Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

[Pagerron]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

Well, Obright, it seems as if you've mastered the Battle dilemma. The idea of the path to bypass battles is a good one. The fact that your battles are "a lot of fun," too, is unusual for RPG Maker 3, at least from the games I've played. That's a definite plus. And 16 spells per boss...Whoa!

Just out of curiosity, how much time would you estimate that you've put into your game, if you have any idea?

All the info. you've provided in your forum is so detailed that no one can say you didn't try extremely hard to make the best game possible. Nice!

I can't commit to being a playtester for SotT, but I look forward to checking it out when it's finalized for sure.

[Ωbright]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

Woooooooo! Woo! Congrats, Obi! It's been a long time coming and hopefully all the modifications you've made will turn a very good game into a great one. I'd love to play it, and I'd love to playtest it for you.

I should say that my time for the next four weeks will be limited, with the end-of-the semester crunch looming over my head. I might be able to pull away to play RPGM for a few hours on weekends, but that means I'm going to want to focus more on Playtesting issues than trying to navigate my inept ass around complex dungeons. At any rate, I'll have a LOT more time in the four weeks following--after school lets out and before my internship starts.

Again, CONGRATS. I know how hard you've been working on this, and what it means to you, and SotT deserves quite a bit of attention and praise.


EDIT: P.S.--I'm up to nearly two hours of playtime in Local Gods. I can't see what you were talking about with the scripting--so far I haven't noticed a single flaw. The battle balance is a little off but at least you've made them a lot of fun. I'm gonna keep playing, it's a neat little game.

Thanks man! And yes, I've been working hard on SotT for a long time. it feels great to be done with it...again. I feel like all of the things that were added to the new version make the game better, not to mention more fun, and more professional-looking. After playing through these last 3 times I can tell you that having everyone's skills appear in the proper order during battles is a MAJOR improvement, because you can keep up with your skills much better. The offensive skills are at the top (mostly), disabling skills next, enhancing skills next, and restoring skills at the bottom. The Sage (healer) is set up the opposite way, but the point is that the skill lists are organised now, and that makes a big difference. There's a TON of things like that...it's so far improved from the first edition that it's almost not even the same game.

Whenever you get time to play the new version of SotT is fine, just let me know, and I'll send you a zip! [EDIT] You can use the walkthrough with the maps if you want, and that will help with the dungeons! Oh yeah...I forgot you downloaded The Local Gods! That's my first game project ever...been working on that one off and on since about 1993! I'm mostly proud of the graphics, I guess...I did them all myself. I WAS proud of the music, but after the OHR engine went midi, my songs never sounded right again. I'm still going to finish that damn thing one day... You say you encountered some battle balance issues in it. Did you go by the walkthrough? If so, then I'll have to work on that. When you get into the Hydra Shrine the enemies are supposed to be harder, but I may need to nerf them a little. Hmm...maybe I'll make a 'Local Gods' thread over here, since it's been stated that games made with other makers are acceptable.

Well, Obright, it seems as if you've mastered the Battle dilemma. The idea of the path to bypass battles is a good one. The fact that your battles are "a lot of fun," too, is unusual for RPG Maker 3, at least from the games I've played. That's a definite plus. And 16 spells per boss...Whoa!

Just out of curiosity, how much time would you estimate that you've put into your game, if you have any idea?

All the info. you've provided in your forum is so detailed that no one can say you didn't try extremely hard to make the best game possible. Nice!

I can't commit to being a playtester for SotT, but I look forward to checking it out when it's finalized for sure.

Thanks! I hope that people enjoy the paths. Yes, it will make the dungeons harder if you don't train at all on the world maps, but the point is that you train much more when you want to, not when you're forced to by the game. It's rather ironic, but the new version has new ways of avoiding enemies AND has more incentive to encounter enemies in the form of new enemy drops in every part of the game.

It's hard to say how long I've been working on SotT...many, many hundreds of hours. Sometimes I went for weeks where I worked on it every free moment, and other times I went for weeks where I didn't work on it at all, or very little. A large part of the game was made on paper first (skills and items mostly), and I'm including that time spent in my extremely amorphous estimate.

If you can't test the game out, then that's fine. The only real incentive I can offer is to be listed as a playtester in the game's credits...and you're in the 'thanks to' section already anyway.

