[Seventh Shade]

Megazeux is a lesson in choosing between two semi-bad options. You can either use one character, two color graphics that look, in a general sense, primitive or you do what this game does, which is look really pretty but have an emptiness and lack of detail in the map design because you don't have enough characters to add all the terrain bits that increase verisimilitude. I guess it keeps with the old-school jrpg graphics style, but I don't know if it's really sensible to fetishize what's really a weakness of those old games, and one only brought about by hardware limitations rather than preference. Still, it's great to see a game use SMZX so well and you folks did extremely well with what you had to work with.

[Exophase]

Okay, so now I'm stuck in the switch puzzle hell underneath the Derelict Grotto. I was there for over an hour until I finally managed to get myself stuck by pushing a couple blocks against the entrance of one of the switch bridges and had to use the exit art. Any ideas

(yes I realize I'm pretty severely sequence breaking here, I even got the Sword Tower key before I got Natalie ;p)

[Lachesis]

Spoiler

The platforms act similar to MZX diagonal mirrors and "reflect" the pathway, and flipping the switch turns them 90 degrees, making the path be "reflected" the opposite direction. It took me an incredibly long time to realize this too, even after reverse engineering the .map file format and looking at the NPC scripts (which didn't help and made me want to claw out my eyes).

Basically, what you want to do is get to the area at the top-right with the chest and activate the switch over there, and backtrack to the far left, down, and right across the really long bridge, taking you close to where you started and where you will then be able to manipulate the path to make the exit platform in the lower-right accessible.

[Exophase]

Thanks again. Can't try it now but hopefully that makes sense to me tomorrow. This is a good game but occasionally it may suffer from I'm-not-as-smart-as-Lancer syndrome (Wervyn, whom I assume had little problem testing this stuff, would be somewhat immune to this)

[Lachesis]

Just wait until this puzzle.

Spoiler

Or

Spoiler

the sliding block puzzle at the top of the Heart Gemini Tower which is supposedly even harder but I haven't made it that far yet

[Dr Lancer-X]

I wonder if I went a little overboard with the puzzles in general; it's just kind of hard to make the locations all that interesting without them (and, for example, the towers would need to be a lot bigger or have a higher encounter rate if you could just walk through them). And yeah, if I'm looking for someone to judge the reasonableness of puzzles I guess Wervyn isn't necessarily the best choice =P

Quote

Megazeux is a lesson in choosing between two semi-bad options. You can either use one character, two color graphics that look, in a general sense, primitive or you do what this game does, which is look really pretty but have an emptiness and lack of detail in the map design because you don't have enough characters to add all the terrain bits that increase verisimilitude. I guess it keeps with the old-school jrpg graphics style, but I don't know if it's really sensible to fetishize what's really a weakness of those old games, and one only brought about by hardware limitations rather than preference. Still, it's great to see a game use SMZX so well and you folks did extremely well with what you had to work with.

Actually it's a bit of a different tradeoff than that; the thing about extreme levels of variety and detail is the amount of additional manual work that would go into location design. I tried creating an RPG that's along the former lines but content creation became a massive barrier and I realised I simply wouldn't be able to make it.

My projects since then were attempts at picking different kinds of 'stylish minimalism' that would enable me, as someone with limited free time and even more limited attention span to create a full-length RPG. Those eventually fell apart, but 'red's approach turned out to be the perfect kind of stylish minimalism required for the task.

The graphical style used in 'red', while very limiting, gave me a lot of freedom because I was able to create a lot of stuff quickly; for the same reason working in MZX can be liberating because of the limitations, not in spite of them. So when I look at it that way, for me, it wasn't a tradeoff at all; it was the obvious thing to do for making this game.

[Wervyn]

Yeah, my general approach to puzzles is "wow, that was challenging, awesome! Don't change anything!" I'm almost never thinking in terms of making things easier for other people. So oh well.

I also need to get around to finishing my playthrough of this. I stopped once I got to the <Red Maze> since life got really busy. Houses are expensive, yo!

"Funny how there's always a little more innocence to lose."

[Seventh Shade]

Lancer-X, on 05 September 2013 - 02:01 PM, said:

Actually it's a bit of a different tradeoff than that; the thing about extreme levels of variety and detail is the amount of additional manual work that would go into location design. I tried creating an RPG that's along the former lines but content creation became a massive barrier and I realised I simply wouldn't be able to make it.

