Housepets! Tails of Babylon! * Developer's Thread *

[D-Rock]

I'll leave that up to you. I was just trying to think of a place where we haven't quite finalized a track location, though that jungle thing has piqued my interest.


...you know what, I'll probably leave suggestions on this to a minimum now. Thing is, I keep envisioning urban areas like cities from these tracks, as I still haven't had much exposure to house music outside of this. That's one reason why I was surprised with how well Midnight Breeze fit into a smaller neighborhood.

[GameCobra]

What i'll do is put the soundtrack on one of the floors for a test and see how it works.

On another note, decided this week will be fine tuning some moves instead of making more floors. I got some more spells and attacks to add to Bailey, Sabrina, Tarot and King along with some more monsters that are magic based, but this time i wanna personally test them before i add them to the floor.

[D-Rock]

Alright, then.

Got a concept for an underling of Nevermore's.

lackeyconcept3.png (3.46 KiB) Viewed 20566 times

Figure you fight this guy after the party *coughBinocough* realizes they were duped, then go after Nevermore. Until then, he could act as a guide.

No name idea, but let's see about sticking with the theme naming, in this case, something related to the works of Edgar Allen Poe.

[GameCobra]

Should be finished tomorrow. I also noticed while making these monsters... we could use more killer rabbits. x3

[D-Rock]

Well, we are going to have a warren full of militant rabbits, remember?

[GameCobra]

If i wasn't so exhausted, maybe. x3

Right now I'm happy with the way these floors are going. Alot of fun surprises this time around for everyone to see. It's pretty straight-forward, but with alot of fun surprises.

[D-Rock]

I've honestly been wary of your definition of "fun" after the first tower demo.

Anyway, are you including the proposed "sub-bosses" in the demo?

[GameCobra]

I've honestly been wary of your definition of "fun" after the first tower demo.

Anyway, are you including the proposed "sub-bosses" in the demo?

The original drawings got in. the sub-bossed ones (like Benjamin) earlier didn't have exactly have battle-ready pictures. However, i don't want to spoil who is in it. If you feel you need to know, unspoil the next line:

Nevermore
Tybalt
Erfan
Reinhardt
Then all four of them at the same time. Reinhardt thinks your group is a bunch of cheaters.

[D-Rock]

*reads last line*
*V1 Tower vibes returning*
You could have always used placeholder images, you know.

[GameCobra]

*reads last line*
*V1 Tower vibes returning*
You could have always used placeholder images, you know.

Yes, i know, but these fully-drawn versions were just too cool :3

[D-Rock]

By the way, are items or attacks that guarantee an item drop possible? I think Frisbees or boomerangs were mentioned to do that, please correct me, but I had a thought with tonight's strip of the claw thing Tarot used as a non-disposable version of something like that, but doesn't do much damage.

[GameCobra]

By the way, are items or attacks that guarantee an item drop possible? I think Frisbees or boomerangs were mentioned to do that, please correct me, but I had a thought with tonight's strip of the claw thing Tarot used as a non-disposable version of something like that, but doesn't do much damage.

There is a way for items to double the rate of dropped items, yes. but no guarantees. I added an accessory in the game for that during this demo as well that will be sold. it's only disadvantage is it offers no other bonuses in battle.

Also, forgot to mention: The item drops from bosses we discussed earlier turn out can't be equipped if it's an item, so instead i made some accessories to compensate. Winged boots for floors and a megaphone for in-battle silence and stun.

[D-Rock]

Got this.

gopherflat.png (3.57 KiB) Viewed 20409 times

Look good? I'll add shading if you think it works
Also, did this.

hpbk7poster.png (1.23 KiB) Viewed 20409 times

[GameCobra]

Works for me. I'll add it in today =3

EDIT: I'm in the middle of helping my family today unpack from a trip from their basketball game trip. I'll try to get this uploaded by tonight, but if not, i'll have to wait til next week. I just gotta do some floor testing.

[D-Rock]

Alright, got this.

gopher.png (12.36 KiB) Viewed 20378 times

[Buster]

Okay, now make a retractable chain variant thats oddly useful for solving convoluted puzzles.

