AR-PUH-GUH! version 1.3beta

New to you guys (most likely), AR-PUH-GUH!
more specifically version 1.3beta
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AR-PUH-GUH!
-Version 1.3beta-


A game full of side-quests, secret bosses, and many much other things.
A rather basic RPG, but with my own twist on things.

-Story-
-You have just appeared.
-At first you see nothing, but then paths begin to appear as a voice instructs you to choose a physical form to fully exist.
-Soon you find out that once peaceful communities are now in a state of fear of war. The reason behind it is a group of violent people simply known as J.O.Y.
-You must bring an end to these hypocritical tyrants, unite the shattered world, and fully experience the world of AR-PUH-GUH!!!

-Features-
If want you a full and detailed list on things (slightly out dated though), you can go here: http://thecoconutofdoom.webs.com/index/gpf.html
However, I'll go on a brief rundown of things.

-This game not focused on story, but rather gameplay and elements I like seeing in RPGs. Those being side-quests, secret bosses, humor, and other things.

-The ultimate goal of this game is to take you to level 99 without much grinding at all and beyond that (you'll have find out what I mean by beyond for yourself, when you can that is). I despise grinding, and I'm not going to just let things fork over monstrous amounts of EXP either.

-There's not just one way to head through the game, being you can choose one from NINE different starting classes to begin with, and you can recruit more members at your leisure, along with more classes than just those starting ones!

There are plenty of other things, but you can view the above page to find them out (a bit too much info for a lone thread, at least imo).

-Media!?-
Who doesn't like screenshots?

First area madness with the JubJub Bird!

Let's not forget the frumious ....banders.

Jubs, Banders, and Jabberwock just chillin' one of the new areas!

Want something more...moving? Then here are a few videos!

http://youtu.be/riWpFxktCdw
An old preview! I really like the music I have for this one.

http://youtu.be/7zXp-jw1Scc
A teaser commercial that I've actually posted here earlier, but here it is again!

http://youtu.be/lddkspz5DE4
http://youtu.be/fCVpXR0ZN2E
Both of these are pretty hideously old enemy showcases, but they're still enemy showcases! There are more enemies than what are shown here, so don't think ALL is spoiled for you!

-Minor History on Progress-
This whole thing started out as an experiment way back around May time 2010, I do believe, and it grew up from there.
With a few minor concepts and trails and errors with the game engine, a full game was starting to hatch, though I wasn't fully sure about releasing it to the public.
Obviously I eventually decided to release it publicly, and that occurred around version 0.8alpha.
My art style was pretty hideous at first, but with practice I've improved quite a bit.
Over the past few years, AR-PUH-GUH! (originally just known as "rpg"), has seen a few releases, but being about one and half years since it's previous release, there's been many updates, some of which are thanks to upgrades to the OHRRPGCE itself.
And now, 1.3beta has graced our presence.

DOWNLOAD: http://www.slimesalad.com/forum/files/arpuhguh13beta_186.zip
MAC VERSION: http://www.slimesalad.com/forum/files/mac_arpuhguh13beta_107.zip
LINUX VERSION: http://www.slimesalad.com/forum/files/linux_arpuhguh_108.zip

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

I think music should be a very low priority for you at this point. I've been playing Ar-Puh-Guh as I promised, but the game itself is making it unusually hard on me. If there's one thing I've learned during my half hour of playing (ed.: I am not done, I'm going to try to play it to its end), it's this:
Ignore all the signs.
They are the most heinous things I've seen in an OHR game in a while. Not a single one of them has been useful. The information they offer falls into one of three categories: boring and rambling, unnecessarily obvious (examine golden treasure balls to get treasure!), or outright lies (there's a treasure over here, except wait! No there isn't.) I had to ragequit when one of these signs actually came to life and wiped my party.

I have to ask, Meowskivich, is this your purpose here? To troll your players and get a big laugh out of it? Because if so, that's fine, you got me! You got me good. Well played. But there's lots of OHR joke games around, they litter the OHR downloads much like Kaizo hacks on SMWCentral. They grate on people's nerves after a while.

