Progress Report

I'm still awaiting feedback from my testers on the "final" version of Ascension, but in the meantime, I've had an opportunity to take a little break from developing. Even so, I've already started turning my mind back towards my Dragonfaith project, and resumed working on it with a renewed vigor. However, I've decided to kind of start back from sort-of-scratch, and rebuild the project up from the beginning, while scaling back a few things. I just feel like maybe there's too much complexity right in the beginning of the game, and it's gotten to a level where it can intimidate me way too early in the development process.

Some of the things I'm working on changing is tightening up some of the maps, to get rid of empty space, in an effort to maintain focus; rethinking the approach in dialogue; and opting for more player freedom rather than a rigidly plot-driven vehicle. I've also decided that maybe controlling a party of three characters right at the start of the game is maybe too much too soon - starting with a single character and then building up later on will make it easier both for the player to adapt to the combat in the game, as well as for me to start configuring the battle specs early on. (This approach was partly inspired by the simplicity of the first Dragon Quest/Warrior game, with which the front-view RPG Maker combat system resembles more closely than the side-view Final Fantasy system).

As much as I'd love to make a complex and character-driven story like Final Fantasys IV-VI, the fact is, RPGs are tough to design, and this is my very first one. So I don't want to burden myself with too many expectations right from the start. One of the tips I'd read in a guide on creating your first RPG is not to start with your dream project - to save it for when you actually know what you're doing. I didn't agree with it then, and I still don't agree with it completely, as I think the motivation to bring your dream project to life could be just the thing you need to actually push yourself through to the end instead of giving up halfway through (which is where I'd wager 95% of projects wind up - I've never wanted to be that guy). But there is some wisdom in that view, and certainly I've looked at my Ascension project partly as an opportunity to gain more experience before tackling Dragonfaith again.

Of course, Ascension wasn't just a detour - it was yet another dream project that I'd been wanting to bring to life, and I am immensely satisfied with what I've managed to come up with. Turning back towards Dragonfaith now, I think it's more important that I can piece this together into an actual, complete game that acts as a vehicle to tell the story I want to tell, than to get too bogged down with making comparisons to professional games I couldn't hope to equal (even if I did have the talent/experience, those games still require collaboration with many people to create). In the long-run, if this becomes something I enjoy and have the talent to do, I don't expect there will be any shortage of creative ideas bubbling around in my head, and it's not like primitive games haven't ever been redone to fulfill their true potential with later experience/technology (see: Metal Gear Solid).

Progress Report

Sorry (once again) for the delay - believe me, it's frustrating me as much as anyone. But I thought you'd appreciate it more if, instead of teasing you with another empty progress report, I waited until I was ready to give you an actual release before I posted again.

Yes, that's right, I have a release ready. I'm not sure I'm 100% satisfied with the Labyrinth stage, but seeing as I've worked on it for about a month, and every other stage closer to just a week, I'm tired of tweaking it and rethinking it. So I'm leaving it up to you, the testers, to let me know what you think of it. Frankly, I'm concerned that the one tester I've had feedback from on this stage is skewing my perception, since she's apparently the sort of person who can sit for 35 minutes straight wandering down aimless passages trying to solve a maze, without thinking anything of it. :p

So, please, let me know what you think of the maze, as well as the rest of the game. I'd love to hear your reaction to the secret, alternate ending if and when you manage to unlock it, as well. I had a lot of fun putting it together, and am very excited to show it off.

I'm putting the release on a separate page this time, so I can make it a sort of "official" release page, now that the game is going into "beta" phase (I guess). Alterations may still be made in the future, depending on the feedback I get, but this is where I close the main development stage and say that, barring bugs and the occasional conceptual exception (and my testers will be crucial for that), the game is pretty much finished, and I'm done working on it - at least in a regular, daily capacity.

Get the download here!

