Aetheria: Shadows of the Past

[raynesu]

I was just thinking about this. In fact I was thinking of switching all structures to Celianna's buildings in order to maintain some consistency. Useful advice nonetheless. I personally don't think they clash as long as you don't compare buildings.

 

[IamGilgamesh]

Gonna check this out.

 

[raynesu]

My goodness I found a ton of bugs in the demo. Some real game-breaking ones too! Expect a fix coming out soon.

 

[Marquise*]

XD I thought it was one of your tester/players typing that!!!

 

[raynesu]

XD I thought it was one of your tester/players typing that!!!

Ha ha, I just wanted to try my own game and found a ton of bugs. Also it was really weird reading my own dialogue, I don't know if it was good or bad.

 

[Marquise*]

Our own work always needs revisions :3

 

[Lymmet]

The game doesen't have any connection to the commercial game Echoes of Aetheria, has it? Either way, this looks pretty promising.

 

[J-Ray]

Sounds interesting... Going to try it.

 

[raynesu]

The game doesen't have any connection to the commercial game Echoes of Aetheria, has it? Either way, this looks pretty promising.

Holy Cow! I didn't even know that game existed! Looks like a good one too! >.> Maybe it's time to change the title.... lol


Anyways thanks for all the interest from all you guys, I appreciate it. It has been a little slow releasing more content because I am currently on vacation . Please expect to see some big updates soon though, a week or so, because I have fixed the aforementioned game breaking bugs. Unfortunately my upload speed stinks here so sorry for the wait.

 

[raynesu]

As promised, I've updated the demo with the bug fixes.


Thanks for your patience. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

[raynesu]

For those who are interested in my ramblings, I've decided to start making some weekly pseudo-blog posts highlighting things and problems I plan to work on and address.


So...


IT'S TIME FOR A 

Yeehaw.


3 main problems I want to address:


1. After seeing other people's projects I have come to realize that my battle system can use some work! In my opinion, I get the feeling that my current system is currently a little basic and I want to improve it! Suggestions welcome!


2. Another thing I want to improve on is my crafting system + weapon/armor systems. My intention for the crafting system was to give players the opportunity to customize their character to specialize into different skills. I want to add more customization to the system giving players even more choices.


3. Finally, I am still not to satisfied with the state of the demo so more work will be done.


That's all this week. Check in again next week for more updates.

 

[parallax]

So i haven't finished the demo yet, but here are some things i've taken note of.

• The time between turns is far too long. I find myself losing interest rapidly during down time and while it has some positive points, it just feels too time consuming to fight more than what you absolutely need to.
  
• No enemy HP bar is a 50/50 toss up, it could be good for more engaging fights, but at the same time it kinda bothers me because i like to know what the enemy has got left.
  
• Quest markers are always hand holdy and immersion breaking, if that is something you care about, it really isn't that big a deal, just an observation.
  
• No dashing in towns, or if that is just at night, is very painful when it comes to getting around.
  
• A few items I saw have no description of what they do, like the Return Feather and Libra in one of the shops.
  
• Wood is in this log..? Maybe change that, it sounds kinda silly.
  
• Gathering takes too long for how many nodes you put into the world.
  
• No reward for beating the big baddie in the mine?
  

However some good points..

• Refreshing to see some custom sprites, its what made me download the demo.
  
• The mechanics of the fights are interesting, despite being slow paced. The weather system is a nice unique touch.
  

I can't think of anything else right now, but there are others, I just can't remember specifics right now.


Conclusion is I'd like to play more of it if the combat pacing was made faster.

 

[raynesu]

Thank you for your suggestions. I was trying to change my battle system and I find your advice very helpful! Also those bugs you caught too! I'll get right on it. I will add dashing in towns as well, though will probably keep it off in dungeons. I don't know if I'll add a health bar to enemies, I an older build I did have this feature, though ran into problems with the script later down the road. I sought to fix this with the scan ability and the libra, which is an item form of the ability(sorry for no description). The return wing should not be in the game just yet because I am still fiddling with it. 