But let's say you actually are serious about this project, and that this beta shouldn't be indicative of what your future updates will provide. When will your next update be? What will it change? Depending on your answer, I'll get back to you again with a more detailed list and/or commentary of what needs to be improved with your game.

By the way, about the misleading sign post and enemy sign post scenarios. If those are what you describe as
then you are sorely tempting me to refuse every side path available until the end of the game. I usually love secret, optional stuff, but not when it carries such an overwhelming risk of killing me.

For some reason the use of the word heinous made me laugh hard enough to produce a tear XD
Don't ask why, as even I don't know. Maybe it was coupled up with the fact that a lot of those early game signs do just throw you for a loop.

But no, I'm not really trying to go for a "kaizo" game, the thing is (if memory serves, mind you it was about one and a half years ago that I released that version) I made some strange miscalculations with the balancing, and though it's kinda...fixed(?) now (a wee bit), balancing is among my top priorities right now (been making out some calculations on how powerful I want to have the heros be and when, and thus being able to adjust enemies accordingly so).

Sorry about making you rage quit dude

And to address your second half of your post, I'll have to do that later as I just noticed I have to leave for an interview. But worry not, I'm working pretty hard and long hours on this game attempting to make it as fun as possible. -Meowskivich

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

Sheesh, really? No wonder you didn't upload it to the Slime Salad game list.
In hindsight, the sign posts are pretty hilarious, and I'll think back on them fondly, but it's not something that should go right into the beginning of a game that wants to be taken seriously.
I've noticed that you're crediting help from the starmen.net forums, and I'm assuming that they are the targets of your frustrated attempts to explain the OHRRPGCE controls profusely. With them in mind, I'd recommend being nicer to the player and giving them a gentler learning curve at the start of the game. You'll also need to teach the player about every single class you introduce. Not in a block of text, but through gameplay. Giving the player specific enemies according to the class that was picked that will test said class's abilities right from the start. (this is just one example, there are countless ways to teach your players) Make it so that by the time a new class of character joins the group, the player knows the ins and outs of the class they're currently playing as.
And of course, if you have a lot of classes, this is extremely difficult. I don't even think Final Fantasy H did a good job with this, and it was made by the OHR senior Fenrir-Lunaris. If you don't think you can handle it, I'd recommend toning down the number of classes you have. Drastically. A lot of games, even the Elder Scrolls series, boil down to "Fighter", "Mage", and "Thief" style classes.

Rename this thing to 'I Wanna Be The RPG!'

Alrighty, I retorn.

And continuing where I left off:
I can not say for precisely sure when the next version will be out, I'm hoping June here, but it'll likely be within a week or two of the next OHRRPGCE version release as there is a bugfix in that release that I am eagerly awaiting that will make part of my work go from taking for-stinking-ever to a snap.

And as for the next releases new features? Well, it's been an eternity since the previous versions and what with me giving out some up-to-date versions here and there to my testers, I've kinda forgotten a lot of terrible stuff left in the old version. I'll try to list what I can, the list is perteh hooge.

- PK BALANCE OMEGA (This telekinetic power will alter both the hero and enemy stats to being a more pleasantly enjoyable experience, and will help serve to keep things more happy for all in the future. Costs 5 PP.

- Graphical updates! I have "prettied" up a bunch of things, namely all humanoid sprites. There are a few other things here and there, and I'm starting to try and implementing my newly-discovered shading techniques. This is one of those things I try to update every so often, basically when I get better art drawing and shading and such.

- Original musics! I will be having all music replaced with 100% original pieces from either me, or one of two guys who actually know what they're doing. Again, one of those things that will get replaced once I improve upon my skills.

- A new dungeon, a new town, a new secret boss, and the mud heap dungeon will be totally revamped....or at least 95% will be, the third floor and and first floor will remain the virtual same (adding in a bit of "scenery" to make it more appealing, and I do believe I shrunk the first floor a bit).

-Side-quests! (finally)
You'll be able to do three of the "hunters guild" quests, and participate in the first arena challenge.

