Last Legend: A G-rated game for R-rated times

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

As can be drawn from the title, LAST LEGEND is, at its core, kind of a joke. However, as can be drawn from the title screen, much care has been given to LAST LEGEND. This is, in essence, the best way to describe it: a joke that is nonetheless given what is most likely undue care. It is full of references that only smart people will understand--including this very line--and is full of things that will either amuse you, kill you, or possibly even do both at the same time, depending on how long it's been since your last save.

STORY

Spoiler

There honestly isn't a lot I can say, because Last Legend is a game about the progression of your understanding of its world. Saying any more than a cover-flap summary is like having a cover page New York Times review tell you how the book ends.

Basically, a knight, a princess, a wizard, and a dragon walk into a bar--ouch.

*rimshot*

The world of Last Legend, like ours, has countries that are experiencing prosperity and countries that are embroiled in war. With a touch of realistic politics--none of this fantasy Take Over The Universe And Enslave Dudes With Our Secret Demon Pact Because We Are An Asshole Country bullshit--a spattering of a mechanic that makes you do more than click "attack" a million times magic, and characterizations that only a real, live picture book author could muster, the story revolves around an excommunicated knight who once fought for one of said countries at war as he tries to pick up the pieces of the only life he ever knew.

Last Legend asks that the player learn about the world on his or her own, much like the knight, so NO MORE WORDS shall be spoken on this matter. NONE

CHARACTERS

Spoiler

Pascal is a Kingsknight in his late twenties. For the most part, he is the character that you will be controlling.

Princess Edrelline, or Edry for short, is the heiress to a queendom who has a very, very dirty little secret that serves for little more than comedic value.

Margaret, or Maggie as she prefers, is a wizard from the country that Pascal's is at war with. Young for a tactician being only in her mid-twenties, her nobleman father once upon a time pulled rank to get her a respectable position in her country's army.

Chris is a dragon and as everyone knows, all dragons ever think about is banging human chicks. By human reckoning, he is a few hundred years old, as most dragons taller than a yardstick tend to be.

SYSTEM

Spoiler

Nothing fancy here, dearies. I use a few simple custom scripts done by other people here and there for my text output, EXP screen, and for dashing, but sometimes, there is nothing more satisfying than some good, old-fashioned turn-based no-action.

CREDITS

Spoiler

Lots of composers. Lots of composers who are very rich and famous, with the exception, perhaps, of John Pee. No crappy hack composers (e.g., TheD, Motoi Sakuraba, myself, etc.). The songs used in the game belong to whoever holds their copyright.

A few programmers:
A "David Schooley" and a "SephirothSpawn," which I can only assume is like a very small Yggdrasil or something to that effect, wrote the EXP screen script.
Also included is an unused Elemental Resistance script by a "PhotonWeapon."
The letter-by-letter script which also seconds as the portrait script is by a person who goes by the name of "Slipknot."
The dash script, which you'll have to figure out which key works for you because it certainly isn't the one listed in it, is by a fellow who calls him or herself "necrofear."

A special mention goes to The Inquisitor's world map, because you can't have an RPG that hearkens back to the days in which games still understood that they were just games without a proper world map.

Everything else is taken straight from the RPG Maker XP stock material. Nothing fancy to be seen here. Glitz doesn't stop a bad game from being just that, as has been painstakingly proven in the past eight to nine years.

I suppose I should credit myself to a certain degree, but no matter how genuinely I go about it, it almost feels either too sarcastic or too narcissistic, don't you think?

DISCLAIMER
There are no warnings about this game, except perhaps the one that says "the dialogue can become PG-racy at times." The readme that comes packaged with it, however, is absolutely foul, even in its title.

DOWNLOAD
download also available from title image

This segment is about... oh, one-and-a-half to three hours long, depending on how much you explore and how quickly you tap the "confirm" button.

THINGS THAT MUST BE DONE
- Act II
- Act III
- Conning my artistic bros into making original pixel sprites.
- Revising Pascal's design. Migrating over three operating systems in the space of less than a year hasn't been kind to it.
- Creating appropriate icons
- Realizing that HyperSnap 6 may not be the be the best image capturing program ever devised.

Play it. Love it. Hate it. Make dirty drawings of it if that's your pleasure, but please don't post those. It is, like all games should be, made purely for the entertainment of its players. If nothing else, please have fun.

EDIT: THINGS THAT MUST BE DONE Sorry, darlings. I forgot to change the most important testing aspect before release--namely, the part where you start at level 99. I'll have a replacement uploaded shortly, but if you've downloaded it already, if you'd be so kind to change it yourselves, that would really be wonderful of you. fixed, now--at least, I hope it is, heh.

