NEOK'S PROFILE

Well justify yourselves however you will, but just know that by catering to only a specific set of players, you lose whatever potential players you had on the other side of the fence, which is something most indie game developers can't afford to do.

there was some minor issues with the original, but it was overall a pretty damn decent game and I thought that the follow-up would be more of a priority than a remake of the first game.

I was wondering you said to remade the first Alter AILIA does that mean everything that happened in the first Alter AILIA is basically thrown out the window? Is this the same original plot we used to have or is it entirely new?

Well when I was developing the story for Variant, I realized along the way that the story in the original doesn't coincide too well with the sequel (in that a lot of things are glossed over). I also realized that a lot of people probably wouldn't have played the first one to completion. That's why I'm doing the re-make first.

So yeah, don't worry about the story in the first game. Go by AAG's plot.


>Neophyte

I'm going to switch things around and make it so that enemies are easier to kill, but also deal more damage. Hopefully that'll speed things up a bit. There's not too much I can do about the ATB speed this time, but I'll make sure to keep it in mind if I ever complete this and move on to Variant.

I still have to balance the game better, but I want to avoid making the beginning area too hard so that I don't alienate more casual players. In any case, there'll be time later on to bring out the heavy guns ;). Anyways, I think it'll be more interesting once you start getting more Special Syncs.

It seems that RM2K3 games take a long ass time loading on my computer, which made going straight into this game very frustrating. There was a 2 minute delay before I could even get started. -_-;

The database for this game is actually pretty huge. It takes me like 5 seconds to apply any changes made. That might be why it's taking such a long time to load.

I'm not sure why you're getting screen shakes though, cause I haven't used it anywhere (my eyes are really sensitive so screen shakes tend to cause me nausea, which is why I avoid it).

I think I will change it so that you don't have to press Z everywhere. That's actually a pretty good point, so thanks for mentioning it.

AP and EX

Actually, AP is a stamina cost, and EX is a spirit cost.

An Ability that uses mainly AP (but may also use some EX) tends to be of "Attack" nature, meaning it only relies on your ATK stat to determine the damage.

Whereas, Abilities that use both AP and EX are either "Tech" nature, or "Spell" nature. "Tech" relies 75% on ATK stat, and 25% on MND stat, and relies semi-equally on AP and EX. "Spell" relies 50% on ATK, and 50% on MND, and have a bigger reliance on EX.

The quickest way to distinguish between them is to look at the nature of the attack. A purely physical skill like Leon's Double Shot is obviously "Attack" nature, while Violet's Frost Diver involves a jump kick and a snow splash, making it "Tech". And Indy's Drain ability is a purely spell type ability, hence making it "Spell" nature. But in any case, they are shown in the Ability's description so you don't need to guess.

The distinction is given in the Help File, but I guess it's not very well explained. I'll see what I can do to make it clearer in-game.

A boring game that goes by fast is better than a boring game that goes by slowly. If you want to err on the side of caution, make it too easy. Too easy is always better than too hard (this is a matter of considerable debate however).

This is a pretty good point. Unfortunately, if I make it too hard, casual players will complain. Too easy, and the hardcore players get fussy. I think you're right though, usually it's better to make it easy than hard. I think I'll make the difficulty scale up gradually as you go through the game, or at least try to.


Thanks for the comments. Let me know if anything else comes up, as it'll only get harder to change things as I make progress.

author=DE link=topic=2730.msg51904#msg51904 date=1229971760
I love everything EXCEPT the battle system, which, although visually excellent, is.. BORING. The same complaint I had on the original.

But the battles are like the meat of the game :'(

I tried messing around with the battle speed, but unfortunately, it seems like the only way I'll be able to get back the kind of battle speed that was present in Alter Aila Variant (the Leon stops train one) would be to limit the number of allies and enemies per battle (and its really too late to do that for Genesis).

Anyways, I've decided to nerf all the enemy HP settings, so battles ought to go be quicker now. I also made Field Effect transitions quicker as well, so hopefully it won't seem so slow anymore. You can get the new patch in the usual place.




Anyways! I played a bit of Dungeon Crawler. It's a pretty interesting game, though it is very difficult to identify who's who considering you only see their heads. Still, it is pretty refreshing to see something like this. My main complaints with the puzzles so far, is that some of them are very simple and meant more to waste time than anything (like one puzzle where there are 3 doors and 1 switch which opens the three doors one at a time. You have to go through each door once in order to proceed, so it's like you go through the same path 6 times before you can proceed).

There are two game-breaking bugs which I've encountered so far. One is when you first cross the big bridge and are given the option to bomb it. If you don't, walk across it, and come back, you'll get that option again and if you don't bomb it, the game will freeze there.

The other is when you're suppose to trade an artefact with one of two guys standing at the north part of the map where you come in. The guy on the right offers to trade, but if you don't have anything, you won't be able to get out of that trading sequence.

Also, there's way too much dialogue at the beginning. I only paid attention to the first 3 characters, and then just blazed through the rest in order to continue the game.

Other than that, it's pretty cool and worth checking out!

author=DE link=topic=2730.msg51830#msg51830 date=1229943114
ALTER AILA GENESIS

DE attacks with Criticism
*SMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSH!*
The Neok has become tame!


Okay, the main thing is that the battles are too long and boring right now, right? I'm trying to make it so that battles decrease in frequency and increase in duration and difficulty. Since I'm trying to avoid 1-2 round long battles, and make it so that you need to do some strategizing to make it through. Sorry if that's not your thing! Since its also the beginning of the game, I'm trying not to throw too many curveballs at once, so that's why a lot of the enemies are fairly generic and quirk-less.

I've uploaded a patch to increase the battle speed somewhat, let me know if its good now or if it needs more tightening.

There were some pretty big game-breaking bugs with my first release, so I'm uploading a patch to fix things up. Anyone who downloaded the version released yesterday, make sure to update!


EDIT: Another patch is released. Make sure to download this one!