Dacian (Alpha demo update 2 available.)

[KanaX]

I'll give it a try. Question: Why is the Audio file out of the compressed project???

 

[literarygoth]

@Kanax: it's due an unfortunate issue with rmVX. When the file size reaches more than 128mb's, the compression process bugs, which creates issues with extracting the game from the .exe. Caused quite the nightmare several months ago. The best workaround, is to remove the heaviest file (in this case, the audio file), compress the game, and package the audio file in with the compressed game. It's a total pain in the arse, but after 4 years development, I can't switch to another engine

 

[Kyuukon]

This is amazing! I just downloaded the DEMO and it already hooked me up ! I can see how you put loads and loads of work into the game.

I gotta go to bed now. I'll finish it tomorrow and edit this post with a proper review (likes/dislikes). By the way, can you link to that sprite editor you used, please :3?

Edit: I'm having troubles getting past the first dungeon, after you fight the fish. I mean, I can't get on the pads T.T Also...

 

[literarygoth]

Ah, I missed a spot. Thanks for catching that, I'll upload a fix asap!

As for the lily pads, if you can't get on them, that means you missed the very first puzzle room at the beginning of that dungeon. Go back, and that room will teach you how to conquer the lily pads.

As for sprite editor, do you mean for the main characters and NPC's?

I appreciate all feedback, thank you!

Cheers,

~Lit

 

[Kyuukon]

A few more bugs:

The last one prevents me from advancing further into the game It happened after defeating the boss on the 3rd door, after the cat.

 

[literarygoth]

Thanks for the feedback!

In response:

1) you're facing the wrong way, check all directions

2-4) great catches! I'll be sure to fix those tonight!

5) Wow. That's a massive booboo.

Thanks for finding these, I'll be sure to fix them tonight and re-upload a patched demo!

Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate it all!

Cheers,

~Lit

 

[Kyuukon]

No problem xD! I'm having fun playing this game Just wanted to finish the DEMO before giving my final thoughts. How long is it?

1) you're facing the wrong way, check all directions

I don't think so. I inspected thoroughly before taking screenshot :E You should check it, just in case.

As for sprite editor, do you mean for the main characters and NPC's?

Characters. If I remember correctly, I saw those poses in some sprite editor out there. The link was dead though

Ooooh, I forgot about one other thing buggering me: The Table of Elements item is kinda buggy. When I use it, the offset of the picture seems off. Also, it would just stay there and won't go away :S

 

[literarygoth]

The character graphics are all custom made by our artist. We used The Panda's template as our inspiration. No generator, sorry.

You know what, there IS a hidden item near there, but it's near the stone wall on the right. I'll have to move the balloon event to assuage confusion. Thank you for pointing this out.

This alpha demo ends shortly after that main dungeon, and you're free to wander around the blank maps at that point (some place holder NPC graphics are in place at the moment, apologies for this). So, about an hours gameplay, give or take.

As for the Table of Elements: There's a message box that appears when you first get it, it tells you that pressing S will close/remove the image. I'm working to try and fix the graphical problems with it displaying. Hopefully I get something worked out tonight when I upload a patched demo.

I greatly appreciate your feedback, you've helped me catch a few bugs I wasn't aware of. Thank you!

Cheers,

~Lit

 

[KanaX]

Welp, I'm happy I got VX to play Witch's House. *cracks knuckles*

(I apologize if I make a note of something previously stated, but I didn't have the time to read the rest the the reviews)

Where do I begin? I should begin with the fact that I never really related with, or cared about games with battles in them. Not my spiel. That means that I may not be the most adequate critic for the demo.

Still I'll give it a try. And I'll start by capitalizing the main idea:

The game was wonderous and wonderful.

Despite the Title Screen which was it self something "simple, but effective", you had me captivated within the first few seconds. The atmosphere is great, the music is great, the lighting is great, as well as the colors. And all that in the opening credits! Then we are introduced to some unexpected (yet decent) voice acting!

