Castle Paradox

[alphawolf]

This is becoming a pain. When I upload my demo game (.zip) onto
castleparadox, it claims it uploads, but there's no download option on
my game! Anything I'm doing wrong?

haha caught myself sounding like a n00b
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#AlphaWolf#

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##AlphaWolf Studios##

[Greenwado]

Just a suggestion, not trying to take anything away from CP, but try uploading on Slime Salad, the community is MUCH more active over there than over here
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Happy RPG Makin

[alphawolf]

well thanks, I'll try that
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#AlphaWolf#

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##AlphaWolf Studios##

[Inferior Minion]

Hi Alphawolf,

I found the error in Castle Paradox's logs. I currently have a 32MB max upload size which I've now bumped. Rather than have you upload the 58MB file again, I've pulled it from Slime Salad for you.

Cheers

~IM
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[alphawolf]

Thanks, Inferior Minion Really, thanks alot!!

And for some reason I still like this site better than slimesalad... but all
part of the same group I guess
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#AlphaWolf#

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[TMC]

I had thought there had been several old games here larger than 32MB. But I guess I'm thinking of rpg files rather than zips. Years ago large file sizes usually resulted from animations of hundreds of backdrops.
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

[alphawolf]

haha mine is because of poorly sized .ogg files
Yeah, and I guess a couple of backdrops, but more are imported for the
demo than are used
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##AlphaWolf Studios##

[TMC]

Yeah, I had a look at your game and saw that most the OGG files were encoded at a very high bitrate, 400kbps, which corresponded to the maximum quality setting when converting MP3s to OGGs. Really, almost noone is going to hear the difference between quality 10 and quality 4, but you added over 30MB to your download size by doing so.

James already changed the quality level descriptions once to discourage that, but I don't think he made them severe enough :)
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

[alphawolf]

well, my .ogg files (the big ones) were originally .ogg, and the .mp3 files (the ones that ended up being smaller) I changed to .ogg
The bigger files just can't help being big hahaha
Oh, and now that I know someone is checking my game out, sometime
could you tell me how you like it?
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#AlphaWolf#

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[Bob the Hamster]

If your music is already in ogg format, you can open it in Audacity and re-export it to reduce the quality level down to something sane like 3 or 4

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

[alphawolf]

hahaha yeah , "Something sane like 3 or 4"
I already have audacity haha and I think shrinking my game size
that way is a great idea, thanks!
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#AlphaWolf#

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##AlphaWolf Studios##

[TMC]

Ah, my bad. Finding OGGs online encoded at absurd bitrates is pretty uncommon. Dang hi-fi-obsessed audiophiles!

Errr, I haven't played your game yet; as usual for a game I'm investigating I only opened it in Custom! I can have a look...
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

[NeoSpade]

I've had a bit of a go on it and playing it reminded me of an engine bug, that bugs me

Percentage based healing seems to be broken in the stable release, it has been for a while too :S.

It'll work just fine in battle, but on the field it won't heal, but hurt. I've noticed this both in this game and my own. (so alpha, if I was you, I'd change the % based healing skills into set amounts until the issue is resolved).

Back on topic: I think that the strongest element of the game is definitely the in-battle enemy sprites, they just totally overshadow everything else in the game. I think you should use the same spriting technique on the other graphics in the game.

I felt that the school building felt empty, there wasn't enough decorations on the walls outside of the dorms. Either the walls or floors really need to be shifted a bit to break up the 2, when you're sprinting (nice touch btw) they kinda blur together, which isn't helped by the lack of decoration.

I felt that the exterior field graphics looked much better than the interiors, I especially liked the way the trees turned out in it. The school exterior could do with a slightly darker colour for the far wall to give it a better sense of depth, but that's more of a preference than a critique.

The battles need a bit of re-balancing. I liked the fact that your MP restores after each battle and that there was actually skills available from the get-go, but the spells seemed a bit worthless.

By this I mean that besides Christina, the others seem to only do a bit more damage with their spells than their regular attacks, Christina's spells are also immense! She can practically wipe all the enemies apart from bosses and a few enemies.

I feel that you should either make her a bit weaker (HP wise, glass-cannon style) or make her spells a bit more expensive, so that she can cast it less per battle. I feel that the physical attacks and her spells are balanced (damage wise), but the lads sure could do with a buff to their spells too.

I noticed that there was a sword that Samuel couldn't equip, a few oddities in the Alchemist (FREE DIAMONDS! ) and the previously mentioned engine bug making out of battle healing currently impossible, but other than that I think this is a good first game.

Oh and as a side-note: I really like the custom icons for Samuel's swords, armour, etc., they're a nice touch too.

[alphawolf]

^NeoSpade, thanks for the feedback
I had let my friend Trevor play the game, and he mentioned the beans
and healing dealing damage hehe I already fixed that, but haven't re-uploaded the demo yet. (so until then... DON'T EAT THE BEANS )

The in battle sprites are alot better than the walkabouts because my
amazing artist sister, Amanda, drew those (hehe), and I didn't want
to put her to the trouble of drawing the walkabouts. I will freshen up
the walkabouts though, because they aren't to par with the rest of the
game.

I also felt that the school needed more decoration (any ideas, because I
had/have none ) , but I thought the main problem was probably the lack of extra things to do (side quests for mere entertainment )

I agree that the outside graphics were better than the inside, but the problem was that the outdoors was allowed to be spontanious, while indoors was full of tiles that create a pattern. I might add aging to the interior (it's an old school)

And yes, I completely agree with Christina's skills being too powerful (and by now you must notice I use my friends names for characters haha), and that the other heroes were not put in the spotlight. To neutralize this, I did not lower Christina's power (although I did increase Spirit Cost), but I increased Caleb's Streingth, Samuel's Streingth, and I'm giving Jenny an extra decent abillity. (again, this is the zip demo I haven't uploaded yet) Perhaps I will make Impact and Shockwave deal more damage (hehe, those were pretty weak )

I had QUITE the issue with font, and screwing it up. I searched to the Vikings of Midgard font to fix it, so some of the icons are not original (that dosen't mean all of them aren't hehe), but perhaps I will add some originallity to those.

Finally, I was unaware of the oddity in the Alchemist hehe, Trevor and I rarely bothered with that so far, so thanks for pointing that out! And yes, haha the equipping was pretty messed up from the get-go with me (my bad )

thanks for the input, I'll be off fixing stuff
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[Rya.Reisender]

I like it more here too. Much more comfy!
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