Artemis RPG latest demo

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Artemis
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Joined: Jun 22, 2006 16:47

Artemis RPG latest demo

Post by Artemis »

Some of you saw my previous post a couple of weeks ago. I'm working on a 2d RPG in Freebasic, and I'm posting demos because I'm looking for feedback. Here's the second demo, just uploaded today:

http://projectargus.com/rpg/?cat=5

Edit: If for some reason that link doesn't work, try this: http://www.projectargus.com/rpg/downloads/

That link will always take you to the latest demo. It's compiled for Windows. Let me know what you think! Oh, and here are some screenshots:

Image

Image

Image
Last edited by Artemis on Sep 01, 2006 20:55, edited 1 time in total.
arenth
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Post by arenth »

Wow I love the tile and character art, the trees look sort of out of place. I am definately gonna give this a shot, and reply back.

.. Maybe not I get a page with this. Error establishing a database connection.
Artemis
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Post by Artemis »

arenth wrote:Wow I love the tile and character art, the trees look sort of out of place. I am definately gonna give this a shot, and reply back.

.. Maybe not I get a page with this. Error establishing a database connection.
Crap. That's weird. That's the first time my site has done that. Anyway, here's a temporary/alternate link: http://www.projectargus.com/rpg/downloads/
D.J.Peters
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Post by D.J.Peters »

Image
alone this details realy realy good work.

I like it.

Joshy
pascak
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Post by pascak »

Good work im learning freebasic to do something like that ;)
Can you compile it for linux ?
Josiah Tobin
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Post by Josiah Tobin »

Good work... I just played a bit of it, I'll play it through later on. The music is interesting, you may want to use some instruments other than just grunge-y guitar all the time, though. :p

During the title screen (and naming screen) there was a lot of lag. It skipped around alot, slowed down, the music skipped, etc. I'm running on an Athlon 64 2800+ 1.81 ghz, with a gig of ram and a Radeon 9600, so lag shouldn't be a problem. Dunno what's going on there.

One thing that bugged me graphics-wise were the trees. The perspective is way off, unless they're supposed to all be leaning away from the camera. :p You shouldn't even be able to see the underside of the top at all. You may want to consider giving the houses roofs as well, so they don't just look like paintings on the ground.

It'd also be nice to have a default name for the character, or maybe some better hint at his/her gender, so the player can choose an appropriate name. I couldn't really tell, at first. :p

Don't take it the wrong way, though. That's just crticism from my initial impression. It looks promising. :) Great work on the character sprites, by the way. The tiles could use some work, but the character sprites are quite good.

EDIT: Would you mind explaining how the battles work? They seem somewhat broken at the moment, and releasing a demo with random encounter battles that essentially trap you in them isn't really a good idea. After choosing 'fight' there are a few options that have nothing to do with actually fighting; choosing 'abilities' leads to a blank menu that I can't get out of, unless I just don't get the controls. If you do have non-standard controls it's probably a good idea to list them somewhere. (I read the readme, but no 'cancel' button was listed) The only thing I could do at that point was press escape to quit the game.

EDIT: Nevermind, figured it out. This may just be me, but I think you should change the way attacking works in the final version-- having to go into the inventory to use your weapon seems rather convoluted and unnecessary. Also, when naming your character, if you enter a blank name then press space at the "please name this character!" warning, the key press seems to carry over to the naming screen, and it selects whatever letter the cursor is on. (hyphen in this case, being at the start of the row of letters)

PENULTIMATE EDIT: Ok, just finished the demo. Just a couple suggestions... You may want to make the characters move a bit faster. They're pretty sluggish at the moment, and with the random battles, it gets pretty annoying. Also, the game was lagging like crazy during the palette fade to night, and again when the second character joined me.

ULTIMATE EDIT: No longer penultimate.
Artemis
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Post by Artemis »

Josiah Tobin wrote:Good work...
Josiah, thank you for playing it all the way through and giving lots of feedback! I will try to reply to each thing you said.

The music is preliminary, and will eventually have drums and bass. I might have some synth stuff in there, too. The music will probably be the very last thing I do. That's the fun part.

It was lagging? On the title screen?! That's crazy. The game runs slow at parts on a 900mhz I've been testing it on, but it's acceptable. I haven't noticed any skipping around or music issues. I've also been testing it on a 3ghz, and of course everything is perfect on there. I guess I'll need to test it on more PC's and see what happens.

