Ponderings

I bought VXAce (pre-ordered, really, for the discount and the shiny bonuses) and I've been playing with it a bit here and there.

One of the things I'm seriously considering is creating a commercial game with Ace. I've been researching the market and the whole process of going commercial for a while now. I still don't know everything I should (marketing and taxes, primarily!), but I'm hoping that I will get a chance to pick someone's brain about it. Obviously, I need to actually conceptualize and finish the game first. And then there's the matter of figuring out where/how to sell it, how much to charge etc etc.

Would any of you be interested in buying a complete game I created? If so, how much would you be willing to spend?

Chapter 1 & 2 Download

Here we are, guys!

Chapters 1 and 2 are finally available for download.

Chapter 1 + 2 ***
* Note that there is a Font folder with 3 files included. Please make sure you install them prior to playing.
** You will need to download and install VX RTP (you can find it here).
*** Special thank you to Reives from Freebird Games for being gracious enough to provide me with free hosting on his server.


Let me say that the list of things that have been changed is extensive. New graphics, new content, fixed issues, and much more! This is as close as I'm going to get to a complete release. There will be only a few very minor changes to these two chapters with Chapter 3 release. It's mostly a couple small cosmetic changes to the text and adding a couple side-quests for Ahmiran. It's nothing that will require you to re-start the game, however. Your save files should work just fine from this point on. But, just in case ... I'm going to be providing save files from this point on.

Major thanks to the beta testers! Especially Ronnie and Volrath who were absolutely amazing with their feedback.

Birthday

Today is my birthday. I am old. XD

Finally!

Just a quick note... Betas will be sent out tonight.

That is all.

Beta (meep!)

*sigh* I really suck at ETAs, don't I?

Well, the good news is that the beta is 95% done and ready. The bad news is that it's not 100%.

4% of that is battle-related and requires a lot of hair-pulling database work. I would use placeholder battles, but that sort of defeats the purpose of having a beta test. The last 1% is just cleaning up the folders so you don't have to download a 700MB+ sized file (yes, lots of unused graphics and music that will probably find its way into the game eventually).

When's the beta coming out, then? I want to try to make it before or during this weekend. I have no other plans until next week, and I'm hunkering down with coffee and croissants until it's done!

*insert witty title*

I'm just going to come out and admit it. Virtually nothing got done this past week. I suffered a raging (and quite debilitating, I might add) migraine for 3 whole days. The rest of the week was spent playing catch-up with various chores and work. I've also worked a bit on requests, since they've been piling up and my request-ees have been very patient.

On the bright side, this unplanned break did not squelch my motivation. I'm still very much committed and eager to work on TUAH. I've blocked off this weekend and I will try to get as much done as possible.

Other than that, not much to report. I'm still looking for a beta tester or two. Please let me know if you're interested!
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I've also changed the general look of the blog today. I hope you like it!

To-Do

Here is my list of things that need to be finished for revamped chapter 1&2:
- Finish mapping 2 extra areas for Bethlam Tower.
Thankfully, the two maps are monster/exploration maps and those don't take as long as town maps. I can churn out the two maps in a day or so. There's also virtually no eventing involved, save for populating it with chests and monsters. Since I'm using visual monster encounters, I only need to create one event that will cycle through troop possibilities and copy/paste it around the map.
- Finish skills and AI for 6 bosses.
The most difficult part about this is balancing the stats for the bosses. Obviously, they should be tougher than a regular fight, but not outright kill you on the first turn either. I've also done a few changes to the boss line-up that should make them much more interesting.
- Delete unnecessary maps and resources before compiling.
Although I know TUAH will inevitably end up as a large-sized game, there's no reason to include all the resources at once. Especially since you'll have to download the newer chapters again.
- Playtest and playtest.
Just to make sure everything is running smoothly. One thing I've learned is that no matter how much time I spend testing, I can't catch all the bugs/typos/etc. So, I'm not going to spend an excessive amount of time testing. I will try to catch any game-breaking bug, however.

Phew! That's a rather short list. I'm not giving an ETA, but I really hope I can finish all of this within a week.

In other news, Joerao is awesome and will be composing a couple of tunes for me. Volrath is also awesome and may be making a trailer for TUAH. I'm so excited!

Progress update

I'm still hard at work on finishing up the release. All the graphics are completed, as are the extra maps. The only part that's left is the much-hated database (I'm looking forward to having that all done), rebalancing the battles and test playing. I'm both looking forward to testing everything and dreading it. I'm almost tempted to take the "super lazy developer" route and have some poor beta-tester check the game instead of doing it myself. If I wasn't determined to give y'all a quality game, I would totally do that *insert crazy laugh here*.

I leave you with two gifts. One is another screenshot of revamp maps:

General Store. Don't you just want to shop there?

And the second is a portrait and faceset I did:

Adding Content

As I was organizing the database last night, I realized that there wasn't a whole lot of "playable" content in TUAH so far. Chapter 1 has the player exploring Bogden forest, which is all of 3 maps in size. And outside the main-quest related fights, you don't even get to fight anything! Chapter 2 is not much better. Gullad mountains is supposed to have a huge mine, yet it only had 2 types of enemies. Worse yet, the tower had absolutely nothing outside the boss fight -which, let's face it, was a pretty sad one at that.

So, I will be adding more stuff. More maps, more fights and more treasure chests.Thanks to Thalzon's fantastic battlers, I've got a ton of fun enemies for you to encounter. I've already mapped out the enemy types. I'm moving onto their abilities and testing after that. Then it will be a matter of adding more maps.

Is this going to delay the release? Well, no. I'm still planning on releasing the updated graphic version sometime this week. The extra content will be added and released with chapter 3.

In the meantime, here's an extra screenshot for you guys:

~Spiffy Ahmiran~

Graphical revamp is done!

I finished the very last map needed for the graphical update last night. Phew, what a lot of work that turned out to be. Not the map itself, but the update in general. While I'm very pleased with the results, I will definitely not be doing it again.

The rest of the update isn't that time-consuming. I have to finish up converting script calls for Quest Log 2.0 (which is a handful of quests, so it's not too difficult) and play through the game to make sure that everything is in good shape. I'm also probably going to add a few more places where Alistair can interact with the environment (examining bookshelves, anyone?) and add more instances where personality/relationship levels are altered. This will, hopefully, only take a week.

So, from this point on, all you should see is new content. Hooray!