itch.io

Thanks for the in-depth feedback!
You're right, reusing texts in that scenario kinda ruins it, it's really something that needs a lot more writing to hide the cracks. I originally planned to use this mindbreak system to replace the original questioning mechanic (to make it less boring than just asking question after question), so I would try to use it a lot, probably once per person, with a big boss at the end of the chapter. Collecting keywords in the field is a great idea, I also want to have items/evidence in there for Joe to present, maybe they can fill that role. I hadn't checked out Cyberpunk and  the Arkham series yet, but it sounds like I should take a look at the brain dance and detective mode sequences respectively. Thanks for the tip!
Regarding the last stand,  you're right, that was not the super cool climax it was supposed it to be. The whole elemental thing does not lend itself to a detective game, I think I will drop that going forward and replace it with something more fitting and cooler. Or maybe as an additional touch like you mentioned, but as the main focus it's just confusing (and not fun). I should also make it clearer that the boss is saying the text, that was a clear oversight from me in retrospect.
Again, thanks a lot for taking the time to test it and writing the in-depth comment! Lots of great ideas and suggestions in there in there, I took a lot from it!

It is unfortunately unlikely for me to try something like that, as I always try to make sure the Dolmexica mods I make also run on the Dreamcast. And in my experience, anything from 3D games and from after the Dreamcast's lifespan does not fit in the Dreamcast's limited memory. 

I am still fixing Dolmexica so it works with the Street Fighter VS Tekken mod, and the characters there seem to fit into Vita memory at first glance. Maybe someone has already made Street Fighter IV / Tekken mods for Mugen? If those don't work with Dolmexica, I would also take a look at those, but I wouldn't proactively make new ones.

The problem is that even the characters are broken in various ways, which makes even making a game using only the characters for Vita a bit of a challenge. I'll try getting the characters fixed with Dolmexica first and let you know when I have something that works on Vita.

I took a look at all the things going wrong with Street Fighter vs Tekken on Dolmexica and it's unfortunately quite a lot.

• Not relevant for the vita version, but it already fails loading the truetype fonts. For the vita version though, that will mean that those fonts will not show up since truetype fonts are not supported on there. Will be fixed for other platforms though.
• Then there's the issue that a lot of paths have \ instead of / in them, which Dolmexica does not handle gracefully, that also has to be fixed.
• There seems to be a difference in how Mugen and Dolmexica handle fight/system fonts. Dolmexica completely unloads the system fonts before loading the fight fonts, leading to the fights in Street Fighter vs Tekken missing font1 (in data/RenegadeLifebar/FightWithoutPorts.def). That will also have to be adapted to avoid a crash when loading fights.
• Characters themselves sometimes crash on Dolmexica due to various reasons. Balrog_mx has an unclosed group header that doesn't seem to be handled gracefully and causes issue. Similarly CvS_OgreTAG just crashes.
• Other characters have smaller issues, Blankaw's hitboxes don't work (probably a localcoord issue) and some characters like Kratos2 don't have any input in Dolmexica.
• There's also some characters that work, even when fighting against themselves, such as Cammy.
• There are issues in the appearance of both menus and stages. There seems to be something going wrong with the localcoord of the stages in Dolmexica. This should technically work, probably a bug there somewhere.

From what I see it's not one thing that affects all characters, but rather a range of different issues affecting different characters, unfortunately. I'll continue taking a look at and fixing the issues, I just wanted to give a first overview over the things that are going wrong as this might take a while to fix. 

I'll take a look, thanks! Will let you know when I find out what's causing the issues.

Yes, if it  works with Mugen it should also work with Dolmexica. But there might be bugs in Dolmexica causing crashes/different behavior from Mugen etc.  So if you have a link to the premade Mugen game I would be interested in taking a look. Thanks!

> it just includes one character then it just generate a small file not including all the assets.

So if you only add one character it doesn't create a proper VPK? Haven't encountered that before and can't reproduce this here, but it could be a bug that happens with certain characters, do you have a mugenarchive link for a character it happens with?

I see, then it really seems like it happens when trying to load a stage that doesn't exist. That would explain why it works vs Kung-Fu Man, as his stage, kfm.def, should be included.

Could I see your data/select.def ? There might be something there that causes a wrong stage to load.  And  a link to one of the characters you use would be helpful, just to make sure it's not also anything else going wrong. Thanks a lot!

