Fidel & The Maker's Trial 1.3.5 + Progress on the Sequel!

Greetings everyone!

I thought I might grab your attention with the cover art for my upcoming sequel to this under-played game. That's right, Fidel & The Pauper's Paradox is still coming along quite well and I am excited to tell you all about what to look forward within the game, but first: I just updated Fidel & The Maker's Trial! So let's go over what this update covers:

• Fixed a file error caused by a number of factors: the encryption I employed in my previous update didn't play nicely with a few files that decided to be named "x.OGG" instead of "x.ogg". (in other words, the problem was case-sensitivity with the file extensions.) It's the fact it took this many months for someone to bring this to my attention that I know not many people played this game 😜
• The previous files have had their names fixed, however, along side that I have removed the previously employed encryption.
• I have changed the way the heal spell calculates the amount healed. Previously it was: 2 + (users) level, with an additional spell effect of healing 40% of the max HP. This resulted in the displayed pop-up number to be incorrect, despite the healing actually working correctly. I have now removed the extra spell effect and added the 40% healing into the recovery formula, so now it looks like this: 2 + user's level + (user's max HP * 0.4), the result should be the same amount of healing but the pop-up number also matches the amount healed.
• I added a tutorial message just before the first save point. This is mostly for players whom mistakenly assume there might be an autosave system in my game. This message will hopefully inform them that such a system does not exist in my game, so they should be mindful of their saving.
• Speaking of tutorials, I have completely changed the jumping behavior in the game. Previously, jumping would happen automatically at designated locations. The "automatic" part was mostly because I didn't know what I was doing in RPG Maker. Obviously I have way more experience now, and as a result I have adjusted the jump mechanic accordingly. Now players will need to face the correct direction and press the ACTION key (which is E, SPACE, or ENTER) in order to jump. To be clear: jumping still requires the player to be at the correct designated area in order to jump, but now it doesn't happen automatically, therefore adding a bit of extra interactivity with the game.
• The result of this change necessitated a new tutorial message to pop up just before the first jump so that players understand how the jump mechanic works.
• I implemented SRD's Master Volume plugin so that the initial volume of the game won't be ear-bustingly loud (it's still pretty loud because for some reason the RPG Maker engine is just...loud. But now the game launches at 60% volume)
• I have adjusted the end credits accordingly, now properly crediting all plugins used, as well as copyrights for the engine itself.
• Fixed an exploit that allowed users to skip the scripted fight just after the monster hall in level 2.
• Finally, not directly related to the game: I have updated the store page to better reflect the the updated version of the game. Screen shots are now taken from the 1.3.5 build.

Let's move on:

Fidel & The Pauper's Paradox

The cover art for Fidel & The Pauper's paradox was provided by the very sweet and kind Somon-san (そもんさん) Here are her links:

https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/53110226

https://twitter.com/feerie__

She's working with me to create some unique CG art to bring the characters alive in Fidel & The Pauper's Paradox, and I really couldn't ask for a better artist!

So what are the core features of Fidel & The Pauper's Paradox?

In my previous update + devlog I posted for the 1.3 release of Fidel & The Maker's Trial, I briefly discussed the outline for the sequel. Most of the outline has remained the same (though the name, as some might note, has had a change)

The Story (in brief)

Fidel & The Pauper's Paradox features a light-hearted story about memories and what the source of our happiness is.

The Levels You'll Explore

The game will feature 3 core levels. Each individual level is slightly longer in length than the total of Fidel & The Maker's Trial, features unique puzzles distinct to each level, along with an appropriate gadget or ability that you can acquire in each level to help you progress further and unlock new secrets.

Each of the 3 levels can be approached in any order you choose, offering replay-ability as certain events may change depending the order you complete the levels, or better yet...

Alternatively, you can rush straight into the final boss, and likely die, but nothing is stopping you from being headstrong (and stupid) without completing a single level. Ignore my whole game and try to beat it in under 10 minutes!

A Town of Sad, Lonely People...

While your goal might be to kill all the bad guys and the final boss, Fidel's only desire is to make sure the people of Crossroad Commune can feel happy once more. It's your choice, controller, whether you want to make the people happy or to ignore them for your mission. Of course, making them happy will certainly liven up the town and with it, perhaps the shy lonely townsfolk will begin to show their face again.

Music & Sound

One thing we should all be certain about is that I would utilize my decades experience as a musician to bring the world to life. As of the time of writing, the soundtrack features 20 original songs (and more to come) and 150 sounds designed by myself (and of course, more to come). Those whom are avid RPG Maker game players won't be hearing RTP sounds here. But what's even better are the secrets galore: Test my game's logic and puzzles and you might just be rewarded a hidden bonus song. What's the purpose of these bonus tracks besides just having even more good tunes to listen to? Well - this is subject to change - the plan is to allow players to download a bonus album only when they have found and unlocked all the hidden songs. Play my game, get free stuff.

Finally, my favorite special feature of my game:

Game Rules

This is one of my favorite features to program for Fidel & The Pauper's Paradox. Game Rules is an options menu feature where the user is able to adjust many different aspects of the game, from the EXP rate of both Fidel and the town, to adjusting difficulty and where and when the player can save. What is shown is only a small part of what I would like to implement. I am currently working on implementing a "Randomizer" function built into Game Rules which will allow the user to turn on a randomizer that will completely shuffle the chests and rewards. The idea behind Game Rules was for it to be used like skirmish based games such as RTS games and 4x games like Sid Meyer's Civilization franchise, or Starcraft custom games. Fidel & The Pauper's Paradox will be relatively short in length for a "full game". It's tough to say exactly how long it will take to beat since it's not finished, but a rough estimate is about 5 hours. The purpose of Game Rules allows players whom have already beat the game to change the rules of the game and experience the game with altered difficulty, either easier, harder, or just weird thanks to the randomizer.

I hope you are as excited for the sequel as I am. I cannot promise release dates at this time. Once again a rough estimate is the end of Winter or early Spring, but that is absolutely subject to change. If you want to see the progress of my game and some of the features I have implemented, I stream every weekend and you can catch my dev streams either live or in the archive to check the progress. Here is my Youtube channel where I stream (and the stream archives are posted)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtjh_cDxm2GJIHFEOfOKzYg

That's all I would like to report on for now! To the few of you out there who have tolerated and withstood Fidel & The Maker's Trial, I hope you enjoy the update and are looking forward to the sequel. To those that just discovered my game: I promise the sequel is like...100x more polished and better.