I enter the first dream sequence and I stand in awe before the eccentric beauty I see. I can tell this is a dream. Or at least a dream-like world. "This is not your run-off-the-mill RM game", I tell to myself.

I am immediately introduced to the main concept of the game: A young man that appears to be frail, but has a lot of untapped potential and a forgotten, dark secret in his past. The world we see is his creation and the sentient beings parts of himself. The introduction of those parts is done masterfully (the shadow may be a little TOO "Har, har, har I'm the bad guy". but that might just be part of how he is an not sloppy writing) I could guess what part of Dacian the Shadow is and why he/she/it feels that he/she/it needs to assert his/her/its freedom, but I'll keep it to myself.

Now about the battle style. It was at LEAST engaging and enticing. I like sprite battles more than picture battles in the first place, the music is great, the background always themed according to the map (exactly like the map), the commands are easy to understand, yet show promise for fox complexity that can be exploited.

Dacian awakes from his sleep and we are introduce to a brother and sister (and a mother whose not really explored). Within two sequences I can already tell the basics of their characters. The dialog is realistic and develops the characters greatly. The maps are still exquisite, but in a more donw-to-earth way.

I enter another battle, where in comparison to the other to battlers, we can see the previously mentioned frailty, as Dacian lacks skills, the other two have. Story-telling via game mechanics! Masterful.

I am in the second dream. Still beautiful. Since I believe that I have given the main idea about my impression, I'll change my writing style to bullets to list some of the notes I made.

• The dream sequences have some weird transitions when it comes to going down a hole. When you go down the hole and presumably enter the lower layer, the exit doesn't seem to give any indication that it will make you return back up, because it is a gap on the surrounding walls (like exits that simply take you south).
   
• Love the lilypad system... That's all
   
• You have an impassable block riiiiiight here:
  
  Spoiler

  
• It could be a different map, but there is DEFINITELY an invisible block somewhere.
   
• In the optional puzzle, where I have to have a flow of water created, for the plant to grow, I'd suggest the you allow the rock to be able to active the first switch also. Because When I moved the rock and started experiment, I tried putting it on the first button, which didn't work. So my cognitive process was "Oh, so the rock doesn't activate the buttons and I'll have to use it some other way". It took me a while to try placing it exclusively on the second button (then again I was severely sleepless and that doesn't help with puzzle solving).
   
• The fight with Despair was... controversial. Because I not sure whether I got extremely unlucky the first time (it overpowered me with a relentless row of double hits and criticals, while avoiding may of mine attacks), or I got extremely lucky the second time (I lost only 10% of my health). Judging by the difficulty of most of the enemies around (even shadow), I'd guess it's the first one
   
• I could deal with the puzzles being a little bit more mind-blowing and complex! The three-button puzzle unfortunately was simple trial and error (unless I missed something).
   
• Now, I was stuck here for 5 minutes (quite a while for my standards )
  
  Spoiler

  
  It's the point where I PMed you. I didn't understand the puzzle so I started spamming the C button. When I interacted with the momeraths that I was supposed to interact with, they just acted like an event that you forgot to direction fix. So I ignored them. Was it because I did so from the side? I don't know. When I interacted with them again after a while they moved. Was it because I had to be above them, so they can walk right? If so, then I'm sure you know multiple ways to fix that, without restricting the player, you lazy, lazy, developer!
   
• The cat puzzle was fairly simple. The switches where a little twitchy, if you interacted with them after pulling them down. What I don't understand was how was it connected to previous puzzl-... Every puzzle mentioned the color of its buttons in the end of the explanation... The colors were green, blue and red.... Waiiiit a minut- 
  
  
   
• I enter the first of the three doors after the kitty puzzle. I find the shadow. Damien harnesses his power and beats the shadow in a rather challenging battle! I'm hyped!..."Character Mori1 is missing"
   
• Also, why the the earth element work only sometimes against shadow?
   
