Pirate Rush

[Wendell 81]

OMG I'm downloading it right now!

 

Edit: Galv, I'll give you all my thoughts about your FANTASTIC game when I finish it.For now I think I've found a little bug... In this 2 screens:

 

 

-

 

 

The red circle is a path that leads me to the previous screen (the one with the tent and the merchant, and also the healing spring) instead of leading me to the right way. Is that right?

Edited June 25, 2012 by Wendell

[Galv 1,387]

What is happening is actually no bug - but I should probably have more of an explanation in-game.

Perhaps I should have Vex get confused... "Huh, why am I back here? There's something funny about these woods..."

 

There's a method of getting through the woods that I am hoping you can work out

 

EDIT: Let me know if you don't figure it out, I'll add some spoilers

Edited June 25, 2012 by Galv

[Wendell 81]

Oh, I'm sorry. I should have paid more attention.

 

Amazing work of yours huh?! The scenes are very exciting, the interiors and the overall mapping is perfect, and the Fuzzy Bunny face when you hit him is hillarious

I can't stop playing.

 

ps: I've figured out how to find the right way through the woods. Absolutely amazing.

Edited June 25, 2012 by Wendell

[+ Novem 344]

Okay, so I'm about 20 minutes in and these are my impressions so far...

 

1. The graphics are EXCELLENT, I just love the look of everything and the mapping is spot on. The characters are also pretty good looking to.

 

2. I'm in absolute love with your combat system. It's pretty awesome (although I wish I could keep combos going longer), and pretty interactive. Although, perhaps you could make it a little more difficult to chain attacks. It doesn't really require good timing, and I think it would feel more involved if it did. By the way, what is it? It's something I'd definitely love to play around with myself...

 

3. The pirate dialogue is great. It sounds just like it should.

 

4. The music rocks, it reminds me of my days playing The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker (which is actually my favorite of the series, ^^).

 

5. Healing items are a bit to scarce. I'm stuck because I keep dying in that cave because there are no healing items around and I'm low on health most of the time. You also put the merchant before the forest maze (which I got through with the help of my trusty dog! lol), but before the forest maze is when I had no money to spend and nothing really to sell. You should probably put him after, near the cave to so that the player can buy the items they need without backtracking to far.

 

I'll add more after I can get past this damn cave!

[Wendell 81]

Galv, right after I save the ladies I get the treasure map, right? When I take the shovel I also see the treasure map poping up. Is that right? I only had 1 treasure map, even with both pop upings.

[Galv 1,387]

2. I'm in absolute love with your combat system. It's pretty awesome (although I wish I could keep combos going longer), and pretty interactive. Although, perhaps you could make it a little more difficult to chain attacks. It doesn't really require good timing, and I think it would feel more involved if it did. By the way, what is it? It's something I'd definitely love to play around with myself...

Good timing isn't required for his combos, but when you start earning more skills, they will be giving you choices of which skills to be using in each combo. Stamina management will be coming into play more then. (and more attacks for you! haha)

It's Yanfly's chain attack script (http://yanflychannel...e-chain-skills/)

 

5. Healing items are a bit to scarce. I'm stuck because I keep dying in that cave because there are no healing items around and I'm low on health most of the time. You also put the merchant before the forest maze (which I got through with the help of my trusty dog! lol), but before the forest maze is when I had no money to spend and nothing really to sell. You should probably put him after, near the cave to so that the player can buy the items they need without backtracking to far.

This is a good point. I'll definitely do something about this.

 

 

Galv, right after I save the ladies I get the treasure map, right? When I take the shovel I also see the treasure map poping up. Is that right? I only had 1 treasure map, even with both pop upings.

Hmm, that shouldn't happen. The treasure map drops when you defeat the pirates. It shouldn't pop up anywhere else.

I will try to replicate it. Any more details on what you did to make that happen would be helpful if you remember

 

Thanks for the comments, guys

Edited June 25, 2012 by Galv

[Wendell 81]

Well, first I defeated the two pirates and saved the ladies. Then, it showed that I've got the map. Then I crossed the bridge, defeated the last pirate. After that I took the shovel, but the treasure map also poped up right before the shovel.

 

Amazing game, I must say.

 

And I have to agree with Niko, a merchant in the entrance of the cave would be great. The enemies are a bit too hard I think, they have a lot of HP.

[Galv 1,387]

One question before I decide how much to tweak the enemy difficulty - did you guys work out how to learn new skills? And if so, which skill did you decide to get? Interesting to see what you do there

[+ Novem 344]

Yea, I use the same Learn Skill Engine in my game, so I knew how it works. I do feel you gain LP a bit slowly, I've been playing for about 45 minutes now and I've only been able to get one skill (Combo --> Flurry).

