Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

Well the last suggestion I can think of is try using the domain admin account, to install the fonts beyond that I am all out of suggestions.

Why? Not bad done. I like it. Music is true to the epic style, not always suited to a particular scene. But it's not for me to decide. The game runs without any errors, except for one - in the combat mode is Freeze. And in Tonoe I think music is awful)

I haven't read the entire thread, so some of these may already have been reported. Anyway, these are some issues I noticed.


Door frame clips through Alys' arm.


No teleport event here. None on the other side either. (The stairs above do, however, move you downstairs on all three tiles.)

Also, I'm not fond of the light beams indoors. The place presumably has a roof.

On a similar note, I didn't test this (...probably should have) but talking to the middle guy blocking the exit to the town made Alys speak up, whereas the other two guys just said that no one is allowed to leave.


The selection arrows seem to point away from the characters rather than at them.


...as the boards apparently don't allow linking, remote linked images or more than three attachments, this is turning out far more of a pain than I had intended.

...continued.


"Don't ask me how" makes her look rather dim. Something broke it, obviously. There are monsters about. You do the math, Alys. What does 2+2 result in again?


I can't get any closer than this to the boss, and I think hitting enter here starts the fight, but I'm not quite sure waht I did. Either start the fight when you approach the boss or allow me to walk up to it and interact.


I'm not fond of these profiles. They seem more like personal opinions than proper presentations. Try to be more factual and formal with text like this.

...and finally.





All these tiles (the ones in front of Alys) look as if they should be passable, but are in fact impassable.


Anyway that's as far as I got. The game froze when I tried to cancel an action in the first boss fight and my only save was just after the intro, so bugger this for now.

Further observations:

Walking speed seems very slow. PSIV has faster walking and smaller maps. I realize that the movement seems more natural like this, and that characters will "skate" if they move faster, but to weigh one con against another, it's much more annoying when it takes too long to get around.

Alys' "chest" bounces rather worryingly when she walks towards the screen. It looks as if something's... not quite attached. Since I can't open the game in RMXP and take a closer look, it's hard to say more than that. Also, seen from behind, her hair moves a lot for such a slow walk.

Saving is disabled in the dungeon. This should NOT be the case in a demo. If I'm looking for bugs that may crash the game (and as noted above, I found one in the first boss fight) then I want to be able to save often.

More impassable tiles:





Again, it's the tile in front of her in each screen. Yes, that means the right lower half of the bush is passable, but not the left.

You're being very helpful so far, vilkacis. I have RMXP open right now and I am rectifying those errors that you pointed out now. I can address some of the issues that you pointed out so far.

- The walking speed:
Yes, it frustrates me as well. That is the default walking speed for RMXP. If I set it higher, it looks unnatural, and if I set it lower, it's far too slow. But I could try it on a speed of 5 ( current walking speed is 4 ) as see how that looks. I recently fired up PS4 on my emulator, and I was struck by how fast the characters moved. It appeared... unnatural to me. They appeared as though they were running. Or maybe I'm just used to RMXP's default walking speed.

If you want, I could send you the unencrypted game, and you could disable the encounter rate in the dungeons while looking for possible bugs. However, thanks to my crappy internet, I have no idea how long it will take to upload. It took me nearly four hours to upload the current demo that you are playing now.

And there are still bugs... And yes, because of that unfortunate glitch that causes the game to freeze ( it only occurs when you cancel Alys' attack, probably a script error with regard to multi-hit weapons, I've seen it happen with Wren and his vulcans as well ), saving probably is a good thing.

You raised a valid point when not saving in dungeons. Often, I look for bugs as well when testing ( and I have tested the game extensively, mainly for balancing battles: RMXP uses high numbers by default, so I had to re-configure every monster stat in the game for use with lower values.)
In fact, the only dungeons where saving is disabled is the Piata basement and Nurvus. The player can save anywhere else.

Lyla2284 wrote:That is the default walking speed for RMXP. If I set it higher, it looks unnatural, and if I set it lower, it's far too slow. But I could try it on a speed of 5 ( current walking speed is 4 ) as see how that looks. I recently fired up PS4 on my emulator, and I was struck by how fast the characters moved. It appeared... unnatural to me. They appeared as though they were running. Or maybe I'm just used to RMXP's default walking speed.

I think I'd run too if I had to save the world from THE POWERS OF DARKNESS^TM

Anyway, like I said - in a battle of convenience versus graphics, I'll take convenience.

Lyla2284 wrote:If you want, I could send you the unencrypted game, and you could disable the encounter rate in the dungeons while looking for possible bugs. However, thanks to my crappy internet, I have no idea how long it will take to upload. It took me nearly four hours to upload the current demo that you are playing now.

No need for that now, but it might be worth considering for the next demo/beta.

Lyla2284 wrote:In fact, the only dungeons where saving is disabled is the Piata basement and Nurvus. The player can save anywhere else.

Ah. Obviously, I didn't get far enough to notice that, but it's good to know. Though, why disable saving at all? It might be a good idea in areas where the player could get stuck if they do something wrong (to prevent them from overwriting a save and being forced to start over), but otherwise, I don't think it's necessary.


By the way, I can confirm that when talking to the guys blocking the entrance to the town, Alys only speaks up when talking to the middle guy.

I can link remote images now?! That makes things easier! Time for some more random observations.


