Eric's Day Off

[DuncanS]

Sure, heroes get lots of credit and princesses for all their hard work, but do they ever get any down time? It seems like all heroes do is run around saving the world from one disaster after another.


Eric, having been busy adventuring and slaying monsters for a good long while, decides that he needs a vacation. Unfortunately, he ends up getting more than he bargained for as he finds out the hard way that taking a vacation is often more trouble than it's worth. Hijinks ensue.


Features:


- Encounter rate modifier right from the menu! Don't like random battles? Turn them off!


- Side-view battles with custom animations!


- Comedy and such!


- Short and to the point!


Have some screenshots:

Made in a week for the RM Venture contest!


Download from RMN - need RTP, will upload no-RTP version if people are interested, but my up speed is somewhere between dial-up and a turtle literally carrying the individual packets on his back to their destination.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

This sounds really cute I'm gonna check it out later this afternoon. Love the title screen!

 

[DuncanS]

Thank you~! *^*

My friend Taka did the title-screen art (I am, to my regret, a terrible artist TT), I'll pass your compliment on to him ^^.

 

[ninjalex]

The game looks very kool

I will try it out later.

 

[Bonkers]

This is so adorable!  The work you did into the tile sets was well worth the time involved.  I'll have more comprehensive feedback as soon as the GMD is completed.

 

[supernatural35]

Very impressed, I am going to check this out right now. I will let you know what I think after I have played it.

 

[ninjalex]

Just finished playing it and I'm impressed! A short but very creative story and very good dialogue.

 

[supernatural35]

Just finished playing it and I'm impressed! A short but very creative story and very good dialogue.

How did you beat the boss?

 

[Makio-Kuta]

This is crashing for me continuously :T At the start of quite a few battles the program crashes with the Windows "RGSS player has stopped working" error message.


Which is a shame! Because the dialogue is very cute and I love the dynamic between Eric and Brenda so far. There were many times where I laughed. - I suppose I could turn off random encounters completely but... I like having battles! (and don't want to be under level :< )


The crash is too frustrating to keep playing the game though. It was good I could save constantly, but it was still too annoying to have to open the program and load every 2-3 battles to keep playing. Good luck in the contest! I hope no one else encounters the same issues I did. :s :s (though, no one else in the thread seems to be mentioning it.)


--


EDIT


Okay, Rach fixed the problem for me and I was able to finish the game!


That last battle was a doozy; I think I won by a hair haha "I'm going to lose Brenda!" I cried, but before that could happen, Eric landed the final hit.


Very cute game! I certainly recommend it to anyone looking for a short game and a good laugh. One thing that bothered me was having that Flintlock in my equipment and never being able to equip it to anyone. :< Being able to adjust the encounter rate was a nice touch. I turned it to zero at the rock push puzzle, played a majority of the game at 50-100, one map at 250 and then grinded at 999. Yeah, I really liked that feature a lot.


The writing in this game is my favourite aspect though and I'm glad to see that you customized it everywhere. Skill usage messages (though some were hard to read for the short time they are on the screen), skill descriptions, item descriptions (the casual clothes one in particular cracked me up), even the map names on the save file were witty and enjoyable! I had to save every map so I could read them.

Spoiler

I feel pretty bad for taking that badguy out while he was enjoying a dip in his lava-hot hot springs though ahaha Did that map have a cute name as well? I suppose I could check in the editor haha

Anyway, Great game! I'm glad I played it. And again, best of luck in the contest.

 

[mlogan]

Started playing this tonight and it was highly entertaining! I can't wait to get back into and finish it. The interaction between Eric and Brenda is hysterical!

 

[DuncanS]

@Makio-Kuta - thanks so much for the awesome feedback! I know of at least one person who encountered the same issue - could you tell me what the problem was? I tested for it but wasn't able to reproduce the error causing the crash D:. The Flintlock was an early introduction - if you look at the database I initially intended to include equipment so I customized the descriptions quite a bit - but I figured that it fit the theme better to have the characters eschew weapons and armour while on vacation ^^. I ended up leaving the Flintlock in as I didn't want to get rid of it completely haha. Thank Racheal for me for fixing my foolishness!

Spoiler

The map name for that map was just "???" - the map names were an attempt to think of how Eric would describe each area, and I could only think that for the last map he would be completely speechless...

@supernatural35 - the final boss is kind of a wake-up call especially if you've had the encounter rate set low during the rest of the game. Tips:

Spoiler

I would recommend having the whole party at level 4-5 so that Eric learns Leap Strike, which is extremely useful because of the stun. Spam Holy with Terence and use Brenda to spam Backhand or to use potions and keep party members around 75%-100% health, as Evil King can do quite substantial burst. Hope that helps!

