Aether Chronicles: Key to Heaven (Demo Available)

[Mushinronja]

Hey all, finally got enough progress done so I could feel good posting again, lol. So, I played through the whole game again to see if it all worked, which it did, I opened the next area for myself to test and found out I made the enemies wayyyyy too bulky, and I added some more conversation spots. Also went ahead and named some more skills as placeholders, lol. Each of the main characters have 100 slots for skills allotted to them, but idk if i'll be filling them up.

I made it tougher to get new skills by upping their SP costs, so as to prevent getting too many skills too early, and though I was initially against it, I probably will make each skill's progressive level locked until you get the earlier one. 

 

[Oddball]

I made it tougher to get new skills by upping their SP costs, so as to prevent getting too many skills too early, and though I was initially against it, I probably will make each skill's progressive level locked until you get the earlier one. 

I'm glad my playtesting helped, and sometimes we have to make changes that we really don't want to. Looking back though, I'm kind of laughing about how I could PWN! all the enemies in the aether facility when I had soooooooooooo much trouble getting past just one the first time i downloaded your game

 

[Mushinronja]

You did start the game in there cuz of my mistake, so you sure had one heck of a disadvantage there, lol. Balancing in general is tough though, I'm basically throwing semi-random stats up and seeing if they stick. Once you get the 4th party member, however, I'm expecting fights to get much tougher.... Though it's because you'll have a myriad of options available to you, so enemies (mainly bosses) will have to push all of your decisions in skill learning to the test.

 

[Mushinronja]

Maps! Nearly done with the next part of the game, and that means I'll probably be putting up a new demo soon too.

Spoiler

 

[bgillisp]

I keep meaning to check this out! Posting so it stays on my list of topics so I can find it and download it when I'm not on a public computer.

 

[Oddball]

I love your forests

they are starting to look a little repetitious though. Although i think you can get away with that with forests, just not with towns

 

[Mushinronja]

Yea, there's only so much I can do with the resources I have atm, lol. That being said, I'm keeping the areas at the beginning of the game looking similar because they're all in the same area. The area of the game the demo currently takes place in is characterized by the forest that looks like these and yellow flowers. Other areas will look different for sure. 

The next town isn't completely fleshed out yet, but I think I've done well in making it look more condensed than the first town. Of course, you won't be able to explore more than one part of the actual city, to make the illusion of size, lol. 

Spoiler

 

[Mushinronja]

Progress is.... progressing, if a bit slowly. Workin on a boss fight, and it currently seems like it's a pretty tough one. If you don't fight it the "right" way you might get in a tough situation, but i was able to clutch it out with a bit of luck. 

Oh, and added cast animations because I had no idea who was casting buffs in enemy troops, lol. 


Actual spoilers if you've played my game, lol. 

Spoiler

 

[bgillisp]

So is the demo not available right now? Your download link on the front page gives a 404 error.

 

[Mushinronja]

Man, what the heck is with me and these uploads? lol. 

Well I checked and although the link on the front page works, I don't think I moved it. I re-copied and shall place here and on the front page. If that doesn't work, then I may put the demo dl on hold since I'm almost done with the next section and thusly the next demo I'll put out. 

No RTP

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s42pkoko7vv39ka/Aether%20Chronicles%20Key%20to%20Heaven%20NORTP3.exe?dl=0


RTP

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x3so6q7ihpgcw3e/Aether%20Chronicles%20Key%20to%20Heaven%20RTP3.exe?dl=0

 

[Mushinronja]

Currently going through all the dialogue to try and further define each of the character's's's characters, lol.

Grissam's being more chill, Nacht is more brash and confident, and Alemmi is stayin pretty much the same.

Some of the other characters are getting more dialogue as well, and I added a new npc named Scholar, who can give some history on the areas you meet him in.

New demo soon, probably, relatively...

 

[Oddball]

Grissam's being more chill

He just had his home town destroyed. Unless he's in the denial stage I would have expected him to be more chill after going through grief. You could do like I'm doing in my game and make the character think it's all a bad dream and that they will wake up soon. If you do have them go through grief though, when they get to the depression stage, have them keep fighting through there depression. that shows a strong charecter

 

[Mushinronja]

Well I meant he's more chill in general, mostly before the bad stuff starts. He'll respond more appropriately to bad situations, but even in the thick of it he's a laid-back, cool-headed sort of dude that goes with the flow. Contrasts with Nacht, who would choose to fight fire with a bigger fire.

Grissam's growth throughout the story will most likely show how he goes from a go with the flow kind of guy to one who takes things more seriously. Standing up for his ideals and having stuff to protect, etc

 

[Oddball]

Ah! Well that makes more sense than

By the way. I've never been able to get risk to work when I tried to use it. But maybe that's what you were going for?

 

[Mushinronja]

It doesn't work? Risk as in the buff move that cuts defense? Hmm, I've set it to be a skill that adds a buff I made called Risk, and it's set to certain hit. Though, maybe it was an issue that was in the current version of the demo that I've fixed since then.

