Warrior Cats: Dark Forest Apocalypse Patch 1.2 [debugged]

[thelazykittypet]

*Several bug fixes have occurred over the past few months; due to the discovery of these bugs being isolated, no version change will take place.)

The full game is now playable! Get it here:

www.mediafire.com/download/w5etdde4ai3c03n/Warrior_Cats_Dark_Forest_Apocalypse_V1.2.zip

Changes made for the full version:

-Attack moves in the Skill category now have the element of the attacker
-New music from Nobuo Uematsu, Kenji Ito, Yoko Shimomura, Phyrrna, and Magical Trick Society
-Misc. small changes to moves, story, etc.
-Added a numerical display over enemies, showing their current HP
-Player no longer starts with a party of four
-Access to all levels and easter eggs, plus a bonus quest to unlock new game modes
-Expanded the camp to include Elders' Den, Apprentices' Den, and Nursery, each with a new function
-Decreased battle speed slightly, as well as changes to battle pop-ups
-Miscellaneous dialogue, balancing, and bug fixes

Feedback is still appreciated! Updated versions will be released if necessary.

Don't forget to join the forum at tlkgames.proboards.com , where you can help contribute ideas to my next game!

Patch 1.1 changes:

-Increased accuracy of Rage Burst
-Increased effectiveness of Focused state, and decreased damage removal chance for Focused and Forcefield
-Corrected battle tutorial dialogue
-Fixed boss parameters
-Blessing of the Spirits increases party level by 1 instead of 3
-Feudal Suppression skill fixed
-Cedarspots sidequest fixed

If you have version 1.0 installed, use the following link to download a new data file instead of re-installing the whole game:

www.mediafire.com/download/x66tlab0tfwm55o/Data.zip

If you have an existing save file, however, changes may not carry over, so be aware.

To use the data folder, download and extract it, and replace the data folder in your installed game with this one.

Patch 1.11

Some bugs were found in the post-game sidequest. Patch 1.11 has corrected these bugs.

Again, you can just replace your data folder if you've already installed the game; the link is the same one above.

Patch 1.2

Finally created a proper intro sequence.

Slight increase to all enemy EXP and Gem drops as well.

Still the same data folder link for those who have the game already.

Attachments:

[thelazykittypet]

Some errors were found and will be corrected in patch 1.1 .

[Vashey~]

I would look, but I'm not at home to download it .

[Vashey~]

I'll be home Sunday, and then I'll take a look .

[thelazykittypet]

Jul 22, 2016 8:39:33 GMT -5 Vashey~ said:

I'll be home Sunday, and then I'll take a look .

Okay :3

[Vashey~]

I'ma pick it up now~

[Vashey~]

Are you open to criticism? I don't really feel like I should have to ask but I really don't feel like getting into a big deal about -_-.

[thelazykittypet]

Jul 24, 2016 18:14:05 GMT -5 Vashey~ said:

Are you open to criticism? I don't really feel like I should have to ask but I really don't feel like getting into a big deal about -_-.

Yeah as long as you're civil about it.

[Vashey~]

I'll say something once i get home today at around 2, I'm not a big fan about typing large paragraphs on my laptop keyboard.

[Vashey~]

~Incoming wall of text~


I'd like to preface this by saying that I have not played to far into the game so most of this is just first impressions.

So the first thing I noticed right off the bat was the title screen (obviously). Ittttttt, doesn't look very good. The title screen is the first thing people see and it plays a lot into how a person is going to feel going into the game. The first thing is that the title (words) feels like they weren't very well formatted, it trails across the entire screen and just doesn't look visually appealing, it's also got that default font which makes it just feel like just another rpg maker game. A good way to format a title like that would be to place "Warriors Cats:" on top and "Dark Forest Apocalypse" under it. Also the background picture doesn't seem to fit the game at all. It has a sort of weird ritual and (traditional) magic vibe to it, and I haven't seen anything like that anywhere in the original series or what I've seen in the first parts I've played.

Moving on past the title screen, the opening of the game feels kind of sudden and random, you're thrown in and you don't really had any time to invest yourself into your character where you'd feel connected to them. I think it would have been better to have you do some basic things like searching and gathering, training and the sort before hand to get to know what those functions of the game are like, and to have some time to talk to the other cats around camp. It could also give you some time to see how other people in the clan feel about your cat and how your cat feels about them in return.

Creating something like this would also give you a better place to have the game tutorials. The tutorials feel odd, like learning to fight your first fight against a group of dark forest warriors seems kind of ... weird, wouldn't you say? It'd be better to have you attend a training skirmish and then introduce the controls there. Also, having controls told to you by the leader is also kind of odd because typically your characters should not be aware that they're in a game or know what z,x, f1 ect. even are. If you were to forgo making a beginning section you could keep this controls in the same string in the event for the leader, just removing the leaders portrait would make it seem less out of place and fourth wall breaking. You'd also get a grip on time consuming activities without feeling that you're risking your first set of (in game) hours in the game.

