RPG Unknown/Hiatus Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

[MegatronYES]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Watch the sides. You might need to walk in both directions once to notice.

I am not following this leg of the conversation at all. Is this about how to get to the upper level to complete the C-circuit portion of the puzzle? I would not describe that as hidden, but I guess I would have had I not found it.

 

[Allsop2604]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

I am not following this leg of the conversation at all. Is this about how to get to the upper level to complete the C-circuit portion of the puzzle? I would not describe that as hidden, but I guess I would have had I not found it.

Eromancer mentioned (a few pages back) that there was enough fuses via chest drops to progress through the level, saying there was a hidden passage. I completed the trail using creature drop fuses, only finding one or two via chests - which leads me to believe I missed quite a few chests and/or hidden passage.

That is assuming this isn't all one big misunderstanding. Cause I found all the chests visible while running around (like you could see them via main route but had to go through some stairs/gates to actually get to).

 

[Wuumaster]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Eromancer mentioned (a few pages back) that there was enough fuses via chest drops to progress through the level, saying there was a hidden passage. I completed the trail using creature drop fuses, only finding one or two via chests - which leads me to believe I missed quite a few chests and/or hidden passage.

That is assuming this isn't all one big misunderstanding. Cause I found all the chests visible while running around (like you could see them via main route but had to go through some stairs/gates to actually get to).

There's...

Spoiler

a chest of fuses hidden in the right-side wall just after exiting the ARIS room.

 

[Eab1990]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Ignoring the fact that I spent like an hour trying to break Neon's top armor before coming to the conclusion that it isn't possible to break, it's a pretty solid demo.

Kinda wish Neon was the lead, but eh. I'm perfectly fine with that boss h-scene.

I'd also like to reiterate that the B and C signs aren't very legible, so I wasted some fuses at first.

 

[MidnightXV]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Try changing the Battle Time Mode in the options! You can set it so that time stops while you choose your commands. Also, you can set it so that struggling is handled automatically.

Thanks for the reply. I dont want it to auto struggle though I just want struggling to be easy. Sometimes you dont want to struggle cause you want to see some H content. other times you want to win the fight easily and move on. It is an eroge after all

 

[Demontom]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

The difficulty of struggling is tied to their current lust level. To keep it easy, keep your lust low by interrupting the lust increasing attacks/making sure not to get grappled. At low lust levels, you can break out in a single struggle. At higher ones, I take it as the girls not fighting as hard, so it can take up to 3. At that point, you're better off breaking the hold with the other skills.

 

[ThatHoboThere]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Finally got around to playing through the demo and I must say, it's pretty damn impressive. Not many games of this ilk out there that have a well implemented active battle system from what I've seen, and the art style, quality and character design has broken through my usual aversion to a futuristic/cyberpunk theme (I blame reading entirely too many swords & sorcery fantasy books as a youngster) so good on y'all there. Definitely looking forward to the end product.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Hey guys,

AltairPL has put together a hotfix for some of the issues that you've helped us find with the public demo~. You can find it here:

You must be registered to see the links

 

[Ayra]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Kinda wish Neon was the lead, but eh. I'm perfectly fine with that boss h-scene.

I'd also like to reiterate that the B and C signs aren't very legible, so I wasted some fuses at first.

Agreed completely on Neon! I think she's pretty swell and Malise really didn't click for me. Well, I think that the "Machine" part of the title refers to Neon, so I'm hopeful she's at least as important and present as Malise. Or at the very least, not shoved to the side. I'm honestly not too worried about that

Regarding the signs, I just reopened the game just to double check since I looked at the darn things for minutes and never could see any letter during my original playthrough. And of course I instantly saw them this time. The problem for me was that they are the same color as the wall and it's not framed by the colored band. If the letter was not wall-colored, or if the painted frame was a tiny bit larger (so that the letter would be framed on all side by the color instead of just top and bottom), I'm pretty sure I'd have spotted them nearly instantly. As is, all I was seeing was the olive colored band, and two little rectangles under it, then the 20. I'm kind of kicking myself for not seeing it before (it's obvious now that I know what I'm actually looking at), but I think either of the change I suggested could avoid some frustration to other players like me or Eab.

