RMMZ Haven: Secret of Caledria | Demo Available

[Neo Soul Gamer]

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Spoiler: Developer's Note

What kind of RPG is this?

When I play classic JRPGs from the 90's, the overwhelming nostalgia I get makes me wish that I could erase my memory of those games just so I could get that fresh experience . That nostalgia is an endless source of motivation for Haven: Secret of Caledria.

My goal is to create a classic JRPG experience that's palatable to a modern audience. The game draws inspiration from several classics such as Lufia 2, Chrono Trigger, FFVI, and Suikoden. As someone with a full-time job and a family, I realize that some fans of the genre may not have a lot of time to sink into a 20+ hour game. Haven will be for those who can appreciate games that are simple in design, but have just enough depth to keep players engaged.

Spoiler: Synopsis

A raid on the region of Olund comes to a halt when Ziedrick, Captain of the Caledrian army, finds out that he was manipulated by Emperor Rofel to lead the attack. His decision to spare the lives of the Olund rebels sets a plan in motion that ushers in an age of peace. Years later, Ziedrick would pass away, leaving his son Oswyn to carry on his legacy.

In an attempt to live up to his father's image, Oswyn quickly rose among the ranks of the Caledrian Army. But with the war coming to a close, he begins to feel a lack of purpose and questions whether or not he should carve his own path to find himself.

After a royal treasure is stolen, Oswyn seizes an opportunity to honor his father, and begins a pursuit of the thieves . Unbeknownst to him, Oswyn would stumble on a secret that goes on to change his life forever.

Spoiler: Features

On-Map Encounters

• Encounter enemies through direct contact while moving in hostile areas. Specific effects will be triggered based on the direction the enemy is facing when approached.

Target Enemies based on Area of Effect

• Use your Arts to strategically target enemies in various positions.

Unleash Special Attacks

• Build your Morale and defeat your enemies using attacks that are unique to each party member.

Capture and use Monster abilities in battle!

• Assign specific monster abilities to your party members and use them in battle.

Build up a Village to Unlock Secrets (Not in Demo)

• Gain new abilities and hidden items as you grow your base of operations.

Embark on various Sidequests

• Explore the world of Caledria to unlock hidden locations, characters, items, and more.

Collect cards and battle with them against various NPCs

• Take a break by playing a fun card based mini-game!

Spoiler: Screenshots

Spoiler: Demo

Link to the Demo is HERE.

 

[Lady]

It look really nice. I can't wait to test your game.

 

[Arcmagik]

This looks really good. Congrats! I've seen Time Fantasy being used a lot more lately and this is one of the better usages I've seen!

 

[Neo Soul Gamer]

@Lady - Thank you! I'm glad to hear you're excited. I'll be sure to reach out to you once the Beta is complete. Less than a week away!

@Arcmagik - Thanks a lot! Really appreciate the support. I was actually a little worried about choosing Time Fantasy graphics. Personally, I LOVE them (obviously, lol). But I'm not sure about what the community thinks about pixel art games. Regardless, I'm confident that the gameplay will give that old-school rpg feel.

 

[Neo Soul Gamer]

BETA Demo is up! I imagine quite a few bugs will be found. I'll be sure to get rid of them as soon as they're brought to my attention.

All feedback is greatly appreciated. If it means dropping and/or changing certain mechanics and features, then I'm more than willing to do so. My main concern is whether or not I have a project that's worth continuing. So please don't hesitate to share your opinions, no matter how negative they may be.

 

[IAmJakeSauvage]

I just finished the demo - and I've got some feedback first and foremost:

• The image I attached was an error that popped up when trying to scroll in a shop.
• The door's in the emperor's castle bring you back to the middle of the room (ahaha)
• The boost command is teetering on feature bloat - you might want to remove it and instead have the characters learn passives from equipment/godstones as well.
• The stamina gauge is another one that makes sense - but still feels like feature bloat. It's very stop/go/stop/go and overall feels a little jarring. If you're planning on keeping it I'd just increase the recharge rate - or lower the rate at which it empties itself.

Other than those minor grievances though, you can tell you've put a lot of work in. The mapping is nice, battles feel pretty good (even if they lack strategy at the moment), the dialogue is well-recieved and overall your project just feels pretty polished despite the beta status. I'm excited to see where you carry this.

• 

 

[Lady]

Overall your demo is very good. I think you put a lot of time in it.

Pro:

1. Very nice opening scene & cut scene.

2. Very unique battle system.

3. Good story line.

4. I like your world map design.

5. Very well plan tutorial.

6. I like that those NPC where I can walk pass them. How did you do that? It can be under when player is in front and over when player at the back.


Con:

1. Using light blue to highlight not that good because not much contrasts between white and light blue.


Question:

1. Quest icon changing grey to blue. What does it do?

2. After they win a battle, there is a window show CP gain. What is CP for?


Bug:

1. I have completed “find scorpion tail” quest when I was in the city. But after I enter Eastern Wood and complete tutorial, it pop up “objective completed: find scorpion tail”.