[D-Rock]

Which reminds me, we really need to figure out puzzles for a lot of the dungeons.

[GameCobra]

Didn't we have someone that wanted to do that for us?

[D-Rock]

...was it Kingfan?

I honestly don't remember.

[GameCobra]

Was a random volunteer last i recall.

Also, i'm going to upload the game tomorrow. everything so far looks good. I only ran into a problem where i noticed i made alot of armor cheaper than the collars, but it'll help out if the game somehow gets too difficult. I just need to do a final floor test tomorrow and then i'll upload it.

EDIT: annnnnnnd done.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxfyY ... WtOWVRaTmc

Whew. I need a big break from this one. i got stuff to do now and i'll be on a huge delay.

SO! Here's the break-down in a less ranty way ~

King's MP is extremely low, but his magic gets buffed by both his attack and magic, which makes him much stronger than Sabrina and Tarot, who are currently stand-alone casters. to make up for this, he can only use Earth magic to damage monsters and he doesn't get as many powerful attack spells as those two, but those spells he gets will scale big time. he'll get one Dark attack spell much later in the game as well. Sabrina can now destroy fights alot faster by herself. Tarot on the otherhand, not so much, but she's great early-on at doing it.

Bailey has been buffed to scale much more with her moves. with the exception of Bash (which does flat 500 damage, no matter what), all of her moves scale big time. great for bosses.

Grape's weapons got a bit of a buff since Bailey is so strong. now they help increase her TP rate by multistriking. Better find them

And as mentioned before, i added all the armor i can think of along with accessories i could think of. The gold in the game is plenty and the prices of the gear is a little low, but after testing it out, i realized not everyone can buy the best gear for everyone. unless you wanna do that for ONE person, that's up to you.

Have fun with the demo up til the 30th floor. I'm going to slowly add more monsters for the next run and tweak spell weaknesses in the meantime until i'm satisfied.

[D-Rock]

Oh, boy, this was an ordeal. The massive maps weren't something I was fond of, primarily the expansiveness of floor 21. I decided to tackle floors 11-20 with King, Bailey, Fox, and Sabrina, things went well, except for the Garbage Raccoons. Did those get a buff? I don't recall them being this hard. Had to skip a few before I was strong enough. On floor 20, I made a team of Bailey, Bino, Fido, and Tarot.

By the way, why were King, Fido, and Bino still without weapons to start? Once again went into the game files.

Even after leveling that last team a LOT, the final set of floors were pretty challenging. I'm going ahead and saying this now, I've always disliked the auto-map feature in RPG Maker.

As for the bosses, I'd say a good start. Nevermore was weird, she seemed way out of it, though I'm guessing that this personality trait won't be carried over into the final game? The text was pretty fast, so I couldn't make out all of the moves that were used. Same with Tybalt. I could sort of tell Efran's skills, and not at all for Reinhardt. That last battle with all four of them was an interesting fight. Tarot's multi-hit electric skill and Wind Dance were great once you had the MP to back them, though even then I mainly stuck to Blink Bomb. Bailey had to risk a few turns to be able to use her best skills using Charge, but definitely a life-saver when dealing with the final gauntlet using Finishing Blow.

However, I was VERY rarely able to save enough TP to use most of Fido's and Bino's skills, even with using Bino's provoke abilities. What happened with that, anyway? I remember the proper demo we managed to find a way to save TP.

Will the corrections on the item and skill effect descriptions be a future endeavor? Again, they either don't provide a clue as to what they really do half the time or scroll off the text box (again, why does the engine not do that automatically?).

Interesting list of new items that you've made, really. I'll see when I get to them.

I feel like I'm missing something I wanted to say, but can't remember what it was.

[GameCobra]

Cool, allow me to answer some questions.

Oh, boy, this was an ordeal. The massive maps weren't something I was fond of, primarily the expansiveness of floor 21. I decided to tackle floors 11-20 with King, Bailey, Fox, and Sabrina, things went well, except for the Garbage Raccoons. Did those get a buff? I don't recall them being this hard. Had to skip a few before I was strong enough. On floor 20, I made a team of Bailey, Bino, Fido, and Tarot.

