Vacant Sky Complete Edition: Act I+ Released!

[Tarranon]

Hello everyone! I'd just like to take a moment to thank everyone who has played the game, and to encourage those who haven't to give it a try! Who knows? You may just like it!
A lot of people put countless hours into this project- a true labor of love for everyone involved; and although I am only a recent member of the team, I'm very proud of the part I had to play in seeing this game to its completion. With that said, I would now like to ask for your feedback about the soundtrack: what were the things you liked? I imagine there were also some things that you didn't like! Which song/s were your favorite? What kinds of songs would you like to see in later releases?
All of these things help me (and the team) to produce a game that I can be truly proud of, and that fans all over enjoy playing and always want to come back to for more! Help me realize this goal by requesting you take a moment of your time to give me your thoughts!
Again, thanks to everyone who made this possible: the producers, the fans, and everyone in between!

 

[Lusus Naturae]

Honestly, Tarranon, I wish I could say something bad about the music, but I really liked the soundtrack. You did a great job, and if I can find anything at all wrong with Act II's music, you'll hear about it. Just keep up the good work, though, and I'm sure you won't!

 

[Kesseki]

I'm getting my butt whooped on the part where

Spoiler

some people (bandits, I assume?) jump out of an abandoned carriage and attack.

I always get overwhelmed during the second battle, they dodge a lot... ~_~u

Anyway, I like what I've played so far. The into was beautiful, and I'm liking the characters and the art. Some of the towns seem a bit overcrowded, though. The first town's shopping district had a lot of fences and other things all over the place, and the streets felt a little narrow and claustrophobic.

Tarranon, I love the job you did with the soundtrack. My favorite so far is Last Night of Summer. Up to now the music has been kind of... "gentle", or melancholic if that makes sense.

 

[ganonfrog]

I'm getting my butt whooped on the part where

Spoiler

some people (bandits, I assume?) jump out of an abandoned carriage and attack.

I always get overwhelmed during the second battle, they dodge a lot... ~_~u

I can probably help. What stats did you give Auria?

 

[Kesseki]

I'm getting my butt whooped on the part where

Spoiler

some people (bandits, I assume?) jump out of an abandoned carriage and attack.

I always get overwhelmed during the second battle, they dodge a lot... ~_~u

I can probably help. What stats did you give Auria?

She's level 2 with a wooden sword and nothing else.
ATK 60
ACC 42
SPD 41
DEF 59

 

[Tarranon]

I could be able to help here a bit. You say you have the wooden sword, but it doesn't auto-equip, so make sure that's done. There's also a sidequest in the town you were just in that gives you one of two useful items depending on how you finish it- be sure to equip that, too.

You've got a decent amount of points in your speed stat, so another useful thing could be to set Auria's reaction to dodge if you haven't already, which could come in handy if the enemies get a string of misses. Don't forget, too, that if you've done some of the earlier sidequests, you may have some extra items that you can use to heal your characters, in addition to the healing items you should already be able to afford to purchase.

Also, I can't remember if one of the enemies is buffed, so if Seri has the dispel ability, be sure and use that. Aside from those things, the only other thing I can recommend is that you visit "a certain place" and use up your skill points to purchase abilities if you haven't already. The first time I played, I forgot to do that a couple of times, and it really hurt me.

If all else fails, you could (though I hate to even suggest this) revert to an earlier save and stockpile healing items. But the battle is winnable, so if you keep trying, you can do it, I'm sure! Good luck!

 

[Kesseki]

Thanks, Tarranon! I actually only got two quests before this (and finished just one of them). I'll probably just start over and talk more thoroughly to townspeople to make sure I don't miss any.

 

[gonewind]

[In case I have any mistakes in this far stretched (and boring, lol) speech, I apologize beforehand, as I am not a native english speaker]

Well, finished at last. Great game, even though it was fairly easy and quite short, it was quite the enjoyable one.

Since everyone here already talked about the technical part of the game (and I don't have any experience in RPG maker anyway ^^), I'll talk a bit about the story instead.

