why is it silly? i lifted that name from a high school friend. there's also all these people.

i mean, if there's something legitimately objectionable about it, then that's fine; i don't and can't know everything. but i'm not finding anything on the google or on the wikipedia, which leads me to believe that it's just a name. and if you find anything like that, do let me know, because i don't want a project i've been working on for this long to go down like that.

p.s. angela leyline and alex kirovabad are both pretty silly names, too - one's lifted, honestly, from Outlaw Star, and the other from a small russian village i saw on a map once. there's no real meaning in any of these names: i just thought they were cool when rammed together with a first name. which i guess sets me up for disappointment

Hi, I've been very very busy, but I just thought I'd let you know what's up. We finally have a release window! Look for Alcarys Complex to drop July of this year.

We also put our

up, and we also have a Kickstarter page we're using to finish out the rest of the music and art.

Any support you could give would definitely be appreciated, thanks! (Hugs also accepted as legal tender at Modest Arcade.)

Hey, everybody. Just posting to let you know that we posted a new bugfix demo. Among other things, this build addresses game-killing errors and other annoyances and is our first public demo to feature our (mostly) final title screen. For more info on fixes and additions, consult the package's bugfix.txt.

Also, if you played the IGF demo, you should know that it's roughly the same content. There are some new spins on the systems, but there's no new narrative content and the scenarios are mapped out identically.

One of the main features this demo adds is the skill learning system: you add unlearned skills to node slots that accrue AP whenever you use a charged node. When the skill is learned, it is immediately available for use by pressing that node's hotkey.

Please let us know if you run into any errors. Thanks for playing!

Edit: fixed a fatal bug in scene 7. Game should now allow the player to progress past that point.

i'll have more news soon, guys.

GZ: Random Mood is something, like the Mood Cards, to help prevent the interactive dialogues from being guessing exercises. at no point do i want this system to become a guessing exercise, because then there's no point to it.

you can activate Random Mood as many times as you want, and all it does is tell you a mood that is used at some point in the dialogue. when a mood has been used by a character, it is removed from the pool, so it gets easier to choose a good mood as the dialogue goes on. it also gets a little easier to keep track of who used what mood during the previous choice.

as far as being graded, i figured since sociability is really the most important stat, it's important to know how much you get, even if it kind of breaks up the flow of things. i tried putting it at the end of the cutscene, but that seems too far away. i'll experiment with the look & feel of it and see what i can come up with.

like you said with the menu, the changes you suggest are not going to be easy, but i'll look into them. any change would have to take the lack of left and right buttons into account, since they'll be used to navigate between menus.

re: Prisma commercial plaza - this map has been a thorn in my side for years. i've had to deal with all kinds of crazy NPC errors, even after recreating the map from scratch! i thought that i'd finally resolved that bug, but i guess not. noted. also, when you went through the table, was it an automatic action? if so, that's a matter of setting a boolean.

speaking more generally about a lot of the other bugs you found - these are bugs that are not easily reproducible. i don't know how you did it, but man. i have a particular zeal for debugging this game, so this'll be good for me.

as always, thanks for your comments! your continued support in general is pretty awesome.

man, this looks awesome. reminds me of chip's challenge. as soon as i can find the time, mark my words 

thanks, i'm in major study mode right now but i thought i'd post a few things.

- SE is always something i'm looking at. i acknowledge that the footstep SE is not the best sound so i'll have to do something about that. i also honestly don't know why i still have message blip still activated. i'm not very partial to the notion of message blip SE in general and more than one person has said that it's pretty annoying in its current state.
- one of the major usability edits i have planned before the final release is a title screen overhaul to make it easier for players to do what they need to do without having to fiddle around with everything
- UI is locked until scene 9 (when corvallis and angela leave town). i may unlock the main menu, though; it never hurts to introduce people to the interface they're going to be using for the entire game as early as possible (on at least a preliminary basis, anyway). in the meantime you can save by pressing [confirm] when standing over a save point.

i'll see what i can do about these when i'm not buried in integrals. definitely appreciate the feedback, though!

[- You can now select from four scenarios! Recently added are an introductory scenario and a scenario that shows off one of the game's prime features: the Interactive Dialogue system.- Added face portraits to message boxes for playable characters.]

Posted a new demo today with the following fixes and additions (there are more than this, see bugfix.txt for the complete list of fixes):

- You can now select from four scenarios! Recently added are an introductory scenario and a scenario that shows off one of the game's prime features: the Interactive Dialogue system.
- Added face portraits to message boxes for playable characters.
- Delayed hint system: these are CutsceneEvents placed in certain areas that pop up a banter hint if the party remains in contact with the event for a certain period of time.
- In Scenario 4, Alex is equipped with the Chieftain's Bracelet by default. This allows her to charge Lingual Nodes without drinking potion.