 

[coyotecraft]

I'm totally supporting this game. I don't know why you'd call it a joke. It's comical but that's not a bad thing.

Most people will see the bare open maps and rainbow windowskin as a put off and right now there isn't anything to explore. But that can all be fixed, it's just a demo after all.
The story, world, and characters are all well done. You don't have to sit through a boring history lesson of the world. The character's don't fall into any stereotypes. No brooding hero, no sexed up femme fatale. Their actions make sense and I don't have to stop and think about who's on who's side. Unlike most games, where you get a hero and everybody else tags along, the playable characters have story of there own. Even Edry, who you said served little more then comedic value, has merit to grow as a leader. And you see it when she tries to act her part as royalty in beginning.
At first I was thinking it was another typical medieval rpg. But it's very up beat and non-serious. I played up to the part where the four team up. I guessing the demo ends there since the next map traps you between the mountain and ocean. I'm looking forward to see how the story unfolds from there.
I didn't recognize the most of the music. Except for the Threads of Fate music, which was also a upbeat game so it fits.

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

Well, thank you kindly for your words, Coyotecraft.

Actually, there's a bit more to the demo than what you saw, but I apparently forgot to change the "transfer" command after the event you're talking about--I expanded the map you get sent to by about five tiles. I'll post (yet) another fix with that repaired; it's weird because I adjusted every other tile that leads to that map, but it sounds like I forgot the most important one.

Also, that was probably poor wording on my part, but Edry is totally a real character--it's her "very, very dirty secret" that, which when it's put that way tends to be a riveting plot point, is really just secret flavor humor that has to do with more of the game's entirely optional lore--it makes things like why she gets affected with certain statuses and things of that nature make more sense, is all.

I'm glad you enjoyed what you got to play. It's hearing things like this that drives me to work hard; it feels useless if the only people who play it are myself for testing and my hapless friends, but it feels like it's actually worth something if other people are willing to give it a try.

EDIT: Links fixed again so if all goes well, you should be able to go all the way to where the game tells you that "this is the end of Act I." I really do need to triple- and quadruple-check things from now on.

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

In spite of my knowing the elements of film and animation and all that crap, in lieu of actually putting together animated clips in (insert proprietary editing software here), Last Legend uses stills to tell a story where I think sprites would be insufficient. So allow me to tease you all with a minor update and one of said images:

Spoiler: SAID IMAGE

Who is this man? Is he a friend, or a foe? Why does he look like he couldn't carry on a coherent conversation to save his life? And why is he wearing such a ridiculous hair band?

"But why not make it a movie clip?" Because for one, they're huge, and for another, one of these takes hours to create, and that's not even counting the initial sketch. Fifteen to twenty of these for one second of footage, all while manipulating shadows, which I'm horrible at to start with? Hah! Sorry, my apprenticeship was in film, not Flash, which I'm clearly completely unfamiliar with.

I don't intend to use them liberally, but hopefully you as the players will appreciate them when they show up as much as you'd appreciate any of those fancy-pants new-fangled "Full Motion Video" things or whatever they like to use so much these days.

I'm aiming to be able to update this thread with tantalizing, cryptically-not-quite-spoiler screenshots and images from this game-in-pending every few weeks--it's good incentive to keep working on this project consistently in spite of having issues about being consistent when it comes to... well, everything, haha.

 

[action]

So, basically, a knight, a princess, a wizard, and a dragon walk into a bar--really ouch. Can't see what the plot is here, and I'm guessing you want a as-it-happens story, no real plot - these things don't really work out. You did say the progression of understanding your world, which would work, if you had a subplot or two (if the understanding is the plot) Just saying.

Ok, the download finished~

Alright, time for some crit. These are just things popping up in my head as I play it, and some of it you find reasonable for crit, but you'll have to bear with me; they're in a spoiler, since I hit enter for every clause :P

BEGIN SHITPOSTING CRITIQUE:

Spoiler: SPOILER DON'T READ IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED, PEOPLE!

I like the menu music :D It's probably not original though
Heh, bloodstained knight who gives up his past to become a paladin - heh, Final Fantasy IV, heh
Love the intro

Well, the face graphics do NOT match the sprites at all. Come on, you can do better than that! Make some custom sprites or edits, whatnot. It'll improve the game.

The battle didn't look like a battle at all, really. Just some sprites put facing another bunch of sprites, with a shitload of grass tiles.

Ugg, I walk so friggin slow D:

Is is, that a girl with a BOY sprite @^@ Shoot me

the battlers clash so much...

