Author Topic: 東方百画志 ~ The Wish Under Celestial Star (Possibly dead?!) (Read 102719 times)

Chen · « **Reply #60 on:** March 10, 2010, 05:23:58 AM »

I have some ideas-
Shinki+Yumeko = HOW MANY TIMES HAVE WE SEEN THIS BEFORE?
Reimu + Genjii = Reimu and her turtle
Chen + Orin + Nazrin = Food chain.

ChaoStar · « **Reply #61 on:** March 10, 2010, 04:22:19 PM »

Also, is there any content for us to see yet? This sounds interesting. ^__^

If not, would you kindly tell us when you will release a beta?

Ghaleon · « **Reply #62 on:** March 10, 2010, 07:43:35 PM »

Quote from: Wonderful☆Life on March 10, 2010, 04:22:19 PM

Also, is there any content for us to see yet? This sounds interesting. ^__^

If not, would you kindly tell us when you will release a beta?

I imagine Garlyle is currently rushing over to activision to buy the right to use Blizzard's "soon"?

Garlyle · « **Reply #63 on:** March 10, 2010, 08:38:44 PM »

Oh shit, that's trademarked?

Contentwise I'm approximately 1/4th of the way through the first floor, I suppose? But with that said that's actual playable content that I'm into developping now - I've only got about two major bits of code that haven't been worked out yet (And it's just getting the game to display face graphics instead of sprites and rewriting some code to work with that correctly), and even then, those are just things to make the game look right, they aren't actually stopping playability.

Like I said, there absolutely will not be a beta release or anything of it before Double Spoiler comes around, but that'd definitely be too soon for all I still have to do.

Ghaleon · « **Reply #64 on:** March 15, 2010, 05:35:55 AM »

STB2 has been out for some time now.. like a day. WTF is taking so long?! gawddd.. (Yes I'm kidding for those of you who aren't sure >=p).

Garlyle · « **Reply #65 on:** March 15, 2010, 02:31:18 PM »

Final Fantasy XIII is what happened @_@

Expect to see characters using their StB2 cards. And Hatate as well. I'll work her in somewhere.

Garlyle · « **Reply #66 on:** March 21, 2010, 11:02:24 AM »

God, I feel like I've been doing way to much game playing due to a combination of marathoning FFXIII in my off-work hours and playing Double Spoiler -at- work.

Well, maybe that means it's time to switch back into game design mode. Right +_+

Hmm, I'm pondering if I should consider a 'floor by floor' release schedule, much like how other games like PoSR and Gensokyo's Everyday Story have been going. Hopefully in doing so I can set up something where you can just transfer your save data over onto the new version as necessary. Hopefully.

ChaoStar · « **Reply #67 on:** March 21, 2010, 12:37:30 PM »

Quote from: Garlyle on March 21, 2010, 11:02:24 AM

...marathoning FFXIII in my off-work hours...

Well, maybe that means it's time to switch back into game design mode. Right +_+

Hmm, I'm pondering if I should consider a 'floor by floor' release schedule, much like how other games like PoSR and Gensokyo's Everyday Story have been going...

*highfive*

Um, a floor to floor release would be cool. Gensokyo Everyday Story is more open world, so we just release a new version when enough changes accumulate.

Garlyle · « **Reply #68 on:** March 22, 2010, 03:37:16 AM »

Quote from: Wonderful☆Life on March 21, 2010, 12:37:30 PM

*highfive*

Um, a floor to floor release would be cool. Gensokyo Everyday Story is more open world, so we just release a new version when enough changes accumulate.

Ahh, I see 8D

Well, I'd like to say then that there may be a release within a couple weeks, but it depends on how much time I end up spending with my best bud who just came back to town between semesters.

Any thoughts on implementing a sort of skit system (Ala the Tales Of X games) where you can get your characters to talk to each other after various events/meetings/spending time in the party together/etc.?

ChaoStar · « **Reply #69 on:** March 22, 2010, 04:06:28 AM »

Quote from: Garlyle on March 22, 2010, 03:37:16 AM

but it depends on how much time I end up spending on FF13 and with my best bud who just came back to town between semesters.

Any thoughts on implementing a sort of skit system (Ala the Tales Of X games) where you can get your characters to talk to each other after various events/meetings/spending time in the party together/etc.?

Fixed that for you, bro.