- Fixed fatal errors involving interaction with objects, including but not limited to: NPCs, NPC Triggers, disabled Teleports, CutsceneEvents, and Placards: the game would either freeze or not interact with the object.
- Fixed game-killing sound bugs related to OpenAL
- Fixed error involving objNPCTrigger: collision checking was interfering with the EntityMove script's pathfinding and causing control of the party leader to glitch.
- Fixed error in sprite animation: when starting to move, there's a small period where the movement sprite looks like the idle sprite, so if you tap a movement key, the character is moving, but the animation isn't, leading to a 'gliding' effect.
- Fixed bugs in display of Sociability talk icons.
- Modified the halt mechanism on choices. It originally waited 50 steps until it popped up the choice dialog. Now it pops up the choice dialog immediately and waits 25 steps before the player can make any input.



The Interactive Dialogue system (above) is something in particular that I'd like to share with you guys. The main concept is that of a dialogue between your party members and/or their allies and some adversary where you are given the opportunity to choose who leads the conversation multiple times. At the end of the dialogue, you're awarded SP.

Given a few Mood Cards, some hints and your knowledge of the characters, your goal is to choose the right character at the right point in the conversation and maximize your SP award.

The one in this demo is fairly basic, with players choosing between two party members and having three Mood Cards at their disposal, which they can use to immediately see the mood of all party members at that point in time. I'm aware no one really knows these characters yet, so this is kind of touch and go.

My goal is to have one of these for all nine Sociability levels and to have them gradually increase in difficulty until the player's gleaning the most advanced moods from their characters based on context. For example, if Corvallis is proud, it may be seen as a welcome change from his meek demeanor, but if Angela's proud, it may come off as boastful.

Anyway, feedback is welcome, as always.

Edit: Also, I'm looking for someone who can do a good folk soundtrack. PM me if you're interested.

udderdude: oh, that's too bad. :/

you may consider equipping some of the provided equipment before you set out and using Alex (the one in white) as your party leader instead of Angela because the hookshot and pistol AI modules are way more robust than the melee AI right now.

it also sounds like Lomah in particular is flitting between AI states for some reason. i'm looking at these things right now and will address them in the next version of the demo (which is coming very soon).

Alec: do you have any other games on your system that use OpenAL that run fine? i'm trying to nail what this would be but i don't honestly know. it may be a one-in-a-million freak out, but it's counterproductive to think that way. try downloading and installing the latest OpenAL library. after that, remove the copies of openal32.dll and wrap_oal.dll from the game's directory and try to run the game again.

thanks for the feedback!

thanks for the comments, guys! really appreciate them.

gz: glad you liked what you played, but i'm sorry to hear of your troubles. i'm going to see if i can address the issues you were having.

most of the game-breaking errors seem to come with the territory of changing code in a system that has, frankly, become quite massive. the mastrov easy map, in particular, moonlights as a cutscene map, so there are a lot of invisible NPCs that only get activated during one scene of the game. thanks for pointing this out.

the other errors and issues stem from not communicating enough with the player. unfortunately, this is one of my weaknesses as a developer, and i'll try to get better as time goes on.

re. the trip wire: since this game abstracts the character from the player quite a bit, i'm thinking of using the character to see places the player can't really see because of the top-down perspective. for instance, if the player takes too long to locate the wall entrance or trips the trip wire, i could have angela communicate using banter that there's an opening in the wall or give some kind of other hint.

i'm also thinking about adding an intro scenario to the demo as well, if that helps. if i do this i'll just post the save file.

thanks again for your awesome critique. i've been dealing with class but i'm going to have a pretty large amount of time to dedicate to this within the next two weeks, so i'll see if i can't climb ever closer to a finished game.

hey man, this is pretty cool. i played it for a little bit and it's a great time-waster. the graphics and the music are both pretty cool. good to see you still trucking along!

Update: I've made updates to the site. There's now a fairly detailed characters page with brief bios of the six main characters as well as most of the supporting cast up to the end of the second act. I've also posted both

and the IGF RC2 demonstration. For the demo, you should just be able to unpack it and go.

If you notice any speed issues or other bugs, post here with your OS/CPU/GPU and a description of what was going down when the error occurred (ex. fighting a Saidder in the Grafton Desert, game freezes in the Ancients' Courtyard in Midvale, etc). I try to get all the bugs before I drop a public demo, but it never happens, ever, so I'll be happy to help as best I can.

