Shining Fanwork: Shining Force III: 16-bit Pre-Alpha Demo Available

[Cullsoft]

First battle: It appeared that Grace really didn't seem to get her turn per round, and seemed like Masqurin was almost getting two goes per round because of this.

Boooooooooooooooo!

In all seriousness, sounds like a great achivevement in getting the engine working this far, even if there are still a fair number of bugs that need to be worked out (which is pretty much inevitable at the beta stage). I'm hoping to give the demo a go sometime tomorrow, with some proper feedback.

[FinFish77]

Is there a way to get this to no launch in full screen mode? I'm trying to run it in Windows 8 but I keep getting a DirectDraw error. From what I've read online, it sounds like it's only a problem when running in full screen mode.

[Diego_Didakus]

I run it in windows 8.1 without problem.

[Tor_Heyerdal]

First floor of the first house: I was unable to bring up the menu system, regardless of what key I was pressing to be either A or C. I also had difficulty searching the chest that is in the far room on the first floor because of this, and once it eventually did search, I can't recall what it was that actually ended up opening it

When you say "the first house", do you mean "the house that you start out in; the Republic HQ", or do you mean "the first house that you go into after leaving the Republic HQ"? If you mean the former, then I can't imagine what could be causing that. If you mean the latter, then that makes sense. The Republic HQ is on its own map, and the church is on its own map, but *all* of the other interior houses all share one big map, and I only put the menu code on the map for the Republic HQ first floor, and the Saraband *exterior* map. So you won't be able to use the menu anywhere else yet. However, you can still search searchables on such maps by simply facing the thing you want to search and then pressing Enter, or Z, or Spacebar (which are all the "C" button), to search it without bringing up the menu.

EDIT: It just occurred to me, you said "the first floor of the first house", not just "the first house", which means you had to have been talking about the Republic HQ, because it's the only building with more than one floor. And it also occurs to me that some people in other parts of the world say "first floor" to mean what I would call "the second floor", and I think that that might be what's going on here, and confused me. lol. Did you mean "the floor above the ground floor in the Republic HQ"? If that's the case, then yeah. Like I was saying above, the second floor is on its own map, and I haven't put the menu system into that yet.

Talking to people who ask questions: If you talk to someone who asks a question, the Yes/No thing stays on screen until you enter a new house/section.

That's never happened to me before, and I've tested those pretty extensively. I'll try to look into it though.

First battle: It appeared that Grace really didn't seem to get her turn per round, and seemed like Masqurin was almost getting two goes per round because of this.

That's because Grace's Agility is just abysmally low to start. I currently have the initiative working like this: Everyone has an initiative value that starts at 0, and then everyone adds their agility to it over and over again, and then when someone's initiative reaches 100 (I'm pretty sure agility can go over 100, or definitely at least near it, so I'd have to raise that number), their turn takes over, and when their turn ends, their initiative goes back to 0. So Grace's agility of 4 just isn't reaching that 100 point very quickly at all, and sometimes, other people will get two turns before she gets one. I did it like this because I figure it must not be just a raw "high agility first, low agility last, everybody goes once, start over" kind of a thing, because if it was, then no one would ever get two turns in the same round, but that *does* happen sometimes. So I figured it must work something like this. NOWADAYS though, I figure maybe not because of this *exact* issue. I'm *pretty* sure that Grace got more turns than this in the original. I've been meaning to get around to harvesting some data on this issue, but I haven't found the time yet. I'm getting to it though. So now I'm wondering if maybe it *is* that system I just described which I thought it wasn't, but maybe there's some kind of random proc based on the Luck stat for getting two turns in the same round? I dunno'. This is why I want a data miner to hack into the game for me! xD

Also, the battle doesn't end if Synbios gets defeated

Yup. I know. That's not a bug so much as I just haven't gotten around to that yet. :P

Bar the above, this is an absolutely fantastic achievement, Tor. Good luck to you getting further on with it!

Thanks so much, Swalschy!

Also the jingle turns off the music with some items.

Yeah, this was because I redid the system that plays the jingles a while back, and I forgot to update a few of the item finds with the new system.

But good job again, this makes me want to replay SF3.

EDIT: Whoops, didn't realize that this is two pages now. Have more comments to respond to. xD

Boooooooooooooooo!

Don't worry. It'll be fixed, I promise. ^_^

In all seriousness, sounds like a great achivevement in getting the engine working this far, even if there are still a fair number of bugs that need to be worked out (which is pretty much inevitable at the beta stage). I'm hoping to give the demo a go sometime tomorrow, with some proper feedback.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Is there a way to get this to no launch in full screen mode? I'm trying to run it in Windows 8 but I keep getting a DirectDraw error. From what I've read online, it sounds like it's only a problem when running in full screen mode.

I think that these URLs here should help you out, FinFish77.
http://rpgmaker.net/articles/887/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://everlongrpg.proboards.com/thread/1794" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The information contained in these two links should be enough to solve your problem, I think, one way or another.

I run it in windows 8.1 without problem.

Excellent. Good to know. Just one question, what in the hell is Windows 8.1? xD

EDIT: I edited the first quote response in this post with some further consideration.

[Lord Oddeye sama]

First battle: It appeared that Grace really didn't seem to get her turn per round, and seemed like Masqurin was almost getting two goes per round because of this.