For the boss fight, I see some people saying to simply interrupt the boss Tentacle skill. Playing turn-based, it's actually pretty common that it's impossible to interrupt the skill, since you can't delay your turn. In my case, Neon tended to get her turn right before the boss, and the boss casting time is lower than the time it takes for Neon to get another turn. In Active mode, I assume you can just wait for the boss to get its turn (and pass the turn to Malise if she's ready), so that's an advantage that Active mode has. I think that's fair overall though since turn-based is easier in general. Either way, even with the Tentacle skill being sometime impossible to interrupt in Turn-based, the boss was extremely easy at level 4 with freshly repaired armor and no lust (kick = instant freedom, and boss damage was really low). That's an entirely different matter with broken armor and high lust though...

Thanks for the patch!

 

[Bertus]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

I've just finished the demo and i am really impressed by the quality of the game so far.

The Cyberpunk setting is very well made and also the music is great, even if there are only the background and battle track.

I would even pay a little extra for the soundtrack album when the game is finished, because is fantastic

I admit that at first i had some troubles figuring what was going on at the first battle, especially since i didn't expect that the position of the icon was the same as the arrows on the keyboard and i wal like "wait, how do i do that? what's going on" but it's also extremely easy to figure out, seconds later.

The other little trouble i had was at the beginning since when everythings is dark i had some difficulties to understand what was a walkable floor and what was a wall, but still, it wasn't too hard to figure out.

Still, it's a good game, you guys are really great!

 

[FlamingNegger]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Thank you all for kind words and feedback.
EM will answer questions later... I don't know all the answers, and when I do I tend to say too much .


No, this is not intentional. If you could answer few questions, it would really help us fix this:
1. Which battle time mode were you using at the time?
2. How was the previous hold on this character broken? (death, struggle, assist)
3. Was attacked character recently revived?
Thanks in advance.


Out of curiosity, what are the specs of that laptop and what does the game FPS counter indicate?

Well, have fun everyone .

1. I was on the "Wait for input and action" time mode.
2. Struggle, since both characters got hit by "Tentacle" at the same time. It took two turns to get out of it by using the struggle that costs energy. I intentionally took hits from "Tentacle" to see if it leads to H scenes (2 or 3 times). It didn't, so I started to interrupt its "Tentacle" charge using Neon since it was really damaging (the boss' attacks). Eventually, it used "Tentacle" on me while it was on a blue bar charge.
3. Never revived a character.

 

[AltairPL]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

1. I was on the "Wait for input and action" time mode.
2. Struggle, since both characters got hit by "Tentacle" at the same time. It took two turns to get out of it by using the struggle that costs energy. I intentionally took hits from "Tentacle" to see if it leads to H scenes (2 or 3 times). It didn't, so I started to interrupt its "Tentacle" charge using Neon since it was really damaging (the boss' attacks). Eventually, it used "Tentacle" on me while it was on a blue bar charge.
3. Never revived a character.

It should be already fixed in 0.0352 hotfix Eromancer linked few posts earlier, but this info will be useful in case its not, so thanks.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Hey guys,

Just a heads up, it looks like Kimochi is shutting down next month. No worries though, if you purchased an early access version of MATM on Kimochi you'll still be able to access it (as long as you have it downloaded), just not through the Kimochi client.

There's some more information in this thread for anyone interested: http://www.ulmf.org/bbs/showthread.php?t=28496

 

[Iloiine]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Sucks to hear about Kimochi. I was actually looking forward to using it to find new games--much more convenient than shuffling through forums. Oh well.

On the topic of the demo, yesssssss; I had a lot of fun running around the access tunnels with full lust and broken armor and trying to still get through fights. Only fight I couldn't figure out how to beat was 2x reapers and a big robot--I just couldn't take out the grenadier before the reapers locked down at least one of the girls (and, by the time I was able to break out of lockdown, the grenadier had downed one or more of the girls).

Took on the Fleshfather no problem, though.

BUT! On the note of the Fleshfather, I noticed something during that fight(and a bit during others). It seems like Neon fills the support role in combat and Malise is the main DPS. That mostly works, except it makes Malise kind of... dull... in fights.

With Neon, I'm constantly having to make snap decisions between another attack to take out this reaper or to heal or wait and interrupt this next grenade or defend to build up energy.

Malise? Nah, it's just "precise attack or fire wildly." Oh, and try extra hard to break out of grapples if it's the engorge H-sequence.

In fact, when it came to the Fleshfather, the turns I took with Malise were automatic--I just used the double shot until she ran out of energy and then kept plugging away. Meanwhile, neon is firing carefully timed interrupt after carefully timed interrupt (granted, this meant she was also just using the same ability round after round, which might mean the FF isn't the most interesting of fights, but she was still more engaging to fight with than Malise).

