RPG MAKER 2003 - PRACTICE TIME IS OVER, LET'S MAKE SOME RPGS NOW

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ihavefivehat's picture
Wed, Feb 11 2015 01:00 PM
02/11/2015 - 14:00
03/05/2015 - 13:00
America/Chicago

The most recent merged project file is here!

And here is a Google Doc where we can keep changes that we've made to the game.

To-do list:

-Streamlining:
-> make it so the player has some control over where Clyde and Chrissy appear in the museum (FirecatFG did this in his gallery. The other galleries should use the same method)

-Finish the museum:
-> Add Clyde and Chrissy's dialogue to the ihavefivehat and everythingstaken galleries.
-> Add more npcs SEMI-DONE, BUT THERE SHOULD PROBABLY BE MORE
-> Add echoey footstep noises?

-Keep working on the Main questline:
-> Zita then sends the player on the UFO quest or another quest
-> Finish UFO quest, make it so ending ties in with main quest. Ghosty has a choice to side with curators or Zita. DONE
-> Finish the World Breaker quest
-> Finish the Unstable Teleporter quest

Other:
-> Continue working on Ghosty's computer stuff
-> Start working on the RPG for the true ending (may be phased out?)

Ok, it's time to rock! Here's how it's going to work..........................

Starting tomorrow, I'm going to post an 'inspirational curiosity' every day and you will have the opportunity to extrapolate it into an RPG maker game! Suggested work time is 15 - 30 minutes. But if you want, you can take longer... or you can take shorter. It's all up to you!!!!! THE CHOICE IS YOURS TO COMMAND.

Don't feel like you have to be able to make a game everyday to participate. Maybe you can only do it on the weekends. Maybe you can only do it when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars. That's okay, just do what you can and submit it! The more games, the better!

Please post your games as attachments in the comment section so that we don't flood the new games feed.

In case you need it, here is the link to RPG Maker 2003.

Here is a cool website which you can use to create character sprites really quickly.

Here's an old website with a bunch of miscellaneous resources

And another.

This website has a bunch of MIDI versions of video game tracks.

Have fun!!!!!!!!

----------

march 1st?!:

WE DID IT!

February has always been known as a time of temporal instability, but a quadruple leap year!? That's practically unheard of. For a while there I wasn't sure if we'd ever make it to march, but here we are. We're in like a lion, and everything's cool.

I'm going to take a few days to make up for some of the days I missed, and then I'll finish up compiling our games into one project file. From there we can figure out how we want the final mega game be.

woo! woo! WOO!

Feb 32nd:
Today, you should make a game inspired in some way by this midi version of Moby's 'Lift Me Up'. You can use the song itself, or the feeling the song give you, or the title, or whatever.

(selected using the random midi function on cool-midi.com)

Feb 31st:

Feb 30th: (I'm trapped in a time pocket where february extends indefinitely! help!)

random word generation + search in the Art Institute of Chicago's online database.
Word is 'trails'
Work is 'Tent Rock Trail' by Gustave Baumann

Feb 29th:

The sacred heart of st. camillus de lellis

Feb 28th:

random image on photo.net.
title 'try to win the race of life'

Feb 27th:


method: latest image posted on livejournal

Feb 26th:


random image generator at photo.net

Feb 25th:


method: random word generator + google image search + random number generator to choose from results

Feb 24th:


method: took picture of my living room, wrote program the chose a random point on the image the then took a close-up of the object beneath that point.

Feb 23rd:


method: random numbers + book of paintings

Feb 22nd:

TAKE THE DAY OFF!

We did it! We're halfway there! Take the day off to rest, reflect, and recuperate. Tomorrow, we will come back full force for the last 11 days of this grueling RPG death gauntlet!

Feb 21st:


method: random number generator and national geographic; I had collaged using this magazine in the past so there is stuff cut out.

Feb 20th:


method: ads on weather.com

Feb 19th:


method: Random number generator and a pile of old national geographics

Feb 18th:


method: classic random word generator today

Feb 17th:

Today's image is courtesy of Sergio Cornaga (thanks sergio!)
it's from The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects by Mike Mignola

February 16th:

method: the book shelf method, using covers only

February 15th:


method: Used Random Word Generator to search in the database of the Museum of Modern Art (the word was 'handling'). Chose specific work out of those results using a random number generator.

Feel free to also use the hyper-descriptive excerpt on the museum's page:
http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=944

February 14th::


method: random number generator to pick book/page from my shelf
(from Hairless Who no. 1 by Joe Tallarico)

February 13th:::


method: random number generation + google search

February 12th::::


method: used the random poem function on allpoetry.com. chose first one that fit on my screen without scrolling.

February 11th:::

AttachmentSize
MarathonGameMar20thV3.zip33.47 MB
marathongameJun24-2017.zip56.05 MB

Games made for RPG MAKER 2003 - PRACTICE TIME IS OVER, LET'S MAKE SOME RPGS NOW

Comments

everythingstaken's picture

Feb 11: 1Dollar

AttachmentSize
1Dollar.zip14.49 MB
FirecatFG's picture

Feb 11

Are we supposed to upload those to the games section or the comments?
Passwords fo Dungeon Of Mild Annoyance: This is RPG maker, there are no passwords.

AttachmentSize
TheCheapDentist.rar1.23 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

feb. 11th: teeth of fury

Yes, good idea. Upload in the comments! I'll put that in the thing.

AttachmentSize
Teeth of fury.zip14.13 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

nice! and good idea to

firecat: nice! and good idea to switch up the battle at the end!
everythingstaken: coughcoughcoughcoughcoughcoughcough

everythingstaken's picture

wow!

firecat: Yeah, I really wasn't expecting to switch up characters even though that's what happens in so many of the games I make. lol It was a nice touch!
ihavefivehat: Jesus, I guess you do know RPG Maker super well, I have no idea how to begin to make what you did!

I like how different all of these games are too!

ihavefivehat's picture

If you have any questions

If you have any questions about how I did something in particular I'll be happy to answer!

everythingstaken's picture

Feb 12

Just a reall deep dark thought

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Just a reall deep dark thought.zip14.51 MB
FirecatFG's picture

Feb 12

1 Dollar Meal: I really liked the way you "talked" with people other than the old man. The way the sound effects were "held" when you hold the arrow button.
Teeth Of Fury: Those are some pretty amazing custom assets. I loved the artstyle in the intro cutscene.

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CallItWhatYouWant.rar743.07 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

feb 12th: a dark game by a twisted soul

just a reall dark thought: is it possible to escape from all the reapers? I couldn't manage to.
call it what you want: hilarious! I loved seeing the poem brought to life so majestically!

edit: Oh yeah, and I'll have plenty of free time over next couple days of days so if you guys can send me your project files I can get a head start on merging them.

AttachmentSize
a dark game by a twisted soul.zip17.73 MB
FirecatFG's picture

Feb 13

a dark game by a twisted soul: I like how this game managed to suprise me the moment i pressed "New Game". Cool use of custom stuff as always.
reall deep dark thought: Im still perplexed on what's the logic behind level progression, I also found a specific spot on the map that sometimes makes you skip to what i think is the last "Stage"?(The one where death talks about chopsticks) very weird.

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AttackOfTheBirdPeople.rar1.17 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

feb 13th: bird time

look for the secret ending!

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bird time.zip18.88 MB
everythingstaken's picture

Harpies on Harpy Island

AttachmentSize
HarpiesOnHarpyIsland.zip14.54 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

Attack of the Bird People:

Attack of the Bird People: This game made me hate harpies so much. The fact that every time they catch you, you're forced to fight a lengthy but hopeless battle is hilariously annoying.

Harpies on Harpy Island: This game was excruciating in a funny way. It definitely made me hate harpies to an even greater extent than I thought possible. After restarting the game several times, I was able to get away from the mob early and push my way to the tower. It felt so good to destroy the harpy habitat. Hopefully, that will drive them to extinction.

everythingstaken's picture

AttackOfTheBirdPeople: Man,

AttackOfTheBirdPeople: Man, I thought from the start that when fighting those harpies that I couldn't beat them. Is it possible at all/have you done it before/is there something after defeat them?

bird time: I have no idea how you made those birds work, but I deff want to try something like that! I love how you made a "ground" by just having characters move horizontally. Very clever. I still need to find the secret ending though!

ihavefivehat's picture

feb 14th: fist puncher

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fist puncher.zip20.45 MB
everythingstaken's picture

Meet Your new friends where you are dead

fist puncher: Wow, I need to figure out how to do stuff like this in RPG Maker!

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Alienz.zip567.56 KB
FirecatFG's picture

Feb 14

Bird Time: I like how you made it look like it's some kind of interactive screensaver but there's actually an objective of sorts. (I suppose that's what you meant with "secret ending"?). I also like how between this game,Theeth of Fury, and my game for today we have 3 games about a horde of creatures taking over humanity.
Harpies on Harpy Island: I like how, due to the rather glitchy way the "follow hero" behavior is implemented, this game feels like a puzzle about pushing trough harpies the right way, despite the fact that it becomes impossible if you take more than 3 seconds.

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TooManyBlobs.rar609.6 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

Haha! I'm guessing that more

Haha! I'm guessing that more of my games will end that way before this is over.

Meet your new friends where you are dead: The other aliens all chose to die because of a mistake, but you choose to die because of the truth.

Too Many Blobs: There was something really cool about watching the blobs multiply until they filled the screen. I like that you have to enter a name for your character because it makes feel slightly more attached than you would otherwise.

edit: Also, here's the Project folder that contains all of my games so far. If you guys are curious about how I did anything, you can poke around in there to see.

AttachmentSize
marathon.zip7.01 MB
FirecatFG's picture

Punch the faBRAIN

fist puncher: I found that brain photo to be a bit disturbing.
Meet Your new friends where you are dead: I actually didn't expect the plot twist that the creatures in the other islands were actually themselves all along.

Anyways, here's the first batch of project files... Kind of, i actually deleted the original Cheap Dentist and What You Want files, but their Gamedisk counterparts seems able to be read by RPG maker without problems. I also made a few small modifications to them (The most noticeable one being the fact that Guy Person from Attack of the Bird People now starts with slighty less health).

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Firecat1.zip2.13 MB
FirecatFG's picture

Feb 15

Here's the game for today i guess

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TheOrangeRoom.rar595.11 KB
everythingstaken's picture

Feb 15

TheOrangeRoom: I like the concept of your game a lot, I wish I could wrap my head around what the code is supposed to be. I bet I'm doing something pretty obviously wrong or something, I bet it's right in front of my nose. I'll keep at it.

AttachmentSize
InfinateIllusionarySpace.zip14.5 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

Feb 15th: shifty lights

this one is kind of a change of pace. it's more in the interactive screensaver vein. there's no win condition.

AttachmentSize
shifty lights.zip34.24 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

cool, we all made pretty

cool, we all made pretty visually interesting games today.

I couldn't figure out the code either, but I really like the sense of mystery and foreboding in your game, Firecat.

FirecatFG's picture

Feb 16

The Orange Room: I knew after giving it some thought that you won't be able to figure out the code. Even if you figured out what's the pattern you must follow you are never actually given a hint on how to turn that pattern into a 5 digit code. The solution is basically which order you see the events of the room, using the "Minutes later/earlier" as a guide. If we consider the room with the door as the first digit and the zeroth minute, then:
The next time you enter the room you jump two minutes, for a total of 2 minutes spent in the room.
The third time you enter the room you jump another two minutes, for a total of 4 minutes spent in the room.
The fourth time you enter the room you rewind 3 minutes, back to when you spent 1 minute in the room.
And the fifth time you enter the room you jump two minutes again, for a total of 3 minutes spent in the room.
The next time you enter the room you loop back to the start. Making the code 02413.

InfinateIllusionarySpace: This game feels like it want to take everything i know about what's passable on an RPG map and what's not and throw it away. Also, two times i walked around for a lot just to end up getting back to where i started.

shifty lights:I surprised at how okay RPG maker is at having this much going on at the same time, or maybe the game is just giving the illusion of being very dynamic. I like how enginewise, the main character is the same one as the one in birdtime.

everythingstaken's picture

Oh! I should have gotten

Oh! I should have gotten that you were at the beginning when the door is there not the end. I actually tried 24130. There is enough information, lol I just didn't get it!

FirecatFG's picture

Here's my game for today

I was going to attach this file to the previous post but my internet decided to die, so no default assets today.

AttachmentSize
TheBatttleOfTheAlienSquids.zip556.61 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

yeah

I guessed 24130 also. I think if you changed the code to that it would hit the sweet-spot of not totally obvious but also not too difficult for most people to figure out.

The Battle of Alien Squids: Hahaha oh man you totally had me laughing out loud there at the end!

ihavefivehat's picture

Feb 16th: The Unknown Planet

I spent way longer than my recommended time limit on this one

AttachmentSize
the unknown planet.zip35.68 MB
everythingstaken's picture

Feb16

Unknown Planet: Wow, you really did spend more than 15-30 minutes on that last one!

Alien Squids: Nice use of alien squids! Was that game made using the battle system? I couldn't completely tell.

AttachmentSize
Different worlds.zip549.25 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

yeah

while overall I'm happy with the game, I don't recommend spending that much time on one of these. I felt really burnt out and unenthusiastic by the end, and as a consequence I don't think I was able to fully do the idea justice.

sergiocornaga's picture

Re: The Unknown Planet

I only just played this one, but it was really cool... the glitchy aesthetic worked brilliantly.

FirecatFG's picture

Feb 17

Battle of the alien squids: The battle mimics the looks of the battle engine, but it is actually just a long string of "Show choices" and battle animation events. Also the outcome is independant of which choices you make.

The Unknown Planet: The moment i saw the "Houses" i realized you used the Arecibo Message as part of the elments. But then when i took a look at the tileset i was surprised at how you managed to use what is essentially pieces of a single image to create such cool enviroments. I also liked the musical nod to shifty lights near the end.

Different worlds: These are some nice mazelike enviroments. I kind of skipped a line in the intro so when a character said they will be out of jail soon it was a surprising twist that changed the meaning of what i was doing.

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ThePlant.rar435.92 KB
everythingstaken's picture

Feb 17


This game has 3 endings!
I also spent a super long time on this for whatever reason.

ThePlant: lol I like how there is a castle and you just can't get to it and the pile of rocks in the way has dialogue and everything. I also like how you scaled the guy for the overworld because of plant monster.

AttachmentSize
We Hated Those Guys.zip646.57 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

Feb 17th: Horace and the Plant

sorry this was late!

edit: oops this build had a game-ruining bug in it. please don't play it yet.
edit2: okay, it should be all better now!

AttachmentSize
Horace and the Plant v2.zip35.74 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

We hated those guys:

We hated those guys: Awesome! My favorite ending was bringing Liz to the place with all the bones and creeping her out. Like Abe just seems like this nice dutiful guy, but really he's been harboring some sick perversions the whole time.

The Plant: Cool, another game where a horde of normally docile objects destroys humanity! It's always more fun when that happens.

FirecatFG's picture

We Hated Those Guys: I went

We Hated Those Guys: I went for the "Romantic Place" ending during the first try, i liked how getting Liz to actually follow you was a puzzle on itself.

Horace and the Plant: I like how the title screen sets a lighthearted tone to the game but then you met Horace for the first time and the game shifts into a "emotive" tone but THEN the plot eventually degrades into something downright dark and twisted.

I seem to have a bit of a problem getting today's game uploaded, i might try tomorrow.

ihavefivehat's picture

Feb 18th: Stuck eye

AttachmentSize
stuck eye.zip35.79 MB
everythingstaken's picture

Feb 18th: Dr Dr

Horace and the Plant: Jesus, what a dark game. I actually thought it was going to end a few different ways, so I didn't expect what had actually happened. I love talking to the kids about the dog too. I felt bad playing this whole thing.

