VXAce - Northwall v1.0.1

RTP included (updated 9/30/19): https://www.dropbox.com/s/qxd6ntpc15zimsx/Zev's Game (With RTP).exe?dl=0

Demo Video


Creator Walkthrough

Screenshots

Reviews
Features

Story

Full Credits

Spoiler

All Music by Kevin MacLeod (http://www.incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Songs:
"A Singular Perversion"
"All This"
"Anguish"
"At Rest"
"Atlantean Twilight"
"Awkward Meeting"
"Black Vortex"
"Clean Soul"
"Colorless Aura"
"Come Play With Me"
"Constance"
"Danse of Questionable Tuning"
"Dark Fog"
"Darkest Child"
"Darkness is Coming"
"Decline"
"Despair and Triumph"
"Dreamlike"
"Dreams Become Real"
"Easy Lemon"
"Evening of Chaos"
"Exciting Trailer"
"Failing Defense"
"Five Armies"
"Fun in a Bottle"
"Ghost Story"
"Ghostpocalypse - 6 Crossing the Threshold"
"Gloom Horizon"
"Heavy Interlude"
"Industrial Music Box"
"Lightless Dawn"
"Lone Harvest"
"Lost Time"
"Mistake the Getaway"
"Movement Proposition"
"Night of Chaos"
"On the Shore"
"One-Eyed Maestro"
"Past the Edge"
"Pensif"
"Plans in Motion"
"Prelude and Action"
"Private Reflection"
"Rains Will Fall"
"Road to Hell"
"Satiate Strings"
"The Descent"
"Thunder Dreams"
"Unrelenting"
"Wounded"

Additional edits for looping music by Zevia

Additional Scripts
"Enemy Stats" by Shadowmaster (www.crimson-castle.co.uk)
"Basic Module" by Victor Sant
"Command Change" by Victor Sant
"Direct Command" by Victor Sant
"Ace Core Engine" by Yanfly
"Ace Battle Engine" by Yanfly
"Anti-Fail" by Yanfly
"Gabs" by Yanfly
"Parallax Lock" by Yanfly
"System Options" by Yanfly
"Battle Commands" by Yanfly
"Element Absorb" by Yanfly
"Buff and State Manager" by Yanfly
"Ace Shop" by Yanfly
"Predicted Charge Turn Battle" by Yami
"Order Gauge" by Yami
"Revival Animation Fix" by Yami
"Viewed Battle System" by Jet
"Enemy HP Bar" by Vlue
"Scale Encounters" by Neonblack
"Event Jitter Fix" by Neonblack
"Fixed Pictures" by Seer UK and OriginalWij
"Viewports" by Shaz
"Class Items" by Nicke
"Move Route Extras" by Galv
"Move Update" by Kread
"Common Event Variables" by Hime
"Convert Code: Eval" by Hime
"Custom Page Conditions" by Hime
"Untargetable State" by Hime
"Post-Battle Events" by Hime
"Tile Swap" by Hime
"Refresh Fix" by ShadowLurk
"State Viewer" by Modern Algebra (rmrk.net)
"HP Barrier Bar" by bgillisp
"Map Effects" by Zeus81, licensed under creative commons 4.0
"Fullscreen++" by Zeus81
"Counterattack Edit" by DoubleX
"Graphical Object Global Reference: A Debugger Script" by Mithran
"Multiple Inventories" by Fomar0153
"Animations Over Pictures" by TheoAllen
"Skip Title Screen" by JV Master

Facesets
Jalen
Kii

Additional Sprites
Hokija
Deathswallow
Marquise
Matthew Ashworth
Rajawali
Vibrato
FenixFyreX
hiddenone

Ending Splash Art
Heru Purwanda

Portraits
Fayforest
Blue Rock

Additional Sound Effects
freeSFX (http://www.freesfx.co.uk)

Playtesters
Dalph
Archeia (http://archeia.moe)
Liberty
Matthew Ashworth
Milennin
Indrah
PatrickJFraser
Nerga
Susan
Akemi Homura
Nashthenewb
Methkirito
Stewmega
Amasenpai
Jonthefox
Agnieszka Wheeler
Sean Gallagher
Padr81
Arcter

Voice Effects, Additional Sound Effect Edits, Lighting Effects, Game Design, Story, Battle Design, Additional Sprites, Additional Animations, Mapping
Zevia

Enjoy the game? Try what's available of the sequel.

Hey folks.