• I load the game again and I enter the second door. I find misery... Which I don't think I'm supposed to beat without some severe grinding...
   
• I load the game yet again and enter the third door... Which leads me to the beginning of the level... I'd... like some context here!

Overall. A golden piece of the RPG Maker Library. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to anyone. Nothing more.

 

[Hungry Chao]

@Kanax: it's due an unfortunate issue with rmVX. When the file size reaches more than 128mb's, the compression process bugs, which creates issues with extracting the game from the .exe. Caused quite the nightmare several months ago. The best workaround, is to remove the heaviest file (in this case, the audio file), compress the game, and package the audio file in with the compressed game. It's a total pain in the arse, but after 4 years development, I can't switch to another engine

Lol, I know how you feel with that. Such a pain!

I love the design of the main town. Very nice balance of simplicity and detail.

 

[literarygoth]

@Kanax, thank you so much for your thorough review and play through! You've provided me with some very useful information, and discovered some more bugs that myself and play testers hadn't caught. Pesky bugs.

The puzzles are supposed to be simple but pose a little challenge at first, especially as they're in the beginning of the game. There's plenty of puzzles to come. (I love puzzles!)

- I'll have a look at the switches for the cat puzzle and see if I can fix them, and I think I should adjust the sign for the area you got stuck at - as well as fixing the momeraths. That too, is an easy fix.

Ah yes. misery. Mwahaha. Misery is a bonus boss, and yes he's a tough bugger. He IS defeatable and coughs up a very very useful reward.

To date, Misery has only been defeated once, by a member of Valence Studios (with no assistance from me).

By sound of things, no one has yet found Dacians journal.
Hint: it's in his bedroom. It has a small surprise for you ^_^

Great feedback guys, thank you so much! I'm on my way home to patch the alpha demo and fix the bugs you've found.

Cheers,
~Lit

 

[literarygoth]

Gah, double post.

UPDATE:

Main post has been edited, with lots of things spoilered to make it easier to browse.

Bug Fixes:

~ impassible invisible tile in the 2nd dream dungeon fixed

~ hidden item pop up balloon has been moved one tile to the right, closer to the actual location of said hidden item

~ I cannot replicate the issue Kyuukon had when interacting with that portion of the map and thus freezing. I hope this isn't a persistent thing. Please keep me updated if this is the case!

~ passability errors pointed out by Kyuukon have been fixed. Thanks for catching those!

~ Fixed error that caused a crash with a missing, now obsolete, character file. My apologies!

~ Fixed Boulder in the river puzzle. When pushed onto the wrong switch, there is now a notification that you've pushed it on to the wrong switch.

~ Adjusted Despairs strength

~ Fixed 2nd momerath puzzle, can now interact with them from any reachable angle.

~ Adjusted the wording on the sign accompanying the above puzzle. Hopefully this will make more sense and make figuring this puzzle out easier for those on the first play through.

~ Fixed the twitchiness of the switches in the kitty room puzzle. They should no longer bug out on you if you choose to interact with them after activating one of them.

~ Added a message to the transition that sends you back to the beginning of the dungeon from the multi door room. It will now let you know that you chose the wrong door.

I have uploaded a fresh copy of the Alpha demo that includes all these fixes. The link is on the main post.

Thanks everyone for your stellar feedback and for giving Dacian a go!

Cheers,

~Lit

 

[Kyuukon]

You know what, there IS a hidden item near there, but it's near the stone wall on the right. I'll have to move the balloon event to assuage confusion. Thank you for pointing this out.

The Mog kinda thingy by the lake? I had already picked it up but the balloon kept showing up regardless :U

Let's see...

Liked :

- Very nice and eerie introduction! It grasped my attention right away. Very well done.

- Excellent selection of music. Every theme in the game fit the atmosphere perfectly. Were the tracks composed especially for your game? Because that's the impression it gave me

- Simple but fun battle system. I love tiny numbers and sprites. Plus the elements kinda system was a nice feature too.