Stuck Eye: This reminded me of that game I made "Maze of Darkness" except you don't see anything and you can't figure out where you are completely based on sound which made it funny and way more frustrating which was interesting. At the end I kinda wish I could have seen in the game what the environment I was traversing actually looked like.

ihavefivehat's picture

I was wondering how

I was wondering how frustrating stuck eye would be. It was hard to put myself in the position of someone who had never seen the actual maps of the game. I wanted it to be annoying, but hopefully it wasn't too annoying.

everythingstaken's picture

You're right!


Here it is!

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DrDr.zip561.17 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

Feb 19th: One Minute To Live

Destroying Time With Agency: I liked this a lot... my favorite moment was when you catch of a glimpse of the edge of the other island. It gave me a weird feeling that I can't quite put my finger on. This is a game that I'll be thinking about for a while.

By the way, everythingstaken, I think you forgot to attach dr dr to your post yesterday!

AttachmentSize
One Minute To Live.zip35.86 MB
FirecatFG's picture

Feb 19

Stuck eye: Very fun game, i thought the map design was just right, altougth the descriptions does make you want to be able to see what's happening.

Here are the games for today and yesterday, a special thing about them is that they are built upon other project files of mine, i wonder if that makes them easier or harder to compile.

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TheDeadOptician.rar428.91 KB
SundialTown.rar439.33 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

wow

Cool, I somehow missed these games before which stinks because Sundial Town is great! I liked that more and more people started to show up as the apocalypse got closer. Sort of like these people were drawn to their deaths without really knowing why.

Son of a dolphin's picture

I played this game a few

I played this game a few weeks ago, and I enjoyed it. I read this comic in a bookstore today, and now I'm looking at this game in a different way. It has a similar theme, but presented very differently. http://www.amazon.com/The-Sculptor-Scott-McCloud/dp/1596435739

ihavefivehat's picture

That sounds really

That sounds really interesting. I read his Scott McCloud's book 'understanding comics' and I think it was a big influence on me in a lot of ways. I'll have to check this one out for sure.

everythingstaken's picture

Feb 20: nail clippers

One Minute To Live: Wow, I wish I had thought of this one! I love that the main character is a cat girl. Just the general concept is really great, would also be interesting for a longer game too. That "having sex" noise is really disgusting. It may also be disgusting to me because I usually use that as the coughing noise, but it works for being gross as all of those things.

TheDeadOptician: I'm glad there's a callback here! I'm thinking that I want to try out a couple in the next few games.

SundialTown: Wow, this was surprisingly dark and funny. I liked how it became this frantic thing just to see what all the different characters would say each time even though they usually just said the same thing over and over. This I think is my favorite of your RPG Maker games thus far.

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nail clippers.zip563.82 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

feb 20th: nail gazer

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nail gazer.zip36.53 MB
everythingstaken's picture

Feb 21: Horse Island

nail gazer: I can't say I knew where that was going. I liked the tiny village part the best.

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horseIslands.zip581.06 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

feb 21st: dream horses

this is a screen saver. it's not even close to being a real game.

horse island: I like how naturalistic the map was. it felt peaceful

drdr: that was great! I like that your character doesn't know the building that she's in even though she has an office there. very mysterious.

AttachmentSize
dream horses.zip37.63 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

feb 23rd: Divine Intervention

AttachmentSize
divine intervention.zip37.85 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

Feb 24th: couch friends

totally non-interactive. you have to use alt-f4 to quit.

AttachmentSize
couch friends.zip38.72 MB
sergiocornaga's picture

I love the way this looks,

I love the way this looks, sounds and feels.

ihavefivehat's picture

thanks!

^^^

ihavefivehat's picture

Feb 25: Butter Man Adventures

AttachmentSize
butter man adventures.zip24.99 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

cut this thing short?

So today I've been thinking that maybe we should end the marathon portion of this event and start working on making the shared executable. I feel like the early enthusiasm that I felt when I first started this has worn off, and I'm guessing the same goes for you guys. The idea of making a shared world that contains these games is still pretty exciting to me, though. Let me know if you all agree or disagree with this.

everythingstaken's picture

No, no!

Keep it going till it's done! I just had to take a small break and do some other stuff. I'm going to post a bunch of games in a bit actually.

ihavefivehat's picture

oh ok cool!

I'll keep it going!

ihavefivehat's picture

feb 26th: raw meat town

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raw meat town.zip27.61 MB
FirecatFG's picture

feb 26

It has been a while since i did something for this. Today's game is kinda dull compared to other of my games but whatever.

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EarlyBirdSpecial.rar442.51 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

Nice! There's something

Nice! There's something really funny about recreating modern scenes with the stock tile sets. This was one of my favorite games that you've made so far.

sergiocornaga's picture

Feb 27: RushinCats

Basically the same idea as my test RPG. Hopefully it runs properly.

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RushinCats.zip540.82 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

cool!

The pictures of the cats falling apart were really disconcerting.

clyde's picture

This is what Google

This is what Google Translate gives me.

"Vash priyezd oznachayet nasho
Smert
molchat Durak
Teper kogda You are here
eto after
You die seychas
chto
nyet"

everythingstaken's picture

Here is a WEEK'S WORTH OF RPGS!!!!


Wow! lol Yeah, I was doing a bunch of other stuff. I'll be back in it until the end. By the way, yesterday wasn't the 29th. ;-)

AttachmentSize
MarchRPGs.zip4.33 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

Wow, there is some really

Wow, there is some really great stuff in here! Death Walks in particular was great on so many levels. Having the player experience real perceptual anomalies is such a great idea. Also, your judgmental analysis of the player's vote made me feel legitimately self-conscious.

Outback reminded me of what it was like to be a young child at an adult dinner party. That was such a surreal feeling, being with all these super large and awkward people who don't know quite know how to react to your presence.

FirecatFG's picture

Feb? 30

Here's my game for today

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MountainTrail.rar454.68 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

wow

That was super annoying! It reminds me of elderly people who I see walking sllooooowllly down the street. They just seem so accustomed to tedium that they don't even notice it.

ihavefivehat's picture

Feb 27th: cat eyes

despite being unstuck in time, I still managed to finally make a game again! maybe i'll escape february after all.

seizure warning on this one.

AttachmentSize
cat eyes.zip28.71 MB
FirecatFG's picture

Feb? 32

Here is a game for today as well as one following a theme from a previous day i wanted to make.

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PretendThisIsARhythmGame.rar515.74 KB
TheRace.rar456.02 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

Pretend This is a Rhythm

Pretend This is a Rhythm Game:

Great send-off for the marathon! It was actually touching to see all the old characters come back and dance together! I think this would make a great finale for the final mega-game also.

sergiocornaga's picture

Loved the nod to Rhythm

Loved the nod to Rhythm Heaven.

everythingstaken's picture

Feb ???

If I missed any days let me know! I think I got them all. @_@
The 30th-32nd is in there.

AttachmentSize
The Last Games.zip1.62 MB
FirecatFG's picture

Here's the hopefully final

Here's the hopefully final version of the "project files" for the second half of this marathon. A text file in the rar should tell you where to teleport the player for each game.

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Projectfiles2.rar1.8 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

feb 28th: skeleton racers

two endings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AttachmentSize
Skeleton Racers.zip28.65 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

Progress update:

I've been working on merging all the games into one executable. This consists of a lot of copying and pasting and then some tinkering in event scripting to remove weird conflicts. (Though there are some cool accidents in there, like having doorways from one game teleport you to a completely different scene in another game) So far I have all of FirecatFG's and my own games working together. I think I'll probably have the rest finished by the end of the week.

Question: Do you guys want me to put your games from the practice round in there too? It wouldn't be too much added work at all.

sergiocornaga's picture

I'd definitely like to see

I'd definitely like to see some of the other practice games included, and mine if only to stop me from only having one entry. I think I'll make some minor modifications first, though... is not having an ending or way to back out of the game a problem for the way you're setting things up?

I'd also like to submit one more game for this, but I'm not sure if I'll manage to complete it. Give up on me if I can't do it within a week, or less?

ihavefivehat's picture

Don't worry if your game

Don't worry if your game doesn't have a way to back out. It won't matter in the grand scheme of things.

everythingstaken's picture

You don't have to

You don't have to put my practice round games in there too unless you really want to, they are already online anyways. Here's a zip file with everything in it!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B25ixuBBGFaeSjVxMExPbGZBc3M/view?usp=sharing

FirecatFG's picture

I kind of went ahead and

I kind of went ahead and made an idea of how the games could be joined thogether. Feel free not to use it though.
You can press enter when you are under the numbers of a day to see the games made for that day (Only feb 11 and 28 have rooms, and most doors redirect to the same game.) Theres also an experimental "Return to calendar" spell on the skills menu.

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Main World.rar586.04 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

i like it

I was thinking that we could have separate areas where the games are arranged by date and by author. This would totally work for the date one. I'll start putting games into this format once I have them all set up.

everythingstaken's picture

If you need...

If you need any help with any of these I could make something for this overworld area. Would be neet if there were some little extras hidden around or maybe you could unlock some stuff when you play the different games. 8-)

ihavefivehat's picture

yeah!

That's what I've been thinking about. I was thinking that games would exist in the overworld. Then there would also be a museum type area where you could view our games sorted by date and by author (this is where Firecat's calendar would come in.) Maybe games would only unlock in the museum after you've found them in the overworld?

The cool thing about RPGMaker is that it has a built in save function, so we can let players feel like they're collecting all the games over multiple sessions and then reward them with some weird stuff for doing so.

everythingstaken's picture

Google Chat?

Do you both have Google Chat or facebook or something? I'm interested in what you're doing for the overworld area and stuff like that and if you wanted any help with assets or anything like that, I'd be more than willing to help.

ihavefivehat's picture

good idea

I have a few ideas floating around, but nothing too solid. We should definitely do a google chat some time and figure things out.

ihavefivehat's picture

progress update 2:

Whew! I finally got all the games working conflict-free (I think) in a single project. And that includes everybody's practice round games!

The only thing I have to do is write some common events to reset switches and variables when you finish a game and make sure there are no bugs with that. I won't be able to get to it today, but I don't think it will take too long. Hopefully I'll be able to finish up next time I have a chunk of free time.

ihavefivehat's picture

Feb 29th: Divine Inspiration

cool I made another game!!!!!!! This might be offensive to you if you are Christian and serious about it.

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divine inspiration.zip20.84 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

Progress update:

So I have all the games working together, and also have a pretty solid format for initializing and ending them from a hub world.

I also went through and completed days 1-4 of Firecat's calender format! I've attached the project file in case anyone wants to work on it.

How to put the player into a game:

1) Call the common event 'getReadyForGame'
2) Teleport the player into the correct location. For everythingstaken's, Firecat's, and sergio's games, I used the church cross tile to mark the location. Feel free to delete these when you have everything set up. For my games, most of them have fake title screen maps. For these, you can just teleport the player anywhere on those maps. Everything else should just work once you teleport the player to the correct map.
4) For games that might not allow the player to exit, I'm giving the option to save prior to entering. See Harpies on Harpy Island in Feb 13 for an example.

How to exit a game:

Find the part of the game which would normally end, delete the 'return to title screen' command and replace it by calling the 'endgame' common event. This will reset everything and teleport the player back to the spot they were in when they started the game.

For games that end with a Game Over screen, I've created fake game over common events, so just call the appropriate one of those instead of 'endgame'.

For creating the individual calendar room maps, feel free to do whatever you want. You don't necessarily have to follow my format. Just note that each room corresponds to a day on the calendar, and you should be able to move between them as such. So for instance, you should be able to exit feb11 on the lower portion of the screen to get to feb18 and vice versa.

If you do work on a room, post here before you do so, and then upload the updated project folder when you're done. That way we can avoid situations where two of us build the same room. I'll be doing this from now on.

Okay, have fun and let me know if you need me to clarify anything!

edit: I forgot to mention. If you want to change anything in the rooms that I've already made then feel free to do so. No need to ask for my permission or anything.

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marathon.zip30.31 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

I'm going to start working

I'm going to start working on the feb 15th room.

edit:
Finished that! From now on I'll keep the most recent file at the top of this page.

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marathon.zip30.33 MB
everythingstaken's picture

These look great. I enjoy

These look great. I enjoy the characters in the over world from my games and seeing you write for characters that are in my voice and seeing what you've picked up on, it's kind of funny and strange for me to see. I like it, I wouldn't mind if you kept doing that. I'll think of something clever or interesting to add, but I'm really happy about how this is looking. Super different from my marathon.

btw, for most of my games unless I made a custom end screen I don't think I really need a Game Over screen, you can just get rid of them if you want.

everythingstaken's picture

Also, can we just include a

Also, can we just include a specific skill or something where you can just use a skill to get back to the overworld map instead of going back to the title screen or would that break the game somehow? Also, I think in the end of each game we should set the variables and switches to 0 each time because I think that's the reason why the grim reaper game I made doesn't work properly. I'll go in and edit my games and add some stuff accordingly of course.

ihavefivehat's picture

oh dang

I do have something going which re-sets the first hundred switches and variables back to 0, but the fuck up with the grim reaper game was due to another mistake I made. Working on fixing it now!

Also, this is a good time to mention that if you want to use switches and variables on the overworld map, use anything over 100. That way that they won't get reset at the end of each game and they won't interfere with anything else.

edit: I fixed the problem with your game, everythingstaken. Plus I fixed some other bugs that I noticed and added an item which lets the player escape from the current game. The new file is in at the top of the page.

FirecatFG's picture

not feb

here is a version of the marathon with many fixes and improvements to my games, as well as a room for feb 32. this was made on a earlier version of the marathon files so im afraid you will have to work around that. also, you will need to copy the custom resources from another version of the marathon

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ihavefivehat's picture

thanks!

I merged it in with my more recent changes and added it to the top of the page.

edit: oops, I had uploaded the wrong file. Just changed it!

everythingstaken's picture

Place Holder

For ease of access I'm just going to make place holder rooms for all the rest of the days.

ihavefivehat's picture

good idea!

Also, I just realized that there are some problems with the Run Away mechanic. I think I'll be able to fix them next time I get my hands on the game, though.

everythingstaken's picture

Sick!

8-) Wow, I had just played your DDR game for the first time. I'm really into this idea and it was fun to see all the characters in the same place!

everythingstaken's picture

Yo!!

So, I just made a whole bunch of placeholder rooms for each day, connected all the rooms, all the butlers say which day each room is, gave doors and signs (with proper names) to all the games except for the practice games, and all the doors link to each game. I didn't take the time tonight to see where the starting point is for each game, so I kinda guessed for some of them, but each door will teleport the character to each respective game which is helpful at least so you don't have to go looking for what game matches up with which date and which door.

The dated rooms work so you can just keep going to the right if you want to play all the games in chronological order, or to the left starting at the end if you want to play backwards. If you go up in a room you will jump back 7 days and if you go down you will jump forward 7 days (if there are 7 days ahead or behind).

I'm super into Feb 15's room by the way! It's a really strange complimentary mix of the games.

Also, FYI, I renamed some of my games on the signs, but the names are still pretty similar if there is any confusion.

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RPGMarathon0319Morning.zip30.75 MB
everythingstaken's picture

Whoops!

There were a few games that weren't properly connected and I put the butter man in an obviously wrong place. I'll upload a fix sometime tomorrow if someone doesn't beat me to it. Also, are there any date rooms that anyone wants to do so two people don't end up doing the same room? I'm interested in making Feb 28th's and 25th's and then people could add or take out whatever.

ihavefivehat's picture

Thanks for doing all this! I

Thanks for doing all this! I don't have any rooms in particular that I want to do more than the others but I'll hold back from doing the 28th and 25th so you can have them.

I'll update the link on top of the page now.

FirecatFG's picture

a small update

here are converted versions of all remaining theme photos (you might want to set the transparency on the picture event to none). as well as some more title cards for my game (would you want me to make these for all of my games?).

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ihavefivehat's picture

thanks!

Having the pictures all set up is a huge help. You don't have to make title cards if you don't want to. I only included mine because I enjoyed making them during the marathon and wanted to see them in the final product.

ihavefivehat's picture

update

I went and imported all of the pictures that Firecat converted and also linked them to the respective events in the game. I didn't get around to doing the Curator's descriptions yet, though.