That's because Grace's Agility is just abysmally low to start. I currently have the initiative working like this: Everyone has an initiative value that starts at 0, and then everyone adds their agility to it over and over again, and then when someone's initiative reaches 100 (I'm pretty sure agility can go over 100, or definitely at least near it, so I'd have to raise that number), their turn takes over, and when their turn ends, their initiative goes back to 0. So Grace's agility of 4 just isn't reaching that 100 point very quickly at all, and sometimes, other people will get two turns before she gets one. I did it like this because I figure it must not be just a raw "high agility first, low agility last, everybody goes once, start over" kind of a thing, because if it was, then no one would ever get two turns in the same round, but that *does* happen sometimes. So I figured it must work something like this. NOWADAYS though, I figure maybe not because of this *exact* issue. I'm *pretty* sure that Grace got more turns than this in the original. I've been meaning to get around to harvesting some data on this issue, but I haven't found the time yet. I'm getting to it though. So now I'm wondering if maybe it *is* that system I just described which I thought it wasn't, but maybe there's some kind of random proc based on the Luck stat for getting two turns in the same round? I dunno'. This is why I want a data miner to hack into the game for me! xD

I'm 100% sure that everyone is supposed to get one action per turn unless they have boss status. I may have gotten two actions in a row from the same character once or twice, but that was only because of the agility variance ; the first action is the last of turn 1, and the second action is the first of turn 2. It's the random value that's added to your agility score that may cause this to happen.

There was that one time in a team game when Kahn got several actions in a row but that was a glitch! (He even gained HP regen from no apparent source). Sometimes you might lose actions too (at least in SF2, not sure about 3), also a glitch.

[Cullsoft]

What Lord Oddete Sama said - I'm pretty certain I've never seen dropped turns in SF3, nor do I think it's happened to me in any SF game.

Could be that it needs some sort of checksum routine at the end of each turn, maybe something along the lines of...

Code: Select all

1) At that start of each battle, each character (force members and enemies) is assigned a flag named "ACTED_THIS_TURN"
2) At the start of each turn, set all ACTED_THIS_TURN flags as "false"
3) Once each character has acted in a turn, set their ACTED_THIS_TURN flag to "true"
4) At the end of each turn, check all ACTED_THIS_TURN flags - if any are still set to "false", let them act next (possibly using RNG for order)
5) Once all ACTED_THIS_TURN flags are "true", start new turn and goto 2 (i.e. set the flags back to "false")

On a related note, the closest I've seen happen to skipping a turn is when enemies get to act in a turn, but decide not to act even when in a position where their AI should get them to act (e.g. Abdark surrounded by the Force) - I'd gather from this that there's something in their AI routine that says "do nothing", maybe with a very low chance of occuring (the Abdark example did happen through EXP grinding).

[Swalchy]

When you say "the first house", do you mean "the house that you start out in; the Republic HQ"

Yes, the Republic HQ House is what I was referring to. Just couldn't think of what to call it other than the "first house"

EDIT: It just occurred to me, you said "the first floor of the first house", not just "the first house" ... it also occurs to me that some people in other parts of the world say "first floor" to mean what I would call "the second floor", and I think that that might be what's going on here, and confused me.

Yes, to me, the main floor of any house is the "Ground floor":


I was referring to the first floor, that is, the floor above the ground floor:


But as you say, the menu system isn't active on this section of the map yet

That's never happened to me before, and I've tested those pretty extensively. I'll try to look into it though.

Screenshot, after talking to the woman with the flowers:


I did a bit more testing with this, and this only happened if I pressed X (B) to negate the answer to the question ("no"). If I moved over to the "No" and pressed space/enter/Z/C, then everything acted as normal. However every time I pressed X, the Yes/No thing would stay, as seen above. This happened even after I moved it from Yes to No to Yes a few times. Hope that helps with finding out the issue!

So now I'm wondering if maybe it *is* that system I just described which I thought it wasn't, but maybe there's some kind of random proc based on the Luck stat for getting two turns in the same round? I dunno'. This is why I want a data miner to hack into the game for me! xD

As LOS and Cullsoft have said, this is actually the system in place. Everyone gets at least one go per round. Certain bosses get two (Faile, Arrawnt, Vandal, Shiraf etc., etc.), other bosses only get one IIRC (Giant Queen Worm, Mage en route to Balsamo etc., etc.).

Everyone else at least gets one

Again, excellent work on this. Once you've ironed out the above, I would pretty much say all that's left is to sort out the battle maps, and you could, technically, release it out for us to test the in-battle mechanics and give you feedback.

"All" that's left, I say

[Tor_Heyerdal]

I'm 100% sure that everyone is supposed to get one action per turn unless they have boss status. I may have gotten two actions in a row from the same character once or twice, but that was only because of the agility variance ; the first action is the last of turn 1, and the second action is the first of turn 2. It's the random value that's added to your agility score that may cause this to happen.

What Lord Oddete Sama said - I'm pretty certain I've never seen dropped turns in SF3, nor do I think it's happened to me in any SF game.

As LOS and Cullsoft have said, this is actually the system in place. Everyone gets at least one go per round. Certain bosses get two (Faile, Arrawnt, Vandal, Shiraf etc., etc.), other bosses only get one IIRC (Giant Queen Worm, Mage en route to Balsamo etc., etc.).

Alrighty, then. I'll change that up tomorrow.

I did a bit more testing with this, and this only happened if I pressed X (B) to negate the answer to the question ("no"). If I moved over to the "No" and pressed space/enter/Z/C, then everything acted as normal. However every time I pressed X, the Yes/No thing would stay, as seen above. This happened even after I moved it from Yes to No to Yes a few times. Hope that helps with finding out the issue!

Yup. That helped me isolate the issue, and I have now fixed it.

Again, excellent work on this. Once you've ironed out the above, I would pretty much say all that's left is to sort out the battle maps, and you could, technically, release it out for us to test the in-battle mechanics and give you feedback.

