RMMV Ulfar: Dreams

[leenat40]

THIS WAS MOVED TO "COMPLETED PROJECTS" AND THIS PAGE IS NO LONGER SUPPORTED!

Still in the alpha stages! The demo is just to get the general idea, of where the story is heading.


World
​

Spoiler

The story takes place in "The Alliance". Thousands of years before, our civilization still existed, but the war to end humanity was just around the corner, understanding, that hope is none, the best engineers and scientists were brought to create an intelligent machine-lifeform that would re-do the world with samples, after the war. But something (Specified in-game) went wrong and now, humanity lives in "Medieval-Ages", not knowing of the past. Until a group of cultists finds and awakens that machine lifeform...​

The Story
​

Spoiler

In a world filled with intrigue, cults, politics and Gods, the story starts with a eighteen year old boy having a vision, of besieging a castle of the Emperor and getting killed. Then he get's revived by a mysterious crystal and get's told that he must kill a man named "Jon Hammil", if he want's the world to exist. The boy wakes up in a forest, only remembering the request. And on his journey he learns, that nothing is as it seems...​

The Game​

Spoiler

http://www.mediafire.com/file/6bmobebesh1enht/Ulfar+Dreams+DEMO+1.04.rar

The Screenshots

Spoiler

​

 

[leenat40]

Hmm... Not a lot of views. (Feels like I am making some kind of conspiracy theory)

 

[padr81]

@leenat40 - Stick with it, most games are in development for years before they get any real recognition unless your a known developer.

Looks at the dates on the other threads. My game April 2015 3.5k views, 35 views per week.
Book of Shadows Sept 2014 with a well known member of the forum and currently at 15k views in 30 months. Thats only 120 views a week.

You have 70 odd in over a week so your not doing too bad. Stick at it and keep improving and interest will grow.

On your game, I watched the Driftwood playthrough and agree with him on most things.
Your mapping needs alot of work. Good mapping is what will draw the play in as Screenshots are what will nudge people in the direction of downloading your game or not.

Take your very first screenshot.
It looks like the fence is only 1 tile high (which it is) but at the back its higher than the cliff. Perspective is way off.
Also just below the tent your cliff edge looks wrong. You have a bottom of cliff curved tile on top and no edging.
You also have a bottom tile in the middle just to the left of that.
The top of the cliff I would say is too bare and there are at least 2 more mapping errors.
Those steps are so long and again because of the height and length the perspective looks off.
No way a hill would naturally look like that and if they are man made and the place is looked after why are their big mounds of dirt.

After your title screen this is the first screen of the game potential players will see.

Little things like that is can put people off, there's so many games here people will generally edge towards the developers they know will give quality with their play time and will give others projects one look every so often. So if you only get one chance to make an impression, make it count. Look at the first SS in Porcupine Princess, Flesh Forward or Asylum and think, if you were a person with limited play time where would you likely click.

I'm probably not one to offer this advice as I don't maintain my own topic half as well as I should and it looks terrible in comparison but you need to grab people.

Stick with it, improve your game, mapping in particular and the views and followers will come.

 

[leenat40]

@padr81 I see...
I actually sent Drifty a new version with a lot of fixes and more content!

 

[padr81]

@leenat40 Cool good luck. I'll download your demo dude when I have time. Basically what I'm saying is don't get disheartened and keep going. People will come around eventually and as your game gets better and better more and more will come across to you.

Stick with it, even when it seems no one but you cares. I've had times like that. I literally had 1 person make two comments on my game between September 2015 and last March. One comment ins 18 months, now I've got 3 or 4 people who test my game religiously and all kinds of people playing helping me out and giving me advice.

 

[Titris Thrawns]

Hey-O! I was able to throw ~30 minutes at version 1.04 Chapter 0! Got a few notes and screenshots to share. Oh! The new Intro video blew me away! It struck me as very anime-ish and makes me quite envious. Only downside is I was not able to skip it on restart or choosing to go to the title screen. Which is frustrating, especially when testing.

Mechanical Notes:

Spoiler: Dun dun DUN!

