Dead Content Fall of Terra [Released!]
- Thread starter ImmuneEntity
- Start date
Dead content awaiting restoration.
ImmuneEntity
Sponsor
Thanks for the comments.
Guarda boss? I'm actually not sure which boss you're referring to. Could you be more specific?
Guarda boss? I'm actually not sure which boss you're referring to. Could you be more specific?
Crystalgate
Member
I'm currently at the siege you showed in a screeshot. I've managed to unlock as far as to the third tier of skills for the first three characters. Ciara's useless defensive spells are of course an exception since they only go to second tier. I think I'll stop trying to unlock more skills for a while.
The story is fairly good. It has a lot of clichés, but so far the clichés always stop right before they would get annoying. Example:
Battles aren't so fun though. The characters doesn't have anything useful besides damage and healing. Some skills inflicts status effects, but it's so unreliable I can't really make it part of the strategy. In the end, I find the outcome of the battles depends more on resources than actual strategy.
The story is fairly good. It has a lot of clichés, but so far the clichés always stop right before they would get annoying. Example:
Damian has a tragic past and is reluctant to move on. However, he rather quickly decided to give Ciara a chance rather than dragging the moping out as long as possible fr some contrived drama.
Battles aren't so fun though. The characters doesn't have anything useful besides damage and healing. Some skills inflicts status effects, but it's so unreliable I can't really make it part of the strategy. In the end, I find the outcome of the battles depends more on resources than actual strategy.
ImmuneEntity
Sponsor
Ah, okay. It seems like a lot of people get stuck on that fight lately. Here's some details about that boss fight that may help.
Hope that helps
Garuda has 7000 HP. He is weak to fire, so hopefully by now you have at least a tier 2 fire skill that you can keep hammering him with. He's also weak to toxin but you'll get more bang for the buck if you use fire. He is immune to all ailments except stun and armor break (stun will have a 40% chance of working and armor break will have a 20% chance of working), so keep trying those skills on him and when it does work it will be very beneficial. You'll want a good supply of tonics to keep replenishing your SP. Use Ciara to heal your party when necessary, and use her Shield skill to reduce physical damage by half (you may want to use it on Damian to keep him alive since he has the fire and stun skills).
Hope that helps
Crystalgate
Member
I would suggest grinding some when you come to the mountain village. You have a free healing and you can backtrack to a cave with infinitely respawning Basilisks.
It's mainly money which is interesting. The reason for that is that after the mountain village there will be a lot of situations where you lack a inn or something else which grants infinite restoration. The crystals are there, but they only work once each. Tonics combined with Ciara's healing seems to be the cheapest way to go around when an inn isn't available, but often you're locked in a place with enemies who hits hard enough that you make a loss if you repeatedly fight and heal. Some random encounters also pretty much demands you to use offensive skills.
It's very easy to get into an unwinable situation, especially since the game so far thrice has forced me to fight without a healer. Healing items are really expensive, but you will nevertheless need a number of them.
Basically, resource management is the name of this game.
Edit: I played the game some more and it had me again fight a bunch of battles without a healer. This time I ended up using a lot of high end healing potions as well as some elixirs to survive. Now, I could have bought even more medium level potions which would have spared me the high end ones, but the problem is that I didn't know what would be coming. What if instead of having healer-less fights I got to a town with equipment upgrades? If that would have happened and I had blown my money on healing items I would also have been screwed.
I do have a save right before the healer-less fights, but I don't feel like re-fighting the battles and re-watching the cutscenes after that.
It's mainly money which is interesting. The reason for that is that after the mountain village there will be a lot of situations where you lack a inn or something else which grants infinite restoration. The crystals are there, but they only work once each. Tonics combined with Ciara's healing seems to be the cheapest way to go around when an inn isn't available, but often you're locked in a place with enemies who hits hard enough that you make a loss if you repeatedly fight and heal. Some random encounters also pretty much demands you to use offensive skills.
It's very easy to get into an unwinable situation, especially since the game so far thrice has forced me to fight without a healer. Healing items are really expensive, but you will nevertheless need a number of them.
Basically, resource management is the name of this game.
Edit: I played the game some more and it had me again fight a bunch of battles without a healer. This time I ended up using a lot of high end healing potions as well as some elixirs to survive. Now, I could have bought even more medium level potions which would have spared me the high end ones, but the problem is that I didn't know what would be coming. What if instead of having healer-less fights I got to a town with equipment upgrades? If that would have happened and I had blown my money on healing items I would also have been screwed.
