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Sanctaea Chronicles (SRPG Studio, Fully Playable)


Von Ithipathachai
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7 hours ago, PeonyofLeosa Dreamworld said:

@Von Ithipathachai

How'd you get your Fire Emblem Ascension project get popular

@PeonyofLeosa Dreamworld

It hasn't.  At least, not like any of the big-name hacks like Bloodlines or Staff of Ages.  While it is probably one of the better-known English-language SRPG Studio games out there, it and SRPG Studio games in general are still mostly ignored by the Fire Emblem fangaming community as a whole, with its continued fixation on GBA hacks.  However, I'll still try to give a bit of advice.

One problem you have right now is that you simply don't have a lot for people to go off at the moment.  Just some descriptions of a few characters and that's it.  I assume you're eventually going to write more of a proper story later, so I'd work on that first and foremost.

Another thing I should mention is that our circumstances are a little different.  As I was trying to present my story with a level of detail befitting a hypothetical game (including map designs and even unit stats), it may have been better off in Concepts where people are more likely to care about such things.  Later, when I decided to turn my project into a real game, I attempted to take advantage of significant events like SF Interviews and FEE3 and use them for self-promotion, i.e. of new releases.  You, on the other hand, don't seem to have the means nor the intention to turn Song of Oblivion into a proper game, as no major fangame engine has developed sufficiently to replicate a Three Houses-like experience like the kind you're going for.  I don't even think there are any FEE3-like events to promote purely written material with.

So...  If I'm going to be honest, you may be out of luck in terms of getting your project popular.  Written works just don't attract the kind of attention that fangames do in a video game fandom.  Sorry.  My best suggestion right now is to just keep working on what you have.  Maybe if you have a large enough amount of material, somebody will take notice.

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Just finished playing v3.0. Had a good time. You've done a really good job with this.

Some feedback:

+ Drop-able door keys and chest keys for every door/chest so that thieves aren't required. The debuff from daggers still makes the class useful without forcing you to deploy them.

+ 6 move flying units (instead of 7).

+ Stages that actually punish using cavalry and flying units.

+ Native skill to class types (armored skill makes enemy armored units actually tank).

-- Cato as a character doesn't make sense. He is presented as a reasonable guy, but his actions completely contradict that. To make him believable, you'd likely have to add more early chapters to communicate just how bad things are in their territory for him to be willing to take such measures (since this happened before he got corrupted by Iopter). Story isn't that important to me, so I don't see it as a big deal. Just something that stood out.

-- Way too much exp given. I used 21 characters up until the final chapter and had no trouble keeping them above average level. That's without using much bonus exp.

-- Characters are too tanky. Almost every character is sturdy. They either have ok def/res or are able to tank one at the expense of the other.

-- No checkpoints or in battle save. If you add more berserk users in future chapters, people will cry.

Weapon Levels:

I know that you are committing to weapon ranks, but I actually like weapon levels because it lets you take advantage of multi weapon classes. Access to multiple weapon types isn't nearly as useful if you are limited by rank. The 15 hit/avoid is also not that useful when characters are so tanky. I also hate staff grinding my mages.

Other:

  • I saw on older pages that there were shops on maps. Do those still exist in the latest version? I went the whole game without knowing they were there. If they are there, what stuff did they sell? From a balance perspective, I actually thought that the caravan limit for indirect weapons was sufficient (still had kodachi/javelin/hand axe uses on most chars by end of the game).
  • Is there a way to selectively highlight enemy ranges? Is that reasonable to add in?
  • Enemy mounted/flying units don't seem to use their leftover movement points.
  • I have 0 clue how much actually gets debuffed from daggers. Is there any way you could have stat buffs/debuffs show as green/red text next to the stats instead of having it applied directly?
Edited by Anonymouz
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2 hours ago, Anonymouz said:

+ Stages that actually punish using cavalry and flying units.

Hm.  That latter one is interesting.  I'm normally told that the fliers you get are among the most OP units partly due to the level design generally being very pro-flier (i.e. the sheer lack of indoor maps and several maps being designed in a way that strongly encourages their use).

2 hours ago, Anonymouz said:

-- Cato as a character doesn't make sense. He is presented as a reasonable guy, but his actions completely contradict that. To make him believable, you'd likely have to add more early chapters to communicate just how bad things are in their territory for him to be willing to take such measures (since this happened before he got corrupted by Iopter). Story isn't that important to me, so I don't see it as a big deal. Just something that stood out.