As always, feedback appreciated. I'm always interested in potential improvements. 

[What's Alcarys Complex?]

| Download the Demo (57 MB) | Kickstarter Page



Site | Download | IndieDB | Facebook | Twitter

What's Alcarys Complex?

Alcarys Complex is an action-RPG developed in Game Maker 8/8.1 Pro. Myself and a few other people have been working since August 2006 to create a responsibly written, entertaining JRPG without condescending to the player or using common JRPG cliches as a crutch. I handled the programming and writing, mostly in my spare time. I took it to Iraq with me twice and worked on it on top of my twelve-hour workdays, and now it's almost done. And I could not be more relieved.

I have paid careful attention to the main script for this game: I began writing the game's first draft in February 2009 and ended in May. Since then, this 165-page script has consistently seen countless draft revisions. The story is informed greatly by characterization and character development - each of the six main characters have defined growth arcs based on their circumstances and experience.

Now, I'm not a professional writer, and I'm not published, but I've taken to heart the notion that writing is a skill and a process meant to be honed and improved over time, not something you just do, and I hope that will suffice.

Note: this game is a story-based role-playing game; its style is most like Squaresoft's SNES games. Naturally, a lot of focus is given to the main plot sequence. There's character development and lots of dialogue. Just giving people who don't like playing RPGs like this a heads-up.

Screenshots (click thumbnail to enlarge)

more...

The Gameplay

Banter: Banter is a system of real-time text-based dialogue that doesn't interrupt the flow of gameplay. It's mostly used to provide additional characterization to the main characters, as well as to communicate "radio" broadcasts in real time that inform the player about the world (this is more subtle than it sounds).

Combat: Battle, while containing many options, isn't the primary point of this game. The vast majority of combat encounters are voluntary, and the only rewards it nets are material: you get tags that you can turn in to shops for items. You get no experience from combat. That's the job of...

Sociability: Statistical growth is handled mostly by the plot. There is a maximum of nine levels in the game, dictated by how far you are in the story. Once you pass these thresholds, you automatically level up. Statistical customization, however, is possible with the Sociability system.

Cutscenes, banter, and NPC dialogue all grant Sociability Points (SP). Each level has an SP benchmark, and once the character is past that benchmark, they can spend any points after that directly on stats and grow their character the way they want.

NPCs: I write NPCs with two fundamental rules in mind: one, that the NPC will react to the plot, and two, that the main characters will subsequently react to the NPC and learn more about themselves in the process. I use a couple of tools to achieve my ends.

One: I've built a system of plot periods to provide an easy way to allow NPCs to react to the plot. NPCs will say different things if you approach them later in the game as opposed to earlier. Two: When an NPC gives the player a choice in this game, the choice isn't between snippets of dialogue the character might say. The choice is between the characters themselves. Conversation NPCs allow the flow of dialogue to diverge into wildly different directions, depending on the character chosen. Three: Certain "buddy" NPCs exist that befriend (or in some cases, antagonize) certain main characters. You can progress these conversations over the course of the game.

The Characters

(from left: Corvallis Unruh, Angela Leyline, Attlas Douglass,
Leyt Duckworth, Alex Kirovabad, Lomah Byron)

These people have their own motivations, rivalries, and social circles. Some of them hate each other and some of them have never met. But they all have something in common: they're the silent that thirst for a voice in this chaotic world. Maybe they'll make headway at some point. Full info on the main and supporting cast can be found here.

The World

In the game's world, a class of beings called cursors arose from a rogue state scientist's clandestine experiments. Full lore info can be found here.

Default Controls
Note: in order to customize your control set or use a joypad, go to the Configuration menu.

[Arrow] - Move/Navigate Menus
[C] - Attack/Confirm
[X] - Show Dialogue/Secondary Function
[Z] - Cancel
[Q] - Main Menu
[Enter] - Pause
[A,S,D] - Party Member Command Menu
[1-6] - Node Hotkeys (top row number keys)
[F1] - Help

Feedback Opportunities!

This game isn't released yet but it's really close to completion! The game is feature-complete and it's about 90% content-complete. When it comes out, you can find it at www.modestarcade.com.

Specifically, I'm looking for people who would be willing to help us find and destroy bugs prior to the final release of this game. If you can help us out, shoot me a PM with your e-mail and I'll add you to our QA mailing list. We'll let you know when it all goes down.