Progress Report

I have to apologize. I really wanted to get the next release out before this weekend (I'm going away, and won't be able to work on the game for several days), but it's just not going to happen. So you'll have to be a little bit more patient. Everything is pretty much finished (although I still need to go through the game and make sure everything works and there are no last minute tweaks), except the Labyrinth stage which I am still working on.

I swear, this stage is turning out to be the bane of this project. It's not to a point where I just want to give up yet - I think there is potential here for a really great stage. But there are just so many options, and wrapping my head around these mazes (to a sufficient degree of mastery as to predict how the player will experience them), while also trying to design unique challenges to disorient the player and ramp up the difficulty of solving the maze, while introducing a certain level of randomness...it boggles the mind. And every time I think I've got a good maze design to work on, I have to spend several hours building it in the map editor - so far only to ultimately decide that it's not good enough. :-\

(maze analysis)

It's pretty frustrating. But I'm still plugging away at it. Give me another week, and I'll see what I can come up with.

Progress Report

I know this is probably the longest wait I've had between releases since I started working on Ascension, but if you be just a little more patient, my next release should be more or less final, barring bug fixes and potential late-stage conceptual changes (though I hope and anticipate there won't be a lot of that). And I'm starting to get close to being ready for that release - I'm going to try real hard to put it out before next weekend. For the moment, I'd like to go over some of the changes I've been working on, and the progress I've made since my last report.

I'm just about finished hiding the secret items you have to find to get the alternate ending, which is itself pretty much finished.

I also fixed some parts in the Nastrond stage that I noticed were causing game-crashing errors (again due to the graphics file change I mentioned previously) - my apologies that the stage is apparently not playable in the latest release that's out.

And speaking of Nastrond, I'm installing a few optional shortcuts, since it's such a long, drawn out stage. Certainly, I'd like for you to experience the stage in its entirety the first time at least. But after the third or fourth time through, when you're on Hard Mode and trying for the alternate ending (for example), I don't expect you to want to sit through every bit of dialog, necessarily.

I'm also, by the way, in the process of changing around some of the dialog with Lucifer's generals, to make it a little bit more conversational and less of a lecture/text dump (since this game originally existed in the form of a written story).

I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but I made another minor graphics-related change so that now your save game file will include an indicator letting you know what difficulty level you're on (E for Easy, N for Normal, H for Hard). That should hopefully be a clever (and helpful) little addition.

Labyrinth is proving to be a real monster. I've been studying maze theory and I've come to the conclusion that my own amateur maze building skills aren't up to the task of constructing a convincingly challenging Labyrinth, so I've resorted to using a program to generate mazes which was created by maze genius Walter Pullen (here's his website - it's chock full of mazes and interesting maze-related information). Here's the prototype for the new Labyrinth maze. :p

Still, there's a lot of work involved in translating a maze into a playable game map, and then there are other considerations as well, since I want the maze to be uniquely challenging. I've utilized certain strategies to disorient the player, including reducing visibility and eliminating landmarks as much as possible. But there's still so many choices in deciding how to put this stage together that - like being lost in a maze - I can't figure out which direction to go!

But I should have that sorted out soon enough. So stay tuned for my big release, hopefully some time next week (fingers crossed!).

Progress Report

Since there's a lot of work to be done yet before my next release, which may not be ready for another week or more, I wanted to keep you posted on the progress I've been making, considering that I've been working literally day and night, for hours on end, to the point that my arm is going numb and my head is swimming from sitting in front of the computer too much (but I don't want to stop til it's finished!). And a lot of it is behind-the-scenes sort of stuff that you might not even notice much, as the player, and it would please me to give you an indication of just all the work that goes into putting a game together (even a relatively simple one like Ascension).