Skit system? Never really considered it. It sounds like a cool idea. And I suppose you could just have trigger areas that'll activate a conversation once, if you have met some prerequisite.

Garlyle · « **Reply #70 on:** March 22, 2010, 04:09:04 AM »

1. Actually, I was marathoning FFXIII because I was renting it and had to return it on Thursday (Did finish it in time... at about 5AM on the day I had to return it @_@)

2. The way I plan to do it is by having a 'camp' type option on the menu which brings up options like saving and party changing (If they're available), as well as any conversations that have unlocked.

MysTeariousYukari · « **Reply #71 on:** March 22, 2010, 07:07:10 PM »

I like the camp idea

But you should give a name, or at least a number to each camp conversation, so that players can tell them apart.

Just a quick question, have you thought of giving the game a New Game+ sort of feature? If you haven't thought of it, would personally recomend it, it gives games so much more replay value. Like something similar to in the Tales Of games.

Garlyle · « **Reply #72 on:** March 22, 2010, 07:31:11 PM »

Yeah, I probably do plan on some sort of New Game +, but that'll be a fair distance away. We'll see how it goes.

And yes, the skits are going to be easily discernable.

Also, since I actually made a crapload of progress today...

Have some screenshots.

Current F1 completion progress estimated at 25%-30% ; base code progress estimated at 80% of all the 'little cleanup things' I need to do.

MysTeariousYukari · « **Reply #73 on:** March 22, 2010, 07:36:30 PM »

Quote from: Garlyle on March 22, 2010, 07:31:11 PM

Yeah, I probably do plan on some sort of New Game +, but that'll be a fair distance away. We'll see how it goes.

And yes, the skits are going to be easily discernable.

Also, since I actually made a crapload of progress today...
*insert a screenshot of a funny attack name*

*insert a screenshot with a funny line here*

Have some screenshots.

:* Wow, I actually want to help with this know, anything I could do?

The New Game+ suggestion was of course knowing that it won't be for a while.

Garlyle · « **Reply #74 on:** March 22, 2010, 07:45:31 PM »

Well, if you're familiar with RPG Maker VX (Which is largely the same as other RPG Maker engines), the thing I could benefit from the most at the moment is someone to do some Animation databasing. While I'm capable of it, it's not something I consider myself all that skilled at or really want to have to do too much of, but I've got several moves which need their own animations. Having someone working on those would be wonderful for me.

If you're not, the other two things I could use do also relate to graphics, and more or less fall into one thing - even if I do have the Tasofro-esque portraits for most characters, they were (almost) all taken from TVTropes - where they were shrunk down to 250x250 .jpg files, which does a bit of a number on their quality and means they need a lot of pixel-by-pixel edge cleanup, which... that's not fun. If someone could go digging for a collection of these at their original size, it would be appreciated like mad; and if not, if you'd be willing to spend a bit of time cleaning up edges (I know, it's a sucky job, I've had to do a lot of it already @_@), that would be nice too.

Those are the two major things I need right now. The last one that I'd like to have is someone drawing up custom battlers to be used for the characters when you fight them (Right now you see their cut-ins during the fight, which is kind of disappointing, though not too bad in the end?), but that's a very major task (As that constitutes a CRAPLOAD of characters over the course of the full game - it's... 6 boss characters on this floor alone, which seems about average as my current plans go...) and I'm not going to wait up on it.

Oh, and,

Quote

*insert a screenshot of a funny attack name*

That's actually the name of one of Momizi's spellcards in Double Spoiler, is the wonderful part 8D

ChaoStar · « **Reply #75 on:** March 25, 2010, 03:00:47 AM »

Quote from: Garlyle on March 04, 2010, 02:02:43 AM

but as many are playable as I can manage (Should be roughly 90-100 characters). Every playable character will also have their own advantages, disadvantages, and spellcards to bring into battle.

May I say that you are either very brave, or a very crazy man, sir.

Garlyle · « **Reply #76 on:** March 26, 2010, 03:47:30 AM »

I vote on the side of 'crazy'.

Speaking of which I got a lot of mapping done. I'm most of the way through 1F now, because there's only a couple small areas that remain at this point.

Map-wise, anyway. I still need to actually put together the battles and test them for balance, handle a couple major events... you get the idea. Plus there's still a few things to handle code-wise.