Now that you mention it, the early chapters are heavily reliant on telling and not showing the poor conditions in Rema, which might hurt Cato's early-game character a bit.  I'm nervous about adding more chapters to Claudius's pre-army merge portion of the game, partly because Carol's pre-army merge portion would have to get the same amount to keep things equal.  The best solutions I can come up with to the "telling and not showing" problem include additional Base conversations and visitable yellow houses that just give background info, as I'm concerned about making cutscenes drag on for too long.  At the moment I'm struggling to figure out how to handle a new Base conversation in Chapter 10 where Carol expresses frustration about not being able to spare provisions for starving Fenizian commoners before she makes the journey to Fort Barca.  Maybe that will give me some good practice.

2 hours ago, Anonymouz said:

-- Way too much exp given. I used 21 characters up until the final chapter and had no trouble keeping them above average level. That's without using much bonus exp.

Now this is a new one.  I'm already planning to shift over to just using Radiant Dawn's Bonus EXP system to prevent certain mounted characters (i.e. Boudicca and Derrick) from becoming too broken, but I haven't heard much about chapters giving too much regular EXP.  Part of this "way too much EXP" thing might stem from the fact that as part of my policy of "making everybody good", almost nobody suffers from significant under-Leveling.  I'm open to suggestions for how the problem could be addressed.

2 hours ago, Anonymouz said:

-- Characters are too tanky. Almost every character is sturdy. They either have ok def/res or are able to tank one at the expense of the other.

Really?  In my experience, the enemies hit pretty hard.  But then I usually test chapters with characters at the same Level as the lowest-Leveled enemies, so it's possible that it's easier for characters to snowball than expected.  Normal difficulty in Fire Emblem is usually just right for me, so draw whatever conclusions you like about my own skill level.

2 hours ago, Anonymouz said:

-- No checkpoints or in battle save. If you add more berserk users in future chapters, people will cry.

You used to have battle save, but I took it out as I felt it trivialized certain chapters.  I don't think Berserk users are going to be that common.  However, now that you mention it, I'm curious about how you handled Leopold.

2 hours ago, Anonymouz said:

I saw on older pages that there were shops on maps. Do those still exist in the latest version? I went the whole game without knowing they were there. If they are there, what stuff did they sell? From a balance perspective, I actually thought that the caravan limit for indirect weapons was sufficient (still had kodachi/javelin/hand axe uses on most chars by end of the game).

There are no longer Shops on maps.  All shopping is now done within the Base, just like in the Tellius games.

2 hours ago, Anonymouz said:

Is there a way to selectively highlight enemy ranges? Is that reasonable to add in?

Not currently, but there should be a plugin for it on either the Japanese or English SRPG Studio Wikis.  I'll consider it.

2 hours ago, Anonymouz said:

Enemy mounted/flying units don't seem to use their leftover movement points.

This is another quirk I've noticed about the enemy AI.  On another note, mounted enemies in GBAFE don't seem to do that either, even though in theory they should be able to.

2 hours ago, Anonymouz said:

I have 0 clue how much actually gets debuffed from daggers. Is there any way you could have stat buffs/debuffs show as green/red text next to the stats instead of having it applied directly?

The Debuff Ailment inflicted by Daggers inflicts Pow, Skl, Spd, Def, and Res -3, recovering by 1 per turn.  Do you know you can use the left and right arrow keys to change pages of the Unit Menu?  There should be a little space at the bottom of the growth rates/Supports page where you can see what Ailments a character has.  You should be able to view Ailment descriptions by hovering over them with the mouse.  As for clearer indicators of stat alterations, there might be plugins for those too.  I know there's one for showing when stats are capped.

Anyway, thanks for trying the game out.  If you can, please fill out the feedback survey to give your thoughts on some other ideas I have for v3.1.  And if you want to follow the game's development more closely and get early access to new halfbody portraits, feel free to join the game's Discord server.  Links to both should be in the OP.

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  • 1 month later...

Hey, everyone.  Sorry for the general lack of updates.  I've been busy working on a side project for Ghast's Make a Fun Chapter contest, but hopefully that should be wrapping up soon.

