Hory Shit! An Original(?) Erebus Production - Rockwell and Friends

[Bias Bus]

An ongoing project created and worked on by yours truly. The game itself wasn't really going to be that big, as it was merely a test to see if I could actually create a decent looking game by using RPG Maker VX (the same RPG Maker, Snaafu was made with for those who wished to know/cared). However, as time dragged on and my interest towards the game grew, I decided to lengthen it and add more things to it. Although I still see this as practice for an even bigger project I have in mind once I finish this, I can say that it's far from what it used to be in the past.

The story centers around a young, upstart adventurer by the (titular) name of Rockwell, who begins his morning with news of a looming threat that has been predicted by the local oracle; Blair the Witch. Over the course of his journey to uncover just what the hell's going on, Rockwell will meet up with various things that will prove to be friendly or hostile to him, namely, monsters, eldritch horrors, misplaced Touhou cameos, etc.

...No, this game doesn't take itself seriously. But given the one who made it, was that any real surprise?


Rockwell and his crew, searching for One Piece.


Yeah...don't ask.


Wait, what? You're seriously gonna use this?


A preview of one of the zany enemies that Rockwell n' his band of misfits will face in the next release, coming whenever I feel like working again!

Download Link -> Rockwell n' Friends (DEMO) *New Link because I fucked something up in the game*

RTP Data -> Get this shit now.

Be sure to let me know what you think as well as give me some feedback on what you want to see changed, what can be improved upon and all that. This is really my first time messing around with VX so I dunno how good or bad I'm doing with this (I just know that I had fun with it), so any advice/pointers and whatnot would be appreciated. Also any reports of bugs, glitches or generally anything strange about the game (in a technical sense) are more than welcome too.

Spoiler:

Yes, the title screen is supposed to look like that. I forgot to change it when I compressed the game data.

[Stuffman]

Just got Vivian so I'm not that far in, but...

This is something I see in a lot of newbie RPGMaker games, so let's learn about TILE EFFICIENCY. TILE EFFICIENCY is all about not making your maps so big that the player has to waste a whole lotta time walking around.

Let's use Rockwell's house as an example:


Damn, son! Look at all those wasted tiles. Three quarters of the floor is totally useless, but you still gotta walk across the whole thing.

Now let's introduce some TILE EFFICIENCY!


Barely any detail removed, and the door was moved closer to where you start. Now you only gotta walk six spaces to get out, instead of like twenty.

Now of course dungeons are an entirely different matter since you gotta cross space to fight battles, but this is important to keep in mind when working on town maps. Always ask yourself, "can I squish this down any more without losing anything important?"

As far as gameplay goes I think you need to work on how you're balancing out Rockwell's arsenal. His starting glove hits twice, which by default makes it better than any weapon he gets that hits just once because most of his damage comes from his strength, not from the weapon itself. Dogfight makes it so you can hit twice with any glove but then you're spending mana to do it and the scaling of the formula (looked in the database) is gonna make it of questionable efficiency once he gets into higher levels.

Also lol at Lizz being the "muscle" of the three, but doing the least damage and having the least HP.

[trancehime]

Yeah, I recall telling you that I had a minor biff with the map design.

I do like the writing, it's quite good compared to other newbie RM games.

I think that's something I'd like to applaud a lot. Stuffman pretty much laid down what needs criticisms.

[Bias Bus]

Ah, right. I sorta figured that I was making things a little more spacious than they should be. The reason why lies within the fact that I thought it'd be neat to make the inside of the houses just as large as they appear on the outside. I dunno what I was thinking at the time, but still, I thank you both for pointing this out.

As for Rockwell himself, I actually was supposed to change the starting fist weapon to have so it didn't hit twice in a row but I put it off. Again, thanks for showing me that I forgot about this sorta thing.

Also, if you haven't been able to fight the chicken monster in Abraxas Mountains then it's due to me not changing the Battle BGM after I deleted the old one which wasn't a looped .ogg file. I re-compressed and re-uploaded the demo link which fixes both this bug and also made the indoor maps smaller. Also those with the actual VX program will be treated to some new tracks added in the Sound Test too.

Thanks for playing.

[dustyjo]

Oh man I'm totally playing this later.