- Story progression! You'll be able to go up and fight the first major boss of the game.

- As with any new dungeon should have, there are new enemies! You can get a look at some new ones in one of the above post's enemy showcase videos, though not all are shown.

-A bestiary will be added! With this fabulous toy you can get the low-down on how to go about smiting these foes with relative ease. Mostly only monsters will show, so people you may fight will not show up.

- A more detailed world awaits! I've added some trees to spruce the island up a bit, really. Also, some folk will say different things after certain events.

- Critical hits are a go!

- Options menu full o' goodies. some stuff trivial, but there's a nice surprise I stuck in...

- There might be a dancing monkey in here somewhere...

- There's a help menu to aid both the people who aren't familiar with the OHRRPGCE's controls and those who've never played AR-PUH-GUH! before. This will also have an elemental resistance reference guide for in case of forgetfulness.

- A carp ton of items have been added.

- and there's a billion other little things that I don't really care to mention.

So yar.
I see you and Mastah K have ninja posted while I was writing this massive thing, and to address the "being taken serious"....who says I'm wanting to be taken serious? This is certainly not any joke RPG, but it's not serious either. However, I am considering sticking in a couple o' tags to say "you have talked to this one guy" so that the Signclops won't just be there, you'd have to "accept" this quest, as it were. If you're so passionate about it, I'll get on it. However, he is supposed to be the easiest of the optional bosses anywho.

And teaching the players about the characters through gameplay instead of text? That's kinda what I did for the first area there, however I don't exactly expect EVERYONE to get EVERYONE (that's a lot of part members!), so I'm not going to have them play as each separate individual. If you wish to take them for a spin, go ahead and try each of them out in the start. The only one that is actually added into the game that you can't just try would be a Portalist, and it's a special class anywho. I AM having gradually progressive town with higher and higher level hires that you can get, but each party member is gonna take a nice bite out of your wallet though. Pretty much the level is displayed by 1/100 the price of hiring them.

(In uncle voice) One more thing, the whole deal with the Signclops is actually the first in a continual "side-quest" throughout the game. Just so ya know.

And that should do it for now, any further questions can gladly be submitted through the enclosed taco. Or you could, you know, post here. If you don't want to do it the fun way that is. I like tacos. -Meowskivich

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

People with no previous OHRRPGCE experience are often thrown by the controls. The OHRRPGCE controls are really only intuitive if you have experience with Emulators or old DOS games.

That is why I really want to have mouse support in GAME in the future.
http://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/Plan_for_improved_mouse_support

um...k?
Any reason you brought this up?

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

Oh, I just saw this:



and it just reminded me how often new users get confused by the OHRRPGCE controls.

Sorry, didn't mean to sidetrack the thread :)

It's k, I was just really confused there for a moment.
Though I honestly don't know what built-in mouse support would do for my game...other than, mayhaps, some minigames.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

With your latest response in mind, I'll wait until the next release to delve any deeper into this game. There are definitely some things that I noticed in my first impression of the game that I would like to see fixed or changed, and these are all relatively easy and feasible:
-Put some effort into the title screen to make it presentable
-Take another look at your Global Text Strings, some of them are too long for their text boxes (overwriting a save, for instance). I feel like I should mention here that playing with the strings and making jokes out of them is a bit more dangerous than usual, since they're so vital to a player's understanding of the game. I, for one, would never want anything other than a standard "Quit Game" message that will let me exit the game. Maybe I'm over-thinking this; get other people's opinions on it.
-If Portalists aren't going to be in the next release, don't make any enemies drop Portalist-exclusive items.
-Try to keep mobile NPCs out of one-block-wide passages using invisible walk-on NPCs or Zones, it's annoying when they get stuck in there
-Add an "Are you sure" Yes/No confirmation message for when the player selects a class. This is extremely easy to implement and there is no reason for you to not do it.
-Put the class-selecting Hero at the start in Party Slot 2 with plotscripting so that when the first character joins, he'll be in slot 1. This is a bit nitpicky, but it is a bit startling when the second character joins and replaces the first one on the map. Actually, wait, can you do plotscripting? If not, then ignore this detail, you can deal with it later.

