Leon the Hero: The Rose of Alluca

[leonhiroshima]

Hey, I'm Leon Hiroshima! I'm Kumo Shinagi's brother.
Me and him are making a game to a story I've always wanted to tell.

Here it is!

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Hero Design in conjuction with Cloud Manga Present:
Leon the Hero: The Rose of Alluca

The Begining

As legends die, new ones are born. The death of a god, and the rebirth of a savior. The same is within Leon's story. Leon is a Mercenary for hire, in Wombat Town, a town on a little speck of land. Leon's job wasn't going good for him, as his sword skill was not believed, for he was only 16. The story starts with Leon finally getting a job after months of waiting. Leon thinks of money, and not where this mission will lead him. A journey of discovery and love. Watch where Leon's destiny takes him in Leon the Hero: The Rose of Alluca!

Character Info and Art:www.freewebs.com/allucaandalderia/leontheheroinformation.htm

Features:

• A Real-Time Action CBS (Thanks to Nash) that uses information from the DBS!
  
• Epic Battles and powerful magic!
  
• A semi-Engrossing story that shows a boy becoming a hero and a universe giving birth to a legend!
  
• A difficult system, weapons aren't given to you...
  
• Detailed graphics, interactive backgrounds, and dangerous dungeon traps!

Demo Coming in the next few days.
Full Game coming soon.

---

[Kumo Shinagi]

Yeah, I made the system and everything, but he provided me the story. Light Warrior and Leon the Hero will probably finished by the end of april (if nothing stupid gets in my way).

Leon the Hero is a game from RPGM1 that we finished but never released online. It also was made with a bad bug and I lost the password somewhere at school (I slapped myself don't worry).

A demo will be out in the next few days.

[Doan the Nado]

This game sounds like it has potential. I love the back-of-the-box description, it is done very well. The website looks great! I love your map and character drawings. The backgrounds have a good amount of depth, and they lend themselves to some good story. I am interested in your plans for the characters' hobbies. Will they come into play at all in the story or in mini-games or anything?

Anyways, keep us posted, I like the way the title sounds and you have done a good job of promoting it.

[Dungeon Warden]

Your game shows promise. I look forward to playing your demo.

[christi]

I like your plot description... it gives a pretty decent amount of information for it's length. (Which reminds me, I really need to update mine sometime.)

But, anyway... that's cool you and your brother are doing sort of a joint-game thing. I've always thought it would be cool to work on my game with someone; more inspiration and whatnot... y'know. (I had a bit of input from my husband during the earliest stages of my game development... he's played a lot more RPG-type games than I have, and he's given me some pretty good plot and environment design ideas, but I wouldn't say we're working on the game together by any means... he just sort of wanders in and makes random comments here and there.) The only problem I could see would be running into creative differences, but if you're providing the story and he's providing the system, that probably wouldn't be a big deal.

I love your character sketches, and your world map looks pretty well thought out. I guess the only question I have for you is...

Leon said:

A semi-Engrossing story that shows a boy becoming a hero and a universe giving birth to a legend!

...why only a semi engrossing story? Maybe I'm just misunderstanding, but I'm thinking of "engrossing" in the "totally holding your attention" sense... and that's one thing I really look for in a game. Can you explain that any further? Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you.

At any rate... best of luck with everything! I'm looking forward to seeing what you can come up with!

[leonhiroshima]

What I mean by that, I'm just putting up a precaution.
The story may, or may not catch your eye, But my brother and I are trying to show as much of the original story, with enhancements, I created to it's fullest.

Leon the Hero is a solo story by nature, but I asked my brother to emplement a part of the original story. Having his friend Silia, follow you but, not battle with you. Which that's how it is in my drawings.

I make the Ideas, and my brother tries to put my ideas into the game. To me, my brother is the best at this kind of stuff.


EDIT: I might change that christi, as, we are trying to make LtH:TRoA, into two parts, thus, being more engrossing of a story. this might happen but I'm not saying ;D.

[Kumo Shinagi]

Battle System Specs:

• Action CBS in the vein of Kingdom Hearts (exept really siplified).
  
• Up to 6 Enemies can attack you on screen en masse.
  
• Battle System makes use of the Square, Triangle, [R1]-[R3], & [L1]-[L3] Buttons.
  
• DBS Stats Such as Armor and Attack play a role in battle.
  
• You Level Up, as normal, and depending on how many enemies you kill, your class level will raise as well.
  
• You can access your Items and weapons anytime in battle.
  

