Heart of the OHR Contest

[JSH357]

Motrya 24.5% is on track for release in the contest. I'm kind of nervous about it, but I do think it's going to be an amazing game when it's complete.

[NayusDante]

All of my shops and items are written in. Homework took over my afternoon and evening today, so not a whole lot of progress.

So far, almost all of my graphics are stock (mostly from the 8-bit set). However, I got around to doing my first original monster today - the pippin. These guys are my token slimes, but I figured they should be fuzzy. Still messing around with the design, might give them some kind of ears, and I'm still tweaking the palette.




The first chunk of dialog is actually written, though I've yet to implement it. I'd like to get the whole dialog script completed before I go putting anything in, for order's sake. I'm keeping it simple and true to 8-bit style, so no fancy scripting or anything. There's a few events in the game that will have animation, but no lengthy cutscenes.

[guo]

Pippin looks cool, and I like the backdrop and battle sprite. Are they original?

[Baconlabs]

Everything's coming along swimmingly for Viridia.
I finished writing all the dialogue and such several days ago, and most of the graphics were done months ago. I think I might actually make the deadline for once.

This is a single chapter of the game, and it is a bit story-heavy, but I reckon it'll be enjoyable nonetheless. Many text boxes feature a portrait of some kind, and some characters get the privelage of changing their expression here and there.

[NayusDante]

Pippin looks cool, and I like the backdrop and battle sprite. Are they original?

No, those are from the 8-bit set. Check Hamster Speak 36, it's in the art section. I'm just using those resources as placeholder graphics until I can do all original stuff. At the very least, I could modify them a bit, if time becomes an issuue.

[NayusDante]

So tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday, I'm going to have plenty of time to get EF done.

Done:
Fix the Boat (I wasn't reloading passability, durrr - now it's fine)
Fringed the Overworld (Wasn't going to do this because DQ1 MSX didn't have it, but it looks a lot better. It's meant to be retro and authentic, not just archaic.)
Items, Equipment, Shops, Inns (All the data is in OHR, just need to assign them to NPCs, and I already know who goes where.

ToDo:
NPCs, Dialog (15% so far?)
Scripting
Character Stats
Character Skills/Spells
Monster Stats
Monster Skills/Spells
Original Graphics & Music
Testing, Revision
Title Screen (Animations, etc...)
Ending, Credits

I'm kind of hung up on difficulty. Should I keep the traditional need for lots of grinding, or should the battles be quick and easy? Given the size of Dragon Quest as a reference, and how long Dragon Quest takes to finish, how long would you prefer that a similar game takes to finish?

[Bob the Hamster]

If you go with grind-heavy, I hope there are lots of kinds of enemies to add variety

[NayusDante]

There's approximately 35 random encounter enemies.

For the contest, I might lean toward easy. I have this horrible vision in my mind of a judge spending hours having to grind and giving a low mark for it. Maybe I'll have three or four sets of encounter tables that jump up a bit spaced out through the game, requiring a level or two to grind before advancing.

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

Hey, someone's actually using those 8-bit graphics I made! Even if it is just for placeholder graphics until original ones or edited versions can be made, that's still kind of neat.

I don't think anyone's used them at all up until now, unless maybe someone else used them for a game during my recent mostly-inactive period and I just missed it.

[The Wobbler]

I'm kind of hung up on difficulty. Should I keep the traditional need for lots of grinding, or should the battles be quick and easy?

Neither. Grinding isn't difficulty, it's a waste of time. Quick and easy is a waste too. Make the battles challenging but not overly frequent, so that the player actually feels like they accomplished something by surviving.

[ncw64]

Whew, so I've made little to no progress in quite some time now. My computer was fried (no surge protector) but we were able to recover all the data off of the C-drive somehow. Last I remembered I only had maybe two hours to the slow player of game-play time. I'm probably going to stop it here and try to work on balance and stuff if I get around to it. I hope to see some awesome games in December, and I hope you all enjoy mine as well!

[Newbie Newtype]

I'm kind of hung up on difficulty. Should I keep the traditional need for lots of grinding, or should the battles be quick and easy? Given the size of Dragon Quest as a reference, and how long Dragon Quest takes to finish, how long would you prefer that a similar game takes to finish?

DW1 is pretty short if you tone down the leveling. I wouldn't use DW1 as reference anyway, it's much more like an MMO than a lot of JRPGs.

Not enough games make leveling up fundamental. Most people don't realize that you can gain a lot of EXP from doing other tasks, like exploring new areas.

[JSH357]

Hey so I forget if I ever made my feature request, but I actually have two that I can't decide between.

1) expand the damn 16 color palette import option to where authors have the option to simply not use a palette and import 24bit!! - quoth Charbile

2) Expand the resolution of the engine beyond 320x200. I'm talking at least 640x400 if not higher.

I am leaning toward #2 being my default request, so I'm just going to leave this here and say that's my feature request.

[Bob the Hamster]

Hey so I forget if I ever made my feature request, but I actually have two that I can't decide between.

Actually, you already got your request. See <a href="http://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce ... eatBugs</a>.

Also, both of those requests are much harder than anything anybody else requested ;)

1) expand the damn 16 color palette import option to where authors have the option to simply not use a palette and import 24bit!! - quoth Charbile

This one actually will happen. TMC and NeoTA have a plan in-progress for that. I can't guess at when it will be finished.

2) Expand the resolution of the engine beyond 320x200. I'm talking at least 640x400 if not higher.

This one is extremely hard. It is not impossible, and I would like to see it too, but other stuff has to be solved first.

Actually, in some very simple form that only works for purely scripted games, it would probably not be too terribly hard (the backends already support higher resolutions), but by doing it that way, it could create a backwards compatibility nightmare for adding higher resolution support for games that want to use built in features and not script every dang thing.

We could (and probably should) have a whole thread to discuss the issues that need to be solved before higher resolution support can be added.

[JSH357]

Well, good to have the ideas being thought about at any rate. Charbile is absolutely right that the first one is a major thorn in various sides.