[Kom]

I've been working on this for a while, It's coming out pretty well, too. Basically, The player (me) is transported from his boring everyday school, to a RPG like school. The game has decent background music in every board and a few minigames so far. It has my own inventory and map engines created specifically for this game. I had to develop a real time party engine that was fairly decent, and it took me some time. Luckily, I was able to make four different party members (not including the player.) Each party member uses different kinds of attacks, such as using a sword, a gun, or magic. Hopefully I should be able to put in a decent screenshot of the game soon. It's taken me quite a while to get what I have so far.

[Xx*SaturnineMatthias*xX]

kom said:

The player (me) is transported from his boring everyday school, to a RPG like school.

Why did that make me think immediately of Balamb Garden?

Must be my FF8 addiction.

[Kom]

Here's a few screenshots.


This is the intro to the second map.



This is the battle with the first boss.



The inside of a building. (Oh, and the party member in this screenshot is Rodure.)



Part of the first, simple minigame.

[NoahSoft]

hot damn this looks sweet

[Dr Lancer-X]

Looking good.

[Kom]

Sadly, when I checked the size of the entire game, it was about 8 MB, even in a zip. I converted all of my OGGs from 100 kbps to 70 kbps. I cut as much empty space as possible from all of my WAVs. I even exported the robots used repeatedly in the game to TXT files and made robots that import the text files. I got it to just over 5 MB ;_; . I'll just have to post it as two+ parts. The game will most likely be in one download, while the music and sounds, since they take up so much space, will be in the other(s). *sigh*

[Val]

Don't worry about it, really. 5 MB is nothing. On most people in the community's connections, that'd take all of 10 seconds.

[Kom]

But I thought that there was a 4.88 MB limit on attached files?

(Oh, and that'd take me forever on my cruddy dial up at home with a maximum speed of 44 kbps. I know, it's nuts!)

Also, I think that my party engine is quite a bit better than yours from your emF games. The party members will actually move about freely while staying near the player. It even seeks and attacks nearby enemies. The code is pretty long (6 KB as a robot in the game, 11 as a TXT file), though. That's why I exported them into a TXT file for use in the game, which cut the game's size down by about 120 KB.

This post has been edited by kom: 07 March 2007 - 09:30 PM

[CJA]

A lot of times, all the bread in the file can come from really high-quality samples in tracked things...

You can fix it by downloading ModPlug Tracker, opening the file, going to "Samples," looking at "LEN:" This is the size of the sample. If it's tremendous, then left-click the actual red waveform and do "Convert to 8 bit" and/or "Convert to mono."

edit: and save lol

This post has been edited by CJA: 07 March 2007 - 09:54 PM

[Terryn]

Are all of your sound effects in wave format? No need for that. Turn them into OGGs.

Also, I really like your style. Very simple and very promising. I hope to play this soon!

[Kom]

Actually Most are in OGG. Very few are in WAV. When they are converted, however, they sound worse, but aren't really any smaller. So I left them as wavs (most of them are 20KB or less anyway). I have made two minigames so far in the game and 8 playable levels. I will work on It some more when I am at a better computer and actually able to edit them off of my hard drive instead of off my flash drive.

I might be able to post a demo version of it soon. I'm also trying to make the game fairly non-linear. And I almost forgot, it uses Gemini's sword engine, which I really edited a lot anyway, though I based my current engine on it.

This post has been edited by kom: 07 March 2007 - 10:07 PM

[djtiesto]

LOL @ Jamal, I'm definitely d/ling this game.

I love it when people put screenshots in their journals.

This post has been edited by djtiesto: 08 March 2007 - 01:45 AM

[Koji]

I am envious, this looks damn good with such simplistic graphics.

I donno why but I can never make something simple look good

[RoSS]

You should definitely keep working on this. It looks very promising!

[hob nado]

Yeah, survey says this game looks pretty neat. I like the enveloping feel that comes across in that underground level.

[batman]

batman likes what batman sees. batman demands a demo, punk.

[asiekierka]

It made me think of Shuriken School (is it spelt like this?) when stared longer on the photos.

[Kom]

I have now posted a demo of RPG Skool, enjoy!

