RMMV Ophidia

[jigida70]

Ophidia

(Edit--I replaced the demo with one that I playtested after deployment. It seems that the Window Arrow image for Galv's Message System isn't there after deploying without unused files.)

I am early in development on this project. I am focused on story-line and eventing right now, and will go back through and worry about tilesets later (my sister is an artist, and she will be helping me with this). I was originally going to do this story as a novella, but decided it would work really well as an RPG.

Update: The game is now playable to the end, though I am going to improve dialog, and make the cutscenes better. I will be looking for feedback to know if I need to leave better clues on how to get through the game. Gameplay should be around an hour total without excessive need to grind to get to higher levels.

Spoiler: Story and Gameplay

Neva Tiverton lived a sheltered life as the only child of Kersa and Ander, who ruled one of the four kingdoms of Ophidia. Their kingdom was attacked one night by soldiers from a rival king, led by someone Neva had only heard about in legends—a sorcerer named Alpharan. As the army laid waste to the land they loved, Ander shocked Neva, by using something he had been hiding from her since birth, their family’s magical abilities. Using a spell, the three members of the royal family, along with four of their most trusted guards, were transported to a cave system hidden from the rest of the world.

Kersa and Ander could not sit by and let their kingdom fall, so they left Neva in the hands of the guards, and set out to negotiate with another kingdom. Neva woke the next morning to a panicked guard, who succumbed to his wounds as he told her where to find a powerful summoning spell her grandfather had left in the cave. Neva spoke the words for a spell that promised a powerful warrior to help her defeat her enemies. Instead, it delivered a high school senior from Earth named Thomas, who was even more ill-equipped to handle the battles ahead as she was.

Now, the only way for Neva to escape the caves, find her parents, and return the Tiverton Kingdom to its rightful rulers, is to work with a young man whose only concern is returning to Earth so he can take his SATs and escape the small town where everyone knows his family as the Crazy Coultons.

It is up to you to help Neva and Thomas realize their potential. Their powers are tied to their emotional bond, and your choices will determine whether they are able to overcome their pain, anger, and self-doubt in order to find the magic that resides in themselves.

The game will be story-centered, with dialogue choices that will affect two variables—Empathy and Courage. Depending on the amount of these variables, there will be different states, such as Distrust, Hate, Compassion, and Love, as well as Coward, and Brave (I’ll think of more states on the courage spectrum later). Being in one of these states will cause changes in attributes, as well as affect how some events play out. There will be no random encounters, instead there will be on map events that trigger battles when the event touches the player.

Spoiler: Screen Shots

Title2 by James Clark, on Flickr

Screenshot1 by James Clark, on Flickr

Spoiler: Credits

Galv
Yanfly
Avey
Dawn Dutcher (My sister, for the Title page

Spoiler: Demo

The demo is playable through to the end, even thought I still need to make changes so it is more enjoyable for players.
Downloadable Demo needs work. I do have a demo that is playable in the browser at https://jigida70.itch.io/ophidia

 

[hiddenone]

I hate to say it, but your demo's unplayable at the moment. It crashed as soon as I started because it was missing the 'windowarrow' file. I dropped a random file in so I could try to keep playing, but it's missing battle animations too and I can't guess what it'll need. Make sure to test it after deploying the game to make sure it can actually run.

 

[jigida70]

Hiddenone,

Thanks for the feedback. When I deployed, it must have left out some resources. I will play through the deployed copy, and add files needed before I zip it back up and upload to dropbox again. I will definitely test after deploying from here on out.

 

[Rhino]