Looks like it cannot find a stage based on that error message. Did you try adding a select.def that also contains stages? Or is a stage file referenced somewhere inside the character? Not something I've seen before, but I also could not rule it out.
Do you have a link to the character, on mugenarchive or somewhere? If I'm able to reproduce the crash, it should be easy to figure out what's going wrong. In the meanwhile I'll doublecheck how Mugen behaves when it cannot find a stage, I think Dolmexica just showing that error screen is a bit imperfect, that's something that can be improved in the next version either way.

Regarding how many characters are supported, there is no fixed upper limit. The only time the character count comes into play is when loading the character select screen, and it would probably be pretty hard to max out the Vita memory with just the portrait images. Loading might take a while though, I assume the point where loading is just too annoying is reached earlier than any memory concerns. The highest character count I have tried is roughly 100 characters, but there I got around that loading annoyance by just not including the portrait images on the select screen. But yeah, long story short, not really a limit that should cause crashes there. 

If it crashes it might again be some file it can't find, or a problem with file names it can't parse, that's what often causes issues there. If you know what characters or stages cause issue, I'd be interested in checking them out just to see what might be causing crashes there.

Thanks a lot for letting me know about these issues! 

Hi, thanks for trying it out!

There are two things that I can imagine going wrong. Maybe it's somehow breaking based on the path you are running the executable in. Is there maybe something like Unicode in there? It should be able to handle whitespaces, but I haven't tested with much else, so if it just doesn't show up, that could be one thing to try, running it from a folder without special characters.

Another thing could be that the executables aren't working on your machine (the ones packaging the game in /vita/external/vita-sdk/). I got a report by someone that they weren't working for him in 1.4, so I replaced them in 1.5, maybe that could be causing issues? Does the 1.4 version work for you? (From here, there's a Dolmexica Infinite Version 1 4 Make-your-own-game kit for Vita download, it's the third one, their names seem to be cut off: https://captaindreamcast.itch.io/dolmexica-infinite-archive) That way I could at least rule out that it's the changes to the packaging that broke anything. Of course it could also be related to them not working on your machine in either 1.4 or 1.5. Is there an error message when you just click on \vita\external\vita-sdk\vita-mksfoex.exe and vita-pack-vpk.exe? Something like "Can't run on this architecture"? I would assume it also pops up when trying to run it from the script, but just to be sure.

Final question would be if it only happens when you try packaging after adding your custom character. Does it also not show up if you just try to package it with the asset folder that comes when you download Dolmexica? If it's that, it might again be some strange filename interfering with the packaging process.

If it's not any of that, my final suggestion would be to open the script (make_vita.bat) and try running the steps of the VPK creation in that script step-by-step on the windows terminal, to check if there are errors popping up there. Although I think if you already tried running the script, it would look similar to how it looked there. 

Those are the things I can imagine could still be causing issues, please let me know if none of them work out, I'll also let you know if I come up with anything else. Thanks!

Thanks a lot!

Answers to questions that often pop up. Will extend this as stuff comes in, right now it seems most questions are centered around how to actually get it running on consoles / in browsers. Please let me know if anything is still unclear or doesn't work. Thanks!

Running on Windows:

Extract the download and open Dolmexica Infinite for Windows.exe.

Modding the game:

Extract the Dolmexica Infinite download. Change the files in the assets folder as you would with regular M.U.G.E.N to add characters and stages (documentation is here: https://www.elecbyte.com/mugendocs-11b1/mugen.html). Differences between Dolmexica and M.U.G.E.N are documented here: https://captaindreamcast.github.io/DolmexicaInfinite/differences.html

Creating a .CDI disc image for the Dreamcast:

Extract the Dolmexica Infinite download. Modify the assets folder to include the characters/stages you want. Open "Dolmexica Infinite Make-your-own-game kit for Dreamcast.exe" and follow the instructions to generate the .cdi file. A more in-depth explanation is here: https://captaindreamcast.github.io/DolmexicaInfinite/makeyourowngamedreamcast.ht...

