Lost Blade UPDATED DEMO!

[Ltbenjamin 4]

http://www.livestream.com/eathug/video?clipId=pla_ee722ca1-23d1-4f42-8fd1-4de52fe632bf

Palladinthug plays lost blade! (Magi part 1 video)(video wont play on a phone)

Skip to minute 9 i think it is and watch him use harikari! I almost died laughing....(i put that in the game as a joke) anyways seriously tho ive since fixed the problems he has pointed out: fixed the wait time on the pre-menu intro, fixed the chest to say its locked, explained things better, took off the techno music lol, fixed passable issues, changed my cool infinite snowman to a one time boulder : (  fixed transitions, fixed the cart from being able to be pushed the wrong way, and removed harikari. (The blades in the tool equip category it confused him but it is not an error, its just confusing so I explained that better in the game as well). I also fixed a few little things, i wouldnt have uploaded  a new version but there was a un-passible tile blocking you in one of the final castle rooms and also found a script call i forgot to add, that confuses the luna msg system and crashes game if u save and reload at dimension rift instead of playing straight through it. whew....ok peace out!.

My next updated demo wont be for at least a month or two. Play this demo updated as C 8-20-14 and tell me what i should put in the next update. (Currently focusing on the story, and quests.)

Edited August 21, 2014 by Ltbenjamin

[Ltbenjamin 4]

[Ltbenjamin 4]

Got the Demo size from 260MB down to 170MB! Also adding alot of new kaduki enemies and kaduki (Animated) Bosses!(going to fully convert to animated enemies and characters) more to come! keep checking! 

[Ltbenjamin 4]

Wow 13 downloads overnight of my newest demo! Thanks guys feel free to tell me your likes/dislikes of the game!

[Ltbenjamin 4]

19 downloads of the new demo! ......and no comments : (

 

so does it stink or something?

Edited September 18, 2014 by Ltbenjamin

[DaXigua 2]

Hey so I played through the demo. Good start with everything, I really enjoyed some parts. Here are my thoughts:

 

 

 

 

The GOOD: I really thought there were some beautiful parts in the game. You did a nice job integrating the visual scripts in some of the scenes. I think the game has some promise and I enjoyed some of the battles.

 

However, some suggestions:

 

To be honest the game is really unpolished and needs a lot of work. I understand that it is a demo and things will get fixed, but it was hard to play through the demo because of how rough some things are such as:

 

1) Many of the face sets don't match the sprites

2) Many tiles that shouldn't be passable are passable (for example you can "walk over" many trees)

3) The mapping is, to be honest, really lazy. It is especially striking because it contrasts so much with the pretty, scripted graphics. I would recommend downloading some of the highly rated games on this or other forums to see how to map better. The world map, for example, has vast stretches of nothing but the plain grass tiles and the towns could be a lot more interesting. Also I noticed that you directly copied the interior of some buildings and used them again in other towns (for example the Inns). This is really obvious and just looks sloppy.

4) Speaking of interiors, I am not sure if this is a demo thing or not, but it usually is not a good idea to have tons of houses that have nobody and nothing in them. Maybe you plan on adding more later? Your towns should be populated with people and things to interact with.

5) The eventing is messed up, but perhaps this is a demo issue? For example, there are open doors I can't enter, direction fix issues, treasures that give me unlimited items, etc. I normally would list the ones that gave me problems, but there were so many I lost track.

6) Character Development: I don't know if this is important to you, but you might want to consider thinking out the characters a bit more and fleshing out their personalities. For example, you run into princess Idelette and have a short, one sentence interaction with her, and then she gets kidnapped and we are supposed to care. She has had literally zero development or interaction with our main characters, yet has become an important plot and a major drive for our characters? Why should we care about her at all? Perhaps you intend this to be a light-hearted game where characters are not important, but if not, you need to think them out quite a bit more.

7) A small recommendation: I would change the animations for the status markers (such as sleep) because they are a bit annoying in battle. Maybe animations that have no sound and are smaller in size.

8) Also, no reason to encrypt your file for demos. It helps the players if something is buggy in the game, or allows them to make a better critique. There were several times I wished I had the unencrypted file so I could see what you intended to do rather than what the result of gameplay was.

 

Conclusion:

My guess (and this is only a guess) is that you got so into integrating the cool scripts that you neglected the other parts of the game development that make a game enjoyable. This became evident to me when I entered Castle Town and I just saw random NPCs that just randomly bring up mini-games created by other developers. There was no set-up for the games, no "framing" of them for the player, no real reason to even engage in them. It was just like, "here are some mini games I didn't make but I thought were cool!". They were not at all integrated into the world you had created.

