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[Craig Stern]

it seems to be really effective in-game.

Okay, I'll take your word for it! That's too bad that it got co-opted for Plants vs. Zombies. I hope they at least paid you for the additional track.

[supershigi]

I hope they at least paid you for the additional track.

Yup, they did   Unfortunately I still get messages from people saying things like, "Hey, isn't that song from Plants vs. Zombies?  Do they know you're using their music?" >_< 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i saw a video of this in your youtube profile when you commented on my youtube profile, looks nice. portrait art can use some work though (although so can the portrait art in my games)

[supershigi]

Only one more tileset to go!  I don't think my eyes can take much more... they actually feel like they're throbbing right now ;_;

@Paul: Thank-you for checking out the video   I actually liked the portrait art in your game, hehe, but that's probably because I have a thing for the hand drawn style (which is also probably why my portrait art looks as it does).  But yeah, if I ever end up selling my game I'll probably try and recolor the portrait art while maintaining the original style so that it looks more polished. 

[supershigi]

@Andy: Thank-you for offering to try out the demo ^_^  To answer your question, you should be able to install it anywhere you want; you can actually choose the destination when it starts installing (when I install it on my computer, it usually defaults to Program Files).  Please let me know if you have any other questions.

[aeiowu]

I'm really impressed and all I've seen is the game video.

A couple quibbles:

1. on the dialog in the beginning of the trailer, cut out the sound when the voice actor takes a breath. It's so quiet that it is pretty noticeable. I think the silence is really effective but because it's so minimal, you've gotta focus on the details that much more.

2. That image on the OP at the top has always bugged me. I think the lighting makes the image look like wavy/warped paper or something rather than give off the illusion sun-rays. I think the problem is that the bridge is a bit off-kilter as it is and the blurred rays of light just play that up into some kind of optical illusion gone wrong. I'd suggest, if you're going to do that, just have the light cast onto bridge or perhaps a different blending mode would do the trick... I'm not sure of the solution but I think with a little tinkering you could find something that is more effective.

Again, quibbles, but great work so far overall!

[starsrift]

I've been playing through the demo off and on. I've not finished yet - just got into Debonet.

Wow.

There's a lot of polish on this, it's really good. As perhaps to be expected, the music is spectacular. I really like a lot of the silliness in it (talking signs!). Some of the changes you've mentioned you're trying to put in seem to be like they'd be really appreciated.

I do wish it could be played in a window rather than requiring fullscreen, though, along with a pause function.

[rekcah]

I've been playing through the demo off and on. I've not finished yet - just got into Debonet.

Wow.

There's a lot of polish on this, it's really good. As perhaps to be expected, the music is spectacular. I really like a lot of the silliness in it (talking signs!).

I had some good laughs too! I loved some of zombie jokes! ahaha

[MaloEspada]

If you don't mind the super saturation of my comments here, I thought of one thing today:

Why are there no female humans on the main party?
The game is feeling too much shoujo right now.

[supershigi]

@Andy: I'm really happy that you're enjoying the game and its music!  It always makes me feel good when people notice how much effort is put into the project (especially this week... I've put in so many hours building the last area's maps that my wrist is starting to hurt again, hehe).  And yeah, I know what you mean about rpg maker games... it's a shame that there are so many games out there that feature stolen materials. 

Oh, and the voice in the intro is me

@aeiowu: Thank-you for your comments ^_^  Concerning the dialogue at the beginning of the trailer, I actually wanted to have the voice sound very organic so I purposely left in all the little mouth and breath noises when I spoke.  I don't know why, but to me it feels more intimate that way.  And as for the first screenshot, it might be because the sunbeams in the actual game are animated and the screenshot is just directly captured from the game so you're only getting one frame of the animation.  I think you'll find that it actually looks pretty good in-game though (at least I hope so, hehe).   

Oh, and on an unrelated note, are you the person who made Gray?  If so, it was quite an interesting game!  I went back and read the comments everyone else had left because I was curious to know others' interpretation of the meaning. 

@starsrift: Oh that's great, you're almost to the end of the demo then!  I'm really happy that you like the music and silliness... I think when I wrote the dialogue for the Doogay Swamp I was in a really goofy mood, hehe.  Oh, if you want to play in windowed mode you can press Alt-Enter.  Please let me know if that works for you.

@rekcah: Oh good!  Hehe... Yes, I was definitely in a weird mood when I wrote that

@R.D. Ein: I don't mind at all ^_^  Hehehe... don't worry, there will be 2 human females who join you later on.  You actually meet one of them shortly after the demo ends... her name is Sophie, and she's an engineer who builds airships for the Orderian Engineer's Guild.  I think she's really cool, hehe.

[supershigi]

I finally finished all the maps in the Saphine Kingdom (the 2nd to last location in the game), so I thought I'd share a few screenshots!