@ninjalex - Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the feedback ^^.

@palladinthug - Thanks so much! Agreed - the more effort is put into something, the more you (and in this case, hopefully everyone who plays the game) get out of it!

@mlogan - Thanks so much ^^! I'm glad you're enjoying it~!

 

[Makio-Kuta]

I know Rach sort of explained it to me before because we had a similar problem with the game we're working on, but when she starts talking scripts I honestly just smile and nod as she throws words over my head. It has something to do with the damage pop ups (I think) and how the program does (or doesn't?) dispose of them??


I don't know, the way she described it it's something that doesn't always happen, but has a chance to happen. And if you're unlucky and it happens once, it suddenly starts happening a lot. Some known bug. Again, scripts are like another language to me and I just smiled and nodded and she fixed it for me. I'll poke her tomorrow; she's sleeping right now.


Yeah, I like that they never had gear; it made it more believable that they were on vacation xD Maybe change the Flintlock into a key item? Rather than an equipable. It's a small thing; but it drove me mad trying to put it on someone haha -i'm probably the only person-

Spoiler

Ohh Eric you're a creative thinker aren't you (not) That's a nice touch though. xD
For the boss battle, I actually found using Megaton Punch worked better for me. It seemed to hit for more and I had pretty bad luck at stunning the boss. I had Terence focus on healing while Brenda double slapped, since overall her damage output was a bit higher than his and he had more MP so could heal for longer (plus healed a bit better)


When I first challenged the boss at LV4 I got slaughtered, but yeah end party was 6,6,5 and that seemed to work pretty well.

And again! Lovely game~

 

[Dalph]

I already played this one days ago (when it was posted on rmn) but I decided to give it a shot again, because it's gorgeous and funny.

Let's start saying that Brenda's slaps are priceless.

OH god, just run while you ca...*SLAPS!* ahahahah, hilarious stuff...

Awesome work on the DS styled RTP sprites (you made them by yourself?) and a praise to your artist for the amazing titlescreen.

The boss was challenging, but nothing serious, because I did quite a bit of grinding.

Nice touch on the encounter system (this must be said), and you're a pretty good mapper too, I like how you modified the tiles.

The only thing that bothers me a little about this game is the font, that is a bit too small for my tastes and sometimes I can't read it well (but only in battle), but this is just a minor thing, so I don't really care that much.

I especially enjoyed the humour and the characters.

Overall, it's short and sweet, good job.

 

[DuncanS]

@Dalph - thanks very much for the great feedback ^^! I did make the DS-style sprites (which took more time than I care to admit haha TT) and I'll pass on your compliment on the title screen to Taka! The font sizing was definitely something I fiddled with quite a bit, and I agree that there are a few points that need some more user acceptance testing XD.

@Makio-Kuta - thanks! I'll look into known errors around the popups in the YEA Battle Engine and see if I can sort it out :S. It's cool to see that there's more than one approach to the boss fight! I switched the Flintlock to a key item, so when I fix the crash bug that will be in the release (just for you ).

 

[Yato]

It was our game that had an issue with popups and a quick victory screen. For this one, it was actually the character shadows from Yami's script. Basically, I used Mithran's handy tool to pinpoint which sprite was causing the problem and made sure to dispose it after battle.

Just add this snippet.

class Sprite_Battler < Sprite_Base  alias eric_bug_fix_sprite_battler_dispose dispose  def dispose    @charset_shadow.dispose if @charset_shadow    eric_bug_fix_sprite_battler_dispose  endend

 

[DuncanS]

@Racheal - Ahh thanks so much *^*! I tried finding the offending object, but without being able to reproduce the error I was pretty stumped :S. I'll be sure to add you to the credits XD.

 

[morb2]

This looks like a cool game

 

[Yato]

That's why Mithran's script it so nice. It reports the error even if it doesn't cause the game to crash that particular time. It was pretty bad on Maki's laptop though. Every second battle was crashing, so it was highly unplayable.

 

[DuncanS]

@Racheal - Yikes o.o; Sorry about that ;n;! I'm uploading the fixed version now, which will hopefully resolve any crash issues people have encountered. Once again, thanks so much ^^!

 

[mlogan]

All right, I know I'm missing something obvious, but for the life of me can't figure it out.

Spoiler

I am in the swamp, after falling. I went north and found the door blocked by vines. I can't seem to go anywhere else and can't find anything to unblock the vines. Please tell me the horribly obvious thing I am missing so I can continue. Thanks.