I'm just gonna' take it one battle at a time. :P

[Swalchy]

Just one more quick question:

Is there going to be an option to change the resolution, especially on full-screen mode? At the moment I can only play it in Windowed mode really, due to the fact that at my full-screen resolution of 2560x1080 (21:9 29-inch monitor), everything looks quite ridiculous

Looking forward to more battles!

[Nash Vegas]

Tor you are doing an awesome job. Sorry life has been busy and I haven't had a chance to even think about mapping out places for you. If time opens up I would be happy to attempt helping again

[Cullsoft]

Okay, playing through it, here are some of the bugs I've noticed... For the record, I do some UAT as part of my job, and have tried to take a somewhat professional approach to testing the demo. (So whilst my comments may seem overly picky and may have been raised already, you may want to consider this a bit of a professional grade freebie! )


- During the demo explanation, you mention a few glitches with the font you're already aware of (I immediately noticed the character spacing was too narrow, buit that was mentioned as under investigation). One that didn't seem to be mentioned was that on a couple of points the text extends beyond the edge of the window, such as here:

sf316b-textwindowoverlap.png

WALKABOUT COMMENTS:

- When viewing the status screen, if you press C the status screen stays in view while you're able to move. The only way to clear it seems to be to open the status menu again, remembering to press ESC instead.

sf316b-statusscreenpersists.png

- Shame that with the overhead view of the Republic HQ during the opening, Benetram and Grace are visible, so they don't get their sudden reveals when they're introduced.

- Not sure about Masqurin "pushing" Synbios back during the flower scene... kinda makes it look like she's shoving him aside to speak to Dantares, which feels out of place. May be best to keep them standing like this through the scene (i.e. their positions after Masqurin shoves back Synbios):

Code: Select all

| DG
|SM

- When I first picked up a medical herb (from the chest in the building to the left of the entrance to Saraband), it came up with unwindowed text saying "Synbios found the medical herb" "Synbios gave the MH to Dantares", then repeated the text (along with "item found" jingle) in windows as normal. I then picked up the Health Bread from the house on the opposite side of the bridge, but the text only appeared in windows as normal.

- You may want to consider reviewing the save file screen's appearance, as it currently only has room for 4 character sprites.

- Critical bug: When I try to go to "use" in the menu, I get the "tried to search directly ahead" messages, after which Synbios cannot move. When I then try to use the menu, odd things seem to happen with the main menu jumping to the item menu unexpectedly. Somehow I managed to find a way for it to select the "Status" screen", and after closing this was able to resume movement. This bug does prevent items from being used (dangit, I wanted to test the Health Bread worked correctly! :P)

- The shopkeepers don't appear to be set up correctly yet. When I speak to the item seller, her introductory message appears as windowed text, but it then cycles through the rest of her messages as unwindowed text:

sf316b-shoptext2.png

- Also, on a less important note, the shopkeepers are missing their portraits.

- Similar to the Status Screen bug mentioned earlier - when speaking to the guard at Garvin's mansion, I accidentally pressed "B" when given a choice, and the "Yes/No" menu remained on screen. (As with the status screen bug, restarting the conversation and reloading this menu returned it to normal)

- During the cut scene with the Imperial guards (before Medion appears), I was able to bring up the menu when the message box wasn't showing, such as when Campbell is scolding and dismissing the Imperial guards.


BATTLE COMMENTS:

- At present there doesn't appear to be an ability to deselect a character so you can scroll around the map or open the battle menu (i.e. map/save/status).

- The fade in/out for attack animations felt too long and drawn out. Any chance this could be cut to, say half as long? Also, there seems to be a lengthy pause after the battlefield fades back in before the next character is selected.

- Will weapon type advantages (e.g. Sword<Lance<Axe<Sword) be implemented?

- When HP is lost, the red background remains for the lost HP (in SF3, this goes transparent) - will this be changed, or is it intended to reflect the 16-bit games?

- Magic effect values may need to be modified. Masqurin's Blaze L1 spell should be doing around 10HP damage, but only did around 7.

- Critical bug: WHERE THE F*CK IS GRACE'S HEALING EXPERIENCE?!?!?!?

- Enemies don't seem to be dropping any gold when defeated - has this not been implemented yet?

- Critical bug: Casting Egress causes the game to crash, returning a dialog box with the error message "Event script references an event that does not exist" when the church loads.


AESTHETIC/DESIGN COMMENTS

I'm guessing many design elements, in terms of graphics and music, are going to be addressed later once the battle engine is completed. However, from what the Demo shows I've got a number of recommendations:

- As I gather has been rasied previously, I'm afraid a lot of the sprites do look more like simple edits of other 16-bit SF characters than 16-bit conversions of the SF3 charatcers. One of the things that made SF3's character models stand out from previous SF games was how every charcter's model was unique and reflected their appearance, rather than the reused pallette switches that previous SF games were limited to. However, those that have had new sprites made (such as Hayward and the Masked Monk) are looking good.
- On that note, Grace is so obviously doing a Vicar Khris cosplay (as are the rest of the Force doing SFCD cosplays)... Note that she doesn't wear a hat until AFTER promotion - I think some of the WIP screenshots showing her sprite without a hat felt more suitable.
- The charatcer portraits don't animate - no blinking or speaking. Makes them feel kinda... static. Implementing this would help make the game feel more Shining - not just in SF3 terms, but with all Force games.
- Maybe it's just me, but the SF2 jingles sound out of place with the SF3 music and setting...
- Find a consistent ground with the music - stick with either MP3s of the in-game score, or MIDI variations. The MIDI version of "Antagonism" (the music from the start of the Medion scene) felt out of place after the MP3 versions of the Saraband and Republic HQ MP3s.
- Thought bubbles! These helped to give the characters and cutscenes more depth (such as Masqurin's exclamation mark before rushing to catch up with the others when they meet Medion) - particularly when it comes to Sc2(?) and 3 where they're used abundantly.



