Archive for 2016

Intro

One of the challenges of using a game creation engine –even one as scriptable as RPG Maker– is interacting with various external social gaming software. In our case, getting Achievements to work in Steam was very difficult. The Steam API is written in C++, while RPG Maker games (VX, VX-A) run in Ruby.

Once we finally got everything working, we decided to release our library to the community, so that other developers will have an easier time getting Steam Achievements ...

The Mercenaries’ Guild is a vibrant cohort of adventurers within Last Dream: World Unknown. The monster targets are accessible early in the game, which presents certain balancing challenges. Roaming villains should be difficult and thus worthy of the effort and reward, yet not frustrate Players. We have asked our many game testers to experience these unique battles and offer their feedback. In response, the characteristics of each Guild target has been refined; enterprising Players can defeat selected Targets with the ...

Sometimes, there is no way to speed up the thing you’re trying to do. Take Last Dream’s battle transition, which shatters the screen into ~220 pieces that go flying off in random directions, courtesy of the KGC_SpecialTransition script (ytomy.sakura.ne.jp).

You get an achievement if you play the entire ...

Gamers use the term “lag” to mean a handful of different things. Sometimes, your game engine just runs choppily. In Last Dream, we noticed that the beginning of each turn in battle would freeze for about a second –but only for certain enemies! The last boss of Last Dream 1 had this problem, and it really interfered with the thrill of the fight.

After lots of tracing, we found this line hiding away in the battle engine:

temp_actor = Marshal.load(Marshal.dump(@actor))

Marshal.dump() ...

Our development team wistfully recalls the approach of Christmas with an exciting new RPG in hand. Ah, the endless hours available to explore a vast new world of possibility! We have been tirelessly striving to complete Last Dream: World Unknown for the holidays, but, in the end, we decided that achieving a high polish was more important to us than finishing early. Hence, our team is continuing to game test and fine tune the in-game experience, adding Easter eggs and ...

Lag, lag lag. Everyone hates lag. We’ve stopped playing games because they were too laggy, and we’re sure you have to. Last Dream: World Unknown pushes the RPG Maker game engine to its very limits, so lag is something we are constantly encountering and trying to eliminate.

But if everyone hates it, why don’t game developers just get rid of it? Turns out that making your game run smoothly is easier said than done. The “Performance Tuning” series will cover ...

The Chief Developer for Last Dream: World Unknown is compiling another massive Strategy Guide, on track to exceed 700 pages. This volume will include a complete walk-through, comprehensive skills and items, battler stats, puzzles, village offerings, and much more. Yet, developer-generated Strategy Guides tend to serve as mere introductions to their games. Players discover many more tricks and advanced strategies than we could have conceived. In Last Dream 1, did we know the fastest means to acquire the Ship or ...

Last Dream: World Unknown contains new and unique character skills such as the Engineer’s “Fast Item” ability, the Knight’s “Last Stand”, and the Gray Mage’s “Telekinetic Frenzy,” among many others. Enjoy this teaser video from World Unknown!

One of the unexpected and humbling experiences that arose from releasing Last Dream to the broader gaming community was how much better our fans are at playing Last Dream. We have now held multiple paid competitions, and each time fans have crushed our own performance. Admittedly, it was naive to believe we would be the best just because we designed Last Dream, but we are skilled game players… It’s just that there are so many astonishingly proficient players out there. ...

Last Dream contains over a thousand classics of literature in the form of titles and authors found across in-game bookcases and desks. Last Dream: World Unknown deepens this level of detail by offering over four-hundred chapters from original short stories. Each chapter expands on the history and mythology of Firma, the new land of World Unknown, including the Annals of the Great Wars, the Encyclopedia of Synthesis, A Soldier’s Journal, and many more. Selected works were derived from actual military ...