- Story, characters and scenario are very good too. I don't have any complaints in these areas. The parallax was beautiful too.

- The journal with voice acting! OMG （ ﾟДﾟ） !

Disliked :

- I didn't like much, at the beginning, how a 'wrong' SE played when I interacted with the sign. It breaks the immersion. Same goes with the message 'You can't access menu now'. Maybe you should remove them altogether.

- Dream door sprite didn't blend too well with the rest of the map. Maybe this was made on purpose? I dunno... but again, it breaks immersion a bit :E

- Check your Above parallax layer Z level (it shouldn't go up 199). Every time a balloon icon popped up, I could see part of it go below the parallax layer. It was a bit awkward xD

- Only thing I disliked about the battle system was the battle-back. It didn't blend too well with the sprites. I know it's a style but I didn't like it :/ In my opinion, removing the blur would make it look better.

I'm sorry if you were expecting a more in-depth review but the game DEMO isn't very long. But I enjoyed my play-through and wish to see this completed some day :3

And I'm glad I could help a bit

 

[literarygoth]

@Kyuukon:

Glad you've enjoyed it so far. Yes, the sound track is 100% custom made for this game; all credit to Zackwell Valence. The journal was one of my favorite things to make, I hope it wasn't too hard to find. I really wanted to put as much detail into every little space to make the maps more interesting to explore.

Duly noted on your latest suggestions, I'll most likely make those changes.

As for the battle background, the blur is already as low as it will go I'm using a script to create this effect, and I've already adjusted it as low as it will go.

I greatly appreciate your feedback, thank you!

Cheers,

~ Lit

 

[Matseb2611]

Heya. Got some feedback. Unfortunately I haven't managed to get far due to bugs. Maybe you've fixed them already, so apologise. I've downloaded the game yesterday, so here are my impressions on that version.

I couldn't really hear any music in the title screen. Is there any at all or is it meant to be quiet?

The overall volume difference between the music and sound is way off. Music is way too quiet, whilst sound effects are grotesquely too loud. I have to turn the volume up to actually be able to hear the music, only to have a random sound effect blast my eardrums and force me to turn the volume down. The voice acting that was in the dream sequence was also too quiet.

Wasn't too fond of having credits at the start. I personally prefer for the player to get into the game right away, or at least to have a more meaningful cutscene happening rather than just the character walking in the dark.

Starting the game with a dream sequence is pretty interesting and a nice idea. I wonder how all that will factor into the story.

Not sure what to think of the puzzle at the very start. It's not my ideal way of starting a game, but maybe some players will like it.

The second screen has you walk extremely slowly along a straight path. I am not quite sure what that was meant to be about. Again, not really something I found enjoyable, but maybe some players will.

The mapping and visuals have been pretty great so far though.

Would it be possible by any chance to make the text size a bit bigger. Just that I tend to usually play RM games in windowed mode and I found the text to be a bit too small to keep my attention.

I've looked at the Table of Elements pic, but I don't really understand what I'm looking at. Also, I couldn't find a way to get rid of it when I was done looking, so I ended up reloading the game. Only the second time I noticed you mentioned to press 'S' to get rid of it. It's a bit strange. Why not just have it disappear upon pressing standard action button? If you still prefer to stick with the 'S' key, I'd suggest to at least highlight it in the instruction that pops up so that the players can see it straight away. Like put it in different colour and make it a capital.

In the dialogue with the NPC, we suddenly hear a screech coming from outside, except we didn't actually hear it. It was just mentioned in a text box. Why not just have an actual screech sound effect play? I mean, it is a game after all, not a book.

I got outside and entered a battle screen, but the game froze during an explanation. It mentioned looking at the icons that would show whose turn it is, and then I can't do anything else. The instruction just stays on the screen and won't let me fight.