 

Scripts only make a game pretty, they don't carry a game. In fact, some of the best and most memorable RPGMaker games I've ever played only used a few scripts (such as Tales of the Drunken Paladin for VX).

 

I don't mean to be harsh, In fact the reason I spent so long writing a review of this game is because I think it could be really good with some work. So keep working at it and I believe you can improve it a lot! And maybe you've already fixed some things I've talked about.

 

 

 

Best of luck with your development! You have my support!

[Ltbenjamin 4]

Thank you so much for the review! I am hellbent on working on this game until people actually think its good, and that means something because most people these days accept nothing but the best! I already know about most of these issues but it is very helpful to know how important small details are. I thought i had fixed the doors, those might be the ones i havent made yet, and the chests that u r talking about are cheats that tell you they are cheats and give you the option to not open them, unless there is some chest event error i dont know about. I put them in to make it easier for people who want to run through the game to review it. Also I didnt see any mismatched faces with sprites. I will look for that. The tree you can or cant walk thru/behind ive fixed a few of these, i will have to go thru the all the maps and fix all of them and customize more, im dreading it, its gonna take forever lol. yes some duped mapping was lazy sorry lol and your right i was spending most my time with all the cool scripts. I am fully planning to add things to the few empty houses and make the shops in castle town not duplicates, and add more to the festival (gotta get some festival tilesets) Which i didnt understand why u thought minigames didnt belong at a festival. Anyways just trying to explain some things lol thank you so much again, im glad that most the problems are just mapping probs and not gameplay/story probs. I will improve on character development tho, thats great advice. And i agree the state animation loop sounds are annoying i meant to remove them. i love it when people play my game, thats what drives me to make it better. Anyways I got alot to work on! Thanks for playing! I hope it can be great one day also!

Edited September 19, 2014 by Ltbenjamin

[DaXigua 2]

Thanks for the response! Just to clarify, it's not that I didn't think the minigames belonged in the festival. I just thought they weren't really integrated into the world well. Think about how the mini games are integrated into the fabric of the towns in The Legend of Zelda series if you need an example. Also, the games should give you something useful or be important! Many of the mini games in RPGs give important items or are necessary for the hero to complete his quest.

 

Anyway, you have a really great attitude towards improvement and I am super excited to see how this game continues to develop. Let me know when you have updates and I will be happy the play through them :-)

 

Best of luck!

[Ltbenjamin 4]

[+ LadyMinerva 998]

Hi Ben! I'm still playing your demo but I'm currently busy with a lot of things at the moment. I'll let you know how it is in a few days or whenever I get the free time to do so. :3 For now DaXigua pretty much says a lot of the points I would say too, but so far I really like the idea and concept. But I'm more into the combat system since I'm a Victor-user myself.  I'll let you know about that soon as well!

Edited September 22, 2014 by LadyMinerva

[Ltbenjamin 4]

Thanks for the support! I have a long list of things to fix, time is an issue for me as well. I've been doing alot of research lately....

and by research I mean playing old super nintendo games on my phone to get ideas. All of the issues are simple clicks to fix I just got to get around to it. Hope you enjoy! 

 

some fixes i'm thinking about/working on are:

 

*more custom skills

*more map details

*map passability fixes

*chest/door direction fixes/animation /sounds (alot are fine theres just some new places i did in a rush)

*new state animation loops (remove sound)

*castle town has same stores as porttown (i duplicated the maps for time) im going to make them custom.

*making the festival games more meaningful and intros to them

*festival tileset things for the festival

*add more people and quests

*more character development

*more story

*more places

*and of course finish the game and the other two worlds

*face/sprite matching (some have slipped past me I have to playthru to find alot of these errors)

*adding jobs? blue mage lv27 ect.   blood knight, 

*adding action bars where it takes time to use a skill again ect

*removing enemy healthbars (or at least for non bosses) idk yet

*more scenes and intros

*more skill sound effects

*make the scenes look better (character positioning and animations)

*dialogue box fixes

 

Thanks for all your help and ideas!

just a matter of hammering out the little things and getting back to the fun part (story progress)

I believe im done with scripts it has enough to make it look and play great (although they arent needed I love the cool features) 

Edited September 22, 2014 by Ltbenjamin

[Ltbenjamin 4]

