Tower of the Spirit World(Demo V1.1), Massive overhaul Options

[Freank]

Please, replace the screens

[Rast]

Fixed. For reasons unknown to me, the IMG tag was mysteriously replaced with this:

CODE

[ImageResize=border="0" class="linked-image"](URL)[/ImageResize]

[Rast]

Updated. Rebalanced some of the enemies and equipment, and changed the dialogue on a few NPCs.

[Rast]

Really need some test players here. I can't get anything else done without feedback.

[kayden997]

I got nothing better to do. Hey, I know. I'll help you.
I'll try it out

--Edit--
Could you possibly upload it to mediafire? (you don't need to signup or anything, just upload and link)
thx

[Rast]

Uploaded.

Mediafire (57MB)

[Oceans Dream]

I played your game for a little bit. You'll have to bare with me on this since I am sleepy:

Resolution clash abounds! The system set is blue and RM2k3 RTP looking, while the tower is a very blown up GB image, while the title name is modern looking with anti-aliasing and all.

I'm sure there's a way to event a race selection so it looks better than a show choice.

I don't think it goes 8 bit style enough or SNES style enough. Like, I think you could do with a one color font instead of a gradient one for example, then maybe grab a font from here:
http://www.wombatrpgs.net/viewtopic.php?t=...244d82c72b971f8
I think maybe a new system set could do as well, you could try this out and see if it fits!
http://i.imgur.com/3fJ0d.png

That and they are from different sources so I would see about trying to get them all from one source (like everything recolored FFLegends, or RTP or something

Why are potions and revives free?

I'd work on the mapping a bit actually. Take some refs from old school and SNES maps if you'd like. Not about the emptiness, but rather the design and stuff. Like the stores and all.
http://www.fantasyanime.com/saga/images/ff...uardianTown.png
Here's an example, like check out the ones on the left. Nice, simple and small, with some plants for decoration as well as signs and other decorations.

A new exfont would be neat. I can help you set it up if you need help on that.

"Door is locked by magic of black" shouldn't this be "This door is locked by some kind of black magic." or something to that extent

The music sounds mismatched in quality, especially since you mix midis and mp3s

I wonder why you don't use the enemy sprites of one of the FFLs instead of the map sprites? I particularly like the 2nd ones sprites.

I sort of expected the king to have a unique sprite. I talked to king armor first so maybe at least a golden armor for him?

Enemies drop very meager amounts. With what I got, I arrived at the south town and still couldn't afford the cheapest equipment.

Wow, the Human is very outclassed by the Mutant to begin with, other than agility. But other than that and HP, the Mutant has higher everything.

You can walk outside of the light circle in the cave. I would suggest you make the map size bigger but have the map part in the middle so you can always have the player in the middle of the screen rather than reach the end. Like say 9 tiles away from the map edges should be where the hero can't go any further.

The cave battle bg has a greenish tint to it but the cave seems brown

The random encounter rate seems fair so far, no battles after 2 steps or something

Save points? I didn't find any. How do I sell stuff?

That level up mirror is all the way back there. Couldn't there be a portable solution or one in each town?

You can walk underneath the bottom of the potted plants

I tried pulling a switch in the castle for King Shield, didn't seem like anything happened.

Hey how did I not get a single point of experience? I killed some enemies and the bandit leader and got the Kings Armor (which I can't use, I dunno why I'm even getting them)

Castle Sword and Shield have some stealth minigames which aren't too bad, though I didn't get through them yet, apparently I need to do some other event first before I could go to the Castle shield one.

Well I'll get more playtime done one of these days so I'll see if I can find anything else that comes to mind. I'll go over some more positives too but right now I need to sleeeep.

This post has been edited by Oceans Dream: Apr 29 2012, 01:01 AM

[Jonnie19]

Okay, quick run down on error's I have found after the first 30mins of play:

The revive's aren't working for some reason, one of my character's have died and I cannot revive them.
Mapping is slightly confusing in some stages, including in the first town we arrive in there is a "hovering" ceiling piece

The guard is facing the wrong way on the first floor of the castle.

Ocean's has already mentioned this but what is with the free revives and potions it seems abit easy to say the least

I will continue the game either way, and will edit this post with more details once got progressively further

[Rast]

"Door is locked by magic of black" shouldn't this be "This door is locked by some kind of black magic." or something to that extent

It's a callback to the original Final Fantasy Legends. Sort of how all the Final Fantasy remakes have Garland exclaiming he will "knock you all down!".

The music sounds mismatched in quality, especially since you mix midis and mp3s

Actually, they're all MP3s. The majority of them were rearranged specifically for the game when I first started the project. I've been slowly rearranging new music to try smooth things out, though, as a lot of the arrangements are just lacking.

I wonder why you don't use the enemy sprites of one of the FFLs instead of the map sprites? I particularly like the 2nd ones sprites.

Well, I was trying to avoid using FFL's Final Fantasy-ish monster sprites. I wanted to give the battle system a different look by actually showing the player characters and monsters about the same size, rather than using huge monster sprites. Definitely something to consider changing, though.