Moving on from that you're story feels kind of week, THAT BEING SAID, like I stated, I haven't gotten that far into the game, there's still plenty of time for improvement and story development, but as of right now it feels really bland. It kind of feels like the plot was ripped from the third and fourth arks and just had oc's placed into it. Now this isn't necessarily a problem, as having your cat fight dark forest members isn't that far fetched, it's something that could always happen again at anytime with any set of cats who have a darker set of ancestors who live on through memories and stuff, but for this to work you'd have to (again) have a feel for the members of the clan and the people around you so it doesn't just feel like a shallow repeat. You would need to of had at least some time to get familiar with the cats so you feel you have something to protect, even if it's just on a basic level. ~(This may happen and I just haven't encountered it yet) Perhaps you could have people throw around some rumors about the cat's you're setting out after, so that you know just WHAT you're dealing with, and that these aren't just regular cats, they're blood thirsty, vile creatures that are in the dark forest for a reason.

I'm going to head on to more aesthetic areas now. As for the art in the game (portraits and sprites) the portraits are kind of inconsistent. Having some portraits where the characters look at the camera and others where they're looking off to the side is odd. The only other problem I have is that it's very easy to tell that whoever drew these sprites didn't seem to be drawing them with the game in mind, they clearly weren't transparent as you can see the bad crop job around the silhouettes, things like that just look unprofessional and really hurts the aesthetic of the game. While I don't prefer the art style, I will admit that it is very well polished, there seems to be a lot of thought placed in it and you can tell it's fully developed and fleshed out, which as a fellow artist I can appreciate greatly. There aren't (for the most part) any weird colors and there aren't many ugly lines and everything just feels very solid and well put together. (~If you are open to any help with graphical clean up, I'm available if you're interested.~)

The final thing I have seen so far that I'd like to comment on is the battle interface. I don't like it very much, maybe if you blew the sprites up some so they weren't so small on the screen I'd be into it more, but as of right now they just seem overly small and unappealing. I think using something like yanfly's base ace battle engine is more preferable, but once again for the most part THIS IS OPINION and the battle interface doesn't matter much as long as you can see what you're doing. Not to mention that moving over to the first person type of view would require you to gather together some battle sprites and I know that is MUCH easier said than done.

The final thing I'd like to say about the battle interface is about the menus. OH GOD THE MENUS. There are just too many menus, it's hard to even keep track of what attacks you have, having to search through 5 different skill tabs, and having 5 tabs for all of you're cats as well? Ugh, it's such a clunky way to do things. I have two suggestions to clean this up:

1 - Merge some of the menus, as there are specific reasons for all of your menus this would be a bit difficult to have go smoothly.

2 - Make you're characters specialists. Only give your characters one or two extra skill menus, say Willowsong uses tactical options (as the leader) and standard skills. Maybe Silentbreeze uses just standard skills and white magic. Maybe you could have another just have skills and special physical attacks. Doing something like this is very good to keep you from having to wade through menus for the whole battle and it makes it's just nicer to have characters that use skills specific to them, things like having the leader perform leader actions (tactical skill tab) or having someone that's extremely devoted to good use pure attacks (white magic).

------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's about it. I'm would like to know you're thoughts on a few of these , like the thing about menus, I know that rpg maker isn't the most flexible program on planet earth and would like to know if there's reasons for some of the things that I pointed out. I've used rpg maker so I'm open to and well versed in rpgm jargon, maybe we could even reach new solutions for any problems you may agree with or know of.

[thelazykittypet]

Well the title screen is just one of the preset images (the best one they had) with auto-generated text. I have no artistic talent whatsoever so i wasn't about to make my own.

I've never been a fan of pre-story game actions, they feel like an unnecessary drag.

I personally think the tutorial is okay. Also having controls explained by a character isn't new, other video games also do it, and i think it's fine.

There is quite a bit more to the story, you'll have to play to the end. And i haven't even read the third and fourth arcs yet so i wouldn't know.

The portraits were taken from a tumblr art blog, I didn't make them.

The problem with merging the skills into fewer menus is that there are so many skills, it would still be very clunky if i merged them, probably even more so. Especially with the small skill window that this script gives. There are some characters with only 4 skill tabs, but a character with any less than that would be pretty much useless in battle. And I am actually using the yanfly engine.

[Vashey~]

Welp, that's two hours of thoughtful response time wasted.

