Thanks for the feedback! I agree that the combat needs work, both in balance and execution. I expect to overhaul it a good deal once I get around to expanding the game content, but that may be a while away. There’s no plan to move away from standard turn-based combat (for this game, anyways) but I do have a few ideas about how to make it feel a bit less sluggish and a bit more unique.
As for certain weapons being more powerful but less expensive, they were supposed to be two-handed weapons, but I was attempting to use multiple plugins for equipment management that didn’t play as nicely together as I’d have liked, so for the sake of not breaking things entirely, shields and two-handed weapons are treated like regular, single-hand weapons that can be dual-wielded. That’ll also be handled whenever I get around to doing a bigger update.
As said previously, it is not the turn-based combat that I am pointing out. It’s not bad to use it. It is the version of RPG maker which is aging very badly due to its overuse in RPG maker projects. The ATB system is already a good idea to make it more dynamic but it is still a system that dates back to 1994 and still requires a good facelift.
2 handed. That make sens. But why not just seal the equipment slot ?
I could solve pretty much all of my issues with 2H weapons and shields in minutes by using the slot seal on the former and tying a zero-damage attack skill to the latter, and in the end it might come down to that. The plugin I wanted to use would’ve allowed for more complexity - properly allowing dual-wielding 2H weapons under certain circumstances, allowing some small shields or bucklers to be equipped alongside a 2H weapon, allow dual-wielders to equip shields but not in the ‘primary hand’ slot, etc. - but it’s conflicting badly with a Visustella plugin that’s handling a lot of other equipment changes, including the simple solution for unlocking extra magichip slots, and so for now it’s enabled but doing nothing at all. I’d like to properly identify and fix the conflicts but that’d mean way too much time reverse-engineering the Visustella plugin for compatibility, so until I get around to a combat overhaul it’s low on the list.
That’s interesting. I would have liked to be able to help but I don’t use plugins.
I wish you good luck with your project. I will come back to see how it has evolved.
-Just one last tip. Don’t forget to credit external resources like plugins or graphic resources that are not created by you. Especially if you’re going to make it a paid version.
IIRC - if the 2nd hand slot is a weapon, even if you seal the slot for shield, it won’t read it as a shield. So you can still put a weapon in. The first way I could think of solving the problem, personally, would be to have certain weapons have the ‘Dual Wield’ slot type for the main weapon, but that wouldn’t really solve the problem because it’d just let you use a 2H weapon in the second slot.
Of course it’d be like that… RPG Maker’s separation of weapon+shield being handled completely differently than weapon+weapon is a constant pain in the ass, and part of what started this mess. And of course if I set it to lock out ‘Weapon’ instead it just instantly unequips itself, rather than trying to lock out the other weapon slot first. In fact, if I put it in the secondary slot it’s polite enough to unequip both!
With Visustella’s item/equip core - the one plugin of the two equipment plugins that’s more or less properly working - I can almost fudge it with the provided notetags, but not quite: I can limit how many of the same weapon type is equipped, but not how many of other weapon types are equipped - I can take a two-handed sword and say <Equip Weapon Type Limit: 1>, and then I can’t put any other swords in the other slot, but I can’t further that with something like <Equip Weapon Type Limit: ‘Axe’,0> to lock out any axes, etc. That sort of thing would be trivial to add (although instead of ‘Axe’ it’d be the ID number of the weapon type for axes) if the plugin weren’t obfuscated to hell and back.
Now that I’m thinking about it, it’d probably be easier to use another method of adding/unlocking the other magichip slots than it would to keep the Visustella equipment plugin around and keep limiting myself to their paradigms, but that’s probably just going to cause a different set of headaches.
Ultimately, the issue will always be the fact you allowed universal dual-wielding from the start. Regardless of damage calcs, it will always be superior to any form of defense because more damage = faster fights. This is why RPGs like The Last Remnant or Final Fantasy Tactics make Dual-Wielding its own dedicated skill to unlock or Etrian Odyssey where it stuck on one class. With healing being so potent and the girls having natural DEF buffs through their fatness, why would you use a shield or even a zweihander? And given how you want to make each girl a DPS-machine because of the mana absorption, you have ZERO PURPOSE (lightning strikes) in running any other build but max damage.
You going to need to put more thought (and maybe more plugins…, VS may not play nice with every one but there are those that are compatible with the suite) in how you want weapons to be designed and how the girls engage with them if you truly find the DPS everyone is putting into to be a problem. If you don’t want to go through the trouble of turning off dual-wielding, you need to expand on the system itself. Have skills that can only work with one hand free. Have shields completely negate damage or give you a barrier in HP. Increase the damage enemies do and decrease healing sources to push for more defensive play (it’s more fun too!). Only allow certain weapons to be used as off-handers, like knives, shortswords, or the like ala D&D5e’s Light trait. Give more foes HP thresholds or auto-revives so that more damage doesn’t equal a win.