 

Oh, and a bit more feedback.

 

1. The first cave puzzle was very clever, just solved it after about 10 minutes of trying. It did drag on a bit long, but overall, it was great. Although following up that rather long puzzle with yet another puzzle was... disheartening. Maybe try spacing apart your puzzles a bit more. Have something interesting occur in-between?

 

2. Still having trouble with the enemies due to the lack of healing items. I can take them out just fine, and I have some gold, but I'd rather die and let my HP fill back up then go all the way back through the forest maze first (besides, going back through and coming back ends up with all of the healing items I bought used up anyways, -.-).

 

3. I like the awards! I didn't know there was a script for something like that in VX Ace yet... Sorry, can you direct me to that one to, XD

 

4. I think the boss in the cave was a bit hard, but that's only because I had no healing items (okay, I'll stop making the same point over and over again now!).

 

I'll get back to you with more...

[Galv 1,387]

1. Good point there, didn't even think about that (Definitely something I needed to be told )

2. All the healing items you buy get used up, but you also keep all the loot to sell to compensate for this. But yeah, I'll do something about the healing items, no need to keep making that point

3. Achievement system by Tomoaky (http://hikimoki.sakura.ne.jp/)

4. Do you mean the pirate boss is too hard? I wasn't actually expecting that one. There's another boss after him that's very hard haha.

[+ Novem 344]

4. Do you mean the pirate boss is too hard? I wasn't actually expecting that one. There's another boss after him that's very hard haha.

 

Yea, I meant that one. But pretty much everybody is hard to kill... XD

 

Oh, and I just made it to the last boss with the Jade Razor. He's absolutely ridiculously hard. Every time you take down his allies, they just spring right back up unless you have him stunned. I used up all three healing items you gave and I only managed to get him down by 3 quarters. The battle really drags on to, it should be fine if you drop his health by a bit. Not to mention will you please make him more susceptable to getting stunned, lol

 

I also forgot to mention that you should reduce the amount of enemies in the puzzle areas, especially the second one. I kept getting swarmed so a puzzle that I should've been able to solve in a few minutes turned into a slog that took me 15 even after I figured it out. It was pretty infuriating.

 

I accidentally loaded myself to before I entered the cave (commences hair pulling) so I can't put any feedback as to what happens after that last boss. I'll get back to you later, :S

Edited June 25, 2012 by Niko Jose DelValle

[Galv 1,387]

I guess it was cruel to keep spawning enemies when you douse the torches... haha. I'll tone that down a lot.

 

As for the boss being more susceptible to getting stunned - he's just as likely to get stunned as everyone else, you might be getting unlucky haha.

 

This is great feedback, I appreciate it, Niko

You are becoming bald pulling your hair out so other people (who play after I fix things) don't have to

[+ Novem 344]

Absolutely no problem Galv! It's my pleasure to be of assistance. I'm a very critical person, so I actually enjoy testing and giving feedback and expressing my opinions. Plus, I love helping other players out. If you need anybody to test your future versions, I'm your man (plus I get to play earlier, wait, did I say that out loud!? ).

[Galv 1,387]

Galv, right after I save the ladies I get the treasure map, right? When I take the shovel I also see the treasure map poping up. Is that right? I only had 1 treasure map, even with both pop upings.

Ahh, I see what you meant there now - thanks for picking up on that one.

 

I've made some tweaks and updated the download in my original post.

 

Changes made if interested:

- The first dungeon map is a simple puzzle now that shouldn't be frustrating or take much time - being more learning about moving things for the next puzzle.

- There is no spawning toads whenever you get the fire puzzle wrong now. I admit that was a cruel punishment.

- Boss has less Hp so doesn't take so long to kill, but he remains difficult until you learn the trick.

- Shop keeper is outside of temple now for you to buy/sell items.

- There's a magic box that gives you the heal-all items before the boss. If you use them all and die, you can get them from the magic box again.

- other various tweaks to enemies.

[+ Novem 344]

Thanks Galv! That should make it much easier to finish, and a much smoother gameplay experience. I also do honestly enjoy your clever puzzles, it just felt for an early game puzzle it was a bit to difficult and dragged on to long. Feel free to get creative and elaborate later though!

 

I also have to say I really enjoyed that fire puzzle, it was creative and simple, while also being flashy. You should do a puzzle tutorial, because that was an excellent example of good puzzle making.

[Galv 1,387]

If anyone finds any bugs, please let me know. Niko actually found a game-breaking one that happens when you are defeated by the boss. It breaks the parallax and also blocks the passage to get back to the boss. I'm interested to see if anyone else gets this as I can't replicate it.