I do have a save right before the healer-less fights, but I don't feel like re-fighting the battles and re-watching the cutscenes after that.
ImmuneEntity
Sponsor
If you're really stuck, send me your save file (immune_entity@hotmail.com) and I'll give you enough items and so forth so that you can get by this boss fight.
In general though, you should try to use multiple save files.
In general though, you should try to use multiple save files.
Love the game, you certainly spent ALOT of time into this.
Came across some glitches though, but they've already been shown.
Problem, like many, is the balance... At first, it was the correct difficult, easy, yet difficult enough to heal often.
Then the swamp came... Yeah, let's just say that I evaded most of it's inhabitants... Then in the cave, the bats wern't that hard (Phew....) And then at the crystal I had the (Not so) smart move of not healing (Since all of my characters still had 100+ HP and 20+ SP) and then....well, a boss monster that can do 140 dmg...I was screwed, changed my strategy and used the crystal and I barely made it. (since it was a boss monster I'll allow it. xD) and then...well, I was kinda surprised there wasn't a crystal right after the boss, and still made me fight through 2 packs of bats... (Had to use 2 Revivals...)
At last! Out of the cave! (Heal+Save) Oh shit, 3 headed dog that does 50 Dmg per turn AND has a skill that can do 150 Dmg!?!?!?
I didn't stand a chance.
Either way, mapping is awesome, love the cutscenes... If only the battles were a bit more for the medium player that doesn't search every part of each city and/or isn't a strategic god(dess) (From easy - Medium -Hard, the game is currently on hard, and needs to be on medium)
8/10 is well deserved. (And your help isn't needed, I'll just try some different strategies)
Came across some glitches though, but they've already been shown.
Problem, like many, is the balance... At first, it was the correct difficult, easy, yet difficult enough to heal often.
Then the swamp came... Yeah, let's just say that I evaded most of it's inhabitants... Then in the cave, the bats wern't that hard (Phew....) And then at the crystal I had the (Not so) smart move of not healing (Since all of my characters still had 100+ HP and 20+ SP) and then....well, a boss monster that can do 140 dmg...I was screwed, changed my strategy and used the crystal and I barely made it. (since it was a boss monster I'll allow it. xD) and then...well, I was kinda surprised there wasn't a crystal right after the boss, and still made me fight through 2 packs of bats... (Had to use 2 Revivals...)
At last! Out of the cave! (Heal+Save) Oh shit, 3 headed dog that does 50 Dmg per turn AND has a skill that can do 150 Dmg!?!?!?
I didn't stand a chance.
Either way, mapping is awesome, love the cutscenes... If only the battles were a bit more for the medium player that doesn't search every part of each city and/or isn't a strategic god(dess) (From easy - Medium -Hard, the game is currently on hard, and needs to be on medium)
8/10 is well deserved. (And your help isn't needed, I'll just try some different strategies)
ImmuneEntity
Sponsor
Nice comments. I'm glad you are enjoying the game, and I hope you're able to finish it.
As I've said before, balancing is difficult. I did want to make the game challenging, but of course I didn't want it to be frustratingly difficult. I think it's possible that the reason that some people find the game difficult is that they just don't have the same level of equipment (mostly armor) and inventory (mostly tonics and potions) as I did when I played. This is simply because I probably "found" more items than the average player might find, and I may have also unfairly prepared for certain boss fights without realizing it. So, perhaps in some boss fights that I felt weren't difficult enough, I maybe should have left them the way they were.
If I ever work on this game more, I'll consider finding ways to make the game more balanced. Balancing is very difficult, because what you think is a small change can have major implications in overall difficulty. Hopefully you will be happy to know that this version of the game had many changes to make it easier than the beta version.
As I've said before, balancing is difficult. I did want to make the game challenging, but of course I didn't want it to be frustratingly difficult. I think it's possible that the reason that some people find the game difficult is that they just don't have the same level of equipment (mostly armor) and inventory (mostly tonics and potions) as I did when I played. This is simply because I probably "found" more items than the average player might find, and I may have also unfairly prepared for certain boss fights without realizing it. So, perhaps in some boss fights that I felt weren't difficult enough, I maybe should have left them the way they were.
If I ever work on this game more, I'll consider finding ways to make the game more balanced. Balancing is very difficult, because what you think is a small change can have major implications in overall difficulty. Hopefully you will be happy to know that this version of the game had many changes to make it easier than the beta version.