My projects since then were attempts at picking different kinds of 'stylish minimalism' that would enable me, as someone with limited free time and even more limited attention span to create a full-length RPG. Those eventually fell apart, but 'red's approach turned out to be the perfect kind of stylish minimalism required for the task.

The graphical style used in 'red', while very limiting, gave me a lot of freedom because I was able to create a lot of stuff quickly; for the same reason working in MZX can be liberating because of the limitations, not in spite of them. So when I look at it that way, for me, it wasn't a tradeoff at all; it was the obvious thing to do for making this game.

I don't know about that. Back when I was working on that roguelike I made an engine that added the kind of details we're talking about to the randomly generated levels. I'm mega slow at programing and middling at it as well and it didn't take long at all. I somewhat agree that megazeux's graphical limitations speed things up... except when you're trying to figure out how to eak just that little bit more out of it. Did you read what Anna Anthropy said about megazeux encouraging a certain demo-sceneishness because megazeux is both very capable of doing much more than what it's immediate capabilities would suggest but the difficulty of getting it to do it means that showing off technically sometimes gets in the way of everything else that makes a game good?

[Exophase]

After going back to the area I was stuck in I'm all but positive that I actually broke the game. The bridge that went back to the entrance was permanently gone and pressing the switch in the upper right would make the bridge leading to it disappear. Now that I went back I could get through it without a problem, although I'm still not really sure how to get the chests in the corners.

[Exophase]

Okay, this isn't good.. I just purchased and used a few arts scrolls and now my spell lists are full of duplicates and I lost some. Like the ever important portal Although now Natalie has three portals instead. I also lost my greater art and who knows what else, I'm not totally sure what I had beforehand. I can dig through older saves to check.

Did I totally ruin my game with a save version upgrade or something? I did that yesterday. This along with how incredibly badly I sequence broke the game (I had the sword key before Natalie even joined, and at no point did I find the game unreasonably difficult combat-wise - although part of that is probably due to how broken Rapid Bow + Glass Arrow was)

EDIT: Okay, I went back to an older save. I have two Sluggish in Sophia and two Vulnerable in Amy, no other dupes.. and no Platinum Wind (it was on Karen). I have no idea when or how I lost it. I'm probably tempting fate even trying to play like this but I'll see what happens, including more art corruption next time I purchase more.

EDIT2: I can confirm that giving any of my party members but Sophia De-Petrify caused one of their basic arts to be replaced with a basic art they already have. Last time I gave them all De-Petrify and Geyser and gave three of them Weaken, may have given some others too. It really broke their arts lists.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Oh dear. I don't suppose you have the original save still? If so I can have a look at it for you.

I knew something like this would happen. I blame Lachesis for wanting a sorted inventory =P

Was it just arts that got corrupted, not any items?

EDIT: Wow did I drop the ball on this. The problem is the code that teaches new Arts and it's so obviously wrong I'm amazed it didn't break during testing. I'll have a patch out in a moment.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Here's a version that shouldn't mangle your spell lists when you use <Basic Art> scripts.
http://sho-in.com/ix...1.04-update.zip

If you know which spells you should have I can repair your save real quick.

I'll be updating the main zips in a moment because this is a really game-breaking bug.

[Exophase]

Well, just removing the dupes from Sophia and Amy would probably make me feel better.. and giving Karen Platinum Wind back (am curious if that got lost due to this bug too or if it was somehow reset due to sequence breaking). I've attached the save file.. hope I got the right one, it's supposed to be third from the top.  SAVESLOT2.zip (598.01K)
Number of downloads: 49

[Dr Lancer-X]

Might want to try attaching that again. Basically, what happened was that when using the items that teach arts, the code:
- found the position in the player's 'art inventory' to place that art
- moved all the arts that appear after it down
- replaced the last art in the list with your new one.

So each duplication is a loss, basically.
Somehow I didn't make this screwup for arts taught through the scripting language (i.e. Greater Arts) or arts taught in battle (Spirit Arts. Battle Arts aren't in your art inventory), just for the items.

This would have been how Platinum Wind got overwritten, since it's almost definitely going to appear last (unless the character has other Greater Arts)

[Exophase]

Yeah, it's up now, sorry.. didn't realize it kept rejecting it.

I actually did lose Spirit Travel (I think it's called) earlier but just figured spirit arts went away somehow

[Dr Lancer-X]

Exophase, on 06 September 2013 - 10:13 AM, said:

Yeah, it's up now, sorry.. didn't realize it kept rejecting it.

