RMMV Craddle of Manae (demo available)

[HiddenCrops]

Cradle of Manae
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Hey everyone!
Here's a preview of a project I've worked on in my spare time for since 2018
This is the first time I'm making one and currently it is made predominantly with assets from RTP and other free resources.
What I have right now is an early preview of the project. Which basically still a work in progress. So non-core elements of the game might change in future development.

Feel free to chime in if you have questions, feedback or criticism of the game!

SYNOPSIS

Spoiler

• 
  Fantasy Genre
  Exploration
  Story Based
  Side Quests
  RTP turn based combat

OVERVIEW:
You will be trusted into a world with limited Magic as a girl named Ellie, an outsider of unknown origin who arrives at Sancha Town, while being tasked to join the Expedition Guild. After joining Guild you will encounter allies and enemies as well as uncover mysteries surrounding a calamity 30 years prior to your story.

As an Expeditioner your day-to-day job is to explore an area with up to 3 of your chosen fellow Expeditioner and kill powerful monsters that resides inside it. Killing monsters will grant you materials to craft powerful weapons, which in turn will help you in accessing more dangerous areas. Other than that town settlers and allies might give some personal request for you to do, and some request will have you choose the outcome of their story.


COMBAT:
The combat will use RTP turn based combat, and because Ellie is a Channeler, whose main ability is to drain MP (Manae Points) from an enemy, give MP to an ally, and unlocks an ally special skill that are called Potential, the majority of tactic will revolve around how you manage the expenditure of your party's MP. A character's MP will be used whenever they perform Magic and Potential.

Allies that would aid you in battle will also have different set of skills they could use in combat. So half the battle is also determining which allies you should bring onto an Expedition.


And now to the corner I call "Things I shouldn't prioritize as high"..
here's a preview of how the combat will look! (complete with all the watermarks of the world!)
All possible thanks to the wonderful works by Yanfly's and Moghunter's plugins!
link to dem plugins:
http://yanfly.moe
https://atelierrgss.wordpress.com/

SCREENSHOTS

Spoiler

CHARACTERS SO FAR

Spoiler

• 
  Ellie:
  
  
  
  The protagonist of the story, as a Channeler she specializes in conserving and restoring the party's mana, as such she will greatly determine how her allies approach a combat.
  
  Therese:
  
  
  
  An energetic girl with adventurous heart, she specializes in dealing high amounts of damage without relying in Magic. Supportively she could also stun an enemy, which denies them from doing anything for a turn.
  
  Lucius:
  
  
  
  Observant boy whose also Therese's brother, he specializes in debuffing enemy while also could grant an ally invulnerability to Magic for 3 turn.
  
  
  
  More to be added though!

DOWNLOAD LINK

Spoiler

Note: some of the plugin wouldn't work when I change it to distribute mode somehow, but it's nothing game breaking when I test it,
Let me know though if there's a problem inside the demo!

https://www.mediafire.com/file/mvnm80jcmia4d7b/MANAE_DEMO_1.2.rar/file

Credits for the demo:
PandaMaru for the Art Assets
Yanfly for various Plugins
Moghunter/Atelierrgs for various Plugins
HimeWorks for various Plugin
DreamX for Victory Aftermath Plugin
Fallen Angel Olivia for AntiPlayerStress Plugin
Julian "Szyu" Heinen for Crafting System Plugin
Galv for Action Indicator Plugin
SkottyTV for STV_Beastbook Plugin
Vlue for Quest System Plugin
SumRndmDde for AltMenuScreen Plugin
TungerManU for "Kloe's Theme" and "Boat Theme" BGM
(TBA) for "Infested City" BGM
(TBA) for various ME's
(TBA) for various SE's

Thanks for reading this post!
And if you play the demo, thankyou again and I hope it was an enjoyable experience. (though that being said.. if you think it's horrible feel free to criticize it!)

------EDITS------
*Changing download link due to the mistake that is DEMO_01 (real thanks to @hiddenone for pointing this!)

----TO BE ADDED REAL SOON----
*Credits to all non RTP sound used in the demo.

 

[Ebanyle]

This looks really god! The skills animations are top notch~
I haven't played the demo yet (currently only seeing the project by video and screenshot), but there are some points that bothered me:
- Your maps have a good floor/wall structure, but they are... a little empty. There's something lacking in it. I think you could try using smaller trees and plants in the nature areas, as itsi not uncommon for florest to have plants all scattered around. The inside map is a bit too big too, but since I have not that much experience with houses and etc I dontdreally know what I can say.
- The battle camera moves waay too fast when switching between one character focus to another. It feels a little weird. I think if it were for the camera to be smoother, the effect would be nicer.