Also, I finished up the room for February 16th. It's a different format than what we have been doing for the other rooms, but I think it's fun. Feel free to do similar things yourselves.

ihavefivehat's picture

idea for the overall structure of the mega-game.

So I was just thinking about this game in the shower. I feel like what we have going now is really cool, but my mind keeps wanting to create a larger narrative to tie everything together. A loose story started to form in my mind while I was cleaning myself. Let me know what you think.

You're a ghost living in a decrepit, tiny room. It probably just has a bed and a few broken shelves. When the game starts, you receive a mysterious package which contains a calendar. You decide to hang the calendar up on your wall.

After it's hung up, you realize that it's a magic calendar and staring at it closely pulls you in to a calendar world containing various games (the thing we're making now). After every time you finish a game, you receive a key.

The only way to save your progress is to exit the calendar and sleep in your bed. The first time that you do this after finishing a game, you wake up and notice that a door has appeared in your apartment. The door leads to a museum-like area that's totally vacant except for a bunch of keyholes in the wall (hint hint).

When you one of the keys that you received from completing games in the appropriate keyhole, a new exhibit appears in the museum pertaining to the appropriate game along with perhaps viewers (providing commentary) and curators (maybe providing author's notes?)

When the player plays all of our games and activates all the exhibits, 'something cool' will happen. I have no idea what this would be though... maybe it would involve learning about the player character's past.

---

Anyway, I figured this would be an interesting way to tie all the games together which would require a relatively small amount of extra work. Well, the amount of work would depend on how much content we put into the museum exhibits. They could just be an organized way of playing the games or something more fancy. I'll try to make a prototype later today as a proof-of-concept, but let me know if you have any input towards or problems with this idea.

everythingstaken's picture

I dig it!

I like it. I do have some questions that I think are important. Who is the ghost? Why do they get the calendar? Why are they able to transport into the calendar? What do the games have to do with the exhibition? Does the ghost live in a museum and "live" through interpretations of the paintings? Maybe they lived through interpretations of the paintings when they were alive. Do we find out anything about this after we play through the game or is it still a mystery or are there clues to what's going on throughout the game.

Fore example, is the ghost a curator or janitor or a museum guard who used to live there? Maybe they are one of the artists or an artist who wants to be in the museum and it's a phantom of the opera style situation where no one knows they are living there.

I kind of like the idea of maybe a phantom of the opera style character who is an artist that lived secretly in the museum or got stuck in the museum and died. Maybe the way to win is to "make a game" somehow with your interactions.

I had a funny idea for this that we can incorporate if y'all like it. Since this is a game sort of about games, like a mega-game with a bunch of "micro/mini/non-games" I was thinking it would be funny or interesting to have a character having an existential crisis called Meta Zita who is very into meta-games. Basically because there are a lot of non-games I thought it would be funny if somewhere this character suggests meta games you can play with the different games. They would be hidden and you can only find them really in one place, but it could be a funny addition to the story and a funny self aware comment about what this collection is. If you aren't into this idea I'm super okay with holding onto this character myself for later.

But also, maybe the ghost you are playing as because you meet Meta Zita at some point (maybe in the real or calendar world [maybe both??]) you create a meta game and somehow by playing an untold or hinted at meta-like-game you can create a game in the museum, people take notice and then you pass out of purgatory and ascend to heaven or something or maybe your character just vanishes when people get excited about seeing this meta game happen and you see the meta game become like all the other exhibitions and then you get credits or something.

Also, I'm not sure if you're aware of one of the most famous RPG Maker 2003 games, Yume Nikki, but the bed and doors outside the apartment thing seems like a direct reference to it which I was wondering if you wanted that close of a reference. I was kind of worried about seeming too much like Yume Nikki when I was doing those wrapping environments, but I found that because I was making them a lot smaller, so it had a different effect.

ihavefivehat's picture

I didn't really have a

I didn't really have a specific interpretation for the ghost thing, I just liked the image. I liked that the 'real world' in this game would consist of a tiny, unattractive space and all the color and fun would happen in spaces that are only questionably real like the world inside the calendar and the museum. In my head the ghost definitely isn't living in the museum, he's just a visitor.

I like where you're going with finding out about the ghost's former life, and especially with having the goal of the game would be to have the player make their own game. I hadn't considered any of that. For me, the museum was just a mysterious and surreal space which served the practical purpose of allowing various interpretations of the game to be presented and coexist together. I like the Meta Zita character and the idea of having the player create a meta game to win, but I'm kind of at a loss right now for ideas of what that would look like. Maybe I'll get some more ideas once we create the museum itself.

I've never actually played Yume Nikki, but I can't say that the idea for the doorway is 100% original either way. The idea comes from dreams that I've had, but also from hearing about Silent Hill 4 (never actually played it though) and from the movie Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me. It's an idea that resonates with me for some reason.

I just watched a video of Yume Nikki though and it is really similar to my idea so maybe we should change it anyway.

Unrelatedly, I uploaded a new version of the project with a new game called Infinite Ninjas on Feb 31st.

everythingstaken's picture

This is that Meta character


This is that Meta character I mentioned above. I kinda modeled them after Anthony Burch because I remember from his Destructoid articles and videos he kinda introduced me to the broader idea of what meta-games are (like pacifist runs in games). If you want to use that character idea I'm okay with changing the character design/whatever.

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ihavefivehat's picture

update

Added a quick intro sequence to the game using my idea from above. I didn't get around to adding the museum area today. Project is linked at the top of the page as usual. Let me know what you think!

everythingstaken's picture

It's great!

Yeah, I really like this! I especially like the audio at the beginning. I think there should be a reason you can only save in the bed though and maybe a more intuitive way or story reason of getting there other than just walking off the calendar, though doing that is fine.

I also really dig the spaceship part! I'll try to make some areas that are kind of like that. It's a bit more fun not just having doors and stuff.

sergiocornaga's picture

I'd just like to mention

I'd just like to mention that the EasyRPG Player seems to break a lot of things!

ihavefivehat's picture

yeah

I mostly just put that in there out of curiosity, to see how it would run on a mac. You can still run the game normally by clicking the other executable, though. Easy RPG is still in development but one day it will be pretty cool. I think they're even working on android and html 5 ports.

FirecatFG's picture

Mar 21

Here's some additions from me. I made a new game for Feb 29. As well as a room for Feb 18 (By the way, you can feel free to change this and Feb 32 room as much as you want). Also, it fixes a bug i found. If you used the run away item in The Dead Optician after he joins your party. You recieved a "Real" game over. This was probably caused by the game being hardcoded to instantly give you a game over if all members of the party were dead, and i fixed it by changing the "Remove party" event to remove the optician before the dentist.
As always, my files contain little to no custom content, so you will have to provide it from elsewhere.

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marathongamemar21.rar2.52 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

nice!

I like what you did with February 18th! I updated the file at the top of the page.

I have free time today, so I'm going to try to knock out a bunch of calendar pages. For now, I'll be working on the 17th, 19th, and 20th, so if you work on the game today, make sure to don't do anything to those particular maps.

edit: So I finished the 17th's room but then got distracted and made a game for February 30th instead of doing the rooms for the 19th and 20th. The game is called "Do The Tent Rock" and it's one of my dumbest ones yet, so check it out!

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MarathonGameMarch24thV2.zip38.2 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

update

I made a room for the 20th. Kind of skipped the 19th because I couldn't think of a good idea.

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MarathonGameMarch25th.zip38.24 MB
FirecatFG's picture

So im guessing the room on

So im guessing the room on the 19th can now be changed? Here's a version of the room i wanted to make.
By the way, where are we going to place the practice games on? i was thinking we could make a room for it on february 22.

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marathongamemar25.rar2.45 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

Good idea! Maybe players

Good idea! Maybe players would have to solve some sort of puzzle to access that room too, so they could be sort of a bonus thing.

ihavefivehat's picture

Updaet!!

I added a room for feb 21st............... I feel like I did some other stuff too but for some reason I can't remember what right now. Maybe I just imagined it.

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marathongamemar26.zip39.72 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

uppdathe:

I made a room for the 23rd. Good news: our game now includes an entire digital Rosary! Get your prayer on!

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marathongamemar27.zip39.73 MB
FirecatFG's picture

Mar 28

Made a room for the 26th as well as some more titlescreens.
I guess we can make it so you unlock day 22 by completing conditions on other calendar rooms, such as having to complete the rosary prayers and leaving the room 19 at midnight, etc.

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marathongamemar28.rar2.52 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

I love that you snuck a

I love that you snuck a ninja with the 'hiyah' sound in there! I merged it with custom assets from the old games and linked it at the top of the page.

By the way, do you upload smaller files because of bandwidth issues? If so I can try to upload smaller files as well to make things easier.

edit: For opening feb. 22nd, I had the idea that we could do a Zelda-style trading sequence using characters from the calendar pages, but I like the idea of solving miscellaneous puzzles also. I don't want to force players to complete the rosary though, I think that would just be cruel.

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clyde's picture

pedestrian dialogue.

Word on the grapevine is that y'all may be interested in having some folks who have played the games write a few lines of dialogue for each which can be spoken by art-lovers in the museum. My wife and I would be interested in doing that, but I don't really want to learn RPGMaker or nothin. If y'all want us to do it, we need a couple of questions answered:
1) Could we make monologues from two separate characters about the same piece of art?
2) What format would you want this in?
3)Should we write it from the voices of stereotypical/campy archetypes?

ihavefivehat's picture

sorry for missing your message!

But it makes more sense to have this conversation here in the comments anyway!

Here are my personal answers to your questions (including one of your questions from the message you sent me). If anybody else has ideas or input please don't hesitate to post 'em also.

1) Could we make monologues from two separate characters about the same piece of art?

Answer: Yes!

2) What format would you want this in?

Answer: A text file would be fine. You could just list the name of the game and the appearance of the character or characters. Then you can just type out the dialogue as if it were a manuscript for a play. You can use line breaks to indicate how you'd like sentences to be spaced out.

In case you want to get specific about how you want a character to look, I've attached a file which contains all the sprite sheets that come with RPG Maker. We can refer to a given sprite in the following format: "char3-1". 'char3' is the name of the image file and '1' is the position of the given character on the sheet. So 'char3-1', for example would refer to the king and 'char3-8' would refer to the blue soldier with the tassel on his helmet. (Hopefully this will make more sense when you take a look at the sprite sheets themselves.)

3) Should we write it from the voices of stereotypical/campy archetypes?

Answer: If you would like to do that, then please do. It's not an absolute requirement, though.

-Could we say that we want two people to talk about one piece? It wouldn't have to be an actual dialogue where lines are staggered between them, more like just two people standing near one of the exhibits, one has a few lines and the other has a few different lines.

Answer: This would be totally fine. And if you did want to have two characters having a conversation that would be no problem either.

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everythingstaken's picture

Uh huh, yes.

^ I second all of this.

I don't mind if the voices are campy or whatever, whatever you feel. If you feel like being serious, that's okay too. Whatever would turn out the best!

clyde's picture

I just wanted to assure you

I just wanted to assure you all that we are working on this, we are just slow. If anyone is waiting on us, make sure to tell me and we will pick up the pace, but we are making progress.

ihavefivehat's picture

no worries

we're also going at a pretty slow pace at the moment, so don't worry too much about it.

ihavefivehat's picture

update:

I added rooms for the 27th and 28th. (Note that the 24th and 25th remain incomplete).

I also fixed a couple small bugs that I noticed here and there.

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marathongameApr1.zip45.56 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

update:

Added a map for the 29th and fixed some miscellaneous bugs I noticed.

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marathongameApr2.zip45.67 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

update

I didn't have much time this morning, but I did go through and fix a few small things; mostly these were bugs involving the Run Away item. It looks like those issues are going to have to be fixed on a game-to-game basis.

FirecatFG's picture

Here's an idea for Feb 22

Here's an idea for Feb 22 quest. I made it on a previous version of the marathon files so you might need to work around that.

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marathongameApr3.rar2.48 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

wow!

You did a seriously awesome job with that! Having a quest like that really brings the world to life! Maybe we can add more things like that later.

The only difference in the file attached here is that I added all the custom assets back in.

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marathongameApr7.zip45.69 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

update:

I went through all of the finished rooms and fixed my games so that they don't cause any issues with the run away mechanic. The only ones I couldn't fix were Dream Horses and Raw Meat Town because for some reason you can't open your item menu in those games. I racked my brain trying to figure out why but I eventually just gave up... hopefully I'll figure it out when I come back with a fresh mind.

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marathongameApr7-2.zip45.74 MB
FirecatFG's picture

about the items:

The game seems to prevent you from using most menu functions when there's not a single hero on the party. It seems to be one of RPG maker hardcoded quirks.

ihavefivehat's picture

ohhhhhhhhhh thanks!

I'm smacking myself in the head right now! made the fixes and uploaded a new file.

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marathongameApr7-3.zip45.74 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

update

In addition to the usual fixing of bugs and then forgetting about them, I've also created a proof-of-concept version of the museum area.

To enter it, complete at least one game and then exit the calendar and sleep in the bed.

For each game that you complete, a new 'painting' will appear in the museum. Right now, I'm using the small images that Sergio, everythingstaken and I posted along with our games. Eventually, these will also be accompanied by characters with dialogue written by Clyde and Chrissy. Also, you should be able to jump into the games from the museum but I haven't added that part yet.

Note: So far this only works with 4 games: Teeth of Fury, One Dollar, Just a Reall Deep and Dark Thought, and A Dark Game By A Twisted Soul.

Firecat: If we're going to go this route would need some small (48x48 pixel) images for all of your games too. If you don't have the time to make those images, let me know and we can probably figure something else out.

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marathongameApr8.zip45.76 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

update

All I did today was make some minor changes to some of my games!

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marathongameApr9.zip45.76 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

Infinite Ninjas:

This is another 'interactive screensaver' type game. Interact and also save your screen while getting stabbed forever and ever (by ninjas).

I realized that I never posted a stand-alone file for this game or Do The Tent Rock, so I'm gonna do that now!:!LK!:L!KJ:!KL!:J!LK!J:!LKJ!:!LKJ!:LK!J!:

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Infinite Ninjas.zip24.54 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

Do The Tent Rock

An educational game featuring people who are bad at rapping trying to rap using a wikipedia page.

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Do The Tent Rock.zip23.37 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

update:

I went through all the days up to and including the 16th (the starship) and play-tested the games. It turns out that a lot of the games still are not properly set up to return the player back to the calendar map when they're finished. In other words, they'll give a real you Game Over screen or just boot you back to the title screen. Those need to be replaced with a call to either the 'endgame' common event or the appropriate 'game over' event. Anyway, the days that I mentioned should now be free of those errors and also errors involving the 'run away' item.

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FirecatFG's picture

here are the "thumbnail pictures" for my games.

I decided to upload all of them on a single image. Let me know if you are okay with that.

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ihavefivehat's picture

great!

And yeah, that's totally fine because I'll need to cut and paste them into other sprite sheets anyway.

Capt_hastings-Chrissy's picture

We got excited

Hey, We just wanted to give you the heads up that we were playing all of the everythingstaken games and got excited and talked about some of them on Episode 8 of our podcast. http://shortfreegamestalk.tumblr.com/post/116170434463/short-free-games-talk-podcast-episode-8.

hooray

Ferris wheel but stove steak
between lard. tvdinner walk
as if Ferris wheel. fake inside of open
against taffy, Ferris wheel or lake
bake between bard. box un smother
into clover of computer match

outside Ferris wheel. lard because chair batch
within stove. stilt uncover but
wake out of card because tvdinner.
among table walk between quilt. whither
amid computer, quilt open and
steak among wreath. card or welt stake
with box talk inside lake. lake open.

everythingstaken's picture

Oh wow! I'm flattered!