Zekallinos
Sponsor
-Make some random respawns. Whenever you enter a map, there's a 1/5th of a chance for each enemy to respawn. That way, you won't have to refight them every time, but should you decide to backtrack, it won't be a lifeless void (especially since you don't have a lot of small animals and others stuff to give more life to your maps).
-The more I think of it, the more your maps are not interesting. They are mapped correctly, tiles are used fined but...it's just...like they should be used, and not more. In other words, they are very ordinary. Try fusing some tilesets and looking around in the screenshot threads or mapping contest threads to get some inspiration (that's what I do, at least). For now, focus on moving forward, but if you ever intend to be more visible, you will have to work on that.
-Anyway, with a bit of grinding, that boss wasn't too hard. There's a very big difference depending on your level at the time of combat.
-I like the scene after the flashback. They are very commonplace, but this one was executed quite well. If you can find a song that fits exactly the length the cutscene and ends with a bang, even better.
-Ensure you playtest the game's difficulty without doing the sidequests at least once.
-Should you focus on one type of skill? If so, is the opposite strategy viable?
-I really like how you started with some snow patches, then gradually making it snow, then covering the floor with snow, main reason being that it's quite similar here, when I look outside the window. Nice music too. You grass is a little too green though, make it a little more yellowish (just a little) and reduce saturation.
-Common, I'm sure you can come up with a better name than "Blue Hound".
-There's a script somewhere that makes you leave footprints. Use it for the snow fields.
-All your dungeons (both interior and exterior) are very linear. There are some paths that you can take to get some treasure, but most of the time it's just a straight line. Try some other layouts, like paths that need to be unlocked by going through another path, at the very least.
-A priest with dark powers, haha. Nice. You could elaborate a lot on that, how he feels not to be able to help people, etc. Battle wise, he is, just...not very impressive. Kinda boring.
-I like your choice of music.
-When you get to the castle, the king says, at one point "I know you will". But the text bubble's arrow doesn't point towards him.
-The castle siege thing...it's very advanced for an RM game. Good job on that! I wonder, how long did it take you to balance it?
-You do know that "I'll meet you in the other side" sounds like "I'll meet you after we both die, cause that's going to happen for sure" right? I think you meant "I'll meet you in the other side of the passage", but still, it leads to some confusion.
-In the houses of the residential area. You are not using the wall tiles correctly. The beams are supposed to be on the outside, not the inside. If you know what I mean.
-You need to make a half-submerged sprite for Damian, because RM's bush thing won't cut it. The water level is too high, so it looks very very wrong (just reduce the transparency of half the body).
-Don't start change scenes when I'm walking in the middle of a corridor. Make it after at least something happens, like, going to another map, activating a lever, etc.
-Alright, now, I see you've made a lot of effort to develop Damian's character, so that he doesn't feel like a standard hero. It works, but it also doesn't. No matter what you write, I can't visualize him other than the Arshes sprite. So 1) I have some preconceptions of him as a young idiot hero that I can't throw away, even though he isn't 2) He thinks a lot, he feel a lot of sad emotions from the past but his face is always the same thing. I think that we would feel your characters a lot more if they had face sets, with different emotions. Because right now, something just doesn't seem to work.
-Don't shut off the sound of thunder when you enter a house. Maybe make the volume lower, but silence doesn't fit.
-Errr...what? So we find a powerful "Magic Robe" in a chest, in Gali, then a bit latter, we find "Felt Robe", which is strictly worse?
-If you can, try to stay consistent with your animations. Either use RTP or Particle Animations, but avoid mixing both. There are plenty of us who use Particle Illusion here, so you should probably be able to find what you need.
-When you free the prisoners, you flash the screen too quickly. Don't open the cell, flash, say one line, flash again. Engage the conversation right after you open the cell.
-It's not pertinent for a merchant to be selling weapons in the middle of a battle. Leave those for towns.
-Heal the party before boss fights. Really.
I'll finish this another time.
-The more I think of it, the more your maps are not interesting. They are mapped correctly, tiles are used fined but...it's just...like they should be used, and not more. In other words, they are very ordinary. Try fusing some tilesets and looking around in the screenshot threads or mapping contest threads to get some inspiration (that's what I do, at least). For now, focus on moving forward, but if you ever intend to be more visible, you will have to work on that.
-Anyway, with a bit of grinding, that boss wasn't too hard. There's a very big difference depending on your level at the time of combat.
-I like the scene after the flashback. They are very commonplace, but this one was executed quite well. If you can find a song that fits exactly the length the cutscene and ends with a bang, even better.