But we're getting somewhere @_@

Still trying to decide exactly how I want to do the music. My current setup allows for approximately 2-3 tracks per game represented, with characters with a similar purpose sharing themes; but I was pondering doing something like two for each game, with one being the 'standard' battle theme for characters from that game and one being the boss theme when fighting them. @_@ It might be simpler that way, but it might not... ragh @_@

(And of course, music is always a huge chunk of a game's data when it's in MP3 form. Even if I drop the quality down notably - which, I apologize in advance, is what I'm going to do - I still can't throw in every character's theme song. There'd be just too many, especially when counting area music and stuff)

Speaking of which, if you guys know of any remixes that sound really RPG-esque, pass them on to me as YouTube videos or something. I don't keep a huge collection myself of anything not by ZUN or dBu, so...

Ghaleon · « **Reply #77 on:** March 26, 2010, 04:33:32 AM »

I say you bribe SSH to custom-make Touhou remix tracks for each character and event!

Seriously though, that's a tough one. It would just be silly battling Kisume while headbanging to Satori music or whatever.

I think that whatever you choose, you'll be unsatisfied, so in your case, you should probably go with whatever is easiest. That's probably why Labyrinth of Touhou just has their own non-Touhou music.

I'll keep an ear out for RPG-esque Touhou music though, one thing that comes to mind though is the "what is Touhou" youtube video where Reimu and Marisa are explaining what Touhou is with the Chinese tea playing (I'm not sure which circle that Chinese tea is), probably make some good town music (unless you like your town music extra hyper/happy, I personally like prefer calm and content...Unless it should be hyper like that magic village Geo in legend of mana or whatever).

Garlyle · « **Reply #78 on:** March 26, 2010, 05:06:42 AM »

Quote from: Ghaleon on March 26, 2010, 04:33:32 AM

I say you bribe SSH to custom-make Touhou remix tracks for each character and event!

Seriously though, that's a tough one. It would just be silly battling Kisume while headbanging to Satori music or whatever.

I think that whatever you choose, you'll be unsatisfied, so in your case, you should probably go with whatever is easiest. That's probably why Labyrinth of Touhou just has their own non-Touhou music.

I'll keep an ear out for RPG-esque Touhou music though, one thing that comes to mind though is the "what is Touhou" youtube video where Reimu and Marisa are explaining what Touhou is with the Chinese tea playing (I'm not sure which circle that Chinese tea is), probably make some good town music (unless you like your town music extra hyper/happy, I personally like prefer calm and content...Unless it should be hyper like that magic village Geo in legend of mana or whatever).

Yeah, I know it kind of feels odd, but such is one of the sacrifices I need to make. I think I'm going to focus on 'grouping' characters and using a theme for them. I still want it to have Touhou battle tracks for the actual battles... I think I'm going to go with the "this battle theme for this group of characters" type of construction, honestly. As opposed to just doing it by game, but by characters with some sort of connection sharing a theme.
...So you won't get into a fight with Wriggle to "Lunatic Princess" - but it'll likely be a remix of "Eastern Youkai Beauty" or "Plain Asia" or whateverthehellMystia'ssongwas, because she'll fall into the same music group as Mystia, Keine, and possibly Rumia. Similarly, Momiji's battle track will be shared with Aya and Hatate ; Daiyousei shares her with Cirno and quite probably Letty, etc. etc.

...Which makes me debate if I want to have a few different boss themes in there too that aren't Touhou-themed and use them on major battles, and let the various themes play for random encounters, unless it's the first time you'd run into a particular theme song. Hm.

...Like you said, there's just no easy answer to this one and I'm not going to come to an "I'm completely happy with this" answer. Maybe I should drop the idea of using the Touhou battle themes and just find a bunch of awesome ones and use those? Hmm. Ffft.

Ghaleon · « **Reply #79 on:** March 26, 2010, 05:42:16 AM »

I'm multi-tasking atm and don't have the time to re-read the entire thread. But I seem to recall you mentioning you don't intend to make your game like Labyrinth of Touhou in the sense that some of the characters you don't get until the game is already virtually over, or more than halfway thru the game, that you could choose your party and stick with it for the majority of the game...I THINK. I personally think that sounds good regardless (or maybe just make a NG+ where you can do that I guess).

But anyway, if that's the case... I mean, why do you need to make a themesong for each character unless you have to battle them all (or most), and if you have to battle them all, how can you have them availalbe for most of the game? a 100 character boss rush at the start of the game? Somehow I doubt it. I hope you get what I'm saying. Do you plan on actually making the boss' stats scale with level somehow, and allow you to choose their order (kinda like megaman), somehow I doubt that.

