Breath of Death VII: Dem bones, Dem bones (UPDATE: Bugfix patch now available on XBL)

RainbowDespair

I've received a few emails from individuals wanting to license the engine from Breath of Death VII to make their own RPGs, so I've created a post on our website to discuss the idea and the pros and cons. Any input anyone would like to make there (or here) would be appreciated.

http://zeboyd.com/2010/08/30/game-engine-licensing-yay-or-nay/

Gibbs

So, the last time I booted up BoD it had me download an update.

I know the 360 only allows a certain number of patch files on the system and if the game you wish to play has been bumped off, you have to redownload the patch.

Does that apply to your game as well? You'd think that since you just redownload the whole game again that it'd be fine.

Or did you roll out another patch that I missed?

LewieP

Pretty sure that by definition all XBLIGs have to be completely up to date when you play them. That's part of why there is the requirement that you have to be connected to live to play them.

Seol

RainbowDespair wrote: »

I've received a few emails from individuals wanting to license the engine from Breath of Death VII to make their own RPGs, so I've created a post on our website to discuss the idea and the pros and cons. Any input anyone would like to make there (or here) would be appreciated.

http://zeboyd.com/2010/08/30/game-engine-licensing-yay-or-nay/

From the way you were talking about your development process, it doesn't sound like BoD had an engine that you could point to as a separate entity and licence: no map tools, scripting tools, anything like that. To be frank, anyone who can't put together a tile-based, 8-bit-style RPG engine in XNA probably isn't ready to release a game, and anyone asking for an engine is probably expecting RPGMaker-level tools. What they're asking for isn't what they'd actually get, and it would be a substantial task (considerably bigger than making another entire game, I'd say) to give them what they want.

Capt Howdy

RainbowDespair wrote: »

I've received a few emails from individuals wanting to license the engine from Breath of Death VII to make their own RPGs, so I've created a post on our website to discuss the idea and the pros and cons. Any input anyone would like to make there (or here) would be appreciated.

http://zeboyd.com/2010/08/30/game-engine-licensing-yay-or-nay/

You should license your engine for $5. :winky: It's all the rage in the gaming world.

GnomeTank

I'd be interested in your tile engine, though I don't know that I would purchase and use the RPG engine itself. I think just your tile engine though would be a useful starting point for a lot of people. It's something I'd pay 20 or 30 bucks to get my hands on.

e: You bring up a great point on the sameness though. The main reason I'm NOT making a JRPG for my first real XNA project is that I didn't want to feel like I was making a clone of BoD7.

RainbowDespair

Seol wrote: »

RainbowDespair wrote: »

I've received a few emails from individuals wanting to license the engine from Breath of Death VII to make their own RPGs, so I've created a post on our website to discuss the idea and the pros and cons. Any input anyone would like to make there (or here) would be appreciated.

http://zeboyd.com/2010/08/30/game-engine-licensing-yay-or-nay/

From the way you were talking about your development process, it doesn't sound like BoD had an engine that you could point to as a separate entity and licence: no map tools, scripting tools, anything like that. To be frank, anyone who can't put together a tile-based, 8-bit-style RPG engine in XNA probably isn't ready to release a game, and anyone asking for an engine is probably expecting RPGMaker-level tools. What they're asking for isn't what they'd actually get, and it would be a substantial task (considerably bigger than making another entire game, I'd say) to give them what they want.

Yeah, that's a good point. Our engine is quite versatile and gets better all the time (just last night, I created some nifty code that lets the map engine support animated overlays (which we're using to create a nifty fog effect in one dungeon) we were working on), but it's all code-based. I can use it quite well since I understand how and why it's the way it is, but someone expecting separate tools or an actual UI ala RPGMaker would be sorely disappointed.

In the end, we decided on not licensing the engine, for a number of reasons.

Oh and as for patches, Breath of Death VII has had 2. The first one came out soon after launch and fixed some crashes and other errors. The second one came out a few weeks ago and fixed some gameplay mechanics that weren't working like they were supposed to - they were fairly subtle changes in most cases, so most people won't notice a difference.

slash000

Hey guys,

Check out the October issue of Official Xbox Magazine, on page 92!

