Eternal Twilight

[Fernyfer775]

Disclaimer: This game is very challenging and requires a lot of attention to detail, strategic game play, and character equipment/skill management to succeed!



Synopsis

The genocide of the magi has begun. The Empire has spread it's reign around the globe. Why now though? After all these centuries of peace, why would the Empire want to eradicate the magi from existence? Is it truly out of fear for the powers that magi can posses, or is it something far more sinister...?

Characters
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Spoiler

Name: Luna
Class: Archer
Specialty: Critical Hits and Burst damage.
Biography: Luna is a strong willed young woman with a mysterious past. With a bow in her hand, Luna travels the world in search of meaning. Her life is forever changed when she is dragged into the conflict between the Magi and the Empire...


Name: Damien
Class: White Magi
Specialty: Healing
Biography: Damien is one of the few survivors of the Tajini-Magi Tribe massacre. Normally a peaceful and loving individual, he has seen the darker side of humanity, and he vows for revenge. He will stop at nothing to avenge his friends and family who were murdered by the Empire.


Name: Trish
Class: Elemental Magi
Specialty: Party buffs and damage over time.
Biography: Trish is a free-spirited happy go lucky type of girl. She comes off as very playful and joyful, but deep down inside, she too has suffered at the hands of the Empire. Trish comes from a powerful line of Magi called the Hututsi, but was forced to flee from her friends and family when the Empire raided her village.


Name: Ryudo
Class: Mercenary
Specialty: Tanking and large single damage output.
Biography: Ryudo is an ex-Imperial Knight who swore off his allegiance to the Empire when the civil war began. Unlike many other humans, Ryudo holds no fear or anger towards the Magi. His first love, who was a very powerful White Magi was murdered by a group of humans, and since that day, Ryudo swore to stand up for Magi, even if it meant killing his own kind.


Name: Minerva
Class: Black Magi
Specialty: Massive Single and Multi-Target damage output.
Biography: Minerva is a young, but very powerful magi. In her veins runs the blood of a human and a magi. There is a lot more to this young girl than meets the eye. Upon being captured by the Empire, Minerva invoked some forbidden magics to save herself, but in the end, traded her soul to a demon that she should have never beckoned.

Gameplay​

Spoiler

Eternal Twilight is an old-school styled fantasy RPG with a Turn-Based battle system. I have made much use of the plethora of amazing scripts that Yanfly has created for the MV system to bring a battle system that is familiar, yet original in its own right. I am a firm believer of quality over quantity when it comes to designing a battle system and the types of skills a player has at their disposal. Here are just a few of the mechanical systems found in Eternal Twilight:

• Intelligent enemy AI that will keep the player on their toes. The AI will respond according to the player's actions to make sure "LOL-SPAM ATTACK" will lead to the players demise.
  
• Amazing equipment system where no two pieces of armor/weapons are exactly alike! Every piece of armor that is dropped by enemies or crafted by the player will have randomly acquired "affixes" and "suffixes" which will add bonus stats and passives to them. On top of the random affixes and suffixes, equipment also has "rarities" which will greatly influence the bonuses that the piece will yield. Replace that "Common Cotton Robe of Wisdom" with an even stronger "Uncommon Cotton Robe of Wisdom!"
  
• Skill Learning system that allows players to build their characters to their liking. Upgrade your skills to add additional effects, reduce their MP cost, or completely alter what the skill does.
  
• Runecrafting system with over 100 recipes allows players to create powerful weapons, armors, and glyphs to bolster the strength of your party!

• This and much more!

Screenshots​

Spoiler

Title

Battle Scene


Robust crafting system!


Massively customization equipment system.
No two pieces of gear will be the same!


Skill Learn System allows you to upgrade your skills to become even more powerful!


Trophy System with over 50 unique prizes and rewards to earn!

Self-Proclaimed: BEAUTIFUL "RTP" Mapping!
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Media​

Spoiler

Action Sequence and Let's Play Videos


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Game Download (v1.1.1)
https://rpgmaker.net/games/8326/downloads/


Currently Known Bugs​

• Minerva will sometimes become "invisible" when using Metastasis (it will fix itself after she takes another action)
• The New Game/Continue/Credits/Options choices will not fade when you select CREDITS in the game's start menu.

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[GutshotStr8]

Nice! I love seeing put together quality games using easily accessible resources like the RTP and Yanfly scripts. There's so much to be done with them, and frankly I'm wary of games that focus on custom scripts and graphics because gameplay too often comes in at a distant third. Keep up the good work!

 

[Niten Ichi Ryu]

The story and setting looks interesting.

And seeing how you been insightful (and helpful) in the premade action sequences topic, I guess skills will be nice Eye candy.