In the meantime, I've decided to separate the "favorite character" questions from the feedback survey since turnout for the survey has been poor.  Please fill it out, if you can.  Note that you will need to sign into your Google account to do so.

https://forms.gle/qCmhmtZrSr6MLboC8

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Quote

I'm normally told that the fliers you get are among the most OP units partly due to the level design generally being very pro-flier (i.e. the sheer lack of indoor maps and several maps being designed in a way that strongly encourages their use).

I don't remember there being too many obstacles that they were useful for. I overleveled them early on and kind of avoided using them unless it was necessary. Some maps had large numbers of archers and it was easier to just push and tank all the hits.

Quote

I haven't heard much about chapters giving too much regular EXP.  Part of this "way too much EXP" thing might stem from the fact that as part of my policy of "making everybody good", almost nobody suffers from significant under-Leveling.

I was using 3-4 healers + fatima so I was getting more exp than usual. On the final chapter I had 12 units at 20+ and 9 at ~lvl 18 (no prepromotes). I also had something like 1400 bonus exp left .

Quote

In my experience, the enemies hit pretty hard.  But then I usually test chapters with characters at the same Level as the lowest-Leveled enemies, so it's possible that it's easier for characters to snowball than expected.  Normal difficulty in Fire Emblem is usually just right for me, so draw whatever conclusions you like about my own skill level.

Almost every character is able to take 2-3 hits in 1 of the 2 damage types. All you need is 3-4 of them to create a sturdy front line. Enemy groups with mixed damage types were a bit tricky, but that was because I rarely used Bill.

Quote

There should be a little space at the bottom of the growth rates/Supports page where you can see what Ailments a character has.  You should be able to view Ailment descriptions by hovering over them with the mouse.

I never noticed this. Nice that it's there.

Quote

 I don't think Berserk users are going to be that common.  However, now that you mention it, I'm curious about how you handled Leopold.

I was perfectly willing to just let someone die since it was the last chapter and it takes a long time to reach the point where you get targeted. He ended up targeting my thief who had a whopping 9 pow so I had nothing to worry about. If I was trying to be strategic, I would have abused fatima to get a unit to cover the range so he uses his main weapon instead.

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  • 1 month later...
6 hours ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

Also, this happened:

You king. Dare I say it, you absolute madlad.

All your networking has paid off. You're in the "first page of google search results" club, the big leagues.

Verified to work for me as well. Conglaturations.

EDIT: I noticed that I'm listed as a support contributor on that page. Was I supposed to be writing supports? I did not realize this, please forgive my severe dereliction of duty.

Edited by AnonymousSpeed
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On 4/6/2020 at 5:11 PM, Von Ithipathachai said:

Yay, done with the MAFC project, meaning I can finally get back to work on Sanctaea Chronicles.

Also, this happened:

Capture.PNG?width=652&height=598

Nice!

From what I've played, (chapter 4) this game has been awesome! I can't wait to finish what you've made so far. All of the characters are interesting at worst and mostly are lovable, almost all of the portraits are excellent, and it's an all-around terrific game thus far!

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1 minute ago, Benice said:

Nice!

From what I've played, (chapter 4) this game has been awesome! I can't wait to finish what you've made so far. All of the characters are interesting at worst and mostly are lovable, almost all of the portraits are excellent, and it's an all-around terrific game thus far!

Thanks!

By the portraits, do you mean mine (the in-game ones) or Furan's?  Either way, thanks.

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5 hours ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

Thanks!

By the portraits, do you mean mine (the in-game ones) or Furan's?  Either way, thanks.

The in-game ones are really good! I wasn't aware that there was portraits outside of the game, actually. They're almost all exceptional! People who are multitalented scare me.

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2 minutes ago, Benice said:

The in-game ones are really good! I wasn't aware that there was portraits outside of the game, actually. They're almost all exceptional! People who are multitalented scare me.

FuranSuwa is working on Kozaki-style halfbodies for every character.  They're intended to replace the GBAFE-style portraits currently in use once they're all finished, but until then you should be able to look at them in the Extras menu.

Actually, I think I lied partly about the in-game portraits being mine.  Sorry about that.  Some of them are simple recolors or straight reuses of vanilla GBAFE portraits, some of them are splices I did myself, some of them are splices done by other people, some of them are recolors of free-to-use portraits made by NICKT.

Feel free to ask me if you want to know specifically who did what.  And if you want to keep up with this game's development, the best place to follow it is my Discord server, which you can find in the OP.

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8 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

FuranSuwa is working on Kozaki-style halfbodies for every character.  They're intended to replace the GBAFE-style portraits currently in use once they're all finished, but until then you should be able to look at them in the Extras menu.

