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

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

You "would", but again, the likelyhood of this happening is pretty much nil because it's asinine.

Basically, this law requires you to do such insane things as;

-Knowing the actual geographical location of your buyers WHEN they buy the game

-Knowing the name and address of your buyers

-Keeping all of this stuff in a database that catalogues all this stuff and it has to be on an online server on YOUR own dime

so yeah, this would ruin most small businesses, it'll get overthrown or ignored.

Can't say I'd be concerned in the least if I got a fine from a foreign government. Would it adversely affect EU patrons? Since Patreon isn't complying I can't see them being required to fill out extra forms, etc.

EDIT: I mean EU patrons of this project, to be specific.

 

[Krh]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Would it adversely affect EU patrons?

I don't see how it would. You'll be getting money from us, not the other way around.

As others have pointed out, it's very unlikely they'll pursue it anyway.

 

[freeko]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Can't say I'd be concerned in the least if I got a fine from a foreign government. Would it adversely affect EU patrons? Since Patreon isn't complying I can't see them being required to fill out extra forms, etc.

EDIT: I mean EU patrons of this project, to be specific.

I would be if I were residing in a country that had an extradition treaty with whatever country wanted to arrest you for tax fraud.

 

[HentaiWriter]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

I would be if I were residing in a country that had an extradition treaty with whatever country wanted to arrest you for tax fraud.

Yeah, that's not gonna happen. They'd spend more money doing this than you would have "stolen" from the system.

Also, Eromancer, I dunno if you know or not, but your Skype's off, I know before you said you forgot to turn it on for a few days before

 

[Azunia]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Its like a big "net" they working on.... its the same as our dutch minister of finance Dijselbloem said just yesterday..... "Greece say they are going to work against tax evasion but the ICT in their country is under developed so its hard to find out who is evading what"
While here in the netherlands youl have a harder time trying to evade taxes (unless the goverment helps you with it of course) cause their "net" is getting better and better.

Not that it should scare anyone off or so cause the internet is like a living thing anyway... but those are steps to that stupid controlling system goverments dream off... specially in the EU and USA.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Added a new post on Tumblr:

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[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Hey guys, new posts/screenshots on

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and

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!

We're in the final stretch for the first release, and I'm happy to say I'm very pleased with how it's panning out.

 

[Scherzo]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Looking at those map screenshots, something about them seemed off to me, and it took me a minute to figure out why.

Shadows.

The maps don't really have a sense of depth and height, because they totally lack shadows and lighting. Because of the graphical style and perspective of the game, it's a little more pronounced than with RTP graphics.

Obviously, RPG maker's shadow tools are useless for these maps, so I would urge you to consider making paralax mapped shadows. If you're aiming to make a professional-looking game, I think it will be worth the time, because your maps will look better, and also be easier to navigate; because as it is, it's hard to differentiate terrain that's at different heights.

 

[PM21]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

"The first release is nigh"

I had better start thinking of what I'm going to tell people when I inevitably cancel some plans this week to play.

Oh, and I guess I had better drink lots of water.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Looking at those map screenshots, something about them seemed off to me, and it took me a minute to figure out why.

Shadows.

The maps don't really have a sense of depth and height, because they totally lack shadows and lighting. Because of the graphical style and perspective of the game, it's a little more pronounced than with RTP graphics.

Obviously, RPG maker's shadow tools are useless for these maps, so I would urge you to consider making paralax mapped shadows. If you're aiming to make a professional-looking game, I think it will be worth the time, because your maps will look better, and also be easier to navigate; because as it is, it's hard to differentiate terrain that's at different heights.

Well, I'll argue against the comment that "they totally lack shadows and lighting", as I've attached a comparison pic of what it really did look like without shadows on the tile artwork. I'm glad you brought it up though as in making the screenshot I realized it might be a little subtle, so I ramped it up some and included that possibility on the right.

However, you're completely correct in that it could benefit from some sort of parallax shadowing for broader non tile-specific shadows (like shadowing under the bridges and below walls). There are some potential hurdles though, as the maps are bigger than usual RPGM maps due to increased scale of the sprites. In addition, since it's running at 1024x768 I've already had to do a ton of optimization to keep the framerate up. I don't think it'd be impossible, but would definitely need to be toggle-able for people with slower computers.

Do you have any experience painting parallax shadow maps? I've been looking for someone to help with maps in some aspect for awhile.

"The first release is nigh"

I had better start thinking of what I'm going to tell people when I inevitably cancel some plans this week to play.

Oh, and I guess I had better drink lots of water.

Hah, well give it a few days -- we need to make sure there aren't any unprecedented critical bugs in testing.