We did the swarms at the same time. :-D

ihavefivehat's picture

OKAY

Here's the plan! I have buttloads of free time over the next few days, so here's what I'm going to do by Sunday night:

1) Finish the calendar map
2) Finish the museum section
3) Playtest as much as possible

This will leave us very close to having the game totally finished. All we will have to do then is come up with some sort of reward for completing all the games and insert Chrissy and Clyde's dialogue. I'm excited to have this finished!

clyde's picture

You might want to skip our

You might want to skip our contribution.
We signed up for the WizardJam and that's going to take all of our free creative time until next Friday.
Plus we are very slow. We haven't discussed all the games yet and haven't even begun to write our succinct summary sentences for thoughts on the games. We don't want to hold y'all back another month.

ihavefivehat's picture

that's okay

Personally I'd rather wait longer than cut your writing from the game. And there will be plenty more things to work on once I finish what I was planning on doing over the next few days.

ihavefivehat's picture

big update:

So I actually didn't get around to finishing the museum, but I did do a bunch of other things!

- Added all the missing rooms to the calendar
- Playtested and fixed bugs in every game (they should all work smoothly now)
- Changed the 'Run Away' mechanic so that now, instead of having to use an item you can just pressed the shift key!
- Made it so that a flashing thumbs up will appear above the doorway that leads to a game after you've completed that game. So now players will be easily able to see what games they have and haven't played.

We're getting really close to finishing this thing now! but there are a few things left to do! I'm adding a 'to-do' list at the top of the page here to keep track of things.

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ihavefivehat's picture

wow

So RPGMaker 2003 was given an official english release for the first time ever! Apparently it includes performance fixes and more stability for newer operating systems. Pretty cool! Once we finish the game I'll make a build of it using the official version so that it's more stable and stuff.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/362870

Johny L.'s picture

Holy sh-- Enterbrain your a

Holy sh-- Enterbrain your a freaking man

We may learn that Enterbrain has made a very better english translation and fixes, tought, i heard that there was a similar engine which is free and based off RPG Maker 2003, it's RPG 20XX, and it's been developing for years, it takes forever to be finally completed, and if it comes out years later we're ready for another RPG Maker collab.
Oh, and the release date for an old software is pretty awkward...cool release...wonder if we can get a Sim RPG Maker rerelease...

ihavefivehat's picture

thoughts on the game

Since we're coming up on putting the finishing touches on this thing, I'm having some thoughts on the thing as a whole and how to pull it all together. I wrote down a bunch of stuff before running for the bus this morning (I drank a lot of coffee). Just sort of miscellaneous stuff, but I thought it was worth posting:

The calendar portion of the game is messy, distracting, and tonally inconsistent. (Not saying that this is a bad thing. Those are some of my favorite qualities!) It will mess with and confuse the player's perceptions of the games within it. By completing a game, the player pulls it out of this tonal mess and inserts it into the more sterile, academic, and clinical museum environment. Maybe we should imply that the curators want to rescue the games from the chaos of the calendar and save/preserve them for posterity. But it should be ambiguous as to whether this is a good thing or not.

The museum layout: Right now the museum is laid out so that each gallery/room corresponds to a single day of the event. I want to change it so that each author has their own gallery with their games ordered sequentially. This will give each author a space where they control the presentation, and in some sense the player's perception of their games. Chrissy and Clyde's dialogue will subvert this control a little bit, which is interesting.

I'm think it would be cool to come up with an implied back story for the main character of this game. Based on everythingstakens comments from a few weeks ago, I keep thinking that the ghost could be someone who died in a museum. I like the idea of someone dying of thirst/starvation in a back corner of a museum, but the absurdity of that situation might not appeal to everyone. Anyway, regardless of the backstory itself, I think it's best if we imply his/her backstory through environmental storytelling rather than pure exposition, and leave it open to interpretation. I would like to hear people's input on this because it's all still kind of vague in my mind.

everythingstaken's picture

Wow!

I haven't looked at the files for a bit as I was finishing my long project; this looks amazing! I love all the different map environments, they are a lot of fun to navigate through and see all the references.

I also like the story reason for saving the games and doing things like that. I think it should be ambiguous or be more of a bad thing that you are rescuing the games. I took a good amount of classes about visual critical analysis and that idea kind of reminds me of the idea of what curators do and the idea about putting work in an area without context. On one hand if you put something in a white wall gallery then you can not see maybe the history of the artist's work or the context in which it was made, like the area or time in which it was made. If you put the work with other artist's work then, often the curator is giving their own context to the work that the original artist may not have intended. This is definitely the case and easily seen by looking at the difference between a re-blogger's tumblr and the difference between the context of a work on that sort of blog and then the original artist's blog, especially if the original artist's blog is only of their own work.

Bleh bleh bleh.

So it would be interesting if something like that is represented. I think it is definitely interesting to view the different games in the context of the group jam and the different subjects and days they were made, the context of the different game makers, and then just the stand alone context of the games alone. I like the way they are presented because viewing them by date is I guess the original way I viewed them, because when I go back and play them, I don't just play everything of one person, I go and see how we interpreted the different subjects.

I am not sure how this difference of opinions of context would inform the game or be shown other than literally moving where you access the games. Could be something to think about!

I also like the idea of having rooms for the specific authors, but I think my favorite way of showing the games is alongside everyone else's. I guess I'm trying to think how it would work for my room specifically or my section. What were you thinking about doing for yours? I separated the author's works in Heart Pounding etc. Marathon, but I did it in a way where you interact everything the same way, but just the different person's games were in a way highlighted and the environment changed each time and that there were other ways to separate the games, like by genera. I guess I am thinking that essentially the way you could access our individual games on their own would just be an easier way to get to each game and would take away from the big calendar mode. Maybe our individual games appear in a different space after we beat each of the games, so the games we've already played can be viewed easier without having to explore and such.

Also, I like the idea bout implying the back story through different environmental or mechanical things. I would also like to still do the Meta Zeta thing now that I have some time to work on stuff that's not 8 SONS. If you want to talk easier about any of this stuff I could definitely do a google chat or something.

ihavefivehat's picture

well...

My feeling for the museum environments is that they should be very spare and empty feeling. This is both for story/thematic purposes and also because having another area as content-packed as the calendar would be redundant and possibly detract from what we have going on now. Actually thinking about it now, I kind of want to make it totally silent except for echoey player footsteps (yeah, the player is a floating ghost but whatever) just to hammer home how different the museum area is from the calendar.

Anyway, I was kind of envisioning my as just being a very empty, gallery style room with the 'paintings' on the wall. Maybe they should all be like that. Anyway, I'll play around and upload an example once I find something I like.

The games will only appear in the museum after you finish them in the calendar first. I definitely want the calendar to be the main way of experiencing these things, and the museum to function mostly as 'here are some other ways of looking at these things that you already played'.

clyde's picture

I really like the maps like

I really like the maps like everythingstaken was saying. Seeing characters from the games walking around and the ways that the maps sometimes have related logics to them (like the sundial one and the horse one) is really exciting and acknowledges what is in these games and what they are about. I think that putting that amount of intention into their presentation will help a lot of people appreciate these games more. That a larger world is aware of each game, creates a consensus that what the player just saw is known and understood by the hubworld. Gosh this is turning out to be so cool.

To be honest, I'm still not sure how Chrissy's and my contribution will fit into this. We are still excited to do it, but it's hard for me to visualize implimentation. Maybe we should send you a few blurbs so we can understand how they will be implimented better?

ihavefivehat's picture

thanks!

The outside feedback is really valuable. And yes, I think your idea about sending me the blurbs is a great one. That way, I can upload a little 'sample area' so you'll have a better idea of what we're going to do with them.

ihavefivehat's picture

update:

I added the beginnings of a gallery room for my games. Right now the game is set up so that it automatically sets all every game as being finished, but normally the paintings wouldn't appear in the gallery until you have completed the game in the calendar map.

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marathongameApr27.zip45.91 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

update:!LK:

cool cool cool, I finished the gallery for my games.

Here's how to get there in case you didn't know:

1) Go into the calendar and beat at least one game
2) Exit the calendar by returning to the overview map and then walking to the edge of the screen (everythingstaken mentioned that we should have a more obvious way of exiting the calendar and I agree, we'll have to fix that at some point)
3) Sleep in your bed and save your game. When you wake up, a door will appear in your apartment
4) Enter the door. You'll figure it out from there.

---

I think this is a pretty good format that we can use for all the galleries. I don't think we should do anything too fancy for them since the calendar is already fancy enough. Next time I work on the game I'll make tilesets for everyone else's games too.

note: The hallway area of the museum is just a place holder for now.

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ihavefivehat's picture

cool cool cool cool

I finished up the secret room that firecat added on the 22nd. It now has links to all of the games we made for the practice round.

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marathongameMay03.zip46.05 MB
clyde's picture

We got blurbs for five games.

Tell us if we need to do anything differently.

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RPG maker comments clarified.txt4.55 KB
Capt_hastings-Chrissy's picture

ghostie

Hey you guys, I just wanted to let you know that if you go into the ninja level via the calendar you do not get your little ghostie avatar to go around the world in. Also, on another note, the gallery is the coolest thing ever. I really like how each one is individualized. I especially like how ghostie gets to ride the horse.

ihavefivehat's picture

those are perfect, thanks!

Since you're writing them as yourselves, how do you want to be represented in-game?

ihavefivehat's picture

So I'm working on putting

So I'm working on putting your dialogue into the game, and I was wondering how you guys want to be represented. If you want, you can design characters for yourselves using this website and send them to me:

http://charas-project.net/charas2/index.php

clyde's picture

Chrissy would be Hero4-5

Chrissy would be Hero4-5 (the brunette in the bottom left corner)
I can be Char4-5 (the bald guy wearing green)

FirecatFG's picture

May 4

I have added my own museum collection to the game, as well as a few bugfixes and other small details. I think i fixed the "Double Fadeout" the "endgame" event seemed to had, but i hope i didn't break anything else.

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marathongameMay4.rar2.54 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

Cool, it looks really good.

Cool, it looks really good. I love those empty picture frames. Looks like you fixed the bug with the ninja area that chrissy mentioned too!

ihavefivehat's picture

update

I added a system where clyde and chrissy appear in front of a random painting each time you enter a gallery, and also put in their dialogue. I also did some other small things here and there.

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marathongameMay07.zip46.1 MB
clyde's picture

Capt Hastings and I are making progress.

I just want to assure you all that we are working on the dialogues and we are making progress. I don't really want to submit them because sometimes we want to rewrite them and it is probably simpler to just submit them when needed than confuse y'all with multiple drafts. Capt Hastings and I are still developing or process for writing these. We thought it would be as simple as transcribing the podcast, or taking excerpts from them word for word; this is not the case, it doesn't work that way.
When you need some more submissions, I can give you what we have, but right now, the ones we have are still getting worked on.
They aren't ready, but tell us if we are taking too long anyway and we will give you what we have.

ihavefivehat's picture

ok!

right now there's still more than a few things to do on our end before we're ready to finish the game up, but I'll let you know if it's getting to the point where we have nothing left but your writing. (that is a ways off, though)

ihavefivehat's picture

update:

I did a bunch of stuff today: Wow look at me, a change log. So professional!!

-Added some flashy effects for the run away mechanic. You now get saved by an angel! Great stuff!

-Added author's notes for a few of my games. You can read them from the plaques in my gallery.

-Wait.... the Shifty Lights music was stored as a 20 meg wav file??? Fixed that and saved a good 17 megs. (blushing face smiley)

-Now the museum receptionist will tell you how many games you've completed and how many are left.

-Re-did how teleport events work in the calendar area. This is a work-heavy thing, so I've only done up to February 22nd so far. I like how it's going though!

-Made is so the image on the toast is selected randomly rather than based on what direction you enter the room from (this might not make sense, but trust me: it's real)

So, cool cool cool progress and stuff! I'll update the to-do list at the top of the page also.

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marathongameMay13.zip33.98 MB
clyde's picture

The more I play the merged

The more I play the merged project, the more impressed I am. I just ran over the hurt-tiles in the Deep Dark room and it occured to me that these are environmental instruments of optional pain. I was always confused by the spikes in The Binding of Isaac, but now I think I get them.
Interestingly, I don't get the same impression from the hurt-tiles in Just a Really deep Dark thought by everythingstaken. In that case I see them as painful thoughts, circumstances, or events that the protagonist comes across.

ihavefivehat's picture

interesting

yeah, I had actually been playing Binding of Isaac around the same time that I made that room, so maybe it was an unconscious influence. Those empty rooms with just spikes in the center were one of my favorite parts of that game.

ihavefivehat's picture

So I've actually been

So I've actually been working on this quite a bit, though I've been neglecting to post an update.

-I finished the screen transition thing I was working on for the calendar map
-There is a secret quest involving aliens. (Go to February 25th and talk to the lady with glasses. But only when there is an alien face visible on the toast!)
-It also has a couple fun game breaking items which I will eventually put as rewards for secret quests.
-Numerous little changes, a few small secrets, various little snippets of dialogue and such

everythingstaken: I'll make the gallery area for your games for the next update. Also I have a sort of basic ending in mind, but I'm not too enthusiastic about it. Your Meta Zeta idea sounded really interesting. If you still want to do that then now is a good time! Let's google chat about it some time.

everythingstaken's picture

Uh, aaah, ooooh

I can do it @_@ I just got caught up doing a whole bunch of stuff, this is a good time for me to do it too. Trying to find a job with basically no marketable skills in New York is hell, I hate it. I think I also need to edit some things about a couple of my games because there are a couple weird glitches in a few of them that deal with the tile set.

ihavefivehat's picture

dude I know

I went to art school, so my skills are also pretty unmarketable. Once RPG Maker 2003 and Klik n Play cross over into the mainstream we'll be filthy rich though. It's bound to happen soon, I can feel it.

ihavefivehat's picture

oh hey

look at me, I forgot to upload the file!

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marathongameMay27.zip33.99 MB
everythingstaken's picture

Yo, yo

Ah, I've been super busy. Luckily I have a secure job that starts up in a couple of weeks, so I am super free to keep working on this. I figured I should upload what I have working right now. I am not sure how to make it so objects pass in front of you, so I thought I would take a break. I hope you enjoy my gallery! I like the addition to the gallery line by the way! I feel like this game feels super great with all this polish we are giving it!

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marathongameJune8.zip34.45 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

haha

oh man, your gallery is looking fantastic! great job!

everythingstaken's picture

Still Working

I'm working finishing it so you can warp to all the different areas and I figure out how to make things above the character. Hopefully it will be done tonight so I can work on the Meta Zita stuff tonight and tomorrow. 8-)

ihavefivehat's picture

yeah dude

nice man! I don't know if you were still going to go with the idea that you meet meta zita in the bathroom, but if you were I found this nice lookin bathroom chipset:

edit: Oh yeah! I was thinking that there would be a ladies and a mens room in the museum. but the same scene would play out in whichever bathroom the player used first. It would be a fun passive way for the player to roleplay ghosty's gender without realizing it.

and to get things to appear above the character: since you're using events instead of tiles, you just need to go each event and change the 'event layer' option from 'below hero' to 'above hero' :)

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everythingstaken's picture

Thanks, and lol I meant I

Thanks, and lol I meant I had already "figured" it out (typo). That chip set looks great by the way. I feel like some of it reminds me of New York, Manhattan restrooms. Makes sense for a museum. I could also add in some signs and some extra stuff. What is this from? It looks cool.

ihavefivehat's picture

I was just google searching

I was just google searching and found it in this forum thread:

http://www.charas-project.net/forum/index.php?topic=26599.0

People have made some really nice assets for rpgmaker 2000/2003 over the years!

everythingstaken's picture

Wow!

All of these are great.

So, I made it so everything links to something, except I left out the two previous games for the practice. They have statues, but they just don't link to anything because I'd need to take some time to understand how you were linking stuff or if you want the practice games to be a secret unlockable. Anyways, did you start working on the Meta stuff? I could create the bathroom and some of that other stuff tomorrow if you want, or do you want to figure out something else/work on something else?

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ihavefivehat's picture

hey!

Originally, the practice games weren't going to show up in the museum at all. I think I made one of the NPC's in the secret area say something about how the curators will never find them there. I don't know, maybe we could make that into a side quest featuring Player Choice (tm) where you can decide whether to help the curators obtain the secret games or not.