Spoiler

-I think you might also want to delete your save file before sharing your demo, it feels a bit weird as a player to be able to 'continue' from a game that hasn't started.
-I took the empty bottle from the bookshelf, but it doesn't appear in my item list. If it's an item that will come in handy in the future, you might want to add it to the inventory to remind the player that they picked it up.
-After the initial cut scene, I started to walk around when the monster noise played, it opened the save menu which was a bit weird. Also, even though I moved off the bed, the text box was still acting like I was there. You're using Galv's message style right? I think you can use \pop[-1] to target the player wherever they are.
-Sir Fram just faints (dies?), and the player can't interact with their body to show that Neva is sad/shocked or anything. Asides from the music, it feels a bit undramatic.
-We say the words, summon Thomas, and then all of the sudden battle a slime? Where did it come from? The sound from before sounded more like a lion then anything else.
-I got a failed to load img/animations/Howl.png error during the battle and had to quit, so I tried again, failed to load img/animations/Cure4.png. Then an sound effect file was missing.. In the end, I had to copy all the rtp assets into your game to make it playable. I think you should know, the default deployment option to exclude unused items really doesn't work very well. It doesn't take into account any assets loaded via plugins, so that might be why there's so many issues. You really need to replay your demo again, and make sure it's all set.
-Neva tells Thomas to use his magic, but his skill list is empty. I think you should hide the extra commands (using something like Hime's Battle Commands) until they're actually usable. Also, it would have been quite nice to have an escape option.
-There's a typo in the battle rewards, it always says something like 10Crystals, and needs a space adding.
-I couldn't get past the ogre troop, he's really strong and there's no healing items and no escape so I had to quit playing there.
-The idea of trading crystals for skills is interesting, but might need more explanation. Who are we trading the crystals with? If it's just 'as soon as you have x amount of crystals' it sounds to be like crystals would be a consumable item, needing a certain amount every time you cast a skill, rather than having crystals magically unlocks an ability for you.
-I think the healing room could have been done a little better, perhaps having to interact with the bed and sleep for a while instead of walk in walk out?

All in all, I do quite like the concept, and I'm interested to know more about how Thomas ends up being summoned by the book. Unfortunately, I am definitely getting the sense of it being your first game. It's just not all quite together yet, so I think you might need to focus a bit more on some of the details, and iron out all of these bugs.

I know my review came off quite negative, but I'd rather be honest and give you something to work on, rather than saying 'Zomg best game evaaa!!' which will never help you to learn anything. No ones first attempts are ever really that good, heck my 3rd game was still pretty poor. It's a learning curve, but if you keep practising, engage with the community and learn from those with more experience, you'll definitely get there.

Good luck!

 

[jigida70]

Rhino,

Thank you. Your constructive criticism was spot on.

Spoiler: Replies

-Good point on deleting the save files. Also, instead of using the "exclude unused items", I'm going through and deleting files I do not want to use from my game project. If I need to, I can always add them later. I did a playthrough before posting, but didn't get any errors. Then when I went back through, I did get those same errors. Either way, I need to do a better job of playtesting before posting.
-I have a few forced save menus throughout, especially after long dialog chains, and right before a player is about to fight a boss. Is this something I should shy away from?
-I added some dialog from Neva when she inspects Sir Fram's body, good catch on that.
-I'll make sure the empty bottle shows up in the inventory.
-When Thomas is summoned, I have a battle right away just to show how useless Thomas is at the beginning. Maybe I should show a slime creeping towards them while they talk.
-I will add an escape option.
-I will use the plugin to hide Thomas' commands until they are usable. I am also trying to figure out how to handle Thomas' perception of reality. He isn't sure if this is a dream or real, and he surely doesn't think he has magic within him. I need to be careful with how I handle his gradual (or maybe even sudden) realization that he isn't in Kansas anymore.
-I will make sure there is a space between number and the word crystals. Also, I am not entirely sure how I want to handle this. In this cave, there aren't any places to spend currency, but I want the characters to expend something in order to learn spells. I am thinking about allowing the player to exchange experience points in order to learn spells. This will give them the choice between leveling up, or learning new skills.
-I like the idea of having the characters go to the beds. Choices by the player will determine the relationship between Neva and Thomas, and it would be cool if the two suddenly went to the same bed if certain variables show that their relationship has turned things that way.
-As far as the ogre goes. I had that boss reachable right from the beginning, but my intention was for the player to realize they weren't ready to beat him yet, and go west. If done right, the player can get the heal spell after three battles, and Thomas gets a couple of special, non-magical skills by level three so he can contribute. By the time Neva and Thomas are both level three, the Ogre is very much beatable.

