Primus - Nemaria Universe

[lemmingllama]

Normally, dealing damage in the hundreds or thousands appeals to me the most. If they are much higher than that, it starts to get confusing and you get stuff like Disgaea with millions of damage per hit.

[Koby]

I'd rather stay simple. Not too little but not too much. Say max HP ending up around 5k, but starting around 100 to 300. Take for example FF10. Damage for most of your characters (not counting summons) are less than or around 5k normally by end game.

[nemarious]

I'd rather stay simple. Not too little but not too much. Say max HP ending up around 5k, but starting around 100 to 300. Take for example FF10. Damage for most of your characters (not counting summons) are less than or around 5k normally by end game.

Normally, dealing damage in the hundreds or thousands appeals to me the most. If they are much higher than that, it starts to get confusing and you get stuff like Disgaea with millions of damage per hit.

Yeah, it would seem you guys have the same sort of opinions as me. I wasn't planning on having super attacks that hit for millions. I don't want any attack to do more than 9,999 which will be the damage limit and will never be hit by an attack anyway apart from a critical with an Overdrive attack maybe. You won't be able to hit that amount of HP either naturally. You'll need to be wearing special accessories and armour that boost your HP to get anywhere above 6k.

The way I've been looking at it the upper boundaries for natural parameters would be 4k health, 400 manna and 200 for the other stats. Every character would start with 100hp, 25mp and 10 in all the stats. Obviously the rates of growth for each stat would be different for the other members which would result in the class separation we would be looking for. Having them all start of the same and having the same natural ceilings makes balancing things easier; well it makes the maths easier.

It would seem we have come to a conclusion then. I'll carry on with what I had planned to do just with slightly lower ceilings for manna. I originally started with 1000 but that was far too much.

EDIT: This will of course be the sort of thing that beta testers will be feeding back on as we all play the game to death before release.

[Caledoriv]

Sorry for not being around here in the last weeks - right now I'm pretty occupied with school stuff (my A-level exams begin in one week ). But in one month everything should be over xD.

@ Facesets:

The 4th picture of Alysha seems to me as if she was merely whistling because she's astonished by something and not that she's shocked. But maybe that's just my imagination :/.

I also cannot help myself of thinking that the last "laughing" picture doesn't really fit when I compare it to the ones of the other characters. It appears to me as if she was bugged out - I'd prefer a more cheerful mouth.

The others are just great! Well done!

Just one more idea for improvement: Could you reflect the character graphic of Leni along a vertical axis? His hair is on the wrong side compared to the facesets .

@ Numbers:

The starting and max values you mentioned are also just fine.

Cale

[nemarious]

Sorry for not being around here in the last weeks - right now I'm pretty occupied with school stuff (my A-level exams begin in one week ). But in one month everything should be over xD.

There is no need to apologise. I do appreciate input but I don't expect or demand it. Good luck on your exams also.

@ Facesets:

The 4th picture of Alysha seems to me as if she was merely whistling because she's astonished by something and not that she's shocked. But maybe that's just my imagination :/.

I also cannot help myself of thinking that the last "laughing" picture doesn't really fit when I compare it to the ones of the other characters. It appears to me as if she was bugged out - I'd prefer a more cheerful mouth.

Her surprised face is supposed to look like she's been rendered speechless by something. Have you never confused a friend and they've just looked blankly at you with their mouth open a tiny bit as if they didn't know what to say?

As for the other image, the bottom two are supposed to be talking images. I understand what you mean about the mouth though. The problem I had when making the facesets was I didn't want them all to look the same. I tried the make their features as varied as possible, with different eyebrows, mouths, hairstyles etc. Usually with the talking images they came from a pair that were grouped together. I agree that it doesn't quite look right though so I'll see if their is a better one.

Just one more idea for improvement: Could you reflect the character graphic of Leni along a vertical axis? His hair is on the wrong side compared to the facesets .

Good eyes! You're not really supposed to notice that... again, this boils down to the software I use to make the facesets. When they are generated, they are facing the left and his hair would be facing the right direction. This causes problems when using them for RPG maker though, as the faces appear on the left of the text when displaying a message which, if they were still facing the left, would make him look as if he was facing out of the screen. As such, I flip them through the y-axis so they are facing the right way.