And yeah! I can actually work on the game a little bit right now. I'll add a few more areas to the museum and put together the scene where you meet meta zita.

everythingstaken's picture

Cool, cool

I guess I can start on the final traditional RPG area and make it as a seperately thing just because that could be an easy thing to work on right now while you are adding onto the larger game.

ihavefivehat's picture

sounds good

The other thing that you could do is just sort of walk around the calendar area and see if there's anything that you'd like to change/add. There's no need to do anything huge, but maybe you'll want to change some dialogue or add an NPC with something to say here and there. That area makes up the bulk of the game but it's kind of missing your touch, I think.

everythingstaken's picture

Oh, yeah, I can do that

Oh, yeah, I can do that first. I'd like to add some more non playable characters. That would be fun.

clyde's picture

To give y'all an update from

To give y'all an update from us, we are nearing the point where we have something we are happy with written for every game. After than it won't take very long to do simple revisions. We will probably have something written for every game by the beginning of next week, and then I want to do pass overs for a little while unitl you all get impatient.

ihavefivehat's picture

good to hear!

I'm excited to see what you guys have come up with!

everythingstaken's picture

I'm excited to see it soon

I'm excited to see it soon too! :-) You can take your time as long as it's good. 8-) We have a little to do too.

Blueberry Soft's picture

!!

I'm really looking forward to this!

FirecatFG's picture

Feb was long ago

Here are a few things i wanted to include to the game:
*Now after completing 3 games you unlock the ability to change the music of the museum area.
*I was considering adding some "movement" to chrissy and clyde commentary. See the "Call It What You Want" or "The Trail" portaits for and example of what im talking about.
*Extended the museum hallway slighty to the left.
*Added an NPC in the main calendar area that can disenable the world breaker.
*Also made it so some of the games will get a different behaivour if entered from a unstable teleportation. (On cases where you would normally be stuck unable to open the menu)
*Many other small details and secrets and things i may have forgotten about
*This version was made before everythingistaken submissions. But i think i included its additions correctly.

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ihavefivehat's picture

cool!

I merged all of your changes into the file I'm currently working on. The only change of yours that I didn't include was the museum hallway extension, because I already redid that area completely.

I think you guys will like what I'm doing to the museum. It has a lot more character and mystery now!

everythingstaken's picture

Cool!

I'm super excited to see it! I also think you'll like some of the additions to the calendar that I'm making.

Also, I was thinking of having a "secret" area connected to the night club where you can listen to all the original music that we (mostly your music) added to the game.

Haha, I feel like I know so much more about RPG Maker and making games in general right now, I wish I had known a lot of this stuff when I started out making stuff for this jam. I downloaded Audacity for that alien game I made and now I realize how easy it is to add music to stuff. I also didn't realize how easy it is to add assets. I always had them stored in some random folder and then imported them and it took forever. >_<

everythingstaken's picture

This is getting so big! I

This is getting so big! I think I need to log my stuff better. I know ihavefivehat is doing a bunch of stuff right now.
I am glad you added an NPC to disable world breaker and the teleportation fixers, we totally needed that.

Currently, I have been doing what feels like a bunch of miscellaneous stuff too. Do you remember some of the small details and secrets that you've added, because I don't want them to become lost.

Right now I am basically just editing the calendar areas to add my own flairs and characters and stuff. Mainly this is just me adding a bunch of sound effects to characters that don't already have sound effects. I changed the layout of the Harpy Mountain area a lot. I also super edited my Outback Steakhouse area. I will post my updates a little later tonight and then we can figure out how to combine them.

ihavefivehat's picture

Since I haven't made any

Since I haven't made any changes outside the museum area today, I just copied over all of non-museum map files (the .lmu's in the project folder) from FirecatFG's file straight into mine. So we didn't loose any of the small changes that he made.

But since you've been working on the calendar also, it will take a little bit more work to merge your stuff in without overwriting Firecat's. If you keep a record of the changes that you make it shouldn't be too hard, though.

everythingstaken's picture

Yeah, I know for the most

Yeah, I know for the most part what I've done and I've kinda been going in an order.

Also, one thing I noticed and tried to fix in some instances while just playing some of the games over again was sometimes the screen flashes after you finish a game or you see your ghost appear in a place where they shouldn't be or you see a character temporarily before a game starts. I can easily go back in and fix that later though, but there were a bunch of instances of that.

ihavefivehat's picture

yeah I thought I had fixed

yeah I thought I had fixed that a while ago, but it keeps popping up. I'll see if I can figure it out.

ihavefivehat's picture

update!

I think I'm done adding stuff for today! This file has a totally re-done and fleshed out museum area. This included doing a little bit of pixel art to add velvet ropes and men and women's restroom signs to the museum tile-set.

You can also now meet Meta Zita and begin the 'main quest' of our game. I haven't actually implemented anything beyond the initial meeting, though. Feel free to carry on from where I left off if you want. And let me know if you can't figure out what to do to meet him. I don't think I made it too obscure, but I want to see if you guys can figure it out for yourselves.

This file includes FirecatFG's changes from earlier today as well.

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everythingstaken's picture

Cool! New Update!

I added my stuff to the file above.

What I've added to the calendar:
Feb 11- New NPC
Feb 13- Completely changed the map layout, tileset and added sounds.
Feb 14- Changed Alien text and added sound effects.
Feb 17- Hellboy and Johann Kraus, changed chicken and cow audio.
Feb 19- Cat-girl meows.
Feb 25- Cat-girl meows.
Feb 26- Changed potato looking creature's sound so it's audible.
Feb 27- Added two cats w/sound effects.

I also changed some stuff from 2 of my games. We Hated Those Guys was broken in the mega file and I sort of changed some stuff to Outback so it feels more fleshed out, so, Clyde and Chrissy, idk what version of We Hated Those Guys you played, but you may want to take another quick look at both of them.

Outback- Added a ton of characters, new sound effects, and music. I liked this game a lot, but knew I wanted to add some stuff to it. This version of my game feels pretty different, though it's the same concept.
We Hated Those Guys- Apparently the tileset that was used in previous versions was not the tileset that I had on my original version so you couldn't move throughout the island properly, so I fixed it so you can explore to the area with the skulls and the area with the romantic view.

SPOILER!!!

Do you just go into the women's bathroom, is that it, I did it? I can't get past the ropes can I?

By the way, I'm not sure how to fix this, but Snow Bunnies has this error when it goes to the Game Over screen it gets stuck in this weird endless loop.
lol I meant to upload this last night but I fell to sleep. ;-)

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marathongameJun11a.zip101.07 MB
everythingstaken's picture

Just in case anyone is

Just in case anyone is working on anything right now, I made another pretty large update.
I essentially added a bunch of detail to the side quest to unlock Feb 22nd.

On Feb 32nd there is and old lady waiting to get some medicine.
On Feb 11th the curator has some additional dialogue now.
On Feb 14th you can take the orb at any time now.
On Feb 23rd you can now get the Body and Blood of Christ as different items.
On Feb 22nd the skeleton reacts to you trying to give him the orb earlier.
The skeleton also reacts to you giving him the Body of Christ.

By the way, I am unsure of how to get to a couple secret areas (the UFO area and Fbe 32). I'll take a crack at it rn. I think it's related to the Bread level, but I'm not sure how to trigger it.

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ihavefivehat's picture

To get to the UFO area, you

To get to the UFO area, you need to wait for a particular image to appear on the toast, and talk to a particular NPC when it's there.

I replayed that quest recently and there are a few things I'm going to tweak about it, including making it a bit easier to start.

I probably won't be able to work on the game until later tonight so feel free to make changes anywhere.

everythingstaken's picture

Oh!

lol I realized how to do it right after I asked, but that was only from looking at the code.

I was going to add a couple things to it, but I can wait until you're done if you want.

It would be a good idea to vary the dialogue of the different characters on the toast screen which I would be happy to do. For example, they'd only say something about the image on the toast when they see it, because it was confusing at first. Maybe the alien girl would recruit you no matter what was on the toast?

Also, one reason I couldn't complete the alien thing was because I didn't complete any games before doing that mission, so going to sleep wouldn't do anything. I fixed that in a newer version I'm working on.

ihavefivehat's picture

oh coool thanks!

and actually you can make whatever changes you want. the ones I was going to make were very small anyway.

FirecatFG's picture

About Fbe 32. The only way

About Fbe 32. The only way right now to get to it is through unstable teleports. But it would be nice if someone made ghosty go to that place as part of a quest.
By the way, i really liked what you did with the Feb 22 quest. Those were some pretty funny dialoges.
Anyways, I think there is something i want to talk about the "endgame" event. The way it's programmed right now means you get games added to your total of completed games even when you already unlocked said paintings, and even if you teleport out of the game before actually completing it. I think this should fixed?
Also, can somebody replace Miscmix.png with the one i attached on this post?

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ihavefivehat's picture

awesome!

Love all the changes that you made!

This is a really tiny update. I didn't actually change anything in the game, in fact. But when I was downloading your new file to check it out, I noticed that it was a much larger. Turns out that the music you added for Outback was a huge wav file, so I converted it to an mp3 and the download is much smaller now.

Also, I saw that you have a 'busy restaurant' sound file that was also quite large, and I couldn't tell where in the game it was supposed to play. I just deleted it for now, because it was making the download big, but if that ruins something we can always put it back in.

Oh yeah, and I added the new miscmix charset that firecat posted. as well!

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marathongameJun12a.zip36.72 MB
everythingstaken's picture

Cool! Yes!

I implemented those changes into the file I'm working on.

One thing I noticed that we need to do a whole lot! We need to name all of our variables and all of our switches!
I've run into a couple areas where some things strangely overlapped. After I added the Blood and Body of Christ there are random parts where you just hear slurping or chewing, but that could be for other reasons too. I noticed them in "I Don't Like Mondays" and The Dungeon of Mild Annoyance.

Also, how have you been making it so variables and switches go back to normal after finishing an area?

ihavefivehat's picture

haha

those slurping sounds are actually an easter egg I put in...

if you buy chips or soda from the vendor in the skeleton race track and play a game, you get the sounds of ghosty loudly eating/drinking in the background while you play. It only lasts for a few seconds, though.

for variables and switches, there's a common event called 'endgame' which, among other things, resets all switches 0-100 to off and all variables 0-100 to zero. So if you use switches and variables outside of the original games, make sure to use ones over 100.

But yes, we could definitely stand to rename some variables and make everything easier to understand. I just realized you can add comments to event scripts so It definitely wouldn't hurt to do that with some of the more common and complex scripts.

everythingstaken's picture

I'm getting frustraited and

I'm getting frustraited and I just need a tutorial or something. I added the changes you made ihavefivehat. Don't worry about that other audio, it was just the audio file that I mixed with the original Outback song. Here's what I've worked on!

Fixed a transition from Feb 22nd to 23rd (so it scrolls like the rest of them do).
Feb 21st Frog: Now there is a bunch of new dialogue and he gives you a new item the FPTC. You can give the FPTC to the Alien Girl and she'll break it.
Feb 26th: The lady in the back that you can't get to without the UFO has an Easter Egg dialogue.
The little girl here also has some additional dialogue and so does the man sitting next to her.
Feb 27th: The curator has some additional dialogue and sound effects.
Feb 25th: The curator has specific dialogue for each day. This dialogue isn't finished or anything, work in progress, you can change it, but it's just an idea. I changed some other stuff too, but you can change it back or whatever. I was thinking that every day there should be something different other than just the image on the toast, but I couldn't figure out what... Uuuuh. or like why should you be going back to this area so many times to see what happens? I may change the curator back, but I think people should be aware that the toast doesn't look the same each time. Maybe a bunch of people that are interested in said thing come to the toast whenever it's different, but the alien girl stays there no matter what, so you have a sort of... "huh, I really want to see what's up with this girl specifically". If this happened it would give people incentive to get through the randomization of the toast.
Feb 16: The Squid Aliens all have new dialogue when you have the Strange Device.
Feb 14: This area now has wrapping and the landscape is different so it fits the wrapping.
Imagined Affection: I changed the variables in it so now when you go back to this area everyone is still dead. I was thinking about adding something to it where you could reset it, MAYBE, but I'm not sure where yet or if I want it, it would be really secret, maybe in the church.

And the main thing I've been struggling with was the ninja area. I made it so you can fight the imposer alien ninja and I gave dialogue to some the adjacent characters. I added some battle animation for the ghost and made a picture for the ninja alien. I was finagling trying to make a class and whatever for the main ghost character.

Basically because I haven't done battle stuff in any of my games previously, I have no idea how to use it or edit the stats. For instance I have no idea how to get rid of the "Row" selection in the battle. I also do not know why I can't escape the battle. I wanted the interaction to be essentially that the ninja was super powerful but couldn't touch you because you are a ghost and then you would have to just escape the battle if you did not have the Strange Device equipped. Then when you have the device equipped you'd kill the ninja in one hit.

:-) ;-) :-)

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marathongameJun12Midnight.zip37.38 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

so good

I love love love all the changes you've made so far!

For the battle thing, there's actually a pretty easy solution. In the 'enemy encounter' window you have it set to disallow escape. you'll want to set it to 'execute custom handler' instead, and then you can make it do whatever you need to when the player runs away.

As for removing the 'row' command, well... you just can't do it for whatever reason. But I don't think it's a huge deal to have it in there.

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clyde's picture

I hear ya.

I hear ya.

sergiocornaga's picture

Argh!

I wanna cause a ruckus in the cafe SO BAD!

FirecatFG's picture

We've officialy put more effort in the overworld than the games.

So here are some additions from me:
*I kind of misunderstod what everythingistaken wanted to do with the ninja fight so i now made the Strange Device an item you use in battle instead of equiping. (Also, are you supposed to recieve random ninja encounters?)
*I added some NPCs around the place that only appear when you finish a specific game of mine.
*Added some forced tutorials. And made the experience from when you start the game to when you unlock the museum door more linear.
*Added a secret soundtest of all non-RTP songs in the game on Feb 32 (You need the UFO Beacon to reach the place)
*Now if you play all 6 practice round games the skeleton will reward you with a teleporter to Feb 22. (The true use i intended for this teleporter is that maybe you could give it to one of the curators to give in the position of the secret games)

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marathongameJun14.rar2.62 MB
everythingstaken's picture

I really dig the soundtest

I really dig the soundtest and where it is! I think we could do some other cool stuff with the UFO.

Also, the teleporter would be cool for some meta puzzles or game breaking puzzles. Maybe I could add a feature where you can just teleport wherever, but you have to enter in a code first and maybe you don't know a code until you go to a place.

Where are all the NPC's and tutorials? I only found the NPC and item at Feb 19th.
I want to add your stuff to mine since I edited a whole bunch of core things yesterday/today.

lol I'm sleepy, I think I'll just post what I worked on soon so you can see what I'm talking about.

everythingstaken's picture

Updates 8-)

I'm about to pass out because of combined tiredness and heat exhaustion. I implemented a couple things you did, but I'll do more of it tomorrow when I'm awake. I added the jukebox island and changed the variables. I added your guy on the 19th. I also added the Teleport common event, Tutorial common event, and the Sound Test variable, but I'm not sure what they are connected to just now.

The main thing I worked on today was basically you can chase the little girl around the entire calendar. Whenever you leave a "date" it will track whichever day you came from. There are also some variables tracking where the girl is and how she moves. Basically how she moves depends on which date you came from and what button you push when you get to a screen with her on it. This means there are a whole bunch of new events on each day of the calendar. Right now, it breaks if you come in from the calendar to a position that she's at. Basically though, usually, if you press the opposite direction of where you want her to go, she will go there. You are trying to get her to Feb 15th so you can take back the strange device and zap her.

I also added in an extra alien on the 14th and changed how the level looks a bit and changed and added dialogue to all the characters. You can get rid of the curator on this level and it doesn't count for an alien.

I also added a bunch of dialogue to the curator on the 16th and changed how the strange device alert acts (I changed it on this date and the 14th).

