RMMV Luna Sanctus [RPG/Fantasy/Strategy] (Demo Available)

[TheoAllen]

Was thinking about a 2 side timeline, with heroes on top and enemies on the bottom. I'll simply use icons with the actor's face and icons of different color for enemies.

That is actually a clever idea. However, I'm also not UI/UX person so I can't really give u advice on how to design it in the battle screen either.

Well I did want to implement grid movement at first, but there was so much stuff to do and fix, and the fact that people didn't seem to care about it pushed it down in my priority list.

Still not sure about the turn thing for movement. I'm thinking about 2 options:
1) It does not take a turn, but once you move (only possible at before taking any actions), you can't go back.
2) Moving does take a turn, but the hero goes back to 50% ATB instead of 0.

That is up for you to decide. But I still prefer the first approach since it's basically your grid system is a free targeting system with no actual attack range.

It's because all the games I played had demo start right in the middle of the game. The logic is that some systems (such as the ability system in my game) aren't introduced right at the beginning at the game, so to give the player a taste of every available system in the game you throw them in the middle of the game. I thought that was normal, but apparently not with all the negative responses I had. I'll probably change it in the near future to a part of the early game instead of right in the middle of the game (the current demo starts at around 15-20 hours into the game I think).

Actually, middle or not doesn't really matter. What matters is the information delivery. If you can get me informed without being overwhelmed even though you threw me out of the blue in the middle of the game progression, it doesn't really matter lol.

Do you use Audacity to convert to ogg? When you convert to ogg in there, there's a property called "quality" that goes from 0 (max compression and worst audio) to 10 (less compression and best audio). I simply chose 10 lol. I think as long as the game is under 1GB it's not too bad. Many games nowadays have file size of over many GB.

Hmm... no, I use FL Studio and simply pick the 128kbps export lol. Then I only use Audacity for basically adding the loop point. The file size usually bumped a bit. I had no idea why or curious enough to find what was happening.

As for 1 GB size point, well no, not personally. I don't think I deserve to have such large game size if I didn't bring the same enjoyment as those big sized games. I prefer efficiency. If I can compress as much as possible my game without damaging the quality, I will do it so. The reason why I'm fine with the big sized games is that I trust the quality of the game and I know I will be enjoying it. As for RM games, it's pretty much shooting in the dark. Most of RM dev are individual is pretending to know the gamedev, frankly I don't trust them, likewise, I don't even trust myself. My game is almost reaching 200mb and I personally think I have sinned.

That thing: https://itch.io/t/364815/ability-system-how-it-works

Ah so that the one, I gotta say that I didn't have a chance to actually tried it because as I already said, the game seem didn't "give" the chance to experiment. There're so many options that I had no idea what to choose.

Speaking of which, it might not directly relevant. But it stuck on me and I had to bookmark it because I somewhat agree.

 

[MushroomCake28]

@TheoAllen Lol you actually linked a Ted Talk. Yeah I get the idea. The fact that you completely went without looking at the core feature of the game (aka the ability system) proves me that I really need to rework how the information is presented to the player.

As for game size, 200MB is so small... (for a MV game, VX Ace games are much smaller). You know you can get like 4TB for less than 100$ today right?

 

[TheoAllen]

The fact that you completely went without looking at the core feature of the game (aka the ability system) proves me that I really need to rework how the information is presented to the player.

Wait, I thought the actual core mechanic was the grid system, not the ability system lul.

You know you can get like 4TB for less than 100$ today right?

It's not the size that matters. I never really have a problem with the size taking up my HDD space. But it's the internet that matters. Like I said, I failed to download ur game once. Generally, when the game is reaching 3 digit MB, my expectation went up, but most of them failed to meet my expectation. The enjoyment I got wasn't as much as the struggle of me waiting for the game to be downloaded.

Take this with a grain of salt though, as I probably the minority. But personally, I swear to make my game as efficient as possible.

 

[MushroomCake28]

@TheoAllen Core feature is the ability system and the grid battle (they go together, like for example there's an ability called "volcanic burst" on the earth summon skill and creates a fissure that shoots magma, but only on the center of AoE, not the sides of it).

As for size, I think it has to do more with your internet. As someone with an internet of 15MB/s (which is becoming frequent in the west), anything less than 10GB is a small download lol.

 

[TheoAllen]

As for size, I think it has to do more with your internet

That's why I said internet, duh

As someone with an internet of 15MB/s (which is becoming frequent in the west), anything less than 10GB is a small download lol.

The fastest internet I've got was around 2-3mbps, and it was in the capital city. It's much slower in my place, and the common speed is around 3 digit kbps. Sometimes even 2 digit kbps. We have FUP as well, when it reached a certain quota, it will be slowed down.

 

[MushroomCake28]

Okay, so I'm near release!

