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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Monster Profiles "Slime"


Name:
Slime
Family: Slime
Number: 1

As you would expect, Slime is the most basic of basic when it comes to the monsters in Monster Tamers. At least at first glance he is. Small, weak, and frankly unintimidating, Slime doesn't get much love from serious Monster Tamers. However, the small guy has some tricks up his sleeve that may keep you from just giving it to your little sister. If you can endure having a weakling in your party for long enough to get him to his highest level, you'll be rewarded with one of the most powerful moves in the game. It's up to you to decide if it's worth it or not.
  • Max Level - 40
  • Level Up Ease - B-10, C-20
  • HP Rank - 200
  • MP Rank- 270
  • STR Rank - 120
  • DEX Rank- 100
  • AGI Rank - 150
  • INT Rank- 90
Moveset:
  • LV 5: Gelly Glob
  • LV 10: Firebal
  • LV 15: Gel spell
  • LV 20: Buck Up
  • LV 25: Firebane
  • LV 35: Radiant
  • LV 40: MegaMagic

SPRG: Monster Tamers -Map Systems-

As stated in a previous post, the Dungeons will be divided into three parts: the Garden (as pictured) the Castle, and the Boss Room. The Garden will be maze focused as opposed to the puzzle oriented Castle. In order to facilitate you're trek to finding that portal, certian features are available to the player.

Guidance Arrow: (Only appears in "Garden")
This arrow points the player in the right direction towards the portal. Most useful when you want to speed through a dungeon. However, if you go the "right way" you will surely miss out on treasure, other Monster Tamers, and possibly side-quests.

Blue Screen Map: (Appears in "Garden" and "Castle")
The Blue Screen Map pretty much shows where you are in relation to the screen, and not the entire map. In it's basic form, it's quite useless. It'll show you where important characters or other things are on the map. However, you can upgrade it to the point where it shows invisible items, ghosts, and even hidden portals.

Overlay Map:
(Only appears in "Garden")
This on-screen map is incredibly useful when finding the right way to go. Because the Gardens are often filled with twists and turns, the overlay map, combined with he aide of the pointer arrow, can really make things easier. That is why you must find the dungeon map before you can use it, unlike the other two. Each dungeon has its own map, so you'll have to get used to finding them.



Friday, October 26, 2007

SPRG: Monster Tamers Customizable Room

Customization has always been a way to give the player more say in the game. That's one of the reasons why having the ability to choose and create whichever monster you please is an attractive feature of the game. On a smaller scale, the player will also be given the same freedom in deciding what his or her room will look like. You start off with this gray slab with limited allure and limitless potential. As you progress through the game, you can unlock trophies and other decorations for your room. Or, if you manage to make a surplus of money, you can spend it on special items found in a Decor Store.

Obviously, none of these things will affect the over all game, but that doesn't mean you won't find your fair share of secrets through decoration. Secret portals are unpredictable things, and sprucing up your place my land one in your midst... Rare recipes can also be found on parchments that happened to be hidden in a doll... In other words, there are some benefits to buying the decorations aside from aesthetics.

Gee, doesn't that look (slightly) better?

SPRG: Monster Tamers Dungeons


It seems like more and more that Dragon Quest Monsters is influencing my own game as I continue to work on this project. To put it simply, the guys at Square-Enix got it right. Of course, I have made enough of my own modifications to their formula to give SPRPG: MT enough of its own feel to be unique. That being said, I'd like to establish a post dedicated to how the Dungeons will be set up in this game.

  • There will be 3 types of Dungeons in this game: Boss, Secondary, and Extra
  • There are 2 parts to a Dungeon
  • Boss and Secondary Dungeons will have 2 parts most of the time, Extra will only have one
Dungeon Types
Boss Dungeons will primarily focus on developing the story. The name of this type comes from each of these having a "boss" or powerful monster at the end of it that must be defeated. All boss dungeons have bosses, but that does not meant Secondary or Extra ones do not. In order to beat the game, all boss dungeons must be finished. For the sake of the story, this is pretty much a given.
Secondary Dungeons are dungeons that correspond with a side quest. They are not important to completing the game and do not necessarily effect the story. However, some secondary dungeons will be used to continue a "branch" of the story that may no longer be important. In addition to involving side quests, secondary dungeons are a good way to find more monsters and monster recipes.

Extra Dungeons can also be called "Secret Dungeons." These dungeons are short, boss-less, and only have one part to them. They end with finding a rare treasure or recipe. Access to an extra dungeon is a reward in of itself. However, although there may be a pot of gold at the ends of these rainbows, getting there may not be a walk in the park. Some of the common monsters you find in random battles may be "boss level" in other dungeons. Although you may be at a point in the game to unlock an Extra Dungeon, it is not a guarantee that you will survive in it.


Dungeon Parts
Dungeons are taken in two parts: the Garden and the Castle. Mind you, these are figurative terms not literally. Not every dungeon is castle. It is important to know the differences in these two to better understand the game.

The Garden tends to be the easier of the two but not by much. The focus of the Garden part of a Dungeon is to find a portal to get to the Castle part. Dragon Quest Monsters fans will be familiar with this type of layout although it is not completely the same. This part is a compilation of a bunch of mini-maps with simple shapes. This results in a slight maze like experience because finding the portal may boil down to guessing the right path.