I'd work on the mapping a bit actually.

My biggest issue is lacking chipsets to work with. I've got tons of them, but they're all SNES style with moderate amounts of detail, while I'm trying to go more towards 8-bit. I have a lot of the FFL chipsets, but they have barely any extra details. But yes, mapping is something that's being worked on.

You can walk outside of the light circle in the cave.

Somewhat intentional. There's a secret or two hidden just out of view. Nothing amazing or needed, though.


Potions aren't supposed to be free, I noticed that the other day and fixed it up. I'd redone the database and forgot to set the price on them. As for saving, it's done via the menu in most areas.

For information on experience and the like, read the first post. Humans have to buy better equipment to get stronger, and can equip Styles(can be found randomly, some can be bough in the Town of Hero). Mutants can equip light armor and weapons, while monsters equip monster souls(found randomly) and eat corpses to gain abilities. There's a merchant in the starting town that sells them on occasion.

As for leveling, it's done at the leveling sphere in the main town. I've added in(but forgot to put it in game) an item that shows your current experience, and in the future there will be a leveling sphere in each town.

Oh, and the enemies dropping small amounts was somewhat on purpose. It's leftover from when I was remaking FFL to the pixel, though I'd meant to ease up on that a bit and make getting money easier, so I'll fix that up. The King items aren't able to be equipped. I'm still getting the story smoothed out and probably didn't make it obvious, but they need to be placed on the statue in the Town of Hero.


EDIT: Oh, and the ceiling will be fixed. The guard is facing the way I originally intended him to, but down may look better. Revives should be fixed in the next demo update, though I don't know why they weren't working.

[Oceans Dream]

My biggest issue is lacking chipsets to work with. I've got tons of them, but they're all SNES style with moderate amounts of detail, while I'm trying to go more towards 8-bit. I have a lot of the FFL chipsets, but they have barely any extra details. But yes, mapping is something that's being worked on.

This isn't mine but something like this could work:
http://rpgmaker.net/media/content/users/65...er/FFcdesat.png
That's more FF Adventure rather than Legend but you can try that with the Legend pieces and see how it goes.

Also, I haven't played FF Legend 1 so that phrase reference was lost on me! I did play 2 and 3 though.

[shinyjiggly]

Okay, so I've played through pretty much all that I could and here's some stuff that I found:

-Can we get a little bit of explanation about the icy area speedrun thing? It's a little confusing why there's even a timer in the first place.
-
just mess with some chipset stuff and this should hopefully be avoidable.
-When the lady walked away towards the castle, you used the increase transparency to make her "disappear". Since that action doesn't enact full transparency, I could still see her at the edge of the path, barely visible. It would work better if you used "change graphic" and changed her to a completely blank char
-At the very very beginning, one of the heroes flashes on-screen. You can set this guy to have the same blank char by default to avoid this.
-Next to the very first inn guy, there is a 2nd layer tile with nothing on it but still doesn't let you pass. I would suggest putting something there instead of nothing to block the player.
-Even though the sword and shield should just be keys to the statue, maybe you should at least allow them to be equipped? Maybe even with the added stipulation of lowering all stats horribly in an attempt to get the player to want to do something else with them?

For musings on where this game could go from here, let's look at the facts given by the game:

The door to the tower is locked with black magic: This could imply that the party has to find a way to break the spell on the door somehow. This would likely involve working with a powerful mage of some sort somewhere down the line.

There are four items visible in the corners of the title screen, surrounding a blown-up picture of the tower:
I wasn't sure exactly what sort of items they were, or if they were actually supposed to be important, but it appears that these four objects are needed somehow to gain access to the tower.

Keep in mind that I have not been ale to complete the icy area speedrun thing as of yet so I do not know what is supposed to be at the end of it.

[Rast]

Keep in mind that I have not been ale to complete the icy area speedrun thing as of yet so I do not know what is supposed to be at the end of it.

Occasionally a minor reward and bonus experience, which can be used for leveling(and more further on). That's one of three bonus speedrun dungeons currently in the game, which have no bearing on the story whatsoever. I intend(and should've in the first place) to reference them in-game instead of just in this topic so players know about them. As for an explanation, that was my mistake. I did post some info about them, but never updated the first post with it. That'll be updated soon enough.

When the lady walked away towards the castle, you used the increase transparency to make her "disappear". Since that action doesn't enact full transparency, I could still see her at the edge of the path, barely visible. It would work better if you used "change graphic" and changed her to a completely blank char

Yeah, more remnants of my poor eventing from years ago. Fixed it.

Even though the sword and shield should just be keys to the statue, maybe you should at least allow them to be equipped? Maybe even with the added stipulation of lowering all stats horribly in an attempt to get the player to want to do something else with them?

Probably something I'll do. I forget why I made them unusable in the first place, really.

For musings on where this game could go from here, let's look at the facts given by the game:

The door to the tower is locked with black magic: This could imply that the party has to find a way to break the spell on the door somehow. This would likely involve working with a powerful mage of some sort somewhere down the line.

