RMMZ Sempiternal

[Reinarc]

And it's live

Sempiternal by Reinarc

The Fever has returned to Agrad. Can you stop it?

reinarc.itch.io

No more major changes, this baby is going forward! I do want to know of any thoughts on smaller things that can be changed, or if you found any bugs/glitches that my awesome beta testers didn't catch.

Thank you again Lady_JJ, Cythera, and Kimo!

There is a known issues and feedback document in the folder. Those are just my thoughts on what I was curious about with the game so far.

If you encounter the soft-lock bug, please let me know (and whatever details you can tell me about what happened before, that's awesome). It drives me nuts >_<

I will be doing weekly updates on my itch.io page, so that I can give other amazing developers on this site a chance for their work to be seen. If you want to keep up to date with the development, follow me there If I make a post, it's either replying to someone or asking for testers for part 2!


EDIT: I may have been playing around with some future features and bumped up the health of one of the early enemies to....really high levels. And I may have forgotten to change it before deploying. Maybe...#awkward. Fixed.

 

[Reinarc]

Edit 12/27: Fixed some minor bugs with Kara's alchemy system.

Hey there! I would love to get some help with balance testing on my newest version! (See previous message for link to itch.io). Right now I'm thrilled with the new mechanics I've introduced, as well as some of the changes. But I want to make sure the balance feels just right, especially since I've made number adjustments in order to future-proof the game.

I have two difficulties: normal and hard.

Normal should require some thought on bosses, but generally will be a more casual play (this is what I would play on if I didn't make the game )

Hard is for the more tactical minded. Normal enemies should require strategy, chain battles and bosses a solid plan and synergy with your ability layout. But it shouldn't be frustrating or impossible.

Naturally, because of how much was changed I'm expecting a bug or two (or three ) to have slipped by my play testing. Thanks for your help!

Spoiler: Change Log 12/27

Change Log 12/27

DEV NOTE
---------

Was having some extreme animation lag on Windows 11 (with a gaming laptop, no less). I went into display settings and changed the display "scale" to 100% (it was set at 150%) and this cleared up my lag immediately. Weird. RPG Maker is behaves strange with animations (to me anyway).

GENERAL
---------

ATK/MAG reduced and DEF/MDF of all enemies raised. HP reduced for allies and enemies. This is to future proof the game and prevent numbers from escalating too high later on.

The level that alter skills unlock has been spaced out slightly. This was done because there are too many upgrades that come too quickly.

Divine Star now rezzes at 10% HP, down from 50%. However, it will give the ressurected ally invincibility until they act again. This is to prevent frustrating instances of rez'd characters getting immediately killed. Future boss mechanics may be able to circumvent this state.

Wither from Manual: Warrior FP cost reduced from 5 FP to 3. Turn knockback reduced from 2 to 1.

Exp gained from monsters after the introduction increased by 10%.

Alter crystal moved from Deep Woods to Tella Forest, with reset monsters option after you complete the quest(should you want to grind for hard mode).

You can now activate the Regulator with the R button in dungeons (if interactables exist, R will pull up a choice menu).

Footstep coding more optimized (and when disabled can improve performance slightly).

Standard attacks across the board have been nerfed.

Small bonus to money earned has been added to chain battles.

Burn damage (and all damage over time) can now kill.


KARA
-------

Kara has lost the ability to equip manuals and the Motivate ability.

In it's place, she will be able to use the Tactic "Alchemy." Alchemy costs 3 FP, does not consume a turn, and let's Kara mix items together or enhance certain items. The effects of this mixing vary from item to item.

Kara no longer has passive abilities. Her passive button will now show item mixtures.

Using items with Kara will restore 1 FP to her.



AARLIN
--------

Crusade changed slightly, adding an additional FP when attacking light exposed targets.

Mighty Guard changed. Now, switches out Brace for Bulwark, a stronger guard status that will take damage for low HP allies. This passive reduces Aarlin's strength and magic by 20%. This passive can't be accessed in the demo.

Frigid Strike and Sweeping Strikes positions on the Alter board has been switched.

Motivate is an Aarlin exclusive ability now. FP cost reduced to 1, and now causes an ally to act immediately.

 

[Lunesis]

I played for 3 hours so far, here are my thoughts:

Spoiler

-Love the music choices, never got tiring, good use of music in scene changes as well, like the encounter with Jardak
-Mapping layout looks great, tilesets are very nice, and I think some fog or weather effects would enhance them even more
-The guy pulling the box of fish was a neat idea
-Jardak is an interesting party member, quite an unlikable arse
-I like the 'elsewhere' cutscene with the bandits, feels like real storytelling instead of just having another character somewhere describe the scene
-I like the barrel puzzle in the first cave, almost got stuck until I rewatched D7's video and saw you could reset with R, since I was playing with a PS controller
-I like the dramatic scene in the city with the fever and the escape from the city
-I like the idea with the chain battles, risk vs reward. I waited until there were 4 enemies left, was not able to let autobattle play out without using some alchemy to heal which I appreciated
-I enjoy the party banter a lot, you do good with the characters and making them more dimensional
-Love the innocent goblin, I have wanted to do a smart monster storyline
-I liked that they were trying to integrate into the little village, I then knew his past was going to come back to haunt him
-I still feel like the dialogue has a good balance, although I would enjoy more fighting
-I like Jardak as a villain, you have focused on giving him a relationship with the party that drives the plot

Some small issues I found:
-Able to use Aarlin's healing spell at max health in the menu
-Orange barrel trio should have O instead of X on the bottom tiles, same with the green cupboard
-Peaked my curiousity should be piqued
-Some of your quest text in the menu gets cut off at the bottom

 

[Reinarc]

Thank you @Lunesis, I'll fix those couple of things. Glad you liked it! Aarlin wants to over-heal everyone apparently. What a guy.

