Godsent

[drenrin2120]

I demand a tech demo. Immediately.

[Linkizcool]

Wow, Meiscool. Long time no see. This game looks great, I look forward to playing a final version. Beautiful map-making as always!

[aboutasoandthis]

I wish I was as dedicated as dedicated as you are. This is beautiful!

Actually are you pursuing professional game design, or is this more hobby-ish? Just curious.

[Felix-0]

the fact that you cracked open RPG maker 2k3 in every way possible and dominated it is a feat within itself.

[Meiscool]

aboutasoandthis: Hobby only.

Everyone else: Thanks. The support helps during the really boring portions of game making.

So, been ages since I'm given this some attention. Final year of college is a real bitch. Unpaid 40 hour/week internships + normal job + research study gives me little time to do what I want here.

But I have some time off so I've worked on this. Since its been so long since I've worked on this I went straight into coding. Done A LOT this week.
Homing projectiles, Area-bound zigzagging projectiles (kinda like orbitals but with straight-line movement), Projectile bouncing (Zelda Link to the Past style) WITH geometry (IE location you hit projectile determines where it will fly to. Really proud of this one), Self fire magic (creates an aura that prevents you from being burned, slowed, and lights up dark areas) and accompanying dark areas that are lit up when fire (ANY FIRE) is on screen. Plans for earth magic made (self magic will create a shield that reduces stamina upon receiving damage before health is reduced. Targeted magic will create an earth clone of your hero at target location).
Created a hunting grounds of sorts... an area just for killing monsters to get materials for crafting.
Also created two 'hard-type' normal enemies that will most likely result in a game-over the first time meeting them. They have a mixture of status effects and combo their damage with those status effects to make it difficult for the player to fight back. Far from impossible to beat, and both enemies actually have huge weaknesses (one takes 20x normal damage from fire being shot inside its mouth, etc) that are explained by NPCs. Kinda trying to mix some Dark Souls inspired difficulty into the game; some enemies are just plain hard until you know what they are all about. These enemies have low/medium experience (because once you know how to kill them they die pretty fast), but have high material drop chances (35-100%).

Screens of new area:
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Screen of darkened area being lit up by fire aura:
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Yup.

[Moosetroop11]

The funny thing is after all this work I think my favourite thing about this game is the side menu : p it looks so natural and cool.

[Felix-0]

that is one sexy side menu.

[Archem]

That is one sidebar I would have sex with.

[A Forgotten Legend]

Dat grass tile tho.

I'm glad to see you're still truckin' along with this Meis.  Great work as always.

[evmaster]

Holy crap. This looks amazing for rpgmkr 2003. I think I might have commented before but still this looks so great. I don't understand how you are making such at thing in rpg 2003. o-o

[DragonBlaze]

Ok, just got to say, holy f***, you continue to impress Meiscool. This is besides the point, but for all these years years you have worked on this, it's a shame that this wont be taken beyond rm2k3. I mean this **** should be on steam for everyone to download. One day.. One day...

[Meiscool]

Thank you very much guys.

To everyone that loves the side bar: I want to again state that its just an edit of Relic Walker's side bar (changed from all pink to silver/gold with colored face and other minor pixel tweaks).

DB: I have often thought to myself that this is a **** ton of effort just for a rm game, and maybe one day it will be taken beyond it, but right now my goal is to just release SOMETHING (be it for any program). Problem is I'm a perfectionist so I never feel anything is at the right point to be released.

Progress: Just a few more things done here and there. Made another enemy (these take a long time to do believe it or not). Finally made an acceptable code that prevents you from walking through enemies. At first I checked hero collision box against enemy collision boxes and prevented overlapping, but that actually got restrictive and was unable to modify jumping/leaping/moving attacks of enemies to prevent hero from briefly getting stuck in the enemy during the attack. If I turned collisions off during the attacks then I run the risk of the hero being inside the box after the attack... Finally figured out a code that expels the hero from the enemy collision box if the enemy has collision checked as a property. This will need a lot of testing I'm sure. Its bug-less, but I need to know if it feels right.

Also placed limiters on the boomerang's abilities. In previous videos, I could have the boomerang active for an unlimited amount of time (and it went through walls). It can still be active for an unlimited amount of time but... It dispels once your stamina drops -40 or once you are knocked down. It also dispels or bounces (based on boomerang type) once it hits a wall. This is awesome fun for certain cramped areas where you can get the boomerang to hit an enemy > 10 times just because of the bouncing! Additionally, elemental boomerangs have an upgradable maximum effect procs (ice boomerang is a shield and is dispelled after blocking X projectiles, fire boomerang is a damaging orbital that dispels after hitting X times, etc.) with unlimited most likely being the final upgrade. Lastly, stamina no longer regenerates while using a maintained boomerang effect, bringing you ever closer to tripping due to fatigue and dispelling the effect.

A small quality improvement: Fire anything now thaws frozen enemies. Too many enemies to handle at once? Freeze some, kill one, thaw one, kill it, repeat.

[Prpl_Mage]

Problem is I'm a perfectionist so I never feel anything is at the right point to be released.

Ah I remember that feeling, part of me misses it. But truth to be told I'm kinda happy that I lost it. All that pressure all the time. Luckily my work with people made it disappear piece by piece.

Also, yeah you're doing some great work here and I kinda envy you for making all these tweeks and fixes along the way.

[Meiscool]

I agree prpl. Like, there are good and bad sides to having that kind of attitude towards your own creations.

Speaking of tweaks, I did more today. First is kinda awesome, but also annoying because it created a bug that I have to painstakingly change tons of variables for to fix... but yeah.

Anyways, sometimes sprint movement would get the player caught on edges/slopes that give you auto movement along them. This was because I had sprinting moving at 2 pixels per refresh. I changed it to 1 pixel per refresh twice, which eliminated the movement catch, but created a bug where if you do a Drive attack up/down a slope, sometimes the image of your character will appear at the end of the drive before starting it... which is my own fault because I try to use 'placeholder' variables for multiple functions to save variable space.

So fixing that is my next big project. While working on that, I noticed that Drive attacks (sword stabs that move the player forward with the stab a medium distance) could be spiced up... so now depending on if you press keys during your Drive you will end the Drive and do an additional action. At the moment I have Drive -> press enter to do a spin slash and Drive -> press Esc to do a fast backflip away from target. Trying to think up ideas for Drive -> Shift.

And screens of new areas:




Coded for horizontal and vertical mirrors (my hope is to have a boss fight where the room shifts between the two and you have to position your reflection to do things ). You might also notice that some of the screens have a different character sprite for the hero... I am working on making my own costume for the main character (as opposed to using one someone else made). Anyone decent with pixel art and willing to help, let me know. I have TONS of poses to convert and even doing a few helps greatly.

Lastly, custom app icon:

[Meiscool]

Project is still alive.

Fixed the bug/bugs mentioned above. Also reduced some potential lag on lower-end computers as a result of fixing it.

Today I coded 'guarding' into the game. At the moment I have holding the x/esc key change your character's stance, making it to where you're next move command is a dodge (backflip or dive) and your next item throw is your boomerang. Just now I have coded that during the first second or two (duration is upgradable) of entering the stance your character is guarded. If hit while guarded, no damage is taken from most attacks, and the character is knocked back a bit.

Still have to code facing orientation into this (don't want the character to guard attacks when she's not facing the right way) but it works well so far.