-------------

On an unrelated note, is anyone else having huge issues with ULMF? It's completely inaccessible a solid 70% of the time for me, and it's taken
nearly an hour to make this post because when I can access it, it "goes offline" before I can post.

 

[PM21]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

On an unrelated note, is anyone else having huge issues with ULMF? It's completely inaccessible a solid 70% of the time for me, and it's taken
nearly an hour to make this post because when I can access it, it "goes offline" before I can post.

Yeah, every night since the Zone release the server has been inaccessible for me. You're Central U.S., if I recall? Same here and on the day the Zone flash released I said people could message me for a link, but then the site was down all day.

 

[HentaiWriter]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Same, ULMF has been getting wrecked nonstop for the past week or so.

 

[holololo]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Any news on the PayPal option yet? Guess no.

It's nice that you are putting in a lot of effort into the production, I also understand that things get difficult pre-release, but it would be nice to see some progress on the consumer accessibility side of things (though I figure a large part of your drive is due to personal satisfaction instead of monetary factors).

 

[AExMachina]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Any news on the PayPal option yet? Guess no.

You can use Paypal to pay Patreon.

 

[Anon42]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

You can use Paypal to pay Patreon.

Nope. Not for NSFW projects. Paypal on Patreon only works for SFW - Paypal notoriously hates anything adult, so any payments using it on Patreon will automatically fail.

 

[Scherzo]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Well, I was a bit hasty in saying "totally" lacks shadowing, but I was looking right at that bridge overpass when I said that.

If full paralax overlays are an optimization issue, you might be able to instead use events just to add a few shadows to the major "problem spots" like under bridges and tall walls. There is the great little script called Event Fine Tuning that allows you to offset events by exact pixel amounts, letting you place objects and details like that exactly where you need them, which is great for adding some extra detail to maps without using paralaxes.

I won't pretend to be the world's foremost expert on paralax mapping, but I have done a few, including some simple shadow maps. I know my way around RPG Maker, photoshop, and Daz, so I might be able to help you with some map editing. PM me about it if you're interested.


As for the forum issues, yeah It was down for me yesterday for a bit too. It seems to be down somewhat often to me, but over the span of say, a week, I wouldn't say it's down 70% of the time. If I see it down, it's usually fine the next day. I don't come on here every single day though.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Any news on the PayPal option yet? Guess no.

It's nice that you are putting in a lot of effort into the production, I also understand that things get difficult pre-release, but it would be nice to see some progress on the consumer accessibility side of things (though I figure a large part of your drive is due to personal satisfaction instead of monetary factors).

I'll be messaging the people who have expressed interest in that when I post details for the release. No worries!

Well, I was a bit hasty in saying "totally" lacks shadowing, but I was looking right at that bridge overpass when I said that.

If full paralax overlays are an optimization issue, you might be able to instead use events just to add a few shadows to the major "problem spots" like under bridges and tall walls. There is the great little script called Event Fine Tuning that allows you to offset events by exact pixel amounts, letting you place objects and details like that exactly where you need them, which is great for adding some extra detail to maps without using paralaxes.

I won't pretend to be the world's foremost expert on paralax mapping, but I have done a few, including some simple shadow maps. I know my way around RPG Maker, photoshop, and Daz, so I might be able to help you with some map editing. PM me about it if you're interested.


As for the forum issues, yeah It was down for me yesterday for a bit too. It seems to be down somewhat often to me, but over the span of say, a week, I wouldn't say it's down 70% of the time. If I see it down, it's usually fine the next day. I don't come on here every single day though.

I ran some tests to see if events with large graphics would slow FPS down, and it turns out it only slows it down by the amount any standard event would (other than initially caching the graphic, which could be scripted to pre-cache on map load).

The problem however is that I've gone to some lengths to improve upon existing anti-lag scripts by adding a layer that stops rendering processing on event graphics that are offscreen (This is essentially what makes 1024x768 possible with large maps). So, when the tile of an event with large graphics goes off screen it will clear the image, meaning shadows at the edge of the screen would poof. I *could* add a tag with a size variable to large graphic events that would cause my anti-lag script to increase the radius for determining if something is off screen for said events. So, that's one option.

I feel like there'd be less overhead and more flexible results if I could get parallax mapping working with only a minor loss in FPS. Judging by these tests the inevitably big size of the image shouldn't slow it down, but caching a map could be a pain. I'm also running into an issue with really really big spritesheets (not file-size wise, but pixel dimensions), where RPG Maker gets completely inconsistent and just decides to fail to load the bitmap. I haven't isolated whether it's system specific or what yet, and it's one of the things we have to test before this release. I'd imagine that same issue would extend to large dimension parallax maps.