2. Graphic error on the castle wall, it happen on both side.

Spoiler: Graphic error

Suggestion:

Can you design your party chat window able to open using keyboard button? I’m using keyboard to do all the interaction but suddenly I have to use mouse to open party chat. I feel it’s a bit inconvenient.

 

[Neo Soul Gamer]

I just finished the demo - and I've got some feedback first and foremost:

• The image I attached was an error that popped up when trying to scroll in a shop.
• The door's in the emperor's castle bring you back to the middle of the room (ahaha)
• The boost command is teetering on feature bloat - you might want to remove it and instead have the characters learn passives from equipment/godstones as well.
• The stamina gauge is another one that makes sense - but still feels like feature bloat. It's very stop/go/stop/go and overall feels a little jarring. If you're planning on keeping it I'd just increase the recharge rate - or lower the rate at which it empties itself.

Other than those minor grievances though, you can tell you've put a lot of work in. The mapping is nice, battles feel pretty good (even if they lack strategy at the moment), the dialogue is well-recieved and overall your project just feels pretty polished despite the beta status. I'm excited to see where you carry this.

1. I'll have to dig into that error and find out what's going on. Oddly enough, it didn't trigger in my playtest. (EDIT: Found the issue, thanks)
   
2. Really? He should only be one tile above the exit. The purpose of this was to make sure that anybody using mouse for movement wouldn't end up leaving the room by accident if they moved left or right (the entrance is three tiles wide). I'll take another look.
3. I 100% agree. And learning passives from Godstones was already something I was prepared to implement. So transitioning to that system will be quick and easy.
4. Again. 100% agree. I had already lowered the rate at which the stamina dropped in the beginning. I'll decrease the rate and speed up the delay of recovery. I'm still on two sides about keeping this feature though.

Overall your demo is very good. I think you put a lot of time in it.

Pro:

1. Very nice opening scene & cut scene.

2. Very unique battle system.

3. Good story line.

4. I like your world map design.

5. Very well plan tutorial.

6. I like that those NPC where I can walk pass them. How did you do that? It can be under when player is in front and over when player at the back.


Con:

1. Using light blue to highlight not that good because not much contrasts between white and light blue.


Question:

1. Quest icon changing grey to blue. What does it do?

2. After they win a battle, there is a window show CP gain. What is CP for?


Bug:

1. I have completed “find scorpion tail” quest when I was in the city. But after I enter Eastern Wood and complete tutorial, it pop up “objective completed: find scorpion tail”.

2. Graphic error on the castle wall, it happen on both side.

Spoiler: Graphic error

Suggestion:

Can you design your party chat window able to open using keyboard button? I’m using keyboard to do all the interaction but suddenly I have to use mouse to open party chat. I feel it’s a bit inconvenient.

Cons:

1. Interesting take. I'll look at changing that as well.

Question:

1. I've decided to let that be more of a reference for the player. As the quest list gets longer, it may be more annoying to find the current quest you're doing. So highlighting it just allows you to find it easier in the quest log. The plugin I'm using does provide some deeper functionality, but I decided not to use it that way.
2. There should have been a Tutorial on CP after defeating the first soldier in the Battle of Olund after it drops a Holy Stone. Did it not show up for you? Or maybe you skipped it?

Bug:

1. Thanks for mentioning that. I'll fix that. Simple oversight with quest referencing in the events.
2. I noticed that when I first started designing the maps and just never got back to it. So thank you for reminding me.

Suggestion:

1. Absolutely! I'll probably have that assigned to the "C" button in the next update.

Lastly, to answer your question about the walking sprites. I didn't do anything fancy. I believe what you're seeing is the result of the sprites being two tiles high. I could be wrong though.

Thank you very, VERY much for the feedback you two! I expected you all to come across many more bugs where I was the only one to play and test it. I tend to get tunnel vision after so many playtests. Haha.

 

[immatx]

This looks really good! Unfortunately, my laptop sucks and won't run it. I'll try to find some other way to play it, but I just thought I'd let you know that it looks very appealing based on what you put in the post.

 

[Neo Soul Gamer]

BETA Demo has been updated! There are too many changes to list, but most of them are subtle. As for the major changes:

• Enemy A.I. and parameters have been changed to make combat a tad more strategic. This is still a WIP until I get more feedback.
• Lot of bugs have been fixed.
• A few changes have been made based on the feedback given earlier in the topic.

As always, positive and negative feedback is appreciated.

@immatx - I appreciate the support! Hopefully you'll get a rig that can run it.

 

[Lady]

After I got Bayard to join my party, I went into blacksmith shop. At the shop menu, I want to check whether any new gear suitable for Bayard. I try using Q and W (page up and page down) to switch but nothing happen. It keeps showing Oswyn information. I end up using my mouse to click on >> and << to switch char info.

Spoiler: Spoiler

 

[Neo Soul Gamer]

After I got Bayard to join my party, I went into blacksmith shop. At the shop menu, I want to check whether any new gear suitable for Bayard. I try using Q and W (page up and page down) to switch but nothing happen. It keeps showing Oswyn information. I end up using my mouse to click on >> and << to switch char info.

The Q & W/PgUp & PgDown buttons are typically used to switch party members when you're in certain scenes that show party information (equip, status, etc). For shops, using the left and right keys should have cycled through the information displayed for individual party members. Did you try that?