Your concern about gathering is also noted. Perhaps I'll try to lower the number and increase the yield or just overhaul it, I'll keep everyone posted.


Once again thank you for your feedback.

 

[raynesu]

So it's time for another

Sorry about the image above again, I really like it


After reading people's comments I have made some adjustments to the battle system.


- ATB fill speed has been drastically increased (about 100% faster). In order to compensate for this, ATB has changed from semi-active to wait, meaning ATB and time freezes when selecting your actions.


- Healing after combat has been removed and FP (My analogue to TP) is now retained after battle. I wanted to do this to promote party management.


-Begun work on a more comprehensive skill tree system. Take a look!

Spoiler

Overall I do like Yanfly's JP system and skill learning system, however it did not allow for people to see the entirety of the skills available to them. What I really aim to accomplish with this is to incentivize people to invest heavily into a tree and building their characters based around an end goal, I think this system for skill learning will help accomplish this. 


Additionally, to make the demo a bit more interesting I am also trying to flush out the side quest and main quest's stories.


Crafting system is also being redone, there will be less nodes to collect from but they will have a chance to yield more.In the old system a failure to gather resulted in only 1 material being gathered, this has been changed to a range (1-3). Successful gathers have also increased yields (5-7). You also do not obtain logs from wood, but rather trees.


More updates as well as yet another updated demo to come in the future.

 

[raynesu]

I got 2 things for you guys this week:


The first is a continuation of my revamped Skill Tree System, below are all the skill trees I have made so far with all the currently available skills.

Spoiler

So the first one you've seen before, it's raid's magic and special trees


Magic:

Special:

Here's Rylus's magic and special trees


Magic:

Special:

Ciel only has a special tree right now

Emille only has a magic tree

So skills are bought with skill points. Characters receive 1 skill point per level up and can receive bonus skill points on completion of some quests. There is currently no way to reset these points but I'm working on it. Skills in each tree are broken into tiers (The rows each skill is on), which cost more as you progress down the tree. There are no level restriction on skills, so with enough points one could rush to the highest tier of skills. 


The second thing added this week are voices when in battle. While battling I felt as if there was a lack of character interaction with the player so I added voices ^.^


Here's a short video of a battle. I think it turned out well, other than the start voice being sort of over the ready one during a preemptive strike.


Video Link Here

 

[raynesu]

Hopefully you guys aren't getting tired of this. :^)


New Demo Progress:


This week the main focus was shoring up my demo. The original demo, in my opinion, was not up to standard, so I've gone back and edited it. So far I've gone through and balanced many of the encounters with my skill tree system. Additionally I've updated the quests to include skill points as rewards. The skill trees seen in the previous update are all the skills that are included in the demo, though more are on the way. Additionally, the 2 towns in the demo have been expanded; I added an additional dungeon as well as making the small houses accessible. Also there are a few more side quests added to the demo. Currently I am still play testing my game to make sure the encounters are balanced as well as working properly so bear with me .


Weather Update:


The weather buffs in battle have changed. I've consolidated the effects of weather such as AGI up and DEF down into single weather icons. Additionally I made nighttime itself count as a weather effect because I got the feeling while play testing that night in my game needed some more treachery to it. So now you get a negative weather effect for night . Additionally, during nighttime many buildings in town will now be closed. This includes people's homes and shops, though the bar and inn will always be open during night.  


Trait System:


A minor system that I've implemented is the trait system. Traits occupy the default accessories slot and cannot be removed. Traits will give small boosts such as increased health or critical rate for example, but also have more interesting effects such as negating the negative effects of weather. This is still a work in progress so stay tuned.


A new demo should be released sometime next week. Hopefully, please look forward to it and as always thanks for your support and time!  