~Combat is much tougher, but, much more interactive! Downside is the first Gemy is a heck of a fight. Jon appears to do zero damage, even when I have no errors on the reel.
~If Jon dies in the first Gemy fight, the player will be forced into a game over screen when Jon runs from Tom. Jon dies from 2 hits from the Gemy, which is pretty easy as a new player learns the dodge controls. I recommend having an event code revive all party members after the Gemy fight to avoid this Game over and forced reload or restart of Chapter 0.
~No ability to use items in battle? The new battle system makes fights longer, I recommend having items usable in battle for the less hand-eye coordinated players.
~The Guard command feels broken or very lackluster. It did not help Jon survive longer in the fight against the first Gemy and the shadows did not mitigate much damage compared to normal hits.
~In the fight with 3 shadows (before the Chosen One fight), The Whistle ability was unable to be used more than once. This seemed to happen after the shadows started using whistle on Jon. Unsure if this intended or not, but it made that battle longer and boring since I could not whistle in between chops them up!
~There are two save prompts very close together before the Chosen One boss fight. I don't recall being able to move in the interim so it seemed redundant.

Graphical and Thematic Notes:

Spoiler: Boss Music was Epic

~The Chosen One Boss fight music is excellent. But, if you listen to it all the way through, there is a 3-5 second silent period before the music restarts. I recommend cutting that down to 1-2 seconds if you are able!
~I liked the crystal scene with the voice acting that occurred between Jon's house and Arach's house. It amped up the tension and mystery!
~Small text oddity when Job talks to his Mother.

Spoiler: Screenshot

~You can walk on top of walls in Arach's house. Unfortunately, the screenshot I made isn't uploading =\.
~The barrel events are still a little goofy:

Spoiler: I ain't lookin at you Barrel!

Spoiler: Summary

I only played up to the Chosen One boss fight. The thematic qualities have improved a lot since I played the Early Project feedback demo. The battle system is more interactive, but has increased the difficulty and time spent battling. A bit of balancing is needed for the first Gemy fight as I burned a lot of time reloading/restarting the game to get past that choke point. Oh My Zemak! Whew, I finally wrote down how to spell that!

I'm looking forward to catching up to where I was in the Early project feedback demo and experiencing the new chapters!

 

[leenat40]

@Titris Thrawns Thanks a lot for taking your time to play it. I am currently investigating how to let the player skip the opening movie.
Also, thanks for pointing out the bugs. I'll try to fix them in the next update.
Also, I do recommend playing the new chapter in this demo, if and when you can.

 

[leenat40]

Guys, I have really good news for the fans!
I have fully completed the development of the game! Only thing left now is getting feedback to polish aspects of the game, and a lot of polishing!

 

[Titris Thrawns]

Hey-o again! I put in a good few hours, but only got to the beginning of Chapter 2 before running out of time this week. I'll go right to me notes.

Thematic Notes:

Spoiler: Yipee!

~The Chosen One's boss music continued after the fight. I believe it lasted all the way till Jon goes super mode and has the vision of his dead family/arach. I enjoyed it, but wasn't sure if that was by design so I figured I'd mention it.
~The new scene with the skeletons and the flash back to the castle where the soldiers died was interesting and confusing. I believe it fits with your overall theme of 'flash of insight' of the future/past that I comes full circle as the game concludes.
~I kind of miss the chapter names you had before. Chapter 0, chpater 1, etc. just feels boring. I recommend doing both "Chapter1 : The Dawn star!" maybe as two lines? *shrugs* That way the player knows they've hit a new chapter and have a fun/cryptic title to go with it.
~New crystal scene with Yong is fun. Some of the VA was hard to understand, but it is a talking crystal in between realms... So it makes sense that it's voice is so distorted! The Crystal does come off as a bit odd cackling about how 'interesting' things are going to be. Makes me feel it might be a big bad/manipulator behind the events of the story? *shrugs* I guess I'll have to keep playing .
~I like the special tea service dialogue change. Some may critic the treatment of women in the quest sequence, but that's artistic choice. I'm happy that Yong is no longer in a weird hypocritical spot of threatening to turn someone into the crown guard after blindly sleeping with them. It seemed to allude that the tea house owner was also the mysterious guy I beat up to take a mysterious ring from. I choose to kill him and recruited Jessica to sit next to Mister Shadow. I do like the mini-stronghold recruitment theme there.
~Speaking of Jessica, Maybe add Yong asking for her name in the quest obtaining dialogue? That will probably sway players to kill the tea house owner, but may give Yong a more humanizing element to his desire to bring the tea house owner to justice for abusing the girls/women.
~The Bandit Bribe guy was mysterious in his teleport away and line of dialogue indicating he was observing humans. Sadly he and the other goofy bandits were the last thematic guys I ran into. Ran into a bug, but I'll get into that in the mechanical section.