Of course the whole point is moot if you do NOT intend on allowing the player to have access to the entire character roster relatively early in the game.

Garlyle · « **Reply #80 on:** March 26, 2010, 05:48:55 AM »

Yeah, it's a progressive thing, admittedly. I will probably do something like a "New Game +" at the end to allow you to restart the game with everyone already available, but yeah. Although my goal is more or less to let you play with 'anyone', this is also a story that has everyone in it. Although it might have been cool to do a 'go in any order you want' type of thing, it just doesn't fit with it. Especially as a few canon characters play a role that's a bit bigger than just "They're in the tower, fight them and they'll join" - hell, pretty much everyone has some reason to be there.

So, I suppose what I should say, is that I intend to create a game where, eventually, pretty much everyone is playable or appears. Getting some of them right off the bat will be damn near impossible in a couple cases, and even once you complete the game you might not have seen a couple characters yet! But with that said, the game's highest-ranked challenges aren't going to be canon Touhou characters, so you'll be able to use everyone by the time it comes for the biggest showdowns.

The reason music is getting to me is that what I plan to do is a system that replaces battle music based on who's in your party - for instance, if Momiji's in your active party, there's a chance to hear "Life on the Mountain" (Or whatever I end up picking) as your battle theme. Since a huge number of characters also show up as bosses... yeah.

EDIT: Fuckit, I'm sitting down and figuring this out.

Axel Ryman · « **Reply #81 on:** March 26, 2010, 05:49:15 AM »

Garlyle · « **Reply #82 on:** March 26, 2010, 11:52:07 AM »

Thanks muchly for those. There's a few I'm going to be using, even if none will be showing up in this demo; they also prompted the discovery of several other awesome tracks.

Speaking of which, I seem to have pinned down my battle music situation. It should total out to about 40 battle tracks total now - 30 'groups' of tracks, referring to groups of characters who share random battle tracks, and it should be about 4-10 'boss' tracks: a 'miniboss', 'boss', 'floor boss', and 'EX boss' track as standards, plus extra tracks for the story's major bosses who will show up later.

And getting that done prompted a lot of other work @_@ Things are coming along really smoothly, I'm surprised. Beta testing might actually start around this time next week, then it'll be a couple days before I'll release the first floor of the game.

~~I shouldn't be setting a deadline though I'm terrible at meeting them~~

EDIT: Not that I'll specify what the problem is, but a problem: The issue with all programming is sometimes figuring out why it's not doing what you want it to, but in this case, trying to figure out where what I want it to do is failing is driving me nuts right now. Damnit. It's not critical, I do have a 'backup' option, but... it'll reduce a lot of the style D:

Ghaleon · « **Reply #83 on:** March 26, 2010, 06:02:26 PM »

Mmmm finding bugs is something every programmer hates doing... Except me that is. I can try and help with that if you're willing. I am familiar with c++ and c#. Though I rekon I can debug others too.

Fishin · « **Reply #84 on:** March 26, 2010, 10:08:28 PM »

Quote from: Garlyle on March 22, 2010, 07:45:31 PM

If you're not, the other two things I could use do also relate to graphics, and more or less fall into one thing - even if I do have the Tasofro-esque portraits for most characters, they were (almost) all taken from TVTropes - where they were shrunk down to 250x250 .jpg files, which does a bit of a number on their quality and means they need a lot of pixel-by-pixel edge cleanup, which... that's not fun. If someone could go digging for a collection of these at their original size, it would be appreciated like mad; and if not, if you'd be willing to spend a bit of time cleaning up edges (I know, it's a sucky job, I've had to do a lot of it already @_@), that would be nice too.

This should have most of them if you haven't already found them. Good luck, I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

Seian Verian · « **Reply #85 on:** March 26, 2010, 11:09:34 PM »

So, I just discovered this thread, and I think it's freaking awesome. I'll try and help with finding the music!

To start with, THIS is the ultimate version of Necro-Fantasy, I don't care what anyone else says.

Mention if you have any specific requests by the way, and I guarantee that I can find something that works if it exists.

EDIT: Something for Rumia

And epic Marisa

Or just plain awesome Marisa

And Aya

For the Perfect Maid~

Oh god please use this for Yuyuko

Youmu slashes all apart Till When?