 

[Lunesis]

It's really one of the best games I've seen on D7's stream so far, so much that I wanted to play it myself. You can tell from the presentation and the amount of effort you've put in since you first started, the characters and story are involving and it has a lot of twists which are necessary for any good dramatic RPG story.

 

[kimo]

-Some of your quest text in the menu gets cut off at the bottom

I don't know about the controller you use, but on a keyboard you need to use the <PgDn> function to see that text at the bottom. Since I use a laptop, I had to figure that one out myself. It's a shame a player cannot use <Tab> to change windows and then whatever allows the Quest text screen to scroll down. But I think that may be a limitation of the plug-in.

@Lady_JJ missed piqued?

 

[Lunesis]

Ohhhh, I use a PS4 controller and thought the bumper buttons might work. If that is the case then disregard.

 

[Reinarc]

I’m still tinkering. I also prefer controller and generally dislike pgup/dwn :/ let me see what I can come up with.

 

[Lunesis]

I’m still tinkering. I also prefer controller and generally dislike pgup/dwn :/ let me see what I can come up with.

I think it's either VS menu core or VS options core that makes the bumpers work? I don't know but they work for me when I switch categories with R1 and L1.

 

[Reinarc]

I'm looking, but it's hard D:

I did get inspired to work on the keymapping some more, and I have two setups now (not live yet)

Left side setup - move with WASD, space or enter for action, backspace or esc for cancel/menu. Toggle up and down with ` key (up) and tab (down).

Right side setup - move with arrow keys, space or enter for action, backspace for cancel/menu. Toggle up/down with the pgup/pgdown keys.

It feels a little cozier now. Will edit if I can figure out some stuff with the controller.



Edit: So I did have a lot of luck implementing things. Aside from the left hand/right hand configuration above, I also did manage to implement controller support...kind of. At least on my ps5 controller.

L2 triggers the Quest Log. R2 triggers the help (same as E on keyboard) button. R button on keyboard is no longer functional. Instead, if you are in a dungeon, E will offer a pop up menu.

What I couldn't do was enable the bumpers to switch between actors in the menu. Weird. You have tab and pgup/pgdown for that. Same thing for the quest log.

I also implemented some icons in the Quest Log to help out.

 

[IvanForever]

Just wanted to say the videos of your game look interesting, and this looks like something I might want to try. Keep up the great work!

 

[Lunesis]

Awesome progress! Always good to make small improvements.

 

[kimo]

Just wanted to say the videos of your game look interesting, and this looks like something I might want to try. Keep up the great work!

Definitely give it a go. The current Part 1 is about 4 hours long if you thoroughly explore all the possible areas. The battle system is very unique, so read any accompanying info in the game folder and ask any questions you have. @ Reinarc as been incredibly helpful.

 

[IvanForever]

Definitely give it a go.

Yes, planning to as soon as possible! My friend also likes Reinarc's game, so I have even more reason to try.

 

[Reinarc]

Final update for a while. I'm in the middle of a career change, and things have been stressful to say the least. I do plan to keep working on part 2, but my initial goal of February is definitely not going to happen >_<. Updates below! And I will be doing updates every 2-3 weeks via my itch.io: https://reinarc.itch.io/sempiternal

TLDR: Aggravate Element changed to consume the debuff, grant full MP, status effects buffed. Aggravations have new animations. Challenge monster added to Tella Forest. Victory screens in dungeons are on the map now.

Spoiler: Change Log

CHANGE LOG 1/17/22



GENERAL

Rescue (Manual: Apothecary) cost reduced to 2 FP. Now can only be used on dead allies, and provides Awakening (death immunity) like Divine Stars do.

Recover (Manual: Apothecary) now is instant cast, 2 FP, and restores 30% MP.

Reason: to accommodate new Manuals introduced in part 2 and give Apothecary a niche as a support off-hand.




When an enemy is exposed to an element and you use the same element, you will not get a repeating "Expose X" popup.

Aggravate Element adjusted: when using this mechanic, it will now consume the current exposure on the target and grant the user full MP.

Because you lose the expose element, I increased some of the aggravate status effects to compensate:

Enfeeble/Chill: Now buffed to 50% reduction of stats.

Lethargy: -75% Max MP.

Shock: -100% evasion/-25% MDEF.

Burn: Damage increased.

Each different aggravate element now has its own quick animation!