I actually did lose Spirit Travel (I think it's called) earlier but just figured spirit arts went away somehow />

Here you go:
 SAVESLOT2.zip (534.44K)
Number of downloads: 49
Sophia lost 2 arts and Amy lost 1 because I don't know what they were originally. Karen's got the right number since she only had 1 dup and I knew what it erased (PLATINUM WIND).

I can readd Spirit Travel if you know who lost it.

Anyway, to reiterate: everyone, please get the patch http://sho-in.com/ix...1.04-update.zip
Turns out v1.03 is the most broken release of the game >_>

[Exophase]

Thanks a bunch. Spiritl Travel was Sophia's, but it's redundant now anyway (and I can get it back if I really want to). I'm sure whatever Amy lost isn't too important.

[Lachesis]

Hey! Don't blame me! I haven't even tested it!

Spoiler

Also wow, I have literally been beta testing everything after the Red Maze, haven't I? Maybe I should hold on recommending this game out to everyone until I've actually beaten it so any new bugs will be fixed.

Also, I am a similarly bad person to be judging the puzzles and have basically plowed through every single one since that reflecting path puzzle--maybe there should be more hints or a solution guide or something

[Exophase]

Just "beat" Red. Very nice game. I use the word beat loosely because the end-rating is missing a ton of stuff.

Here's a bunch of random thoughts.. don't read unless you've beaten the game!

Spoiler

- I only beat 2/6 towers, Star and Sword. It looks like I could have just went back up Star to get to the Black Altar, although I suppose the game is kind of encouraging you to take a different tower up. I have the keys for Spiral and Gemini and was expecting to find Crescent (since it's supposed to be the next easiest after Star) but didn't. It would have been funny if I went up Sword instead of Star in the first place, which should have been possible.
- Incidentally, that means most of the more difficult puzzles aren't needed to complete the game (although I don't know how much more to the story there'll be if I go through the other stuff), so I take back what I said about the puzzles being too hard. My griping about the Star tower entrance was highly exaggerated, I think I was just too tired to really put in a suitable amount of effort, but it really wasn't such a bad puzzle.
- On the other hand, the puzzle in Sword where the boulders transition to crates and vice-versa was really difficult for me and must have taken a few hours before I started making progress on it. Then I was scared to death that I'd have to do it again since I thought there was a chance I didn't have the right stuff for the top again (I went up Star four times...). I didn't manage to pass the puzzle at the top that Lachesis specifically lamented.. I have no idea what I missed out on. At least Lancer had the courtesy to turn off battles there.
- For the longest time I thought you could always escape from battles because I never failed to. I don't think I encountered an enemy that I'd have had no chance at if I were full strength, but I did escape from some tight spots and it did help me sequence break as much as I did early on. But then in Sword tower, when I was tired of fighting during that puzzle, that's when escaping seemed to start failing...
- I have no idea how to get the "black" art from the enemy that uses it. Maybe you can just kill it before it uses it. Of course I tried nullifying the attack in various ways to no avail..
- I didn't take the right path in the final area, wonder what I missed
- I really like how the main-world with its fairly generic premise and all of its RPG trope lampshading ended up being deliberate since it was a game world in-universe to begin with. Well, sort of.
- So, the ending looks like it takes place in Nexus, but is it actually the real world? Since it sounds like the virtual worlds were down entirely and couldn't come back up until more regulations were in place..
- It makes sense that Amy needs marionettes to interact with the real world but why does this carry over to the virtual worlds? If this was explained I must have missed it.
- Something that kind of struck me as odd was that in Sophia's flashbacks it showed that the virtual worlds now had millions of people (sounds about right), while in the time of the game it's said almost everyone on the planet is on them.. implied to be on them 24 hours a day. Especially weird considering a bunch of the shards should have been down already.
- Has anyone seen Zegapain? The virtual-reality-world story isn't exactly uncommon but this game reminded me of that in particular, for some reason.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Glad you enjoyed it.

Spoiler

Exophase, on 08 September 2013 - 07:27 PM, said:

- On the other hand, the puzzle in Sword where the boulders transition to crates and vice-versa was really difficult for me and must have taken a few hours before I started making progress on it. Then I was scared to death that I'd have to do it again since I thought there was a chance I didn't have the right stuff for the top again (I went up Star four times...). I didn't manage to pass the puzzle at the top that Lachesis specifically lamented.. I have no idea what I missed out on. At least Lancer had the courtesy to turn off battles there.