I like the glowing balls on the world map. Maybe you should use the same system in dungeons as well? However, they don't seem to disappear after a fight - recommend either having them go away until you leave the map, or at least only respawn after a few moments. Presently, it seems easy to just bump into them again (though I managed not to, so maybe it's not that bad...).

Combat takes too long. A group of three Crawlers takes half the evening to kill when they start showing up, and once they begin to spam Weaken, you're just sitting there getting bored. Getting rid of the start-up casting animation for skills like that would help. Giving them less HP so they die faster would also help, as would making them slower so I don't have to watch that before I can kill them. <_<

Hahn used to learn Wat at lv3 and should still do so. He needs something that can actually do damage before long, as a single knife is pretty worthless for attack, even after buying the upgrade in Mile.

Speaking of Hahn, his sideways walk is kind of jerky compared to the others. One frame seems to be a pixel or two ahead of the others.

Running seems flaky. PSIV made it easy to escape from random enemies if you couldn't be bothered - here, it seems the chance is much lower. Perhaps this is because enemies are faster compared to the party - I notice them going first a pretty good chunk of the time.

In Krup, there is an annoying squeak noise whenever I enter the town map. (???)




This only shows up in the middle of the shelf, not at the sides. It's not the only place I found this, but I didn't screencap the others.




This tile is impassable.




And here's another one.




This barrel, on the other hand...




O RLY? Looks pretty full to me...




It actually closes when examined, then opens again.




This system is... kind of annoying. I'm not fond of these even in console games, but they're really not suited to a game you play with a keyboard, IMO. (Vortex is suitably impressive, though. Ouch!)




I find this exchange kind of odd. Not only did you cut a classic line, but it changes the entire relationship between the two. ???




The narration also feels odd. The game uses close-ups to display these things; if you're changing things already, why not add a new image that shows him looking bothered?

(Also @ sole survivor Hahn - that's what happens when I fail to run from the same group of enemies ten times in a row and can't be bothered to heal between attempts.)




...okay, this could pose a problem. (Before you say anything, I have all the fonts installed.)Apart from that, note the wonky space under the meseta display.




These guys seem to be floating. Move them down below the darker sand.

(Also, while we're on the subject of combat: the transparent window? It looks rather weird to not see the characters behind it. You could just extend the opaque bit all the way up - then you could move the background up as well, which might allow for a bit of extra space for the enemies.)




This odd line shows up over enemies when they take damage. I'm unfamiliar with XP's method of storing sprites, so I have no idea what could be causing it.




It bugs me that only one tile will actually let me enter town. Recommend letting the entire thing take the player inside, as per the original.




I can't step over that tiny stone...




...but the stump does not pose a problem at all.




Two things here. First: as I recall, the "light" is not something generally known by the people of Algo (though the Espers may know). It feels strange to have people swearing by it. Second, Alys may occasionally threaten people with physical violence, but the worst language you ever get out of her is "old fart". That kind of language over something so minor seems quite OOC to me.




Where's the sweeper guy? I miss him.




I have no idea what I'm standing on, but it's pretty impressive nonetheless.




That's a tiny bridge. It's going to look funny crossing that later...




I have no idea what this thing is, but I can't walk on top of it.




I can't walk on top of this, either. I don't remember anything like this outside the very specific spots of quicksand, and it's mostly annoying. It's pretty similar to the sand that can be passed, so... eh. Oh well - sequence breaking time!




This is bad map design. There is nothing physically stopping me from moving on ahead - just the map border, which is a game limitation. If you're not going to give me a path out, block it off in some way that makes it obvious what's an exit and what isn't.




More floating enemies.




It looks as if I should be able to walk around the tree, but I can't.




Another "false" exit. Just copy and paste exit events around these places.




I AM JESUS.




This is before the place burns down. Might want to give her a different line until then.




These enemies are too close. Characters will seem to bump their heads against them.




Lol. Might want to move that one step down so this doesn't happen.




There's only a single walkable tile in the middle of this bridge, though it looks as though you should be able to walk on the ones above and below here.




I AM JESUSSS




...but I can't walk over this tile below me.




Or this one in front of me.




No one comments when I examine these statues. A generic "o noes" would be nice.




Okay, here you have blocked off the exit, but I remember being able to just walk off screen at any point here and not having to walk all the way down to the place I came in. Again, I'd prefer exit events around the sides.




What's up with this place? The Motavia we're shown in PSIV is not a lush, green place. It feels out of place. What's more, unless you've changed it (which I haven't seen, because I quit at this point), there's another dungeon right behind this.

I'm actually not fond of these new dungeons so far. They take longer than the usual world map trips, and if you're going to make up for the lack of random enemies on the map by putting these things everywhere I need to go, you might as well just save yourself the trouble and add randoms to the world map instead.


...okay, that kind of took longer than planned. Sorry about the image dump, but I've compressed them quite heavily, so the page shouldn't be too heavy.

vilkacis wrote:


I have no idea what this thing is, but I can't walk on top of it.

I can answer that. That is part of the mountain, it just kind of got separated from everything else. It happens.

Or this one in front of me.

I need to point out the trees as well coming seemingly from nowhere. =|


Man, I think I'm just going to cave sometime and download it on my sister's computer, than transfer it to my computer. =D Me wanna play.