I added in some more content, including a completely reworked introduction (you now get to see some of Northwall's destruction instead of everybody just talking about it), a new battle system, and some better lighting. The transition from the more standard battle system to the charge turn has made re-balancing everything quite the task, but overall I think a lot of enemies have actually become easier. I'm actually worried that a number of the bosses are too inconsequential now, but it's hard for me to tell since I made the game and wrote their behavior.

Would love to hear some feedback from anyone who gets some time to give the game a try - the demo is basically everything I've got playable at the moment, although on my to-do list is re-working the cave and forest to be more intricate dungeons (and to at least have a puzzle or two).

Have a good one!

No replies yet? What a shame...this is a pretty good game.

I like how the characters are well developed (Maestro seems to be a cool villain), how the skills are customized and how the battles require some strategy to win (instead of just attacking and attacking).

The mapping isn't that bad, but could be seriously improved, it looks a bit odd in some places (especially in the village and in the forest).

All in all however, it's a good game.

BUGS:

During both the dialogues with Marion (in the village) I can move Kavin, and this mistake messes up the whole scenes.

Thank you for the notes on the bug - there's a parallel process running that tracks your coordinates to know when to begin the cutscene, and the rest of the cutscene was simply part of that parallel process. I've added another page with a self-switch to turn it into an autorun. The second occasion is so the townspeople are moved around seamlessly without the delay of the autorun - but that has also been resolved.

Mapping's definitely my biggest flaw. I'm not sure if I'm ready to tackle full parallax mapping to make it all very beautiful, but I'd like to make lots of things less blocky and square as part of my revamps. Whether that involves some creative tilesets or simply diving into parallax mapping, we'll see. Do you have any ideas for improvements to the village and forest that I can use for my updates to them?

Thank you very much for testing and finishing it up, Clarence - I really appreciate your time and feedback.

Additional story branches would be an awesome addition to the game.

--

I suggest to stay away from parallaxing, at least for now, it requires a lot of time and work, use it only when you are familiar enough with normal mapping.

Just add a little more "random" details here and there (trees, flowers, grass, and other stuff).

Plus, don't create too large maps (the forest is like 70x70...too much if you ask me), just create different smaller sections and connect them.

Here's a couple of good mapping tutorials:

by Indrah

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/61-mapping-in-five-easy-steps/

by Luchino

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/18566-lu-chans-mapping-commandments/

Just follow these useful hints and you're ready to go. Good luck for your project!

Thanks for the advice on how to spruce the maps up a bit - it's a big project and something I've been wanting to fix up for some time.

Rpg Maker Decrypter can do this (everyone knows this tool and is 100% legal "if it isn't used to steal and only for learning"). And don't misunderstand me, that shot was done "just to show you how to improve your mapping skills", but I deleted it (since it bothers you), I don't want people to think that I steal other's work. I'm a serious person.

And as far as I know, you can't really protect your game, RM encryption is very basic.

I revised Aylan's map a bit after looking your suggestion screenshot over a bit for inspiration - do you think this looks more attractive to wander around in?



I wanted to get the feel that as you move south, they've done a lot of clearing to get the lumber for the small town (and when I redesign the forest dungeon, I'm hoping to make that more obvious, as well). I also didn't want to put roads in the town, to give it a feeling that it's not a place well-traveled - but at the same time, I liked putting in the darkened, "matted down" grass to indicate common foot trails where the citizens frequently walked. I also thought it would be cool to leave lots of tall grass in the areas that they didn't use. I also really liked your idea of putting in thicker areas of trees instead of the thinner ones I had previously. I don't want it to feel too much like it's in the middle of the forest, but I do like the visual it gets of appearing more "wooded."

Certainly yes, add a little bit more of small details here and there randomizing the nature a bit, plus make the ground less blocky. Remember that this is not a city but a village near a forest.

Follow these suggestions and then you're ready to go.

So I decided to go through and fix up the forest dungeon map to be more appealing to wander through. In the process, I also included a new puzzle in a "side room" that functions like a lights out puzzle (turning one off turns all the others around it on and vice versa, the goal being to turn all of them on). Next stop will probably be to create more equipment so I can provide a more fulfilling reward for completing the puzzle - currently a chest appears that, when you open it, says, "PUT SOMETHING IN HERE."

For curiosity, here's a sample of the new forest maps compared to the old:

New Maps

Old Map

The newest build of the game is now up!