You miss some slightly decent (for the time) equipment, although it's not super compelling stuff. That puzzle was meant to be hard, although as with most puzzles in this game, I just put down a heap of stuff and hoped I would be able to solve it. I figure if a puzzle isn't mandatory I can put whatever I like in there.. I get especially cruel in the Gemini Towers.

Exophase, on 08 September 2013 - 07:27 PM, said:

- For the longest time I thought you could always escape from battles because I never failed to. I don't think I encountered an enemy that I'd have had no chance at if I were full strength, but I did escape from some tight spots and it did help me sequence break as much as I did early on. But then in Sword tower, when I was tired of fighting during that puzzle, that's when escaping seemed to start failing...

Escape always succeeds if Sophia is alone in the party (this doesn't include cases where other party members are simply knocked out- you need an actual 1-person party, like the start of the game and at the start of Nexus, both of which can be dangerous esp. if you wander into the wrong areas. Otherwise it's a contest of the sum of each party's agility. The spells (Portal, Spirit Travel, Exit etc.) always get you out of battle.

Exophase, on 08 September 2013 - 07:27 PM, said:

- I have no idea how to get the "black" art from the enemy that uses it. Maybe you can just kill it before it uses it. Of course I tried nullifying the attack in various ways to no avail..

Yeah, you have to kill it. The main 'trick' is to use Quick-status moves like Timecross- you can typically get each chara to use Timecross twice, which means your characters will get 8 moves (excluding each Timecross use) to do the damage instead of 2; much more manageable. This kind of strategy really works on any boss except the final boss (the final boss has a special move that counters Quick-status moves after the first time you use one) but since it requires a ton of gems it's not too game-breaking I hope.

Exophase, on 08 September 2013 - 07:27 PM, said:

- I didn't take the right path in the final area, wonder what I missed

The second best sword in the game. If you did get it, there's nothing else; the path just goes on forever.

Exophase, on 08 September 2013 - 07:27 PM, said:

- So, the ending looks like it takes place in Nexus, but is it actually the real world? Since it sounds like the virtual worlds were down entirely and couldn't come back up until more regulations were in place..

Yep. Nexus is basically a virtual copy of the real world. I think I imagined that it's not an exact copy, but certain things like the Reality Simulations headquarters would have been reproduced in the simulation to function in the same way.

Exophase, on 08 September 2013 - 07:27 PM, said:

- It makes sense that Amy needs marionettes to interact with the real world but why does this carry over to the virtual worlds? If this was explained I must have missed it.

I didn't go into this in the story, but in my mind using the system required some level of physical interaction (even just sending messages to limbs etc.) that Amy would be incapable of (and Sophia was wary of customising things too much for Amy since she wanted to keep Amy's existence a secret)

Exophase, on 08 September 2013 - 07:27 PM, said:

- Something that kind of struck me as odd was that in Sophia's flashbacks it showed that the virtual worlds now had millions of people (sounds about right), while in the time of the game it's said almost everyone on the planet is on them.. implied to be on them 24 hours a day. Especially weird considering a bunch of the shards should have been down already.

I think there was some time between those two events... but in that case, why is Eden still in beta? Maybe it wasn't actually in beta at all; this was just a misleading story to avoid suspicion about why there's a shard up that nobody can use. Except through that public terminal station...

I will admit there are portions of this story that were not that well thought through =P

[Lachesis]

Spoiler

The Cresent Key is in a place you wouldn't really think to check a second time. Go down your list for Spirit Travel and note some places you'd never return to under pretty much any circumstance... it's at one of those places.

[Exophase]

Just found a game breaking bug: when Sophia hit level 100 (or maybe it was 99, not positive) the battle engine entered an infinite loop levelling her up to every level afterwards with 0 status bonuses. I'll have to wait for a fix before I can resume.

Lachesis, on 08 September 2013 - 01:13 PM, said:

Spoiler

The Cresent Key is in a place you wouldn't really think to check a second time. Go down your list for Spirit Travel and note some places you'd never return to under pretty much any circumstance... it's at one of those places.

Spoiler

Thanks! I'm sure I would have seen it as I randomly swept around looking for it, since I didn't really try up to this point, but it was still good to know.

So I beat Crescent, Spiral, and Gemini now, although I didn't clear all the treasure in Gemini yet. I was prepared for the worst but I thought they had pretty nice levels of difficulty in their puzzles (although again, didn't really properly clear Gemini). Nothing like those two really hard puzzles in Sword anyway. I did waste a while on the slider puzzle so far.. it seemed like a good puzzle, just slightly too hard for me right now.