 

I've updated the homepage download link with some more bug fixes.

[RavenTDA 19]

Hey I just wanted to say I really liked playing your demo. It was well polished and a lot of fun. I really adored the dog and the sniffing animation in the forest it did. Pretty cute. I also liked the way you made the maps using various background pieces of xp and ace. I thought that was rather different and it turns out nice. As a little thanks for enjoying the demo so much I made a quick faceset edit for your character Mia:

I don't have the actual original to edit but I figure you can replace the face/hair as you like if you want to. If you happen to use it please also give credits to Jalen since I worked with a lot of pieces from her. Hope you like it. Can't wait to play more of your game. :3

[Galv 1,387]

That's a nice face I like it a lot - the hair perfectly matches the battler I am using for Mia better than my current image for her. Thanks for posting it for me and the comments. Glad you enjoyed it

[Harmill 5]

I really wanted to play this all the way through, but I've gotten some RGSS crashes during battles with the toads. I got Alpha, and then I went into the woods and started battling those toads so I could get to Lv.2. After I won a few battles, it would crash at the beginning of the next one. It's probably a problem on my end (though I don't know what's causing it - it's never happened on any other RM game I've played). I'll try again and avoid grinding off those toads and hopefully it doesn't show up again. I really like the atmosphere of the game for the 15 minutes I played though

[Galv 1,387]

Thanks for letting me know. Please do let me know if it happens again and what the error is (so I can google it to try to find out what's happening)

[Harmill 5]

It's not an error report. It's like when you have a program that freezes, and a pop up comes up saying "X has stopped responding" and you have the option of choosing to end program now or to wait for it to respond (which it never does). In this case, it's actually RGSS that stops responding, which might be more related to some other problems I've had with my laptop. My laptop has been having off-and-on problems for a year or so where my Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer, but like, what you use to search through My Documents and such) will stop responding when I try to type something in the Run command or the search bar in My Documents. Restarting the computer usually fixes this until the next time it occurs. If these are related, then it's not a problem for you to worry about.

[Galv 1,387]

I've had another who got the same(?) crash as well, so I don't think it's just your laptop and it does concern me greatly. Maybe I'm pushing the limits of what the software can do too hard... not sure yet haha.

[Harmill 5]

Aw I got it again; this time it was in the Jade Temple after pushing two stone boulders onto the switches. :wacko:

 

But this is really well done. Everything has had a lot of attention and nothing seems to be lacking. The maps are gorgeous and I feel that your choice of music tracks fits each map/scene perfectly and really enhances the atmosphere of the game. The lost forest section was clever and creative (I'm planning on using a similar method for my own lost forest-esque section)! And the boulder puzzles were pretty good; they do their job in making me think without being too hard.

 

The treasure map idea is fantastic and suits your game's theme perfectly! I've played some games that use this but they are often too large and the map is too vague that it becomes overly difficult to determine which area the map is referring to. I think it was a smart choice to make the first treasure:

on the previous area from where you find the map.

 

 

The loot also suits your game perfectly, too. I really like how you can interact with almost everything, and search for spare items in pretty much anything that looks like it could potentially hold something.

 

This part is nitpicking, but I'll say it anyways. When you first find the Jade Temple, you have the option of fighting the two guards when the patrolling one isn't looking, or to battle all three at once. I really like this idea, but I couldn't help but be dumbfounded how the patrolling wouldn't hear his mates shouting as they spot Vex. It almost seemed like if you initiate the fight while the patrolling guard has his back turned, then he instead joins the fight a couple turns later or something. But like I said, it's just nitpicking because you could also just say that the pirate is too drunk to notice.

 

I'm interested in further developing my character because I noticed that as soon as I purchased Flurry with my LP, a new skill showed up for me to learn. Also, even though it says that Alpha gained 50 LP when he leveled up, he still had 0 in the menu. I assume he'll never be able to learn abilities with LP?

 

I'll post more thoughts if I can get further without this peculiar crash showing up.

[Galv 1,387]

Thanks for all the comments, very much appreciated! I am disappointed that it's crashing so much for you, though - I do apologise for that. Can I ask if you're using Windows 7? So far that's the common denominator.

 

Also thanks for pointing out that it says Alpha gets 50 LP for levelling up... he's not meant to get any as he will be gaining skills on level up instead of you choosing for him. I'll have to look into that one

And that's a good point about the pirate on the bridge. I'll ponder that one, too.

[Harmill 5]

I'm using Windows 7. Also, I downloaded the demo before you made the adjustments you listed on Page 3 of this topic. Reading the changes, it doesn't seem too different but I suppose I'll update and restart when I next sit down to play this.