I've updated the battle system a bit. I created a little prototype to test the battle system and catch bugs. If you guys could take a look I would appreciate it. It's only one map, so it should be really quick.

Download ( 144MB ): https://www.dropbox.com/s/2qe1io6hszb86e7/Luna Sanctus PROTOTYPE.rar?dl=0

And yes, I added grid movement in battle ( @TheoAllen )

 

[atoms]

@MushroomCake28 I'm glad you shared in detail the main features of the game on your game page, everything looks really good and interesting when I scanned through it.

I thought I liked your game page long ago, can't believe I must've missed it for so long now!

Good luck, and looking forward to hearing about the completed game!

 

[MushroomCake28]

@atoms Thanks! Very appreciate it!

 

[TheoAllen]

Tried this for a few mins and I already have two complains. And it's all from the character input phase.

First, the zoom when selecting an input. While it can be used as a focus on who is taking action, but it takes away the entire field view. I can not see my enemy, the position, an all until I selected attack.

Second, it also takes away the ATB bar by hiding it. I don't know who is going to attack or take action next while I'm going to input a command.

Those two are still my biggest turnoff.

 

[MushroomCake28]

@TheoAllen You can return to the full view by pressing "X". And you can also toggle on the ATB bar in the full view. Besides, in the full view, there's also the timeline to give you an idea of who's going to be playing next. It's either that, or you start in the full view mode, but you'd have to input something to have access to your commands.

 

[hiddenone]

I gave your battle demo a try, while the idea seems good there's still a lot that could use more tweaking.

Spoiler: Feedback

Personally I think too much info given all at once. While I understand that it's just a demo to test battles, with so much info it's hard for a player to be able to focus and judge things separately. I ended up just using a few of the skills, once I found which ones I liked because I didn't know if experimenting with all of them would be worth it.
Skits:

• Having all the busts right next to each other in the center of the screen makes the skit feel a lot more robotic, taking away from any emotion/life of the characters. You could make them move around the screen a bit, or jolt and react when someone says something shocking
• The message box is so wide! The screen isn't default size, so there's no reason to make the message box the full width

Battles:

• Hoo boy, there's a lot of info given but that's not always good. Too much info can be overwhelming
• Zooming in on the character whose turn it is is a bad idea, most players would probably want to be able to see all the enemies so they can decide what would be good to do without having to go through the menus repeatedly. And zooming in on the enemy can make it pretty much impossible to see things, like when attacking the boss

​

• Animations are slow, which makes the battle feel like it's dragging on
• There doesn't seem to be any info on which attacks happen right away, and which have a delay. Magic seems to usually have the delay, but if that's the case why not share that info somewhere?
• Animations don't always show up where expected, some seem to be set to the screen instead of appearing where placed
• There's no popup or message when enemies are beaten, they just fade away... It doesn't make me feel powerful when I beat them, even just a 'KO' popup would be an improvement

Crafting:

• There's no 'are you sure' message, which means a player could accidentally craft something if they misclicked. It's fine to not have that message, but make sure the player knows there's no double-check
• Can't craft any weapons or armors, so no clue if they're actually useful/worth the costs

Overall the idea for the battle system is neat, but I didn't really see the enemies using the grid to their advantage. I moved all my characters pretty close to each other, but didn't notice the enemies doing any AOE attacks to them. The other systems worked fine, so with more polish they could be a nice touch to the game. Good luck with your project!

 

[TheoAllen]

@TheoAllen You can return to the full view by pressing "X". And you can also toggle on the ATB bar in the full view. Besides, in the full view, there's also the timeline to give you an idea of who's going to be playing next. It's either that, or you start in the full view mode, but you'd have to input something to have access to your commands.

While that certainly better, I still prefer the ATB bar to stay consistent by keep displaying it, because keep pressing X to display the ATB bar is sort of annoying. It's an essential UI that is should be a HUD, means "head-up display". I don't remember a single game where the turn order like one line ATB and CTB keep disappearing for a sake of skill input or action.

 

[MushroomCake28]

@hiddenone Thanks for taking the time to try my little demo!

Skit:

• I'd love to add animations when I have the time! It just takes so much time to animate each dialogue line... maybe in a future update.

