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Wayfarers is a nice name and fits really well for earlier in the game but not so much later on. Maybe I can just do something like Avatar vs Avatar: The Last Airbender. Name it something like Wayfinders: *********. For now I'll put more time and energy in development and hope maybe I'll have a "eureka!" moment with the name later on.

Sadly no. It's still in development.

Unreal feels a lot more manual in a sense that you have to know how to put even the simplest things like talking to an NPC together compared to RPG Maker where its as easy as clicking a few buttons. I could have made a whole scene with a handful of premade sprites in RPG Maker with the amount of time it took for me to learn how to put together UI for the dialogue box as well as having an NPC respond to me under the right conditions in Unreal.

Unreal is pretty complex but I don't think it's too hard to get into, especially with the amount of tutorials there are on YouTube. Unreal has a kind of visual scripting they call "Blueprint" where instead of typing in lines of code, you use nodes and connect them in certain ways to execute stuff.  Unreal is significantly harder and can be intimidating (sometimes even frustrating when something isn't working right) at times but I've personally found it more rewarding when I learn how to put together a scene, UI, interactions, etc. What's helped not get so overwhelmed with Unreal is being really patient and doing things one step at a time.  

Thanks! Me too!

Yeah the custom sprites don't quite fit with the default assets. Something I'll have to research more. Still keeping an eye out for a potential long term pixel artist to work with.

Oooo this is the first time someone has talked about Daphne! She will definitely be more involved than what the demo shows. Thanks again!

Thanks for the kind words! I do think this break has given me time to look at Wayfarers at a different angle and also enjoy the world/character building much more in the meantime.

Thanks!

(Kinda) Spoiler: There's a character on the train you need to talk to after talking to the guard that won't let you go to the other side. Talking to the character will provide a choice.

If there's till difficulty getting the guard to move let me know and I'll provide a screenshot (or maybe a short vid if you'd like) on what to do.

Hey do you use discord or anything like that? Got some questions I'd like to ask you.

Hmmm I think I have something like that but with characters. There was a time I stopped writing the story because I wanted to figure out how I wanted every character to develop throughout the entire series. Reading about this world builder's disease, maybe that means I should ease off the "perfect" character development and move forward with the story.

Haha thanks! Hopefully I'll have more updates that reveals more of the world and story (without the risk of spoiling anything) in the near future.

Wow what a comment! As always, super motivating to see people excited for my game.

Thanks a lot for all the feedback, especially about the characters. I'm happy to see Archie being a favorite by most people and am doing what I can to make the other characters, like Lily and Perry, being just as interesting in their own unique ways. The demo is pretty old so I will say I have put a significant amount of work on Perry and Lily since its release since I want their to be a bigger impact with the story and character development I have mapped out for them.

Really happy to see you felt rewarded with your curiosity, that is something I'm trying to include more of. I definitely want to give my game a more lively feeling by having a lot of optional scenes and interactions as a form of interactive worldbuilding. Also revealing hidden quests, items, etc. This is also why I am including branching paths in the game, to let people have more agency over certain events. Although branching paths means even more work on, I am already feeling like it will be worth it.

Regarding questions about Archie and his past, I could go on and on about his backstory and what I have planned for him but...probably best I don't risk spoiling anything . Haha :I

Thanks for giving me the feedback in the train, I'll try to find a good balance in the amount of time. Oof speaking of which, I still haven't fixed the issue with nothing happening after the timer finishes (It's on my to-do list I promise!). I'll also need to check on that save restriction. I think it's about time I wrote up a bug list to keep better track of these.

It's always great to know there are people excited to be able to someday play the full version of Wayfarers. I'm still stuck to only working on it mostly over the weekends but am also exploring the potential of working on this more often in the near future. Thank you again for your feedback! 

Glad you like the story!

Thanks for the advice. I'll check out that tool. Also thanks for heads up on the bug. There have been a number of bugs I've already fixed since the demo but that was one was still in the current build T_T. 

You can't pass the train? How far were you able to get to in the train? 

Yeah I've seen the breadcrumb reveal of RPG Maker MZ. I was actually entertaining the idea of migrating my work to MZ but the big deal breaker is plugins from MV won't work on MZ, which makes sense being a new engine. Yanfly made a video explaining he plans on having people make MZ versions of his plugins so that's great. However I have a lot of plugins from other plugin makers as well and I don't know if they are going to do the same. Also it would probably take a long time to make those MZ compatible plugins. 