Ahh, I see.

8 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

Actually, I think I lied partly about the in-game portraits being mine.  Sorry about that.  Some of them are simple recolors or straight reuses of vanilla GBAFE portraits, some of them are splices I did myself, some of them are splices done by other people, some of them are recolors of free-to-use portraits made by NICKT.

Yes, I noted that Claudius is Young Zephiel recolored.

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On 4/7/2020 at 12:12 AM, AnonymousSpeed said:

EDIT: I noticed that I'm listed as a support contributor on that page. Was I supposed to be writing supports? I did not realize this, please forgive my severe dereliction of duty.

The "Support Contributor" credit is just for people who helped me write Supports.  Specifically, you and Emperor_Siegfried helped me come up with riddles to use for Lee and Omar's Support chain.

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1 hour ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

The "Support Contributor" credit is just for people who helped me write Supports.  Specifically, you and Emperor_Siegfried helped me come up with riddles to use for Lee and Omar's Support chain.

Oh, was that part of a forum game or something? I should like to look back over these riddles if possible.

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22 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Oh, was that part of a forum game or something? I should like to look back over these riddles if possible.

Your riddle was "What do you put in a basket to make it lighter?"

(The answer is "a hole")

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2 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

Your riddle was "What do you put in a basket to make it lighter?"

(The answer is "a hole")

Thank you.

I stole that riddle. Shame on me, but now I know I gotta get the Lee-Omar support to see the fruits of my thieving labor.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Hey! Thought I'd drop by here and let you what I think so far and totally not because I need to get my post count up so I can post my own game here

I've finished the first 6 chapters and am really enjoying it overall. I liked the split armies at the start, and each unit feels useful in some form which is great. First maps were pretty easy (to be expected, it is early game), but started to pick up by Chapter 6. In terms of the story, I'm liking the intrigue you built up with Ferrum and Cato, making it not just a matter of "good country" vs "bad country".

Onto a few issues I had (most of them are really minor):

  • Probably my biggest issue was stationary 1 range bosses. They can just be trivialised by attacking at range. I'd either give them 1-2 range or make them move (probably the latter)
  • The narration text between chapters obscures the world map. I'd move the text to the bottom of the screen instead.
  • The camera doesn't move to show reinforcements appearing. Caught me out a few times.
  • In Ch 5, Boudicca started moving on turn 5 despite her saying she won't until turn 10. Maybe it was because I'd attacked Dougall? A similar thing happened with the armour knights in Ch 6. In any case I'd try to be a bit clearer about when enemies move and don't.
  • Only spotted one typo in the Ch 2 intro: Derrick says 'villagee' instead of 'village'

Also thought I'd share that a green unit ended Ch 5 by killing Boudicca, which I thought was pretty hilarious.

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38 minutes ago, robinco said:

I've finished the first 6 chapters and am really enjoying it overall. I liked the split armies at the start, and each unit feels useful in some form which is great. First maps were pretty easy (to be expected, it is early game), but started to pick up by Chapter 6. In terms of the story, I'm liking the intrigue you built up with Ferrum and Cato, making it not just a matter of "good country" vs "bad country".

Onto a few issues I had (most of them are really minor):

  • Probably my biggest issue was stationary 1 range bosses. They can just be trivialised by attacking at range. I'd either give them 1-2 range or make them move (probably the latter)
  • The narration text between chapters obscures the world map. I'd move the text to the bottom of the screen instead.
  • The camera doesn't move to show reinforcements appearing. Caught me out a few times.
  • In Ch 5, Boudicca started moving on turn 5 despite her saying she won't until turn 10. Maybe it was because I'd attacked Dougall? A similar thing happened with the armour knights in Ch 6. In any case I'd try to be a bit clearer about when enemies move and don't.
  • Only spotted one typo in the Ch 2 intro: Derrick says 'villagee' instead of 'village'

Also thought I'd share that a green unit ended Ch 5 by killing Boudicca, which I thought was pretty hilarious.

Thanks for the feedback!