Thanks again to both of you!

[Perversion]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

I think I know which game I'm gonna review for the mag, and it shouldn't take that long to do, so I'm gonna go tentatively out on a limb and ask two questions...

1)How many hours would I have to invest in SotT if I wanted to play the whole thing?
2)How soon would you need a "playtest review"?

Also, concerning the problem you had with the switches, I had a similar problem when I put too many auto events in one area (town, house, etc). For some reason, even when the event code told it to switch to the next mode, it stayed on the same mode and replayed the same mode event when you pressed the button to activate the (non auto)event. The only way I found to jar the game back into coherence was to exit the house I was in, and come back in, or go to the stats menu, at which time everything worked fine. So, no, Obright, you are not the only one who has been having this problem with RPGM3.

[Ωbright]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

I think I know which game I'm gonna review for the mag, and it shouldn't take that long to do, so I'm gonna go tentatively out on a limb and ask two questions...

1)How many hours would I have to invest in SotT if I wanted to play the whole thing?
2)How soon would you need a "playtest review"?

Also, concerning the problem you had with the switches, I had a similar problem when I put too many auto events in one area (town, house, etc). For some reason, even when the event code told it to switch to the next mode, it stayed on the same mode and replayed the same mode event when you pressed the button to activate the (non auto)event. The only way I found to jar the game back into coherence was to exit the house I was in, and come back in, or go to the stats menu, at which time everything worked fine. So, no, Obright, you are not the only one who has been having this problem with RPGM3.

If you farm for rare enemy drops, exp, gold, and most importantly enemy skills for the Dark Scholar, then it can take 30 hours or more to beat...40 or more if you do all of the extra stuff in the game. If you just play straight through though, only training when you really need to, you can finish in about 20-25 hours.

Obviously I'd like to release the final version as soon as possible, but I'm not going to set a definite release date because I don't want to pressure anybody. I know how hard it is to spend that much time playing a game sometimes, and people will enjoy the experience of playing much more if they can take the game at their own pace.

About the switch/event problem, I SO wish I'd seen this thread by Pagerron earlier...he explains what I was experiencing much better than I could have, and it would have saved me about 7 hours!

The Switch Switcheroo

[Wavelength]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

Thanks man! And yes, I've been working hard on SotT for a long time. it feels great to be done with it...again. I feel like all of the things that were added to the new version make the game better, not to mention more fun, and more professional-looking. After playing through these last 3 times I can tell you that having everyone's skills appear in the proper order during battles is a MAJOR improvement, because you can keep up with your skills much better. The offensive skills are at the top (mostly), disabling skills next, enhancing skills next, and restoring skills at the bottom. The Sage (healer) is set up the opposite way, but the point is that the skill lists are organised now, and that makes a big difference. There's a TON of things like that...it's so far improved from the first edition that it's almost not even the same game.

Whenever you get time to play the new version of SotT is fine, just let me know, and I'll send you a zip! [EDIT] You can use the walkthrough with the maps if you want, and that will help with the dungeons! Oh yeah...I forgot you downloaded The Local Gods! That's my first game project ever...been working on that one off and on since about 1993! I'm mostly proud of the graphics, I guess...I did them all myself. I WAS proud of the music, but after the OHR engine went midi, my songs never sounded right again. I'm still going to finish that damn thing one day... You say you encountered some battle balance issues in it. Did you go by the walkthrough? If so, then I'll have to work on that. When you get into the Hydra Shrine the enemies are supposed to be harder, but I may need to nerf them a little. Hmm...maybe I'll make a 'Local Gods' thread over here, since it's been stated that games made with other makers are acceptable.

Any time you feel like sending the file is fine. Make sure you use my Yahoo address (Blueshift14@yahoo.com) because my University address is almost full to capacity. It's bursting. It's like Ruben Studdard in a Medium T-shirt.

I won't have a LOT of time in the next three weeks but I'd like to get started and get past where I did in the playtest. I had this feeling that things were about to get really fun, but without any guide, the mazes were KILLING me!

About Local Gods, the imbalance I was referring to was the way characters become so powerful after just a few fights. As it turned out one of my characters was dead during an early boss fight, and it created a serious positive feedback loop where he now dies quite a bit, so he can't get stronger. I know it's just a matter of style; I'm just noting that I don't like it that particular way. It doesn't take away from how amazing it is that you built this game from such basic elements, though, and it's not taking away from the fun of it either.

