RPG Maker Four Lords

[Jarmengrandr]

Note (6/20/2021): This thread will remain for archive purposes. However, a completely new Four Lords: Revival is being developed. Graphically, it's not going to be much different, but I need to re-build the game from ground up due to some technical changes I made. (No, I'm not moving from MV to MZ. That's a whole other beast of things to change.) The game will still be free to play, but yeah. In case someone checks on this years later.

Hello. Jarmengrandr, the developer for Four Lords here. That's about it.

Four Lords (Updated 4/14/18)
Eleven individuals come together after a recent war. Three humans find where the four monster lords have gathered:
- An adventurer seeks vengeance for her shattered past.
- A hero wishes to redeem herself from her failures.
- A princess struggles with the darkness inside her.

The four monster lords each set their sights on four other monsters known as the Forbidden:
- A devil maintaining order as a lord.
- A dragoness planning for the sake of all.
- A succubus who dances away the pain of war.
- A slime queen who devours the pain for the future.

The Forbidden themselves also find purpose in the upcoming chaos:
- A lich quells the pain welling up within her.
- A war spirit burns a trail of retribution for injustice.
- A soundwave dances to the broken melodies of history.
- A yukionna wishes to identify her new self.

Follow the stories of one or all as they battle to end the ripples that bring them together.

Gameplay
Four Lords is designed to be a short game, with no grinding necessary. Each character fights in a specific style. Each can perform the base functions needed for battle in an RPG. But the battles themselves may be somewhat challenging.

The current version of the game contains Free Battle mode, allowing you to select any character and fight against any other character. The completed game will contain a story mode of sorts for each character, with unlockable scenes and endings.

 

[Six]

Re: Four Lords

Interesting game with combat that is actually fun and have some thought behind it.
Is at least among the most advanced rpg maker combat I have seen.

Story for the mage did make me want more after meeting her story boss and the sex scene was decent enough.
I really do love lesbians though so likely others can find more faults.

Seem to be smart going for an actual game before bothering with custom music and sexy pictures.
Big plus for not starting with the usual ask for money as well.

 

[Ruffleneck]

Re: Four Lords

Best of luck! Sounds interesting ^^

 

[Serio C]

Re: Four Lords

I like the combat, really nice.
And the MV games and it's brutal size will never change.
Good luck!

 

[Jarmengrandr]

As I mentioned to some people, any comments/criticism, however small, helps with development in quite a few ways. So I'm much obliged to hear anything.

Currently re-balancing the characters/skills as I build the AI. Why? Two main reasons: I can't concentrate on event building until the core of the game is functional. And, the AI I've made (for one fight alone) proves a challenge to me, who tests the fights with all of the characters. There does need to be some amount of self-testing. Otherwise, we run into more situations where people go, "How did this get through the development/testing phase?" I do want the combat to be challenging—and not solely in the RNGesus sense.

As a result, some characters/skills that can be seen in the present demo differ from their current state. It also means I'll definitely be releasing a second demo before release.

Long story short, I need to work more.

 

[Nytemare]

Re: Four Lords

I'll chck the game out later tonight and give you some feedback, I've tested a ton of games and should be able to provide some decent input.

 

[Nimrod]

Re: Four Lords

Hmmm, this is tough.

I like that you want to make a good game first and foremost, but I hope you realize that without appealing art, well crafted custom maps, or custom sprites, just being good won't do you any...good.

RPGs don't work like most other games. They are more akin to visual novels. Gameplay is the one thing people don't mind skipping over, as long as it's not just mean spirited. This doesn't mean it's not important, it just means that if you want to focus on it, you have to do one hell of a job, it needs to be exceptional, and MV is not really good at that. If you want it to stand out, eventually you will need to make it look different, make it look special, give it it's own style.

A good example of this would be Ankoku Marimo Kan's last game. The core battle system is pretty much basic MV, but the artistic style is 100% Marimo. It's basically a piece of shit, gameplay wise, but it's so pretty that you don't mind. This effect is boosted by the rest of the game's story, characters, art, and other gameplay related stuff.