Mechanical Notes:

Spoiler: Wrench Icon here

~Mysterious Ring (Obtained from the eye patch guy in the ruins behind Yong's house?) doesn't appear to work as advertised. +5 atk works, but -169 defense? Sadness!
Screenshot:

Spoiler: But I waaaant defense T_T

~The Mysterious storage room/castle music plays in the town after being teleported there.
~Is it possible to have a save point next to the secret Chosen one boss in the Tea house quest? He was very tough and I lost my first try. Thank goodness for retry battle!
~Speaking of saves, maybe one before the tea house owner choice? I'm a picky person for saves like that . Also helps for testers going back to try every option.
~Speaking of killing the tea house owner, Jessica has a line of dialogue "Did you realize..." something about ramifications of killing the guy. It should be "Do you realize..." what you've done etc.
~Game break issue; If player kicks the Bandit bribe Toll guy's butt, there appears to be no map transfer back to rest of the maps leading to town.
Screenshot:

Spoiler: Sorry Stem, we can only hang out with those other two bandits now...

Battle Specific Notes, ideas, rants, etc:
~Could there be partial damage for partial completed battle inputs? 0 damage is harsh for when I fat finger 1-2 commands incorrectly T_T.
~Gemy and Stem's Laifdran ability appears to do 0 damage .
~The Lv 11 "The Chosen" Young is very tough. Doubleslash hits a lvl8 Yong for 130-160ish (Yong can only take 3-5 of these before KO). Combine that with Lesser confuse spam and regular attacks having a chance of missing the Chosen one, the battle can be very frustrating. I lost on my first try, but got really luck on my second try; all confused attacks were hits on the Chosen one and the Chosen one did not spam doubleslash. I think the chosen one also was attacking twice per round? I may be remembering wrong on that last point.
~Simphel on enemies makes battles really loooong. If enemies were killed in 1-3 hits I wouldn't have an issue, but when it takes 3-6+ hits those heals make me crai crai!
~Stem appears to do no damage when attacking (tested on Bandit toll guy and his shadows). Cool fire animation but no burning .
~It also appears that whistle has a hidden mana cost. Thus Stem is unable to do anything until he can use Manragein.
~Manragein doesn't recover enough mana for stem to use Simphal. That combined with his atk doing no damage means Stem doesn't contribute much in fights .
~Buff Stem and his Manragin! and/or nerf regular monsters to die in 1-3 hits from Yong. Or have Stem do half damage-ish that Yong does? *shrugs* I can imagine battle balancing being a pain. My current project I've kept it absurd simple with one-hit KOs for monsters and did an hour of battle testing on one whole boss. My brain melted a little bit. I guess what I mean to say in this rant is, battle balancing is tough.

I'll be back when I finish exploring Chapter 2! Sorry I've been unable to give the build a full spin. I'm learning that play testing a game every week isn't something I can feasibly do with my schedule.

 

[leenat40]

@Titris Thrawns
Thanks a lot for the insight. I am fixing those mentioned issues ASAP.
As for the scene you mentioned with the castle and skeleton...
One happens in the future and the other (where people are alive) before.
Fun fact, that scene (before) is actually from the Expansion pack called "The Battle for Sangath".
It takes place 200 years before the main game and stars one of the most well known warriors that fought for the freedom of Sangath. It also reveals very important information about one of the main characters Zak. (You've seen him in the opening).
I'll keep the rest for myself, until the trailer for the expansion.

 

[Eviticous]

On the issues I noticed that turned me off your game, to be honest, is he mapping. It needs a lot of work. It feels broken and unnatural. Aside from that the game seems ok but I would suggest slowing down and ironing out bugs, spelling, grammar and especially mapping.