I have to agree with this. I couldn't come up with many ideas on this floor to hide the weapons for everyone, so i ended up trying to make a large floor. I ended up getting lost myself while testing it a few times. I'm planning on changing these later, but might get someone to help me with it and add a swamp leve here. that was the idea i was going for here.

And yes, i buffed the Garbage Raccoon. I wanted him to give double EXP with him, but also doubled his stats to make up for it. If he's still too much, then this third plan will likely be the nail in the coffin for him: No Defense, tons of health, and have completely random attacks - with a small chances to perform very deadly moves (since a funny idea i had with him was to just throw thrash at you at random... but one of the items in the trash... is a nuke. or the scroll that Karishad had that opened a portal to somewhere, removing one of your players from the fight)

By the way, why were King, Fido, and Bino still without weapons to start? Once again went into the game files.

My bad again. I had to modify King's weapons big time and forgot to add them as starters. i'm adding them on my map to make sure i never forget this again.

Even after leveling that last team a LOT, the final set of floors were pretty challenging. I'm going ahead and saying this now, I've always disliked the auto-map feature in RPG Maker.

I admit i'm growing bored of them as well, but it's the fastest way to make the floors at this point. I'll try to add more variety later.

As for the bosses, I'd say a good start. Nevermore was weird, she seemed way out of it, though I'm guessing that this personality trait won't be carried over into the final game? The text was pretty fast, so I couldn't make out all of the moves that were used. Same with Tybalt. I could sort of tell Efran's skills, and not at all for Reinhardt. That last battle with all four of them was an interesting fight. Tarot's multi-hit electric skill and Wind Dance were great once you had the MP to back them, though even then I mainly stuck to Blink Bomb. Bailey had to risk a few turns to be able to use her best skills using Charge, but definitely a life-saver when dealing with the final gauntlet using Finishing Blow.

However, I was VERY rarely able to save enough TP to use most of Fido's and Bino's skills, even with using Bino's provoke abilities. What happened with that, anyway? I remember the proper demo we managed to find a way to save TP.

Will the corrections on the item and skill effect descriptions be a future endeavor? Again, they either don't provide a clue as to what they really do half the time or scroll off the text box (again, why does the engine not do that automatically?).

Interesting list of new items that you've made, really. I'll see when I get to them.

I feel like I'm missing something I wanted to say, but can't remember what it was.

I could never get the text during battle to slow down, honestly, and it doesn't appear to have a feature that allows you to do so. However, i read there's a script for it:


Window_BattleLog around Line 191

#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# * Get Message Speed
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
def message_speed
return 20
end

If you enter that into the Battlelog, you can change the speed out. If you want, give it a test.

Texting descriptions i'm not sure why they are doing this. it varies person to person. I keep shortening the text and it seems to be affected by monitor size? no clue.

On another note, i find Fido does a good job in dealing awesome damage, but as you say he's TP starved. That is actually normal. I plan on making some items though later to help increase this if it gets really bad. Bino is in the same boat as well, but he's suppose to be getting his TP by taunting. As i came across making his weapons, I began thinking Bino may need some retuning since provoking in the game isn't as good as i hoped for Bino. Even when he provokes people, he's not being attacked.

As far as the bosses go, i just went with my best idea of what the characters would be like in the game. Don't mind their canonical dialogue, i'm just having fun with it. Though feel free to comment if you like it or not =3

[D-Rock]

Cool, allow me to answer some questions.

Oh, boy, this was an ordeal. The massive maps weren't something I was fond of, primarily the expansiveness of floor 21. I decided to tackle floors 11-20 with King, Bailey, Fox, and Sabrina, things went well, except for the Garbage Raccoons. Did those get a buff? I don't recall them being this hard. Had to skip a few before I was strong enough. On floor 20, I made a team of Bailey, Bino, Fido, and Tarot.

I have to agree with this. I couldn't come up with many ideas on this floor to hide the weapons for everyone, so i ended up trying to make a large floor. I ended up getting lost myself while testing it a few times. I'm planning on changing these later, but might get someone to help me with it and add a swamp leve here. that was the idea i was going for here.

