MV - Mana Engine (Demo Available)

Slaughty · 2024-03-04T08:56:23+0900

(Work In Progress - Names, art, etc. subject to change) Demo Updated January 14, 2025 Download Join Guy (name changeable), a mute orphan, in a thrilling globe-trotting adventure to save the magic of a changing world. Along the way, he meets two enigmatic strangers who lead him on a race against time to prevent the Mana Engine, an ancient machine, from draining the world of its Mana (magic). Make new allies, learn the magic of the ancients, and push back against an expanding empire. The world is changing rapidly with the advent of Mana Technology, leading to the emergence of a new global empire after the fall of several kingdoms. Using this newfound technology, the Hegelian Empire embarks on a quest for worldwide expansion and conquest. Their ultimate goal is to find the Luminal Vessel, a prophesied being with the ability to restore the Mana Engine to its complete state, thus granting the empire unlimited energy and power. To uncover the secret of the Mana Engine and the Hegelian Empire's relentless pursuit of it, our protagonists embark on a journey around the world, gathering clues, conquering ancient dungeons, brewing potions, crafting weapons and armors, piloting airships, and making new allies all in an attempt to thwart, Hegelia. As they progress, they'll unlock abilities that were once only seen in the Arcani, an ancient mystical race with the power of magic. Is the Mana Engine what everyone believes or is it something more malevolent than anyone could've imagined? Mana Engine is a love letter to classic turn-based JRPGs such as Chrono Trigger, Suikoden, and Final Fantasy VI, while also being inspired by more modern classics like Sea of Stars and Chained Echoes, presented in a format borrowing from the SNES 16-bit era and PS1 32-bit era. Spoiler: Features Classic ATB (Active Time Battle) turn-based combat with three different timing modes. Wait - Battlers wait until turn completion Semi Wait - Battlers wait while selecting an action on turn Active - Battlers do NOT wait Combat takes place dynamically on the map. Where enemy positioning matters. Perform combo skills with two or more allies to unleash even more damage. The higher the friendship between two party members, the higher the damage dealt. Friendship system - Strengthen the bond of your party to activate new skills and make others more powerful. Maps - beautiful parallax maps with lighting. Option to turn off lights and use overlay instead. Four difficulties to account for different playstyles. Whimpy - ATB MODE: WAIT (ATB pauses on player turn), can flee from combat. Easy - ATB MODE: WAIT. (ATB pauses on player turn) Normal - ATB MODE: SEMI-WAIT (ATB pauses on player selection) Hard - ATB MODE: ACTIVE (NO ATB pause) Skill Tree - Choose what skills you and your allies learn. Skill points are distributed on level up and through completing certain tasks and quests. Exploration - Explore the world to find potion and cooking ingredients, hidden places, fishing locations, ores and materials for crafting weapons and armor, stat scrolls that permanently increase STATS, towns, dungeons, and more. Potion Brewing - Find recipes, gather ingredients, and brew potions that can heal and revive your party turning the tide of battle. Weapon and Armor Crafting - Weapons and Armor too expensive? Craft your own weapons and armor from resources gathered from the environment and defeating enemies. Cooking - Cooking food not only gives you a full recovery but also certain buffs that can give your allies an edge in combat. Careful though, some of the same ingredients also get used for brewing potions. Fishing - Take a break from thwarting the empire and relax by fishing. Fishing locations are hidden across the game world. Mini_Games - Try your luck at two different card mini-games that can reward you with money or items. Spoiler: Screenshots Spoiler: Guy Guy (Name Changeable) is a mute orphan who always longed of traveling the world and leading a life in service to others. After turning 20, he is forced to leave the orphanage and wants to join the Colonial Guard to protect his community. His plans are altered after meeting Luma and Nael during a festival in his hometown. Spoiler: Luma Luma is a 19 year old junior priestess of the Aurora Ascendancy, an ancient religion whose goals are to maintain balance and peace in the world, and preserve the knowledge of the Arcani. Since birth she has demonstrated an uncanny affinity for magic and healing. She has trained both her body and mind diligently to become more attuned with the natural flow of mana in the world. Due to a negative stigma about magic users, Luma has kept her abilities a secret and she feels guilt for not using her powers to help others to her fullest extent. Spoiler: Nael Nael is a 23 year old initiate to the Aurora Ascendancy. She joined the Ascendancy only a year ago but has quickly worked her way up through extreme discipline and her strong physical prowess. Little is known about her life before joining…

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Started by Slaughty Mar 3, 2024, 11:56 PM 91 posts Page 2 of 5 View original ↗

Slaughty

#21 Jun 4, 2024, 08:12 PM Source

Been doing some back end menu stuff. Something that has been bothering me is the actor select window when you use an item from the menu. I have some items that permanently add to certain stats and unless you memorized the stats from the status screen, it is kind of a gamble. The party/formation scene was lacking in current HP/MP and Job Points thanks to Mog's Scene Menu but it had all the stats that I wanted to convey to the player.