There are four items visible in the corners of the title screen, surrounding a blown-up picture of the tower:
I wasn't sure exactly what sort of items they were, or if they were actually supposed to be important, but it appears that these four objects are needed somehow to gain access to the tower.

I don't think you've actually gone as far as you could in this case. I'm fixing up NPC dialogue and trying to give the player a clear idea where to go to solve this, but essentially you follow the rumors regarding each of the kings and collect their armor, sword and shield. You then place it on the statue in the Town of Hero, which gives you the black sphere needed to get into the tower at first. That's all I'll say in the open, so click the spoiler below if you don't mind more details.

[Show/Hide] Spilers!

The four items around the tower are the four spheres(minus color). Each portion of the tower is sealed by one of them, which is usually guarded by one of the Fiends. After placing the items on the statue, you fight Gen-Bu, the first fiend. You then venture through the Tower until you find two more doors: One is sealed by blue magic, and the other leads to the second "World", hence the name of the game. I plan to change this a bit in a revision of the story, and this demo is more or less a showcase of how the game will look and play. I'll more than likely keep it to one or two worlds at most, rather than the 4 that were in the original.

Really, the only reason the Fiend plot is there(and the reason the game this is based off was named The Final Fantasy Legend in the US) was to ride on the success of Final Fantasy.

Oh, and thanks for the suggestion, Ocean. I've already been working on some Final Fantasy Adventure musical arrangements, as both it and FFL's music were composed by Nobou, so it gives me a larger amount of music to work with while still sounding like it's from the same game. I'll definitely look into FFA, and possibly FF1 tilesets and hopefully put together a few good chipsets. I think what I'm really missing are small details in the chipsets. Chairs, lights and candles, bushes, flowers and the like. Small details that make a a map look more complete.

Oh, and those odd tile issues are because of the way I set up the character sets. Each sprite can be a max of 24x32 without going into another frame. RTP sprites will be around 24 pixels tall. The sprites I'm using are roughly 16x16, so they're positioned a few pixels up to compensate and allow the sprite to overlap certain tiles, like walls(for increased depth). But because the actual "base" of the sprite is the lower 16x16 or so(which is hardcoded into the engine), they'll sometimes seem to be a bit too far and overlap with some objects. Like those pots. So I'll just need to go fix the chipsets and/or character sets up to work better.

[amerk]

No matter which I download from (Sendspace or Mediafire), I keep getting the CBAData crash when encountering a battle. Unfortunately as a result, I can't play enough to offer much feedback, aside to say I do like the little bit I was able to see.

[Rast]

That's odd. That usually happens if it can't find the battle backgrounds or monster sprites, or the like. When you install it, does it ask you to overwrite anything? I had this happen to me once a while back, and saying no fixed the issue, though I'm not sure why it even does that.

At any rate, I'll be releasing a new demo soon(in a week or so, most likely) featuring new graphics and updated maps, new story-related things(mostly small details for now), and most importantly a rework of Humans.

They'll have 4 classes: Slasher(Damage-oriented), Medic(Healing), Scout(Status effects that -will- be moderately useful, or I'll rework it to something else) and Protector(defense-oriented). With these come new epic sprites, courtesy of Heaven Miracle. All humans will still be able to use all armor, and many weapons. Medics probably won't be running around with battle axes, but hammers(A cleric's favorite) and pretty much any one handed weapon.

Additionally, when picking a mutant you'll be able to assign them an element. Mutants attack power will be lowered a bit, but each one will now start with a spell and naturally learn more spells of the same element.

Monsters have no current changes. Once I'm done with Humans and Mutants they'll get a makeover and either become useful, or fun and very much a novelty like they were in Final Fantasy Legend.

Demo should be up in a week or so. I'll be removing any unneeded resources I find and testing most areas for errors. I'll likely try and make the game not need the 2K3 RTP to reduce the file size slightly.

[amerk]

Yes, it does ask about replacing things, so I'll say no next time. The only things I might suggest, from the little I've seen:

1. Use a more retro Window Skins since the current one clashes with the theme of the game.
2. Include information on the differences between the races and genders to help the player determine who they want in a party. You could add a yes/no option if the player wants this info, and if no dive right into the party creation, or if yes display the info before diving into the party creation.

I'll wait for the new demo before giving this another go.

[Rast]

Just an update on things. I'm holding back on releasing the new demo for now, I have a lot I want to touch up on and fix before I release it, so instead I'll just leave some notes about what's being done and the like.


1) Music
I've rearranged quite a few new pieces, and as of now there's new music for just about everything(except the Fanfare music).

2) Story
The story is being reworked, as I've mentioned before. When the new demo is finished and released, the World of Continent will be reworked a bit and expanded. In fact, you'll spend a lot more time there in the full game, and there will be plenty of new areas and things to do.

3) Battle and Misc
As mentioned before, Humans have classes and mutants have elements. New skills will be implemented, leveling will provide additional benefits, and combat will be reworked to make use of all these new things. It probably won't change too much, but I definitely need to touch it up a bit.