#rmvxa

That is, until I got an idea. What if I messed around with some of the things in RPG Maker and the freeware options for it to make it more interesting? I know for sure I’m not going to be remaking HL2 (too much would have to change for it to be able to even be made in RMVXA, afaik), so why not add my own little optional storyline after the end of the game?

My idea is this: Instead of putting Gordon in stasis, the G-Man decides to use him as entertainment. The more you replay on a New Game+ save, the further along this story goes. The further along you get in this story, the more things begin to change. NPCs begin to deliver lines implying that everything isn’t as it seems, that they’ve done this before and doesn’t this feel familiar? New doors are available to open. The ending dialogue with the G-Man remarks how entertaining you are. He makes note of all the fun little things you did in your run. Eventually, Gordon himself gets sick of this. He’s aware of how many times he’s been put through the Resonance Cascade. The game, otherwise, continues as normal (as it has been, anyway), but with four major changes. - Every time the G-Man is on screen, Gordon (without player input) walks towards him until he leaves. - The ambush room in Apprehension no longer has the ambush. Entering it results in a combat. - Once the player reaches Xen, there will be a portal directly at the beginning, leading the player and Gordon through a brand new set of levels with a different final boss - the G-Man himself. - Gordon gets three allies once on Xen to help him with redone Xen levels. Barney Calhoun, Adrian Shepherd and a helpful Vortigaunt.

There’d be some surprises in the new Xen levels, including the corpse of Dr. Breen.

Big art post! But I’ll go through things in order, so don’t worry.

I wanted to start off by saying thank you to everyone who’s been supporting the project! I know it’s hard to really get to know the characters or the environment without even having a demo and instead having a game dev who loves to hold back a lot, but I still appreciate everyone who’s stuck around despite that! So from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for all the support and patience you’ve given me!

I’ve given you guys a bit of Keiko art so I wanted to give some love to the second protagonist, Cai. I included a little bit of Cai sketches that I did a long time back of some expressions and to overall try to encompass who he is as a character. He’s an A.I. with a heart, who loves to learn more about what it means to be a person while keeping a somewhat laid back attitude. Almost like a switch, though, if anything threatening comes by his way he does get serious.

Next are two images that show the evolution of Cai and Keiko’s art as this half year has gone by. My biggest issue, which I’m sure I’ve talked about before, is choosing an art style for the game. I’m not at all good at having a consistent art style since I keep learning every day, but I still think that it’s only gotten better as time went on. November Cai and Keiko were... sub-par, to say the least. At least after 5 months Cai finally took his hand out of his pocket.

Then is the evolution of Keiko’s pixels. Actually, there was one before the first one, but yet again lost to time. When I first started mapping out the game, I really could not be bothered to animate sprites. Not only did I struggle with pixel art (I still do, it’s probably one of my weakest digital art skills), I also really didn’t like animating. So the first batch of sprites for all the characters in the games were... t-poses. Really. They would just have a blank, pixel expression and slide across the screen. For all the time I’ve playtested the game, it definitely gave me something to laugh at while I was working. I still have the t-poses for Cai and the other minor characters, but for some reason Keiko’s disappeared.

Next two are just some in-game pictures. Nothing real special, just the game over screen and Cai.

The next three are some maps. You’ve got a mysterious, dark, and rather tight hallway with eyes and a message written on the walls. Then I decided to show an update to the garden. There are still some errors in it, but I think it’s coming along wonderfully. I focused so much of my time and energy on this particular map, making sure it looked nice. You’ll understand why I devoted so much energy to it when the demo released. After that, we’ve got this vertical room. It’s the first of quite a few hand-drawn maps (as opposed to putting tiles together), and this one in particular helped teach me more fundamentals of pixel art. And a big flower monster too, so yay!

There was another picture introducing another character I wanted to add, but tumblr won’t let me add it. Maybe if I do another of these before the demo comes out I’ll include her.

Hayato Gokudera - Katekyo Hitman Reborn!

The next major overhaul has arrived! This update comes with improvements and overhauled parts. So, what's new?

New installer (This doesn’t apply to the Microsoft Store version) The installer is completely re-done. Moving it from Installshield to WiX Toolset and xeam Visual Installer provides a quicker and sleeker installation experience and improving the repair function.

**NOTE:**You'll need to uninstall the old version before installing the new one. Having both the old and the new version may damage both of them, making them hard to remove.

Overhauled Northbridge Platform Northbridge Platform (Launcher, Save Manager, and the PDF Reader) was re-written from the ground up to the Windows Presentation Foundation. The new version utilizes DirectX instead of GDI, providing a lightning fast response to the GUI. There are under the hood changes to improve performance as well and making the launcher easier to maintain. In addition, some areas of the launcher use native dialogs for picking files and folders. And of course, it supports high DPI displays, so no blurry fonts. Did I mention that supports 64bit systems natively?

Improved performance When I moved the battle system to the new one, there were some things that need to be ironed out. One of those things was the performance. In low-end systems, the game ran slowly during battles. It took me a long time to figure it out, but after moving around things, tweaking and doing some modifications, the game runs much faster. During exploration, the rendering was improved, using smarter calls to render and tweaking the garbage collection system in the engine. In battles, some of the scripts were removed, as they were causing severe slowdown. The result: vastly improved performance. Almost 60 frames per second.

Performance, performance, performance! (Sorry, I couldn't resist).

And the minor stuff.

Journal now records all side-missions.

Some balancing changes.

Celtia got a makeover.

Some tweaks on some maps.

New icons for the spears.

Now, this is pretty new tech. If you have any issue, please let me know and I’ll fix it as soon as possible. This update will be available in Microsoft Store in a few days.

Intro

Yo! Here are some floor tiles I recently made that are inspired by REFMAP/MACK and RM2k3's RTP (same as the wall tiles that I posted recently). They're simply 16-bit tiles that have been scaled up to fit a 32x32 grid. I had RPG Maker VX/Ace's grid-size in mind when I created these. All of the floor tiles loop, of course.

Terms

You are free to use these tiles for your game(s), commercially or non-commercially, if you credit me as "Luiishu". Please, for the love of mangoes; do NOT claim my graphics as your own and do NOT go out and sell them, or something silly like that!

Outro

As always, I'd love to check out your game if you decide to use any of my resources! :)