Burn the .cdi file to a CD-R using Padus Discjuggler 6.0 (https://www.afterdawn.com/software/cd_dvd/burning/padus_disc_juggler.cfm).  CD-RWs will not work. Burn at slow speeds, if possible. Put the CD-R in your Dreamcast. If it shows -Dolmexica Infinite 1.5 executable- during the Sega logo screen, you did everything correctly.

Creating a .vpk package for installation on a jailbroken Vita:

Extract the Dolmexica Infinite download. Modify the assets folder to include the characters/stages you want. Open "Dolmexica Infinite Make-your-own-game kit for Vita.exe" and follow the instructions to generate the .vpk file. A more in-depth explanation is here: https://captaindreamcast.github.io/DolmexicaInfinite/makeyourowngamevita.html

Transfer the .vpk to a Vita  and install it from VitaShell. For info on how to jailbreak your Vita, refer to the information in this guide. In addition to that, libshacccg.suprx (a Vita shader compiler needed by vitaGL) needs to be extracted on your Vita. For information on how to extract libshacccg.suprx, please follow the information provided in this guide. The Vita emulator Vita3K is not supported currently.

Creating a .zip archive for upload on sites hosting HTML5 games:

Extract the Dolmexica Infinite download. Modify the assets folder to include the characters/stages you want. Open "Dolmexica Infinite Make-your-own-game kit for Web.exe" and follow the instructions to generate the .zip file. A more in-depth explanation is here: https://captaindreamcast.github.io/DolmexicaInfinite/makeyourowngameweb.html

The batch file will output a zipped folder you can directly upload to itch.io, newgrounds, or similar sites.

If you find something not working, please post it here!

Everything that's not mentioned here (https://captaindreamcast.github.io/DolmexicaInfinite/differences.html) can be considered a bug, so don't hesitate to post about it.

The more details you post, the easier it would be to fix (e.g. which platform, which character, which stage, etc), that would help a lot! Thanks in advance if you take the time to write it down!

Full documentation is here: https://captaindreamcast.github.io/DolmexicaInfinite/makeyourowngameweb.html
The short version is that you need to download the Make-your-own-game-kit for Web, adjust the assets folder in there to contain the Mugen/Dolmexica files the web version is meant to have, and then run the Dolmexica Infinite Make-your-own-game kit for Web.exe. With that you can create a zip file you can upload to sites like itch.io or newgrounds (those are the two sites where I have uploaded Dolmexica web builds before and they worked, newgrounds has been a while ago though). 

Workflow-wise I would suggest testing the asset folder with the Windows version first to make sure the characters and stages work. You cannot run the web version to test locally (at least not very easily, you would need an Emscripten setup). To test your web build I suggest creating a private itch game page and uploading the game there (that's how I usually test my web builds before uploading them publicly). Please let me know if something doesn't work, and thanks for trying it out!

It's mostly aiming to be compatible with Winmugen. I did add compatibility to higher res characters at some point (for example the hi-res Kung Fu Man that comes with later Mugen versions), but they are a lot less tested, and unfortunately often break the memory limit of the Dreamcast (which is also why I put less focus on them). 

Only with some hacky workaround from what I can see.

I got it working by copypasting a Dolmexica for Windows executable into the assets folder of the Make-your-own-game kit (on the same level as the chars, data, font, etc folders) and selecting that as the Mugen Executable for VSelect to use. Seems like VSelect cares mostly about the relative folder structure, so editing the select.def like that works. I tried the, at the time of writing, latest version from the author, 1.3.10.4.

That's unexpected, hmm, it doesn't really depend on any runtimes, unless it was compiled wrong. I've recompiled it now under 32 bit, while making sure there's no special dependencies, does this version of the executable work for you? 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T6fk8ErxfBQhJR4Gcrlk6Jl03o3Oe5gM/view?usp=shari...

The Vita version? That does not look like a vita error, and if it is, it's not one I'm familiar with unfortunately.

If it's on Windows, the error seems to either signify that you are trying to run a 64-bit program on a 32-bit machine (which sounds unlikely), or because a .NET framework runtime is missing. Dolmexica itself does not use .NET, but the Make-your-own-game-kit GUI programs use it, does the error happen when you try to open those? 