The secret alternate ending that I teased earlier is coming along very nicely. In fact, it's all but finished, and I've moved on to tackling the issue of how to unlock it. I've decided that to do so, you will need to find a hidden item in each of the stages of the game. They only appear on Hard Mode, and it will be a challenge to find/reach them, as I want the player to work for this ending (which is totally worth it). They shouldn't be impossible to find, obviously, but I want to put them in places where the player isn't very likely to stumble on them by accident. Ideally, I want the player to play through the game once and get the normal ending, before attempting the alternate ending (since the normal ending, which is the "true" ending, better concludes the story, and the secret ending is mostly just for fun). I plan on putting a tip at the end of the credits after you beat the game, informing the player of what he must do to unlock the secret ending, because, secret though it is, I do want the player to know that it's there, so he can look for it.

So anyway, while I'm hiding the secret items in each of the stages, this gives me a great opportunity to revisit each of those stages now that the game is in a state of relative completion from start to finish, and evaluate how I feel about them. I can polish them up, maybe add or extend a few things here or there, and complete things that maybe I rushed when I was trying to get the stage posted that week. Obviously, overhauling Labyrinth is going to be part of this process. I went back to Limbo (the first stage, you might remember), and completely recoded the gremlins, because the way I had done it before was kind of clunky, and OCD as I am, I wanted to polish it up a bit. It was a headache keeping track of all the switches and variables and whatnot, and as the player you shouldn't notice a difference beyond a minor change in the way the gremlins move, but as the developer I feel a lot better knowing the code is a bit more tidy. I seem to have the stage working nicely again now, which is a great relief, but certainly after I post the next release you'll have to play it and let me know if you encounter any bugs.

One other thing I've worked on a bit already is an additional challenge to the Chaos stage (as if it wasn't already tough enough!). It involves maneuvering your avatar in free fall to land on a moving platform. And it was actually an idea given by one of my testers. The first time I tried it out, I came to the conclusion that it would be too difficult to implement, and not worth the effort. But I recently thought of a different approach, and seem to have it working now. But I must stress this one caveat: I am working in RPG Maker, not Platformer Maker, and the "collision physics" are spotty at best, so I wouldn't expect too much precision, and for that reason, it will only be a minor part of the stage.

It has certainly been exciting bringing my story to life, and it has also been an immensely fruitful experience, working out all the challenges I have come across, especially in the sense of creating various "arcade"-like stages that don't necessarily run the way a game made in RPG Maker would be expected to run. I look forward to applying that experience when I finally get back to working on Dragonfaith (oh yes, I haven't given up on it). Although I'll probably need a bit of a break after Ascension reaches a stage of more or less completion. And it is towards that end I work, because I don't want this project to continue on indefinitely. I posted the first release at the beginning of June, and so I've been working on it for about two and a half months now. Let's see if I can't have it finished (at least in beta form) by the end of this month!

I better get back to work if that's to happen!

Ascension - Stage 11

Lest you think I've been slacking off, due to this release being a couple days late, I've actually been hard at work day and night. There's a lot to do to get the end of the game all together, and it seems less logical to release these last bits separately, so that one week you have the final stage, and then the next week you get to see the credits, or what have you.

Non-endgame updates in this release:

I made some minor adjustments to the previous stage (Erebus), because the gargoyles on Hard Mode weren't giving the player very much freedom of movement.

I feared that Labyrinth might be too much of a challenge, but according to one of my testers, it may actually be too easy. The version that I've released didn't fully realize my (somewhat more complex) plans, so I may have to actually go back and rebuild the maze to make it even more unforgiving. I don't begrudge the opportunity to do this, just the work that's going to have to go into it. :p Look for that in an upcoming release.

I also changed some filenames around for some of the graphics, for economy of content (you can fit eight full character sprites or faces in a single file). I tried to fix all the parts in the game that use them, but if you come to a point where the game crashes (with an error that says such and such a file can't be found), let me know; it's an easy fix.