Spoiler:

GnomeTank

Holy shit. That's quite the press right there. "Hey you 2m people that bought FF13 (which was a shitty game, we might add), try this much better JRPG made by people with 1/1000000th the budget, in 1/1000th the time, and it's a better game".

LewieP

top stuff.

Blackjack

GnomeTank wrote: »

Holy shit. That's quite the press right there. "Hey you 2m people that bought FF13 (which was a shitty game, we might add), try this much better JRPG made by people with 1/1000000th the budget, in 1/1000th the time, and it's a better game".

And they were able to praise one game without insulting another, like some sort of adult non-goose life-form!

GnomeTank

Blackjack wrote: »

GnomeTank wrote: »

Holy shit. That's quite the press right there. "Hey you 2m people that bought FF13 (which was a shitty game, we might add), try this much better JRPG made by people with 1/1000000th the budget, in 1/1000th the time, and it's a better game".

And they were able to praise one game without insulting another, like some sort of adult non-goose life-form!

Oh, I'm capable of that, but every time I get a chance to make fun of the shitpile that is FF13, that I wasted 60 bucks on, I take it. Especially when it also glorifies an awesome game like BoD7.

claypoolfan

This game was awesome, I really admire what you guys did and am baffled that you offered it for so low a price. I really had a great time with it.

That being said, am I the only one who went crazy

Spoiler:

in the lab? I almost threw my controller in frustration so many times because of how lost I got in there. Took me so long to find out where I needed to go and I was constantly going in circles.

But the game was awesome and I can't wait for CSTW.

RainbowDespair

No, you're not the only one who went crazy there. Heck, I got lost there once and I'm one of the developers.

Sipex

Hey, amazing press right before your next game comes out.

Bonus.

Also, I didn't get lost but it was purely PURELY out of luck.

claypoolfan

Haha, ok that makes me feel better. It was kind of awesome though cause last night when I finally found the staircase I was looking for it felt so good.

GnomeTank

Is there a trick to...

Spoiler:

...beating Ultimate Evil? All my dudes are level 32, and I think I have all the best gear...there has to be a trick to this I'm missing.

Sipex

GnomeTank wrote: »

Is there a trick to...

Spoiler:

...beating Ultimate Evil? All my dudes are level 32, and I think I have all the best gear...there has to be a trick to this I'm missing.

Have a dedicated healer or two, if you can all heal, cast it every round. Get regeneration up and as much passive damage as possible.

Then outlive him and whittle his HP away.

slash000

Yeah the Lab is a beast. I know I wanted it to be difficult and confusing, because well it's only 1 section of one dungeon that is relatively difficult (the others are fairly straightforward dungeons), and it's the final part of the final dungeon in the game. Many older RPGs had really incredibly confusing levels.. But anyway, there won't be anything nearly that baffling in CSTW. Although I will say the dungeons in CSTW will be more interesting in a few ways. Just nothing in the game will be as baffling/confusing as the final piece of the final dungeon in BODVII.

Dragkonias

Did anyone else just abuse save points to clear the encounter countdown and just run through the dungeon afterwards?

RainbowDespair

No, you're not the only one. Don't worry, we'll deal with you later...MWAHAHAHA!

SpecTrE3353

Dragkonias wrote: »

Did anyone else just abuse save points to clear the encounter countdown and just run through the dungeon afterwards?

I did this for like the last half of the game. Part of the reason was just so that I could wander the levels looking for chests and getting to hear the music un-interrupted. If there is one weird thing I can say bothered me in BoD7, it's that the songs reset to the beginning every time you entered and then exited an encounter. I felt like I heard the beginning 5 to 15 seconds of the songs over and over... any chance CSTW will keep playing the songs from the point they left off when you get into battles RD/Slash? Probably not your highest priority but I'd love it if it did

RainbowDespair

SpecTrE3353 wrote: »

Dragkonias wrote: »

Did anyone else just abuse save points to clear the encounter countdown and just run through the dungeon afterwards?

I did this for like the last half of the game. Part of the reason was just so that I could wander the levels looking for chests and getting to hear the music un-interrupted. If there is one weird thing I can say bothered me in BoD7, it's that the songs reset to the beginning every time you entered and then exited an encounter. I felt like I heard the beginning 5 to 15 seconds of the songs over and over... any chance CSTW will keep playing the songs from the point they left off when you get into battles RD/Slash? Probably not your highest priority but I'd love it if it did

It's a good suggestion, but it would require us to do a complete rewrite of the audio system to take advantage of XACT (which isn't very well documented) so not for CSTW. Maybe with a future game.