I got the Heart key from that dragon, but still have no idea where the tower itself is. I was hoping to find something in the Chaos Labyrinth but gave up - eventually even locusts were doing > 9999 damage.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Exophase, on 09 September 2013 - 12:26 PM, said:

Just found a game breaking bug: when Sophia hit level 100 (or maybe it was 99, not positive) the battle engine entered an infinite loop levelling her up to every level afterwards with 0 status bonuses. I'll have to wait for a fix before I can resume.

Wow; I thought I had tested for that eventuality, but evidently either I didn't or I broke it afterwards. I'll get on that in a moment.

Spoiler

Exophase, on 09 September 2013 - 12:26 PM, said:

I got the Heart key from that dragon, but still have no idea where the tower itself is. I was hoping to find something in the Chaos Labyrinth but gave up - eventually even locusts were doing > 9999 damage.

It's on an island; there is no way to walk to it. There are two methods of accessing it:
1) Visit Quantum Visionaries in Nexus; just head south of the Reality Simulations headquarters. There's a method of travelling anywhere in Eden there.
2) Go through the Red Maze and find the teleporter to the Heart Tower (it's to the lower left), then cast <Exit>.

EDIT: Here's an update: http://sho-in.com/i-...1.05-update.zip

[Exophase]

Thanks again Lancer.

[Lachesis]

Just beat the game. 34:04:01

Spoiler

JQV somehow murdered me the first time around after it broke apart, and then died stupidly fast the second time. Plasma Field, Everlasting Blue + Cyclone, and Fractale-casted-on-self ended up helping a lot for that part of the battle. I think I got pretty much everything aside from those four chests on the 7th floor of Gemini Tower East and a couple chests in the dungeon under Derelict Grotto. No new bugs to report, fortunately :>

Aside from those things the most helpful feature by far was the ability to combine equipment. Every RPG should have something like that, seriously. Although, there still ended up being a few holes in my defense by the end...

Great game. When's the sequel coming out???

[Dr Lancer-X]

As a piece of bonus info for anyone interested,

Spoiler

the final bosses are more powerful if you beat the 6 tower sentinels. They're not necessarily a huge challenge at that point but they should be slightly less of a pushover

[Baby Bonnie Hood]

MegaZeux RPGs sure have come a very long way from the old smiley graphics and 40 counter limit, haven't they?

[Exophase]

19:20:22 for "proper" game clear.

Lancer-X, on 09 September 2013 - 07:37 AM, said:

As a piece of bonus info for anyone interested,

Spoiler

the final bosses are more powerful if you beat the 6 tower sentinels. They're not necessarily a huge challenge at that point but they should be slightly less of a pushover

Spoiler

Not a huge challenge you say? It must have taken me like 10 tries to beat them, with everyone at level 99. Maybe I didn't know all the best game breaking stuff (that and I didn't combine equipment.. never really liked doing that in RPGs...). Only started to become manageable after I abused the hell out of Jewel Arts. Took me a while to realize just how critical rush was.

I was expecting something extra in the ending but didn't get anything Is there something that I need all arts to unlock?

[Dr Lancer-X]

Exophase, on 10 September 2013 - 02:38 PM, said:

Spoiler

Not a huge challenge you say? It must have taken me like 10 tries to beat them, with everyone at level 99. Maybe I didn't know all the best game breaking stuff (that and I didn't combine equipment.. never really liked doing that in RPGs...). Only started to become manageable after I abused the hell out of Jewel Arts. Took me a while to realize just how critical rush was.

Spoiler

I guess it's a YMMV thing. I found it a pretty good challenge with my testing party (I found everything in the game a good challenge with my testing party because I balanced the whole game around it =P) however I didn't have any combined equipment or a lot of the additions, like most of the battle arts which were added after the fact when I realised I only had about 10 of the things and most weapons didn't have any. Lachesis wiped out the bosses quite easily so, yeah. I feel much better about the difficulty now though.

Exophase, on 10 September 2013 - 02:38 PM, said:

Spoiler

I was expecting something extra in the ending but didn't get anything /> Is there something that I need all arts to unlock?

Spoiler

Nope sorry It's just a scorecard; there's no extra unlockable plot or anything like that.

[Exophase]

Lancer-X, on 10 September 2013 - 01:03 AM, said:

Spoiler

Nope sorry It's just a scorecard; there's no extra unlockable plot or anything like that.

Spoiler

That's a shame, the ending really felt like there was something that was just about to happen that was cut off. I'll just assume you did this on purpose to toy with me