[Xx*SaturnineMatthias*xX]

I wish my school would suddenly get that interesting (/me imagines going to school one day to find it demolished and a floating mercenary training camp erected in its place)

[Kom]

Sadly, this game might not get done as fast as I had hoped, mostly due to having 2 school projects at once, and I am working on two other projects right now: Some kind of GUI for MZX, and a half-life like-gun & weapons engine for MZX. I usually do work on RPG skool on the weekends, while I work on everything else during the week. That's actually not a lot of time: Every week day, I get 1 1/2 hours of programming in per day. That's 6 hours, because I usually work on rpg skool on friday. On friday, I have about 3 hours to myself, while on saturday I have about 10. On sunday, I have about 3. That's about 16 hours a week working on Rpg skool, while only 6 on everything else. It's almost as if I don't sleep on saturday, but I do. (I've never really done the math before, and I'm actually surprised.)

[CHEZZY]

My games have simplistic graphics too, why doesn't it work for me?
Also, I got dibs on the hl gun engine when it comes out.

[Kom]

I've worked on it quite a lot these last few days. After releasing the demo, I was able to get some input on this game, which helped me in recognising all of the game's flaws. I have fixed a few errors and made a few new challenges. I'm trying to make the entire game expierience and level based, instead of money only. I have to change all of the engines and enemies. I am also aware of the non-contrasting colors issues, which I will fix soon. There are now six ways to view the status displays. I am trying to make a microgame to fit inside the actual game. So far, all I made was a battle arena for it. It's taking me a long time to make this game, so it's not my major focus, even though I work on it often.

[ShloobeR]

Hey Kom,

just posting to say I liked the demo's style! Keep it up buddy.

[CHEZZY]

You should make little luck talismans that are in half and you have to find someone else who has a talisman to fit yours and something good will happen,
like the kinstone pieces off Zelda and the minish cap.

edit: Oh, and you should be able to turn off the status on the enemies, so that battles are easier to see.

This post has been edited by CHEZZY: 13 March 2007 - 04:59 AM

[Kom]

I've taken the enemie's AI and the party member's AI and tweaked it. I've fixed a few systems in the game and added a life regeneration feature. I have to delete all of the enemies and start them over again due to the major changes in my coding. There is now a semi-lock-on feature that displays the last attacked enemie's status in the lower left hand corner of the screen. I should have a new demo out in a week or so, depending on how much I work in it...

[CHEZZY]

Okay, I'm sure plenty of people would be happy for a little while with another demo, but I'd actually be happier with the full game, even if I have to wait. If you just release a whole lot of demos, everybody will know the game inside out before it's even released. Plus, there's also the risk of this game succumbing to the demo curse. It's your choice, but if you do release another demo, make it a large one.

[Kom]

What I meant was, releasing a new demo to show everything that has been changed. I wouldn't want to go through the entire game and then fgure out that there's some major problem that everyone doesn't want in the game. It takes me quite some time to actually program an entire level. Not to mention fixing all of the bugs in every part of the game.

[CHEZZY]

I know what you mean, especially with a game this big.

[Kom]

Seriously, the game is humongous...

It has...

• 11 playable boards so far, most of which are larger than 100 x 100.
  
• Two cinematics that take up separate boards.
  
• Other Cutscenes that are within the boards
  
• 4 different types of enemies with different AI and attacking styles.
  
• 4 party members, not including the player.
  
• 2 full minigames.
  
• only 4 out of the 32 spaces in the world map filled out

And all of this is stuff that I've bade so far. I have many ideas of things to come. I also have an idea for a microgame that's used and affected throughout the game. The game also has lot's of different sounds and music involved. To cut down on file size, however, I have to use other mod files in my collection. Most of these aren't files that I have made, however, but everyone who made them will be put in the credits.

This has already taken me over 80 hours of time to make so far, and the file size is fairly large. I've gotten back to the main game itself, though, because I've replaced all of the enemies. I'm working on programming the Portable Village map, but this requires a lot of entrace and exit robots designed to femove and replace the overlay of the portables that the player can enter. Not to mention the graphical design it takes to make the stuff look 3D. If I wasn't so slow at level design, I might have been done by now.

EDIT: Also, since I work on the game while using a public computer a lot, I have to edit it off of a flash drive, which is slower than editing it off of my hard drive at home.

This post has been edited by kom: 15 March 2007 - 06:16 PM

[gingermuffins]

I'm working on a large project at the moment too. I hope to get it done before I'm bald.

I liked what was in the demo. Tiny problems aside, it's pretty good stuff!

Good luck on it.