I'm making a video game! Demo soon.

[RickZarber]

I feel the time is now right to officially announce a long-gestating project. I'm turning JAQ into a video game using RPG Maker! It follows the plot of my comics fairly closely, but the real draw for me was expanding the world to include as many NPFers as possible (and just in time, when many of them haven't posted in years!), including lots of references to stuff from the heydays of last decade! Haha, I'm selling this super well, right? :rolleyes: Seriously though, I'm kinda making, like, an interactive nostalgia trip that's hopefully amusing to play for its own sake? The main thing being a massive "NPF Town" map, with lots of stuff to poke at and explore, and plenty of side-quests to add some breadth to the otherwise linear story. I've put in over 300 hours of work on this over the last year or so! Still a long way to go, though.

That said, I'm going to drop a demo (which I guess will be like a pre-pre-alpha kinda thing) which covers the quote unquote starter area (ie, the top third of the town map). Following the comics, it only gets you through about the first nine and a half of them, but there's a lot more to explore outside of that. So yeah, I'm rushing to add the last few elements missing from that area (a few dialogue trees, items to buy, that sort of thing) and then I'll make it available, probably early tomorrow.

So, maybe this is a thing at least a few of you are interested in?

[MuMu]

I was actually thinking about JAQ the other day. Everytime I find a key in a game I remember the "You got a small key." gag. It's stupid but I guess that's the kind of thing my brain puts in priority memory.

Anyway, sure, hit us up with a demo whenever you're ready, who would say no to free games.

[phil_]

L-l-l-linux build?

[mauve]

YAY! I'd love to see this!

[Flarecobra]

I would be quite interested. After all, always did support JAQ. :)

[RickZarber]

:D Thanks errybody!
Everytime I find a key in a game I remember the "You got a small key." gag. It's stupid but I guess that's the kind of thing my brain puts in priority memory.Same... and I did it to myself. Also, totally gonna be a running gag in the game.
L-l-l-linux build?Yes, actually! I'll put out options for Linux, Windows, and Mac!

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

So This is NPF; The Game of the Movie That Never Happened, based on the original webcomic, right? I kid of course. I do vaguely remembered JAQ, but I think it was a bit before my time and I only ever saw a few of the later episodes, so I had no idea what was going on and trying to go back and find it all scattered throughout the old comic thread was a bit too much work.

So yay videogame version!

[RickZarber]

So This is NPF; The Game of the Movie That Never Happened, based on the original webcomic, right?I mean, that's not inaccurate...

As for cameos, I will gladly put anyone into this game, on the proviso that if you don't already have sprites you have to help me make them. (ie, Provide a base and tell me what you want done to it.)

And as for the comic, if anyone does ever want to read or re-read it, it's still archived down in my signature. Just click "Next in storyline" to only see the JAQs.

Meanwhile, I've cut together a (crappy) little trailer of my work on the game so far. The first section is those 9½ comics included in the demo (and nothing else--I wanted the rest of the demo to be unknown so you can explore) just so you can see what it looks like, and then the back half is stuff I've been working on from much further into the game (set to some music that Fenris wrote for that superhero flash series we never made).

F_Y081DFMHE

[Loyal]

Looks very neat. I still got that JAQ poster hung up in my room, even! I hope your efforts go well, and of course support any and all things that may stoke my ego.



-aside glance at the date-

...sigh.

[mauve]

-aside glance at the date-

...sigh.

.....dammit Zarber.

[RickZarber]

.....dammit Zarber.Moi? I am all innocence, I'm sure.

The demo is ready!

Since Dropbox dropped their direct linking support, you gotta left-click or open in new tab/window to get to these. Right-click & Save Link As will not work. If you don't have a Dropbox, you don't need one, just click "no thanks" at the bottom when it asks you to log in, then download the file. Unzip, and you're ready to go; no installation required or anything.