I also fixed the frog event and some stuff with the ninja.

Good night. Zzzzzzzzzz.

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marathongameJun14b.zip37.39 MB
FirecatFG's picture

Most of the tutorial only

Most of the tutorial only works before you unlock the door to the museum. So you will need to start from a new game to see it.
Here is a list of all things i did (I'm recalling these, so there might be something i forgot):
SCREENS:
187 - Apartment without door: Most of the tutorial scripts are found here.
163 - The Calendar: There's a portal back to the apartment
172 - Feb 18: The Doctor will now only appear when you beat The Cheap Dentist
173 - Feb 19: A dad from Call It What You Want will appear when you beat that game.
179 - Feb 25 (And variations): Small change in the layout to account for a change in Feb 32.
182 - Feb 28: A plant will appear if you have beaten The Plant
168 - Feb 32: Added secret soundtest
227 - Museum's Cafe: Somebody will appear if you beat Early Bird Special
223 - FirecatFG's Exibit: Added some "Decorative Flowers".
212 - Secret Feb 22: Keeps track of the practice games you have played and gives you an item.
149 - Snow Bunnies Title: Fixed being unable to quit game.
ITEMS:
133 - Device: Made it a switch item instead of a weapon
140 - Secret Teleporter: Teleports you to Feb 22
M.GROUPS:
97 - Ninja: Some changes.
COMMON EVENTS:
13 - Get Ready: Triggers Tutorials.
14 - endgame: Triggers Tutorials (Also maybe fixed the "flashing")
25 - Secret Teleporter Script
26 - A Tutorial For Finishing Games
SWITCHES:
135 - DeviceInBattle: Triggers the ninja killing script.
136 - SecretTeleporter: Triggers teleporter script.
137 - TutorialTrigger: Triggers "Thumbs Up" Tutorial.
138 - FirstNight: Triggers a nighttime event after the first game.
198 to 200 - Keeps track of practice round games
301 to 303 - Keeps track of practice round games
VARIABLES:
119 - Soundtest: Keeps track of current song on the secret jukebox.

everythingstaken's picture

1:51

Cool, I'll go back in and try to paste in a bunch in an hour or two. But if you'd double check for me after I've done that, that would be cool.

By the way, I played through the whole game as we have it just to bug check and do some other stuff and I beat everything in 1 hour and 51 minutes. It's crazy that we've made that much content, with most of which was made in about a month. Probably with replaying some stuff, losing in specific areas, exploring, and some of the future content that we have to add it seems like our game is about 3 hours long. Probably the longest game I have ever been a part of making.

everythingstaken's picture

New Update

Okay, so I think I merged everything that FirecatFG did into this one. Definitely double check. Also, I am not sure how to make those ninja random encounters go away or how to bring in the battle changes FirecatFG did to the ninja battle other than the item thing. The reason I didn't put the item thing in was because I wanted it so you could see the ghost using the strange device in the battle, which I haven't made pictures for yet.

The tutorial is great by the way. I like how it explains the shift key thing. This part being linear doesn't bother me too because the rest of the game is non-linear and it makes things so much more clear.

So, other than FirecatFG's stuff I made it so when you are chasing the little girl around and you come in from the larger calendar, she will kick you and run away at most of the areas. There are a couple that are different just because of where you spawn. Also, I like the idea of the 33rd teleporting you to your apartment. I keep accidentally jumping to the apartment when I go too far down on the calendar.

I also fixed a bunch of other stuff with the little girl and her running patterns that I realize I had messed up.

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marathongameJun14c.zip37.4 MB
everythingstaken's picture

Tho

Though combining the files can be a pain in the butt, it is a great learning experience digging into how you both are coding!

I think everything FirecatFG put in is in this version. I also fixed an error with Bird Time where your animation would be stuck for the entire game.

Things we still need to do:

  1. What happens with Meta after the bathroom?
    I feel like you have to do something meta in the cafe.
  2. Are side quests, the alien girl and the Feb 22nd skeleton related to Meta and how? ;-)
  3. If Feb 33rd teleports you to your apartment/the gallery, does that mean you're a ghost on Feb 33rd?

I think today I'm going to make a little laboratory for Meta Zita today and give him a bunch of meta games for each game for you to play.

Oh, maybe Meta sent you the calendar. Duh, that makes sense doesn't it.

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marathongameJun15.zip37.4 MB
everythingstaken's picture

Story Idea

Okay, so Meta Zita gets you to collect all of the game breaking or special items and then he tries to do a speedrun of the entire game because doing a specific speedrun in a short time limit will get him out of February. You have to outwit him in different moments and outbreak the game.

Thoughts?

ihavefivehat's picture

that sounds pretty interesting!

I'd never thought of Meta Zita as a rival for Ghosty until now. The only thing I would be worried about with the speedrunning thing would be making the player replay the games too much.

I haven't been able to work on the game recently, but here are some random ideas that have been kicking around in my head.

I made a room in the back hallway of the museum which looks very similar to Ghosty's apartment. I think that would be a cool place for meta to set up the laboratory (once the player figures out how to jump the rope). I don't know, maybe that door should just lead straight into Ghosty's apartment itself.

I hadn't really ironed out a solid idea for the cafe quest yet, but it would have involved taking some elements of the calendar's world and merging them into the museum world. I have this idea that the museum and calendar were once the same thing, but the curator(s) created the museum to create order out of chaos as it were. Curating, organizing, and contextualizing the world of the calendar is their way of doing this. I was thinking that most of the quests with Meta would involve undoing their work.

Also in the back hallway, there is a garbage chute that's currently locked. My idea would be that the player would be able to somehow open it up and jump inside, falling down into the museum basement. Not sure what would be down there yet, I was kind of making it up as I went along.

So yeah, I didn't have any solid ideas. If you feel inspired about the Meta quest right now, feel free to pick up where I left off!

everythingstaken's picture

I like all those ideas!

Great ideas!

Also, you wouldn't actually have to play any of the games again. If you chased him around at the end he would just be going to different areas, popping in and out, imposing as different people or messing variables around and then leaving and you'd have to chase him or mess with whatever variables he messed with so you can follow him.

ihavefivehat's picture

ok, I see what you're saying

ok, I see what you're saying and yeah! That sounds really cool!

everythingstaken's picture

Quests

Also, I was thinking mainly to do stuff with Meta you'd have to get the UFO and other items of the sort. lol like maybe you can just teleport or UFO over the rope, or maybe there's some weird invisible object that can do something weird.

ihavefivehat's picture

haha yeah

that might work!

When I made the ufo quest I expected it to just be like an easter egg that some players would stumble across, but since it's so much more fleshed out now we could definitely make it part of the main quest.

here are some other ideas that I've been kicking around

A quest to save the cats from the cat hoarder on that one calendar day. After you beat the quest, there would be a cat doing something on every screen in the game.

A quest to bring more people to the church by making it 'cool'. You'd cut a deal with the vendor at the race track to replace the wine and bread with chips and soda. Also you could bring in new musicians and redecorate in order to appeal to the youth demographic.

Maybe we could work those into the zita quest also somehow?

ihavefivehat's picture

mild update

changes:

Calendar:
Overview
-Edited some typos in the tutorial text for when the portal first appears.
Feb 11
-The Doctor now disappears after the player has finished 'The Cheap Dentist'
-Added some dialogue to The Doctor where he makes fun when you're looking for cough medicine.
Feb 15
-Disguised the entrance to Feb 22
Feb 18
-Edited some typos in The Doctor's dialogue.
Feb 19
-Added dialogue to the Dad's note and the guy who only appears during the day.
Feb 21
-Disguised the entrance to Feb 22
Feb 23
-Disguised the entrance to Feb 22
Feb 29
-Disguised the entrance to Feb 22
Feb 32
-Fixed a bug with the teleport event to Feb 25 (plain bread)
-Fixed a bug where the sound test event changed the wrong variable.
-Edited the old lady's dialogue a bit.

Museum:
Cornaga hall
-Changed information kiosk dialogue, and added sound effects
-Removed all references to this place being a museum. I want the player to put that together themselves.
Cafe
-Added sound effects for the curator
ihavefivehat's Gallery 2
-Added sound effects for the curator
Firecat's Gallery
-Fixed the decorative plant events so that they're on the same level as the hero.

New Assets:
3 short curator voice samples ('hello!', 'ahem', and 'yes?')

Bugs:
-Fixed a bug where the 'gamesFinished' variable would increase by 2 instead of 1 every time you finished a game.

---

This was mostly a polishing update, but I'll probably add some new content tonight or tomorrow!

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marathongameJun16a.zip37.36 MB
everythingstaken's picture

Looks good! I like!

Looks good! I like the addition of hiding Feb 22nd even more. I'm a part of this game festival/showcase thing for NYC game devs on Thursday and I'm trying to make a new multiplayer game for it, so I'm going to be working on that until it's finished. I'll be back to work on this soon!

ihavefivehat's picture

I'm working on the alien

I'm working on the alien quest!

I made some changes to the beginning of it, and it should be easier for players to figure out now. I think I'm also going to overhaul the part where you're actually on the UFO. The weird references to hair that eit put in there gave me an idea for how to end it.

So if anyone is working on the game right now, avoid making changes to anything regarding the alien quest line.

ihavefivehat's picture

update:

I plan to work on this more tonight, but I'm taking a break, so here are the changes I've made so far. The main thing is that there is a new beginning to the alien quest line, but there are also a lot of polishing things and bug fixes as well.

Monster Groups
-Ironed out bugs with the Ninja Lady encounter

Battle Animations
-Added an 'abduction' animation

Games
Divine Inspiration (title screen)
-Made it so that the 'thingsbuilt' variable is reset to 0 when you start the game

Calendar Stuff

Feb 14 (grave island)
-Slight changes to curator alien
-Added bones of the original curator
-Changed battle animation to 'abduction'

Feb 15 (illusion room)
-Changed teleport event to Feb 22 to fix a bug with the quest where you chase the alien girl

Feb 21 (large field)
-Changed frog dialogue
-Changed battle animation to 'abduction'
-Added body of original frog
-Changed teleport event to Feb 22 to fix a bug with the quest where you chase the alien girl

Feb 23 (church)
-Changed teleport event to Feb 22 to fix a bug with the quest where you chase the alien girl

Feb 25 (toast)
-Changes to all versions of this map. This includes a major overhaul of how the alien quest begins.
-The UFO girl will now give you advice on how to catch the alien girl

Feb 29 (heaven)
-Fixed the event that teleports you to Feb 22 so that it properly teleports you to the secret room if it has been unlocked
-Changed teleport event to Feb 22 to fix a bug with the quest where you chase the alien girl
-Fixed the picture frame so that its animation is set to static

Feb 31 (ninjas)
-Slightly edited hair ninja dialogue
-Changed dialogue of the ninja watching the sparring match
-Changed battle animation to 'abduction'
-Added bones of original ninja

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marathongamejun17a.zip37.36 MB
everythingstaken's picture

All these changes look

All these changes look great! I love the dead frog in the river! I'm excited to work more on this.

ihavefivehat's picture

thanks! and update

I started working on the new version of the alien spaceship. It's a lot different... way better. But I didn't finish it yet because I'm sleepy. You're welcome to check it out, but it ends when you turn on the light switch and from there you're stuck.

I also made a few other changes:

Assets
-Scream sound effect
-New sprites added to 'fist charset'

Apartment & Apartment with door
-Switched the abduction event to teleport you to a different area

Feb 14 (grave island)
-Fixed typo in curator's dialogue
-The game will now tell you when you've found all the aliens

Feb 15 (illusion room)
-Made the teleport back to the calendar map activated 'on hero touch' rather than 'on collision'
-The game will now tell you when you've found all the aliens

Feb 21 (large field)
-Fixed small tile error
-Moved frog corpse to a less conspicuous area
-The game will now tell you when you've found all the aliens

Feb 25 (alien toast)
-Fixed typo in curator's dialogue
-Slight editing of UFO lady's dialogue and appearance of aliens

Feb 31 (ninjas)
-The game will now tell you when you've found all the aliens

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marathongamejun17b.zip37.8 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

up dizzy

Here's an update. It's not huge, but I got a bit further in designing the UFO area, and added some new sprites. Let me know what you guys think so far.

Assets
-New sprites on 'fist charset'
-New sprites on 'objecte' charset
-New additions to 'chipset1' (the futuristic tileset)

alien ship
-Changes to map layout, events

apartment with door
-Debug thing now also lets you set it so that you'll be abducted next time you sleep

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marathongamejun19a.zip37.81 MB
FirecatFG's picture

Pretty cool

I like what are you doing with this quest. That fake apartment was a pretty cool idea.
Anyways, i made an update using the jun17b files. It is mostly just some bugfixing and adding a few features from my previous update that were missed before. I included a changelog text file with the rar that should give you details on all updated files and areas.

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marathongameJun19b.rar2.62 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

Thanks for keeping an eye

Thanks for keeping an eye out for bugs!

I merged your changes in with the previous file. This should make it so your update to your gallery's tileset isn't lost in the shuffle with the next update.

Other than that, there were no changes in this update.

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marathongamejun19c.zip37.81 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

update

whooops!

I just realized that the last file I uploaded didn't include my own changes from the previous update.

So here is the actual latest file............

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marathongamejun20a.zip37.81 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

another update

I was able to work on the game a bit before work today. You can get a little bit further in the alien quest now.

If you guys have free time today and you want to continue that quest, feel free to do so. I just have a vague idea for how it will go which is- you will find the UFO girl from the calendar, who is now bald. The two of you will somehow escape from the space ship. So you can pick up from there if you want.

change log:

hallucination 1 2 & 3
-Slight tweaks to all of these maps

Alien Ship
-You can get a little bit further in the quest now

AttachmentSize
marathongamejun20b.zip37.81 MB
everythingstaken's picture

<<<<Story Ideas>>>>

Ok! So I was thinking about the entire thing with the curators and with Meta and thinking why should the character just automatically side with Meta? It doesn't seem like Meta or the Curators are either particularly good, so why not side with either or neither. I was thinking this would work similarly to how Shin Megami Tensei works where there is a Lawfully aligned cult and a Chaos aligned cult and you can either choose to side with one of the cults or to not side with anyone. I'll describe the 3 ways.

Lawful Curator.

The curators say there is nothing outside of February. The curators want to arrest everyone with special items because they see the harm to the world that they can cause. They make it clear that if you use a special item it brings the chance that you could completely break the world that they live in. They are treating it like gun or drug control in a way. They want you to side with them to get all of the special items and have all of the people with special items arrested.

You go and do some of the side quests trying to find everyone that helped you along with the quest that has something that could break the game and you arrest all of them. All of the people and items are turned into sculptures and put in a secret display hidden in the museum. That you can find if you use a game breaking item.

Meta Zita is aware that the curators are trying to trap all of the people. If you go down the Lawful path Meta will tell you that what you are doing is wrong and you have the option to rescue everyone from the exhibit.

You can trick Meta into being captured in this path and they get put into the exhibit. The Lawful path extension doesn't show you what February is at all and you end up getting rid of all the NPCs. At the end of this path you are unable to undo what you have done because Meta is locked up and all the game breaking stuff is locked up.

The curators also hide from you that there is an area outside of February. They said it's just a fable.

Chaotic Meta Zita.

Meta wants to escape February at all costs. When you meet Meta Zita in the bathroom they see that there is a specific potential in you. You have more agency than everyone else in the world has. You sneak back into Zita's lab and they explain that the curators have been locking up all these people because they have these game breaking items. They tell you that you have to get to the people with the game breaking items before the curators do.

So, the two main things you have to do on Zita's path is to do all the side quests and not arrest anyone and break everyone who was put in jail/exhibit out of jail. From breaking people out of jail you get some extra game breaking items.

Once you have all of the items and everyone is out of jail then Zita and some of the people in the exhibit/jail team up and you realize they aren't the greatest of people and they want to just glitch out and speedrun the entire game to escape the world. They think the only way to get out of February is to glitch everything out. You can either help them or go to the curators to get the curators to help arrest Zita and friends.

