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Post by Josh Devlin on Feb 20, 2021 17:54:13 GMT -6
"Nah, this seems normal; some areas just have ambience, like the sound of wind, to add immersion. You see this more in modern games, though," Josh explained. "Now this next fight I'm going to be relying on you to protect me while I sling magic at these things." He went into the submenu to change Kevin's battle behavior, focusing on protecting Angela so she could cast spells. The upcoming fight was notoriously difficult specifically on Angela's path; this next boss had a ranged attack that could nearly one-shot her, or actually one-shot her on a critical hit. While having magic was helpful, it wouldn't account for all the damage needed. The sudden victory fanfare once they stepped onto the bridge made Josh flinch. "Ummm...this needs to be fixed. It's acting like we just beat the boss. What in the world...? Wonder if we'll have any trouble going backwards through the Maw of the Earth from Forcena to get to Gnome. Hopefully we can afford Forcena's equipment..."HSAJRZobJae Tsukuda{WC: 167} {PC: 11}
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Post by Jae Tsukuda on Feb 22, 2021 9:32:15 GMT -6
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Post by RaikouRider on Feb 23, 2021 21:13:24 GMT -6
Jae Tsukuda Josh DevlinA random event has occurred!As soon as the two entered the Grassland Country, the two found the town to be strange-looking; all of the town's assets were on a completely black background. The townspeople, flowers, and even the country flag atop a flagpole were totally still. Furthermore, the music was stuck on the first note, and the controls weren't responding at all! Looks like the game spectacularly crashed. Hopefully their last save wasn't too far back, and this crash was avoidable. Otherwise they might have to come back to test a later build...!
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Post by Josh Devlin on Feb 23, 2021 21:22:34 GMT -6
Josh smiled and shook his head. "Surprised that it took this long for the first crash. It's probably because of what happened with the boss," he started to explain. "You see, to save on memory, instead of having multiple, similar-looking maps, developers had multiple states for the same map. Most of the time, the map state is based on whatever event took place last. My guess is the crash was because no map state was defined for the current event, because you would never get here with this state in normal gameplay." He continued to ramble related technical items about how retro games were programmed while resetting the console. "It would be nice if we had a memory viewer so we could find a way to avoid the crash," Josh mused aloud as he loaded the game back up. Their last save was before the bridge, where he expected there to be a boss. "Of course, that's probably well beyond our pay grade. Besides, the job of a tester isn't to figure out how to fix bugs; our job is just finding them." He moved Angela along the near side of the bridge this time rather than the far side; hopefully doing something different would alleviate the problem. sC0KY52RJae Tsukuda{WC: 208} {PC: 12}
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Post by Jae Tsukuda on Feb 27, 2021 10:26:40 GMT -6
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Post by RaikouRider on Feb 28, 2021 11:41:05 GMT -6
Josh Devlin Jae TsukudaA random event has occurred!While it was uncertain whether the different movement was the cause or just a placebo, (mostly) normal gameplay seemed to resume. The correct cutscene played this time, at the very least. Once the previously-skipped boss properly loaded, Hawk's tech gauge started the battle completely filled and wouldn't deplete! That would make things quite a bit easier...perhaps even a bit too easy. Might be worth reporting!