As I said earlier, getting this far is a great achievement and shows a great deal of promise, though after playthrough there do seem to be a number of bugs and issues that need to be addressed before it reaches a fully playable state. There's a lot of work to be done before it suitably earns the title of being a 16-bit rendition of SF3, but that's a hefty goal to achieve in any case.

(P.S. I had more screengrabs to add for some of the bugs, but am limited to adding three without going through uploading them remotely, so went with the three I felt would be the most useful.)

[Lord Oddeye sama]

Nice job with the suggestions there, Cull. If you want to upload pics easily though, imgur.com. No account needed and it's drag and drop from the main page.

[Swalchy]

I use dropbox and the public folder section for when I want to show images. They usually get deleted after a month for a thread like this

[Tor_Heyerdal]

During the demo explanation, you mention a few glitches with the font you're already aware of (I immediately noticed the character spacing was too narrow, buit that was mentioned as under investigation). One that didn't seem to be mentioned was that on a couple of points the text extends beyond the edge of the window, such as here:

I hadn't caught that particular text error, but I have caught it in other places, and I will be going through and thoroughly double checking all the text for these sorts of things.

When viewing the status screen, if you press C the status screen stays in view while you're able to move. The only way to clear it seems to be to open the status menu again, remembering to press ESC instead.

Umm... No it doesn't? I just tested it. If you mean the *actual* C key, then that just acts as another X/Numpad0/Backspace/Esc key, and it successfully cancels out of the status menu. If you mean the keys that are acting like the original C key on the Genesis/MegaDrive/Saturn controller(s) (Enter/Z/Spacebar), then all that does is cause you to go into the stats window for whichever character you have highlighted. And if you're already in that window, it doesn't do anything at all. You'll have to show me some kind of evidence of this, because as it stands, I cannot recreate this (and I've been trying).

EDIT: Unless maybe you did this after breaking the menu. I haven't tried that yet.

Shame that with the overhead view of the Republic HQ during the opening, Benetram and Grace are visible, so they don't get their sudden reveals when they're introduced.

Yeah. I agree with that. I'm not sure what do about that, short of panning the camera over to the left until you gain control or something, but somehow I don't think that having the entire left half of the screen being black would make for a very pretty opening sequence.

Not sure about Masqurin "pushing" Synbios back during the flower scene... kinda makes it look like she's shoving him aside to speak to Dantares, which feels out of place. May be best to keep them standing like this through the scene (i.e. their positions after Masqurin shoves back Synbios):

Masqurin pushes Synbios because that's what she did in the original. That happened in the original, so it happens here.

When I first picked up a medical herb (from the chest in the building to the left of the entrance to Saraband), it came up with unwindowed text saying "Synbios found the medical herb" "Synbios gave the MH to Dantares", then repeated the text (along with "item found" jingle) in windows as normal. I then picked up the Health Bread from the house on the opposite side of the bridge, but the text only appeared in windows as normal.

This has been addressed already. I changed the system for the jingles on item finds, and I forgot to go back and change a few of the item finds for the new system, so those ones are wonky.

You may want to consider reviewing the save file screen's appearance, as it currently only has room for 4 character sprites.

I didn't make the save file menu. That's just the in-built RPG Maker 2003 save menu. You can't change it. However, the limitation of four face graphics is going to be worked with. Instead of just displaying the first four members of your party, the way it's going to work is like this: The first portrait is going to show the face of the hero of your party (which, of course, will be Synbios throughout all of Scenario 1), the second portrait is going to show a small screenshot of the location where your game is saved (not necessarily the exact screen that your game is saved at, but just a shot of the locale), the third portrait is going to show a screenshot of the chapter screen for what chapter you're in, and the fourth portrait will be a shot of the title screen of what Scenario you're in.

Critical bug: When I try to go to "use" in the menu, I get the "tried to search directly ahead" messages, after which Synbios cannot move. When I then try to use the menu, odd things seem to happen with the main menu jumping to the item menu unexpectedly. Somehow I managed to find a way for it to select the "Status" screen", and after closing this was able to resume movement. This bug does prevent items from being used (dangit, I wanted to test the Health Bread worked correctly! :P)

This has already been addressed (both here in the forums, and in-game during the foreword). Only the status menu works. If you try to use any other menus, you're going to break the menu system.

EDIT: You can use the Health Bread in combat, if I recall correctly.

The shopkeepers don't appear to be set up correctly yet. When I speak to the item seller, her introductory message appears as windowed text, but it then cycles through the rest of her messages as unwindowed text:

Yup. Haven't programmed in the shop system yet. Those messages that they spew out are all just temporary placeholders. I would have thought this to be self evident. =P

Also, on a less important note, the shopkeepers are missing their portraits.

Yup. Just haven't gotten around to that yet.

Similar to the Status Screen bug mentioned earlier - when speaking to the guard at Garvin's mansion, I accidentally pressed "B" when given a choice, and the "Yes/No" menu remained on screen. (As with the status screen bug, restarting the conversation and reloading this menu returned it to normal)

This has already been addressed here in this forum, and I've actually fixed this now (which I've also already mentioned. =P)

During the cut scene with the Imperial guards (before Medion appears), I was able to bring up the menu when the message box wasn't showing, such as when Campbell is scolding and dismissing the Imperial guards.

This has already been addressed here in this forum. It'll be fixed for the next build.

At present there doesn't appear to be an ability to deselect a character so you can scroll around the map or open the battle menu (i.e. map/save/status).

This has already been addressed here on this forum, on the main forum thread checklist, and in-game.