If it is in fact the Make-Your-Own-Game-Kit gui program, there are two ways to avoid it. One would be to use the command-line batch file that comes with the program instead, you would call it like this:

make_vita.bat "[Name]" [Title ID (has to be 9 characters)] [version]

so for example:

make_vita.bat "Dolmexica Infinite" DOLM00001 01.00

The second way around it would be to install the .NET runtime for that program, which is provided here by Microsoft: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet-framework/net461

4.6.1. is a bit outdated, as the big red warning text saying "this is outdated" says, I will try to upgrade it for the next version. Maybe that's what's causing the issue.

Thanks for letting me know about the issue! Hope this helps, please let me know if you get the error from a different executable/version or if it's still not working and I'll try to find an idea how to fix it!

Thanks for checking it out and letting me know about the slow performance! Could you also let me know which version you tried? Dreamcast still runs somewhat poorly, that's unfortunately expected. Other than that, the Web version has been having issues under recent Firefox versions. For some reason they don't like how the game is (supposed to be) running at fixed 60 fps anymore, throttling it a lot and leading to poor performance. Still don't have a fix for that unfortunately, best I can do right now is to recommend trying it with another browser if possible. 

Hi!

Regarding how to run Dolmexica on the Vita:

The first thing you need to do if you haven't already is to jailbreak your vita so you can install homebrew on it. Personally I've followed this guide here: https://vita.hacks.guide/ . Afterwards you need to transfer the vpk you downloaded to the Vita. Personally I use VitaShell on the Vita to open a ftp server and then use filezilla on my windows PC with the IP provided by VitaShell to transfer over the .vpk file and then install it from VitaShell. After installing, Dolmexica Infinite should be selectable as a game from the Vita home menu.

Regarding how to add characters:

For that you have to download the "Make-your-own-game kit for Vita" above. The full documentation is here: https://captaindreamcast.github.io/DolmexicaInfinite/makeyourowngamevita.html , but the short version is that there is an assets folder in there, where you will find the Dolmexica/Mugen files, that's where characters are added. Adding characters works like it would with Mugen.  For the full info, I would refer to the Mugen documentation here: https://www.elecbyte.com/mugendocs-11b1/mugen.html . But the short version is that you add the character files to the chars folder, then edit the data/select.def file to add that character to the character select menu. Then it should show up. 

So once your assets folder is in order, you can run "Dolmexica Infinite Make-your-own-game kit for Vita.exe" to set the game name and Title ID, and then after running it should output a .vpk that you can transfer to the Vita like you would with the standard Dolmexica version.

Hope it works! Please let me know if you encounter any issues. Thanks for trying it out!

Thank you very much!

Yeah, I think that was the old football stuff conversation at the helmet where I took the aboot reference from. Looking forward to the world map, the world building throughout the acts is a great point too, I hadn't touched upon that yet. We got glimpses from the more cybernetic world in the form of for example the android doctor in the previous acts, but act 3 really paid it off by showing what life is like in the big city. I think that is also a great draw for your game, it makes you want to see more of that interesting world.

Regarding Dream Team, I think you tried both versions that include the characters, the Gamescom one and the prison one (thanks again for that!). I think I might have written in one of the descriptions that I based the characters on the characters from my Ludum Dare game "Inside", it might be that (but it's just very loosely the apathetic main character, incompetent bossy sidekick dynamic).

Finished Act 3, still great stuff!

Found two places at the motel where I could leave the path:

Balancing still felt very fair (did the level 17 run), only the wolf boss was a bit of a  longer roadblock. All of the encounters made me feel like I could beat them as long as I use a proper strategy (working with status buffs/debuffs with the party, sword of damocles strats with Firestarter Sarah).

Music is still absolutely gorgeus. Liked the remixes and interpretations of music from previous acts, for example the fleshrite remixes during the bloodrites backstory explanation part. Everything is still super stylish, I especially adored the Firestarter vs. intros for young adult Sarah and her enemies, those were a nice touch.

Writing was still great too. For reference, I always forced Sarah to go to work and take the Mariner classes so Joergen can return. Still masterful at setting a mood. Also still enjoyed the jokes sprinkled in, my favorite one in act 3 was the blocking box in the motel, that blocking box company is truly a menace. And of course, after two acts of dark tormentuous psychological scenarios, you go even further and introduce not only Canada, but also a Canadian. I'm man enough to admit I flinched a little when he said aboot.

Every other praise I mentioned in my acts 1/2 feedback still hold up, this is a very unique game with a very distinct voice, I think you have a great thing going here!