Aggravate status effects can no longer be stacked: one at a time.

Reason: To give visual flair and clarity to the mechanic, and to clean up the popups/icons present on the screen.






Victory Screen adjusted to be on the map instead in dungeons only. All of the EXP/money/levels earned will be displayed quickly on the map. Story and boss battles will have the traditional victory screen.

Reason: Less interruption to the flow of gameplay, allowing me to give quick, relevant data without being stuck in a victory screen. Because of the weight and effort the player puts into boss/story battles, I decided to keep the normal victory for these fights as a "reward."





Enemies in Tella Forest reduced to 5, Mountain Pass reduced to 6. EXP of all monsters increased by 20-25%.

Challenge monster introduced in Tella Forest (like the special one in the bottom caves in Mountain Pass).

Reason: I felt the high number of encounters was somewhat excessive. I can now take that extra time and devote it to special story/challenge/boss battles. As a side note, after mountain pass it will no longer be required to kill all the monsters in a dungeon. You kill what you want, or none at all.






Difficulty Switch setting is now located in the options menu after the game has started. Option removed from Alter Crystals.

 

[rpgLord69]

Tried the demo out. This thread has so many posts that probably most has already been said, but here are a couple of thoughts: The guy dragging the fish box at the harbour is one of those small details that impresses without needing to be complex. Nice! Really liked the city map. After how nicely it was done, the cave dungeon seemed maybe a bit bland. Battle system is obviously thought out, I think all the people who are more into battle systems than I, are going to love it. And there's even a harder difficulty for them. The characters and dialogue seem well done. A button to give a reminder of what's supposed to be done next is a good idea.

One minor complaint: I got somewhat annoyed searching for the pub where I had to, because I thought the upper area guarded by two guards was some kind of "upper class" area and when the main character commented on that one pub door that he wanted to go somewhere "less reputable" (or something), I thought the correct place was somewhere else than in the upper district

Anyway, can definitely recommend people try this out.

 

[Reinarc]

@rpgLord69 yeah it's been through a lot of development, haha. Thank you for your kind words (and suggestion)! I have definitely invested a lot of energy into the combat system over the game's development period.

I have a sizeable backlog of games to test out for others, but I will be sure to give you some critique when I'm able to! Have a great day.

 

[lolshtar]

-can walk through fish box not sure if its intentional
-bar says middle district when it was upper district
-make bars for FP and MP its much better visually than just looking at a number, you have the space to put states above the hp bar
-can walk over helena at secret lake
-theres no point of using barrier since you cant know who is going to get attacked* alter fix it with the aoe barrier** also dont seem to be any state, does it lasts until you get attacked or its 1 turn? id like to know when l have it up
-burn does way too much damage since it cant even be removed, unless im missing something it completely destroy 100% of my life over 3 turns l dont even bother to heal over it
-alchemy should last until a potion is used, doesnt do anything else so if you press by mistake youre just going to waste it
-l had barrier and heal+def buff up my char still die because of burn shouldnt be possible* yeah the only reason l beat him is pure luck if you dont know whos hes going to target then its just stupid to do barrier/brace and burn completely destroy anyone even at full hp. revive pot and he attack the invulnerability saves you a bunch of life which is cheesy as ****
-autoequip books, l had no idea l was supposed to equip them until l upgraded my equipment very late in the game
-wasnt clear that you could only have only 1 debuff at a time, l thought it was only 1 expose and all debuffs were possible
-mana pots 20 mana is not enough for the turn it takes, sure it gives you 1 lp as well instead of wasting 1 using brace but id buff it to give 40 mana and full mana if alchemy because youre always going to use it healing anyways if its that weak
- l was unable to get both magic and attacks to destroy both crystals but the buff the spider get from devouring it looks really minor, maybe its just a wipe if both are not destroyed didnt tested
-since this is a turn per character based combat system l had a lot of trouble at finding the right time to use my abilities, even had to skip a turn doing damage sometimes because l didnt wanted to do a expose that would cancel the expose l actually want to do since you can only have 1 at a time. missing mana didnt helped either l had to redo all the turns then to do what l wanted but its more of a player mismanagement problem at this point.
the best solutions for that would probably be either :
skill that makes the actor goes behind the next actor turn.
instant skill that remove the current expose
free action until ending turn where all actors can do skills at the same time until youre out of actions.
+chain fights for bonus xp + limited amount of random encounters in each map that you can reset is the best design l have seen so far

 

[Reinarc]

Thanks for the feedback! I’m assuming you played on Hard. Burn is a tough one, it it pretty strong but it doesn’t linger after battle and you always get full heals. I’ll have to go back and look at it again.

Yes Barrier stays up until you get hit. I wanted to avoid status effect bloat so I opted for a visual animation instead but I can review it. It also builds Quintens FP when It breaks allowing him to use Stratagem.

Other things noted. Have a great day!

 

[kimo]

@Reinarc
How is everything going with you? Have you been able to balance your new career (aka RL) with game design yet?

Primarily, I'm just making sure you are okay. I am looking forward to new content when you get a chance.