The fade in/out for attack animations felt too long and drawn out. Any chance this could be cut to, say half as long? Also, there seems to be a lengthy pause after the battlefield fades back in before the next character is selected.

Actually, you can't see it, but it's loading and moving a whole bunch of crap around while the blackscreen overlay is up. However, I don't think that it needs to be up for quite as long as it currently is, and I am actually planning to shorten that a bit.

EDIT: Oh, also, that delay after the animation sequence: I'm planning to shorten that too.

Will weapon type advantages (e.g. Sword<Lance<Axe<Sword) be implemented?

Yes. In fact, I just implemented weapon skill increment last night.

When HP is lost, the red background remains for the lost HP (in SF3, this goes transparent) - will this be changed, or is it intended to reflect the 16-bit games?

This is intended to reflect the 16-bit games.

Magic effect values may need to be modified. Masqurin's Blaze L1 spell should be doing around 10HP damage, but only did around 7.

This has been addressed here in this forum. Also, I've fixed that now. =P

Critical bug: WHERE THE F*CK IS GRACE'S HEALING EXPERIENCE?!?!?!?

This has been addressed here in this forum (I think), and in the main forum thread checklist.

EDIT: This has now been fixed.

Enemies don't seem to be dropping any gold when defeated - has this not been implemented yet?

Yeah, this just hasn't been implemented yet.

Critical bug: Casting Egress causes the game to crash, returning a dialog box with the error message "Event script references an event that does not exist" when the church loads.

Every time I add a new system into the game, it seems to break Egress. lol. I have to go back and fix it again.

As I gather has been rasied previously, I'm afraid a lot of the sprites do look more like simple edits of other 16-bit SF characters than 16-bit conversions of the SF3 charatcers. One of the things that made SF3's character models stand out from previous SF games was how every charcter's model was unique and reflected their appearance, rather than the reused pallette switches that previous SF games were limited to. However, those that have had new sprites made (such as Hayward and the Masked Monk) are looking good.

My game is intended to be in the style of those "previous SF games". This is quite intended. I want it to feel like it never jumped consoles.

On that note, Grace is so obviously doing a Vicar Khris cosplay (as are the rest of the Force doing SFCD cosplays)... Note that she doesn't wear a hat until AFTER promotion - I think some of the WIP screenshots showing her sprite without a hat felt more suitable.

Are you sure about that? You wanna' bet money on it? lol

The charatcer portraits don't animate - no blinking or speaking. Makes them feel kinda... static. Implementing this would help make the game feel more Shining - not just in SF3 terms, but with all Force games.

Firstly, not *all* Force games. You ever play any of the Gaiden titles on the Game Gear? None of those had animated portraits, and we all loved them just the same. However, this is actually a limitation of RPG Maker 2003: it doesn't process picture commands while message text is on-screen. BUT!!! I've recently discovered a patch that removes this limitation! So this will actually probably be implemented eventually.

Maybe it's just me, but the SF2 jingles sound out of place with the SF3 music and setting...

I disagree. However, in the finished product, I intend to provide an in-game option that the player can toggle for SFIII music or a custom arrangement of the classic music, and the option to use the SFIII jingles or the SFII jingles. And by default, they'll both be set to SFIII.

Find a consistent ground with the music - stick with either MP3s of the in-game score, or MIDI variations. The MIDI version of "Antagonism" (the music from the start of the Medion scene) felt out of place after the MP3 versions of the Saraband and Republic HQ MP3s.

What MIDI version of Antagonism? There isn't even a track called Antagonism that plays there. The track that plays there is called "Accident", and it's an mp3 which happens to be taken *straight* off the OST just like all the other tracks used in it so far. So if you think that that track is somehow subpar, then you're gonna' have to take that up with whoever designed and released the OST. xD

Thought bubbles! These helped to give the characters and cutscenes more depth (such as Masqurin's exclamation mark before rushing to catch up with the others when they meet Medion) - particularly when it comes to Sc2(?) and 3 where they're used abundantly.

The classic SF games never had this. And I don't think mine will either. I can't imagine any way of going about those thought bubbles without making it no longer feel like a classic SF game.

As I said earlier, getting this far is a great achievement and shows a great deal of promise,

Thanks. ^^

though after playthrough there do seem to be a number of bugs and issues that need to be addressed before it reaches a fully playable state. There's a lot of work to be done before it suitably earns the title of being a 16-bit rendition of SF3, but that's a hefty goal to achieve in any case.

I would've thought that was self-evident. lol. It is pre-alpha, after all. =P

I use dropbox and the public folder section for when I want to show images. They usually get deleted after a month for a thread like this

I just use Photobucket. But it *is* a pain in the ass to sign in all the time. =P

EDIT:

Is there going to be an option to change the resolution, especially on full-screen mode? At the moment I can only play it in Windowed mode really, due to the fact that at my full-screen resolution of 2560x1080 (21:9 29-inch monitor), everything looks quite ridiculous

Yes. Sort of. There is a patch out there that you can use on RPG Maker 2003 games which will dramatically increase the windowed mode resolution. Although I'm not sure quite to what extent. I'll probably have this patch come packaged with the game in future versions so that people can apply it if they feel they need to.

[Lord Oddeye sama]

When viewing the status screen, if you press C the status screen stays in view while you're able to move. The only way to clear it seems to be to open the status menu again, remembering to press ESC instead.

Umm... No it doesn't? I just tested it. If you mean the *actual* C key, then that just acts as another X/Numpad0/Backspace/Esc key, and it successfully cancels out of the status menu. If you mean the keys that are acting like the original C key on the Genesis/MegaDrive/Saturn controller(s) (Enter/Z/Spacebar), then all that does is cause you to go into the stats window for whichever character you have highlighted. And if you're already in that window, it doesn't do anything at all. You'll have to show me some kind of evidence of this, because as it stands, I cannot recreate this (and I've been trying).

