Dragon Quest I Remake (by GethN7)

[Bob Schroeck]

More stuff to eat up my copious free time...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Terrenceknight]

Cmon Bob you know that is exactly what you want *Grin* whats the point of having free time if you don't waste it on frivolous things!

[GethN7]

Beta 1.50 is still in progress, and I just about finished my first task, which has been to totally overhaul the combat engine, as well as fix several features of the interface to be much more user friendly.

To that end, I have done the following:

* Added finer grained combat formulas (luck has a greater effect on certain attacks and defense)

* The battle engine is more icon and pop up based for easier readability.

* The character status menus are far more useful and display much more information.

* Weapons used as items now function identically to the Dragon Quest games.

* Most remaining bugs patched out of the Return/Outside spells and items.

* Multiple rebalancing tweaks, mostly to Mara's survivability.

* Added a shield defense skill, where an equipped shield has a chance of nullifying a set amount of damage, dependent on the shield's quality and character block rate chance.

* Implemented theft mechanics to game, so Mara can now steal items from enemies.

Other tweaks involve filling in a lot more blank areas so there is more game content, and to make my bigger maps much more fun to explore, more content will be added as I continue working on 1.5, including the Rimuldar continent and portions of Hauksness.

[Terrenceknight]

I'm totally going to miss that awesome Mist Staff bug. Would have been amazing to use on metal slimes when they show up *Grin*

[GethN7]

I'm totally going to miss that awesome Mist Staff bug. Would have been amazing to use on metal slimes when they show up *Grin*

 

Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm adding a sweet consolation prize. In Persona 3 and 4, they added a nifty feature that let you zip around town if you didn't feel like walking, and since I like to make big town maps and people don't like having to walk everywhere, I'm adding in a similar feature. It's still in testing, but results look promising so far.

I also have several more fun features I'm adding to overhaul the game engine, but those will be a surprise.........

[Labster]

I've finally had enough free time to play this, and of course I sent a lot of bugs over towards Geth because bugs have a tendency to find me.  (The trees inside Tentagel Palace sure are shady  ??).  As someone who has never played any of the Dragon Quest, it's pretty enjoyable.

The current codebase sucks.

The sign of a true programmer.

a nifty feature that let you zip around town

I'm hoping it's like Earthbound's teleport ð?¼, where you go fast then steer into a building at the last minute before warping.  If not, I'll settle for a link between the castle library and conservatory.
-- ∇×V

[GethN7]

I have confirmed the first full third of all existing content is bug free, will be adding content and testing the rest. In the meantime, I discovered the embarrassing root cause of the anomalies with the graphics in previous builds and have written a blog post about it explaining my errors in more detail.

http://gethn7.blogspot.com/2015/07/a-fo ... e-rpg.html

[GethN7]

Tests of all existing content are 2/3's complete and I have ironed out all the game breaking bugs, including one I had to remove the stealing ability to fix.

My current battle engine and stealing script worked fine together, but when I added the "use weapons and armor as items when not equipped" script, try to use any weapon or armor with a spell/skill effect will cause the engine to freak out, since it makes the same scene call as the stealing skill, and so I figured it would be fruitless to reconcile the two, hence why I removed the stealing skill for this build, though it may be replaced with another one in later builds.

I also had to redraw a few areas, such as parts of Garinheim and the Tantegel Treasure Keep. The former involved me putting down hedges and a few invisible impassible tiles to fix some issues with tile passibility (you could walk off stairs in place where you'd fall and break your ankle IRL but instead you wind up on solid ground minus the fall), this should avoid any weirdness there. The latter had the first floor redrawn slightly because character sprites were disappearing. I use a technique called parallax mapping for that dungeon (the high up in the clouds background is a parallax layer that gives the illusion of depth and altitude),
and parts of the map were drawn before I added parallaxing so I had to redraw those areas to sidestep the bug (not sure why it happened that way, possible clashing of layers or something), but all I did was basically shrink the floorspace a little.

[Terrenceknight]

Y'know there is a reason why I go outta my way to make sure I never say 'how hard is it to do xxx' when something messes up, cause I know jack crap bout programming and it sounds quite obnoxious unless your very precise! So keep up the good work and look forward to the next beta.