[Ωbright]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

I guess it's a good thing I haven't sent this off yet, because I went back to play one of the 2 other scenarios I was playing through...and deemed about 20 more slight changes necessary. *ROLLS EYES* Oh well, that's why it pays to play through multiple times, especially when each playthrough has the potential to be so different. For instance, one of the new enemy skills was set to deal out WAY too much damage, but it just so happened that in my recent complete playthrough, that skill was never used...it was all stuff like that.

Once these other 2 play tests are complete, I've already decided to play through the final version ONE MORE TIME at least. If nobody else can test with me by the time I'm done with that playthrough, then I'll probably go ahead and upload anyway. I'd like to have other people's reactions/input, of course, but I have to set some kind of time limit...however vague...or I'll never release the damn thing.

I want to realase the final version of SotT, the bonus game file, and the new (complete) walkthrough all at the same time, so it will still be a little while before I'm ready to upload anyway because I still have to finish that walkthrough, and the bonus game.

[EDIT] Whoa...sorry Wavelength! Damn...I had that window open a LONG time! I posted that before I'd seen your post. I can send the file to you tonight, actually...I just need to transfer it to my MAX drive. I'm going to have to just STOP tweaking, and save all further tweakings for the final edit. Give me a minute...I'll have the file for you.

[Wavelength]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

No problem--you're being admirably patient with the maker (why can't they include a damn MANUAL SORT function? GAH!!!), so I guess I should at least be a little patient with the game. I'm really looking forward to it, though! As long as you've got the Playtest Build up within the next five weeks I should be able to devote a fair amount of time to it before my internship starts. Best of luck with the final changes, my friend!!

[Wavelength]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

Just wanted to note that I was just checking your SotT Final Version thread... and noticed all bosses have 16 skills... and my jaw literally dropped. I could play through an entire boss battle and not even see everything the boss can throw at me. WOW. That's amazing.

I'm a bit curious, will MP play a factor in which skills the bosses use (for all the exploration I did in the first edition, I didn't get to many bosses) or will they sling skills at you all day?

EDIT: Sorry, I was a bit unclear, using "skills" and "magic" interchangably. I was moreso wondering whether (magic) Bosses ever tend to run out of MP, or will they be able to cast throughout the entire battle. (I don't remember bosses sacrificing health when I played, so I assume the HP cost of your boss' skills is zero? Or did I just miss it? I've NEVER liked HP skills and never played around with them. But that's just my senseless bias.)

[Ωbright]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

Just wanted to note that I was just checking your SotT Final Version thread... and noticed all bosses have 16 skills... and my jaw literally dropped. I could play through an entire boss battle and not even see everything the boss can throw at me. WOW. That's amazing.

I'm a bit curious, will MP play a factor in which skills the bosses use (for all the exploration I did in the first edition, I didn't get to many bosses) or will they sling skills at you all day?

There are 2 types of enemies: magic enemies, and skill enemies. Bosses are the same way, so magic bosses will throw magic at you all day (mostly), and skill bosses will throw skills at you all day (mostly). The only other alternative is to set the enemy to 'balanced', which I don't personally like. I've had bosses just happen to guard for three turns in a row...um, no.

Now bosses are:
- Always skills with 70 INT, or
- Always magic, also with 70 INT

Even with this setting, and fairly long boss battles, you can still easily play through without seeing some of what the boss is capable of. I'm gald you liked that, BTW!

[Crythania]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

I have started playing the new "Unrated Director's Cut" of this behemoth of a game.

My first thought was to choose the party I played last time because I'm familiar with those guys; then when we get to the point where you can "start over" with a new party, choose the guys I passed up. So I did that. My party was Troy, Brogan, Loren, and Aratus.

We went out and did some adventuring for a while. Then Joseph gained a new spell. Hmm... If I'm not playing him, he'll have gained all of his spells by the time we get to "start over".

So I restarted and chose Troy, Karl, Joseph, and Gabriel. Cute way of getting the pacifist monk Karl to fight! I'd been wondering how that would be handled. Very cute!