EDIT: Unless maybe you did this after breaking the menu. I haven't tried that yet.

I believe he means like this.

It was in the video I sent you, this only happens at the rebublic HQ.

Speaking of which, layer priority issue right here.

Yeah. I agree with that. I'm not sure what do about that, short of panning the camera over to the left until you gain control or something, but somehow I don't think that having the entire left half of the screen being black would make for a very pretty opening sequence.

Just move Benetram out of sight completely to the right, or make it so that a wall hides him completely.

Masqurin pushes Synbios because that's what she did in the original. That happened in the original, so it happens here.

No, here's what actually happens.
http://youtu.be/Sw0Hz0_3mNk?t=5m53s" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My game is intended to be in the style of those "previous SF games". This is quite intended. I want it to feel like it never jumped consoles.

What he means is that most of them look like edited versions of existing sprites from the previous games, not like totally new sprites made in the same style. He'd like to see the same difference ratio between SF2 and SFCD for example, as I recall there weren't too many reused sprites and even those had enough differences to be considered their own thing.

So for example a jump from http://www.spriters-resource.com/resour ... 2/1894.png" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; to http://www.spriters-resource.com/resour ... /15091.png" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; would work, and something completely new like http://www.spriters-resource.com/resour ... /48192.png" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; would be even better. Do tell me if I'm wrong Cull. Personally I'll even take edits, they don't look out of place.

[Cullsoft]

Okay, forgot to mention that I hadn't had time to fully read through all of the previous feedback, so may well have wound up repeating some issues that already been raised. My bad there, but they can be taken as confirmation that a bug's not a unique case for one user, or is an issue multiple people are noticing or concerned about (so could be raised in priority/importance/etc. accordingly).

Responding to a few of your replies (as a lot of them are question answered/bug corrected):

When viewing the status screen, if you press C the status screen stays in view while you're able to move. The only way to clear it seems to be to open the status menu again, remembering to press ESC instead.

Umm... No it doesn't? I just tested it. If you mean the *actual* C key, then that just acts as another X/Numpad0/Backspace/Esc key, and it successfully cancels out of the status menu. If you mean the keys that are acting like the original C key on the Genesis/MegaDrive/Saturn controller(s) (Enter/Z/Spacebar), then all that does is cause you to go into the stats window for whichever character you have highlighted. And if you're already in that window, it doesn't do anything at all. You'll have to show me some kind of evidence of this, because as it stands, I cannot recreate this (and I've been trying). EDIT: Unless maybe you did this after breaking the menu. I haven't tried that yet.

Okay... that opening "No, it doesn't" remark feels like I'm pretty much being called a liar and my feedback is invalidated. That hurts. The correct response should have stuck along the lines of "It shouldn't be doing that, and I can't recreate that bug. Could you provide more info on how it's happeneing?" that you took up afterwards.

I may be prepared to find time to provide step-by-step instructions on how I encountered the error. Maybe.

Shame that with the overhead view of the Republic HQ during the opening, Benetram and Grace are visible, so they don't get their sudden reveals when they're introduced.

Yeah. I agree with that. I'm not sure what do about that, short of panning the camera over to the left until you gain control or something, but somehow I don't think that having the entire left half of the screen being black would make for a very pretty opening sequence.

You could always take a bit of creative liberty with the layout of the room, making it larger than it appears in SF3. As the game's being made in the spirit of "as a 16 bit game would have been made", design changes may need to be made to fit in with how the overhead 2D scenes would have been staged that don't directly transalte from how they can be done in 3D.

Not sure about Masqurin "pushing" Synbios back during the flower scene... kinda makes it look like she's shoving him aside to speak to Dantares, which feels out of place. May be best to keep them standing like this through the scene (i.e. their positions after Masqurin shoves back Synbios):

Masqurin pushes Synbios because that's what she did in the original. That happened in the original, so it happens here.

The video Lord Oddeye Sama provided shows what happens - Masqurin walks up to Synbios and Dantares (with Danatares moving forward to her); she doesn't move Synbios - or at least doesn't make any action suggesting she's pushing him aside to speak to Dantares. Again, it's about the staging and scene direction in a 2D setting - think about how Masqurin acts in the original scene, and how this may need to be presented in 2D without necessarily being a completely step-by-step reproduction.

You may want to consider reviewing the save file screen's appearance, as it currently only has room for 4 character sprites.

I didn't make the save file menu. That's just the in-built RPG Maker 2003 save menu. You can't change it. However, the limitation of four face graphics is going to be worked with. Instead of just displaying the first four members of your party, the way it's going to work is like this: The first portrait is going to show the face of the hero of your party (which, of course, will be Synbios throughout all of Scenario 1), the second portrait is going to show a small screenshot of the location where your game is saved (not necessarily the exact screen that your game is saved at, but just a shot of the locale), the third portrait is going to show a screenshot of the chapter screen for what chapter you're in, and the fourth portrait will be a shot of the title screen of what Scenario you're in.

Sounds like a fair compromise. I did wonder if this was down to how RPGMaker's save files appeared, and how cusotmisable/modifiable they could be; sounds to me like this is very limited, but your solution sounds like a good one within those limitations.

Critical bug: When I try to go to "use" in the menu, I get the "tried to search directly ahead" messages, after which Synbios cannot move. When I then try to use the menu, odd things seem to happen with the main menu jumping to the item menu unexpectedly. Somehow I managed to find a way for it to select the "Status" screen", and after closing this was able to resume movement. This bug does prevent items from being used (dangit, I wanted to test the Health Bread worked correctly! :P)

This has already been addressed (both here in the forums, and in-game during the foreword). Only the status menu works. If you try to use any other menus, you're going to break the menu system.