Anyway, it is really good looking. The characters portraits are lovely (though a bit sketchy) and the battle system seems interesting! Keep up the good work

 

[Switz]

Great job. A lot of heart and soul is going into this and it shows.

Battles need sped up and to echo Ebanyle, throw in more detail on the maps. Your structure (like the grass tower) is spot on old school, bit perhaps too old school (bare). Your geometry/layout is spot on and will still shine. You spend a lot of time getting the size and structure perfect. Now focus on each part as it will look in game. Every single frame at every single part of every map should be perfected. You have the skill and more importantly, the eye, to do it and do it well.

Keep at it, it's looking good!

 

[HiddenCrops]

Thankyou so much for the feedback guys! I'll try to put some touches on the map for the next demo.

and thankyou @Ebanyle for pointing out about the battle camera.. i wasn't planning on looking into it but maybe there could be a way to make it better..
and @Switz by battle speed do you mean in the preview or in the demo? 'cos the preview only show cases the special skills which wouldn't be a 'use all the time' kind of skill.. but If its the latter then did you mean the enemies stat?

 

[onipunk]

I haven't played the demo but I echo the feedback from those above, the maps are fine but could do with a little bit more detail and making better use of the space, especially in your interior map, it looks like it could be compressed down hugely and still keep all the key elements it needs. I'm also not sure what your first language is so if it isn't English this is understandable but there are a few typos, most glaringly in the title of your thread - which I assume should be "Cradle" instead of "Craddle". Getting someone to check over and proofread for mistakes like that will help your presentation of what seems like a cool game. I like the idea that the protagonist serves more of a support role in battle, it's not something you see very often, and I actually really like how sketchy those character portraits look, it's a nice style. Few things to clean up, mostly writing and mapping, but it looks like a solid project with some good ideas behind it.

 

[hiddenone]

I've got a word of advice: never say "it's nothing game breaking" in your post, because the game dev gods will prove you wrong. I tried to play the demo, but got errors before I could really see much of the game.

Spoiler: Feedback

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This is the error I got when trying to start the game, so I couldn't even reach the title screen. I went into the folders and fixed the gamefont file to use the default font and that let me play the game, but you should figure out why things aren't loading correctly (from a quick glance, it looks like you may have listed a font file as 'ttc' instead of a 'ttf').

Finally able to reach the title screen, I noticed that there's a save file included that is about 20 minutes into the game. I started it because I thought maybe that was where you wanted the player to start the game from, but it only showed a few minor cutscenes before reaching the end of the demo... So I started a new game instead.

Unfortunately something must be set wrong, because the new game started me in the blacksmith shop with no intro or information about the game. I wandered around a bit, but didn't find anything but odd errors:

• The blacksmith 'sells' an item called Rookie Weapon (which doesn't seem to do anything) for 0 gold, but only the first time you enter the shop scene

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• Most of the crafting options must still be under construction, since they all call for Potions as their main ingredient. It would probably be best to only include the items that you've finished setting up for crafting (especially since I found a cheat to get Potions, so I could make almost everything... Not that it was useful).
• The player can stand on teapot on the counter in Sancha Town Research Room.
  
• There's no cutscenes in the main guild Hub map, and the only person who reacts to interaction is the old lady behind the counter.
• A doppelganger of the main character can be found standing around in one of the rooms upstairs.
• The old lady has a similar error as the blacksmith, if I tried buying things from her more than once the Potion ended up being free:

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• The free Potion can be sold for 5 gold, so I could actually 'buy' a bunch of Potions and then sell them back to the shop to make money.

Eventually I walked into the building to the left of the Research Room and found a cutscene. It didn't seem to be the start of the game, but I was just happy to have found something to do. I have to recommend that you find someone who's fluent in English to help you with your dialogue, because right now there are quite a few issues that makes the dialogue hard to understand at points.

I picked a quest like I was told to, went and talked to Therese outside, and decided to open the chest that Therese mentioned, and:

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Got hit with another error. I didn't feel like restarted the game again, so I stopped the demo there.

The screenshots you have show that you've put effort into this game, but clearly there are issues with the demo. I couldn't really play the demo, so I can't give much more advice than to please go through your project and make sure that everything is set up to start the game properly when people try to play it. Good luck fixing things!

 

[HiddenCrops]

@onipunk thanks for the feedback! i'll remind myself to ask some proof-readers once the game entered the alpha stage.

@hiddenone I messed up big time.. after doing some quick fix I forgot to put the player in the right position before hitting deploy..
I'm really truly sorry for the inconvenience and thank you so much for letting me know.

here's the new link.. i've redownload and retest it just to make sure there's nothing corrupted..
https://www.mediafire.com/file/mvnm80jcmia4d7b/MANAE_DEMO_1.2.rar/file
Hope it works!