Anyway, thanks for your time! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

| Download the Demo (57 MB) | Kickstarter Page

yeah, this is awesome. it's not at all what i expected but it's fairly addictive and you've got a great concept here. only played knight but what i played was fun.

i definitely agree that the knight in particular could use some kind of screen-clearing special (whether in an item or as a special ability with a warmup/cooldown) since it ends up kind of hectic and i found myself having trouble dealing with the cavalcade of enemies at later levels. it doesn't have to be game-breaking; something to use in a pinch when your health's been sliced down to near-zero could be the difference between death and surviving long enough to hit the next shop.

art's fairly simple but it works well for the game. even with a tiny sprite like the imp, i had no trouble forecasting when it was about to attack. presentation's really slick, too. no complaints here.

oh! 'theives' in the thieves' dagger is misspelled - are you going for like THIS IS A THIEF'S OLD DAGGER (thief's dagger) or THIS IS A DAGGER USED BY THIEVES (thieves' dagger)? whatever, doesn't hurt the game at all and it's something that can easily be fixed.

great work so far!

i'm just blown away when thumbing through your screens. please finish this - there are never enough indie RPGs around.

also i'm very glad to see that you have a dedicated writer. all in all this is pretty nuts 

so i played fez.

it's pretty cool. i don't know if i'll get it but it was pretty fun to wander around

excellent, high-quality work at great prices with a great attitude. highly recommended.

as aquanoctis said, you can use depth = -y; to get a good z-order going, but you have to use it on every object that is at ground level. so i recommend putting that code in some kind of object or entity master object. in my RPG, i'm using one master for entities such as players, NPCs, and enemies, and then I use an object master for objects like trees, counters, etc, that aren't part of the tile system.

another issue is that this won't be enough to make sure your character clips properly against ground-level objects; you also have to use the sprite origin properties to make sure that the player is shown when he's in front of the tree, etc. it kind of changes your drawing offset, so you'll have to place everything again, but you're early enough along that it won't matter much. here are the values i used:

player sprite origin (at the feet of the player): (8,28)
tree sprite origin (at the base of the tree): (20,55)

the fixed .gmk is here.

i wish you the best and i look forward to seeing a completed game!

yeah, supersound doesn't really work in 8.1. it's why i haven't updated my game file for 8.1 yet (among other reasons).

i don't have a fix myself but i'm going to wait until tsg1zzn updates the DLL. whether that will happen at all remains to be seen, really - i don't know how active he is on the GMC.

Not entirely sure, but I think the following fixes that:

Our first update (8.1.69) has now been released! You can get this simply by running GameMaker and allowing the new updater to “do it’s thing”. GameMaker 8.1.69 is mostly bug fixes, but has a couple of cool new features.
First, we’ve added the ability to turn OFF the new parameter checking system. This gives extension makers time to update them, without forcing those of you making games with them, back into Game Maker 8.0. This is a PER-GAME option, and you can find the switch in the Global Game Settings dialog.

the specific option is "throw an error when arguments aren't initialized correctly," and it looks like leaving it unchecked keeps the old argument checking system on. so glad they did this.

it's also nice that GM finally has an updater. that's something it's needed for a while.

after messing around in my project, i've gotten some stuff to work. this may be for the tutorial thread but honestly i think it's info worth knowing if you make extensive use of function overloading and want to make sure that functionality is preserved in 8.1. take this snippet, written in 8.0 (actually, 6.1, if you want to be technical):

Code:

//scrDrawText(x,y,text,width*,fullborder*)

var textX, textY, text, color, width, fullborder;

textX = argument0;
textY = argument1;
text = argument2;
width = argument3;
fullborder = argument4;

width and fullborder are optional in this case. in 8.1, this becomes:

Code:

//scrDrawText(x,y,text,width*,fullborder*)

var textX, textY, text, color, width, fullborder;

width = 0;           //optional arguments must have their variables initialized
fullborder = false;  //optional arguments must have their variables initialized

textX = argument0;
textY = argument1;
text = argument2;
if(argument_count >= 4)width = argument[3];  //optional arguments must use the argument array (argument[x])
if(argument_count >= 5)fullborder = argument[4];

if you call scrDrawText(32, 32, "tiny-ass hamburgers");, argument_count equals 3
if you call scrDrawText(32, 32, "tiny-ass cheeseburgers", 5);, argument_count equals 4
if you call scrDrawText(32, 32, "tiny-ass chicken sandwiches", 5, false);, argument_count equals 5

note that argument_count is not highlighted in the editor. don't let it throw you - it's still a built-in variable.

i guess i'm lucky in that i tend to feed all my arguments to local variables before working with them, but this still makes me sad