I may be able to change the look of the sprites by messing the with heads but to just flip the whole image would cause problems for them when they were used in game. Again, I'll see what I can do but we may just have to live with it.

EDIT: Both of the above problems have been fixed.

Alysha's second talking face now has a more open mouth.

Leni's sprites required less work than I thought and the new sprites look fine in-game. You can view the changes in the post they were in around 10 posts up ^^

[Stuy]

hmm i would lov to help ya test this game ^^

if ya want me to help out could you send me the details

[nemarious]

What do you get when you combine copious amounts of alcohol and death metal music? A very, very good day that's what!

Anyway, a very good afternoon to you all. There are several changes I'm here to inform you lovely people about. Firstly, I'd like to welcome Stuy to the pool of potential testers. There is still plenty of room open for people that may be interested, just shoot me a pm if you want more details, or just request to join in a post.

Secondly, I've been going back and reorganising the GDD a little bit. The idea behind this was to show groups of monsters. Prior to the bits I'm doing now there were just multiples of one species of monsters in each fight, like 2x Slime or a Bull etc but now I'm combining different species into separate 'troops' as they are called in RPG Maker. This starts to happen after the first island when you get your last party member.

Thirdly, I've been simplifying the alchemy system. I was planning on having it as realistic as possible whereas now I've simplified steps. For example, plenty of the beast creatures would give you hides or parts of hides which you would take to a tanner who would turn them into leather which you could then use to make light or medium armour. I was going to do this because it was more realistic; you don't get leather when you kill a cow. I have now changed this to reduce the amount of steps you will need to do alchemy. I took this decision because it is an integral part to the game (one of the epic quests revolve around it) and I didn't want to put people off it by having three or four steps to make a leather helmet.

And, finally, I'm considering having a collector's edition of the game. This will still be free (a lot of the materials are used under Creative Common's licenses so I couldn't charge even if I wanted to) but will feature more content. The reason I don't include it in the normal bundle is simple; those of you with slow downloads speeds shouldn't be forced into downloading the extra content if you don't want it.

This is how it will work:

• Commentary mode will unlock after completing the game. It will allow you to activate nodes scattered all through the world where I will explain why I did what I did etc. Those of you that have played the Portal games will know what I mean.
  
• Signed concept art will be digital copies of all the drawings and stuff I've done while making the game.
  
• Soundtrack will be a copy of all the music I've used in the game, under the same Creative Commons license of course.
  
• GDD is self-explanatory. A completed PDF version of the GDD I'm working on at the moment in time.
  

I will only make the collectors edition if this is something that appeals to you. If you don't like it, it won't be made. Let me know what you think. Until next time XD

[lemmingllama]

Awesome stuff, its great that we can fight different monsters in one battle, will make for more strategy in beating on them. As for alchemy, I respect your decision, althouggh it might be just as amusing to set it up so that its hard to add some extra challenge. Finally, I plan on going for the collectors version, much better that way

[nemarious]

Awesome stuff, its great that we can fight different monsters in one battle, will make for more strategy in beating on them. As for alchemy, I respect your decision, although it might be just as amusing to set it up so that its hard to add some extra challenge. Finally, I plan on going for the collectors version, much better that way

Seriously... Fastest. Reply. EVAARRRR! Lol.

The different monsters take place after the first continent when you have your entire party. It was more of aesthetic change to help me with design than a game play one, there were always going to be fights with multiple species later in the game.

Alchemy wise, there will still be complex recipes for late-mid to end game equipment I just didn't want people to have to go traipsing round to different parts of the world to make one item. This way it reduces the steps to a minimum but doesn't leave it so it's hand-holding. Challenge isn't really the point of the alchemy. All the equipment you buy from shops have no additional effects, they're purely numbers. Alchemy is the main way to get armour that increases resistance to a certain element or boosts a stat and weapons that deal additional elemental damage etc. The only other way to get enchanted armour is as quest rewards.

I'm glad you like the sound of the collector's edition. Another motive prompting my thinking of this is that RPG Maker cannot create zips larger than 128mb without some fiddling. I hope to avoid said fiddling by making the package as small as possible.

