Castle Paradox

[FyreWulff]

As far as I know Charbile wasn't inspired by any game for the attack. I can check all our chat logs, but I'm betting it wasn't.

You have to remember though, that I didn't touch the battles at all. The OHR battle engine scares me to this day, it's the one part of the engine I've never been able to get used to and have never really liked working with it. If Charbile had not signed onto making the game with me, all of the battles would have been win-able by just sleeping on top of your spacebar.

I was playtesting one of Ben Ohki's games one time.. it might have been Sekai no Owari, maybe something else. Anyway, while I was testing it, I actually fell asleep during a boss battle, with my finger pressing the space bar. I beat a boss in the game in my sleep.

[Charbile]

Hi. The wulff has pointed me here- fun fun fun

Being the ever benevolent and tenderhearted fox that I am, I wrote some things in response to various topics as I read them, cause I really appreciate those of you who had the courage, or morbid curiosity, to actually give the game a chance.

WARNING EXTREME SPOILERS WARNING



- philosophy:
Everyone has one, whether you like it or not. Every work's theme is a declaration of that author's. Some authors are vague, some care what strangers think about them, some don't really have a point, etc.

Which, is something I highly recommend: one of the best aspects of working on Sword of Jade was choosing a pure theme that we felt mattered, that we wanted to figure out more accurately, and that you had a lot to show about it.

And I guess I didn't hit you wonderful people with my hammer hard enough, because the theme was what I saw and took from my time with the engine. It might make things more interesting to know:

Jade's theme is the Ohr's theme. Most everything was designed to be related to working with the ohrrpgce. Some things which didn't make much sense might make more sense in that context. Or they might not- who knows! Philosolmaofy is for losers.

- cyport's school
Thought the essential point was clear: when something is free, it loses its value. Concrete being a skilled person is not going to work for free, but someone who has 'the best intentions', but no ability, will.

- black and white
"at least [the heroes] have a viewpoint. The bad guys seemed to be unclear what exactly they were trying to do." -- yep yep. I thought that was great motivation to stop them- they were trying to kill motivation.

- mi'la
Her personality is based largely on mine, so it's really amusing to see how well I did, in that people seem to have the same reaction to her as they do to me.

- proem
It's really depressing. I should have shortened it. But it was the first part I actually implemented, so you can take it as the 'newbie' game within a game.

- best ending possible
You'll need to -assemble- the Sword of Jade (4 pieces, find a smith), you'll need -5- valorians, (and if you want to see the dev room, you'll also need to make it to Dart in time during the 4th dungeon.)

- valorians
Started out as mocking the typical rpg (4 elements), but was refined into

* a way to give the past of the storyworld texture (grinlow)
* a way to structure the plot around dungeons or 'tombs'
* and of course, thematic wise, you cannot rely on other people to do your work for you, you end up being stronger than the celebrated 'veterans' by being the one who makes it to the end, fight your own battles, collectivist *rant rant*, etc

- skill combos
I usually went with something like this:

* Dogero increases his skill, raise Mi'la's, Mi'la skill strikes
* Leave Dogero weak, use Dire Rage, revive him if he falls, Johan uses Motivate
* Enfeeble and Provoke make bosses manageable when you're speed-running with low stats
* Mi'la Speed Strikes, Johan uses Hurry and Quick (a solid way to start off any difficult fight)

- master dao fights
They're trick fights. Checking docs...

Dogero: "He instantly kills Dogero after saying “Three!” To defeat him, Dogero must stun him first thing, which should allow him one or two super attacks."

Mi'la: "Attacks occasionally, has high defense, use zig strike"

Johan: "Attacks occasionally, has high dodge, use pinpoint"

Pyrus: "counter attack equal to the damage received. The idea being to either damage him enough so that Pyrus will survive the counter and heal himself, or to build up enough strength to take him down in one or two hits."

- hero walkabout glitches
Should have used a system where the catapillar is enabled and heroes placed from that, but instead we used npc slots 1,2,3- which, we crammed so much stuff that we had to switch out those slots to make room for certain scene npcs, and I guess there are ways where it doesn't reset it properly.

- making charbile do the battles
Hero documentation, 27 pages. Enemy documentation, 71 pages. It was a lot of work, and I put a lot into it to get at least something interesting out, but at the same time... it was mostly me figuring out how ohr handles battles and constantly fighting to get ideas to somehow work within its tight confines- to then have them not be *as* interesting as they look on paper BLAH BLAH BLASHLAHDL:K thank you very much

[Onlyoneinall]

In case some of you have not noticed, I posted up a Sword of Jade review to not only show I played the game, but to pay some homage to a game that deserves more than one review.
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http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=750 Bloodlust Demo 1.00

[Camdog]

[FyreWulff]

The nice thing about the anima system is that we can adapt it to almost any genre. So even if the next jade is a real-time 3rd person adventure game (which it will more than likely be, I am never making another SoJ as an RPG), we can still keep them if we want to.

[Battleblaze]

I propose the enxt Meeting should be of Only1's game Eight Granasties. Because he craves feedback.
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Indy OHR! and National OHR Month Contest going on now!

"Aeth calls PHC an anti-semite; PHC blames anti-semitism"
-squall

[Onlyoneinall]

I do BB. I just hope I get some good feedback along with criticism from people who finish the game. I also wonder when the next bookclub meeting is.
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http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=750 Bloodlust Demo 1.00

[Battleblaze]

Camdoggy said it was informal and to psot about it whenever it was neccisary. SOJ comments havent been made in awhile NEXT-Eight Granasties.
_________________
Indy OHR! and National OHR Month Contest going on now!