After reading your reply below I just noticed I could also have confused the Boss and have her attack herself

I'm still playing, but I just wanted to already post that I got the crash below on 1.4, it happened after someone attacked, unfortunately I don't really remember who, I remember the animation playing when Billy attacks, but that's unlikely as I was using Ponder All with Billy that round. 

.

Heck yeah, super fun to beat up all the enemies! When you get a combo going it feels super satisfying. Best moment for me was when the boss was trying to skateboard away but I caught him with a jump kick and then pummeled him with a nice combo. Those are the moments.

Also love the sound design of your game! All the background music is great and fits perfectly, plus listening to where the running enemy that jump kicks you comes from added a lot to the gameplay I think, I feel that is an interesting mechanic that I haven't seen used much in beat-em ups. 

All around super cool, great work!

The web version? I have this with Chrome on some machines, unfortunately I can't pin down where it's coming from, the best recommendation I can give is to try another browser or the Windows version.

My current plan is:

Dolmexica 1.3 on November 3rd - No Dream Fight or story, but I want to test some vita and other changes first before releasing Dream Fight 21

Dream Fight 21 A.D. on November 11th

Dream Fight 22 A.D. on December 31st/January 1st

Might be a week later in case something terrifically goes wrong, but right now it looks like it will work out, I'll reply here again and let you know if something changes.

Thanks again for the nice comments!

Thank you very much for the nice comment! Amazing, I did not think someone would play through most of  the mods and then even replay them! I'm glad you thought they were fun! Thanks a lot for trying them out!

 It was always fun making them, but at the time I had run out of ideas and Dolmexica (the engine itself) was getting to a somewhat 1.0-ish state, so I thought I would wrap it up for the time being. The original plan was to have another Dream Fight game a year, but due to some irl troubles that did not work out the past two years. I want to have three DFs this year to be back on track:

20 A.D., which has nothing much (except the Vita port I think). I did that to have something that I can share more easily than DF19, but looking back, I don't think it matters all that much, I don't think I'll do another storyless mod again (that's the part that's most fun to make after all).

21.A.D., which I'm working on right now, and which has a story again, but it's closer in scope to the original smaller mods

22 A.D., I'm trying to do something with OC characters there, as a bit of an experiment (pretty sure that's going to go terribly, so I'll go back to "borrowing" characters from other fighters after that again)

Cool to hear you've also been trying your hand at writing things, let me know if you have something to share there, would of course be super interested to see that! I think that's kind of the nice things of moddable engines like Mugen that they give you something to jump in and get creative.

Again, glad to hear you liked the games! And thank you very much for taking the time to write a comment (even creating a new account!), that means a lot to me.

Just finished Act 2. I really loved everything about this.

First I wanted to start off with the bugs I have encountered, which was the bug at the name menu when not entering it with the keyboard (I used a controller) and the bug in the hunting tower, but as I can see now in the comments, I still had the older version that did not have the fixes for that. Also interesting that there's more info on hatred/love now, I was wondering about those values during my playthrough (but saving all the bunnies  kept the love train going, I made it through lovingly). Also funnily enough I always assumed the infinite ladders were a feature not a bug.

The story is the biggest draw for me, it immediately hooks you with the mystery of the black-haired woman, and then seamlessly transitions into telling the story of the Sweich family drama. Beat-for-beat there's memorable scenes playing out, I think the first one that really made me go "whoa" was the border war scene, that was wild. And yeah, it kept moving forward ever-stronger after that, you wrote that it's going to get even crazier from act 3 forward, but I also already enjoyed the jump from act 1, which, while sad, was relatively normal-esque to act 2, where things got more weird and curious. Like dang, when that king of hatred card got introduced with just the right foreshadowing making you go "... Wait, 'Arthur'?", that was so great, how he was introduced in the story after that. Love it. Looking forward to act 3 and what you'll have in there next demo.