 

[raynesu]

This week is the release of my game's demo. (V. 1.0) I believe this will be the official release of the demo where I am happy with the state it is in. The first post has also been updated for the demo as a few things have changed. The new demo includes the new skill system, trait system, updated battle system, additional side quests, and much more. Additionally I have tried to thoroughly play test the game doing every quest available, and I think (hope >.<) that there are no more big bugs left. My playtime for the whole demo doing most of the side quests is just under 3 hours. If you find and bug or have any feedback I would love to hear it! Thanks for your time and enjoy!     

 

[parallax]

First off, I have no idea why its trying to quote you. The reply system seems to be completely broken for me right now, so I'm lucky this is even letting me reply on any level. Anyways, I spent about 3 hours with the game and here are some notes I made, some are just nit picky, but it is up to you to decide how valuable they are.

1. You should remove or greatly lower the gusting wind sound from the festival cut-scene, it competes with the music too much.
   
2. This is one of those nit picky ones, not being able to run when fighting all those bandits in town, I just like to get places fast is all.
   
3. After defeating the bandits in town I'm unsure how I feel about being healed by the system, I feel like it takes away from any tension and babysits the player a bit.
   
4. During the Mayor's house battles I found that First Aid is extremely overpowered and that you are given far too many potions and none are really needed, again due to First Aid. First Aid in general negates the need for potions, for the entirety of my play-through the exception being during boss battles where it isn't enough and potions are needed, but besides those times First Aid completely makes potions worthless unless in dire emergency. It's mostly op i think because Raid doesn't use FP for nearly anything at all, so he can just heal, heal, heal. 
   
5. Early fights feel very button mashy, I was able to look away and eat my soup without even thinking about anything but spacebar, spacebar, spacebar. I don't know if you wanted the bandits to be complete mooks or not, just as the usual introductory "grunts" that most rpgs have.
   
6. The door on the right side of the mansion has no collision, I'll post an image.
   
7. The pause while entering and exiting buildings in cities is odd, don't really like that. I believe it is so it can say the title of the city in the corner.
   
8. I was going to ask why it asked you if you wanted to upgrade an ability when leveling up, but i see its because you can get different ones, like agility up or evasion up, however I don't really like this as you can't seem to get the old ones back and you have no idea what new ones could be.
   
9. I don't understand armaments, whats the difference between upgrading with bones, wood or copper?
   
10. Heavensfall ability seems really underwhelming for the points needed to unlock it.
    
11. Bats, really overpowered at times. They spam Sonic Wave and the party just gets decimated real easy because of it.
    
12. After doing the tower quest Yven's model is the same, but is a different character in the bar.
    
13. Most of the collision in the kitchen area in that one building in Jezlan is gone.
    
14. Multiple empty item slots appear in the Jezlan armor shop.
    
15. No new upgrades can be found in Jezlan compared to what I could do in Albin, that saddens me.
    
16. Quick Nock needs to be looked at, 3 shots and each has a 50% chance to miss with what i'd assume is average or below average damage doesn't agree with me. I shot it once and missed all 3 shots and felt discouraged to ever use it again when I could rather get a near guaranteed hit with basic attack.
    
17. RNG to find the "rare bosses", took me 5 minutes and I never wanted to intentionally search for them again. I think you should add maybe something like kill...x amount of x monster to summon the rare hunt, or maybe an item you need to craft, like a lure, to bait them out of hiding.
    
18. Enviroment effects need to be explained more often, I have no idea what "night" or "light" or some of the other things do. I know what wind and rain do due to NPCs, but nothing else.
    
19. I don't recall if it is mentioned anywhere, but does anything tell you what stats really do, l assume the more agility you have the faster the character gets to attack, correct?
    
20. Lotsss of fetch quests, I am completely uninterested in doing any of them, though I did obviously so I can know what they are. But they were really boring and I didn't enjoy any of them.
    