So it was like this:

Old Actor Select

Old Formation

So I smashed them together until it worked and made a small plugin to fix this.

New Actor Select

New Formation

I initially put the JP (Renamed SP for Skill Points) in the Actor Select Window too, but I don't really think it's relevant information for that menu and it kind of clutters up the screen.

It ain't much, but it's honest work...:p
Slaughty

#22 Jun 15, 2024, 04:15 PM Source

Not a lot to update on since this took all week long to do. Made an in-game manual/helpfile accessible from the menu using Yanfly's Common Event Menu. Surprisingly it was the most tedious part of development so far and will probably never do it again, lol.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1802011044426011022
Saphie

#23 Jun 20, 2024, 11:05 PM Source

Okay this game looks pretty cool! I'll be keeping an eye out for the demo! Keep up the good work!
Slaughty

#24 Jun 29, 2024, 09:32 PM Source

Been testing and testing and bug fixing and more bug fixing, and tying up more loose ends than I ever could imagine. Getting really close to getting a demo together for the first part of the game, but nothing too visually exciting to show other than this map for the General Store.

Shop Day Time

Shop Night Time

There's an option to "Chat" with Store Keepers. You can find out the local gossip which changes as things happen in the world. You can ask if they need assistance, which can but not always lead to little mini side quests. You can also attempt to haggle a discount from them. There's also different tiers of shop inventory which can be unlocked in the Skill Tree.
Slaughty

#25 Jul 4, 2024, 04:54 PM Source

A little quick test of a short stealth section all done through eventing. This is part of a flashback that I decided to make playable instead of just a cutscene. If you get caught it just resets the stealth section. The purple shadowy areas are the hidden 'zones'. Curious if the arrow indicators are too much or too obvious.
Slaughty

#26 Aug 4, 2024, 12:19 AM Source

Been super busy cleaning up bugs and issues with my first go around of Alpha Testing for the first area of the game and getting ready to see if I can get a CLOSED BETA going. At the moment, the Alpha can be rather long if you do everything, ~3.5 hours, or ~2 hours if you skip optional content, so I'm trying to chop it down as much as possible. I'm really just hoping for some early feedback before I go plowing on full speed ahead with the rest of the game. So, if you're interested in that, keep an eye on this thread for more info hopefully soon.

For anyone interested in the changes from the Alpha to Beta (More for my own benefit):

Boring Stuff
Major UI overhaul. Added way more contrast to UI elements, specifically in battle, and had to change everything else to match.
Battle Commands now use a Radial Menu - one tester didn't know there were other commands, so hopefully this corrects this.
A few Logic errors in conditional branches fixed.
Added Pixi Filter Effects to Enemies when they have certain states. The icon above an Enemy showing what states it has just wasn't doing a very good job at conveying that the enemy was affected. This hopefully remedies that. This wasn't easy! (Actors already had this)
Reworked and Simplified some states.
Changed the way states ticks are handled. They're super short now so the damage popup happens more often, gives a better sense of urgency and coveys what the state does better.
Balance skills.
Reworked some Dialogue to be shorter and more concise. In some instances, cut it out entirely.
Reworked Food and Cooking system. Burning food now gives Bait for Fishing. Getting a Bonus during cooking no longer gives double food, but FAST FOOD that can be used during battle. All Food replenishes a really generous amount of Health and different foods give different buffs.
Simplified Fishing minigame and reworked UI to match the other UI changes.
Simplified and Unified animations, for example, all normal physical skills have X animation on hit, all strong physical skills have Y animation, and so for.

Also Updated screenshots in the first post and changed out the character graphics to GIFs of their sprites running. I don't know, I thought they look cool.
alice_gristle

#27 Aug 4, 2024, 05:52 AM Source

Slaughty said:
Also Updated screenshots in the first post and changed out the character graphics to GIFs of their sprites running. I don't know, I thought they look cool.
They do tho! :kaoluv:
Slaughty

#28 Aug 12, 2024, 02:24 PM Source

Made a "State Tooltip" that pops up to the left when an ally's state changes so at a glance the player can know what's happening. Also made a Scan/Libre ability so players don't have to try and memorize the beastiary or go back and forth between battles. Not so easy and straight forward using Chrono Engine but since I'm already tracking states to apply filters to the battlers the hard work was done for me. Used Mog's Animated Text to breathe some life into it and I was already using it elsewhere to signify big Setting changes.