A little rant on cutscene choreography:

I have a lot of respect for the people who put together those half-hour long cutscenes at the end of classic RPGs. Like, I had this problem more while working on Dragonfaith. Ascension has a lot of long text-heavy passages, since it's inspired by a written story idea, but it doesn't have a lot of complex, choreographed cutscenes with different characters moving all around the screen. I wanted something a little special at the end, to reward the player for playing through the game, but this is a short (I can't call it simple) cutscene that will probably last all of a couple minutes when it's said and done, but I'm moving thirteen characters around at once, and getting the timing and positioning down is a challenge. Add to that the fact that you (as the developer) have to sit there and watch through the whole thing multiple times as you make little tweaks to the stuff towards the end, just to get it right... Yeah, I think I complained about this when I was working on Dragonfaith. It's daunting.

Notes on the ending:

The final stage is a breath of relief after 10 stages of hellish terrain. That having been said, there is still a challenge you must surmount, although it's more of a sit-back-in-your-chair-and-explore sort of challenge than the edge-of-your-seat-thrill-ride kind of challenge that is more typical of the stages in Hell. Once you beat it, the ending is not extensive, and may or may not be along the lines of what you're expecting, but I hope that it is in keeping with the theme of the game/story, and there are a couple of extra fun bits at the end.

To keep everything straight - and this is something I imagine the player can discover on their own, but for the sake of letting my testers know what's in the game to test - let me explain the different variations of the ending. If you play the game on Easy Mode, you won't be able to access the final stage - you just get the basic credits without the bestiary I put lots of work into. Normal Mode gets you access to all playable content (minus the secret ending I have planned but haven't created yet), and the "true" ending, complete with the bestiary. The Hard Mode ending plays out exactly the same as Normal Mode, except there's an extra scene at the end (which I totally think is worth challenging yourself to get).

You might notice that the endings are additive. The harder difficulty level you pick, the more content you get, and there is nothing worthwhile on an easier difficulty that is not available on the harder difficulty levels. The Normal Mode gets you a perfectly adequate ending (though you may feel it's a bit abrupt - that's intentional), so that you don't have to strain yourself to beat the game on Hard, but at the same time, I think the extra scene is worth it. Plus, I think I might make the secret ending available only on Hard Mode, because I want it to be a challenge.

But all this can change in the future, if I change my mind, or get some negative feedback on how it's currently all laid out. In the meantime, you have only to play it and let me know what you think!

14/08/14: Ascension - Stage 11b (5.71 MB) [edit: new release available, check sidebar for info]

Edit: Remember when I mentioned filenames and crashes above? Well, in a true facepalm moment, I just discovered that I forgot to update each one of the gargoyles in Erebus. So, if you already downloaded Stage 11, you'll want to replace it with 11b if you don't want the game to crash every time a gargoyle catches you in Erebus...

Ascension - Stage 10

This release is a couple days late, despite being a relatively short stage. That's only because I was out of town and away from the computer for four days this past week. Although this is technically the last stage in Hell, I'm going to add a final stage in Purgatory - I probably said more than enough about that in the post for my last release. So this isn't the end, yet. But we're getting real close!

The final challenge in Hell is basically a determination of whether your soul is pure enough for Ascension. I've considered making the outcome dependent on actions you take during the game, but ultimately - and especially if you're not sure which decisions contribute to the purity of your soul - it might be a little too frustrating to make it to the end of the game only to be told, "you lose".

On the other hand, I want to reward players for not taking it too easy on themselves, and so this will, in fact, be the end of the game if you're playing on Easy Mode. To access the final level (and escape Hell), you'll have to defeat the game on Normal or Hard Mode. Otherwise, you just haven't suffered enough. :-p

For that reason, you can access (for the first time in this game!) the credits in this release, if you're playing on Easy Mode. They may not be in their final form yet, and I'm planning something extra in the form of a fun "cast" list a la Doom 2, but it's a pretty exciting start, I think.

14/08/07: Ascension - Stage 10 (5.86 MB) [edit: new release available, check sidebar for info]