And yes, i buffed the Garbage Raccoon. I wanted him to give double EXP with him, but also doubled his stats to make up for it. If he's still too much, then this third plan will likely be the nail in the coffin for him: No Defense, tons of health, and have completely random attacks - with a small chances to perform very deadly moves (since a funny idea i had with him was to just throw thrash at you at random... but one of the items in the trash... is a nuke. or the scroll that Karishad had that opened a portal to somewhere, removing one of your players from the fight)

Yeah, it took a really long time to relocate the stairs at 21 when I decided to keep looking around for items.
I had to wait until Tarot learned her triple hit thunder attack to even stand a chance against those raccoons. Not keen on that idea for those enemies, though, seems WAY too overkill.

By the way, why were King, Fido, and Bino still without weapons to start? Once again went into the game files.

My bad again. I had to modify King's weapons big time and forgot to add them as starters. i'm adding them on my map to make sure i never forget this again.

I've been meaning to bring this up, but next release, I'll see what happened when I simply move a save file to the new build. I'm sure that it'll only break the save if major changes are made to the characters. I would rather not go through all of that again if I didn't have to, honestly.

Even after leveling that last team a LOT, the final set of floors were pretty challenging. I'm going ahead and saying this now, I've always disliked the auto-map feature in RPG Maker.

I admit i'm growing bored of them as well, but it's the fastest way to make the floors at this point. I'll try to add more variety later.

Time actually spent designing. Could prove helpful in the developers build.

As for the bosses, I'd say a good start. Nevermore was weird, she seemed way out of it, though I'm guessing that this personality trait won't be carried over into the final game? The text was pretty fast, so I couldn't make out all of the moves that were used. Same with Tybalt. I could sort of tell Efran's skills, and not at all for Reinhardt. That last battle with all four of them was an interesting fight. Tarot's multi-hit electric skill and Wind Dance were great once you had the MP to back them, though even then I mainly stuck to Blink Bomb. Bailey had to risk a few turns to be able to use her best skills using Charge, but definitely a life-saver when dealing with the final gauntlet using Finishing Blow.

However, I was VERY rarely able to save enough TP to use most of Fido's and Bino's skills, even with using Bino's provoke abilities. What happened with that, anyway? I remember the proper demo we managed to find a way to save TP.

Will the corrections on the item and skill effect descriptions be a future endeavor? Again, they either don't provide a clue as to what they really do half the time or scroll off the text box (again, why does the engine not do that automatically?).

Interesting list of new items that you've made, really. I'll see when I get to them.

I feel like I'm missing something I wanted to say, but can't remember what it was.

I could never get the text during battle to slow down, honestly, and it doesn't appear to have a feature that allows you to do so. However, i read there's a script for it:


Window_BattleLog around Line 191

#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# * Get Message Speed
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
def message_speed
return 20
end

If you enter that into the Battlelog, you can change the speed out. If you want, give it a test.

Texting descriptions i'm not sure why they are doing this. it varies person to person. I keep shortening the text and it seems to be affected by monitor size? no clue.

On another note, i find Fido does a good job in dealing awesome damage, but as you say he's TP starved. That is actually normal. I plan on making some items though later to help increase this if it gets really bad. Bino is in the same boat as well, but he's suppose to be getting his TP by taunting. As i came across making his weapons, I began thinking Bino may need some retuning since provoking in the game isn't as good as i hoped for Bino. Even when he provokes people, he's not being attacked.

As far as the bosses go, i just went with my best idea of what the characters would be like in the game. Don't mind their canonical dialogue, i'm just having fun with it. Though feel free to comment if you like it or not =3

Haven't tried editing the battlelog. Let's see what I can figure out/look up. I know that text boxes have guides for where a cut off occurs, but I've learned that it's garbage. You could follow it all you want and you'd still have a good chance to have cut text. Some sections have a preview button, at least.

As for the character phrases, I'll see about typing up personality traits later on. It's late right now.

