Revision to Latest Release

So, I nixed the program update, and went back and restructured a portion of the secret level, as explained. I'm sad to lose the portion I lost - due to an inability to perform instantaneous map transfers - but I took the opportunity to add another little flourish, and honestly, I think it's even better this way. I don't want to say too much, because I don't want to spoil the surprise, but I'm super excited about the secret level. I know there's a high bar for access, and many players may never reach it, but I wanted to have something special for those who are willing to go the extra mile.

So I'm releasing a revision to the latest update, with the secret level now implemented and accessible. As far as its feasibility in terms of the difficulty of reaching it - I'm planning to test that myself, but I want to wait until the beta release, because that will give me a good chance to go back through every stage in the game, and make sure everything works the way I want it to. And that will be ready once I perform the "cleaning" functions I alluded to in my last post. But the reason I want to put out this revision first is because I've learned never to trust in the future. In case something happens - e.g., we all die from this global pandemic, or my progress stalls out again, or my files get corrupted in another computer crash - I want what I've accomplished up to this point to be out there, until such time that I have an improved version ready to replace it.

Ascension (MV) Alpha 10.2 (all stages, including ending and secret level)
Download (~230 MB): Windows | Mac [see sidebar for latest release]

Update on the Update

So, I updated RPG Maker MV (to version 1.6.1), and - I suppose this shouldn't be surprising, but - I'm not impressed. It doesn't fix any of the bugs I'd hoped it would fix (no idea what "freeze when changing screen" is supposed to refer to, but it is most decidedly not the map transfer lurch that I hate), and introduces some new bugs (like a weird text glitch on the title screen when I playtest), while threatening to break plugins (I've already had to fix one so far, in a game that uses very few of them). So, it looks like I'm going back to version 1.5.0. God, this is so frustrating. I envy authors who can scribble runes on paper and communicate across eons, while each version of the software I take time to learn works on only a handful of machines, and becomes obsolete before I have the time to finish a single project...

So I'll be going back, making a significant change to the layout of my secret level, and then still polishing up my project and slimming the download file. That might take some time, but when I'm finished, I'm going beta and finally putting this game into the hands of my testers. If I have any.

Ascension (MV) Alpha 10.0 [Purgatory]

This update took a little longer. The official reason is that I had more to do - not just the final stage (Purgatory), but also the ending, and the secret level. But I could have released just Purgatory, and followed that up later with the completed ending. The truth is, Purgatory involves a lot of dialogue, so that was actually the part that took the longest to polish. And working on those other things served as a nice distraction when I got fed up with tweaking the dialogue.

So, this release almost represents the complete game. But I'm not quite ready to go beta yet - there are a few things I want to polish up, but I wanted to put out a release with everything I've worked on since finishing up Erebus before I go mucking around, in case I screw something up. The only thing missing from this release is the secret level, which is actually mostly finished - but I have it disabled. And here's why:

There's a bit of nonlinear topography involved, that gets screwed up with MV's inability to perform instantaneous map transfers (which I've worked around throughout the rest of the game). I could restructure that bit of the level, but before I go to that trouble, I want to update RPG Maker because the latest update mentions fixing "the freeze when changing screen in-game". I don't know if this means that instantaneous transfers will work or not, but it sounds promising, and it's worth a try.

I've just been delaying updating the program while I work on this game, because there's no telling what problems it might cause, by changing up the way the program does certain things (particularly with plugin functionality - although luckily this game doesn't use a lot of plugins). So I wanted to put out a nearly finished product before I took that gamble, and that's what this is. I'd also like to go through and polish up the innards of my game now that it's pretty much finished (including stripping unused files to reduce the download size), and this seems like a good time to do that.

But in the meantime, here's my latest release, with all stages playable, from beginning to end. Just don't waste time collecting the secrets on Hard Mode yet, because you can't get the reward. Other modifications I've made in this release include an even more streamlined (and, importantly, more intuitive) pause screen. I also reduced the number of picture files required to display the story completion percentage, but you won't notice any difference on your end. I hope to be back with an official beta release in the near future!