WTF, curse? That, was somewhat, spur of the moment.

Jeez, this music. You've gotta tell me more about it.

Cecilia? Rings a bell :P

GRrrr Rawrrawr!

That's about as far as I got - sorry if it isn't satisfying. I'll see if I can come up with more later.
-abreaction

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

Jeez, this music. You've gotta tell me more about it.

Well, it's a little bit of everything from all the composers I like best. Miki Higashino, Kenji Ito, John Pee, Junya Nakano, Noriyuki Iwadare, and of course Nobuo Uematsu. It goes against my cultural upbringing to personally indebt myself to people I don't know, so failing knowing any aspiring composers personally myself, I don't mind if people consider me a ripoff.

Cecilia? Rings a bell :P

Well, I did say "references only smart people will understand," or something like that. But this one's probably a lot more obscure than most people might like--this particular Cecilia is a not-cameo of a maid who was also secretly a ninja working for a princess in Vanguard Bandits--not that any of this matters, because it doesn't. Aside from that, she's a common NPC who's lucky enough to have a name other than "Lady Knight" or "Soldier" or "Man" or "Innkeeper."

Look for references to Schtolteheim Reinbach III, McDullen Harts and Calamity Jayne, among others some other time.

GRrrr Rawrrawr!

Well, it's not like he's a linguist who understands the scientific workings of human language production and acquisition :crossarms:

As for just throwing you to the wolves without any backstory: that's just my, uh, "director's liberties." If a player is anything like me, then they don't give half a damn about something that happened a thousand years ago, and they really don't want it spelled out to them first thing unless the game manages to make them really, really care about learning more about the world. I've crafted an elaborate lore for the world of Last Legend, from the origins of the Holy King and the Dragon God, to the breakoff of Dragonia to become a powerful independent nation in the midst of the war between the Kingsknights and the Dragon Knights (and the subsequent displacement of the dragons who lived in the area, making it somewhat ironic that the country has such a name), and even a lot about the historical pantheon of and the establishment of the Reinstated Hawaiian Nation Free Merchant Republic of the Artemis Ocean, but maybe unlike in most games, none of what happened a thousand years ago actually matters and it's all just flavorful world history.

It's all going into examinable books or tiles or NPCs that won't be inserted until I'm pretty much finished with the game, but it's there for people who want to learn about it. It's also not shoved in the player's face if they don't. The story itself unfolds throughout the game--every story has to start somewhere, and even Terry Pratchett barely writes a page of mystifying setup in each of his books--because it's the story of the main characters, as told to you, the player, personally, by the storytelling narrator. There are no Chosen Ones, and no Divine Favor; like in real life, Our Heroes are only heroes because, in the course of living their lives, they rise to meet the somewhat ridiculous web that life throws at them, which is a lot less mundane than it sounds but yeah. I can see how some people might not like that too much. But someone told me once, "you can't please everyone," right?

As for all the unmatching, of course, this is barebones Act I beta. I did mention that I have to con my visually-artistic bros, which I do have, unlike lacking for composer doggs, into making these changes. Eventually. That's all very low-priority, because while they're my friends, they, like me, do have professional lives and, because of this, it'd be lacking in class to ask them to do such things for free.

At any rate, thanks for the first look, dearie~

 

[coyotecraft]

I played the demo again. Pretty much up to the same point, right after you defeat Commander Petra. Only this time I got fleas and died. For some reason Flea Shampoo wouldn't work and inns don't remove status effects or revive characters. There's also that fact that you can't save anywhere so I'm not replaying it again.

I honestly think you should cut out the game play entirely. The story is interesting and you've done a good job syncing up the music. But...

You walk too slow. Why bother having a dash button at all? Just set it to one speed. Unless you plan on have special floor tiles that you'll fall through like ice, the character speed is unnecessary.
Maps are empty except for listening to what funny things the npcs have to say.
Monsters don't drop any items and barely any gold.
Pascal, even past level 5, would miss 1 out of 3 hits.
The shops are filled with items that I doubt are useful.

Turn this project into a movie like Akasha Seal or Nadir's Canon.

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

There's also that fact that you can't save anywhere so I'm not replaying it again.

Yeah, don't worry about it. But there are save points at every inn, which makes sense to me, but then again I may or may not be from a different RPG generation and might not be so intuitive for everyone.

You walk too slow. Why bother having a dash button at all? Just set it to one speed.

From a technical point of view: I hate the scanline scrolling that happens with Speed 4 walking on 40fps, but I also understand that Speed 3 is probably too slow for most players. I'd turn it up to 60fps, which removes the scanline crap, but it makes all the stock animations that were made with 40fps in mind look terrible.