Another example would be Undertale. The gameplay is arguably fine, the boss fights are fun, but the rest is just plain boring. The game itself looks like crap by today standards, but the style makes it unique. The oldschool/indie vibe makes the lack of resources less griping. But it's the story, writing, and characters, that make you forget about it, or even appreciate it for what it is.

What I'm trying to say, is that gameplay won't sell your RPG, it's like a cute ribbon on an already cute puppy. Appreciated, but unnecessary. You can work on the gameplay all you want and refine it to unobtainable perfection. It still won't sell if you don't pull off some amazing writing or unique visual styles.

It doesn't need to be highest quality, but it needs to stand out as unique.
People complain about gameplay in RPGs all the times, but that's not the reason they got the game in the first place.
Just look at FFXV with all it's amazing gameplay innovations, getting it's ass kicked, in review aggregators, by Persona 5, with a battle system that is the carbon copy of an over 20 years old game, and Nier Automata, with it's fairly basic and yet intuitively fun gameplay.
Look at the improved and polished Mess Effect class systems and third person shooter mechanics, arguably far better than it's predecessors, and how much that is helping the product! :Sarcasm:

It's a good thing that you want to make a good game first, but that won't help you sell it.

Good luck.

 

[glacier]

Re: Four Lords

You've clearly put a lot of thought into your battle system. That's good! But a lot of abilities are poorly explained. I was playing a swordswomen with instant skills, but I had no way of figuring out which of them actually were instant until I used them.

There was some kind of weird chain combo system where using some moves enabled others, but once again it wasn't explained at all coherently. I refuse to spend 20 minutes taking notes with pencil and paper to figure out how my moves work.

There's a bit of a padded sumo problem in combat too. The best way to win every fight was just spam normal attacks until I had a load of TP, then stack a bunch of +attack and -defence modifiers so my super move would actually finish the enemy off.

When I tried to play more aggressively, the enemy would pull a surprise heal out of nowhere and waste all the time I'd dumped into them.

If you want combat to be fun, it needs to be fast and more decisive.

The dialogue is also bland and weak, but that's not the focus of this demo. Still, I really recommend putting some more effort into defining who your characters are and why they are doing what they're doing.

 

[Jarmengrandr]

If I could inhale deeply through text, I would insert it here.

Second release is out. (Also updated front page.)

Windows version

You must be registered to see the links

You must be registered to see the links

Mac version

You must be registered to see the links

You must be registered to see the links

("Hey, the game is smaller! That's suspicious!" Well, I killed a lot of useless files.)

I didn't want to say too much, but there are things I should say here.

Spoiler

I wasn't sure if it was okay to bump this, because there's actually no H content in this release. (There will be later, though.) If this means this thread should be re-located, please do so. But I ultimately decided it was only proper to update with a post if I was going to update the game.

I planned for this release to be the last before the full game. But after taking a step back, I realized that it'll take more time to complete the game than I thought. I knew the reason why, but now I know the reason how.

Most of my time will involve eventing each characters' story mode and testing them. And there are eleven characters. The story modes will be more or less linear, but I am branching them to some extent for endings' (and H-scenes') sake. At this point, I'm committed due to how I designed the game in the first place. Not that that's a bad thing. The burden of my development is time.

Current accumulated development time for Four Lords can't be more than two months. But I'll likely need another month minimum to complete the game.

So what's in this release may frustrate some people. Some may be wondering why I might seem like I'm hooked on trying to promote gameplay, especially after this release. That's not what I'm trying to do at all. I care a lot about the story, characters, and plot. I admit I'm also frustrated due to the almost year-long absence I subjected myself to in life. However, the game's design had to ensure that the gameplay was okay before I could complete the rest of the game. That meant that every character had to be playable before I could work on their events for their story modes. Otherwise, mechanics that should work would be harder to work with in the future. This release is supposed to take care of the battle system, with some tweaks later if need be.

Although now I'm babbling on about "what ifs" after several paragraphs.

Okay. I'll shut up, observe, and get back to work. I'll keep an eye out.