As I said in response to your PM: No need to rage out brofam. The reason I said anything is because I imagine you have the potential to make one of the greatest modern RPGs in SC and it makes me sad to see you choose an old clunky system in place of a better one.

Admittedly, I could have said it better, but I stand behind my point, I believe you could make a much more intuitive and fun to play with control system with EUDs instead of the dropship system. The dropship system inherently limits the pace of your gameplay and makes it feel clunky in nature by having to hit the dropship hotkey and then physically move your mouse to the unit selection for whatever option you're selecting. I'm sure you can make an impressive map either way, but I believe it would be a smoother, more enjoyable experience with an EUD control system.

I did understand uv the same way but my post was deleted. Id happy to try your map with or without eud. but for rpg maps euds really improve the gameplay feeling, as ohh man said you could use only what is easy to do and usefull the command card functions

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 30 2022, 11:36 am by GGmano.

Map is nearly complete, just adding voice actors to the dialogue now (11 in total) so give me 1 week and it's made.

How do you go about finding voice acting talent and how much does it cost roughly on like a word to currency value?

I use a website called fiverr.com. I have 2100 words which is costing around $700. I've made each hero with custom command/battle lines, so when you click your hero to move, it randomly selects 1 of 8 command lines (15 second cooldown) and randomly in battle the heroes will taunt their enemies (total of 8 battle lines for each hero).

That's impressive, how did you trigger that, inverted locations?

Damn, pretty pricey. Do they do auditions or what not?

Also, can I ask, is FF7 abandoned, or do you still plan to finish it one day?

Also, I can test probably around 9pm ish (AEST) if you need MP testing, otherwise you can PM me the map for SP testing and I will PM you back feedback.

#hype

I'm still waiting on 4 more actors but for the meantime the map is playable.

Here is a playable version of the map

I imagine I'm the last person you want to hear feedback from, but I did play a bit and hopefully you can see that I am interested in what you're working on and not trying to tear you down. I played solo as Satan for about an hour, so I didn't get to see all the map has to offer, but I did make it to the end of the Op TIR base.

Let's start with the positive:

• Production value is good, you can tell you've done this a time or two before. Audio effects appeared seamless, didn't notice any weird transitions or anything like that
  
• Story is interesting, made me want to discover more. Did you make this up yourself or is it based on some source material?
  
• Dropship system, despite not being my favorite, works well and seems bug free. Lack of EUDs makes it so you can save the game which is nice
  
• Game seems generally polished, didn't find any bugs
  
• Impressive you managed to crank this out in such a short period of time

Some things I thought could be improved as I played:

• It would be nice if the time warp in the beginning had some sort of visual queue rather than just the dragoon standing there, I imagined there might be a warp gate or a recall animation, something to that effect
  
• I'm not sure what status effect resistance does, Voodoo Witch I think reduced my status effect resistance, but as far as I could tell that was meaningless. Maybe it develops further as the game goes on?
  
• Combat wasn't very engaging, I found myself wanting to just get through the enemies so I could find out what was going on in the story, not really having a ton of fun pulling a couple enemies from their standing positions, whittling them away, rinsing and repeating. The main spells I noticed from enemies were either spawning units or doing something that didn't affect me much (reducing status resistance, draining mana). I chose heal for my initial spell and pretty much from there, I just microed my zealot with all the excitement that comes with that.
  
• Agility felt more meaningful than any of the other attribute upgrades (although I can't speak to tech). I put a few points into sorcery and then realized that the heal spell has a cooldown and mana regenerates way faster than I can use it. I put some points into vitality but then found it wasn't incredibly meaningful as I was mostly relying on my shields since the cooldown on healing is so long and shields regenerate instantly after a few seconds. I skipped tech altogether and ended up just dumping in agility becoming essentially invincible unless I encountered a large group of enemies, in which case I just had to run away until the group thinned out and take them out bit by bit.
  
• The cost of weapon upgrades, spells and lives seemed like it could use some tweaking. I would think a life should be a fairly premium item, carrying a heavier cost than most other things, at 650 mins it felt more like a triviality. This may just be a design preference. Weapon upgrades staying the same price felt too easy, I got +5 after the first area and everything became way easier as I just doubled my damage. I didn't buy any spells because they were so much more expensive, I had weapon upgrades available so cheap at 400 and I was plowing through just fine. I think an increment of +100 for weapon upgrades would help the balance.

I understand that maybe some of the issues I addressed may have changed as the game went on, but I unfortunately just didn't find the gameplay engaging enough to keep at it. Maybe that's just my issue. So that's my 2 cents, hope it's of value to you.

Looking forward to it

Damn dude, was this drug related again. Can you quit putting meth into our community???

Anyway, looking forward to the map.

That screenshot is painfully small, but I'm thinking you may be running an older version of SCMDraft that needs the MPQs that used to be included with SC but got removed at some point in the production of SC:R. Try downloading the newest version of SCMDraft and see if that works.

All good, I fixed it.

Updates:

• Added new card game (Black Tie) for D-Luv.
  
• D-Luv now sells items.
  
• Re-balanced all spells and added 4 new ones.
  
• Spells are now upgradable (3 levels).
  
• Spells are now given with XP.
  
• Changed the Tech attribute for Luck (improves economy).
  
• Added 4 item slots, total of 16 items.
  
• Improved menu system functionality & aesthetics.
  
• Re-designed entire terrain.
  

Black Tie:

A fun game of cards you can play with D-Luv. You can play a friendly match or gamble money.

WTF
go on...

I'd rather not talk of it. That was my old life. Moving on...

The progress of this map is skyrocketing. I have programmed over 9000 triggers, the map is 80% complete.
I've added some pretty cool systems like stackable items, randomized spell selections (so each game is
different), and the graphic FX is the best work I have achieved so far (grid systems creating circles
and triangles). Though the map still uses a classic triggering style (none-EUD), the benefits of the
new systems look promising.

Now I have to arrange the final voice actors, this is the hard part because it's hard to find good ones.
Anyway, the map should be ready in maximum 2 months.

9000 is solid. Have you tried voices dot com?

What is your budget for voice work?

Also AI voices have arrived and they could very well be decent for certain tasks. You can even modulate your own voice acting with them.

Looking forward to playing it.

I gave the AI thing a shot, the voices are quite impressive, but I'm not hitting the quality I want. I'm booked in for the music studio in Brisbane next week, going to attempt one of the voices. My budget is very low right now. Game will be ready in two weeks.