This is my first real attempt to have a finished product. I have most of the storyline for the first chapter fleshed out, now I just need to be able to let the player get from the beginning until the the end of chapter one.
Also, I have a playable demo for the browser at https://jigida70.itch.io/ophidia with some updates over the last couple of days

 

[Rhino]

If you're using default skills and enemies, there's a chance it's asking for files you didn't realise it wanted, and so have deleted them. I played your demo online to get a little further

Spoiler

-Save prompts can be a good idea, especially if it's before a boss or other area where you might accidentally K.O. However, at the point in question after you first hear the noise, I think it just breaks up the scene and destroys the tension. If you want a save file there, put it as you leave the room perhaps?
-Speaking of leaving the room, I know you can't until you've summoned Thomas. The dialogue telling me that plays when you touch the tile before the door. It means if I walk left to right, not even trying to leave the room, that dialogue will show. It's just a small thing, but normally if you're doing a player transfer out into black, you'd put the dialogue event on the tile beneath it, priority same as players, but still on player touch. What that does is means if the player is touching that black space (ie, trying to walk out of the room) it'll show the dialogue, but otherwise, they're free to walk around the door. If you look at the quick event creation door, you can see the map transfer event is on the door, and not the tile before it. I hope that makes sense.
-When you interact with Sir Fram from the top/right, he disappears. You need to set the event to "Direction Fix" (it's a tick box right under the event image) That stops the event from changing direction. You also need to do it with the $BigMonster1 boss you have in the room to the right room. P.s. for that event, try also ticking the Stepping animation. It looks very cool.
-Not every battle needs an escape option, but the ogre definitely does, otherwise the player goes there, realises they can't beat him, can't do anything so just die and have to restart from their save.
-You might want to balance out the battles a bit, the battle with the bat lasted an unfun amount of time. Also, Thomas died twice, in that battle and with the ogre, so he didn't level up in my play through, and I died in the room to the right.
-Speaking of that room, I think something didn't go quite right. I couldn't interact or get past the imp and monster, so I headed out this way.

Spoiler

When I did so, I think it triggered an event it wasn't supposed to, or at least I saw Thomas standing in the room whilst he was also following me. The player spawns on a black tile here too, which is a bit game logic breaking.
-I noticed your dev log says you're testing this on mobile devices. What platform do you want your game to be on? You really shouldn't be trying to make a game playable on pc's and mobiles. To make a full game for mobile platforms, you'd need to be optimising the game for touch input, small screens and small storage space. If you tried to also put that on PC, it'd look awful and be rather unimpressive. Whereas if you're making a game for PC, with big maps and a long narrative, it's not going to run well on a mobile. There is no comfortable compromise to make it work well on all devices, so you need to pick one and optimise for it.

How long are you aiming for this game to be? Standard advice for any learner, is really not to go too heavy or complicated. You're going to get better as you go, and start finding better ways to do things, or be able to do things you couldn't do before, and you don't really want to leave a huge wake of 'go back and fix this simple mistake I made before' behind, because that's a pretty boring and demotivating job.

Aiming for something grand, and not being able to finish it, is one of the biggest blows as a game maker. Sometimes it's just better to take baby steps, aim for something achievable even if it's not earth shattering. By the time you've finished that game, you'll have learnt a lot more, picked up loads of tricks and shortcuts, and can go back to add the extra features and dimensions if you want to, or just go ahead and start another game. Just having that one little thing finished is a lot more inspiring than having loads of grand projects you never got anywhere with. When the going gets tough, you can look at that finished game and say 'heck yeah, I finished that one, I can do this!'
-

 

[jigida70]

Rhino,

Thanks again for the feedback. I updated a few things. I'm planning to put a couple more weeks into this project, and then start a new one with what I've learned. I was able to play all the way through to the end of the game, which was my main goal (technically I have a finished game for the first time--Yeahh!!), but I really want to make it more enjoyable for people.

Spoiler: Updates

• I utilized the Terrax Lighting plugin, which really changed how the game looks.
• I added escape options for the "Bosses"
• I spent some time on the opening cut-scenes to make them work a little better.
• I made the bats a little easier to beat, but still kept them a couple steps up from the slimes.
• My aim was to make the gameplay be around an hour, and my last two playthroughs were about 40 minutes (of course, I know the right order to do things, and where everything is at, so my playtime is quicker), so hopefully other players would be around an hour.
• When I write fiction, I do a rough draft, and then go through several times and edit, while also using other people's feedback to see where I need to make the most changes. I'm using the same technique here, so I appreciate the feedback.

Spoiler: Playable demo

https://jigida70.itch.io/ophidia