Septus

slash000 wrote: »

Hey guys,

Check out the October issue of Official Xbox Magazine, on page 92!

Spoiler:

And building on the idea of awesome little gameplay tweaks that make games more fun, Performance, listed at the bottom of that add, looks like another great indie game.

Maybe I'll buy both that and Breath of Death tonight.

RainbowDespair

Breath of Death VII has been bouncing around the Top Rated recently (#3-#5) with tough competition from Zombie Estate & Miner Dig Deep. If you loved Breath of Death VII and haven't rated it yet, a few more high ratings could help us solidify a higher spot (and a corresponding increase in longterm sales) - http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585504bd/

In other pseudo-news, Slash and I have been seriously discussing the possibility of getting PC versions of our games out after we finish the XBLIG version of Cthulhu Saves the World. We haven't solidified anything yet, but if I get the okay from Valve, I'd like to put them up on Steam, probably in a collection.

LewieP

Oh man, that's fantastic. I wish you the best of luck with that,

RainbowDespair

Yeah, I'm rather hopeful. After seeing how well Recettear has done on Steam, I really think our RPGs would find a lot of success on the platform. We've gotten several requests to port our games to the PSN which isn't going to happen anytime soon (too expensive and too much work), but I figure most people have a PC that would be capable of playing them (system requirements shouldn't be very high).

I sent an email to Steam earlier this week asking if they'd be interested in hosting a PC version of our games and though they haven't agreed to anything yet, they did reply back to me with additional questions about our plans so that's a promising sign. We'll see how things go.

Xaquin

As I don't own an Xbox, I would buy BoDVII in a heartbeat on Steam.

RBach

I already expressed my interest in the Steam thread, but I'd buy BoD and CStW in a hearbeat.

Elvenshae

Xaquin wrote: »

As I don't own an Xbox, I would buy BoDVII in a heartbeat on Steam.

This here covers it for me, as well.

LewieP

Let me know if you want some RPS coverage.

Gibbs

Hell, I'd probably buy it again just because my xbox isn't hooked up to the internet that often. There's some serious gaps where I can't play Indie games.

You might consider throwing in a little extra content to up the price, even. Maybe make the soundtrack included with the games instead of downloading them separately. Wallpapers, concept art (do you even have concept art?)


Call it:

Zeboyd Games: Ultimate Gaming Collection: Volume Zed: Collector's Edition

Excuse me Steam, I would like to purchase ZG: UGC: VZ: CE please.

LewieP

I remember that Dejobaan's "AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity" broke Steam. They had to abbreviate it.

RainbowDespair

On Twitter today:

"Attention X-Play Nation: What's your favorite INDIE game of all time? Send your reply to @xplay now and it could appear on tonight's show! "

Any votes for Breath of Death VII would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Also, Slash found a video guide/playthrough of the game: http://www.gameanyone.com/game/X360/7312.html

RainbowDespair

Breath of Death VII post-mortem - http://zeboyd.com/2010/09/24/breath-of-death-vii-the-beginning-post-mortem/

Also, we just broke 30,000 sales.

slash000

RainbowDespair wrote: »

Breath of Death VII post-mortem - http://zeboyd.com/2010/09/24/breath-of-death-vii-the-beginning-post-mortem/

Also, we just broke 30,000 sales.

For some detailed info on sales, I created these charts:

Spoiler:

RainbowDespair

Woo! We just got picked up by gamasutra!

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20100924/6069/Breath_of_Death_VII_The_Beginning__A_Postmortem.php

slash000

Kotaku just posted an article about BOD7's sales and post mortem.

You can check it out (It's on the front page right now), or go directly to the story here:

http://kotaku.com/5648871/how-an-indie-xbox-answer-to-old+school-dragon-warrior-reached-30k

Arrath

Let us know if that triggers another sales spike!

slash000

Arrath wrote: »

Let us know if that triggers another sales spike!

We'll letcha know. If it turns out to be another big boost I might have to update the chart again