I'm comfortable enough with MV and also didn't really find anything for MZ that made feel like I HAD to have it for making Wayfarers. Although being able to layer maps seems pretty awesome and I saw a pic indicating you can see an actors' movement route on the grid. I also would like to see if they have a more robust character generator.

Oh yeah. I recently got Skyrim for PC because it was on sale. But I actually haven't played it yet. Another one for the backlog haha.

Thanks!

It felt like a crash course in making a game from beginning to end. It's making me reassess my approach in making Wayfarers and pushing me to put in more time and energy in some of the parts I've been apprehensive about.

I actually have other things I'd like to mess around with like level design in UE4 but I feel its best I focus only on Wayfarers. If anything it motivates me to get the first part of Wayfarers done even more.

Thanks for playing my demo! Sadly yes the demo that is currently available is pretty outdated :I. I do make fixes to what people have pointed out but I didn't have enough sense to keep a separate demo version and full version. By that I mean when I decided to continue working on this, I just continued where I left off in the demo. So that means I can't provide an updated demo. Sorry about that :(

Yikes the countdown in the train is definitely one I haven't heard of yet. Also with the guards not having dialogue at the train station Good finds!

The Yanfly guest journal is something I definitely plan on putting in. I didn't know about this plugin that adds a backlog. You make a good point on how beneficial it would be to have. I'll look into it. Thanks for the suggestions!

I'm really glad you like my game. I know I say that a lot in comments but I really mean it every time I say it. Seeing people like my game actually makes me feel good about all the time and effort I have been putting into. It motivates me more and more to finish the game. It also pushes me to see how I can improve the game in any way to make the full version better.

Wow sorry for the late response. I've been pretty busy. 

If you happen to find a plugin (please don't trouble yourself looking for one) then please let me know!

Agreed. Definitely feels more rewarding.

Yeah that's how I've been going about this as well. Sometimes it just depends on my mood or more accurately where my brain is currently at. One day I'll be hammering away at story/event ideas just because that's all I've been thinking about and another I could be working on map stuff because I saw a tutorial or have an design idea. I mean there are days or a week I'm focused on specific things because I feel like they need to be done, whether I feel like it or not. But in most situations I've been going mostly by feel.

Oh haha I thought you meant an RPG Maker game. I was hoping if that game existed, maybe there's a plugin for it. 

Sounds like a good way to go. Whenever I run into a problem when making stuff in Unreal, I used to spend days on it without much progress. Now I try to limit to only a couple hours before I move on to my next task. Most cases, I'll have "ah-ha!" moments where I suddenly figure out the problem when working on other stuff. If this were an actual RPG, it'd be like I can either use up a bunch of my time grinding to blindly trying to figure out a solution to the problem or just go do some leveling with other tasks which will probably give me newfound knowledge that will make solving the problem easier. Hopefully that makes sense.

Haha I agree. I'm having an appreciation for a lot of different parts in game development that I usually don't pay much mind to.

Ooooo shopkeepers with a limit to how much money they have? That would be very interesting to have in my game. I'll definitely look into that.

I'll keep that all in mind in the future. I really do appreciate the offer to help.

Oh I'm the opposite. I don't enjoy making maps and like working on events and story based stuff.

Ugh I can only imagine. I recently spent a few hours trying to make sure a sequence of events worked/made sense with two branched paths. 

I thought about making Lily's shop quest as an event but decided it was important to have a shop interface as a way to introduce the concept of shopping in the game. SRDude's Switch Shop plugin is pretty much using money to turn a switch on so it at least provides a "shopping" experience with the default interface. Since I need Yanfly's Shop Core plugin some of the stuff I plan on having in the game, I want to have the  interface look the same between needing to buy regular items and special quest related items. Not just for this specific issue, I also really want a limited item stock type plugin so I can make the buy/sell economy a little more interesting but so far haven't been able to find a good one. 

I appreciate the offer to help with the overworld but for the time being, it's one of the things I prefer to work on and figure out on my own. There's still way too many things I feel I need to have figured out before really diving into overworld stuff like the shape of the continents and where each realm is going to be place. etc. 

Thanks so much for playing my game! Always good to know there are people  that like it. Yes, I'm still working on it. My production on it isn't as fast as when I made the demo because I've been restricted to mostly working on it on the weekends. But I am definitely intending to finish this game. 

Ah I'm familiar with Twine. I used it to make my Marooned game. Never thought to use it as a flowchart for Wayfarers though. It would definitely be a good way to test variables when multiple choices would be involved in a branching path. Thank you!

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed the game!

When I made the demo, I decided to make it entirely story because I wanted the focus of the game to showcase my skills as a writer. 