Windows Version (162 MB) (https://www.dropbox.com/s/9a79mi618d7prz4/JAQ_Windows.zip?dl=0)

OS X Version (163 MB) (https://www.dropbox.com/s/qkiyhie5pmmqhki/JAQ_OSX.zip?dl=0)

Linux Version (166 MB) (https://www.dropbox.com/s/kdid3ejtztq65yl/JAQ_Linux.zip?dl=0)

HTML-Only (web browser version for any OS) (155 MB) (https://www.dropbox.com/s/jpx8kh44d8rsxz3/JAQ_HTML.zip?dl=0)

I would recommend checking out the options menu before starting a new game. Specifically, the keybindings can be entirely customized, you can set volume levels, switch to fullscreen (the game renders at a native windowed 1280x720), or turn on floaty names above NPCs if you desire that. It also supports game pads; if you press a button on your controller, the button-binding options should show up next time you go to the options menu. If, like me, sometimes upon boot-up your computer struggles with the music, just hit F5 to reboot the game, and keep doing it until the music plays properly.

So yeah, the demo's still a little rough around the edges; plenty of characters are lacking portraits next to their dialogue (or have temporary art), quests end abruptly, lots more flavor text to add, and there's still an XP / leveling system in place, which I plan on getting rid of in favor of something more original. But! all the places are... in place, all the characters have their dialogue trees, and there are secrets to find!

Can you learn a special move?
Can you get refused service at the pub?
Can you find that which should never be gazed upon?
Can you find all $151 in the demo?
Can you get one or all of the characters to level 2?

Please let me know your thoughts, as feedback would be greatly appreciated!

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

It keeps crashing on me upon leaving the house. Undefined typeline or something.

[phil_]

http://i.imgur.com/axPXaei.png
;_; It ain't there, I checked.

Nice title screen, though. Good music.

[RickZarber]

Phil, I don't understand this. It's supposed to be looking for $RickZarber1.png, which totally is there, and is the format required for an individual 3x4 sprite sheet, so I don't know why it can't find it. I've got an Ubuntu boot disc somewhere around here, so I'm gonna see if I can't troubleshoot this.

Hawk, which version are you using?

I've tested the Windows version on two different computers and I haven't gotten any errors, so I'm kinda confused here.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Very cool! can't wait to see it finished, will have to try out the demo (windows version) later along with going back and reading through the old comic.

[phil_]

Well, to save a little time, I do have the $RickZarber image, so it's not like that got corrupted or something in extraction. Having not used the current version of RPG Maker, I don't know where whatever script that's trying to pull the wrong file is located (inside the executable? in /www somewhere?), so I can't offer more than "The file it should be pulling is totally there."

On a positive note, I read through the JAQ archive yesterday. Kyanbu, you should totally go read it.

[RickZarber]

I'm having trouble with my Ubuntu boot, I've tried making a bootable USB and a DVD and neither will boot. Freshly downloaded ISO file too, so I'm not sure what the issue is.

Apparently Linux exporting was only added to RPG Maker two weeks ago, so I'm not having much luck trying to troubleshoot online either.

Unrelated to that issue, I'd like to know if anyone's successfully been able to run the demo? It's extremely frustrating to have put so much work into this, hype it up, only to be immediately met with problems. I'm not equipped to deal with the problems of professional game devs.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Sorry yeah, should have said, it's the windows version. I was having no other problems until I tried to leave the house; sound and music were working, options menu was operational, everything in the house was interactive (nice touches there by the way).

I could attempt leaving before turning off the lights and the message box pops up telling me to go do that, but the moment I leave the screen, error message. Tried it 3 times, same result each time.

[RickZarber]

Hmmm. Can you show/write out the exact error message for me? What version of Windows are you using? Does anything change if you run the app as an administrator?

Also, for both of you, what happens if you double-click the index.html file (which should run the game in your default browser)? Does that work at all? Because I was able to run both the Windows and Linux versions via Firefox instead of their app containers. You do lose the ability to go full screen, but the game should run.

EDIT: I added an web browser-only version, so that's an option now too, but again that should also work in any of the OS versions.

