspectives and its not really a problem. But its easy to pick things apart when you're examining a screenshot.

[CiroContinisio]

In fact I already said I never noticed (not that much anyway) because I never stopped to consider those screens.
Still, when I do my own work I try to be coherent, if I can't, I start from scratch and look for another solution*. Sorry but I feel that kind of mix is an error, and also, you can explain it to me, but how about the random person that sees the game? He will think it's an error too.

If that kind of mix served gameplay purposes, then maybe it's ok. But if it's only graphical laziness, (not referred to Paul Eres or Supershigi) then no.

* I remember one of my teachers, in the logo and symbol systems class, that once said: "You can draw 9 symbols in a certain style, and you think they are cool. But if you must make 10, and the 10th can't fit your style, you must start all over again."
This is something that's always in my mind when I create believable worlds, icons, or such.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

even classical painters mixed perspective -- not looking realistic isn't an error. the only people i've seen even notice the issue are other game designers or graphic artists, normal people don't even notice it. it's something you have to have special training or be looking for in order to notice: as evidence of this, you said you didn't notice it in the zelda games until i mentioned it, that kind of shows that it doesn't look like an error unless you're thinking about it.

[CiroContinisio]

Yeah but I noticed it in Melolune...
Anyway, we're not going anywhere on this one, let's say it's a matter of taste

[rekcah]

Yeah but I noticed it in Melolune...
Anyway, we're not going anywhere on this one, let's say it's a matter of taste

HEY MAN!! WE'RE NOT DONE BASHING YOU YET!......... 

LOL j/k.. sorry i couldnt resist! 

[Hockey kid]

I love this game, the graphics are so jRPG and I love jRPG's!

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Yeah but I noticed it in Melolune...
Anyway, we're not going anywhere on this one, let's say it's a matter of taste

yeah, but the question is would you have noticed it if it was some rpg by square you were playing, and you weren't staring at a screenshot being asked for feedback -- i think it's partially taste but also partially that.

[st33d]

I tried to extract the IGF Demo:

Audio\BGM\Laura Shigihara - Ciro.ogg

Extract Failed

 

WinXP - tried several locations, no dice - breaks at the same file.

[Zaphos]

That doesn't happen for me on xp, st33d -- maybe your download got corrupted somehow?  Did you try (clearing your cache and) re-downloading?

[Jonathan]

Laura, I hope you're still working on this!  I haven't seen updates in a while, how's everything going?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

she told me on youtube that she was taking a break due to back and neck problems from working at the computer too long, but has resumed work on the game this month -- check my youtube profile for the comment: http://youtube.com/rinkuhero

[hyperduck]

ChevyRay was mentioning he uses a Knee-Chair.. looks great, and useful for avoiding slumping, I know some PC chairs can give that problem.




Also, looking forward to seeing more of this game Laura, I really love its look and sound, so sophisticated and polished. And of course, a great game to boot!

[supershigi]

Hi everyone... thanks so much for your comments, and thank-you for the ergonomic chair suggestion ^_^  As Paul mentioned, I haven't been around as much lately because I've been spending less time online in general.  During the week of GDC my neck and upper back started hurting a lot.  I think it was a combination of spending too much time working on the computer, and old martial arts injuries (that probably sounds funny since I'm a 5'2'' half-Japanese girl... but yes, I was really into Karate when I was younger, and I had a few sparring injuries as a result). 

I've been going to a doctor though which has helped a lot, so this month I've jumped back into Melolune again.  The silver lining of my time away from the computer was that I got to spend a lot of time coming up with new music on the piano (and recording some

).  But now that I'm feeling better, I'll try to update this thread more frequently if I can!  Currently I'm working on redoing the database.  I finished all the spells and enemies, and now I'm putting together the enemy groups in an attempt to make the later battles more strategic and interesting.  Once that's all finished, I'll probably spend about a week balancing all of it. 

Hope you guys are having a good week so far!

 

[PsySal]

Glad you are feeling better. As somebody once said in an armour shop in CD, "Don't overdo it!" =)

[Mincus]

Hey, I hope you're still interested in feedback, just played through the demo.

First, I enjoyed it, lot of fun and very cute feel.

However I found things felt badly balanced, I'll try to explain:
Quite early on (after falling through into the cave) I made a minor mistake in that I thought it was better to collect the Melolunes instead of leave them in the pedestals. Once I realised this mistake it meant tracking back through the caves. That in itself wasn't a problem, but it levelled me up rather a lot.
I felt this was a rather minor detour, but it meant that every fight was immensely easy for the rest of demo. Nothing was a challenge. Perhaps this is a design decision?
A possible solution I feel would be to reduce the amount of experience gained from monsters. This was particularly noticeable around the zombies where I didn't need to heal at all as I was levelling every few battles which automatically healed me.