This band of geriatrics is in great danger until they gain a couple levels. The first few battles with soldier hornets and rough traders were challenging. Troy and Karl are the big guns here. Joseph is next to useless. Gabe can heal people, but he can't do much else. I have Gabe out back, by the way. Not sure if that's the best idea, but that's how I chose to do it.

These guys also have a harder time of it because Troy is the only guy who can afford to upgrade his equipment from the get-go. The staff upgrades are more costly, which means going through some precarious battles to get some money. Troy was able to get a better sword and a shield before we left town, but the rest of these guys were stuck with their default equipment.

When these guys started gaining levels, things started falling into place. Of course, there's Troy, who I've seen in action before. My favorite guy is Karl, though. This guy has "Free" written all over him. He gets to cure poison for free! Wow! No need to mess around with Ethers. His attack skills are free, too! I love this guy! And to think, he didn't even want to fight!

Joe is the most useless guy here. He gained his first spell, but it's a healing spell. Gabe gets a very powerful attack spell. Coolness.

I've got two guys here who gain new abilities from exploration. Karl has to find new weapons, and Joe gains new spells from observing monsters. It'll be interesting to see how this turns out.

We've conquered the bandit hideout and have ventured into the ancient ruins. I like the new and improved field map, although I haven't been able to find the krakens and man o' wars. Where are those guys? The "no battle zone" paths are golden.

[Ωbright]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

Hey! Cool...you chose a new party. And yes...you will continue to like Karl...you played FFT, right? Well he gets the equivalent of the monk skill 'chakra', which gives 1 ally back a certain amount of HP and MP...for free. Yup, after every battle, he can just do that over and over until everybody's fully restored.

Also, since you chose Joseph, you can run away from any random battle. That comes in handy if you're looking for a specific enemy for a skill or other drop. So he's not TOTALLY useless. :P The Krakens are now along the shore on the way to the sea cave. I did that so that I could use the 'beach' battle background...the 'desert' one just looked silly. I mean it's one thing to have sea creatures jump onto dry land to attack you...but having them jump out of sand? Um...no. I suggest going back there to get the skill from the Krakens before you do anything else...it will really come in handy! When I played through those last 3 times before I uploaded the final version, by the end I'd gotten most, but not all, of Joseph's skills. In one case I was really trying to get them all...and I still missed one. In the other two I was just playing through normally, and I got some in one that I missed in the other and vice versa. Some of the skills are just harder to find than the others...only appearing on 1-2 floors of a tower, only dropped by 1 out of 4 enemy parties, or both. Joseph can be tricky to play, but fun if you like finding skills for him and collecting them. Plus there's the whole 'run away from any re' thing.

I'm glad you're playing the final version, and liking it! I've been grinding my face away on a grindstone to make tree of life lately....it's almost done now, but I'm burning out fast. I'm pretty sure I'll finish it soon, but for now I have to take a break before I turn into Howard Hughes. I'm not rich enough to crap on the carpet and get away with it. Seriously...if I wasn't working or sleeping, I was working on that damn game. And then one night I was moving my stuff off of the couch when I dropped it...and all of my notes went all across the floor.....47 pages worth of notes, and about 85% of those pages were full front & back. You think Shadow of the Towers is a behemoth...I almost had a 'The Wall' moment. Yeah...that's enough. Let something else suck up my life for a while.

I'm also having PS2 troubles. I mean more than usual. It literally took me an hour to get my max drive disk to read last time...and I really need to upload RoL & the new demo. Once I get this damn demo of mine finished, I'll clear off one of the cards completely, but until then there's no way for me to move stuff around like I need to.

Thanks again...

[Crythania]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

I couldn't find the krakens. I spent some time near the water on both sections of beach. They never showed up.

Things are looking better for Joseph. The going was rough in the ancient ruins. One of those skeletons hit us with Hell's Gate, outright killing Troy. Luckily, another dude had a smelling salts and was able to use it on the spot to get him back. He didn't miss out on any experience. Good thing because I like my guys to be at the same level. We went back to town and bought another smelling salts in case it happens again.

Then Joe got Hell's Gate and things started falling into place for him. The going got much easier with him able to participate in the fighting. We finished up in the ancient ruins, bought a Solar Ring and Lunar Ring at town, then breezed our way through the goblin cave.

Saw one of the new story events upon entering Caldera. Nice!