I know that clicking on the window will show individual stat changes, but that can also be toggled with the TAB key.

This how the plugin functions by design.

Thank you so much for doing some thorough testing.

 

[Neo Soul Gamer]

Just figured I'd give a little update!

First things first:



FANTASTIC job on this First Impressions video by Driftwood Gaming, and thank you to everyone that commented on the video! (Seriously, I'm shocked that there weren't more trolls)

It broke 1k views in under a day! I really didn't expect to get such positive feedback. This community continues to impress me every day. You guys are awesome!

The plan was to initially release this BETA, then slowly make updates to it as I found the time. I honestly didn't think it would be nearly as good as people thought it was. So based on how well received this project is, I've decided to take this MUCH more seriously. This means that there's going to be more content delivered at a much faster pace!

I've made another update to the existing BETA, but I still have to do a couple of thorough playtests before I release it. I'll probably have it up by tonight or tomorrow evening. Until then, I'll ask that you hold off from playing the version that's currently available for download.

The changes will include (but are not limited to):

• Several bug fixes and typo corrections. (Too many to list)
• Added a "Retry Battle" option when defeated in battle. (Apparently, a LOT of people forget to save)
• Changed "Rings" to "Armors". (People were just skipping the rings thinking they were only accessories)
• Decreased Max SP to 15 instead of 20. (I found it a little too easy to spam skills. This will provide better balance with enemies and force some strategy)
• Decrease Max MP to 4 instead of 5 (Ditto, but for spells.)
• Added a mandatory Options Scene call at the start of the game to toggle custom switches. (I learned that all switches are reset when a New Game is started. So having switch options in the Title Menu caused a lot of trouble for things that I wanted to be properly toggled)
• Added another set of Restorative Items, along with crafting items. (Thanks to the crappy RMMV targeting system, I had to separate reviving items and healing items)
• Removed the Roulette Styled damage popup (It annoyed some people)
• Changed icons to better represent battle resource types (Just a few color changes and edits for better referencing)
• Updated dialogue (Trimmed the fat, so to speak. Help the game move a tad faster)
  
• Added a Battle Log Message for when MP is restored. (I treat TP as MP, and of course... There's no damage popup for TP)

So with that said. I want to give a big thanks to Driftwood Gaming, the RMWeb community, and the several friends I've made in the Driftwood Gaming & Lunatic Coders Discord Chat. You all are so inspiring!

Stay tuned for the next BETA within a couple of days!

 

[Kes]

I downloaded this today to give it a quick look, and I'm wondering if you added a new plugin or something at the last update. The reason I ask is that I'm experiencing extreme lag, something I've not seen in an MV game before.

Long black screen before anything start to happen, then after a quick burst of around 37FPS, I get the title screen, which runs at a flickering rate of between 56-60FPS. I choose New Game, and that's when the real problems start. A short while at 0 FPS, and then during the tutorial it went between 2 and 3 FPS, with an occasional 4; most often, though, it was at 2. Here is a small screenie.


When I finally got through the tutorial, there was a long loading time, and then once a map came up, the rate went up rapidly to 58-60 FPS. But every time there was a map change, the frame rate dropped right down again. When I got to the section where the dialogue boxes started to appear (about the war), it stayed stuck at 2 FPS. I force closed down, tried a second time and got the same frame rates. At that point I gave up.

EDIT
My laptop has a decent spec, so it's not due to that.

 

[Neo Soul Gamer]

@Kes

First of all, I really appreciate you giving this a shot. Sorry to hear about the lag.

I'm honestly not sure what the issue would be. The only plugin installed in the update was SRD's Retry Battle plugin. Other than that, no changes were made except for a few database and event tweaks.

I just tested the game on a 6 year old laptop running Windows 7, and it ran at a steady 56-60 frames per second. The only frame dip I experienced was during the fade to greyscale before the Tutorials ran. Other than that, it ran fine. This is the first I'm hearing about any dramatic lag after over 100 downloads of the newest version. So if anyone else can chime in with their experience, please speak up.

I really wish I could investigate, but I wouldn't even know where to start since I can't reproduce the issue on either my laptop or desktop computers. Any ideas?

 

[Kes]

Sorry, I have no idea what it might be. I did wonder if you were using an outdated version of the plugin which allows pre-loading. That, I know, caused significant lag for some games, but I believe that's been fixed now. I just tried again, new day, nothing running except this browser, but still the same issue.

 

[wzackw]

Really nice job on the sprites and tiles. And the battle screen. I'm not surprised it got so many views.

 

[Neo Soul Gamer]

@Kes

With you being a moderator, I hope this isn't too much to ask... Is it possible to pm you a link to an older version? Not asking for a full playthrough, just a quick test to see if the frame rate issues persist throughout the different versions.

@wzackw

Thank you! I'm still VERY shocked at the attention it has received so far. lol.

 

[Kes]

Okay, send it over. I might not have time until the weekend, but I'll see what I can do.

 

[S1130rG.Studi0s]

Downloading right now, just saw this on Driftwoodgaming. Can't wait!