Ascension (MV) Alpha 10.0 (including all stages up to Chapter 12 - Purgatory)
Download (~230 MB): Windows | Mac [see sidebar for latest release]

Load Lag Issue [Resolved]

If you read my note at the end of the post when I released Sodom & Gomorrah two and a half weeks ago, you'll recall that I was having an issue with the map taking an extra long time to load. Well, I have some good news - I've figured out what was causing the delay, because I encountered the same issue on the Purgatory map I am currently working on, and I was able to isolate the problem this time. And it turns out, it's my old nemesis, the RPG Maker MV BGM Delay, rearing its ugly head again.

The thing that these two maps have in common is that they call a BGM file to be played (most of this game relies on silence and sound effects as opposed to having a running soundtrack), and BGM files are significantly larger than shorter sound effect files and images (which have a smaller file size compared to audio). So what's happening is the Preload Manager is hanging while loading those large BGM files.

And before you say, "just disable the Preload Manager", this is exactly the reason I started using it in the first place. RPG Maker MV loads files on the fly (I'm honestly wondering what VX Ace did differently, and why MV is so utterly incapable of performing such a basic function that its predecessor had no issue with), so when you call a BGM, it takes a couple seconds for it to load and then start playing. The Preload Manager doesn't load it any faster, it just opts to load the file ahead of time when you transfer to the map that uses it, so it will be ready the second it's called. It's a tradeoff.

The bad news is that there isn't a whole lot I can do about it. Moving the loading to the front of the map is preferable to waiting until you need the file for it to load. What I can do is bump it all the way to the start of the game, when it's booting up, and players are expecting to wait a few seconds. So far, this seems to work pretty well (the affected map transfers are much quicker), although if I had more than a few BGMs throughout my game, it might make the boot load itself unwieldy.

In fact, I'm wondering if the Preload Manager is any use at all for anything other than BGMs, since - unless I'm mistaken - that's the only thing I recall having loading problems with. In any case, I've modified it so that now it only performs boot loading of predesignated BGM files and not its usual preload on map transfer, so we'll try it out that way and see if any problems arise...

Followup: It looks like I may have to revert to between-map loading after all. There's a question of how long a given file remains in memory after being pre-loaded, and I'm concerned that if the BGM is loaded at startup, it may be purged long before the player, during the regular course of playing the game (and not going directly to the parts I'm working on, as I do when I'm testing), gets to the point where the file is needed.

I haven't been able to test that yet (as it requires longer periods of play-testing), but there's also another problem involving a graphical glitch when switching characters to their damage sprites (to make them appear slouched or fallen over) - a momentary blip, presumably due to the program loading the image on demand.

Prior to investigating the load lag issue, I had replaced the "Now Loading" screen with a blank screen, because I thought it was annoying and disrupts the player's immersion into the game. This actually contributed to my confusion, because when the map hung before loading, I didn't immediately recognize what it was doing. I think I might ultimately just put the "Now Loading" screen back in, and learn to live with it (even though it annoys me when it only shows up for a fraction of a second, as on most maps - better off not showing up at all, if you ask me...).

Ascension (MV) Alpha 9.0 [Erebus]

Back to quick turnarounds! It's nice to work on another straightforward adaptation stage. To be honest, by the end of working on that last stage, I was starting to get sick of it! But with this stage released, the end is starting to materialize on the horizon. Erebus is the point at which our protagonist finds out whether he will be able to escape Hell. It is also the point at which the game ends if you are playing on Easy Mode. To access the final stage, Purgatory (which is a bit of a relief after spending the whole game in Hell), you must be playing on at least Normal Mode. I can't wait to get working on it!