Updates since the last version include:

- A new puzzle in the cave

- Some ability and balancing tweaks (the forest boss, the cave boss, and the fight in Aylan should now be more difficult)

- A few new weapons, armors, and items (namely rewards for completing the new puzzles)

- A new puzzle in the forest

- The forest map has been completely redesigned. Instead of one 74x74 map, it consists of a handful of mostly 17x13 maps that are connected to each other. It's been prettied up a bit, as well

- Aylan has been remapped to be more visually appealing

The game is also no longer encrypted. Since it will not be a commercial game, I've decided to make my work freely viewable and editable. I only ask that nobody use anything in my game for their own work without asking me first, please.

Here's the LT for Northwall! I enjoyed it :'D

Bug Reports :

- Able to move during cutscene with Rick and Ben on world map before going into Northwall ruins.

- Game crash after a battle with one snake in forest. Caught it on video, but for now I'll just explain. I finished beating the snake, the battle rewards finished, then it began giving me rewards for defeating two snakes and then just crashed. No error pop-up, either. I figure I'll wait until this is sorted before doing more of the LP/T.

LT/P

Hi Ksi!

Thanks very much for giving my demo a try. I haven't touched the game since last October (real life and all), sorry I didn't get to you much sooner. I used to check up on my game more regularly, but haven't much looked at the forums recently.

Issues first: not sure why taunt doesn't draw the enemy's attention. It increases TGR rate by 1000% - do you happen to know if that doesn't mean, "Enemies are 1000% more likely to target this character?"

Thanks for pointing out the issue with moving while Ben and Rick are talking to you outside the ruins. There are a number of events in the game that are running a parallel process to check your X and Y coordinates before triggering an event (mostly in large areas where it wouldn't be very feasible to make a line of copied events that triggered on touch). However, it seems you can't make the player wait during parallel processes. I went through and made it so that the trigger for the dialogue is a parallel process, but it immediately leads into an autorun so you can't move around. I made this fix to a number of places, but it looks like I missed that one. Got it fixed up now.

Now the big, game-crashing one... The snakes.

I honestly have no idea went wrong with them. Archeia did a Let's Try without issue, and all of my own runthroughs have never encountered that problem. The particular troop you were fighting only has a single condition on it, related to a party member you don't pick up until later. The enemies are otherwise no different than any other enemy.

I've had that particular crash happen once before to me during a runthrough, and it was on the spider. You can see it in my "known bugs" section, but I can't seem to replicate it, so I'm not sure how to pinpoint what's causing the issue. My *best guess* is that it has something to do with the DoT from holy fire killing the last enemy in a troop. When watching your video, the initial damage of holy fire doesn't kill the snake, but then it dies a moment later. The only DoT that was on the snake would then be the holy fire DoT, so I'm wondering if dying from poison/bleed/etc. damage causes it.

If that's the case, it probably relates to one of my battle scripts (maybe Victor Sant's custom slip damage). No updates have been made to the script since I last used it, though, and I'm not particularly adept at scripting, so I'm not really sure how to fix the problem.

Here is the snake page and snake troop page, as well as the holy fire state page:

For now, I've decided to disable the DoT from holy fire just in case that is, in fact, the problem (and increased its damage a little bit to compensate). I'm very sorry you had the crash happen, and I apologize that I'm not exactly sure what's going wrong so I can subsequently fix it. I promise it does seem to be a rare circumstance that leads to the problem. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Now on to the good stuff!

I'm enjoying your narration. It seems like most people I've listened to try my game put on sort of snarky or comedic voices when they read the characters' voices early on in the game, but seem to grow more serious as time goes on. I can only hope that means they're getting more wrapped up in the story. I was a little curious why all the Northwall citizens are hick-as-Frick Americans, but I thought it was pretty funny. I think you've got a good spin on most of the characters from what you know about them as you meet them - I like your Maestro.

I also really liked your discovery about Rick and Ben's experience. It was, in fact, there as some foreshadowing for the people who noticed, but you're the first one to say anything about it to me.

I really loved watching you figure out the treasure chest puzzle, and I'm very pleased to see that there is, in fact, enough information for people to figure it out. I had a big smile on my face when I heard you have your epiphany and start filling in all the blanks. You seemed so disheartened to "only get a mace" for it, but I was hoping you'd also notice that you get more experience for completing the puzzle than you would for killing the boss. In fact, all my puzzles/events reward experience for completion (just as jumping across the platforms in the cave did). If you still think the reward isn't high enough for the time it takes to solve, however, let me know.

