Do you like RPG games?

[peterhull90]

Dear All,

KQ is an old-skool RPG in the style of Final Fantasy I. It's an open sirce project, currently hosted on sourceforge.
It's in beta stage, with several hours of play, twenty maps, hundreds of items and monsters, though the conclusion isn't done yet.
Recently I've been able to port it to OS X, and I would really like some feedback from you guys :) . It's my first experience in Mac programming, and first in distributing Mac binaries, so I would like to know what you think!
Check out the web-site (http://kqlives.sourceforge.net/) for more details and access to the downloads page.

Pete

I submitted this for news, too (maybe more than once; my ISP is playing strange games...)

[skyhawk]

Wow, that looks nice! I can't wait to play it. When you have a playable version, put up a download link for us to easily get it.

[peterhull90]

It should be playable! Just go to the Sourceforge page (http://sf.net/projects/kqlives) then scroll down to the latest binaries release. (KQ-20030709.dmg.bz2)

Pete

[skyhawk]

alrighty you ready for this?

1) screen is dreadfully small. I have to zoom in with OS X to see it. Quite an eye sore.
2) I find myself skipping through the text. Mainly because it looks unreadable. Also much of the text is lengthy and rambling.
3) I love the landscapes colors and general appearance. I cannot say the same for the characters.
4) needs to have Apple-Q to quit.
5) Default controls need to be documented somewhere.
6) it seems a tad bit jerky on a 400MHz G4 with 16MB ATI Rage 128.
7) I had to quit after about 5 minutes... when do I get to battle!?!!

[Bachus]

Wow, that's very nice. It definitely has that oldschool feel to it, and I loved the the little references and in-jokes (like why you can't see monsters that attack you). I'll definitely be playing some more of this when I get the time.

1) screen is dreadfully small. I have to zoom in with OS X to see it. Quite an eye sore.

Check the options. You can turn on strectching which pixel-doubles the image.

4) needs to have Apple-Q to quit.

Seconded. Though be sure to pop up an alert saying that all unsaved progress will be lost.

6) it seems a tad bit jerky on a 400MHz G4 with 16MB ATI Rage 128.

Seconded, though I'm running a slightly better computer. I was running many apps in the background (like iTunes), so I don't completely fault you for that.

[peterhull90]

Thanks, I'll see what can be done. As a secret option you can press alt+X to kill the game.

Pete

[CubeFusion]

Combat does not seem to work at all on my system. By that I mean that it doesn't even enter combat when it should have been activated. I noticed this after I had deactivated the portal underneath the first town. I then walked past that hurt dude, and then preceeded to talk to the imp looking monster. Instead of activating combat, the monster just disappeared in one frame. I then proceeded through the cave and left the town. After running around for a good 5 minutes, I came to the assumption that battles of all kinds, whether event activated or random, just plain didn't work.

Fullscreen doesn't work on my computer. Toggling it on and off doesn't have any noticable effect. Other than that I really don't have any issues with the game other than performance, which is pretty unsteady on my machine.

My computer's specs.
iMac G3 500mhz
OS X 10.2.6
256 MB memory
Rage 128 Pro with 16 MB memory

[peterhull90]

Right. That's definitely a bug - there's lots of combat in that first dungeon. I had difficulty when developing, because OSX seemed to cache the app, and when I recompiled and double-clicked the app I still got the old version. Is this normal? Second, there should be a config file in ~/Library/KQ, but I don't know how to install it there. This is why the default is the tiny (320x240) screen.
As you might have guessed, KQ is ported, via Win and Linux, from DOS roots. As I said, my Mac experience is limited (I recently bought a 700mhz iBook)
Your comments are really appreciated - I will be able to post a patch soon, addressing some of these concerns!

Cheers,

Pete

[skyhawk]

Originally posted by peterhull90
I had difficulty when developing, because OSX seemed to cache the app, and when I recompiled and double-clicked the app I still got the old version. Is this normal?

If you are using Project Builder, you might have to Clean your app. Otherwise, this shouldn't happen all that often.

[peterhull90]

OK, I know why combat is disabled (reason: I did it for testing purposes and forgot to change it back :blush: )
I'm really sorry about this; I'm busy in real life this weekend but I will try and upload on Sunday.

thanks all,

Pete

[peterhull90]

OK, the newest version should have combat in it: see Home page (http://kqlives.sf.net/) or you migt be able to go straight to http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/kqlives/KQ-mac-20030712.dmg.bz2?download

Pete

[CubeFusion]

Alright, I have played the game for a few more hours and I have a few interface and gameplay suggestions to offer.

I guess I will start with interface issues first.

1. Configuration settings such as controls and screen preferences should be independent from the save files. Everytime the game starts, it forgets what my custom controls and window settings are until it loads my save game, this simply should not be! :p

2. In order for fullscreen to work on my system, I have to set both window mode off AND turn on image stretching. However if both window mode and image stretching are turned off, nothing happens. The game just stays in a small window. Instead it should probably paint the screen black and have the game play unstretched in the center of the screen.

Now for my gameplay issues.

1. Hitting the menu key AFTER opening up that menu previously should simply act as a cancel key and close the menu. The process to check my health should go like this
*Return opens menu* Look at health *Return again to close menu*. The same thing would apply to the load/save/config menu.

2. It doesn't look like their is any way to tell beforehand whether a weapon/staff has any kind of special power. For example the staff sold at the first town gives you the ability to remove poison from yourself, but I had no idea it had that power until I entered combat while it was equipped. You should be able to at least see if one of these items are thusly enchanted before purchasing them.

3. It would be nice if the enemies had health bars after they have had sense/scan casted on them. These wouldn't have to be very accurate (You wouldn't have to display how much HP each enemy has left, just have a small meter below each enemy that shows approximately how much health a monster has left out of it's max). Each saved game would have to have an array stored in it that kept track of which monsters have had sense used on them. This would encourage players to use sense after EVERY new encounter with a beast. As a bonus at the end of the game it could tell the player how many monsters he scanned versus how many exist in the game. The perfect example of this was used in Paper Mario, (Final Fantasy 7 might of had this functionality too, I can't remember).

This is a pretty cool game, I'm a sucker for old school style games.

[Joseph Duchesne]

YES! finaly a new real RPG for mac! (by real I mean 2D, turn based battle system, and storyline oriented)

[Carlos Camacho]

Last update seems to be 2004-09-20. Any working on this still?

[peterhull90]

Last update seems to be 2004-09-20. Any working on this still?
I'm sorry, I haven't been on this site for a long time! I was really surprised to see a message by me in the recent posts...

Anyway, the answer is "yes, but..." We've added some new maps, and to accommodate the new storyline, some of the scripts are being redone (to make a more coherent plot) The "but..." part is that our chief scripter and master of maps, TeamTerradactyl, is unable to spend much time on computer programming at the moment.

I still hope we can proceed, as the project is nearly done, it just depends a lot on whether TT is feeling well enough.

Cheers,

Pete