Maps are empty except for listening to what funny things the npcs have to say.

Pretty much.

addressing gameplay

I've been fixing a few things, like the gold drop rate, items, and stat relativity. All the items in shops are useful, though--food is %healing items in this game, medicines are set-number healing items, ingredient items are for asking a certain chef to cook you stat-up dishes, a few other items are for limiting your weapon crafting level without making an individually-skilled blacksmith in every town (it didn't make sense to put a really terrible blacksmith in the capitol of the Holyland, and a really great one in the middle of nowhere), and the rest remove individual status effects. So everything is useful in its own way--medicines early-on, food when you start getting lots of HP, and so on. Which is why I'm rebalancing the gold drop rate, because I don't want players to just ignore items.

Turn this project into a movie like Akasha Seal or Nadir's Canon.

But this: no can do, sorry. I have this personal philosophy, and it keeps me in good graces with my publisher because I'm not constantly sending them inappropriate pieces: Book stories are for books. Movie stories are for film. Video game stories are for their appropriate medium. This is a video game story because of the way it's suited in being told, and I'm afraid it belongs nowhere else.

Thanks for your analytical input, of course. There are some gameplay things I really do need to address.

 

[moog]

So its a parody game with bad graphics and poor mapping? Is that the joke? :|

Im not putting you down, im just trying to figure out whats so interesting about a joke game with minimalistic effort.

also

No crappy hack composers ( Motoi Sakuraba)

lol

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

Im not putting you down, im just trying to figure out whats so interesting about a joke game with minimalistic effort.

Less of a joke than a satire. It's its own thing, but I realize it's also just a game, which is unfortunately less than can be said of most games released these days--even professional ones--and I'm more than happy to make fun of the industry in that aspect.

But nobody said anything about minimalistic effort. I painstakingly test all of my events and tailor them to be just right, and spend hours and hours with contimerous mapping, and it still needs work even then. At this point in production, I just think that non-essential elements like custom sprites are largely moot points, and gameplay balance comes from reactions, which is why numerical analyses are so important.

 

[moog]

Im not saying you have to have AMAZING SPRITES AND WONDERFUL GRAPHICS i mean id play an rtp game anyday. Im saying that if you have limited resources make sure that you make the best of it. If that mapping too hours upon hours then you might want to look into some tutorials dude.

That being said, best of luck to you.

 

[Nachos]

man rtp games can be awesome, and this game has potential too. there isnt much to comment on, coyote already did.

so we're looking forward to a mayor update. gl

oh and on monday i am starting a rtp project

 

[coyotecraft]

On story presentation.

I'm guessing that the "input name" was just a joke or homage to other games. Since you have a narrator speaking to the player you could have him call you by name. I also saw this connection you could make between the narrator and the dragon, Chris. Since the dragon reads books and the narrator was picking out a story to tell, why not just have the dragon tell the story.
After the beginning of the story, you don't hear from the narrator anymore. You do jump from one character scene to the next. Have the narrator explain the scene a little. In the scene where Pascal just wakes up from being cursed there is this long pause when you watch his superior come in and walk over to his bed. During that pause you could have the narrator explain how they found Pascal and so on.

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

I'm guessing that the "input name" was just a joke or homage to other games.

Well, I hate to spoil the surprise, but this is a Long Play. I guess I can discuss it really, really sketchily, but basically: it barely matters at all right up until it does. And even that is saying way too much, honestly.

Since the dragon reads books and the narrator was picking out a story to tell, why not just have the dragon tell the story.

Interesting connect and insight, but the narrator really is its own character. Once upon a time, I studied pre-Old English and learned a fun word: scop. It was used to describe poets and storytellers and it means "layabout or lazy jerkass," but the other definition is "creator." And that's kind of the thing I'm going for: the narrator is, by extension, the "creator" of the world since the narrator is the one "telling" you the world.

Which is something I would never tell in-game since it's somewhat tangential and irrelavent because the narrator is also just the narrator, but yeah, that's the story behind it.

After the beginning of the story, you don't hear from the narrator anymore.

I'm really considering how to implement this, when you think about the archaeolinguistic context of the narrator. I really want to do a Lost Odyssey storytelling intermission approach to it, but that can always go both ways with players. Then again, some things I suppose are left up to the, ahem, scop's discretion.

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

Spriting gives me headaches like the goddamn flu. Spending so much time working with single pixels'll drive you mad, but you can't help but to feel so accomplished.

A fellow by the internet name of Mack gets credit for making the basic sprite template. And I know it ain't the best sprite out there, but still, please don't use it, or the design, without proper permission.