This first one is inside the palace there... I designed this palace as a place I would want to live in.  There are trees growing through the floors, hanging plants everywhere, waterfalls and fountains, depressions in the floors with pillows and blankets where you can take naps, stone and marble, etc.  It's really unconventional.


This screenshot is from a series of mini-quests the party members have to complete once they arrive... in this one, Hawk helps Andy take a bunch of children camping.


This is the kitchen... nothing much to say except that they don't have a conventional kitchen.  And there's trees growing through the floors.  I love when trees grow through the floors!

[Jonathan]

I played this game at some point last month and I loved it (my wife and I adore the music from Plants vs. Zombies, so we decided to check out your rpg).  The music is absolutely beautiful; the best I've heard in a long time.  The story was also particularly compelling; you did a good job making me feel for the pristine nature of the Leebles' home before I left, and I felt very sad when I found out what happened to Mani. 

I might suggest including a journal system so players know exactly what they're supposed to do next, and you might want to do something to make the swamp look more like a swamp on the world map (I went to Basho before going to the swamp).  Beyond that, this was quite an enjoyable experience.

I really like a lot of the silliness in it (talking signs!).

This.

EDIT: It seems as though you're almost done with production, do you know when the full game will be released?

[supershigi]

Thank-you Jonathan, I'm really glad that you and your wife enjoyed the PvZ music and that you took the time to play my rpg.  I get sad about Mani too, hehe...

I like the idea of including a journal system, especially because there are several sidequests later on so I would imagine it would be tough to keep track of them.  I'm not quite sure how to integrate it at this point, but I'm definitely looking into it.  I'd also like to redo some of the world map art so that it's more obvious that the swamp is to the south of the village. 

To answer your question, I'm hoping to finish the game within the next few months... in terms of linear gameplay I don't have much left to finish.  But I estimate that working on the balance will take me a long time... I played through some of the latter parts of the game and some of the cutscenes still feel rushed, as if I didn't build them up properly, which is a bit discouraging.  I hope I'm able to smooth that out because I really want those scenes to be effective.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

feedback impressions:

- in the voice acting at the beginning, the word 'melolune' wasn't very clear; if i didn't already know the title of the game i wouldn't have been able to guess what was said

- text speed default is way too slow for my reading speed; i'd rather have it selectable when you startup, the way old 2d rpgs did it

- the animation of the water in the background in the first cutscene feels too slow, it might work better if you sped it up a bit (about twice as fast or something)

- i had to guess what button to press (the c button was the first i found that worked) in order to select options and progress text; if there were instructions on what button works, i didn't see it, but if not you may want to add it

- i did get key instructions after the first dialogue screen, but they didn't mention that the c button works, and only said enter or space, and i find c more useful than those (z would be optimal for me, but doesn't seem to do anything).

- the walking speed feels a bit slow, perhaps you could add a 'dash/run' button, where you could hold it down for a faster movement speed

- it feels strange that the soft piano song used for the beginning part is also used in the cave while you frantically search for survivors -- i'd have expected a more anticipatory song during the latter part

- as i mentioned in regards to the trailer video, i don't really feel that the portrait art is up to the standards of the rest of the art, it feels more like someone's random deviantart drawings, whereas the rest feels like someone who has had some training in visual art

- there are often long periods of time where the game freezes for about 10 seconds, as if it's loading something, where nothing works and animation freezes; you could perhaps add a 'loading' message prior to those periods of time so that the user doesn't think the game froze on them, or optimally improve/optimize those load times so that they don't take as long, or are done in the background during the preceding scene

- the gui (when you press escape) feels a bit weird, and again doesn't match the art of the tiles. for instance, some of the text there is outlined in black, some isn't; and of the text that's outlined, there's even text that's outlined in a heavier black; i think it'd look better to make that consistent.

i didn't actually start the game yet, this is just feedback for the intro. i'll give more after i get further into the game, but for now i need to go work on my game. also, sorry if i only focused on the negative things rather than the positive, but i figure you already know what's good about the game and are posting it to see what you can improve.

[supershigi]

@Paul: Hey Paul, thanks for taking the time to give me feedback on this ^_^  That's a good point about the controls, I'm definitely planning on putting together a tutorial once the game is finished... I might also have a quick screen listing the controls right at the beginning as well for those who don't want to do tutorial-mode.  About the text speed, you can actually press the "next" (space or enter) button and all the text will spit out at once, so you can control how quickly you read everything.  I'll probably include that on the control screen as well for folks who want to forward the text. 

A few people have mentioned the waterfall animation, and I agree... unfortunately, rpg maker has a limited number of frames on the autotiles, so I can't speed it up anymore.  Hopefully it isn't too distracting.  And concerning the facesets, although at first I wanted to go with a kiddish sketch look, I'm thinking about redoing them later so that the coloring is more polished and consistent. 