All that said, I really do look forward to your next release. It's a fascinating thing to look at a game's evolution as the years go by.

Wait, where did you pick up on there not being portalists in the next version!? I never said that O_o
They'll most definitely be in, and are a lot more affordable too.

The title screen is gonna stay, at least for now I'm afraid. There's a bit of story to it that most people will probably never find out without asking.

As for global text strings being too long, I'm sorta working on it, though it's not in high priority. Sure, it's not (*shudder* I despise this word) "professional", but right now I'm more focused on "does it work" rather than "am it prettie".
Also, I've been thinking about the ending the game name myself, and it'll likely be changed some time, but again: low priority.

And for everything else pretty much, I'm kinda working on it. However, can't say I really gave much thought about scripting the initial hero into slot 2 though. Also, I don't know that script off the top of my head if you wish to assist my laz- erm, assist me in my utmost time of need...yes. I would be much obliged (though I don't really have hopeless need of finding it unless there's something insane about it that I should know. a quick ctrl-F and away I go).


And in semi-related news, I finally beat Legend o' Zelda: Skyward Sword so that I have proper complaining rights (I have plenty to rant about that game, but I'd rather take that negative criticism elsewhere). What significance this applies to all ya'll is that I will probably be coffee-fueled and working on AR-PUH-GUH! now.

Any questions pertaining to the game, features, and futures can be asked here, and any other random interrogation you may have for me can be done in private messaging. This is Meowskivich, not signing off, as that's not my styles, but rather dragging out his outro to say "goodnight, I'll probably slap a status report in the thread tomorrow night and ask me questions so that I get more excited to work on this" - Overlord Grand Meowskivich the First of the Thirds

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

Who wants stat-growth calculations!? And perhaps equipment stats and some enemy stats? I've pretty much made out the basic calculations on some stuff, and being able to build off that I can figure how to "properly" balance possibly everything and insane calculation errors should be gone.
One of the worst offenders of the insane miss-balance is the Mud Heap dungeon. Somehow (again, I don't know HOW, it just got that way) the creatures of that dungeon feel like I'm punching a wall of cement....with an already broken fist. Once again, I say that I'm not sure exactly how it came about to be that way.
Seriously! That dungeon was intended to be the first place you go to do some exploring! Instead the forest, intended to be harder, turns out to be a cake-walk, being nearly forgettable, and the Mud Heap just turns out to be insane with pathetic boss.

Again, crazy miscalculations. But yes, who wants stat charts!? And possibly some knowledge on how I went about distributing the points in the ways that I did.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

No one wants anything? Okay then, just thought I'd share something to help you with your decision on how you'd like to build up your starting team, but whatevs.

In other news, I'm hyped up on more caffeine than most people should be, but that's okay cuz my body hates energy and is pretty dern immune to any energy-producing anything. What this means is I will be working on AR-PUH-GUH! while simultaneously assisting one o' me best amigops (yes, amigops) with Dragon Warrior 7 and asisting me mom with carrying things.

COFFEEEEEEEEE!

P.S. I think the cOfFeE is taking full effect as I'm finding it hard to resist the urge to shout "COFFEE" at somebody every few seconds COFFEE.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

It's time for "WHO WANTS TO HELP MEOWSKIVICH!?"!

Because I'd like to get things done pretty much ASAP, and my skills with plotscripting are rather minimal, I was hoping someone could assist me with something real quick.

You see, there is going to be a sort of "hunt" side-quest going on that involves you going up to a board and accepting a hunt. You can have as many hunts as your little heart desires accepted at a time, using "accepted this hunt" type of tags and other fanciful things.

What I want help with is some script that goes through a whole list of (possibly hundreds) tags to see what section of script needs to take place. It's all going to be pretty much the same, the guy will say "grats on a jaerb well done hamstray" and then fork over your reward, no prob.

...basically I'm trying to say I need someone to throw together some "if, then" statement
for a list and ending with the generic textbox. am I getting my point across?! I can't tell.......... by the way, coffee is wearing off.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x