[phil_]

Also, for both of you, what happens if you double-click the index.html file (which should run the game in your default browser)?

It opens in Firefox, and I get the same error looking for the same wrongly named file, but with a blurry title screen behind the error instead of blackness. So progress? Like, I feel like the "$" character got replaced with "%24" somehow. I'm going to try renaming the sprite sheets, see if that "fixes" it.

Edit: That didn't fix it. Same error as before, even though there's a %24RickZarber1.png there to find in /img/characters.

[RickZarber]

I looked it up and %24 is the URL-encoded character for $. So that's where that's coming from, and why replacing it didn't work.

If you were to delete what you've downloaded and try downloading the html-only version, does that work?

I really don't understand this, because I can open the Linux version via the index.html and it plays just fine for me...

[rpgdemon]

Don't put non-alphanumeric characters in your filepaths! Lowercase letters, underscore, numbers. You are safe with those - Anything else starts getting really funky.

[RickZarber]

But with RPG Maker, a $ before the filename is the way to indicate to it that a sprite sheet is 3x4 instead of the standard 12x8... Like, it's designed to work that way. Is it the OS that's having problems with that?

[phil_]

I'll try the html-only version, but it might be a few days. Work and other commitments.

[Krylo]

Went and downloaded the demo just to see if it'd work.

Works fine for me.

Also, I enjoy that my house is the only one with a cat. And my early 2000s (in the days when DB was around) personality isn't far off either.

Edit: Using the Windows version with Win 7.

[Gregness]

I didn't think there was much of the forum culture around here that predated me at this point, but I honestly have no idea what the fuck this is. Can anyone help me out?

[Flarecobra]

One of the best epics in Forum History, basically. Here's the comic. (http://parkercomics.com/npf/?p=7)

[RickZarber]

Krylo, thank you for taking the time to try it out! I'm very glad to know it at least worked for somebody.

Gregness, Just Another Quest was a comic I started in 2005 featuring people from NPF. It took me five years to finish, and in the seven years (??!?!?!?) since then, I've been working on various related projects (including a now long-overdue ebook collection). So yeah, now I'm using the story to create a game version of NPF from the 2005-10 era. Sort of. Mostly it's just an excuse for a lot of references to old shit.

[Flarecobra]

The "Turn on NPC names" gave an error for me, but when I left them off, it worked fine.

It was the browser version, on Windows 10, and ran on both Edge and Firefox.

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

I better be the super omg character! Otherwise I will give it a bad review*

*Said bad reviews usually consist of a less happier and positive review but ultimately given a 8.0 out of 10

[Krylo]

Krylo, thank you for taking the time to try it out! I'm very glad to know it at least worked for somebody.Well I support anyone getting into game development even if it is just on a RPGMaker level--and RPGMaker games can still be quite good, so I wanted to see if I could help narrow things down on what was wrong.

Hopefully knowing it works on my system helps narrow it down to 'the game isn't broken, but it doesn't work on specific builds' and now you can just needle Phil and Hawk about their systems and look for specific help on getting it to work with that. (Although apparently there is no help for Phil and his linux nonsense). Also: If you want more information on my system build you can ask. I don't know what would be helpful or not, particularly as it actually works for me, but if something would be I can provide.

Plus, my insatiable ego demanded to know if I was in the game and in what propensity.

(Also: For the final release, put in a sprint button or something. I forgot how painfully slow movement is in old jrpgs before FF6 made sprint shoes a thing. Maybe just straight up put in sprint shoes.)

The "Turn on NPC names" gave an error for me, but when I left them off, it worked fine.

Started the game up again and turned on NPC names to test this. Still worked for me with NPC names on. At least long enough to leave the house and bother Philbo.

Although I prefer it with them off.

[phil_]

(Also: For the final release, put in a sprint button or something. I forgot how painfully slow movement is in old jrpgs before FF6 made sprint shoes a thing. Maybe just straight up put in sprint shoes.)

Did'ja press Shift to dash?

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

TypeError
Undefined is not a function

Is the message I get when attempting to leave the house.