Karl is still my favorite guy. Although the opposition has been steadily catching up with him. He's no longer able to decimate them with a single Waterfall. Still, that skill is very handy, what with its chance of stoppage. Does this guy even need a better weapon? His skills don't cost anything to use. He hasn't used his Tonfa since the very beginning. I just use his most powerful skill. Unless the Tonfa weapons add to his skill power. I seem to remember that skills don't get the benefit of stats or weapons adding to their damage. If this is true, then Karl will probably end up being well balanced with the opposition throughout the game, regardless of how much strength and better weapons he accumulates.

Gabriel's Smite spell is very powerful, and it costs next to nothing to cast! With him and Karl on the team, Mp management is a breeze. I mostly have to use Mp-restorers for Troy and Joseph.

We've explored Caldera and visited Uldrea. These field maps sure are a treat to explore. I like to go off the path and look everywhere, see the sights. Went into the middle of the crater to check out the smoke spouts there.

In light of your PS2 problems, it may be a good idea to invest in a new one. I got a new slim one last summer, and I haven't had any problems with it. Worth every penny, especially since I'm gonna be using it a lot to make games and play others' games.

[Ωbright]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

Hmm...I need to set them to 'always' then...so that if you touch the right spot along the beach, you get into a battle. Hmm...I didn't notice when I was play-testing. I guess I got lucky. Also, the weapons for Karl increase ATT, but more importantly they cause status afflictions at higher levels. Since he's so innately fast (and lucky), he sometimes has a greater chance of inflicting a status ailment by simply attacking than he does by using a skill. Other than that, it's just a game to try and get the best tonfa for him so he can look all cool ang glowy. Also, even if somebody has great free skills, I still like for them to be able to just attack sometimes when I want the battles to go by more quickly. Karl is great, but quite frankly his ATT sucks until he gets a good tonfa. Karl has 4 different tonfas, and each can be found in one of the 4 towers. Each type then has 4 levels, so he can have a 'Ceremonial Tonfa +3', or a 'Slate Tonfa +1' or whatever.

Oh yeah...and remember the Lucky Ring? Well now there's 2 of them...a Lucky Power Ring, and a Lucky Magic Ring. It's about 50/50 whether you get one or the other from a battle, but the chance of getting either one is still 'very rare'. In may last 3 playthroughs I found one in one game, the other one in another game, and I found neither one in the third.

I'm glad you appreciate the maps...that means a lot to me.

[Crythania]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

After a quick stay at Uldrea, we went out to conquer the Tower Complex. Those "no battle zone" paths on the map make it so easy to get where I'm going. As previously noted, I like to explore off the paths and go everywhere on the map. See all the sights, fight some monsters, see if any of 'em cough up a new spell for Joseph. But when I'd rather just get where I'm going, the paths are a wonderful help. This is how gaming with random encounters should be.

Joseph didn't gain any new spells in the Tower Complex. We journeyed back to the islands and looked for those elusive krakens on the beach again. Found 'em. There's one place near the Bandit Hideout where they show up with regularity. Took a few encounters, but Joe got that spell he'd missed out on earlier. With that accomplished, we went back to Uldrea to prepare for an assault on the Amber Tower.

I have a confession to make. I'm not sure I've mentioned it here at the Pavilion before. I don't like random encounters. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that it's my least favorite style of battling. However... I've been getting into it here. "Go with the flow, don't sweat it." That's how I've been playing. And I have to say, I'm starting to see the appeal. This game was made with random encounters in mind, and the dungeons have a nice flow to them. I like all the new treasure chests that were added. Gaining a new level is always something to look forward to, as is finding a new spell for Joseph. We've gained quite a few items from encounters. So, I've learned something new. That by itself makes this a memorable gaming experience.

[Ωbright]

Re: Ursus Quest: 'Shadow of the Towers'

Man...I'm really glad you're liking the new version, and if I made random battles so that even people who detest RE's can enjoy them, then that's awesome. You've pretty much done the same thing with scripted battles...the scripted battle system of your new game sounds truly inspired.

Sorry you had so much trouble getting Electrobiosis...when I said 'I need to change the encounter rate to always', I meant I need to do that when I PLAY it.......I'm not updating again....ever. LOL!! You know what I mean. I'm glad you were able to obtain it through the normal means eventually.

So did you beat the Amber Tower yet? I like a new thing there....I hope you will too.