Of course, our favorite Shinigami~

Never forget the Yama

Not even the Akis are forgotten!

Iku

Something epic for Byaku~

Or maybe this is better for the lovely saint~

Of course, Mima~

ORANGE~!

Still more of a stage theme than anything, but it's an awesome one that needs to be used~

But our favorite Tiger Youkai still does get something~

Two somethings in fact~

Or was that three?

Of course, can't forget her little mouse~

The umbrella shall never be forgotten again!

Parsee doesn't need to be jealous anymore! Not when there's such an awesome remix of her theme around~

(More quite possibly coming)

Garlyle · « **Reply #86 on:** March 27, 2010, 03:29:35 AM »

Well, the bug in particular that I was having was with one of the scripts I've implemented - among other effects it allows the game to play animations on your characters. There's a couple problems though. The first being that it doesn't play animations for characters beyond the fourth (As a four person party is the default), for some reason I can't understand. The second is that even for those it does, the animations are a little... off-center, because it can't draw them where it should be because they won't show up.

So I'm just going to turn off the animations against the party, at least for the time being. Right now it doesn't necessarily look that great anyway.

Thanks, Fishin; someone had already thrown me that in a pool, but the more places I have that linked the less I am likely to end up losing it 8D

And thanks for more music suggestions 8D I -think- for the time being I've got most of what I need, though I have a suspicion I'm going to be hunting down more orchestral tracks to use for the dungeon crawling itself.

Garlyle · « **Reply #87 on:** March 31, 2010, 03:51:58 AM »

So I finally got a ~~beta~~ alpha tester (A really good bud of mine) to take an attempt at the game.

He ended up giving up about 1/6th of the way through the first floor because of rage.

I'm not sure if this means I'm doing something right in terms of difficulty, because he's not used to dungeon crawlers and hasn't played Touhou Labyrinth, etc., but all the same... I hope it means I'm doing this right 8D

In other news, I can confirm that the first release is roughly 2/3 of the way to a formal beta (A couple choice people will get to run through it, then I'll be releasing it 8D)

Ghaleon · « **Reply #88 on:** March 31, 2010, 08:54:40 AM »

Quote from: Garlyle on March 31, 2010, 03:51:58 AM

So I finally got a ~~beta~~ alpha tester (A really good bud of mine) to take an attempt at the game.

He ended up giving up about 1/6th of the way through the first floor because of rage.

I'm not sure if this means I'm doing something right in terms of difficulty, because he's not used to dungeon crawlers and hasn't played Touhou Labyrinth, etc., but all the same... I hope it means I'm doing this right 8D

In other news, I can confirm that the first release is roughly 2/3 of the way to a formal beta (A couple choice people will get to run through it, then I'll be releasing it 8D)

I haven't played your game so I can't really be sure. But I like em hard...But that is the 1st floor. You might want to try and remember not to make what you are making so far as hard as you want the game to be, unless you want no difficulty progression as you progress.

But sounds like we'll all see for ourself soon. yay.

Garlyle · « **Reply #89 on:** March 31, 2010, 04:45:49 PM »

Well, honestly, I'm designing the difficulty around Hard mode, with the intention of replicating Touhou Labyrinth's feel in some ways. The first jump in enemy difficulty is meant to jar you a bit and get you to be unafraid to use your skills in battle, as even if the attack commands can actually deal damage in this one, leaving an excess of enemies early in the battle can lead to you suffering some very significant damage, until such time as you've grown stronger and can handle things easier without needing to abuse your best skills. Later on, once things like full-party heals and revival spells are actually available to you, well, the difficulty's definitely going to ramp up again.

Either way, it's not set up to be unfair (yet), but because I'm testing it on Hard, it's occasionally easy to miss the fact that Normal... isn't quite so much easier as I'd like.

Easy is Normal but with 5x the EXP, so... you don't even really need to grind and you'll be overpowered for a given area.
Normal is intended for the feeling of still having challenging bosses, but enemy battles that don't feel too difficult.
Hard is intended to keep you on your toes, with your party possibly being run over if you're not careful (See most of Touhou Labyrinth)
Lunatic is intended to cause RAGE.

And yes, I have been modifying AI routines based on difficulty. Enemies have new attacks on higher difficulties, or are more likely to use their more dangerous ones, on top of having higher stats.