[GethN7]

Almost done testing all existing game content, adding a few areas to Kol, a few more minigames (Garinheim now has a small fishing minigame), and most of all, I'm pleased to report that after some more tweaks to battle engine, it's now very faithful to the original Dragon Quest. What that means is: 

* Spamming magic via Mara isn't always going to be an "I win" button.

* Some enemies are quite resistant to magic as well, before magic resistance didn't mean as much. However, this applies to both sides, as Mara is now quite resistant to magic damage.* Enemy AI is somewhat smarter, meaning they will use support and healing skills more if they have them.

* Difficulty has been tweaked to where enemies will start getting harder around the Kol region.

* I've tweaked the accessory slots to where you have two, and if the player is willing to farm for Small Medals (hint, kill lots of Slimes), the Small Medal shop has a few items that will make your life much easier, see this link for a better idea what I mean: http://allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/Disc_One_Nuke 

Still refining and beta testing all existing content before I add more new material, but I'm very pleased to say the new engine is much closer to my original vision.

[GethN7]

It'll take a few more days before I have a closed beta ready (these will be sent out on an individual basis before official releases, PM me if you want to try one out), but I have finished checking all existing content.

A bug where fog effects would persist if you leave the Pod Forest has been fixed by adding sanity checks to the world map to disable all fog scripts, so that way no matter how you leave the Pod Forest (exit/Scape Rope/Outside spell), they won't persist. I also rebalanced and tweaked the Pod Forest so it can be completed much faster (you can skip most of the maze if you pick your route carefully), and it can be speedrun as low as Level 9 with some luck, though Level 10-12 is recommended.

Now to just do one last pass and make sure all existing content works fine, then I'll be fleshing out the Rimuldar continent, and once I fill in a few quests there, I'll have the 1.5 closed beta ready.

Also, tip: Thanks to the changes in the game engine, equipping equipment that is ideal for your character's class can have some beneficial effects, especially weapons for Mara.

[GethN7]

I have released a closed beta of 1.5 to some people who have expressed interest in trying it out.

Anyone else who wishes to do so, please PM me.

[GethN7]

Been getting lots of great feedback on the closed beta, putting the final touches on the finished, official release of 1.5, though I'm still eager to get more reports so I can do further polishing.

[Labster]

Sorry Geth, I'm out of bugs. I figure the 50 or so I reported where enough.
-- ∇×V

[GethN7]

Bad news, everyone, a bizarre regression appeared during my latest test and rendered my class change system useless and prone to crashing the game.

Thankfully, I made backups and plan to retool things, but it will take me a couple more days since I sprinkled a lot of class change centric events through my code and need to rework it.

Good news is that by excising it, I can make the next build much more stable, and I have a few more builds to see if I can't get it working again in the way I planned.

[GethN7]

I am incredibly pleased to report that my official release is currently in beta testing, and considering how much I reworked the engine and added back so many old features left on the cutting room floor in older builds and even added new ones, I'm considering releasing this beta as 1.55 or 1.6

Numerous bugs since the earliest builds are now gone, many features only half functional in earlier builds are now fully functional, and all game crashing bugs have been stripped out from all earlier builds.

Still in testing, adding polish where needed, but my newly recompiled scripting and event base looks great.

[Terrenceknight]

So is it safe to assume we'll have to start another new save? *grin* Not lookin forward to picking all the vegtables in the first town again! Maybe this time around I won't be as klepto and taking everything I can get my greedy fingers on.

[GethN7]

It's time for DQ1 Remake 1.6!

http://github.com/Arcane21/DQ1Remake/tree/Beta-1.6

Changes for Dragon Quest 1 Remake 1.6 Beta

* Name is internally "Dragon Quest", not "Dragon Warrior"

* Several broken or missing features excised or only partially implemented are now present.

* Class change system was removed due to overwhelming errors. Code related to it has been left in a dummied out state in the game should I be able to get it working again, so it's not gone forever.

* The battle system has been completely overhauled to have all features save the removed thievery scripting work, and the framerate has been set at 60 FPS due to complaints animations were too slow.

* Have added in an ingame sound test option in the player menu, and the acheivements feature is basic and fully functional.

* Characters faces change depending on how high their HP is, giving another visual indicator of their condition.

* The game font should work out of the box, but if it doesn't, I will include it in a seperate folder for manual installation.

