Outquest.

[Ceiling_Cat]

An attempt at making a truly 8-bit jRPG. All resources are original, and made by me. The engine employed is RM2k3, with some patches by Cherry. (special thanks to him for the 8px font patch which made this thing possible) (HUGE thanks to him again for improving this patch on request)

I know you'll appreciate pictures more than the scarce info I'd provide at this stage of development, so:
Pictures (prototype)

What to expect
The graphics are made to resemble the NES as much as possible. Every sprite and tile has 4 colors only, out of available 54. I try as much as possible to take into account things like the sprite limit, attribute tables, palettes, resolutions and so on.
The battle system is turn based, using action points for turn calculation, making certain actions take longer to prepare than others. You can also plan ahead by previewing the turn order. There's gonna be a lot of stuff to experiment with - several weapon types with different abilities, an unique magic system, and more.
I'm aiming for hard but fair difficulty. Don't expect to be able to finish the game holding A, but also don't be afraid - a lot of effort is being put into balancing things out. Not once you'll be forced to employ advanced tactics juggling turns and elements in order to fight your way through. The battles are supposed to be tough and challenging, but less frequent than in your typical jRPG.
I'll also make sure that the story won't hit you with bad writing, and give you enough of a reason to keep playing. There's gonna be things to do besides the main storyline as well - a game is incomplete if all you can do is rush to the ending screen. I promise you won't want to do that.
Every system in the game is custom - I essentially rewrote the RPG Maker from grounds up, using it only as a convenient tilemap engine. Not a single piece of the default database besides battle anims and character names (as strings) is used.

Technical details:

Spoiler

The game doesn't use any of RM's built-in systems besides names (for strings), messages and things that couldn't be replaced (load/save screen).
3350 variables used so far.
50 switches used so far.
The game runs with no slowdowns despite extensive use of a crapload of (small) pictures updated every frame. Not sure about weaker systems, those dinosaurs with 800MHz CPU might have problems with this. (Update: Lack of a proper graphics card doesn't seem to be a disadvantage... looks like the only problem lies within raw CPU power, I'd recommend 2 GHz or so since I use 2.7)
Custom systems:
A balanced action points based battle system.
Custom menus (hybrids of map and event scripts).
Spreadsheet database loader, powered by RMEF.
Palette swaps done by swapping one common chipset and solid color parallax BG.
The hacks and utilities employed are:
RM2009U
PicPointer
BetterAEP
RMEF (especially the spreadsheet parser)
Unnamed 8px font patch
- All made by Cherry (RM2k3 would rot in hell already if it weren't for his efforts)

 

[Star]

I love the design of the chick in the red, the pixels is almost perfect for it. But the chick with the white hair might need a different color scheme for the way you are going. Maybe a darker white instead of the red. See the chick on the right has something that looks like shading, but the girl on the left doesn't at all. That's my point.

Also where are the monsters in the first screen? o.o

 

[Ceiling_Cat]

I understand, but she's quite the exception as she's the only one designed before I started work on this game. It's only this one piece of art which suffers from the lack of shading, it's probably not gonna be used anywhere besides menu and ending screen.

Monsters weren't loaded there, a bunch of spriteless characters are swinging at empty space with stats. I was just checking out the calculator.

 

[Perihelion]

While these screenshots are certainly pretty, can you tell us more about your game? There's not a lot to comment on here, and we generally like people to provide some story or world information.

 

[Ceiling_Cat]

I decided to leave out story and features summary because it may still change as long as I'm writing the game down at the moment. I'll do that when I finish the docs, okay? ._.

 

[Perihelion]

Well, it's required in the rules of this board that you provide SOMETHING to comment on. This forum is supposed to be for critique.

 

[Ceiling_Cat]

Done. Is this good enough?

 

[Perihelion]

Um, sure, that's fine for now. Some plot and/or setting info would be nice when you hammer it out, but it's not urgent at this time. Does the battle system have any unique quirks or anything you could talk about?

 

[Ceiling_Cat]

Update: I finished the documentation and I'm in the middle of coding the finished systems.

 

[Twirly]

Update: I finished the documentation and I'm in the middle of coding the finished systems.

 

[Ellie]

Love the looks; will be interesting to see how it plays. I like that the battle system seems to have more options than just attack item magic flee, at least.

By action points, does this mean you cast on spell and can then use the rest of the points as well? Or am I misunderstanding that. I always liked games like that.

 

[Twirly]

Update: I finished the documentation and I'm in the middle of coding the finished systems.

 

[Cryranos]

:heart: I love it! It looks like total 8-bit awesomeness! I can't wait to hear more about the story and gameplay! :heart:

 

[Ellie]

I like your pixel art. I don't like the tileset and screenshot. That, however, is personal opinion - I've never been a fan of 8-bit art, possibly because my eyesight isn't very good but to me I can never make out the outlines or see what things are supposed to be. I totally understand that you want to keep to 8-bit though and that's your perogative, carry on. ~

As Star said the red girl is great, would make a good avatar lol.

Still interested in this game nonetheless.

 

[Ceiling_Cat]

Guess what this is.

Can't tell? Well, it's a screenshot of the new systems fully working. Some tweaks here and there, and I'll begin work on the demo. Tech details in the OP.

 

[Ceiling_Cat]

I don't promise a thing, but it's going well again.