If you go with Zita to glitch out everything you break the game and then Zita says the final step is to save the game. If you do so your save will just be super messed up beyond the point of any return.

Neutral Self.

You don't help out the curators, you don't release anyone from the jail/exhibit that doesn't need to be released, and you just do the normal side quests to get the lower of the glitch secret items that don't completely break the game (the random teleporter, the space ship, and the 22nd teleporter). You travel to all the strange secret islands and talk to the people that are there and they tell you that there is a way to get out of February. You get a clock that lets you manipulate time after you visit all of the secret spots and do some different very specific things. At some point when you start to do things in order you are able to go straight to March.

March is a short traditional style RPG, maybe a fan game of Dragon Quest. But, whatever it is this game has a definite ending unlike the Curator or the Meta endings. When you beat this RPG you get a + file or something like that and it returns you to the title screen.

Tell me what you think!

ihavefivehat's picture

Good ideas all

Good ideas all around!

First, a couple of miscellaneous ideas:

-For the curator quest, I think that after they've succeeded in turning everyone else into sculptures, the curators should do the same to themselves. At the end, Ghosty would be left with the option of turning into a sculpture, or just being left alone. If the player decides to turn Ghosty into a sculpture, the game would continue indefinitely, but you can never move or perform any action of any kind. Another random thing, I've always had this idea that the curator might actually be just one person, or one entity that can exist in multiple places. There are never two of them together on the same screen.

-For the Meta Zita quest, I think his lab should be February 22nd. That way we can work that whole quest line into the main quest. The monsters there would be his cohorts, and that would be their base of operations from then on.

-I think Ghosty's quest should stem from following instructions on the computer in the back room of the museum. It would have notes that Ghosty left for him/herself before he/she died. They would indicate how to find the secret islands and whatnot. Each secret island would give a small insight into who Ghosty used to be. When Ghosty figures out how to enter the March RPG, Zita and the Curator should reconcile their differences and join Ghosty's party.

-The RPG should be pretty standard and short. There should be an overworld map, maybe just one town, and a quest like 'find the three orbs/crystals/medallions to unlock the final dungeon'. We could rely on stock RPG Maker assets for balance and enemies.

And I'm starting to get a rough idea of how the game will look:

1) The player meets Zita in the bathroom.
2) 'Ruckus in the cafe' (I've been thinking that this should involve Firecat's game 'Pretend this is a Rhythm Game'. You will get all the cafe people to dance to that song and distract the guard.)
3) Zita and Ghosty enter the back hallway of the museum. They find a copy of the calendar and Zita jumps in.
4) Zita is locked out of his own lab (Feb 22nd). He gives clues on how the player can figure out how to unlock it again.
5) Once the lab is unlocked, Zita will explain his intentions a bit further. He will give you the next quest. (Possibly the UFO thing) At this point, the curators will also contact Ghosty and explain their point of view.

Now, here are some questions that I'm still not sure about.

-Are the curator and Zita quest lines totally separate from one another? Or are they the same quests but with two possible outcomes. Personally, I'm leaning towards the later. How would this look in the UFO quest, for instance?

-When does Ghosty have to definitively choose a side?

-Does the player have to complete all the marathon games no matter what? Maybe we should gate the curator/zita quests by requiring the player to complete a certain number of games before starting one of them.

-----

I love where this is going! Let me know if all this makes sense!

everythingstaken's picture

- Maybe when the curator

- Maybe when the curator freezes they will finally just be in one place as a statue. If you don't choose to freeze yourself you can wonder around, but you can't play any of the games anymore because the doors are now stone, so really the only thing you can do is turn yourself to stone. If you do that then a crowd of people should crowd around your statue.

- For the 22nd I thought it could be that they were his ex-cohorts. It would make sense so we don't have to re-arrange everything and change a whole bunch of stuff, because I like that area and mission as it is, I feel like we'd have to change the mission too much. Maybe they can now drop some hints that they use to hang with Zita. Because Zita wanted to be in their club or use their base or use their teleporter. When Zita's goons should look super weird I can draw them. When Zita goes to the base they send all of the 22nd gang back to the black void with a glitch so they can't get back in. Zita sent the original skeleton that's just hanging out in the black void to the black void from the cool base and that's why Zita was kicked out initially.

- Maybe Ghosty is Zack. idk if that's too meta. I should think of something different. lol I like that the neutral way would be about Ghosty finding things out about themselves. Maybe Zita and the Curator are your parents. lol Idk, I think there should be some connection to those two characters and who Ghosty is. I also like that they would join the party.

- I was thinking Zita's and the Curator's quests should essentially be the same with different outcomes, you either jail them or take their glitch thing. lol Now that I said that, does that sound too much like BioShock? I think this is more interesting because they give you the items as a reward and you don't have to give them to Zita in the end. It's also not "do a bad thing or do a good thing". I think it would be good to make it seem like glitching the game out is really bad and that there are actual people being glitched out and hurt by glitches, so there is a moral incentive to jailing people.

In the UFO quest for example you finally get the item and then you can just call the curators on whoever gave you the item.

I'm thinking Ghosty has to definitively choose a side for Zita when Zita wants to start glitching out the world. For the curators it would be before you arrest Zita or before they start to turn everything to stone. If you get to these points maybe Zita or the curators could possibly die having it so they can't be in your party at the end?

lol Completing the marathon games should do something. I don't know if it should be gated necessarily, like, we should make it feel natural somehow.

I like a lot of your ideas/questions! I feel like this is going super well.

ihavefivehat's picture

- I love the idea of having

- I love the idea of having a crowd of people mill around you after you've turned into a statue!

- For the 22nd, I was thinking that Zita would kind of hang out on the calendar map and talk about how there used to be a doorway to the 22nd. From there, the player would be on their own to figure out how to get in, and then Zita would join them. We wouldn't have to change anything about the quest, we'd just have to change the room a bit and add your sprites. I like the idea of doing it this way because I feel like Zita belongs in the calendar in the same way that the curators belong in the museum. And I feel like it would be less work to tie Zita's lab in this way rather than to add a whole new quest for it.

- Ghosty could definitely be Zack. In my mind, Zita and the Curator are both parts of Ghosty's psyche and they both represent different ways of reacting to death. Zita is frenetic and destructive, and the Curator is false calm and compartmentalization. Ghosty is the part that is hapless, clueless, but with the potential to be anything, sort of like 'the fool' in tarot. Maybe this is getting too pseudo psychological or new agey. Let me know. :P

- I was also worried about getting too Bioshocky. I feel like it would be better if we just wrote in unique Zita and Curator endings for each quest, just to avoid that gamey feeling. Haha, but then it might get too Biowarey. The problem with that is that it might remove the feeling that the player is having an effect on the world with their own actions... but I think that if the endings were well written and implemented then it would be worth it.

- I'm thinking now that the player won't have to definitively pick sides until near the end, when the curators are about to kill zita and visa versa. If the player figures out Ghosty's ending at this point, then Zita and the Curator can still reconcile once Ghosty shows them what's really going on.

- I agree that it would be better if we had the players complete marathon games in a more natural way, but I'm still not sure how that would look. I guess it just requires further thought.

everythingstaken's picture

Zita's friends

Pseudo psychological is fine. We should specifically figure out everything about it.
I think we can do both the Bioware/BioShock thing and have it feel like the player is affecting the world and it feels well written at the same time.

I think we should just start to implement some of the stuff and see how it works out. I don't think we have to change too much for it to work out well.

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everythingstaken's picture

btw

By the way, this weekend I'm going to be completely busy as I'm volunteering for Del Close Marathon in NYC. So, feel free to fuck shit up and do whatever. I should be back on track around Tuesday. 8-)

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ihavefivehat's picture

nice, that sounds like fun!

nice, that sounds like fun! and cool sprites.

I'll be busy this weekend also, but I'm going to work on the game right............. .. . ... . ... ... .. ........ . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...... . . . . .now!

(well, right after I finish typing this I guess)

ihavefivehat's picture

update:

Cool, so I added to the Zita quest.

You can now start to cause a ruckus in the cafe....

I didn't finish scripting that part though, so once you set up the giant colored arrows (you'll know what this means when you play it) nothing happens.

But try it out and let me know what you think! I tried to give plenty of hints about what you're supposed to do, but let me know if it's still too obscure. Also, let me know if it's too obvious.

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FirecatFG's picture

Jun 28

I also was trying to implement a dance party for the cafe. I think what you have is much better but maybe you would want to use some of the stuff i made? The changelog should give you details on the things i added.

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ihavefivehat's picture

nice!

I love that you made Pretend This is A Rhythm game glitch out after Ghosty steals the arrows. Great idea!

And yeah, I'll definitely incorporate some of your ideas from the cafe scene next time I work on the game. I have family visiting me right now, though so I probably won't be able to work on it for a few days.

Capt_hastings-Chrissy's picture

finished(ish)

hey y'all, we finished writing the things for each game, but Clyde is like a crazy perfectionist who wants to reread things over a million times and change a word until forever. So what I am trying to say is you have to tell him when he has to give them to you or he wont. (I checked with clyde, he says this synopsis is not insulting, but accurate, so yeah). Thanks for letting us participate!

everythingstaken's picture

Thanks!

Yeah, I'm glad you all took time to do this! Are you both done? Could you give it to us by Monday, or is that too soon. I want to have this game done by maybe the end of this month if possible. What do you think ihavefivehat, FirecatFG?

clyde's picture

I'll turn it in by Monday.

I'll turn it in by Monday.

everythingstaken's picture

Yay!

I'm excited to finally see all of it, to see those critiques. 8-)

ihavefivehat's picture

yeah that sounds good to me

I think we can have it done by August for sure!

everythingstaken's picture

Cool, cool.

Yeah, I'll bust my ass over the next couple weeks. It's been hard to find stable part time work when I'm starting up school in the fall, so my schedule is going to probably be a bit messy. I am going to stop messing around and spend all my free time on this because I think this project is really great and I want to see it to fruition.

clyde's picture

Chrissy and Clyde dialogues

Ok. This is what we got.

Tell me if you have any difficulties or if we did something offensive or whatever.
Make sure to replace the demo ones that are already in the merged project file though. I don't even remember what those said.

Oh and sometimes we use the names of the games and if you end up spelling "Infinate" "Infinite" or something, you might want to change the names in the dialogue too. No biggie though. I was just trying to be consistent with the spellings as best as I could.

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ihavefivehat's picture

thanks!!

I just read through it and everything seems great!

Thanks for spending so much time on this. Hope you guys will enjoy the finished product!

ihavefivehat's picture

WELL!

After a week of busy real life stuff that kept me from working on this game, I'm back at it! I'm def going to finish the cafe thing tonight, and I'll see how far I can get beyond that too!

Here's my plan for working on the main quest:

1) Finish the cafe quest
2) Tie Meta Zita in to the Feb 22nd quest (this should be as simple as changing a bit of dialogue)
3) Convert Feb 22nd into Zita's lab
4) Write scripts for the part where the Curators contact Ghosty via letter
5) Add the curator headquarters, where Ghosty learns their point of view
6) Finish UFO questline and tie it in to main story

So, after that, here's what we need to get done to release the game.

1) Add one more segment of the main quest.
2) Implement Clyde and Chrissy's dialogue (should be relatively simple, though perhaps time consuming)
3) Add the Ghosty's computer stuff
4) Quick traditional RPG
5) If we have time, add one more main quest line... and if we have even more time, add another!

For the ghosty computer stuff, I say we create a tileset and charset that looks like an old operating system. The player sprite will be a mouse, and will click on folders, open images and stuff. It should be pretty fun to make! The computer will contain hints about Ghosty's past and ultimately be the way that Ghosty accesses the RPG and gets the 'true' ending.

So if other people want to work on the game right now, I recommend either implementing Clyde and Chrissy's dialogue, starting to design the RPG, or working on Ghosty's computer stuff.

ihavefivehat's picture

Update::::

I wrote an ending to the cafe quest, and continued up to the point where Zita enters Feb 22nd... after that he just disappears and nothing happens yet.

I need to take a break now, but I might work on this more tonight... I'm not sure though.

Anyway, enjoy! I'll update the to-do list.

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ihavefivehat's picture

Update:

I wrote a scene where you enter Feb. 22nd with Meta Zita and meet his friends.

Later today, I'll probably do the scene where the curator's contact Ghosty with their side of the story.

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FirecatFG's picture

July 9

Here's an update from me. I added Chrissy and Clyde's commentary for my games and started working on the computer. Although i'm not sure what to actually add to there, Maybe you guys have a specific idea?

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ihavefivehat's picture

update:

Nice job, Firecat. I love what you did with the computer screen. The cursor effect works surprisingly well!

I have some ideas of what to do with the computer... I think there will be cryptic files on the computer which tell Ghosty how to find 'cd's' or something within our games. These will unlock photos and news clippings that have to do with Ghosty's life.

This new file is just a merge of your changes from yesterday with mine.

Thanks for including such a detailed changelog. It helped a lot with merging the two files. I'll definitely make sure to do the same in the future.

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ihavefivehat's picture

workin on it

Hey guys, I'm working on the file now.

I was wondering.......................

Everythingstaken, do you want to make some images (or possibly sound or text as well) which would be found on Ghosty's computer? I'm thinking that they would cryptically allude to Ghosty's past life. They could also just be anything interesting/silly/weird. I feel like you would be good at this given some of the images that you used for 'I hate mondays' and stuff.

edit: and oh yeah... I just noticed that I left the entire scene with meta zita and his friends out of the 'july 10a' file that I uploaded last. Ooooops!!

Here's a really quick file which includes that scene plus the other changes that I've made in the past hour or so... but I'm still working on it right now so expect another update later on also.

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ihavefivehat's picture

update:

I added the scene where the Curator explains their point of view to Ghosty.

eit: I'd like to hear your take on what I've done with the Meta Zita stuff so far. It was originally your idea, after all. Feel free to make any changes or let me know if anything feels off. That goes for everyone, actually.

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everythingstaken's picture

Cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-changes

I just tried playing this most recent version. I can't figure out how to trigger the dance thing right off the bat. I will try again tomorrow and tell you what I think if I can do it.

ihavefivehat's picture

ok cool

I was wondering if it was too obscure or not. I'd give you a hint, but I kind of want to use you for playtesting, hahaha. if you still can't figure it out tomorrow let me know and I'll drop some knowledge.

The next thing I need to do is figure out how the UFO questline fits into the main questline. I'm thinking that Zita sends you to find out about aliens because they have one of the glitch items (the UFO caller, probably). He points you in the direction of the girl on the toast. Then the player does all the stuff we've already implemented and ends up on the UFO.

Right now, I'm thinking that a curator will have been abducted as well, and he will tell the player how to pick the curator's side in this questline. That's the part that I'm having trouble with... what do the curators get out of it? Maybe the technology to turn people into statues or whatever? I'll have to think about it more.

everythingstaken's picture

This is great!

Oh, I did it. Yeah, that was pretty natural and easy, but made me feel clever for doing all the things, it was a good balance. I really like how the dancing thing works out, it feels really natural. I also like how the story sort of plays out. I don't mind that's it's kinda linear. I will add some more stuff to it this weekend since I finally have some free time. 8-)

ihavefivehat's picture

cool!

And yeah, I'm trying to think of ways to make it less linear, but RPG Maker isn't great at letting you do systematic stuff outside of the built in battle system. We'd have to go through and edit every NPC if we wanted to let Ghosty arrest people or turn them into statues, for instance. But now that I think about it, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. It would take several hours but maybe it would be worth it. I mean, we've spent waaaay more than several hours on this thing already :P.

And if we're doing that sort of thing, there are some things we can do on the glitchy, Meta Zita side of things too... like editing all doorways so that they teleport you to a random room instead of the intended location, or having NPCs turn into like... the harpies from Harpy Island or the meat from Raw Meat Town. Maybe we could make a glitchy version of each room in the game. Haha, but lets focus on finishing the main quest for now. I recently learned the term 'feature creep' and we probably have some of that going on. :)

everythingstaken's picture

Feature Creep

lol Yeah, this is starting to feature creep a bit. At one point this game was just supposed to house our short games... but that doesn't mean I don't like any of these ideas!