  • Woods can simply be given a Javelin since you have people with 1-2-Range, but I can't just give Corgan a Hand Axe and call it a day because none of your units in Chapter 1 have 1-2-Range and Bertus will still be able to attack him from 3-Range.  What I might do instead is make his AI move if all the other enemies on the map have been defeated.  However, I'll also need to make enemy-only variants of playable classes with 0 Mov for enemies that are supposed to be stationary at all times.  You may have noticed in Chapter 5 when you attacked Dougall that his and Boudicca's movement range suddenly expanded out.  Stuff like this happens in several chapters and I don't like it because it can potentially lead to unexpected unit deaths.  I've only now come up with an adequate solution for it.
  • I'll have to play around with moving the opening narrations to the bottom of the screen.
  • That's odd.  I swear I saw it move during playtesting.
  • Yes, attacking Dougall early provoked them both into becoming mobile.  Until now I haven't been able to figure out how to reword Boudicca's hint to account for that.
  • The Chapter 2 typo has already been fixed.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the rest of the game if you decide to finish it.  As for your game, I'm on Chapter 4 right now and so far it's been very impressive.  Once I'm done I'll send you a text file containing my feedback if you don't have a thread for your own game here already.

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I agree with your idea for Corgan. Making him move is probably best.

12 hours ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

However, I'll also need to make enemy-only variants of playable classes with 0 Mov for enemies that are supposed to be stationary at all times.

The way I did this was to make an invisible skill which reduces movement to 0 (Parameter Bonus). You can give this to enemies, or add/remove it by events. Definitely easier than duplicating all your classes.

12 hours ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

That's odd.  I swear I saw it move during playtesting.

I've had another look, the camera does actually move but only for an instant before jumping back to your party. Have you got your reinforcements moving into the map rather than just appearing? (i.e. Direction set to something other than None) 

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3 minutes ago, robinco said:

I agree with your idea for Corgan. Making him move is probably best.

The way I did this was to make an invisible skill which reduces movement to 0 (Parameter Bonus). You can give this to enemies, or add/remove it by events. Definitely easier than duplicating all your classes.

I've had another look, the camera does actually move but only for an instant before jumping back to your party. Have you got your reinforcements moving into the map rather than just appearing? (i.e. Direction set to something other than None) 

Thanks for the hidden Skill suggestion.  I don't anticipate bosses will ever need more than five Skills visible at a time, so I could definitely try this.

In most cases, the reinforcements are supposed to move onto the map instead of simply appearing.  Does changing Auto Cursor in the Config menu change anything?

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I've tried changing auto cursor among a few other things (e.g. unit speed and scroll speed as Slow instead of Normal). They still just appear out of nowhere though. Can't really say what's going on there...

Edit: and with that I can now post in the Fan Projects forum! Gonna join the discord which is probably more suitable for these discussions

Edited by robinco
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  • 3 weeks later...

Hmm this looks really nice. 😮 Following, though honestly I wont play until its finished. This way I don't get my hopes up if the project is abandoned later. xD  Nice work so far though. The army separation is reminding me of Tearring Saga, and I really enjoyed TS. 🙂

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm enjoying the hack so far except for Ch 5, as I feel like there's been a huge difficulty spike. Boudicca has been troubling for me to take down, mainly due to her weapon being powerful and our axe unit (Marcela) can get one rounded by her. And she has great avoid too. She always manages to kill one of my units. I'm going to keep attempting this chapter because I will get it eventually, but my main issue is that the green units keep mobilizing Boudicca much earlier than Turn 10 while I'm still trying to visit the last houses. I'll report back when I finally beat the chapter (or not)

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6 hours ago, Dandy Druid said:

I'm enjoying the hack so far except for Ch 5, as I feel like there's been a huge difficulty spike. Boudicca has been troubling for me to take down, mainly due to her weapon being powerful and our axe unit (Marcela) can get one rounded by her. And she has great avoid too. She always manages to kill one of my units. I'm going to keep attempting this chapter because I will get it eventually, but my main issue is that the green units keep mobilizing Boudicca much earlier than Turn 10 while I'm still trying to visit the last houses. I'll report back when I finally beat the chapter (or not)

I've already unwittingly addressed the problem of Boudicca being too difficult for the next version of the game.

Spoiler

Dougall and Boudicca join your army once Claudius and Carol's armies merge, and she has the exact same stats and inventory as a playable unit that she does as a boss.  She can be very OP in the current version of the game, especially if you decide to pump her full of stat boosters, so I nerfed her by replacing her Spirit Lance with an ordinary Javelin (among other things).  This should make her easier as a boss as well, since she hits Def instead of Res now on top of having less attack power.

What Level are your units?

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