You have options in terms of resolving your DPS and character-building fears. You just need more out-the-donut-box thinking in terms of how much of a “Real JRPG” you are willing to devote into this game and the risk of alienating your audience in forcing them to care about how to build for the girls.
I’d recommend sticking with the old saying “keep it simple, stupid” when dealing with this. Try not to overthinking yourself into a bigger problem then it has to be.
The characters have themes and if you’re adding more girls then it makes sense to just limit each girl to a specific weapon set instead of trying to add build diversity. If you felt spicy you could probably do the same thing for Magichips to further balance the characters to exactly what you think makes sense game play wise.
Then it’s a simple matter of play testing to see if combat feels good or not and tweaking from there.
i think this game turned out great! and yes i don’t think the balance is an issue: the art and story are what matter most, the game mechanics are nice-to-have
Happy Halloween! Mari convinced the group to get together for some themed shots in costume on the way to a party, but forgot to share them before the festivities started. Unfortunately, said festivities included half a dozen Vodka Dews and an unholy candy binge, so she’s probably out of commission for the rest of the weekend. You’ll have to make do with this selfie she took while getting ready.
Really, though, I meant to have a much bigger status update this month - not a game update, mind you, that’s a ways out and something the status update will shine more light on - but time kinda ran away from me; it’s just barely still October 31st on the Pacific Coast. I do plan on uploading more Halloween shots and more for the upcoming holidays - it’s a good way to practice scene composition and play around with some different rendering tools, like the new toon renderer seen here. I’ll probably have a detailed post in the next few days.
I’m early in this one - so far, intriguing! I like the sim/management angle for WG.
I really want a text skip key. Tab or CTRL is traditional. There should be an option for it built into RPGmaker, or else a good, simple plugin. Also the option to skip or really shorten battle animations.
You and me both! I wanted to implement full visual-novel style options, including text skip and history, but the game was already broken and time-crunched enough for the game jam, and most of what I’ve published since has just been some touching up. It’s definitely on the list for the next major update, especially as I re-add the chat function and flesh out the day-to-day scenes. For now, though, you can’t really do much to speed it along besides holding or rapid-tapping the Cancel button.
The battle system is also getting an overhaul, and while I’m still playing with a handful of different ideas, making them quicker is certainly a priority.
As for when that update will be… I can’t really say. I’d hoped to get it out by sometime in February, but everything’s been kind of turbulent for me since early October or so - replacing half my workstation due to hardware failures, getting some code shipped on an unrelated (i.e, non-fetish-account) product, family dog passing away (of old age, thankfully, or at least as thankful as you can get for these sort of things - at least we knew it’d been coming), winning a modest casino jackpot, helping a parent get set up for home dialysis, planning travel and lodging for a sibling’s wedding… it’s been a lot of ups and downs in a short timespan.
Still, I’m committed to at least posting a roadmap update for future content releases before the end of the year, and hopefully getting the Halloween and Christmas-themed story and image packs posted in time for Christmas. I’ve also got some stuff for a much more ambitious project that’s still in the design and planning stages that I’d like to show off early in the new year, but I don’t want it to detract too much from this.
As a little present for everyone, there’s two side-stories available for download on the Itch page! The first, a longform Halloween story, features something like 18,000 words of text and only four or five images. The second, a Christmas-themed bit shown above, is much more heavily image-focused, with topless versions of each render (my Christmas present to you!) and only four or five pages of a much more contained story.
These stories feature Kate - the third party member who only currently appears in the game’s epilogue - pretty heavily, fleshing out her character in more ways than one ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). Naturally, this means it also has some spoilers related to the ending of the game (as of any released version), so, uh, be careful about that! As for how canon these stories are, it’s not really anything worth debating.
So, happy holidays! I’ll hopefully have a roadmap update for the future of the game coming up pretty soon!
As promised, I wrote a bunch of garbage about what’s in store for the next few updates. You can look at this devlog for the full details, or the image above for a summary. Don’t get your hopes up for anything soon - I’m currently aiming for a July 2025 target for the next major update and end of 2025 for the complete version of the game. Additionally, while I do want to overhaul pretty much all of the game’s art, it’s not a major focus for the next big update - but never say never.
Not gonna lie, glad to see you pivoted Erika to using dual-weapons only. And seeing all the other intended changes look good, too. Judging by the flow-chart, Month 10 would have an ending B depending on choices/situations?