So if that's the case, sorry about that. It seems to work in testing on my side.

 

[bgillisp]

Got through the demo this afternoon. Here's what I noticed:

Spoiler

-I noticed that you have some NPC's with stepping animation on and some with it off. My suggestion is either go all on or all off, right now it just looks a tad odd to me

-In the room where you start, I can interact with the book on the floor but nothing else? I'd suggest either making it so that everything can be interacted with or nothing, else the player may not know when an interaction will do something or not.

-After the explosion, he says I should go find Alemmi, but with no indication where she is. I'd give the player a hint as not everyone will have explored the town and caught the subtle hint as to where she tends to hang out before that event happens.

-The boss in the facility (Kriez) is way too hard in my opinion. I got to him low on MP, almost out of potions, and no option to go back to town to get more. You either need more MP regenerating places in the facility, a place to rest, or a way to back out or something. As it is I won that battle only by spamming guard + Alemmi's skill that lets the target regen HP + Aether (when I had the TP). So I'd either make it so the party can regain MP better or lower the difficulty of that fight.

-Many of your buffs have an extra [] at the end. Error in Yanfly's script or your state description?

-Speaking of Yanfly, I did notice you have many of Yanfly's scripts, but not the system one? Most players would like the option to turn dash on or off, so that might be something to look at adding.

-In the facility, b2E, south room, if you decide to retreat, the door opens and shows you about to walk through a solid wall.

Those are the suggestions to fix that I have. Looks pretty sharp though for a demo, decent start to the story. When do we get to play the rest of the game?

 

[Mushinronja]

Thanks for playing, and now to address those points:

- With stepping and non-stepping, I kinda figured I'd use it to simulate when somebody is kinda more active than others who are standing more still. OF course these are all little sprites so I don't think it translates well. So I think I may take your suggestion, though idk which would be better, all stepping or not.

- Yeah, well I tried to make most books and things clickable, but I think I should add more to everything. Of course, that'll take time.
 

- Fair enough, I'll add that she's at the sanctuary or sumthin.

- It's good that he's tough but, having to resort to laming it out is definitely an issue. I'd more prefer if he wiped you, lol. I may add some more mp healing spots, it's a magic facility there should be a bunch or something.

- I don't know how to fix that

- And I don't really know what that is, shall look it up, lol.

- And I don't know what that means, but I shall look into it.


Thanks for the feedback. As for the full game, that'll take a whiiiillle, lol. I imagine the game in 3 big segments like story arcs, and this demo is basically 1/3rd of segment 1. That being said a new demo will/should/might be coming out soon enough, and that will actually be the entirety of the first third of the first third of the game, lol.

 

[bgillisp]

Based on what I've seen on the forums, I'd suggest going non-stepping. That seems to be what most prefer, saving stepping for things like the maid cleaning away and such. Though, some games (Disgaea, Legend of Heroes) go all stepping, and no one seems to mind that too much either. So hard to say. Maybe just leave it for now and ask for opinions from some others?

I figured it might take a while to add the rest. I started with books and such in my game too, and moved up as time permitted.

Was I actually not supposed to win that fight? I did wonder that due to the low MP. But yes, maybe 1 - 3 MP restore locations, though even one close to the fight would help a *lot*.

Here's the link for the system script I mentioned. Players can turn on or off dash as they wish in here. It defaults to auto-dash too, something you may need to keep in mind: http://yanflychannel.wordpress.com/rmvxa/menu-scripts/system-options/

As for the [] issue, I checked around more, and that appears to be (according to others) an error in the battle engine script. You are using Yanfly's battle engine, right? Edit: Found a fix for that. Go to scripts -> Ace Battle engine and scroll down until you find Pop_Up Settings -> :add_buff, and then delete the [ in that line (leave the rest, and don't delete the quotes, else it will crash next time anyone adds a buff. While you are there you may wish to make sure :add_debuff reads "%s", as well, as mine had extra characters on it.

The other fix is to not use buffs and use states instead for your buff type skills. I used those in my game instead of buffs/debuffs (as I hate the way RPGMaker handles buffs) and avoided that issue altogether.

 

[Mushinronja]

Oh I see, thanks for that fix info. Tho I think you may be right, and having them be states might be a better idea. Though idk what the actual effects of the buffs are, and I'm not sure if I could get stacking to work. I'd go for a single application being 25% then the cap being 50%.

And with that being said, I think I've got an idea for stacking in the middle of writing this, just have no stacking and make it so you'd need to do a single-person and group buff to get the 50%. Thanks for the discussion here, bgillisp

 

[bgillisp]

All I know is buffs are hard coded into the engine, and states you can control. For that reason I went states, as I wanted to be able to control them better. But in my game I didn't want buffs stacking anyways (it was an all or nothing system in the first place), so states it was. But your idea of single person + group buff could work too.