The other thing is the tonics. They cost 10 gold but heal you for 100, I feel this is unbalanced as 100HP is a lot of HP in the game and 10 gold is a very small amount for such an item. Reducing them perhaps as low as 20 or maybe 40 would be a good idea or put the price up to 150/200 gold.
Additionally on the tonics, the zombies were dropping large amounts of them, I ended the demo with around 25 without ever buying one and only using 2 or 3.

Gold I felt was a bit odd. I initially felt I was getting far too much, I entered Debonet with over 4500gp, then I found the weapons and armour there and went on a spending spree (not realising I was about to complete the demo ) which left me with practically nothing again. Potentially I could grind here and have some really good armour, but with the above problem with experience and levels (here's my finishing levels etc) I wondered what that might do to later battles.

As to puzzles and sidequests, I think I found them all and didn't find any particularly hard. Other than the misunderstanding with the melolune. I also didn't find it obvious where the melon caves were due to the map sprite, but I understand you're redesigning those anyway?

Lastly some specific text/collision issues:
- The zombie king hands you a "Hibacca bag" but the text when you shake the mushrooms is "You shook the muschrooms and Hibacca powder fell into the jar."
- The badgers in the melon caves are sometimes called kobolds, particularly some around a fire you can talk to.
- An area in Debonet that I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to walk on (I walked off the platform to the left onto here).

Finally, just to say again I really enjoyed playing it and the music especially is excellent. I hope you don't take my comments too critically.

[supershigi]

@Psysal: Hehe, thank-you ^_^  I'm back to using Workrave again to remind me to take breaks, I think it's helping a lot!  And on days where I only allow myself a small amount of time on the computer, I end up being really productive in other areas (cooking up huge meals, cleaning, studying Japanese, playing on the piano, etc.)

@Mincus: Hi Mincus, thanks for playing the demo!  And no worries, I didn't take your comments too critically   I'm happy to receive feedback! 

About the Text/Collision issues and the world map: Thanks for pointing these out... So far, no one has caught those yet (I'm surprised I still had "jar" in there).  And yes, I'm hoping to change the world map art before the game is released so that it better matches the rest of the maps, and so it's easier for folks to navigate.

About the battle balance and experience points: I think I actually intended for the first part of the game to be fairly easy... originally the battles were a lot harder, but then folks who had never played SNES-style rpgs before (my Mom for example) kept dying and getting confused, so I retooled it a bit to make the first hour really easy and straight-forward.  The difficulty will definitely ramp up; once you reach Ciro, the battles all have new mechanics to increase the challenge/difficulty which should hopefully match the characters' skill levels at that point.  I noticed that your characters' levels were in the range I was hoping for, so that's a relief   I am however doing a bit of rebalancing of the game as a whole because I want to change the level-curve, so I will be looking at the first area to make sure people can't break their characters by grinding too much, so thank-you for pointing these things out ^_^

About the Tonics: I actually don't mind if the tonics are really cheap... I kind of modelled the item system after Chrono Trigger because I liked that it was always really easy to buy the basic health restoration items, but the equipment was more expensive.  In retrospect I think they did it this way so that people couldn't easily buy the equipment out of sequence... I personally like it because I feel that it's nicer to newer players, but won't really change the balance of the game later on when battles become more difficult (since spending a turn to use a tonic is inefficient, so having 99 of them won't really break anything... they'll function primarily as a backup when the player can't find a Blue Crystal or Inn to restore their HP).

Anyways, thanks so much for playing!  I've been really getting back into the game lately; I finished redesigning all the enemies in the game and I'm building up the troops you will encounter to hopefully make the next enemies more interesting... that's gonna take a ton of time to balance though once it's all implemented >_< Hopefully soon I'll post a new song as well that is supposed to be played during the next dungeon.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

it may be too late, but couldn't you add difficulty levels? hard for people used to snes rpgs, and normal for people not used to them? or something like that... i know that i at least prefer when rpgs provide some sort of challenge

[supershigi]

I wanted to post some sort of update today, so here is a piece of music that you'll hear in the dungeon that comes right after demo ends:

The Mines of the Orderian Engineer's Guild

I'm still working on dismantling it into 3 different pieces that you'll have to collect and reassemble.  My favorite part is from around 0:57-1:16, so I'm trying to make sure that the fully assembled BGM will play long enough for folks to get to it (free of interruptions from battles or leaving the location).

@Paul: Thank-you for the suggestion ^_^ I wish I had planned for this when I started... I think at this point it might be pretty tough for me to go back and add that feature.  Although I think that Amanda Fitch added it in her later Aveyond games, so perhaps there's a faster way to rebalance the database that I don't know about.  Perhaps I can ask her about it later... if anything, I'll definitely keep this in mind if I ever do another game like this in the future!