I think the reason I wanted to have a reprise of the piano music for the cave scene was because... hm, how do I explain it... In my life there have been certain pivotal or sad moments that felt very surreal to me.  It was almost as if I wasn't personally experiencing them; it was like I was an outsider watching it all happen from a distance.  When Achaius and Taranath search the cave for survivors, I kind of wanted it to feel like that... For me, the contrast between the tense scene and subtle music gives me a feeling of "it's happening so fast, it's so out of my control that I'm just watching it unfold."  I think this contrast resonates with me a lot because that's kind of how I experience things; I've seen scenes on television shows where they'll play very subtle but melancholy music juxtaposed with a hectic crime scene or something, and it really affects me a lot because it gives me that feeling of being out of control of my surroundings... like you could be experiencing it, but it feels surreal like you're watching it rather than living it.  But I dunno, I think sometimes I have a weird backwards way of looking at things like this... sorry if I didn't explain that very well

Hm, someone else also mentioned the thing about the game randomly freezing so I'm trying to look into that.  I never get that on my system, so I'm wondering if it's something that occurs with Vista or Windows 7.  If it's not too much trouble, do you think you could tell me which OS you're using, and at which points this occurs?

I hope you enjoy the rest of the demo... as you know I'm working on making the battles more interesting.  I still want to keep the first hour really simple and forgiving, but I'm hoping to diversify things based on some of the stuff that was being said in the brainstorming thread.

[rekcah]

I think the reason I wanted to have a reprise of the piano music for the cave scene was because... hm, how do I explain it... In my life there have been certain pivotal or sad moments that felt very surreal to me.  It was almost as if I wasn't personally experiencing them; it was like I was an outsider watching it all happen from a distance.  When Achaius and Taranath search the cave for survivors, I kind of wanted it to feel like that... For me, the contrast between the tense scene and subtle music gives me a feeling of "it's happening so fast, it's so out of my control that I'm just watching it unfold."  I think this contrast resonates with me a lot because that's kind of how I experience things; I've seen scenes on television shows where they'll play very subtle but melancholy music juxtaposed with a hectic crime scene or something, and it really affects me a lot because it gives me that feeling of being out of control of my surroundings... like you could be experiencing it, but it feels surreal like you're watching it rather than living it.  But I dunno, I think sometimes I have a weird backwards way of looking at things like this... sorry if I didn't explain that very well

I can relate to this!

It kind of reminds me of a scene where the hero dies but instead of sad/melancholy music you hear somewhat up beat/enlightened music. It induces mixed feelings about the greatness of the hero yet the sadness of the fact that he/she is going to die. It seems to have a more lasting effect IMO. The contrast seems to make you think more about whats actually going on in the scene, almost throwing you for a loop haha. Does that make sense?

[supershigi]

Yes, that totally makes sense!  Somehow the contrast does something to your emotions... whenever I see a scene like this in a movie, game, tv show, etc. it always makes me reflect more on what's going on... I'll notice more of the details and really think about the meaning behind things ^_^

[skyy]

Hats off to this project. _GREAT_ work. I haven't tried the demo yet, but I definitely will.
Nice to hear someone sticking to something for two years. Win.
 

[supershigi]

Well, tonight I finally finished a very pivotal cutscene in the game.  It's about Aero's background, but it also ties a lot of things together from the rest of the story.  There were a bunch of little details I had to work out with this one battle music script, but I'm pretty happy with the results.

 

I'm happy to finally be back into the swing of things again... I had a bit of a rough patch around the new year because I hurt my back making it difficult to spend much time on the computer.  This combined with a few other issues left me feeling generally unmotivated and kind of down... but I think I'm doing a lot better now and jumping back into things.  I wrote out a "6-weeks-til-beta" plan to help me with this final push... it is keeping me on track, but the sheer number of little details I still need to take care of does make me feel overwhelmed at times.  Anyways, please wish me luck with this final stretch!

And for those of you who have finished games before, do you have any advice for me about the last phase before beta?  How do you keep yourselves motivated and on track so that you can finish even during the boring parts?

@skyy: Totoro!  That was a big part of my childhood ^_^  Thank-you for your comment... I honestly don't know how I've stuck with it for this long, haha... but I really hope I can finish. 

[Christian223]

Whenever I feel unmotivated, I go back to the reason on why I am making the game, usually I want to do it for a purpose, like communicate something I think it is important, or make an experience that I think will change the players in some way, so when I remember the reason I get motivated again.

When I feel overwhelmed, I stop thinking about all that needs to be done, and I focus only on one thing. I make a list of all things that are needed, and I pick only one thing, and I focus on it forgeting about the rest, I try to get into it's details. This takes a big load of my back and makes it much easier to get to work. If I achieve things faster, I also have more fun, so I put myself goals that are faster to achieve, that's why I focus on details, to be able to make smaller goals.

Some other times I just need to relax, have some fun and forget about the project for a while to recharge myself and get some inspiration.

Hope that helps, good luck, it's a great project.