VSky (chapter 1 at least) is without a doubt a story driven game- battles are rare, and the sidequests are too simple to have any real meaning- and so, the story has to be a real killer for everything to work out well.
The story, at least for me, was too rushed. You seemed to have a lot to tell, and so, you filled the game with tons of forced information in large portions (instead of dividing it smartly throughout the game). When adding to that the already confusing nature of the game, it's easy to get lost.
You got a good sense for drama (you just had to love that sweet ending, even though it was totally predictable), and a good sense of humor (^^), but you lack in pacing, and you don't seem to have those basicks of storytelling installed into you.

Your characters are decent, generally speaking, but they mostly seem to lack credibility. Auria, who seems to suffer from the shonen jump superhero syndrome (if you know what I'm talking about), is a good example, while being a fun and likeable character overall, she lacks greatly in consistency.

I also found the towns in the game rather monotonous, exept maybe the first town and the destroyed one. They were all had that nice touch to them, but looked quite similar and didn't have many intresting places to venture to.

Still, of course, the story is the strong point of the game, but that's exactly why you have to work harder to make it even better (yea, I know, I'm a heartless, over demanding and awful person, still liked your game ^_^).

 

[Crystalgate]

The game seems good so far. I'll post more about it once I've beaten it.

I had two problems though. I can't see the name of the stats in the status screen. Also, Seri seems to dodge about anything with reaction set to dodge. Other than hostile attacks, she has also managed to dodge healing skills and my attempt at changing her reaction to something else.

 

[kaB00M]

This happens after the intro when some dude tries to open some door

 

[boon]

That didn't happen here.

 

[seven]

This happens after the intro when some dude tries to open some door

Have you considered looking at earlier posts, maybe? :x
At the top of the page/on the last page there was a download for a library which fixed the problem.

 

[yamimakai]

at first i thought this was too hard. you know no random battles, sort-of-a-boss every second fight, but then i remembered that games should be played with an actual possibility to lose. so the battle system is balanced perfectly in my opinion. never seen it done better, and i don't mean just rpg maker, but EVER! so good job on that. in the demo i kinda missed places where you could use your abilities. you know like lockpicking and other non-combat stuff. i mean i know it's a short demo and i'm sure the final version will have loads more of that, just mentioning. ohh and i LOVED the story. it didn't seem much at the beginning, but when it all unfolds it's just beautiful. the story twists with Auria or with that old woman's husband were very unexpected. and the whole combination of dialogues, characters reactions, interactions and music really give you deep feelings about the events that are happening. not that generic crap that i see all over these days.and the visual, intro, combat scenes and voice acting are 10/10. it's obvious you guys/girls put a LOT of work there. i guess i could give you some criticism about few details on personal level but that would be too subjective to actually give you a hard time about it, and i don't want to bash your game for my stupid expectations

 

[Crystalgate]

Great game. The story has intriguing mysteries, well-written dialogs and I like the setting. I did get a bit tired of the repeated "Seri wants to do things the kind way, Zaqris the practical way and then we go with Seri's idea" process, but other than that I liked the characterization too. It's also great to have the main character customizable.

As for cons, you have already realized that the linearity is a problem, so I'm going to focus on combat instead.

You have some nice ideas, but combat suffers from implementation. First of, some features are far more a disadvantage to the player when enemies uses them than they provide in advantage if the player uses them. The dodge reaction is one such example.

As a rule, you plan combat so that it works without relying on above average luck and you try to take worst case scenarios into account. For example, if Seri will fall if struck, I'm not going to assume she won't be targeted or that she will dodge, I'm going to heal her. If she gains a lucky string of dodges, it's more convenient than actually helpful since she'd probably survive anyway. A string of dodges from the enemy side however be very dangerous if the battle is already hard.

Counter is also a feature that benefits the enemy more than the player. If I set Ray to counter it may be helpful depending on how often the enemies hit Ray, but if an enemy has counter set I'm definitely going to eat counters since I eventually have to attack it.

None of this would have been a problem if battles were more manipulatable. However, there seems to be very little I can do about the problems. In my file Seri and Zaqris have far more accuracy than Auria and Ray. I still don't notice any difference in their chance to hit. Nor does using the skill Seri has that lowers speed do much. How much of a problem dodge is currently depends very much on luck and very little on what decisions I make.