Ascension (MV) Alpha 9.0 (including all stages up to Chapter 11 - Erebus)
Download (~230 MB): Windows | Mac [see sidebar for latest release]

Reminder: I've rigged it so that after starting a new game, you can reload and select continue to access all stages that have been completed so far. (Without doing the work to get there).

Ascension (MV) Alpha 8.0 [Labyrinth]

As anticipated, this stage took considerably more time to pull together than the last few. In keeping with my new commitment to stay grounded, it's not everything the Labyrinth could be, metaphysically speaking, but it's a functioning level (perhaps for the first time ever), that allows me to tell the story I want to tell. Navigating the maze remains a challenge, but hopefully one that will not be so frustrating as to prevent the player from advancing (which is its purported purpose - but the story relies on the player solving it). Here's what I did to make the maze what it currently is:

To start with, I generated a brand new maze using the latest version of the Daedalus program that I'd used before. I actually stitched my Labyrinth together from four separate mazes, to represent four quadrants, although they are integrated so as to function as one whole. The maze loops horizontally and vertically to create the illusion of being even larger than it actually is. At its deepest point, you are never more than 80 branches from the center (and end of the level) - and if that number still seems large to you, a lot of those branches are short dead ends that can be quickly ruled out.

For that matter, I've implemented a "marking" system, where you can pick up rocks scattered about the maze, to carry around and place, at your convenience, anywhere within the maze in the shape of an arrow pointing in one of the four cardinal directions, or an "x", to help you solve the maze. I figure this will be a good way to make the maze more interactive, to let the player feel like he is using his wits to narrow down the pathways, rather than merely stumbling down the same blind alleys again and again, until randomly hitting on the solution.

I've also added a functioning compass - just for the fun of the challenge of seeing if I could. At any junction within the maze, where the path splits and you have to make a choice of which direction to go, you can press the Page Down key (or whatever it's mapped to), and an icon will momentarily display on screen, pointing the direction you must go to reach the center of the maze (for curious RPG Makers, it keys on Region ID). As this defeats the very purpose of the maze, I don't intend for it to be a normal part of the level, but you can certainly use it for testing purposes if you get lost. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to leave it in the final game as a sort of cheat or Easter egg.

As far as difficulty goes, if you play the game on Easy Mode, your only challenge is to solve the maze (I can't really make it simpler than that, without undermining the integrity of the level). Normal Mode includes the addition of wandering clouds of fog (that you might remember from previous incarnations of this level). If the player touches the fog, he will be scattered to a random position within the maze (and there is always the chance that you will get lucky and wind up close to the center, so it's not all bad). These clouds of fog may bar your path at some points, but they dissipate after being touched (and after you are scattered), and also temporarily vanish whenever it starts to rain.

The only additional challenge in Hard Mode is a screen overlay that reduces your visibility a little bit (though not too much, I think), so you can't see quite as far from your current position in the maze. In all cases, the only thing you have to do to end the level is reach the center of the maze - and the actual pathways in the maze never change (which is something I'd originally wanted to do). To reach the secret bonus on Hard Mode, however (which right now doesn't do anything, but will contribute to unlocking the secret level in the final game), you have to navigate back and forth through the maze to find four switches that open a gated path to a restricted chamber within the maze.

Additional note: You may be gratified to hear that I've increased the player's movement speed for this stage (essentially making "run" the walking speed), because in testing out the maze, I quickly discovered that I had the shift ("run") key constantly held down. That will no longer be necessary. (And if running is still too slow for you, pressing the "run" key will now enable you to positively break into a sprint :-p).

Ascension (MV) Alpha 8.0 (including all stages up to Chapter 10 - Labyrinth)
Download (~230 MB): Windows | Mac [see sidebar for latest release]

Note: This update also fixes a graphical oversight (due to a changed filename) I noticed in Sheol, as well as eliminates an extraneous bat in Chaos that I had placed in order to test and fix a glitch resulting in the bats interfering with the moving platforms, as well as cleaning up a few other minor testing oversights.