itch.io

Thanks for checking out my game auradev, I just woke up but I want to answer some of the questions because some of the inherent flaws you've pointed out I've noticed too.

1.) The game is 2gb because 3 lines of code was fucking up my game so I was uploading it to test on different pcs around my house which required me to try everything, and in the end the build that worked had a few folders of just un processed images and maps and everything took up a lot of space. In the end it will not be that way, but after spending 36 hours just to try to squash this one bug to get the game running at normal speed, I said fuck it let it be.

2.) Walking is a bit slower than default RPG maker games because of inherent movement speed buffs that will be available in the game. Right now I'm balancing for how fast you will be with how slow you should feel in the beginning of the game. 

3.) Enemies do feel meaty in terms of HP because how to combat system will play out in general. I'm having a bit of a time balancing wise. For 1, if you smack mobs in the beginning of the game with autos to bust shields then relic to burst it takes forever. However after fighting those mobs to learn their weakness and using a 1 point relic with an AOE spell or ability you can kill entire group in seconds. This is just very very apparent in the very start of the game when you have no items and little mana to spam AOE. 

Although each map I make takes around 8 hours to make, I've actually spent the majority of time making the combat system. And with the synergy from being able to mix any abilities from any classes I've found crazy combinations that make it fun, but also reduce combat times to seconds. I'm trying to balance around 3 things that are challenging.
A: Those being having a sense of progression going from battles seemingly taking forever to learning the mechanics and building a character that kills groups in seconds.
B: Making fights challenging after you've gained power
C: Having your characters still feel powerful after enemies become hard enough to actually give your characters a challenge. (Think high level d&d battles, where your characters have so many options that battles become hard to make challenging as a DM)

4.) Enemies DO get aggroed during cutscenes, an easy fix that I just haven't implemented yet because working on other things lol.

5.) I think the decimal part of the damage is from how I'm rounding numbers for damage over time abilities. Something that needs to be fixed for sure.

6.) Battle animations are just under the option under the same name in the options menu. They default as "fast" but have 2 faster speeds. This was actually the cause of all of my problems getting the demo out...long story.

7.) You are able to save on the world map, it was explained on the 4th forest map during the end of a cutscene. Having you not realize this leads me to believe that I haven't explained that aspect of the game well enough. Saving is done on the world map by using the tent in your inventory. This sets up a camp which is very important. As the game doesn't have a journal, instead it has the camping system where you will discuss current events with your party, be able to heal via rations, and save by sleeping in the tent. This is another reason movement on the map is slow, because it is meant to feel like a journey. At later parts of the game using your tent and camping is imperative to story progression and travelling in general, I just think I need to explain it better because it was only briefly glossed over in the story.

8.) Enemies should stick around after dying, and have a death animation of crumpling to the floor. I'll look into this and make them disappear if they aren't all just crumpling. 

9.) The class system does feel overwhelming, but only because everything is unlocked in this version for testing. Realistically every class will only start with 1 ability, and then you buy them with "class mastery" points from battles. I'm still working on them and the way I programmed this can't be changed until I have 100% of them done. This is because they are all stored in an array that needs to be exact or it returns a NULL value. This is because every time you buy a skill I want it to change to a higher value. So buying skills in the beginning of the game is quick, and tapers off the more you get. This is for class balance reason, since you can switch classes at any time to learn their abilities, I wanted the player to have meaningful choices, where they can get multiple skills from other classes, but they will risk not getting skills from their "main class" because of the exponential time needed to get them.

As you can probably tell I'm just using yanfly's JP system for this, and have some custom code I added to achieve this:
       

<Custom Learn JP Cost>

var pointArray = [100, 350, 900,1000,1100,

1200, 1202, 1203];

cost=pointArray[user.skills().length];

</Custom Learn JP Cost>

So until I have every skill completely done, I've just left it as having them all unlocked for now.

10.) The target marker is something I'm actively working on the to fix.

11.) The character sprites are pretty much all placeholders at the moment. The wizard girl is the only 1 that is 100% finished, still working on the rest of the commissions, but in the end everything will match. I can do mapping myself, but as for drawing actual characters I don't have that kind of talent. Even when I was working with 3D I can do buildings and stuff like that, but organic just throws me off.

12.) The opening and closing of the text box is a hard one for me too. I'm just using galv's bust plugin atm, and if you don't put a delay in between text it gets really wonky. I was thinking of using another plugin but I'm not exactly sure what to do yet. What do you use for your bust overlay if you don't mind lol?

13.) Can't believe I didn't see this, that there is only exit to title. Will fix this for the next build lol

Thanks again for checking out my game, I'll do the same for yours as well, although I don't think my words will have the same gravity as yours lol

From on RM dev to another, thanks for appreciating the polish on the maps, they take a crazy amount of effort, an effort that will probably be lost on people not familiar with that kind of stuff~