Dungeon Specs:

• You can find Items such as Mushrooms around the dungeon to help you when you're low on Healing Items.
  
• Some dungeons will come equipped with traps, some with puzzles, and some with both!
  
• Extra Added dungeons not included in the original.
  
• Interactive backgrounds (especially in the new dungeons).
  

The demo is almost done, just need to finish a boss battle event.

Later

[Deleted]

This isn't the story where a guy falls in a well and lives there for 7 years is it? ha ha ha

Any ways, yes, sounds good, though very pow!wow!look at this! advertisy, and less informative than it could be. The intro thing sounds like it could really go either way, good or bad, depending on how well you take it.

And, welcome, we're glad to have you here.

[Kumo Shinagi]

In fact, William, it is.
Hey, when he stays to a story premise, he sticks with it.
But, it is not really needed to know about that to enjoy the game.

Back to work!

*Dig dig dig dig dig.....*

[Kumo Shinagi]

If anyone wants to try the demo before I submit it to Doan and the Pav, please post your e-mail.
I would like to do this first so I can make sure everything to debugged (hit detection's a bit loose though).

EDIT-I can mail both X-port and Max Drive files (for those of you that use MAX Memory, I'm still trying to upload to codejunkies).

[Kumo Shinagi]

The demo is up at the pavilion!

Here's some tips:

-Be careful, don't let the enemy totally surround you!
-Use the Block button (L3) to evade attacks, I enabled it for the demo only, you get way later in the game.
-Fight enemies in the training area until you are Level 5+. You should be able to face the Bakuryu boss in Wombat Cave.
-Inside Wombat Cave, make use to pluck mushrooms, they refill your health by a little, but they regrow constantly.
-During the Boss Battle, try talking to the enemy.

Any questions? Post here.

[Doan the Nado]

Would you like me to put this demo up at the Domain of Doan the Nado as well?

[Kumo Shinagi]

Yes, I'll mail it to you soon, I gotta take care of some things first.

[Doan the Nado]

I got it off the Pavilion, so you don't have to mail it to me. I just wanted to be sure it was okay before I just put it up.

[Kumo Shinagi]

Oh, alright, Thanks a lot! ;D

[Dungeon Warden]

Okay, this was suppost to go here.

I found the combat very difficult at first. It was impossible to tell when the small enemies were attacking you as there is no attack animation and the big enemy doesn't need to be anywhere near you to hit you. Only the dodge option saves you from being killed after three swings.

Worse is the fact that your attack misses the enemy unless they are standing on the front right corner trying to run around you. Sometimes you can hit the small enemies when they are in front of you, but the big enemy can only be hurt when he stands on this spot. I used up all my healing items and died several times until I learned how to avoid damage while killing the enemy. This is called playing the system - learning how to fight the controls instead of the enemies. Very poor design in my opinion. I understand that creating a Action RPG is not easy but battles shouldn't be fustrating. I think part of the problem is that the small enemies move faster than the scripts can calulate hit detection. I'm not sure why you can't hit the large enemy - maybe because he is large it is hard to hit the space the enemy is actually on.

Because enemies move so quick, spells are not practical. You can get hit several times trying to hit an enemy with a spell. Some sort of target lock would be nice, although I'm not sure how you could program it.

The traps were interesting and I liked the story (what little there was) - although the ending was a little puzzling - which I'm sure it was meant to be. The boss as easy to beat once you know the secret of combat (I was only level 3) - just let him try to run around you on the right hand side, and hit him until he dies.

I hope you will tighten up the controls and fix the combat before your next demo. The story has potential but the CBS needs a lot of work.

P.S. If you are going to make a practice arena - let the player practice. Don't throw a bunch of enemies at him and expect him to figure out what to do. Also don't end the game when the character dies. Have the character wake up in bed or back at the start of the arena instead. It was annoying to have to start all over again because I died during a "practice" battle.

[Kumo Shinagi]

Well, actually, I have the option to save anywhere available just for things like that.

Now for combat:

I ran into a lot of problems during combat testing:
-You could face anywhere but if you were within the area of the enemy, you would hit (even with magic).
-Distance check (even with the changes) would not work half the time, so I put in an action script that read the distance of the enemies at all times so when you would attack, the distance would be calculated accordingly.
It went somthing like this:

SBC Repeat
Control enemy 1
Load Event
Script Call Distance enemy 1
*repeat this 5 times*
sbc end

Then, Leon's sword script would check the distance for damage.