The last battle also seem to ask for luck more than skill. The enemy has one really devastating multi targeted attack that it uses seemingly random. In one attempt it used that skill twice and I died rather quickly. In another attempt I beat it without it ever using that skill.

Mind you, I'm all for challenge, but I'm not found of things depending to much on the number generator.

 

[Sailerius]

at first i thought this was too hard. you know no random battles, sort-of-a-boss every second fight, but then i remembered that games should be played with an actual possibility to lose. so the battle system is balanced perfectly in my opinion. never seen it done better, and i don't mean just rpg maker, but EVER! so good job on that. in the demo i kinda missed places where you could use your abilities. you know like lockpicking and other non-combat stuff. i mean i know it's a short demo and i'm sure the final version will have loads more of that, just mentioning. ohh and i LOVED the story. it didn't seem much at the beginning, but when it all unfolds it's just beautiful. the story twists with Auria or with that old woman's husband were very unexpected. and the whole combination of dialogues, characters reactions, interactions and music really give you deep feelings about the events that are happening. not that generic crap that i see all over these days.and the visual, intro, combat scenes and voice acting are 10/10. it's obvious you guys/girls put a LOT of work there. i guess i could give you some criticism about few details on personal level but that would be too subjective to actually give you a hard time about it, and i don't want to bash your game for my stupid expectations

Thanks so much for playing and your feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed the game and story. I'm willing to hear your criticisms--they'll help make future releases better, so don't hold back.

Great game. The story has intriguing mysteries, well-written dialogs and I like the setting. I did get a bit tired of the repeated "Seri wants to do things the kind way, Zaqris the practical way and then we go with Seri's idea" process, but other than that I liked the characterization too. It's also great to have the main character customizable.

As for cons, you have already realized that the linearity is a problem, so I'm going to focus on combat instead.

You have some nice ideas, but combat suffers from implementation. First of, some features are far more a disadvantage to the player when enemies uses them than they provide in advantage if the player uses them. The dodge reaction is one such example.

As a rule, you plan combat so that it works without relying on above average luck and you try to take worst case scenarios into account. For example, if Seri will fall if struck, I'm not going to assume she won't be targeted or that she will dodge, I'm going to heal her. If she gains a lucky string of dodges, it's more convenient than actually helpful since she'd probably survive anyway. A string of dodges from the enemy side however be very dangerous if the battle is already hard.

Counter is also a feature that benefits the enemy more than the player. If I set Ray to counter it may be helpful depending on how often the enemies hit Ray, but if an enemy has counter set I'm definitely going to eat counters since I eventually have to attack it.

None of this would have been a problem if battles were more manipulatable. However, there seems to be very little I can do about the problems. In my file Seri and Zaqris have far more accuracy than Auria and Ray. I still don't notice any difference in their chance to hit. Nor does using the skill Seri has that lowers speed do much. How much of a problem dodge is currently depends very much on luck and very little on what decisions I make.

The last battle also seem to ask for luck more than skill. The enemy has one really devastating multi targeted attack that it uses seemingly random. In one attempt it used that skill twice and I died rather quickly. In another attempt I beat it without it ever using that skill.

Mind you, I'm all for challenge, but I'm not found of things depending to much on the number generator.

Thanks for playing! I see what you mean about some reactions being more useful for the enemies than players. The real reason this is problematic on the player's side is because enemies are built exactly like PCs, so every battle is a challenge. This is partially intentional, but something that I'll work on with the much more combat-intensive Act II.

I'm aware of the luck factor, which is something I'm actually experimenting with now. I originally had the final boss completely AI-run, but since the players don't tend to know the system very well by that point, I thought it was far too strong. Granted, the possibility of it casting three consecutive Lavirs is also a problem... I see what you mean. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Mongoosezxc]

does this game have any suggestive themes at all?

 

[Tarranon]

In so many words, it does not. I won't speak for later installments, but this one has nothing suggestive so to speak. Whether or not you consider that a good thing...well, who can say?

 

[Glue]

Rayonne is hot.

 

[Naith]

Nice Character Graphics,

:biggrin: :biggrin: :biggrin:

 

[Sailerius]

Just a heads up. I'm working on a rerelease of Act I that'll include the new dll file out of the box as well as a few graphical and music fixes. Not much in the area of new content, but there might be one or two new sidequests.