DaXigua said I should not encrypt my game files. What is everyone's views on this? It's not that I don't trust people it's because alot of the content is purchased and is not permitted to be shared by the purchaser agreement. I would love to not encrypt it, so if theres a part that gets stuck you wont have to redownload and possibly have to replay it. what are your views on this? btw there is a way to decrypt it. I had to decrypt mine one time because it got corrupted and all my uploads were encrypted. and im definitely not promoting this except in my case it was my own game and an emergency (i almost lost all 400+ hrs of my work becuase the power went out during a storm while i was saving the game lol)

Edited September 28, 2014 by Ltbenjamin

[Ltbenjamin 4]

I put up an updated version. Its not a huge update. But i changed some things with the battle system and skills, also polished a few other things like the minigames. Now u can try to collect festival coins thru games and win a prize. Also made the duped stores custom

[Ltbenjamin 4]

Finally fixed the problem with the battle system items and skills use making the actors step back and not return forward.

also added a few skills with the help of ladyminerva's examples! Added cooldown on some powerful skills so you cant just spam one skill. added mogs weather ex also from an example of ladyminervas game! ok so i like the way that game looks lol 

That will be my last script i add i promise......maybe. also made some of the dialogue scenes better with the characters moving and looking at each other. and the bees at the intro dont just appear they fly towards you before the battle begins. okedoke so im happy with the progress.

[+ LadyMinerva 998]

Hehe~ I would really love to see a video of that. :3

[Ltbenjamin 4]

[+ LadyMinerva 998]

Really cool! I know where and which part of the sequence you used from my skills

For now I think you should try to create your own skills and use the ones that I give you as an idea since my skills are not Kaduki-weapon icon compatible xD Other than that, I wish everything well for your demo/completed project. I'll send you more lists of skills if you like to get some more skill ideas.

[Ltbenjamin 4]

Heeey i do make some myself! Lol two were yours. Theres a few i borrowed from victor and about ten i made from scratch. I figured out how to make my own just by fiddling with the examples. Im still no expert at it but i got the basics of the sequencing down. I wanna make some that show pictures of battle faces and background effects. I took the custom poses off yours and added icons. Although i didnt take time to make the icons look good. I plan to make more and make all my skills better. Gotta make some more custom animations too. I was playing with then all day today figuring it out. Thanks for the help! If you got some favorites id love to see them! Maybe a video of your favorite skills? Your skills are great but i dont have super sprites like yours lol so many poses u use! I just made the video for you tho i wont steal ur awesome skills. Im just was learning some from them. I altered all the victor ones alot. I think he made them fast for examples or he updated his script without updating some sequencing. Or Maybe its cause i have 50 other scripts lol but i had to change alot of his stuff.

Edited October 3, 2014 by Ltbenjamin

[+ LadyMinerva 998]

Haha I know I know, those co-op skills we're a nice touch. I haven't done any co-op skills so I'm really interested in trying them out.

Keep it up Ben, Victor's takes a little time to understand so if you need any help on skills, let me know! and lol don't worry about stealing or so,

If it helps you learn, then it's okay. xD

[Ltbenjamin 4]

just started using the unity game engine. making a game with some friends for the app store. gonna be a outragous doom type shooter

 

hopefully ill hurry and finish this game up and put it on the completed games section

[Ltbenjamin 4]

updated the game. fixed the leaves blowing still inside the buildings. 

[Tejas 35]

Instead of using RTP you must use custom tileset. It will add a different charm to your game. And the story is pretty nice but it lacks a artistic look which mkght not be able to catch attention of players and other developers.

[Ltbenjamin 4]

i dont know what you mean. it has some rtp but it has mostly custom tiles. people say it needs more decorations but it looks full to me idk

ill take a look and try to improve it

[Ltbenjamin 4]

the pass thru issues are just a few bushes I haven't made into events that are passable. and the rest I just either havent seen or didnt think they were a big deal.

I see what your saying tho. the empty space is his yard. I guess i made some maps to big or didn't feel they needed to be covered with trees but i see what you mean now thanks.

as for the different tile sets and sprites (the high fantasy part is when it shows a flashback of when their parents getting sucked into a alternate dimension and everything looks different. I 

realize its surprising and it didn't turn out as good as i envisioned i will have to work on it. some tilesets like rtp and ds dont seem all that much different to me, but I guess its more noticeable than i thought.

The features are really cool but the looks could be changed to fit more with this game. haven't had time to redo a full scale game with different tilesets and menus. This is my first game and i've learned alot.  some of it (princess) and other things were meant to be funny. many games swap between on-screen encounters and battlecreens especially for big bosses. but i really did that as a test to see if i wanted the whole game like that. thanks everyone! 

Edited November 21, 2014 by Ltbenjamin

[Ltbenjamin 4]

cant wait for the new middleware to come out so i can port this game to android! prolly be a year away tho