And opening up the index file immediately gets me;

Error
Failed to load: data/Actors.json

Could just be my old and shitty xp laptop that's the problem.

[RickZarber]

The "Turn on NPC names" gave an error for me, but when I left them off, it worked fine.Was this only from the main menu, starting a new game, or did it happen if you turned that option on in-game?

I better be the super omg character! Otherwise I will give it a bad review*You are not in the demo, but I fully intend to include you in the game. (In fact your sprite is there, just not actually utilized on a map you have access to in the demo.) The main reason a bunch of people don't show up at the beginning of the game is because they show up later in the comic wanting to join the quest, and if they were there for Rick to ask at the beginning, it wouldn't make sense. The only exception to this is PyrosNine, and we came up for another reason he couldn't join (turned it into part of a side-quest).

Plus, my insatiable ego demanded to know if I was in the game and in what propensity.

(Also: For the final release, put in a sprint button or something. I forgot how painfully slow movement is in old jrpgs before FF6 made sprint shoes a thing. Maybe just straight up put in sprint shoes.)Heheh, of course you'd be there! Can't have you involved too much, since you were a mod at the time and the story by necessity has to take place behind the mods' backs, but I want to include everyone as much as I can.

But again, I appreciate your help! I was starting to despair a little when all I was hearing was it wasn't working. I've been doing this as a hobby, so coming up against barriers I don't know how to surpass when trying to share the results has been frustrating.

And yeah, as Phil noted, you can totally run!

As for Phil and Hawk...
I don't even really know where to begin troubleshooting... It does seem that the games just don't want to work properly on some builds. I'll try to do some more internet research.

[Flarecobra]

From the main menu, Rick.

[RickZarber]

Sorry, I meant, only from that, or also if you turn it on in-game?

[mauve]

This is so awesome, Rick! There's so many details! I'm really impressed with this.

I had one glitch-- Rick froze when I tried to go behind the bar in the pub and I had to close the game and start over. Other than that, it ran perfectly on the Windows version for me.

[RickZarber]

Augh, that's so weird. He's supposed to just take a step backwards. I have no idea what could've crashed it there...

I'm glad the rest of it worked for you though!

[mauve]

Hmm... I was facing the wall with the bar directly behind me, so maybe it froze because the sprite couldn't actually move backwards.

[RickZarber]

Ah, okay, yeah I was able to reproduce the freeze, yeah. You must've had to be facing up and slide diagonally into position, and then, yeah, it tried to back up but couldn't. A downside of the plug-in that allows 8-directional movement. I should be able to fix this instance by telling him to step right instead of back, though.

[shiney]

http://parkercomics.com/npf/?p=311

Despite you being neither phil nor mike, please confirm this will not be the case.

[RickZarber]

Can confirm: this will not be the case. The cereal is in fact actually a diarrhetic.

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

Okay so I tried the demo and it is charming. So very charming. But I couldn't help but notice a few design quirks that bothered me. Mainly the doors that go left/right look incredibly odd. In my opinion I would view the door as looking from the top. make that about 1/4 the width of the door.

Also when I first knocked on Arhra's door and she came out there was for a brief second you could see her entire sprite. I tried to replicate it again, but it didn't work

Also, which sprite are you using for me My original gaudy red jacket sprite.. the Sabin based sprite or my v3?

[RickZarber]

Okay so I tried the demo and it is charming. So very charming. But I couldn't help but notice a few design quirks that bothered me. Mainly the doors that go left/right look incredibly odd.Yeah, I don't really like those either; they're a hold-over because Rick's house (my old apartment IRL) was actually built back in 2013 when I first got RPG Maker, unlike the rest of the game which stems from early 2016 onward. They don't show up anywhere else but that one map. I'd like to get rid of them altogether and only have up/down doors like the rest of the game, but I don't know how I'd re-do that map and make it look anything like what it's supposed to. I'm glad you liked the demo otherwise though!
Also when I first knocked on Arhra's door and she came out there was for a brief second you could see her entire sprite. I tried to replicate it again, but it didn't workThat just happens at random on rare occasions. S'far as I know, no way to prevent it.
Also, which sprite are you using for me My original gaudy red jacket sprite.. the Sabin based sprite or my v3?Pretty sure it's v3? I dunno, you can search the folder for the $Mac.png if you wanna see for yourself.