So yeah, that's my big observation from this demo. Maybe Malise should have the interrupt while Neon keeps the heal. Maybe Malise is just wearing her DPS armor for the demos and will have a similarly support/utility-oriented suit in the full game that will make her less boring.

Anyways, great work!

 

[Bertus]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Hey guys,

Just a heads up, it looks like Kimochi is shutting down next month. No worries though, if you purchased an early access version of MATM on Kimochi you'll still be able to access it (as long as you have it downloaded), just not through the Kimochi client.

Welp that's very sad since i thought it was really useful to have something similar to Steam

 

[darkdesire666]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Just played the demo and it was much, much better than I thought it'd be (given the plethora of H-rpgs out there with mediocre graphics, battle system, and gameplay). I really like Neon's character design, although I feel Malise's character is lacking in comparison (maybe because Neon gets to do all the talking). The battle system is a breath of fresh air (reminds me of a few of the FF games) and the graphics really complement the sci-fi theme of the game. You've done a great job on this, Eromancer and co. Keep up the great work!

Anyways, just thought'd I'd give some feedback:
- Sometimes, the default target switches. Say neon's default target is the small robot. After neon's action, malise's default target might be the grenade launcher robot. It's not too big of a problem if you change the options to "freeze the battle timer during action selection," but it's a bit annoying for people, like me, who enjoy playing with the timer off (for the real-time battle feel).
- Adding on to the above point- while enjoying the rush of the battle, selecting a target gets a bit confusing at times because the arrow is beneath the enemy and slightly blends in with the background. I think that adding a cross-hairs icon to select the target would both look nice and be functional.


EDIT: Yup, got it. Thanks for the advice! Yeah, I agree that the writing on the wall was a bit hard to discern at first.

 

[Wuumaster]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Any hints would be appreciated!

Not-Quite-Spoiler tip

Spoiler

You're trying to activate the B circuit. The fuse target is printed on the wall below the 'B'. Opening up that hatch lets you activate the C circuit, which leads to the boss.

Direct Spoiler Tip

Spoiler

Circuit B needs 20pt of Fuse: there's 2 terminals in the big room with the access hatches, and 2 terminals in the room just to the right - you'll need to walk a little south after the room transition though. Circuit C needs 30pt of Fuse: there's 2 more terminals behind the B hatch, and then switch the B terminals to C to total 30pt.

 

[Emerald_Gladiator]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Not-Quite-Spoiler tip

Spoiler

You're trying to activate the B circuit. The fuse target is printed on the wall below the 'B'. Opening up that hatch lets you activate the C circuit, which leads to the boss.

Direct Spoiler Tip

Spoiler

Circuit B needs 20pt of Fuse: there's 2 terminals in the big room with the access hatches, and 2 terminals in the room just to the right - you'll need to walk a little south after the room transition though. Circuit C needs 30pt of Fuse: there's 2 more terminals behind the B hatch, and then switch the B terminals to C to total 30pt.

Heh, I'm not sure if this is really a spoiler, so I'll err on the safe side:

Spoiler

My problem wasn't finding all the circuit locations. However, I definitely remember trying to access what I thought was Circuit B when it was really the door to the boss (Circuit C), and dumping in 30 into Circuit B...my problem was that the wall panel to indicate door/stairway C was very difficult to see/read, and there's a very visable 'B' sign next to the door/stairway C, so it was pretty confusing for me and I mixed the two. -__-

 

[Iloiine]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

Oh yeah. I found the signs for the B and C circuit doors completely unreadable. I just guessed and checked back on the doors every time I stuffed a fuse into a terminal.

 

[DarkMist67]

Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

When the project started out I investigated animating everything . I actually uploaded a few of the early animations (just skill animations, nothing H related really) for the inner circle patrons on Patreon. Unfortunately it was just way too time consuming to do by myself, especially considering the number of variations required.

I wasnt speaking about everything being animated, that would be crazy! I was hoping for some mild animation solely in the final 1-2 stages of H chains. Just some frames with the appendage doing the dirty work. But yeah, with such limited manpower and the number of variations even that might be a way too much. Oh well, the game is still easily one of the best with the most potential i have seen in probably forever, keep it up!

Quick question, will there be H chains that have more/less stages? Roughly how many difference branches per enemy?