Battle:

• Honestly at first I thought the zoom in on the character when his/her turns come was a good idea. Apparently it isn't lol. I'll see what I can do to fix the UI.
• Yeah, the slow animations is a common critique. Unfortunately, I'll have to go and modify the skill animation individually to accelerate animations, so it might take some time before I can fix that.
• The animation position is an issue, since I originally coded the engine to center the animations on the targeted grid instead of the enemy. This will be fixed.
• A KO pop out is actually a great idea! Why haven't I thought of that earlier...
• The enemies only take advantage of the grid when they have AoE skills. If the enemy has a chance to target 2 actors instead of 1, it has 75% chance to target the 2 actors and 25% to target the single actor. I thought it would be unfair and too computer like to always hit the highest number of targets possible, but it would also be unfair to select the number of targets randomly, so I created a little forumula:
  

  Chance to target X amount of actors = ((x ^ 2) - 1) / SUM(all possible num of targets ^ 2 - 1)
  
  So example if it is possible to hit either 3, 2, or 1 hero:
  - chance to hit 1 hero:    1 / 12
  - chance to hit 2 heroes: 3 / 12
  - chance to hit 3 heroes: 8 / 12
  
  Example if it's possible to hit either 4, 3, 2, or 1 hero:
  - chance to hit 1 hero:      1 / 27
  - chance to hit 2 heroes:   3 / 27
  - chance to hit 3 heroes:   8 / 27
  - chance to hit 4 heroes: 15 / 27

Crafting:

• Actually I was planning on adding an additional window after selecting an item that asks the player how many of the item he/she wants to craft. That should fix the "are you sure you want to craft this?" problem.
• Yeah, unfortunately it's just a small prototype. To be able to evaluate the value of the crafted items, you'd have to play the entire game, compare what can be obtained via crafting vs what can be obtained in shops. Unfortunately, that's something that will require further testing.

@TheoAllen Yeah I understand. I might have to redo the UI entirely another time (and people ask me why I hate doing UI...). If I understand the issue correctly, it's not about zooming or not being able to see the enemies' images, but it's the fact that it isn't displaying the ATB or the timeline by default and that the UI is split in 2 part (the selecting command, and full view)?

 

[TheoAllen]

@TheoAllen Yeah I understand. I might have to redo the UI entirely another time (and people ask me why I hate doing UI...). If I understand the issue correctly, it's not about zooming or not being able to see the enemies' images, but it's the fact that it isn't displaying the ATB or the timeline by default and that the UI is split in 2 part (the selecting command, and full view)?

Not being able to see the full view is still an issue. Even hiddenone mentioned the same. Why it's still an issue, because I have a feeling if you didn't consider this as an issue, you would just display the ATB while keeping the zoom, which is still partially take away the full information for planning.

 

[atoms]

@MushroomCake28 I don't know if it'll be compatible with your plugins and work for you, but Yanfly made a speed up Plugin which you can find here.

http://yanfly.moe/2018/02/09/yep-163-battle-animation-speed-options-rpg-maker-mv/

Because I just use the default battle system without much customization, I just know it works for me. I'm sure there are other speed up battle Plugins out there for MV, but again I don't know if any of them will be compatible for you.

This is another one I found on this forum through a google search, I am not sure if it still works with the latest version of RPG Maker MV, but again it may work for you?
https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/battle-high-speed-mode-plugin.46891/

 

[Kupotepo]

@MushroomCake28, where is your battle testing demo? So I can test for you.

 

[MushroomCake28]

@atoms Thanks for the help, but unfortunately no plugin is compatible with my battle system because I entirely coded it from scratch, so I redid all the core aspects (the sprites, the animations, the scene, the battlers, the windows, etc.). Those plugins only modify the behavior of the default core objects like Sprite_Battler, which my code doesn't really use. I'll have to come up with a personal solution, but it matters not: I like a good puzzle.

@Kupotepo Seems like many posts have pushed my post with the link far behind. Here's the link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2qe1io6hszb86e7/Luna Sanctus PROTOTYPE.rar?dl=0

 

[phamtruong1992]

Just downloaded the demo from itch io but couldn't play it at all.
I can start it normally, when it comes to the part where i can press to skip the tutorial, the game will close itself.
Edit: I tried to run the game as administration and now i can play it normally. Will update the progress and how i feel about the game later. The mapping looks pretty cute and neat already despite of rtp assets.
***Update:
1. Had quick glance at your menu, seeing the resolution scaling option made me feel good. I love this plugin of yours Mushroom. But why I think it looks the same at all res?
2. Your mini map is as big as my fist lmao.
3. Just read your response and i have to correct it that it doesn't crash anymore after i set it to run as admin. Don't worry about it lad. But is that really an old build? The version is 1.07

 

[MushroomCake28]

@phamtruong1992 Wait wut... it's not supposed to crash (only place that MIGHT crash is the battle). Probably an asset problem, or your system (you're the first to report a crash). And you're not supposed to get the "skip tutorial" part since that's an old demo lol. I'll PM you to figure out stuff to not spam this thread lol.

 

[Kupotepo]

First, Your crafting mechanic: please put a quantity on magical category. For example, "White Emblem" how much it boosts a hero's "Golden Body"? +1, +2, or +3. You get an idea.

Next, the zoom in and out is hurting my eyes I am not kidding. (So either eliminate or it slower.)

Finally, please slow down the animations, so I can enjoy and follow the movements.

Others then that I do not see anything that needs urgent to fix.