-Ensure you playtest the game's difficulty without doing the sidequests at least once.
-Should you focus on one type of skill? If so, is the opposite strategy viable?
-I really like how you started with some snow patches, then gradually making it snow, then covering the floor with snow, main reason being that it's quite similar here, when I look outside the window. Nice music too. You grass is a little too green though, make it a little more yellowish (just a little) and reduce saturation.
-Common, I'm sure you can come up with a better name than "Blue Hound".
-There's a script somewhere that makes you leave footprints. Use it for the snow fields.
-All your dungeons (both interior and exterior) are very linear. There are some paths that you can take to get some treasure, but most of the time it's just a straight line. Try some other layouts, like paths that need to be unlocked by going through another path, at the very least.
-A priest with dark powers, haha. Nice. You could elaborate a lot on that, how he feels not to be able to help people, etc. Battle wise, he is, just...not very impressive. Kinda boring.
-I like your choice of music.
-When you get to the castle, the king says, at one point "I know you will". But the text bubble's arrow doesn't point towards him.
-The castle siege thing...it's very advanced for an RM game. Good job on that! I wonder, how long did it take you to balance it?
-You do know that "I'll meet you in the other side" sounds like "I'll meet you after we both die, cause that's going to happen for sure" right? I think you meant "I'll meet you in the other side of the passage", but still, it leads to some confusion.
-In the houses of the residential area. You are not using the wall tiles correctly. The beams are supposed to be on the outside, not the inside. If you know what I mean.
-You need to make a half-submerged sprite for Damian, because RM's bush thing won't cut it. The water level is too high, so it looks very very wrong (just reduce the transparency of half the body).
-Don't start change scenes when I'm walking in the middle of a corridor. Make it after at least something happens, like, going to another map, activating a lever, etc.
-Alright, now, I see you've made a lot of effort to develop Damian's character, so that he doesn't feel like a standard hero. It works, but it also doesn't. No matter what you write, I can't visualize him other than the Arshes sprite. So 1) I have some preconceptions of him as a young idiot hero that I can't throw away, even though he isn't 2) He thinks a lot, he feel a lot of sad emotions from the past but his face is always the same thing. I think that we would feel your characters a lot more if they had face sets, with different emotions. Because right now, something just doesn't seem to work.
-Don't shut off the sound of thunder when you enter a house. Maybe make the volume lower, but silence doesn't fit.
-Errr...what? So we find a powerful "Magic Robe" in a chest, in Gali, then a bit latter, we find "Felt Robe", which is strictly worse?
-If you can, try to stay consistent with your animations. Either use RTP or Particle Animations, but avoid mixing both. There are plenty of us who use Particle Illusion here, so you should probably be able to find what you need.
-When you free the prisoners, you flash the screen too quickly. Don't open the cell, flash, say one line, flash again. Engage the conversation right after you open the cell.
-It's not pertinent for a merchant to be selling weapons in the middle of a battle. Leave those for towns.
-Heal the party before boss fights. Really.
I'll finish this another time.
ImmuneEntity
Sponsor
Thanks for the feedback. I won't address all of the points you made, but I can talk about some.
I like your idea of just having some of the monsters respawn randomly. The reason I didn't have monsters respawn every time you re-enter a map is because for me personally it is really annoying when that occurs in games. Thus I made it so monsters only respawn in very specific instances. This is something I can consider if I make a new game or continue working on this one in the future.
If you're actually asking me if you should focus on one type of skill, I always felt it was best to evenly distribute the learning among the skills. That way you are always prepared to attack with an enemy's weakness. For non-elemental attack skills, it's still useful to always have a variety of unlocked skills available, because each tree has something useful.
I spent way too much time on the castle siege. The problem is that I did it entirely in events instead of scripting because at the time I just wasn't very comfortable with Ruby. However, RM eventing is NOT a good way to implement large-scale battles like that, because there is no way to iterate over data structures of elements. Therefore you have to program every single possibility. You don't want to know how many "event lines" that battle is really made of.
As far as the RTP vs Particle Animations, that was just a situation where I had already put a lot of work into the RTP animations, but there were just a subset of the skills left that I was having a really hard time coming up with good RTP animations for. Thus, I added in some Particle Animations to fill in the gap. I'm well aware of the issue of consistency, and I'd be much more concerned with consistency if I were going to sell the game or distribute it to a larger group of people.