Like I said, there's nothing that got me invested into the characters of the game so I don't feel like I'll be finishing it. The consumer of whatever media, book, show, game, whatever it be, shouldn't have to wade in to be able to get invested in the characters. Characters should be interesting and make the consumer WANT to continue farther into the story, as opposed to having the consumer NEEDING to if they ever want be able to get to grips with them . There's a reason why teachers stress the whole "Hook Statement" Get-up in schools. Shows with bad pilots don't get picked up, books with bad first chapters are almost never finished, and games with boring intros aren't completed. Don't get me wrong, games don't necessarily have to have interesting characters, but at that point you can only rely on having a fun game in your hands, and the system is overall too clunky to be fun at the moment.

Overall I'd give it a solid 5/10. It's average. But in the world of rpgmaker, there are many many more games out there, and plenty are much more engaging and polished than this one.

[Vashey~]

Also, about the skill tabs, if you need that many different skill tabs to facilitate a useful character, your game is unbalanced. Assuming that the reason you can't merge skills together is because you need so many of them. If skills were made to be consistently useful, you wouldn't have to have millions of skills lining your pockets to make it through. Some of the greatest rpg games on planet earth have 2 or less skill tabs. Something is telling me to spend more time with your game even though I said I wouldn't. I guess it's just that part of me that always wants to provide people with benefit of the doubt. I really want to help you out and provide you with the input you need to take your game to the next level and give your players the best experience, but it's clear that you aren't really ready to accept any advice.

[Vashey~]

I'll put in another hour or two of gameplay and see what I think then, just to be fair. Maybe it picks up immediately, maybe it'll be the most boring thing I've ever done, who knows. Well I guess you know what there is in store for me, but you seem to be remaining some what cryptic.

[thelazykittypet]

Jul 25, 2016 23:03:07 GMT -5 Vashey~ said:

Welp, that's two hours of thoughtful response time wasted.

Like I said, there's nothing that got me invested into the characters of the game so I don't feel like I'll be finishing it. The consumer of whatever media, book, show, game, whatever it be, shouldn't have to wade in to be able to get invested in the characters. Characters should be interesting and make the consumer WANT to continue farther into the story, as opposed to having the consumer NEEDING to if they ever want be able to get to grips with them . There's a reason why teachers stress the whole "Hook Statement" Get-up in schools. Shows with bad pilots don't get picked up, books with bad first chapters are almost never finished, and games with boring intros aren't completed. Don't get me wrong, games don't necessarily have to have interesting characters, but at that point you can only rely on having a fun game in your hands, and the system is overall too clunky to be fun at the moment.

Overall I'd give it a solid 5/10. It's average. But in the world of rpgmaker, there are many many more games out there, and plenty are much more engaging and polished than this one.

Don't get the wrong idea, I never said i wasn't open to changing the game up a bit, it's just going to be a lot of work, especially with the way the game is currently set up. And I'm not entirely sure on how I'm going to make any sort of casual opening that's also not boring. I might need a few weeks to work it all out.

Jul 25, 2016 23:38:17 GMT -5 Vashey~ said:

Also, about the skill tabs, if you need that many different skill tabs to facilitate a useful character, your game is unbalanced. Assuming that the reason you can't merge skills together is because you need so many of them. If skills were made to be consistently useful, you wouldn't have to have millions of skills lining your pockets to make it through. Some of the greatest rpg games on planet earth have 2 or less skill tabs. Something is telling me to spend more time with your game even though I said I wouldn't. I guess it's just that part of me that always wants to provide people with benefit of the doubt. I really want to help you out and provide you with the input you need to take your game to the next level and give your players the best experience, but it's clear that you aren't really ready to accept any advice.

I mean it's not really that many skills, it's about the same as wctg. But wctg had pretty much the entire screen to list skills while i don't. That's really the only issue. I can't really switch back to the front view system either because the sprites would either overlap too much or be awkwardly small.

[thelazykittypet]

As for the portraits and title screen I really don't know what to do, like i said they're not mine. But if you or anybody else would be willing to help in that area that would be great.

[dawnpelt]

Yay, it finally got released!

I Can't wait to play it and see how it ends.

[Orangepelt]

So, I've played it, and I've encountered an unpleaseant situation: if you save in one of the worlds and run out of elexir and sp, you're basically stuck there forever. You can't buy anything anymore. Also, with the amount of money you get, the items are REALLY expensive.

[Vashey~]

With the whole, youre stuck forever thing, that's kind of a player problem, never saved in only one slot, and always be prepared. If you walk in and your not prepared in any jrpg type game you're risking your game progress.

[thelazykittypet]

Honestly, the best strategy is to buy the cheap items and use them in between battles. But I realize this situation can arise, so I might increase money drops from enemies.