@ Hawk & Phil, were either of you able to download the HTML-only version and if so, did it have the same problems?

[phil_]

@ Hawk & Phil, were either of you able to download the HTML-only version and if so, did it have the same problems?Yes and yes. :crying:

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

Pretty sure it's v3? I dunno, you can search the folder for the $Mac.png if you wanna see for yourself.


The V2 aka Let's see how much physical abuse Mac can take.

Regarding the Arha sprite quirk, I honestly thought it fit his chaotic nature, Like a Sprite version of Zalgo or whatever that jumbled text is called

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Yes and yes. :crying:

Likewise. All I get on that one is a black screen immediately.

[BB]

Linux support for RPGM literally only landed a couple of weeks ago so it might be an unexpected engine thing, the RPGM forums are pretty active so it might be worth a quick browse over there to see if it's a common issue.

[phil_]

Am I on the wrong forum? Because I already searched what I assume to be the official forum (https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php) trying to find a fix. I found lots of tips on exporting to linux when that wasn't a supported option, but nothing since.

And come on, I'm a non-tech person running linux. Of course the first thing I did was search the web for someone asking the same question. Isn't that what you've done constantly since moving to free-as-in-freedom software?

[RickZarber]

Okay, so, since RPG Maker MV has updated several times since I started the project, it's possible the JAQ files were not completely compatible with the newest version. Maybe. So what I've done is create a new game with the updated files, then copy over my game assets to re-create the game, and deploy new demo versions out of that.

All links in this post (http://www.nuklearforums.com/showpost.php?p=1259915&postcount=11) have been updated to the new versions.

I can't guarantee this'll fix the problems, but it's my best guess for now.

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

BTW Rick, you do realize that this has given me the push forward to continue with my sprite comics. Damn you Rick.

[Flarecobra]

I'd call it a positive effect.

[Loyal]

Okay, so, since RPG Maker MV has updated several times since I started the project, it's possible the JAQ files were not completely compatible with the newest version. Maybe. So what I've done is create a new game with the updated files, then copy over my game assets to re-create the game, and deploy new demo versions out of that.A rule of thumb for any game-creation engine, from GMS to RPGmaker, seems to be that you should never, *ever* update it while you're in the middle of a project. I've heard stories of game designers losing everything because an update hosted a slew of irreconcilable compatibility issues.

[phil_]

Still doesn't work, same error. multiple ;_:

[RickZarber]

BTW Rick, you do realize that this has given me the push forward to continue with my sprite comics. Damn you Rick.
Really? 'Cause it just makes me think, Damn, I'm glad I'm never doing a sprite comic ever again.
A rule of thumb for any game-creation engine, from GMS to RPGmaker, seems to be that you should never, *ever* update it while you're in the middle of a project. I've heard stories of game designers losing everything because an update hosted a slew of irreconcilable compatibility issues.Well, I kept a back-up of my un-updated game, just in case. I've played through what I have though and I haven't found any incompatibilities thus far in the updated version.
Still doesn't work, same error. multiple ;_:ALL OF MY ARGHHHHHH. I'm so frustrated and bummed. You were, like, the person I was most excited to share this with...

[phil_]

I just tried unzipping it with a few different programs, just to check if that's where the error is being introduced. Didn't have any success. I'm going to try getting the Mac version, see if this little toaster is brave enough to play it.

---------- Post added 04-09-2017 at 11:14 AM ---------- Previous post was 04-08-2017 at 05:43 PM ----------

Mac version works. Runs a little slow, but so does Text Edit at this point so I'm pretty sure it's not your fault.

[RickZarber]

Ah, great! I'm glad you were finally able to see it at least!