Thanks for the response, I didn't know Llamas were that fast...

[nemarious]

Well, well, well... what an interesting two weeks we've had. Basically, two things have happened. Firstly, I've had to remove the links to the old version and the fonts because MU is being raped by the FBI for no discernible reason. Secondly, because of the downtime I've been considering starting some kind of dedicated service that would allow me to keep in touch with you guys without the site in similar times.

There are two options for the latter. One, and my preferred, would be for me to setup a blog somewhere (wordpress, blogger whatever). The problem with this is they don't always allow comments and feedback from you which would obviously make it less of a community series than it currently is.

Secondly, I could make a facebook account. Yes, I don't currently have a facebook account. I've never had the need to make one; all the friends I wish to keep in contact with I have their mobile numbers and emails so I've never had a use for it, until now. I would prefer not to make a facebook account because it would mean the arseholes that I don't like from school or college suddenly want to be friends with me. BUT, if that's what you guys would prefer then so be it. I could make an account and a group so you either contact me directly or other fans of the series.

Tell me which one you'll prefer and I'll begin working on it. Now, I'm going to get drunk. Have a good weekend everyone.

[lemmingllama]

I would say that the blog would be easiest, I also hate facebook and so I agree with you. Some places allow shoutboxes, so maybe you could just put one in for specifically primus related topics for our input. Plus theres always Kametsu, I doubt that it will be down anytime soon either way

[ragnawind]

I don't mind myself, which you use, but with FaceBook, you seem to be able to create Fictional character accounts, but I'm not sure if you have to have a real account or not, first, but that is up to you. It would also probably be better to have a forum type environment, since that would be easier for feedback and the like, as well as being more organized. A good and free forum service that you could use would be forumotion. Here is the site, if you are interested in that: http://www.forumotion.com/

You can also turn the forum into a blog. The 2 formats are designed to where they can be changed between a forum and a blog at will with no changes while changing or when you turn it back. It will all still be the same, just organized differently depending on how you use it.

EDIT: I currently have a forumotion forum myself , if you want to see a sample of what it is capable of as a free service. It is in my profile here.

[nemarious]

I actually ended up making a facebook account to help with communication for a group project at uni.

I've been swamped with other things of late so I haven't got around to making a group yet but when I do I'll post a link here and probably put in my signature. Facebook does have the benefit of facilitating comments which made it better than a blog.

I'll try to get something done soon but I'm busy til Wednesday at least.

Thanks for your input though, I'll check out the site another time if I get chance/remember to.

[nemarious]

I've finally got round to making a facebook page for the game series. It can be found here.

I'll be updating the page and this thread concurrently from now on. Sorry for the long wait, I've been dealing with a lot of shit including the recent death of my Nana on Sunday. I'll see you when I see you.

[Koby]

Might be better as a Page rather than a Group at FaceBook.

I'm sorry about your nana.

[nemarious]

Might be better as a Page rather than a Group at FaceBook.

I'm sorry about your nana.

Thankyou.

Any particular reason why a page would be better? Surely having everyone on the group get the info at the same time would make more sense? I don't know much about facebook, which is probably evident but I like the idea of being able to access it from my main account as well rather than having a different one. I'm probably just being a tard and a page would make more sense but I don't know if there's any particular pos/negs to either way so I went with a group because it was easier.

EDIT: Nevermind, it has been explained to me that a page is better than a group. I'll get onto making a page tomorrow and I'll update the thread with the details.

[nemarious]

Facebook page is now up and operation. It can be found here and in my signature.

Both the page and this thread will be updated concurrently from now on.

[Connor175]

Damn, this is interesting. I'd love to see more screenshots though and keep up the good work!

[nemarious]

Damn, this is interesting. I'd love to see more screenshots though and keep up the good work!

I'm afraid they're aren't any screenies of the game in its latest version because it's still in pre-production. I'll be posting some concept art on the facebook page, I'll probably post it here too. I'll be posting screenshots from in the game once work has begun on it for certain though.

[Connor175]

Ah, I see. Well I'll be checking either when I get the time.