[CHAOKOCartoons]

Hey so I'm trying to give a Map to Super but I don't know how. How do I do it?
I've tried looking it up but it doesn't look possible. Would we just have to go off of an image and reconstruct it in the main game?

[D-Rock]

What I've found is that it would need to be reconstructed. http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php ... ting-maps/
http://www.rpgmakercentral.com/topic/77 ... -exporter/
Kinda sucks.

[D-Rock]

Internet has been out, but I finally had a chance to post this.

First are the Frisbees, decided for a full frontal view. Underneath are some of the expendable bombs, with a little note on them. If I make one for each element, I'll likely just reuse the symbols I used for the elemental collars. Speaking of which, made a tag for Bahamut's collar.

Finally got around to designing Pete's Feather, too. I was initially going to use the feather that I made for the team logo, but decided to do a redraw.

I'll try armors, but I don't think they'll look all that great if I do frontal views. I'll see about doing angled views, like how the sprites are.

And I know that I said that I would get onto personality points for the various characters, I just never got on it.

[D-Rock]

Frisbees are done.

Frisbee
Super Frisbee
Mega Frisbee
Ultra Frisbee
Ultimate Frisbee
Clay Pigeon
Shooting Star

[D-Rock]

Got more done.

Various bombs. Reused the elemental symbols for these.

Bahamut's collar, not much else to say.

Pete's Feather. Honestly, surprised it took so long to get to this.

Also, I decided to go ahead and make Bahamut's Mask from when we saw him in dragon form. First attempts at sketches were abysmal, let's see if I manage something better.

And something I've been dreading; the armors. As I mentioned previously, I don't think a full frontal view of them would look good. I think at best, an angled view similar to how the sprites are. I'll need to learn about vantage points for this.

[GameCobra]

Been busy, but looking splendid!

Don't push yourself on the armors!

[D-Rock]

Got this done for the Paper Bag armor

paperbagline.png (4.17 KiB) Viewed 19821 times

Frankly, I think this is the only one that'll be this easy.

[D-Rock]

Not sure on how this looks.

paperbagcolor.png (5.84 KiB) Viewed 19691 times

What do you guys think?

Also, I haven't gotten onto others. When work isn't rough, I lack motivation to give it a shot.

[GameCobra]

The shape is good, the color looks damper than what i would expect.

[D-Rock]

What do you mean by "damper?"

[GameCobra]

It looks like the armor got a little wet while it was being made. =3

[D-Rock]

I can only guess that it was because of the colors used. I'll see what happens when I desaturate it a bit.

paperbagcolor1.png (5.7 KiB) Viewed 19636 times

How's this?

[GameCobra]

I'm thinking much brighter.

[D-Rock]

Oh, in that case it's now a light source issue. I colored it assuming the lighting is behind and to the left. That image you're showing is lighting from the front, possibly from the right.

[kavviyenta]

Do you have any more room for another boss or two? If it can't fit into the main storyline, it can be a sidequest boss instead. You stated you don’t have a dog boss and a jackal don’t count. It was mentioned you want to add blue cat OC so I have one even though he’s not really a blue cat.

These OCs were my previous idea for operation Pentito for Valerio’s HP the series fic. I ended up not posting them anyway mostly because the other OC’s descriptions were so good I wanted to see them in the limelight instead. I hope there’s a slot for their role to play.

Their name are El Fin and Dingerpeaje, but I believed they need to be changed so what would be a good option?

El Fin is a purple-eyed Doberman with yellow where rust color normally should be. Overall black fur is lighter than usual. Tail is not docked. Only left ear is cropped leaving the right hanging. Few small scars on limbs but on the upper right back is a scar resembling a Spanish symbol (supposed to be meaning "end" but I'm not sure what fit). Tend to wear long blue pants and cloak. Picture a palette swap of Sasha.

Personality: Laid-back mostly, but can be boastful and even dramatic. Regardless El Fin knows when to get serious. Good at hiding feeling which is revealed to be conflicted at determining loyalty and confidence for such a dangerous game.