I know it doesn't make sense to have the merchant there, but I simply put him there so people wouldn't be screwed if they saved their game but didn't have adequate equipment at the time.
I always either heal the party before a boss fight, or I make sure that there is a heal point before it. If neither of these conditions were true in your case for some reason, let me know, because that's a mistake.
Thanks again for your comments and criticism, and I hope you're at least enjoying most of it even though it can be a challenging game at times. Please keep in mind that I was the only one working on this game for so long (except for a little help here and there with graphics, etc.), and I hope you realize how difficult it really is to make a quality game by yourself (especially when the game is as big as this one).
I like your idea of just having some of the monsters respawn randomly. The reason I didn't have monsters respawn every time you re-enter a map is because for me personally it is really annoying when that occurs in games. Thus I made it so monsters only respawn in very specific instances. This is something I can consider if I make a new game or continue working on this one in the future.
If you're actually asking me if you should focus on one type of skill, I always felt it was best to evenly distribute the learning among the skills. That way you are always prepared to attack with an enemy's weakness. For non-elemental attack skills, it's still useful to always have a variety of unlocked skills available, because each tree has something useful.
I spent way too much time on the castle siege. The problem is that I did it entirely in events instead of scripting because at the time I just wasn't very comfortable with Ruby. However, RM eventing is NOT a good way to implement large-scale battles like that, because there is no way to iterate over data structures of elements. Therefore you have to program every single possibility. You don't want to know how many "event lines" that battle is really made of.
As far as the RTP vs Particle Animations, that was just a situation where I had already put a lot of work into the RTP animations, but there were just a subset of the skills left that I was having a really hard time coming up with good RTP animations for. Thus, I added in some Particle Animations to fill in the gap. I'm well aware of the issue of consistency, and I'd be much more concerned with consistency if I were going to sell the game or distribute it to a larger group of people.
I know it doesn't make sense to have the merchant there, but I simply put him there so people wouldn't be screwed if they saved their game but didn't have adequate equipment at the time.
I always either heal the party before a boss fight, or I make sure that there is a heal point before it. If neither of these conditions were true in your case for some reason, let me know, because that's a mistake.
Thanks again for your comments and criticism, and I hope you're at least enjoying most of it even though it can be a challenging game at times. Please keep in mind that I was the only one working on this game for so long (except for a little help here and there with graphics, etc.), and I hope you realize how difficult it really is to make a quality game by yourself (especially when the game is as big as this one).
Zekallinos
Sponsor
Not at all, there may be lack of polishing here and there, but as a game as a whole, it is very good. Most parts are very enjoyable. For the merchant, it's a very good decision to have him there. What I meant was that he didn't need to sell anything other than potions. I didn't get healed when I started the Brutus' father fight, but it's possible I just missed a crystal before it.
MaRkNemesis
Member
Looks like an awesome game! Congratulations for the effort and dedication to create this! I'll give it a shot when I have the chance! 
FYI, on my 1900mHz box (yeah I know I should upgrade but I have no probs with any other rpgmaker games) there is a delay in excess of 10 seconds after using the action button at save points and during battles. Tried it on a slightly faster box, same result. Makes it impossible to defeat the guardian or the dragon near Bali even with party at level 25 as I can barely get a shot in. Pity, the game has one of the more interesting storylines.
ImmuneEntity
Sponsor
On old machines you will probably have that issue. Because of the scripts I'm using, there is more lag in menus and such than is desirable. I never could figure out what the problem is. It works just fine on average computers. I guess I don't really have any advice for you...other than that I hope you're able to complete it sometime on a faster machine.
Mooglenator
Member
I just completed the game, and i seriously love it!
Looks good. DLing now.
Hard to believe you made this on your own, currently trying to do so myself but I have to tumble through some stuff. (I'm really only making it to get used to RPG maker XP, as I've gotten better I went back and re-mapped entire maps and redid some events to make them look cooler. Still learning how to do puzzles and stuff...)
Hard to believe you made this on your own, currently trying to do so myself but I have to tumble through some stuff. (I'm really only making it to get used to RPG maker XP, as I've gotten better I went back and re-mapped entire maps and redid some events to make them look cooler. Still learning how to do puzzles and stuff...)
ImmuneEntity
Sponsor
Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Hope the game wasn't too difficult for you.Mooglenator":smha2hx0 said:
punchybot":smha2hx0 said:
Yeah, I completely redid my maps several times. You don't even want to know how bad the first version of my maps looked like
I hope you enjoy the game, and good luck on yours.