Also simplified enemy design and elemental resistances. I gave enemies a "Type" which really serves no purpose other than unifying their resistances. The idea is that the player can go, "Oh, that's a bug, I already know they're weak to fire," or "That enemy is flying, his evasion is higher but ranged weapons have a chance to ground it," after encountering them. Also made some small updates to the beastiary to show this new info and clean it up some.

Scan Skill and State Tooltip Combat Stress Test
Quixote

#29 Aug 12, 2024, 11:21 PM Source

Really like what's gone into how the game looks, the UI is pretty nice.
Slaughty

#30 Aug 26, 2024, 06:38 PM Source

Worked on some capsule art over the weekend, background is from Com Sho. If anyone would be so kind as to say which of these they like better that would be great.

Capsule A

Capsule B

Vertical Capsule A

Vertical Capsule B
StrawberryFlower

#31 Aug 26, 2024, 10:41 PM Source

I think your logo needs an outline on each of the capsule idea images. It doesn't stand out much against the background. :D
Slaughty

#32 Aug 27, 2024, 02:39 PM Source

Thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate it. Something more like this?

Updated Logo?
StrawberryFlower

#33 Aug 27, 2024, 06:54 PM Source

Yup! Way more readable!
ShadowDragon

#34 Aug 28, 2024, 12:16 PM Source

you could add the main actors around it, but looks cool though.
Slaughty

#35 Aug 28, 2024, 02:10 PM Source

That's a good idea, thanks, ShadowDragon. I'll start on that.
YoctoCrunch

#36 Aug 28, 2024, 03:17 PM Source

WOW! I am very impressed by everything you've been able to achieve here! The art looks incredible and the story intrigues me.

I especially love how you went about designing the menus. I value accessibility and design a lot in video games, so it makes me pleased to see such a beautiful menu. The smooth movement of the windows in the battle sequences adds so much polish. I'm impressed at how you were able to achieve all of this in RPG Maker considering how limited you are in customizing the menus haha

Slaughty said:
Curious if the arrow indicators are too much or too obvious.
I think they're perfect as they are. The arrows are very helpful in showing where you can hide. I personally wouldn't have known where else to hide if not for the arrows.

Although, if you're worried about the arrows standing out too much from the game, you could change them up a bit. Having them be the same cream color as the pop-up balloons and slightly decreasing the thickness of the strokes would make the arrow fit in better with the game's overall appearance. But I think it still looks good as it is.

I'm looking forward to the demo :>
Slaughty

#37 Sep 2, 2024, 10:11 PM Source

Whelp... guess it's time for all the bugs to show up!

Beta Demo v0.1.0 is now available to download! It's free *HERE* on itch.io

Please leave some feedback & (hopefully no) bug reports either here or on the itch.io page. I really hope it works, is bug free, and most of all you enjoy it!

Download
Slaughty

#38 Sep 5, 2024, 11:35 PM Source

Small Update to Demo: V01_02
-Fixed "Double"/Unused Dialogue when Nael is found in Greystone Forest
-Fixed Outdated Pictures and Verbiage in various Help Menus
-Redundancies for when music doesn't play on loading a save file

Made this GIF

Go download the demo!
Feedback is always welcome!
Slaughty

#39 Sep 12, 2024, 08:37 PM Source
Updated to version beta1.03

HOT FIX!
- Added a "missing" asset to prevent fishing mini game from crashing. (I say "missing" because it shouldn't be calling for that asset anywhere, will investigate further and provide a more thorough fix in a much larger update in the near future.)
ShadowDragon

#40 Sep 13, 2024, 08:31 AM Source

I play little but go in most difficult mode :D

the start is a girl telling "was on that wagon", which I don't really get,
but it should be capital W if that line is correct.

2nd, to bad the propeller didn't turn, but it was a cool ship.

lastly before saving:

I think those 2 words should be swapped to "if you choose so." as it seems a bit weird
reading.

from what I did, it looks really cool, but I definitely play later on to go where ever
I needed to go finding Brand, but it looks already nicely polished.

I give more feedback and issues when finding them into a zip and txt file for you.

@Slaughty to avoid double posting, here are some more insides:

on my way to Brand, it had a typo of "speach" which should be "speech".
the other issue during the first cutscene the name box of Branch and the girls Neal
and probably Lema too:

the candy I crafted as ALly instead of Ally, oversight.

during the airship, the battle of it was cool, but a bit to slow? or on purpose?
as the cutscene on falling, that was really awesome.

I might stumped into more typo's, but unsure, so I mostly skip those, but more
visual part like the text box with the name not visible.