EDIT: You can use the Health Bread in combat, if I recall correctly.

Okay - missed that bit in the opening, my bad.

The fade in/out for attack animations felt too long and drawn out. Any chance this could be cut to, say half as long? Also, there seems to be a lengthy pause after the battlefield fades back in before the next character is selected.

Actually, you can't see it, but it's loading and moving a whole bunch of crap around while the blackscreen overlay is up. However, I don't think that it needs to be up for quite as long as it currently is, and I am actually planning to shorten that a bit.

EDIT: Oh, also, that delay after the animation sequence: I'm planning to shorten that too.

Sounds good. I gathered there would be some work in background while the screen's blank, but hopefully the time can be shortened (at least as much as able - I gather that as the game progresses and more sprites are in use, this will have to be a noticable pause). If the fade in/out times can be cut down, this shoudl certainly help mitigate the pause.

Critical bug: WHERE THE F*CK IS GRACE'S HEALING EXPERIENCE?!?!?!?

This has been addressed here in this forum (I think), and in the main forum thread checklist.

EDIT: This has now been fixed.

Hoorah!

On that note, Grace is so obviously doing a Vicar Khris cosplay (as are the rest of the Force doing SFCD cosplays)... Note that she doesn't wear a hat until AFTER promotion - I think some of the WIP screenshots showing her sprite without a hat felt more suitable.

Are you sure about that? You wanna' bet money on it? lol

Hmmm... how does $500 Canadian sound?










Yep, she's not wearing a hat, she's wearing a headscarf. As opposed to...








...wearing a hat.

I would ask for that money, but I don't want to wind up shutting down progress on the project. So I'll be lenient on this little Grace knowledge argument. THIS TIME.

What I was primarily referring to was that the modified sprite used was of Vicar Khris, where she wears a hat; this felt like an odd choice seeing as Healer Khris wears a headscraf like Priest Grace, with Vicar Khris being more suited for Cleric Grace. However, the sprite in older screenshots looked better than either , though the headscarf would need to be added.

As a proposed idea, I've just whipped up a couple of modiciations to the old Grace sprite, adding her headscarf (I also modified her fringe and corrected her hair colour to match her artwork - though not such if this would give the sprite more colours than 16-bit sprite palletes should have):


But either way, it would look much better if the character sprites were designed from the ground up to look like the SF3 characters, rather than the tweaked versions of other SF characters used here. The current ones look fine for demo purposes, and I can see some work has been done to add details to them (such as Grace's outfit), but some of them could do with an overhaul (Synbios in particular - especially as he's the lead character!)

The charatcer portraits don't animate - no blinking or speaking. Makes them feel kinda... static. Implementing this would help make the game feel more Shining - not just in SF3 terms, but with all Force games.

Firstly, not *all* Force games. You ever play any of the Gaiden titles on the Game Gear? None of those had animated portraits, and we all loved them just the same. However, this is actually a limitation of RPG Maker 2003: it doesn't process picture commands while message text is on-screen. BUT!!! I've recently discovered a patch that removes this limitation! So this will actually probably be implemented eventually.

Why, yes I have played through all the Gaidens! Including the 8-BIT Game Gear versions! Also note that SFCD - the 16-bit conversion of Gaiden 1+2, had animated portraits.

Hopefully this is a limitation that patch can fix.

Find a consistent ground with the music - stick with either MP3s of the in-game score, or MIDI variations. The MIDI version of "Antagonism" (the music from the start of the Medion scene) felt out of place after the MP3 versions of the Saraband and Republic HQ MP3s.

What MIDI version of Antagonism? There isn't even a track called Antagonism that plays there. The track that plays there is called "Accident", and it's an mp3 which happens to be taken *straight* off the OST just like all the other tracks used in it so far. So if you think that that track is somehow subpar, then you're gonna' have to take that up with whoever designed and released the OST. xD[/quote]

I kinda guessed the MIDI wasn't named Antagonism (you'd have to know the names of each of the BGMs, and they're not widely known), but that's why I explained that it was the music from the start of the Medion scene. I'm not sure if an MP3 file was used for it, but you can clearly tell by listening to it that it's a playback of a MIDI file and doesn't match up to version heard in-game; same with the version of Medion's theme. Compare these to the music used for the Republic HQ and wandering round Saraband, which are clearly recordings of the in-game music - there's a definite quality shift between the two.



(P.S. Finally sorted out getting myself reconnected to my webspace, where I've hosted all the pictures for this post)

[Tor_Heyerdal]

What he means is that most of them look like edited versions of existing sprites from the previous games, not like totally new sprites made in the same style. He'd like to see the same difference ratio between SF2 and SFCD for example, as I recall there weren't too many reused sprites and even those had enough differences to be considered their own thing.

So for example a jump from http://www.spriters-resource.com/resour" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... 2/1894.png to http://www.spriters-resource.com/resour" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... /15091.png would work, and something completely new like http://www.spriters-resource.com/resour" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... /48192.png would be even better. Do tell me if I'm wrong Cull. Personally I'll even take edits, they don't look out of place.

Not gonna' happen. I don't understand why so many people seem to take issue with this. But if all of a sudden, I have to start upgrading every sprite, then I officially quit. I'm not doing that. That's simply *never* going to happen. Even if I *could* do it, I wouldn't *want* to.

Okay... that opening "No, it doesn't" remark feels like I'm pretty much being called a liar and my feedback is invalidated. That hurts. The correct response should have stuck along the lines of "It shouldn't be doing that, and I can't recreate that bug. Could you provide more info on how it's happeneing?" that you took up afterwards.