Speaking of battles, I only managed to face the chimera in the dream sequence. So far the battles seemed promising, though for that particular battle, it wasn't clear right away that I was meant to lose that battle, so I ended up wasting one of my healing items.

That's about it. Unfortunately due to the game freezing on the fish battle, I couldn't play on any further. Hope this helps.

 

[literarygoth]

@Matseb

Thank you for taking the time to play and leave a review! Your feedback is very appreciated.

As for your freeze bug, did you have anything else open and running at the same time as the game? RM VX is finicky and often bugs out, which is why it's preferable to play fullscreen.

You're the first to have this problem at that specific location, was there anything that occurred before the freeze up? I've run into similar problems myself testing in windowed mode, but playing fullscreen seems to eradicate the problems I experienced.

As for the sound effects, is there specific sound effects? In battle or out? I've meticulously tweaked all sound in game, although it is possible that I've missed some effects. Could you be more specific?

We've been looking for a female voice actor for Naomi, in particular for the scream. Alas, we've had no luck yet.

The table of elements certainly has issues that I've been trying to fix. And actually, as I sit here at work, I just realized the fix for it has been staring me in the face all along! I should have it fixed and updated tonight.

As for the walking slow screen, that's on purpose. Ever had a dream where you tried to run but your legs wouldn't work properly? That's the effect I was going for there, the taunting words that pop up on screen were also a hint.

As for the first battle with Shadow - you're not supposed to lose that fight. You certainly can beat him, even without the hidden items littered through the maps. We're you constantly getting critically hit? Could you provide me information?

As for the text size. I'm sorry, this game is intended to be played full screen. As you're the only one to complain about legibility, and the only one thus far that has played windowed, all I can suggest is giving it a try fullscreen.

Again, thank you for your review. There's certainly some adjustments to be made that I can arrange when I get home.

Cheers,

~Lit

 

[Matseb2611]

I've launched it in full screen now and I am still getting the screen freeze. Also, even if that would've worked, players play the game however they want, you know. You can't really tell them not to do this or that. Many players will want to play in windowed mode, and if the game crashes for them (or they can't read the text), they won't give it a second chance. In essence, if the windowed mode function exists, it has to be playable as well.

I've played other games made with VX before, and I've never had them screen freeze like this. So no idea what's going on.

In regard to which sound effects are being too loud, just about most of them. For example the menu cursor sounds. Also the ones associated with battle animations. Like when I come out of the house to witness a battle against the fish, the sounds of sword slashing and stuff are way too loud.

In regard to battle with Shadow, well, it was quite hard for the first fight then, though I am not complaining since the game still lets you continue if you lose. He often churned out powerful attacks which took off around 1/3rd of my health, whilst I often dealt very little damage to him, at times even missing. Not to mention I also have to equip a stick to my character mid-battle, because the menu function is disabled when I am on the map. He destroyed me in like 4-5 turns.

And no problem. Unfortunately I can't say that I've enjoyed the game yet, since I couldn't get far and the bugs have a tendency to ruin the enjoyment. But I'll see what happens once it's updated.

 

[KanaX]

That's weird, I don't remember having any of those issues... Should I download it again and give it a go?

Edit: Playtested the demo and it didn't freeze in any occasion, either fullscreen or not.

 

[literarygoth]

Odd. I don't understand the cause for your bugs. You're literally the only one to have a problem I. That particular area.

Was there a hiccup with the download?

I can see what I can do from my end, but it seems to be an issue with the game playing on your end. I'll run the existing demo through my 5 play testers tonight and see if they can replicate the issue so I can get it fixed.

Menu screen is disabled in the intro, the ability to equip weapons and armor in battle is an added feature throughout the game.

I appreciate your commentary, I hope to be able to provide an answer to the cause of the freeze bug you're experiencing.

Cheers,

Lit

 

[Matseb2611]

This is still from yesterday's version of the game. I could try to redownload it. Was the latest update done today?