 

[AltairPL]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

I'm not gonna discuss the game progress, since I read new posts in this thread once in a while, so I don't remember what was discussed earlier, but I can help you with that:

(...)
I'm also running into an issue with really really big spritesheets (not file-size wise, but pixel dimensions), where RPG Maker gets completely inconsistent and just decides to fail to load the bitmap. I haven't isolated whether it's system specific or what yet, and it's one of the things we have to test before this release. I'd imagine that same issue would extend to large dimension parallax maps.

Reason for this is simple - file size depends on compression level of used format, but in memory graphic is stored as bitmap, so 1 pixel equals 4 bytes (RGBA). How many bitmaps can be loaded depends on system memory, but since RPGMaker games are 32-bit applications, theoretical upper limit is below 4GiB, but I've seen this error around 1,5GiB of memory used by game (about 1500 640x480 test bitmaps and other normal game resources). Since you're using 1024x768, you'll see this error a lot - hope you'll manage to solve this somehow.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

I'm not gonna discuss the game progress, since I read new posts in this thread once in a while, so I don't remember what was discussed earlier, but I can help you with that:

Reason for this is simple - file size depends on compression level of used format, but in memory graphic is stored as bitmap, so 1 pixel equals 4 bytes (RGBA). How many bitmaps can be loaded depends on system memory, but since RPGMaker games are 32-bit applications, theoretical upper limit is below 4GiB, but I've seen this error around 1,5GiB of memory used by game (about 1500 640x480 test bitmaps and other normal game resources). Since you're using 1024x768, you'll see this error a lot - hope you'll manage to solve this somehow.

That helps a lot actually! This had me pretty stumped. So would a file format without alpha only utilize 3 bytes? For large boss sprites I could potentially be sneaky and include the background in the spritesheet, since I know where their sprite will be positioned and I don't believe anything goes between their layer and the battle background layer.

EDIT: To follow up--- the big 16 frame boss spritesheet that sometimes generates the error would consume 354 MB by your calculations (4 bytes per pixel). It gets pre-cached at the beginning of the game and loads within the first 20 bitmaps cached. I doubt this is tapping that 1.5 GB-ish ceiling... I also wonder why it is inconsistent? Any thoughts on that by chance?

With this all in mind though, it's probably a good idea if I further customize the battler animation script so that unused poses don't need to be included in the file (unused poses are blank, and since it is a PNG it adds no filesize, but it does add pixels to the image... this would resolve that I think, and isn't something I considered previously due to it not increasing filesize).

 

[AltairPL]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

That helps a lot actually! This had me pretty stumped. So would a file format without alpha only utilize 3 bytes? For large boss sprites I could potentially be sneaky and include the background in the spritesheet, since I know where their sprite will be positioned and I don't believe anything goes between their layer and the battle background layer.

EDIT: To follow up--- the big 16 frame boss spritesheet that sometimes generates the error would consume 354 MB by your calculations (4 bytes per pixel). It gets pre-cached at the beginning of the game and loads within the first 20 bitmaps cached. I doubt this is tapping that 1.5 GB-ish ceiling... I also wonder why it is inconsistent? Any thoughts on that by chance?

File format is irrelevant - game will still treat it and display as RGBA.
Don't know if and how you changed this, but in vanilla, battle effects (blink, flash, etc.) are applied to sprite, so if you include part of background in boss graphic, effect will also be applied to this part. Besides, it doesn't matter if boss is not using whole part of the screen (right/left with full height or top/bottom with full width) as overlapping area will still be used by both graphics.
Let's say for the sake of argument that limit is in fact 1,5GB, this bitmap alone uses over 20% of available memory, and you still need shitload of memory for other graphics - tilesets, spritesheets, tilemap, transitions, backgrounds, battler sprites, etc. Don't know how long it takes to load such monstrosity (354MB... fuck...), but I wouldn't cache something that big, unless it's used very (and I mean VERY) often - if it loads in 1-2 seconds, displaying simple "please wait" message before boss battle should suffice and nobody would hold it against you - at least that's my opinion.
Inconsistency may be related to ruby garbage collection, which cleans unreferenced objects at fixed(?) periods of time. During change between scenes using lots of graphics, there's a chance that objects disposed/cleaned in previous scene were not yet garbage collected and they still use lots of memory. You can manually call garbage collection method - This will probably cause lag, but at least it will minimize chance of "Failed to load bitmap" crash.

Hope this helps.

EDIT:
It's still bothering me - 1024x768 RGBA bitmap uses around 3MB of memory, with 16 frames that's ~48MB... so how big is this boss spritesheet, that it uses 354MB?