However, the story I wrote as a novel, not a game, had a good amount of action in it. I figured since I am now trying to make a complete game, it would make sense to have a battle system in it. I plan on having unique actions included in the battle system with a few plugins that have caught my eye. I would also LOVE to have original battler sprites and attack animations. I've been keeping an eye out on artists to hopefully find one that would be a good fit for Wayfarers. But that's all stuff for much later in development.

Oh yeah draw.io! I actually used that on my first ND job but completely forgot about it! Haha!

Thanks for the share! This will help out a lot on mapping out the branching paths. 

Thanks for downloading my demo! Here's hoping you end up installing it. Here's hoping even more you enjoy it. From what I understand in your comment, you'd like me to thank TheGameDawg for the video he made that talks about my game. If so, I'd like to assure you that I've thanked him when I first discovered the video. He is actually a big reason why I'm continuing to work on Wayfarers! :D

I wrote the first draft years ago but it was incredibly rough. I guess it was more of a proof of concept draft. I came up with the idea to integrate it into a game when starting the 2nd draft of the game. The demo of the game is about where I got with the story. Since I am pursuing a career in game writing and narrative design, I'm focusing on writing for the game only at this time. I'll eventually get back to the novel version after finishing the game.

I really like the 2.5D concept from Octopath Traveler. I've actually been learning how to use UE4 whenever I need to give my creative muscles a break from Wayfarers and exercise my technical muscles (if that makes any sense at all). 

No apology for the long response. It's always good to see someone excited about their own work. It also makes me more excited to work on Wayfarers. 

Thanks so much for leaving a comment! Really appreciate it. I'm really glad you loved the game!

Ah you are working on a similar project. Are you making the book and game the same story or making 2 separate stories in the same world? If it's the same story, have you run into any "works in the book but not in the game" moments? I ran into some of those when first applying my story from my novel to the game. 

Rest assured I'm definitely continuing my work on this game. I haven't been able to provide many updates lately because I've been on the same task of creating the majority of the items in the game. If I'm not working on that, I'm working on story stuff which is hard to really provide updates for without spoiling it -_-. I post more minor updates and general RPG related stuff on my twitter account in case you might be interested in staying up to date. Thanks again for the comment!

Great job! I like how it progressively gets harder.

Thanks so much for the kind words! I'm really looking forward to bringing these 7 realms to life throughout this game. Archie's realm is definitely going to be a fun one to show. Also super happy to see Lily as one of your favorites. I've been putting a lot of thought into her story arc and character development.

Yikes the walls in the wall with no collision was definitely not intentional. Thank you for pointing that out along with the uplifting music playing in the tense parts. 

Good point with the list of current tasks. I'm pretty sure I saw a plugin that could do that (most likely Yanfly's). 

Wow sorry for not responding to this comment until now. I'm so glad that you like my game, especially since you said you're not the biggest fan of RPGs. I'm definitely doing what I can to finish this game.

I feel my maps are mediocre at best but I think what's been helping me out a lot is looking at maps from other RPG Maker games.

Not to directly copy the maps but to get ideas on what kind of ways to utilize the tilesets in order to create towns and rooms with your own personal touches.

When I first started, I kept getting told my maps had too much empty space. 

This was one of the first versions I made of the Universal House of Worship where there was just too much unnecessary space. Made the map feel barren and incomplete.

Here's a newer version where I added a carpet on the main pathway and narrowed it down to minimize that empty feeling. I'm thinking of putting some other statues or decorations on certain parts of the pathway but still on the fence about it.

Hopefully this helps.

Glad to hear the coin store owner did his job. Also really glad to see you enjoyed reading the comics. I actually would love to make another comic someday, maybe I'll return to it once I finish the game.

Here's hoping the completed game will live up to its potential!

Oh awesome! I actually got Yanfly's Full Collection bundle about a month ago since I already use a good amount of his plugins. However there are so many I haven't had the time to really look through what each one does. Turns out that Item Synthesis one is in there as well. Thanks for letting me know!

Thanks! Map layouts are one of the hardest things for me on Wayfarers. I'd much rather be writing random NPC dialogue and figuring out event commands than do them. Haha.

That's definitely a good thing to bring up. I'll look into making it more apparent on how to get to Perry's house. 

Also thank you for the feedback on my game!

I'm so glad you like it! I'm looking forward to working on this again whenever I have the time.

I saw this! It was a huge motivation and confidence booster!

That's awesome! Thank you so much! 

Wow! Thanks so much! This comment really made my day!

I haven't had much time to work on this, lately, but that youtube video and this comment is motivating me to invest more time into it.

Thanks! :D