"Aeth calls PHC an anti-semite; PHC blames anti-semitism"
-squall

[Camdog]

Heh, just as I was about to make another post...

Anyway, I just got the good ending, so I thought I'd talk about that for a second. Honestly, there isn't a lot to say that hasn't been said before, but I thought it was a pretty entertaining ending. The only problem was, as usual, all the philosophizing they tried to cram into it. Is it really neccessary to have screen after expository screen making your point again and again, back to back? It just get's boring. I get it already! Also, people shouldn't "finally realize" something like 20 times in a row. I guess my complaints with the ending are the same as the rest of the game, but those aside it was actually well done. It didn't feel rushed at all, like most completed OHR games i've seen. It was actually a good ending to the story too. Not too sappy, bittersweet really, and plenty of tying up loose ends.

The "after party" was neat.

Anyway, I hope fyrewulff or charbile will still take the time to answer some questions posed in this thread, but I guess it's about time to move on to another game. I'll split that topic into another thread and we can talk about it there.

[Onlyoneinall]

Now that I think about it, all that philosphy is like your parents telling you over and over little "life lessons". It's like, okay okay!! I GET IT ALREADY!!
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http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=750 Bloodlust Demo 1.00

[FyreWulff]

I though I got all the questions. If I missed any, please point them out

[Rinku]

My impressions of Sword of Jade:

I think it's one of the best RPGs ever made (its only rivals being Final Fantasy 4 and Xenogears). I loved it and got a big productivity boost after finishing it, which I've only felt with certain other very inspirational works, such as the movie Ikiru.

I agree that the philosophy was more "told" than "shown" -- thus breaking the famous rule of aesthetics that showing is better than telling. It definately needed to illustrate its principles through concretized action more than it did.

However, it's *not* really Rand's philosophy, Fyre has never read anything by Rand and Charbile (to my knowledge) has read only half of one of her novels. I've read all of Rand's works but was not involved in the creation of this game. However, since Char's a friend of mine it's possible he got some third-hand Rand absorbed through me. But there are very obvious differences between Rand's philosophy and the philosophy in the game, if you're as familiar with her philosophy as I am. I could go into them on request, but I don't think it's too important to point them out. Many philosophies with deep differences often appear the same on the surface, to people who aren't familiar with them, and that's the case here. It's also not the "Heroist" philosophy, if there were such a thing (the Heroists are only a loose assocation of artists, who only share the goal of wanting to be the greatest artists in the world and in improving the world through art, and are very different from eachother philosophicaly -- see heroists.com etc.).

I find it surprising that Mi'la was disliked actually. She was my favorite character, I felt she had the most personality and was the most unique character in the game (no other RPG has a character like her, except perhaps Edge in Final Fantasy 4, who was another of my favorites).

My main criticism of the game is that it was too easy. I flew through it with very little trouble, I don't think I ever died except once. Perhaps I'm just too good at RPGs, but I really felt that a difficulty level setting would have made it much more of a game than it was. As it is, it's a great story in the guise of a game (much like Xenogears), but not a great game qua game.

I also found the characters besides Mi'la, Dogero, and Gahn to be boring. The others just had very little personality, except some of the NPC townspeople who were well-characterized. But there were too many archetypes used nonetheless.

I should also correct something Fyre said about Gahn (Am I correcting the author of a game about his own game? Haha, I'm so Mi'la) -- Gahn was not only after the elimination of all feelings, but was for the complete collectivization of mankind -- i.e. merging humanity into a single superorganism, much like the Borg.

As for the theme being the Ohrrpgce -- that's true too. More precisely, the theme is Fyrewulff. Fyrewulff is someone who always wanted to make a good game, and was faced with a community (not necessarily this one, as this one is pretty new, and he got started w/ the Ohr community back in '98) which never finished games, always gave up, and even when they finished games they were "joke" games, not serious ones, and even when the finished games were not totally joke games (as with Ends of the Earth and Lolsidothaldremobine and Monterey Penguin), they tended to be created by people who would make light of their own games, and not strive to make the best game possible. Fyre persisted and made a game worthy of the Ohrrpgce, a game fulfilling what the Ohrrpgce was created to do: making good 2D RPGs. If you look carefully, many of the NPC townspeople in the game represent different ways to give up on your goals -- just as all the different Ohrrpgce authors gradually gave up on their goal of creating a great 2D RPG. Overrepresented are the older community members who no longer post here. The Ohrrpgce community has had thousands upon thousands of members over the years, and the majority of them quit the community after releasing a half-baked demo, if that. And each quit for a different reason, in a slightly different way, and that wide range of reasons for quitting is expressed in the game. Not all of them quit of course, SoJ is not the *only* game worthy of the Ohrrpgce, but Dogero's party aren't the only good people in the game either. So the theme is, in particular, why people gave up on their quest to make a great Ohrrpgce game, and why some other people didn't give up, and in general, why people give up or not give up on their quests, including non-Ohrrpgce quests.
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Tower Defense Game

[Onlyoneinall]

I liked the last part of Rinku's paragraph because now I know what it meant by the theme being the OHRRPGCE. I guess that would make me a townsperson who tried, gave up, then tried again and succeded on his own? Haha.
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http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=750 Bloodlust Demo 1.00

[LongeBane]

[Camdog]