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everythingstaken's picture

Also, PC stuff

I would love to create some images for Ghosty's past life! I really dig the PC area. The style of it is really cool. I feel like there could almost be a full puzzle or exploration section in this PC world something similar to that one in Enter The Matrix or something.

ihavefivehat's picture

up... up... date?... update?! UPDATE!

yeah! In celebration of us totally and utterly failing and meeting out August deadline, I've decided to swear an oath in front of all trainwreckers. I will work on this at least a little bit every day until it's finished! I might not be able to do a whole lot every single day, but I promise to do something! let's get this thing out the doors!

So this update is not huge... I played through the game to refresh my memory and changed a few things a long the way. I also made it so that Zita sends you to find the UFO lady. The next thing to do is to finish the UFO quest.

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everythingstaken's picture

Oath also

I will also take this oath. My job at this summer camp is leaving me really completely exhausted to the point where I only released TWO games last month on here, just TWO and they were flick games. I will force myself to work on it a little bit tonight and then for the rest of the month before I go to school! This oath will push me! *so sleepy rn*

ihavefivehat's picture

OATH

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1k4s4_mtv-human-giant-blood-oath-leak_fun

I'll do my work later tonight... like probably around 10 ish. So feel free to work on the game and do whatever until then!

everythingstaken's picture

Wow, whao!

Oh, jeeze! What happened to the alien section. I get a "not implemented" thing after the toast turns green. I got a super strange error screen and I thought I was playing Fez or something for a second and was like, "fuck, how did they do this?!" I am not quite sure what you had planned for the events after that section. I think today I will write some stuff for ghosty's back story and I'll post it tonight for y'all to read.

ihavefivehat's picture

huh, weird! I just tried

huh, weird! I just tried that part and it's working for me. What did the error screen look like? was it cool? maybe we can use it in the game...!

clyde's picture

Windows 10

I'm not sure how wide spread this problem is, but I installed Windows 10 and now I can't play any RPG Maker 2003 games. I get stuck in the startup menu and none of my inputs work to select "new game". Just thought I should let y'all know in case it's happening to more folks than just me.

ihavefivehat's picture

oh wow

that's not good! Well, I know that RPG Maker 2003 is now officially supported again, so hopefully there will be a Windows 10 fix soon. I'll look into it. Thanks for looking out!

ihavefivehat's picture

update

Didn't get a huge amount done today, but it's a start. Fixed a few more bugs and tweaked a few things. Then did a super rough draft of the next part of the alien ship.

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ihavefivehat's picture

update:

Here's another small one... just continued to map out the rest of the alien ship.

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everythingstaken's picture

Alright, backstory

Alright, highlight to read.

Ghosty was a hikikomori, basically a hermit that often obsesses with nerd pop culture. They live in their apartment off of their parents with the promise that they will make it big off of computer science. They were obsessed with a religious cult within a popular RPG that they played. The cult promised something great outside of their real world which in turn was that game world to Ghosty. They order different things to their apartment like food and calendars to immerse themselves in the game. They believe that if they played it long enough that they would transcend. This gamer had never had any interest in making games their self. Ghosty trapped themselves in their house and never left since 2003. The last one they order is February 2015 and it was the last one because they died.

Tell me what you think. Coming up with this idea took me a couple days. I figured I could incorporate that into the OS that was created, but idk how functional you want to make the OS or how this info would be hidden in the OS. Maybe the combined game could have a lot of this info in it, like the RPG could just be the RPG they are obsessed with, not one that they made.

sergiocornaga's picture

I like the premise, but I

I like the premise, but I don't understand how/why they died. There's a real-life instance of RPG Maker game cult links… maybe you knew this already?

everythingstaken's picture

5hat: Yo, I really like what

5hat: Yo, I really like what you did with the alien space ship. Made me laugh pretty hard out loud. I'd like to do some punchup on some of the characters to make it kick a bit more. I love this. I love that the frog alien is there and wants to play beer pong with you and then it looks like you can play with him. That feels nuts. It makes sense, but I completely didn't expect to see it and everyone with hair.

I still have a strange error. I'll post a screenshot.

It happens right after the Alien Obsessed Girl says "Stand still and shut your mouth! They won't know that we're here!" and then the screen starts to shake and the screen changes color. I don't think the battle animations work. I will mess around with it. But, it works on your computer? Hmmmmmm! How strange! It would be cool to do this on purpose if this works on your computer at the end of Zita's story.

omg huge image

Sergio: Just reading that article made me scared. I think I was just thinking of a logical conclusion to all the hidden stuff in 5 Nights at Freddy's. Like things leaking into real life. I joked with my roommate about some of the ghosty plot earlier last month saying I wanted to include a whole bunch of hidden easter egg environmental story telling kind of plot and have a bunch of them just being fake red herrings that don't lead to anything and they are parallel, so you don't know which is the "real" one. lol I may save that for another game because it would be a crap ton of work or a lot of bullshitting which I guess I'd be willing to do. lol

Also, new idea!!!! OK, so we have an area of the game just made for the FINAL AREA, but! we have a custom font and custom characters and file names for the sounds and stuff like that but it's all BLANK! All the events and dialogue and settings are in place in the game, but you have to make the assets in RPG Maker 2003. Talk about 4th Wall Breaking! So, literally you have to MAKE the game to beat it! 8-) Heh heh.

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everythingstaken's picture

Hmmmm!

I am trying to figure out the error right now and it loos like it doesn't detect the aliens at all. Like, the aliens don't appear at all or move around or anything while the screen is changing colors. Hmmmm!

ihavefivehat's picture

reply

First off, sorry that I missed working on the game yesterday! I was traveling today and I had to pack late last night after I got home. But the good news is that I should have a ton of free time for the next week or so to work on this.

I like your idea about Ghosty being a hikimori... but I also like the idea of leaving their past open to interpretation. I don't think it's as interesting if the players (or us, for that matter) know exactly what's going on in the game. The characters in this game are angry because there's no real explanation for the world around them. I think the players should feel the same way. So we should throw in plenty of clues and bits of environmental storytelling which blatantly contradict each other, or which seem to make sense at first but become more absurd the longer you think about them.

Also, I would be really happy to see you punch up my dialogue! I'm mostly happy with the scripting that I've done, but I think the dialogue that I wrote is pretty flat in some areas. I feel like Meta Zita should come off as being more unhinged. The scene where he meets his friends and gives you the first mission should be more lively. It feels a bit too conventional right now. So feel free to go wild with that.

As for the error... it's really strange! It definitely works on my computer, so if you're using the latest file and you have all the right asset files then it's a complete mystery to me. I'll try it on another computer when I get a chance. What version of windows are you using?

everythingstaken's picture

XP

XP from 2002 lol I'll switch to my Vista computer to see if it works on that.

FirecatFG's picture

August 8a

I worked a bit more on the mechanics of the computer screen. I would still like to know what content to add to it. Or at lest have the quests planned out before i continue working on it.

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everythingstaken's picture

Cool, cool, cool! Aug 9 Baby!

Cool!

5hat: Yo, okay, I played Firecat's latest version, but I played it on my Vista where the sound cards work, maybe that was the problem? Anyways, everything works out fine now. I really dig that dream world sorta thing, really great! Is there a way to get off the ship yet that I missed? I really love the beer pong section. I may make it interactive and add some visuals, but kind of keep it pretty similar like some pictures will show up or something. Also, idk if you knew this, but you can escape the ship with that "Skill", and you can sort of break the game that way.

Firecat: Yo! I really dig the password screen and the new icons and stuff. I will add some stuff to this area today. I like your new profile picture by the way!

ihavefivehat's picture

There's no way to escape the

There's no way to escape the space ship yet... but there will be soon. I've been working on the game, but I haven't been able to post updates. I've actually been staying at my parents house for the last few days and the only way for me to connect my laptop to the internet is to plug it directly into the router which is in my parents room :0. But I'll post a big update when I get back home. I'm close to having the UFO section finished.

Thanks for letting me know about the skill thing. We need to just delete it since we replaced it with pressing shift.

FirecatFG: I'm don't really have any definite plans for the computer section. I just have a general idea of how it will work:

There will be clues on the computer which will point the player to points in other parts of the game. At those points, the player will find passwords or clues to open more folders on the computer. The folders will contain clues to Ghosty's past life, and eventually the final game. I'll try to brainstorm some specific instances, but feel free to figure things out on your own if you have any inspiration or time. I know you'll do something cool!

everythingstaken's picture

Cool, cool!

Yeah. I haven't had much time to edit assets or anything, so I'm mostly writing out things for the computer. I'm trying to see what the sort of puzzle in there will be. I feel like I should make it simple and not create too many more new assets because the game is already very complicated. I was thinking there could be like sort of a maze going through files and pictures, but I'm not sure how you would really do that or what that would consist of. I was thinking there would be an accessible game that ghosty is a big fan of and you can play through it, it could be pretty short. There would be some sort of progress logs in the game about their experience with the game and how it relates to their life, but I'm not sure! I want this to feel natural rather than, ON THE COMPUTER THERE ARE PICTURES OF X Y AND Z AWFUL THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED TO GHOSTY, HERE IS THE STORY THROUGH PICTURES. I'd rather it be more natural and like an exploration or something. Hmmm!

everythingstaken's picture

Oh, okay, I get it.

Oh, okay, I get it. I'll post some pictures later tonight. :-)

everythingstaken's picture

Preview

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ihavefivehat's picture

Lookin good!

Lookin good!

ihavefivehat's picture

update

cool. I'm back at my regular apartment with normal internet access. Here is a pretty big update.

I'm mostly finished with the alien section. It ended up being kind of elaborate. The thing missing is that you can only finish the mission by siding with the curator. I have the zita ending all planned out, though, and it should be pretty easy to finish it. I wanted to do it tonight, but I'm not feeling up to it anymore.

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ihavefivehat's picture

ckduae

My modem was struck by lightning? Or a power surge at least... so I have to wait for the new one to get shipped to me... I don't know how long it'll take. I can only get on the internet at my job. But I'm still working on the game! I finished the alien sequence. I'm going to make a quest centered around the 'world breaker' item next. It probably won't be as elaborate as the alien one ended up.

I have a more solid idea of how the game will play out now... but I have to go back to work haha. I'm just on a 15 min break. Maybe I'll have time to write about it on my next one :P

I was wondering what ckduae meant

now i know! get well soon!

FirecatFG's picture

August 22a

I shaped up the computer segment a bit more, now it's starting to look more like a legit computer. Although i might have made the "programming" a bit more complicated than it needed to be.

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ihavefivehat's picture

Update:

I got my new modem!

So here is what I've been working on! You can now finish the alien quest line. I would LOVE playtesting and feedback for this. I've been staring at it so long that I've lost all perspective on it :P.

I'm also working a new structure for the main quest line. Oh, and this upload includes the changes made in Firecat's Aug22a update from this morning.

It will be a bit less linear. Instead of Zita sending you straight on the UFO mission, he will give the player hints on where to start one of three quest lines. One will be the UFO one, another will be centered around the World Breaker item, and the last will be centered on the Unstable Teleporter. The player will be able to complete these missions in any order, at their own pace.

Once the player obtains one of the three glitch items, they will have the choice of turning them in to the curators rather than using them for fun. This will result in new exhibits opening up in the museum.

I want the World Breaker and Unstable Teleporter quest lines to be shorter and more focused on the games and world that we've already created. I feel like the UFO quest got away from focusing on the games themselves, and I want to fix that.

I have a plan for the World Breaker quest in my head, but I don't really have anything solid for the Unstable Teleporter quest. So if anyone wants to work on the game and doesn't know where to start, feel free to begin there. Let me know if you have any questions!

---

Firecat: The computer stuff is great! If you're feeling stuck there, you can start working on the quest for the Unstable Teleporter. You could pretty much do whatever you want with it. Let me know if you have any questions!

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FirecatFG's picture

Bug report: The passability

Bug report: The passability changes you made to the spaceship tileset has made the player be unable to move during the first hallucination. A simple fix would be to remplace the tileset on that screen with, say, the world map tileset. Other than that i don't really have much feedback to give to that area. I think it works pretty well.
Anyways, i would want to know more about what you have planned out for the World Breaker quest. I was thinking that for the Unstable Teleporter Ghosty could perform a "glitch" in one of minigames that would take him to unusual places such as behind the scenery of other minigames, or the beta rooms of the cafe and the spaceship. Ending on the "Glitch World" inside Feb 32.
I'll probably wait until everythingistaken finishes the pictures before starting to look how to spread out the information around the computer.

ihavefivehat's picture

Thanks for the bug

Thanks for the bug report!

I like your idea about the Unstable Teleporter quest. But, thinking about it now, I think it might make more sense if it was focused around the World Breaker, since that has more of a glitch aesthetic. Maybe we should switch! I think I can rework my idea for the Unstable Teleporter without too much of an issue.

And the idea is that Ghosty is investigating rumors of an ancient order which is rumored to secretly controlling the world. (Inspired by new age conspiracy theories about the Templars, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, etc.) They'll have to enter minigames and perform esoteric rituals in order to try to contact the society. The rituals will involve playing the games in very specific, strange ways. (Inspired by old playground rumors of how to catch Mew or Missingno in original Pokemon). In the end, they won't find real evidence that the society exists, but they'll gain access to the Unstable Teleporter.

ihavefivehat's picture

update:

Here's kind of a small update!

It includes a few bug fixes, plus Zita and the girl with pigtails will now react differently when Ghosty returns with the UFO Beacon.

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marathongameAug23a.zip37.89 MB
ihavefivehat's picture

update:

This is another small update.

There are a few small bug fixes, plus the curator will now send you a letter when you return from the alien space ship. I also added a new debug character to the apartment which will let you progress to certain points in the main quest. That should make testing things a little bit easier.

Also, here is a Google Doc where we can keep the change log from every update. That should help us keep track of where we are. You guys should be able to edit it too, let me know if you can't for some reason.

Also, from now on when I create a new switch, I'll only use slots above 400 (and 200 for variables). That should keep us from overlapping if we both end up working on the project at the same time.

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marathongameAug24a.zip37.89 MB
everythingstaken's picture

Yo yo, long time!

Yo! I haven't been able to work on the much as my computer crapped out. I've been preparing for school, and traveling a lot. Luckily, I have made time to play all the updates as they have come out and got a new computer that isn't 7-8 years old! I have to install Windows on it when I get back home, so it may be a couple days after now that I can work on stuff again.

Anyways,

I love all the additions to the computer area making it seem more like a functioning computer. I have a little bit of free time right now before I catch my train home, but one thing I would like to add is a "parent drive" button so you can get out of folders rather than having to close out the entire window.

I also love the extent of the alien quest. It feels really fleshed out now and is very funny. I like the differences between the curator's control and the turnip/snake's control. One bug I ran into that I'm trying to figure out now is for some reason when I go back to the bedroom after completing the quest it will send me back into the hair dream. It could be because I did the quest without meeting Zita at all. I remember one of the previous bugs was that when I finished the alien quest Zita would just automatically be in his lair if I hadn't met him yet. Maybe it has something to do with that, but I'm going to try and figure it out.

I just wanted to update to tell you guys I didn't die, I'm just in Ohio... :-p

ihavefivehat's picture

hey! good to hear from you.

hey! good to hear from you. Thanks for looking out for bugs. I think I fixed the ones you mentioned! I'll post an update later tonght.

everythingstaken's picture

back button

I added a parent drive button, idk how I'd impliment it. I can try to figure it out and read stuff. 8-)

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Comp.png8.21 KB
ihavefivehat's picture

update

This is a small update in terms of content... it's just bug fixes. But I did do a lot of planning for the Unstable Teleporter quest. You can see my notes in the google doc if you're curious, but it might not make sense right now. Anyway, expect more tomorrow.

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marathongameAug25a.zip37.93 MB