Art-wise, it all looks very stylish. I think the character sprites for the family work well, like you immediately get a good read on their base personalities, while they retain their family features (eyes and eyebrows predominantly) that show they're related. The  effects, color distortion, VCR effects, those all look amazing. A huge fan of the cutscenes too, I loved how the ones up until Act 2 came back in the cave below the lake. The monster designs are another strong point, between the more ethereal monsters that attack the psyche and the more, well, literal meat-grindy monsters that get more physical, I am a huge fan of their design. Boss monsters were sick (the good sick), like damn, they also had that emotional impact aside from their stellar art, they were both as story beats, and gameplay the climax points. I think there was also a good flow in the demo, only time I got somewhat seriously stuck was with the Sarah Rebellion fight, which I THINK had something going on that she only attacks you with the multi-shot when you strike her? She sometimes did it anyway, so I'm not 100% sure if that's really the case, but letting her burn herself with the sword of Damocles did it for me, so I will not question if my wishful thinking willed magic RNG into existence. Was a tense fight either way, again, also due to the emotional impact at the time.

Music was another high point, when I saw that "Music by horbror" at the end I thought, you're absolutely right to make that its dedicated extra credit, those are some of the catchiest tunes I've heard in any demo day game ever. That "Eat the flesh, drink the blood" verse from the fleshrites fight music has been living rent free in my mind for the past month (I've been playing Dreams of Joy Departed on and off over the past month, this is also why I'm still on the old version). All the vocal tracks are high points really, that thematic song that plays during the heart of ice scene, the smells like teen spirit remix that plays during the deer hunting teaching segment with teenage Sarah, those are burned into my brain, which really is a testament to how great and catchy they are. Cool of you to put them on Soundcloud too, thank you for that! Update after writing the rest: I've been listening to fleshrites on loop while writing this, it seems like the "eat the flesh, drink the blood" is not leaving my brain anytime soon. Again, just a great catchy tune.

I also want to point out just how funny your game is. It has some heavy themes, and I love how you offset them by adding some jokes in there, contrasting the heaviness, and I think also adding to the heavy themes through them, since you have that contrast. Like I think if you overdo it with them, you'd destroy the mood, but you manage to get it just right here, where it forms a contrast to the heavier stuff without making the whole thing absurd. Kudos for that. Most of the humour is of course through Billy's absolutely non-compromising specialness, but also Winter's deadpan attitude and just the descriptions of the world around. Like the America map was one of my favorites. The state "Jefferson", perfect. Only one better was of course the greatest himself, Joergen (hallowed like the mother be His name).

Final point I want to touch on is what I think this game does best, which is setting the mood, I touched on this before, but there is always an otherworldly feel to things, like things are similar to how they should be, but not quite right, which is great because it really keeps you on your toes when following the story. This is where story art and music come together to create something really unique and this is where the greatest strength of the game comes from, like you really feel that there is a vision to the game you're trying to make and you have the music, writing and art skills to make them a reality as a cohesive unit. Those are always the greatest games in my opinion.

I'm a bit late, I made a video of me playing the game, that way you can see how someone who  always comes in last during multiplayer sessions plays. Hope you don't Hadal Rage at all the errors I make while playing it, but that's, uhh, valuable bottom-skill player feedback:

Like I mention at the end, I really like the game, I love its variety of weapons and artifacts (even the bouncy ones) and I think it really shines during hectic combat, be it online multiplayer or single player (you can see in some of the boss fights and in the one spawn with the rotating platforms and the turret at the bottom, things are getting heated). 

Feels a lot better since last time! I love rapidfire mode, I feel it does make it a lot more rapid, but it's nice that you also provide the option to charge your shots! I see some people complained about controls, but that seemed mostly keyboard-centric. With a controller, I didn't really have much issue with anything. Plus there was the helpful overview in the game itself.
The questing system was also a nice addition, I think it wasn't there in this form last time. Added some more character to the npcs around. Still no mercy for the walrus from me though.

Only things I found were that you could get out of buying/d-pad up menus by pressing escape on the keyboard and then moving, which in turn broke the level-up menu. 

Additionally, I got stuck in a room with earth tiles, I thought I could dash out of it, but I ran  out of sodas and had to /unstuck out of there. Roughly top right of the map somewhere, I think.

All in all, I think it's a lot of great improvements from last time! Keep it up!

Thanks a lot! And thanks for letting me know about the resolution issue with the web version, I forgot to set the correct embed size.

Hi! I dunno, I never tested this with Reicast, I remember testing it with NullDC (another DC emulator) and it didn't work with that.
It works on real hardware, so depending on how far Dreamcast emulation has come since then, it might work.