Tower Dungeon Notes:

1. 4 Floors of the same grunts with no different floor design really made the dungeon a chore and I found no enjoyment in climbing it.
   
2. The Tower Guardian, props though he looks really cool, is nothing more than a giant hitpoints sponge, a MASSIVE one at that, I didn't have Scan or an item that scans, but I could tell his HP was huge and in comparison he didn't really do much, his damage was usually lackluster except if he got off his super ability, which was neat, I felt tension as I'm trying to just dps him or get my guard up near the end of the counter cause I had no idea what the hell he was going to do, I believe you also added the ability to stop his super if you break his Royal Guard, that was cool, I appreciated that feature.
   
3. The rewards, most important part I think, they were bad to put it bluntly. He himself drops nothing of note and being forced to choose a reward between "some coins" and two options of random items, I.E. probably garbage, are not good design and I can see that making a lot of players just rage quit, combined with his super sponge HP. I fought him twice to see what random items i could get, got some mana pots, those were nice. But I don't want to fight him more than that to find out what else he's hoarding.
   
4. Boss room design, this also goes in hand with the whole reward thing, I know its standard fare to have the boss have a **** ton of gold and loot, but players can never pick it up, I think you should remove it from his room as its a temptation players never get to satisfy. That is how I feel at least.
   
5. The replay-ability to farm the boss is nice, do the mobs get stronger the more times you climb cause it felt like they got stronger, mostly just more hp though.
   

That is all I can think of for now.

 

[parallax]

the collision image. 

 

[raynesu]

@parallax


Thank you so much for your feedback and your time! (and so much )


The obvious bugs you have pointed out are currently being fixed. Though let me address a few of your questions/concerns real quick


"Early fights feel very button mashy,"


Yeah, that was a concern I had, but I thought I should keep it that way to acclimate new players to the style.


" The pause while entering and exiting buildings in cities is odd, don't really like that..."


The pause only happens during night and the only reason it occurs is the events loading in, so I don't know how to fix it too well, but I'll try.


"I  was going to ask why it asked you if you wanted to upgrade an ability when leveling up..."


There is a planned feature in which you will be able to relearn forgotten traits, but this is for later.


"I don't understand armaments, whats the difference between upgrading with bones, wood or copper "


This is definitely something I overlooked. I played my game so much that the difference is known to me, but someone who doesn't know will find it hard to see the difference. I"ll try to make the difference more clear. The difference is that copper focuses on ATK, oak focuses on MAT, and bone is a balance of both.


"No new upgrades can be found in Jezlan compared to what I could do in Albin, that saddens me."


Sorry D: I've broken down the armors into tiers and for chapter one there is only tier 1 gear. This is just to give players some time to upgrade and use it. I don't want players trading off gear very fast.


"RNG to find the "rare bosses", took me 5 minutes and I never wanted..."


That is an excellent idea! I'll make sure to change/implement this in later versions.


"Environment effects need to be explained more often.."


When I made the weather I wanted them to be a mystery where you had to figure it out, though it seems that it only made people mad . 


"I don't recall if it is mentioned anywhere, but does anything tell you what stats really do... "


Most of the stats are the default for RPGmaker, though there are a few that I have changed such as AGI and LUK/VIT. I'll find somewhere to make this clear.


Tower Dungeon..


I'm glad that you enjoyed the boss, since it was so close to the start I made him mostly a damage sponge to make it easier, though your concerns about the boredom of climbing are heard. I'll go back to the drawing board to make the experience a little better, since it's actually going to part of a series of quests (there's going to be more towers). In regards of it getting harder, no there isn't anything making it harder other than the ambient enemy scaling. I'll look into changing the rewards as well.


Once again I want to thank you for spending, 3 hours? playing my game. I hope it wasn't that bad! Your comments are heard and will go into making a better game in the future!


I am going to re-release the demo, with the bugs you found fixed. Though the bigger things will not have changed just yet.