The Castle is the more traditional type of dungeon, complete with it's own fair share of obstacles to slow you down on the quest to face your doom with a boss. They will be pretty standard for RPG fans, but what makes them special is the focus on the Field Magic System. The Field Magic system is basically the eqivilent to using the tools in Zelda to solve a dungeon. However, Field Magic is not used in battle, limitless in uses, and leveled up through story progress. Basic Field Magic will open doors, push rocks, lift boulders, and blow up stuff. The more advanced kind do some pretty interesting tings as well. Golden Sun fans will find this system familiar.


Dungeon Features
  • Current Area Map
    • Toggle ON/OFF
    • 100% accurate placement of Hero and other events, updated to the game tick
    • Upgradeable through Add-Ons
      • Treasure Box Detector
      • Ghost Detector
      • Invisible Treasure Detector
  • Field Magic System
    • Interact with the dungeon to progress
    • Lift, Push, Pull, Explode and more to objects in your way.
    • Hold down "Shift" to utilize the magic quickly






Thursday, October 25, 2007

FSP Host up and quit... [UPDATE]

...leaving U Division, and consquently all of ICU Gigasoft, looking for a new host. During this transitional period things may be a bit rough. The only thing I'm positive about is that there will be chaos on this site come Nov. 1st when all files hosted on fsphost.com go offline. Hopefully, I can prevent bad things from happening by finding a new host. Hopefully.

[UPDATE] After about an afternoon of work, I was able to transfer the site to a new host. You can still access it by going to udivision.blogspot.com. However, udivision.3host.biz is also an option.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Super Pocket RPG: Game Update Log [#2]

As promised, this will be the log to log all updates, specifically and informatively. Whenever I update Monster Tamers, this post will be moved to the top of the page for easier access.

Update #2: 10/24/07
It's been too long, and I wish I had more to say. However, some big changes are happening with Monster Tamers. First of all, and probably most importantly, the current story will be removed. This may seem a bit odd to get rid of the story, but I think overall this will be better for the game. Instead of going for a story-driven game, I have opted out for a mechanic-driven game. As much as I would have liked to have made this a deep game, I don't see myself getting too far in game like that. For completion's sake, it's better that I stick with something simple. That new simple plot is yet to be decided on, but it shouldn't be too hard to think up.

This simplification of Monster Tamers also applies to dungeons. For those of you who have played the original Dragon Warrior Monsters, you'll know what I mean by "simple dungeons." Without pictures, this is a bit hard to explain. Basically, you get to the dungeon by going through a portal. All of the portals are found in the main castle, which is your HQ, and more portals are unlocked through story progression and secrets. This way you can focus more and amassing your horde of monsters both rare and powerful without being bogged down with story elements.

Update #1: 9/9/07
So far, we are looking at exactly 16 Monsters that are possible to make, and about 14 of those you can fight. Generally, the number of monsters you can make will be higher that those you actually fight. That is because of the "Monster Essence" system. In other words, I may never fight a SpotSlime but if I use extract essences from a Slime and an Antbear I can make one, providing I have the recipe.

I've also been fooling around the difficulty of the enemies. I've realized that once you get four monsters in your party (I was able to do so in about one hour of playing) the battle get rather easy. This is because the max number of monsters you can fight is 3, so when you have 3 monsters plus yourself, you have the speed advantage. I decided to combat this with simply raising the enemies hit points, in stead of fooling around with ATK and PDEF. Of course, I also adjusted the speed to make sure they get to attack before they die.

Game Reviews

Game Reviews

GameBoy Advanced

Golden Sun
[7.5/10] (10/23/06)

Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced
[8.8/10] (1/19/076) (by C Division)

Nintendo Gamecube

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year
Door
[9/10] (12/11/06)

Downloads

RPG Maker Related

Coming Soon... Go to Downloads.com to
get a free RPG Maker XP Trail!


WinMugen-- The famous fighting
game maker. This version allows it to run much better on Windows XP than
before.

Version -- FINAL

Mugen Character Maker (MCM)--
A very useful tool if you want to get into making characters as opposed to just
downloading other people's creations.
Version -- mcm20b-dev35

Links

Wave Bossa's Creations;


http://wavebossa.blogsopt.com

Information

Wave Bossa, AKA I Division, is a dedicated member of the ICU Gigasoft
team. Thanks to recent surge of interest in his incredible, but
controversial, Mugen Character K'oss, he has created his own development
blog and promises more news and updates. In order to learn more
about his creations and see videos of his characters in action, just
follow the links to his site.

U Division Info

Welcome to U Division's Official Website!


What is U Division?

U Division is a part of the ICU Gigasoft game-making team. We create
games based on the "RPG Maker 2003" and "RPG Maker XP" software from
Enterbrian. The software belongs to them, but it allows us to make
games for free.

Are U Division Games Free? Please tell me they are!!!

Repeat, ALL U DIVISION GAMES ARE FREE. This is more of a hobby if
anything, so we do not seek to make a profit out of it. That is a
double edged sword, because at the same time there is no money to provide
the extra "motivation" to complete a game.


Um... do you have any completed games?

Do not worry, we plan on completing our current projects for you to play, or
at least arrive at the state where we can produce demos of our product.


Hey, how do I play these games?

In order to play the RPG Maker 2003 games, you will need to install "RPG
Maker 2003" on your computer. Sites such as
"RPG RPG Revolution" offer this
program, you can order it online.


What about RPG Maker XP?

That's the beauty of XP, you don't need to install anything but the game!