* Depending on the Unicode settings of your computer, some minor graphical errors such as squares appears at the end of popup messages and ellipses turning into boxes may occur, but this should be harmless and not affect gameplay.

* Several plot tweaks have been made to give the player a better idea where to go to proceed on their quest. For instance, Mara and Sara will provide some basic quest information when you first meet them for the first two main quests.

* A few more empty houses have been turned into explorable areas with new content.

* There is a new title theme song: Asu he no Houkou by JAM
Project - Lyrics can be found here - http://www.animelyrics.com/game/muvluva ... houkou.htm

** All other tracks in earlier builds are still present and used, this only replaces the title. I have added this for two reasons: Parts of the lyrics have been used as inspiration for later plot developments, and as a means of supporting the fall Kickstarter for the official translations of the Muv-Luv series (this was the theme song of Muv Luv Alternative), for which I am greatly in support of.

* The status menu has been greatly overhauled and provides much more information.

* Numerous text size issues have been fixed from earlier builds.

KNOWN ISSUES

* The Outside scripting has some bugs on the Rimuldar continent, not wanting to work in the Cave of Rimuldar and Rimuldar Tower. I have enabled the spell to work everywhere, so this should solve the issue, though this may result in breaking story events or teleportation to dungeon exit points for other dungeons, will attempt to figure this out in more detail by next build.

[GethN7]

I wrote this blog post about the "Damsel in Distress" trope and how I used it in my game, some spoilers, so be warned, but it's basically my "Take That" to everyone who has watched Anita Sarkeesian's still incomplete "Tropes vs. Women" series and swallowed that malarkey about how the Damsel In Distress trope is automatically bad because it disempowers women and and serves as a male empowerment fantasy.

I thought that logic was idiotically flawed from a troping and a feminist perspective, and since I'm both a troper and a feminist, I decided to show why that logic is flawed based on how I used it in my own game, but I don't mind if anyone disagrees:

http://gethn7.blogspot.com/2015/07/my-r ... amsel.html

[Labster]

So is it safe to assume we'll have to start another new save

Heck, my saves from the 1.5 closed beta don't even work any more.
PROTIP: don't talk to the new character in the lower left of the throne room before getting the teleport stone, you won't be able to get back to the castle.  Great for the single-character party challenge, though ??
-- ∇×V

[GethN7]

So is it safe to assume we'll have to start another new save

Heck, my saves from the 1.5 closed beta don't even work any more.

PROTIP: don't talk to the new character in the lower left of the throne room before getting the teleport stone, you won't be able to get back to the castle.  Great for the single-character party challenge, though ??

I revamped the entire engine since 1.5.

I reuploaded the beta as well, that was a leftover test NPC I forgot to remove, sorry about that, he was for debugging the Outside spell code.

[GethN7]

Bugfix update: Beta 1.61

http://github.com/Arcane21/DQ1Remake/tree/Beta-1.61

* Fixed numerous reported bugs in Rimuldar.

* Outside/Scape Rope issues in Rimuldar area should be resolved.

* Crash bug fixed.

* Added some visual improvements.

* The "D" key now toggles to an additional HUD window that shows party gold, map name, and X/Y coordinates on map. Disables minimap, so toggle back to see it.

[GethN7]

Work on my next beta has begun, this one will involve me filling in more dungeon and story areas and adding events for Princess Lora.

I've got the game engine pretty well refined, so unless I discover some glaring issues, all saves should be transferable in later builds.

[GethN7]

Some great news guys:

* Doing some tweaks to make battles seem more "modern". Enemies will have some animation and visual cues that they have taken damage,

* The F8 key will serve as "toggle" on the world map so you can see the "region" you're in. Higher numbers denote greater chanllenge, so if you're feeling lucky, now you know where to try powerleveling.

* Colored text will display for some stuff as a handy visual indicator, not just in battles.

* Finally have the scripting I need to implement some of the more esoteric DQ spells and skills, like Chance and BeDragon.

* Redoing a lot of past events so having Lora in your party will alter their circumstances and text.

[Labster]

The game appears to be Windows 10 compatible -- actually windowing is working slightly better than on 8.1.

Not that you should all update right away -- there are still the bugs. But since Windows is my quaternary OS (behind Mac OS X, Ubuntu, and FreeBSD), I think I'm probably the person to try it right away for testing.
-- ∇×V