The trees don't bother me, but it's probably just because I'm used to them. My tile artist says she agrees with you regarding the perspective of the trees... so you'll probably see new trees in the next demo. It sounds like she was thinking about that, but your comment really motivated her to change them.

You can't tell her gender? Ugh. Again, maybe it's just because I'm so used to looking at these graphics, so maybe I assume too much. Anyway, I put the image of her there specifically so you would know what gender your character is when you are naming her. Maybe I'll replace that part with a closeup head shot with her looking more feminine. Also, she'll probably be on the title screen.

Hm... in battles, maybe I could combine the Inventory/Abilities/Pass all into one list of choices. That way you'd see your weapons, your abilities, and the option to pass (which is only used when you didn't plan right and are out of MP or whatever...)... all in one list. I'll see how that works. That would be better, right?

You probably figured out by now, but tab is the cancel button. It functions both as pause and unpause/cancel. Having one button for that makes more sense on a joypad, I think.

Thanks for the heads up about the space bar thing on the character naming screen. Those are exactly the kind of little bugs that I need help finding!

So the palette fade to night made it lag really bad? It slows down noticably on my 900mhz, but I still consider it playable. The other machine I've been testing it on is a 3ghz, so of course everything is perfect on there. You say that I should speed up the characters, because they're a bit sluggish - but I'm wondering if maybe it's just more sluggish than usual for you. The game tries to maintain 30fps, which should be easy to achieve on your 1.8ghz. Anyway, if you get a chance, could you run setup.exe and tell it to show FPS? Then you could verify for me whether or not you're getting the full 30fps. If you are, and you still think the characters are too slow, then maybe I'll do something about it. Or what if I make the characters move at that same speed, but get attacked less often?

I know it's a little glitchy when the 2nd character joins. I wouldn't say it lags for me, but there are some screen blips. Overall, it sounds like you have more performance issues with the game on your 1.8ghz than I have on my 900mhz. This is troublesome, but I'll see what I can do to optimize everything. I almost wonder if it was something in particular that your PC didn't like... like maybe the fmod sound/music dll I'm using? If you feel like it, you could try turning off the audio from setup.exe and see if that makes any difference in performance.

Thanks again for all of the comments (and everyone else, too)!
cha0s
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Post by cha0s »

you have a chick pixel artist? cooooool o.o

i'll have to try this.. atm i'm downloading a huge file (56k), gotta try this and lachies.... dum dee dum...
Josiah Tobin
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Post by Josiah Tobin »

Well, I had FPS turned on from the start, actually. It was at 30 fps just about all the time, with some slight drops now and then, but nothing really significant. It was still playable when it was lagging, it was just really annoying. If it happened on a regular basis it'd probably be enough to turn me off of the game.

About the gender thing: I was guessing 'female' after walking around a bit, there are some... fairly clear indictations to that. ;) It was just a bit difficult and I wasn't really certain whether it was just the character's clothing or not. A default name that sounds feminine would greatly help this, I think. I also find it slightly annoying when no default name is given, but it's not a huge problem and it's probably just my personal preference.
Hm... in battles, maybe I could combine the Inventory/Abilities/Pass all into one list of choices. That way you'd see your weapons, your abilities, and the option to pass (which is only used when you didn't plan right and are out of MP or whatever...)... all in one list. I'll see how that works. That would be better, right?
It would, but having a distinct 'attack' option would be much better. It may be overdone, but there's a reason it's so popular. ;) It's simple and it works... It also makes it much more obvious how the battles work, in my opinion.
You probably figured out by now, but tab is the cancel button. It functions both as pause and unpause/cancel. Having one button for that makes more sense on a joypad, I think.
Yep... Though it may be a good idea to list 'cancel' in its list of uses in the readme. Just a suggestion.
So the palette fade to night made it lag really bad?
Not enough to be unplayable, but it was extremely annoying. It's still perfectly playable though, since it doesn't happen too often. (the day/night/night/day transition)

Oh, and I'll try turning the sound off and seeing how it runs. :)

Josiah
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Post by TbbW »

haha awsome man! :D
Nodtveidt
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Post by Nodtveidt »

http://projectargus.com/rpg/?cat=5

Looks like your site has been defaced.