Ability: El fin is a dance battler. Always doing flip and numerous steps in unpredictable way. Tend to be acrobatic and also pragmatic. Is good at analyzing weak points and does not hesitate to go after that.

Now here's the twist:

When El Fin decides to get serious, the cloak and pants are removed, revealing that the doberman is a girl. Not only that, the clothing has spring-mechanism that held her ability back. She is even faster than before.

History: Born Elly Jefferson, she was the oldest of five who resides in northwestern US where her siblings were given away. She and her parents both owner and biological moved to Oasis Towers (belongs to Anthroguy101). This didn’t end well when coyote bandits ambushed them. (yeah, unoriginal since its already done by Rick, but there are more scattered tribe aren’t there?) Though the family was left unharmed, Elly ended up hiding in one of the bags unbeknownst to both groups. As they got further, Elly was found out and used as hostage but the coyotes were more lenient enough to explain their life with her. However, they ended up being captured this time by member of the PFC. Elly tried fighting them and actually injured two of them but lost, resulting in her left ears badly damaged. (And that stop from here as I didn’t go any further)

Note: -People and animals tend to mistake her name Elly as her nickname instead of El Fin
-She collect a variation of hats and like to show off with them in styles
-Has a sweet tooth

Dingerpeaje appeared to be a blue cat with no interesting feature. Not a single scar. Has red eyes and a fox-like tail. Wear a brown collar with a lamp-shaped tag.

Personality: Carry a stoic demeanor. Occasionally smirk when something interest him. Apparently show a sadistic side when doing his job.

Ability: Acute sense that can predict danger almost up to clairvoyant level. Is shown to be telekinetic in making objects move out of touch even without gesturing.

The twist? The cat’s body is actually literal puppet. The real Dingerpeaje is a purple ferret with tan paws and face and black around eye and nose. His power involves puppet-based magic. He is actually hiding inside the cat’s body and can see through the cat’s sense as if it was his own.

As for history, I didn’t put up anything. All I can say is he is abandoned for his power and later was found by a strange magician who deal with puppetry himself. Later on, Dinger was not happy that his new owner is using him as a tool and ran away taking the secret with him. He was later found by the PFC. The cat is not real and is actually synthetic, a creation made by the ferret himself. Although he can be redeemed, all I can say is he is not the kind of ferret the Miltons would want to hang out with.

Whether you choose either or not, I hope they can fit into the game. Both history will have to be adjusted anyway.

I think the doberman can be the only minion of Nue/Olde who joined for the sake of a challenge from the heroes or is oblivious to the fact that she is manipulated into joining the game in a way similar to how Nevermore manipulated Bino.

As for the puppeteer, there can be a chapter where the heroes hear of a disaster and the only lead is it is caused by a ferret leading them to think one of the Miltons is responsible. They encounter a blue cat who seemed to give riddle on where to go. They fought a unique type of enemies (maybe the return of the living dummies) along the way until they find the culprit. He is actually a decoy and they went on another path leading to the blue cat which they fought until he revealed his true form as the ferret responsible for the event. I have not decided what the skull-faced ferret’s motive is.

What do you think?

[D-Rock]

Well, the NPC, Sucre, was originally going to be blue, but I found pinkish looked better on her. The Apparition is a dog, based on a dog from a specific story. I never posted that one here, just showed it to Star and Chaoko on DeviantArt. Still, we'll consider these. Let's see what happens.

Thank you for your input!

[Obbl]

Welp, in other news, I've gotten a rough Akkadian cuneiform translation of the two phrases from (a rather long time) earlier

1. You are a massive nerd for bothering to translate this.
-> You are a massive slave of desire for becoming weary to translate this.
-> atta aššum annū targumu āniḫum warad ešqum ṣibūtatim

2. Dad, it's Sabrina. CALL ME.
-> Dad, I am Sabrina. Speak to me.
->Abu ana sabrina ayyāšim awu

The second one has a nice look to it fairly naturally, but I can't get the first to look any good. If you want to improve that one by moving the words around to different lines for a more balanced look or something, you can pretty much feel free to. It's almost entirely one word per line (the first glyph in the second to last line is its own word).