 

[Joewoof]

Nice! I love seeing put together quality games using easily accessible resources like the RTP and Yanfly scripts. There's so much to be done with them, and frankly I'm wary of games that focus on custom scripts and graphics because gameplay too often comes in at a distant third. Keep up the good work!

Well said.

No download?

 

[Fernyfer775]

I wanted to make sure there were no game-crashing bugs before posting the demo, but I believe it is ready!

I've updated the OP to include the demo download link. The demo includes about 40 minutes of gameplay...enjoy!

 

[Clangeddin]

The two imps are too strong.

They heal, they AoE combo, they apply multiple DoTs, they manage to hit before the white magi can cast his heal, if one falls, the other enrages. For the first boss that's overkill. I'm not gonna farm just to get past that.

They have good health as well, at least reduce that, since there's two of them.

And there's no way to bring back fallen comrades in combat.

 

[Fernyfer775]

@Clangeddin: To get a feel for your preparedness for the battle, do you mind answering a few questions, just so that I could see what/where/if I should adjust certain things?

1. What level was your party when you fought the imps?
2. Had you opened any chests and upgraded any of the equipment the party had? If so, were any of those pieces outfitted with runes?
3. When fighting the imps, were you focus firing one imp at a time, or splitting damage between them?

Thank you for your time!

 

[Clangeddin]

The level was 4/4/3.

I opened all chests and runes I had, I slotted all gear with the runes I had. Luna had Oaken bow (white), leather helm (green) and leather chest (blue), the two mages had oaken weapon (staff/grimoire) and cotton hat/robe, both green and white.

I was focus firing, splitting damage appeared to be counter-intuitive considering how dangerous each of them is, and as long there's two of them they can also do the combo.

 

[Fernyfer775]

Perfect, thank you. I will look into the numbers and tweak as necessary. My aim was to make the boss beatable at level 3 with an upgrade here or there, but I guess I made it a bit too hard.

Any feedback on the storyline so far?

 

[Clangeddin]

Usually I never give feedback about the storyline, unless I see something very illogic, but even in that case I'll just say "oh well, it's fantasy. *shrugs*".

I'm more of a bug / balance guy.

No bugs found so far btw, which is good considering the track record of the last rpg maker games I played.

Edit: Actually, wait, Luna's third maneuver, the one that absorbs HP and MP from the enemy, says it's instant and does not complete turn, but it's actually just a normal speed that does complete the turn.

 

[Fernyfer775]

Well, I found the problem with the Imp boss > I am using a monster leveling script, and I was testing the imps out at higher levels. 

I believe you were fighting the imps at their base strength plus 3-4 levels, when they're not supposed to level up because they're bosses. Oops

Also, fixed the typos in Luna's ability, great catch!

 

[fish]

Hmm... I feel like the world map can use a bit more variety with mapping. 

Looks pretty interesting overall though.

 

[fallenlorelei]

I played a bit of this last night and was super impressed! Although when Luna went to get a drink, it sounded like she was peeing XD I chuckled. Anyway - I didn't get too far because I got stuck at the Imp boss - they just demolished me. But when I turned it off, I was inspired to figure out Yanfly Action Sequences for my own game! So thanks for that haha.

Anyway, I'll be keeping my eye on this =D

 

[Fernyfer775]

@Fish: I agree, in fact, I'm still on the fence on whether or not I'll be sticking to an overworld map or not yet. 

@fallenlorelei: Maybe Luna was peeing while drinking? As for the imp boss, I cut their HP and damage output by about 20-30% across the board. You haven't even seen the GOOD action sequences yet (Minerva and Ryudo have the cool ones)!

 

[lolshtar]

You forgot fps limit for people with 144 hz monitors.

Imperial strike did as much if not less than normal attack

l am not interested on the characters/story at all, the only part that made me laugh(in a good way) is the old lady kill

l spammed attack all day until the 2 imps, defeated one at level 2 with basic gear but couldn't kill the second one(before nerf)

No autosave, had to restart when l failed the first time with my spam attack against the imps.

Pressing shift to run is annoying.

I'll see when l have more free time.

 

[Fernyfer775]

@Fisherolol: Well that puts me in a weird spot when it comes to balancing. One player tells me his characters were lvl 3-4 with upgraded armors/runes and the Imps were too hard, and then I have another player tell me that they almost killed the boss at level 2. 

To be fair, most games start off fairly simple and easily beatable with just spamming attack. Can't throw players into this crazy strategic skill juggling fray from level one, especially when there's no way to restore MP (yet), and they each have 1-2 skills to use. I expected the player to be able to kill all/most trash mobs with basic attacks up until at least the 2nd dungeon.

Auto-run is an option that can be turned on in the menu/options.

I'll be implementing an auto-respawn feature, so that if a player dies, they're not automatically sent to a game-over screen. 