Tried out your game...hate to say but it's a bit slow. The graphics are nice from a still point of view but don't look so hot when animated, especially the character's animation, which could use a bit of polish. The trees should be replaced post-haste as they're a true eyesore but the rest of the graphics I guess are passable. The battle engine needs a whole lot of work, but it looks to be a good start...the enemies look nicely-drawn but need to be animated.

It's a decent start but it needs a lot of work. Speed it up a LOT, work on the animations, and perhaps do some dialogue polish...static dialogues are okay but it looks much better to write out text character-by-character for a console look. Also, try not to overuse particles or alphablending...in moderation, these can be good effects but when you overuse it, it looks cheesy.
Artemis
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Post by Artemis »

cha0s wrote:you have a chick pixel artist? cooooool o.o
Yeah, well, we kinda live together, so it's convenient. :)
Josiah Tobin wrote:It would, but having a distinct 'attack' option would be much better. It may be overdone, but there's a reason it's so popular. ;) It's simple and it works... It also makes it much more obvious how the battles work, in my opinion.
See, you probably grew up playing FF1 or something. I grew up playing FFL1+2 for the gameboy, and it was done this way. You can have as many weapons equiped as you want, so you can change what you're using from turn to turn. If you only have an "attack" with a flame sword that you've already equiped, then what do you do if you want to use the ice sword next turn? This way, you can switch from both weapons within battle, and also have a ball+chain which attacks all enemies, and so on. What do you think?
Nodtveidt wrote:http://projectargus.com/rpg/?cat=5

Looks like your site has been defaced.
Thanks for the heads up. I noticed that yesterday and it should be fixed now. Pretty crazy!
Nodtveidt wrote:Tried out your game...hate to say but it's a bit slow. The graphics are nice from a still point of view but don't look so hot when animated, especially the character's animation, which could use a bit of polish. The trees should be replaced post-haste as they're a true eyesore but the rest of the graphics I guess are passable. The battle engine needs a whole lot of work, but it looks to be a good start...the enemies look nicely-drawn but need to be animated.

It's a decent start but it needs a lot of work. Speed it up a LOT, work on the animations, and perhaps do some dialogue polish...static dialogues are okay but it looks much better to write out text character-by-character for a console look. Also, try not to overuse particles or alphablending...in moderation, these can be good effects but when you overuse it, it looks cheesy.
It seems like everyone thinks it's slow, so I guess I'll speed things up about 25% or so. You think the trees are an eyesore? That's not good. Is it because you think they don't fit in, or just because you think they're ugly on their own? As for the character walk, I think we'll improve it by adding diagonal walk frames, but I'm happy with the existing frames.

I'm not sure if I'm going to animate the enemies or not. I have one person working on enemy graphics, and I'm not sure if it's practical to ask for so many animation frames. I'd rather have 50 non-animated enemies than 10 animated ones, you know? And I don't want to bring more graphics people in, because I like the cohesive look that comes from having one enemy artist.

Your comment on particles and alphablending is a good one. I'll keep that in mind. I like the particle effects for attacks though, because it's something different, and it's more practical than trying to do tons of sprite frames.

I know there's still a long way to go. I can't really estimate how far along I am percentage-wise, because there's no end in sight. I feel like I'm putting the finishing touches on the game's skeleton, but there's still the whole body to work on.
Josiah Tobin
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Post by Josiah Tobin »

See, you probably grew up playing FF1 or something. I grew up playing FFL1+2 for the gameboy, and it was done this way. You can have as many weapons equiped as you want, so you can change what you're using from turn to turn. If you only have an "attack" with a flame sword that you've already equiped, then what do you do if you want to use the ice sword next turn? This way, you can switch from both weapons within battle, and also have a ball+chain which attacks all enemies, and so on. What do you think?
Ahh, I gotcha. Yes, that could have advantages. You may want to document it in the readme or something, as for lots of people it'd probably be a bit non-standard. :)
Ryan
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Post by Ryan »

I bought and loved FF Legends 2. Eventually gave it to my little brother years ago and he's since beat it several times. Would you also be handling magic the same way?
Nodtveidt
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Post by Nodtveidt »

Artemis wrote:You think the trees are an eyesore? That's not good. Is it because you think they don't fit in, or just because you think they're ugly on their own?
Both...they're a bit ugly, and they don't fit the style that you have for the rest of the scenery. Frankly, they look "plastic".
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