Really? Even with the question mark? How can I be calling you a liar if I'm asking a question? lol. I don't understand that.

You could always take a bit of creative liberty with the layout of the room, making it larger than it appears in SF3. As the game's being made in the spirit of "as a 16 bit game would have been made", design changes may need to be made to fit in with how the overhead 2D scenes would have been staged that don't directly transalte from how they can be done in 3D.

I dunno'. You've already complained about the one time I took a creative liberty. Which brings us to:

The video Lord Oddeye Sama provided shows what happens - Masqurin walks up to Synbios and Dantares (with Danatares moving forward to her); she doesn't move Synbios - or at least doesn't make any action suggesting she's pushing him aside to speak to Dantares. Again, it's about the staging and scene direction in a 2D setting - think about how Masqurin acts in the original scene, and how this may need to be presented in 2D without necessarily being a completely step-by-step reproduction.

And exactly how am I supposed to accomplish those diagonal facings? She can't face Dantares if she doesn't move up to him. It's 2D. There is no diagonal facing. If even just this tiny little creative liberty is chastised, then I'm afraid to make any more.

Sounds like a fair compromise. I did wonder if this was down to how RPGMaker's save files appeared, and how cusotmisable/modifiable they could be; sounds to me like this is very limited, but your solution sounds like a good one within those limitations.

Thanks.

Hmmm... how does $500 Canadian sound?

Sounds pretty good, because it looks like I still win. There's not one screenshot there where she's hat-less. She has a hat in every one of those shots. Just a different kind of hat after promotion. You'll also notice that the hat which I do have her outfitted in doesn't even resemble her post-promotion hat. It's clothy and flimsy, like what she's actually wearing. I'm sorry that you don't like it, but I do, and I'm not changing it.

What I was primarily referring to was that the modified sprite used was of Vicar Khris, where she wears a hat; this felt like an odd choice seeing as Healer Khris wears a headscraf like Priest Grace, with Vicar Khris being more suited for Cleric Grace. However, the sprite in older screenshots looked better than either , though the headscarf would need to be added.

The entire rest of the forum disagrees with you, which is why I changed it in the first place. And I've come to agree with them now too. It won't be changed. At least her hat won't be. I do kind of like that colour change to her hair though. I might use that.

As a proposed idea, I've just whipped up a couple of modiciations to the old Grace sprite, adding her headscarf (I also modified her fringe and corrected her hair colour to match her artwork - though not such if this would give the sprite more colours than 16-bit sprite palletes should have):

... Not a chance. That makes her look like she's a member of the Crips or something.

But either way, it would look much better if the character sprites were designed from the ground up to look like the SF3 characters, rather than the tweaked versions of other SF characters used here. The current ones look fine for demo purposes, and I can see some work has been done to add details to them (such as Grace's outfit), but some of them could do with an overhaul (Synbios in particular - especially as he's the lead character!)

No. You're too picky. Once again, if the community expects every sprite to be done from scratch and completely unique from anything else, then I no longer want to do this project. That's just too damn picky. Did you send a letter to Sega when you played SF1 and found that Tao and Anri had the same sprite with a colour swap? I don't think so. I don't understand why anyone would make a stink about it here. This is the one critique that honestly does upset me (anywhere else where I might sound like I'm upset, I'm really not; I'm just super direct and I'm not afraid of offending people. I'm not here to be liked. I'm here to release a good game).

EDIT: To be fair though, I do at least acknowledge that I can come across as pretty jerky sometimes. And I do apologize for that. It's just who I am. I'm confrontational. I really do try to keep it to a minimum though. Especially in public forums such as this. In other words: the way I respond here is already watered down. Yeah, I'm a bit of a jerk, and I do apologize. Then again though, I've noticed that "kinda' jerky" seems to be a fairly common trait among game developers. Seems to be kind of par for the course. I don't know why.

Why, yes I have played through all the Gaidens! Including the 8-BIT Game Gear versions! Also note that SFCD - the 16-bit conversion of Gaiden 1+2, had animated portraits.

Of course. I also wasn't talking about the SFCD remake. So I don't know why you bring that up. But either way, it'll probably be done, like we each acknowledged.

I kinda guessed the MIDI wasn't named Antagonism (you'd have to know the names of each of the BGMs, and they're not widely known), but that's why I explained that it was the music from the start of the Medion scene. I'm not sure if an MP3 file was used for it, but you can clearly tell by listening to it that it's a playback of a MIDI file and doesn't match up to version heard in-game; same with the version of Medion's theme. Compare these to the music used for the Republic HQ and wandering round Saraband, which are clearly recordings of the in-game music - there's a definite quality shift between the two.

It could be named Shaboobulah or Waxedbananas, it's still not a midi. It *can't* be a midi. My system won't play midis at all (not even in RPG Maker!). It *is* an MP3 off the OST. xD

[Omega Entity]

A headscarf is different than a hat. The only similarity is that they're worn on the head. Cull wins.

[Tor_Heyerdal]

In my world, if it's worn on the head, than it's a hat. And then a headscarf would be a subcategory of hat. But fine. I'm willing to give you that. There's still a clothy thing hanging off the back of my sprite's "hat" though, which Grace's promoted form doesn't have. I think that should be good enough. I don't see any way of minimizing it any further without having it just look like she has blue dye in her hair. Also, I like it the way it is.
I feel like I'm getting mixed signals here. Should I be taking minor creative liberties or shouldn't I?

[Lord Oddeye sama]

Now now, let's not argue about details like that. You might take input from the community but ultimately it's your game project, take it in any direction you like. Those are remarks and suggestions, not formal requests.