I do not intend to add an auto-save feature though.

I'll look into the Imperial Strike ability. I'm still playing around with the numbers.

As for the FPS issue, is it due to the screen resolution or just the battle animations in general?

Thank you for your feedback though, it's good to get different perspectives from different types of players.

To avoid double posting, I'll respond to GutshotStr8 here as well!

@GutshotStr8: Yeah, the goal in the 1st fight is to kill off the minions 1st. They die with normal attacks from either Luna or Damien. I am going to implement a respawn feature instead of a straight up "Game Over" when you die in a battle, so that should fix that issue. 

The vagueness in the "this is the beginning...of their end" is on purpose. It's to have the player wonder WHO exactly the end is coming to.

I meant to use the word rabble in that context. According to the definition: "a disorderly crowd; a mob." The commander sees Luna and Damien as "disorderly" and deviant. 

Good catch on the "Luna's party was defeated" I hadn't caught that one before. I'll get that fixed, thank you.

As for the enemy "animations" I was hoping to bring a little livelihood to the battle screen instead of having them sit there all boring and static-like. Maybe I need to adjust the movement a bit, but I think I'm gonna stick with it.

 

[GutshotStr8]

FWIW I wiped on the first battle, with the Imperial Commander and the Soldiers or whatever in the forest. I focused fire on the Commander, and by the time he was dead, they'd burned down my healer (who switched from Smite to Healing almost immediately), and the Hunter had no chance on her own. I don't think it's necessarily unbalanced, just that I needed a different strategy (kill Soldiers first, presumably). However, not having any option to save before the batrle means I'll need to rewatch intro, etc before I can retry. Thankfully intro isn't too long, but I think you should have option to save somewhere between intro and the first non-trivial battle.

Few other comments:

Title screen looks very nice, and I liked Verona's portrait as well. I like the set-up you have for presenting information about skills in battle.

In the intro, when it says "this is the beginning... of their end" it's actually not clear either grammatically or from context whose end you mean. The magi, or the humans who hate them?

The Commander says "Enough of your rabble" before attacking, which I think maybe you were thinking of "babble" although that sounds kind of silly in context. But I don't think "rabble" makes sense there.

When I lost that first battle, it said "Luna's party is defeated" twice before going to game over screen.

I don't like the enemy animations. I understand you want them to do something besides sit there, but the shrinking and growing just seems weird. If there's a way to make it less dramatic that might work, but personally I'd say meaningful animation > no animation > weird/distracting animation.

Looking forward to playing the rest, looks really nice so far and seems like many of the game's features are well thought out!

 

[Joewoof]

I think I'll wait for a longer demo before trying this out, but those action sequences already look great!

 

[GutshotStr8]

Played again and this time made it through to the imps. I'm really enjoying the process of getting random equipment and runes, deciding which equipment to upgrade and how, etc. It's such a simple but effective system!

This might be personal preference but I don't like dialog that shows up in spits and starts. You know, three words, then I press enter, then . . . with about half a second between each dot, then a few more words. I read much faster than that, and I don't find it dramatic, I just find it annoying. 

I ran into a weird issue with the imps. I started by burning down Lagos, and when he hit 0, it said he was banished and could no longer attack. Apparently that meant I couldn't damage him either, even after he healed up, though that wasn't clear to me until I wasted two turns trying.

So then I switched and burned Ragos, and when he hit 0, he got the same state, and then Damien cast his banishment thing (cool effect with his eyes on the portrait, BTW, I was not expecting that) and Ragos went away, but Lagos was still there and none of my skills could damage him. My red magi was dead so I couldn't try her skills, but it seemed like this was a bug of some sort. I ended up just quitting because it seemed like the battle would never end.

Even before that, I found the imp battle confusing. Their sudden appearance didn't make sense to me, and then they started inflicting a bunch of states on themselves and on me that i wasn't clear on what those did.

Just trying to help you iron out details, I think you've got the building blocks of a very solid game here, keep up the good work!

 

[Fernyfer775]

@GutshotStr8:  I figured out what caused your bug with the imps. You must have killed the non-healer Imp first, which meant the healer one was still alive, and he healed his partner, which then screwed up the troop event that was supposed to trigger the end of the fight. I just went ahead and removed the heal from that fight altogether, as it was causing more problems than it was worth. I went ahead and added a prompt to the player to switch to the other Imp when one gets banished as well. 

I'm actually looking at a way to expand on the random equipment drops to have slightly varied stats as well. Possibly even considering adding in a "runecrafting" system where you could combine runes to create stronger ones.

I'll make sure I cut-back a bit on the word pauses...it'll save me time in the long-run anyways lol.

I really appreciate your time, effort, and feedback, thank you.