I'm glad you've been able to figure out the little nuances to the battles, too, such as using impale on the bats. I tried not to bash the player too hard over the head with tutorials, and was hoping that the first three battles in the game would establish, "If the regular stuff doesn't work, try one of your other abilities." I haven't had enough testing to know for sure whether the battles and bosses are too hard or too easy, but you're progressing through at about the level I'd like players to (so far). Archeia was able to finish her Let's Try without getting a game over, as well, so as far as I know, it's on a good path at the moment.

I'm reuploading the demo with some fixes, including taking out what I think caused your game to crash. I'd really love to see what you think of the rest of the demo (was so sad not to see you try out the forest puzzle, see your decisions at the end of the forest, your reaction to some of the events that follow...).

I like your suggestion about changing the end of the cave sequence to be more zoomed in and have a separate map just to show Kavin/Quincy standing in front of the collapsed rubble. When I finally get around to coming back to work on the game, that may be something I'll tackle before I work on anything else.

And as a final note, I really loved your exclamation during the worm fight of, "WHOA WHOA WHOA.. WHOA... CALM.. THE Frick... DOWN!" You'll be happy to know I've lowered their breath damage a bit.

Changes Made Since Last Update

Awww. Well, don't I feel like an ass now.

Very sorry I haven't worked on it in such a long time. I have the exteriors completed for the two forts (the next step in the story), but that was the last thing I did before real life took over. I also got into the (EDIT: can't tell you what game it is due to the NDA) beta, so I've been toying around with that when I'm not working or spending time with my girlfriend. I kind of forgot about my project for quite awhile, but I'm doing some VO for Artbane and that got me to looking around the forums again.

I'm starting to feel the itch to begin work on this again, though, especially after watching Ksi's Let's Try. I've also got a handful of music I never got around to using, and listening to it just reminds me how much I want to create the associated areas.

I'm also trying to make sure that what IS done so far is well-polished, so I keep going back and making little fixes and adjustments to stuff.

I'll probably take a look at doing some more work on mapping this week when I'm finished with my audiobook work each day. I've got some recording and editing to do for Artbane, as well, and I have a sketching project I'd like to work on here and there. My current audiobook should be finished roundabout mid-May, so I'll probably have some more spare time after recording auditions each day.

Please finish it pal, I like it and Archeia loves it particularly, you should be honored because it's hard that an RM game catches her attention.

Follow my suggestion and don't waste this occasion.

Good luck for all your projects!

To be honest, I really love writing dialogue, character interaction, cutscenes, interesting monsters to fight, hunting for the right music, finding the right loop points for it, even creating fancy lighting parallaxes... Really almost every aspect of making a game.

The one thing that really bogs me down and causes me to work slower than I otherwise would is mapping. I really hate creating the backgrounds for my areas, much as I love filling them with everything else. It's especially hard because I haven't developed the eye for maps that so many members of the community appear to, and it's often a quick criticism I receive about my game - boring maps. Sometimes I feel like, even when I put in a lot of time on them, there are just too many things I didn't notice or consider that everyone else is going to point out. The little nitpicky things that really give maps life and make them interesting to wander around and explore feel a little too tedious for me to be enthused about.

That being said, I have started work on the game again. I've been trying to figure out how to solidify the manner in which the story progresses for the next area, and I'm just trying to build up the enthusiasm to map out the area. There's also a major mapping project for the following area, as it's the only actual city in the game instead of towns, forts, or dungeons, and that's been pretty daunting.

The current area I'm working on is, effectively, both a dungeon and a town, then the next area will be the big city and its accompanying dungeon, then there will be the final dungeon and boss. So if it's any reassurance, the game is probably around 40-50% complete, not including any extra time spent polishing things up after I get them created.

Worst case scenario, I'll just make some really simple, ugly maps for myself to finish the rest of the game, then go back and pretty them up before releasing it.

Hey folks.


I've been hard at work on my project when I've finished being hard at work on my job for the last several days and I just wanted to pop in with a little teaser of some new animations I created.


Those of you who've played my demo will recognize Tilana's transform skill, but you'll hopefully notice the "glowing light" that kickstarts the animation is now cooler because it has 100% more wolf. A new ability that's been added to Kavin's holy list is Angelic Form, and I'm showcasing the animation for that in this video, too.


If you'd like to see what else I've been up to on my demo that isn't included in the current release, I make updates to my original post under the "Change Log" section whenever I'm working on the project. You can also see what I have setup for myself in my "To Do List."

wut? Kevin is an angel? Anyway, this is really neat...I love it.

Good job.