Leon's Magic works a bit differently than his regular attacks, you can use magic while facing directly to the enemy (Enemy-> <-Leon) within 4 spaces of eachother.

It looks like I need to work on enemy actions and
enemy distance and targeting.

[Deleted]

I played both the Yuji: Light Warrior and Leon the Hero demos, and these are all my points, I guess:

(note: I'm posting this in both topics. A lot of these are pretty similar for both games)

Suggestions:

Putting the map for the player when they're walking around in town, dungeon, or world map can help them not to get lost (the town in Yuji was like that because the four corners all looked quite similar, and it could also help with navigating the very spread apart town in Leon). I don't think the dungeon or world map for each need it that much though.

Re-sizing the characters' proportions could help make things look less cutesy and such. If you'd like just ask and I'll post up the proportions I use.

Put more stuff in the towns. I assume you'll do this and it was only like this because they were demos.

To make All Targeting abilities' VFX go once (Yuji), go to the abilities' direct effects and change the VFX script from the Success Slot to the Group Slot.

It'd be nice if you put more messages for the party members to say when different things happen in battle (Yuji), and speed it up so there isn't a pause before as well.

Both world maps were very plain and boring, but that could be because these are demos.

The enemies (Yuji) were too strong and magic was too weak.

In the Dai-Sho-Don mini game, it seemed like you had less time to hit L1 and R1 than you did /_\ and less time to hit /_\ than square. I think it'd be better to make them all be the same time and instead of cutting the time add more buttons in. I'd say it'd be good if the first time was just square and /_\, the next added in O and X, and the next added in L1 and R1. It's harder to distinguish between L1 and R1 on the screen than any other buttons so perhaps try it just saying L and R and see if it's easier (tell the player L means L1 and R means R1 before the game starts).

The sword animation for Leon is out of his hand (and the boss's axe animation), though I do know this is a very hard thing to perfect.

The enemies before the boss (Leon) do move too fast. It's probably good for the enemies to never run at 2x player speed (which is what I think it was). It'd be good to start the player out fighting enemies at half speed probably.

The collision detection's not very good in Leon either. Wouldn't it work to find the X distance and Y distance of the enemies and party, sort by party direction, then based on the party's direction find the values for player X - enemy X and player Y - enemy Y? Then, if say the party is facing northwest and the player X - enemy X = 1 and the player Y - enemy Y = 1, the player is facing the right way and the enemy is right in front of them. I think that would take care of the collision detection. You could also do the same, but reverse it and do it for enemies' attacking collision detection. If you need more help on how to do this more specifically just say so, I don't mind at all.

It'd be nicer if the mushrooms were automatic (Leon). This really only is because RPGM2 takes the player out of the menu when they use an item everytime.

I think both games could benefit from a custom camera system like Doan's. It's really not hard at all to do. I could give you the password to my game so you can look at my scripts (I'd tell you which ones) and explain them.

I think the battling in Yuji'd look better if the camera wasn't so far away from the enemies, but that would make you have to edit the VFX accordingly. You can also make the enemies bigger by making all their animations be 150% or 200% size while leaving the actual value of room they take up whatever it's at (I have not tried this myself but I don't see why it wouldn't work) to simulate a closer camera.

It'd probably help your caves look less blocky if you used the map editor. It'd save you money and allow all your rooms to be bigger and more expansive too, and square per square the map editor is much more memory efficient.

Compliments:

Some of the townspeople were quite funny and caught me off guard and made me smile like the wizard girl and cowboy girl in Leon and the guy in Yuji that randomly says he has to go to the bathroom. The wizard girl was my favorite. This is what I like most in townspeople. Examining the well was also funny.

The two suits for Leon to wear is cool.

The tail on Leon is good looking and livens things up some.

I liked how Leon talked to the townspeople too.

The title screens and intro credits for both are awesome, no questions asked.

Your great use of music all the time is one big thing I noticed. It definitely adds to the game.

The Dai-Sho-Don game was fun the first few times, till I lost so often. I think it'd be perfect if the player was eased into it a little, and some of the later ones that are harder could be optional too.

It was funny how AFTER the Dai-Sho-Don mini game Yuji said they weren't after the fruit and were just passing by. It made me laugh. The rock that fell on him and the way he fell flat on his face was really funny too. That little part was probably the highlight for me.

I also like how you masked the back of the screen when the player went into the shop menu a lot, which I'd never thought of even (though should've probably).

I like the color you changed the windows to. You've inspired me to change mine to something others than transparant! (or try, we'll see how it goes)

Definitely a very good demo overall.