It's a lot of fun and very polished! I wasn't very good at it but I still enjoyed it!
Ayback
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Excellent presentation! The characters were fun and the graphics and sound are great! For the mechanics, I feel like the batting could use a slight visual cue of some kind, as the angle makes it hard to tell how close the ball is. The pitching also seemed a bit random - it didn't seem to matter where I aimed in determining where the ball went or whether or not it was hit.
It was still a fun game, even though I lost 12 - 1! 🤣
There isn't a way to save due to RPG Maker MZ's handling of Message Boxes. You can't really do anything during a sequence of messages other than press ENTER or ESC, both of which just go on to the next message. Adding a SAVE menu during the day kind of throws off the pacing, but I might consider adding them in places. Other than that, I'm thinking I'll either add a "RETRY" option after a bad ending, or just make it so there are no bad endings and have the game continue after losing the battle (Winston intervenes and saves you, Chiyoko blacks out and unleashes some crazy latent power and drives the enemy away, etc) I was moving towards the latter solution, but burned out and ran out of time.
Start out by doing covers - just remake NES songs you like as closely as you can. Not only is it a good way to learn how to actually use Famistudio, but you'll pick up on different ways to use the different channels. One example - I never would have thought to use a triangle wave as part of a drum without hearing it first. Note that Famistudio also comes with a ton of sample files that are actual NES music pieces that you can take apart, mess with, and learn from.
For channels, the usual setup is for the main melody to be on Pulse 1. Use Pulse 2 for harmony with Pulse 1. Each pulse channel duty cycle has its own characteristics that you'll get used to the more you experiment. The Triangle wave channel is usually your base and the Noise channel is the drums (Note: the Duty Cycle also affects the sound of the Noise channel so play around with it!.) DPCM is most often used for drums as well. You'll want to watch the tutorials on those - they're a game changer! Once you know the basic rules of each channel, you can start messing with them and using them for other things, such as Triangle for melody and a Pulse for the bass!
Speaking of tutorials, the Famistudio tutorials are also extremely detailed and worth a watch. I watched them after I made my first soundtrack and still learned a ton. Things can actually get quite complicated when it comes to creating instruments - I'm still learning that part myself.
If you want to change your songs tempo (BPM,) click the gear icon next to the song's title on the song list in the upper right. Click the BPM dropdown and select a new BPM. If the BPM has a star (*) next to it, it is an "Ideal Tempo," which means the notes will be perfectly divided and nothing will get messed up. (It took me forever to figure out how to change tempo in this thing lol)
If your melody sounds too grating or "tinny," try decreasing the volume on the channel. You can do that by clicking the VERY small arrow next to the magnet icon right below your channel list. This brings up your channel effects. Click the "Volume" button. Then, to the right, click in the timeline where you want to change the volume. Drag it up or down to where you want it. This has solved the problem 9/10 times for me, unless there is just something fundamentally wrong with the piece. There are other effects you can put in as well.
That's about all the good tips I can think of off the top of my head. If there's anything I did in my soundtrack that you'd like described in detail, feel free to reach out to me on Discord! (Discord name: "ayback")
I started my entry an hour ago. I decided to write a simple theme song in LMMS, and when I went to make it loop, I accidently included the intro to the song in the loop. I went back to fix it, but stopped myself. I'm leaving it like that. It's actually causing me pain! So that might be part of the process - Don't fix your mistakes! Now I'm wondering if I should just make the song play like that for the entire game. My Perfectionist Demon is crying in a corner somewhere and I've only just begun.