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Post by Josh Devlin on Feb 28, 2021 11:58:32 GMT -6
Josh frowned and apologized; it seems his explanation fried Jae's brain. "Guess I went into a bit too much detail. You see, when you've bad enough experience in contracts like this, you'll not only understand how to bug hunt, but you'll learn about how games are coded, too. Especially ones where hardware limitations are a very real concern."Angela was not a very good character for the upcoming boss fight with the two Machine Golems; Josh manually controlled Kevin briefly to put Angela between the two of them before switching back to his main character. "This will only work if you and Kevin can hold the line," he told Jae as Angela began casting her first of many Holy Ball spells. Mana wouldn't be an issue; the main concern would be keeping the entire party standing. Those swinging arms did a lot of damage to squishier characters, and it was very easy to get surrounded on the bridge. Once Kevin and Angela had significantly weakened one of them, it pointed its fists directly across the bridge and launched them toward the party, dealing heavy damage to Kevin and knocking Angela out completely on the return! Control of Kevin was automatically allocated to Josh, the front-line fighter immediately stopping to quaff a potion. "The other one should do that at some point, too...gotta be more prepared!"--- Jae Tsukuda9CiFhkZJ{WC: 226} {PC: 13}
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Post by Jae Tsukuda on Mar 4, 2021 11:04:17 GMT -6
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Post by RaikouRider on Mar 4, 2021 22:41:40 GMT -6
Josh Devlin Jae Tsukuda A random event has occurred!Once the battle was over, the two Machine Golems rolled toward the ends of the bridges, then exploded, taking the bridge out with them! The two fell a long ways with an accompanying whistling noise that sounded like it came out of a cartoon. The screen faded to black, and all the players could hear was a loud crashing noise. When the screen faded in again, they were surrounded by dwarves that appeared to be concerned for Angela, Hawk, and Kevin. The three had reached the Dwarven Village, a place where the party could restock on items and upgrade their weapons and armor. They would need it, too; the villagers made their next objective clear. The blacksmith, Amp, was trapped in a cave-in after losing one of his barrels of gunpowder in a large explosion. There was a nasty monster called the Jewel Eater down there. Hey, wasn't someone looking for gunpowder back in the City of Maya? In the meantime, Hawk's tech gauge still wasn't fixed! Perhaps this would take more than a cutscene to fix...
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Post by Josh Devlin on Mar 4, 2021 22:50:41 GMT -6
Josh was impressed that Jae was able to take one of them down so quickly, enough that he was able to finish off the other one with a barrage of magic. "Okay, this is normal. This is what's supposed to happen. So we gotta go down to the tunnels below and rescue this guy, I forget what his name is, then he gives us gunpowder, which is needed to open up Cannon Travel." He couldn't help but chuckle. "Cannon Travel...only in Kanto. I dunno who comes up with this stuff."As the two went shopping, Josh noticed money was an issue. Again. They had enough money to upgrade only two of their three characters to the latest set of armor, and the added defense value made such a big difference in the early game. " We might have to grind another level or two down there. The boss guarding the Gnome Spirit is pretty tough. The thing is, who should we short?"--- YxIIPPEQJae Tsukuda{WC: 162} {PC: 14}
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Post by Jae Tsukuda on Mar 6, 2021 3:28:11 GMT -6
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Post by RaikouRider on Mar 9, 2021 20:49:50 GMT -6
Jae Tsukuda Josh DevlinNothing happened!All rolls were failed.It seemed like staying at the Dwarves' Inn, followed by a save-and-reset, fixed the problem with the tech gauge. The two were free to continue into the depths of the Cleft of the Earth, whether it be for a quick grind to get their equipment up to date or to head straight for the boss ahead.
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Post by Josh Devlin on Mar 9, 2021 21:58:47 GMT -6
"Sounds good," Josh agreed with Jae's plan. "Just be careful. Fall back if your health runs low and let Kevin take care of the mobs." He checked the party's supply of healing items; with only one Angel's Grail remaining, the two didn't have a lot of wiggle room in case something went awry. "I wouldn't be opposed to spending some time just farming mobs for a little bit if you're uncomfortable pressing on. It will give us time to clean the caves out of other treasure, too. Maybe we'll be able to restock that way."Feeling the pressure of keeping a frail spellcaster alive in an area with new enemies, Josh temporarily switched his primary character to Kevin and switched Angela's AI to remain as distant as possible from enemies, and disabled automatic spellcasting. While this would make her useless as a fighter, it would save her limited supply of magic in case the two got in trouble from going too deep while still preparing for the final push later on. Jae TsukudaovuPqkCv{WC: 171} {PC: 15}
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Post by Jae Tsukuda on Mar 12, 2021 23:37:39 GMT -6
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Post by RaikouRider on Mar 16, 2021 16:07:54 GMT -6
Josh Devlin Jae Tsukuda A random event has occurred!As Angela, Hawk, and Kevin continued deeper into the Cleft of the Earth, even beneath the Dwarves' village, the music was stuck on the happy-sounding town theme. Furthermore, no enemy mobs were appearing at all! Without the extra experience from the stronger enemies, the boss before acquiring Gnome, the Earth Spirit, was going to be quite a bit harder than the developers intended. Would they return to a previous area to gain levels, or would they keep going?
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