MorningStar Zwei (NaNo 2009 late release) v1.2

[ficedula]

Thanks - the dump.txt file is what I needed. I'm 90% sure I know what the problem is, although I haven't reproduced it yet [that's what I'll try and do next...] and I should have a fix out soon-ish.

If you're having problems installing .NET then something's possibly not-quite-right with your Windows install anyway - but if you've got to the point of running the game it sounds like it's installed now, anyway - and the crash bug is our fault. So once it's corrected you should be able to play it through.

[ficedula]

Update: v1.2 is out which will fix the problem with crashing on the first morning, for anyone who had it.

http://www.studiomab.co.uk/AssetData.as ... wei120.zip

It also improves savegame handling and removes the dependency on SDL, so that doesn't need installing.

If you have v1.1 installed (Windows) there's a patch file to save redownloading the whole game:

http://www.studiomab.co.uk/AssetData.as ... tch120.zip

OSX version:
http://www.studiomab.co.uk/AssetData.as ... wei120.dmg

[elmedir]

Thank you, it works now.

The game felt a lot shorter than the original Morning Star. I'm not sure why. Less text? Shorter battles? A combination of both? Or perhaps my mind is playing tricks because I had enjoyed the original so much? I just remember that game to have been... meatier somehow. I agonized over it for hours and hours and then I just breezed my way through Zwei yesterday. Sort of disappointing. Not the game itself, just it's length.
Speaking of battles, why do we only get to see stats for Kagome and her temporary partners? Knowing how much health/meta the enemy has left would be useful.
I also think there are a few "Kagome/random venus has leveled up!" messages missing. I am told so when Kagome gets to 140HP but not when she gets to 160 (don't know if she can get higher) and there's nothing to indicate how the other students are progressing, unless I happen to partner with them so I can see their current health.
Though I am happy that battles got shorter (I never felt like going through yet another battle was such a chore this time around), I'm not sure I can fully appreciate them in terms of challenging/balanced gameplay. Either I wade through enemies so fast I don't get any sense of accomplicement, or I lose horribly time after time because some girl managed to snuff out half if not most of my health in a single hit.

And how come I never get sent to the infirmary after losing in battle training?

The blinking is a nice touch (how come Hikaru doesn't get it too?) but all characters seem to be stuck with the same expression. What's it called again... neutral half-smile. Or neutral half-scowl in Natsuki's case. It's like they're incapable of showing any actual feelings. Whatever happened to the cute expressions of worry/anger/embarrassment from the first game? Were they sacrificed for the sake of blinking? I especially miss the blushing. Kagome's constant teasing of everything that walks doesn't exactly help me forget it either.

I have so many objections and questions about the story I can't even begin to sort them out in my head. (thrown-out-of-loop Morning Star fan. ) Maybe after I've mulled over them some more. It's a fun read though.

I got endings 1,6,8 and 10. Then I tried the extra mode. Oh dear. So... shoujo. So.. many... cavities. (shudders) Nice use of colors by the way. I tried playing it according to the title by concentrating on Sa-chan and her favorite activities and got the 'Perfect Cherry Blossom' ending. Why is this also reffered to as 'ending 10'? Am I to think that if I concentrate on the other students, despite the title theme, I can get different endings in the extra mode?
And since I got so far into the spoiler territory:
Is it possible to blow my cover in front or the Sachikos?
Can Akane really betray me after agreeing to help with my mission?
I recall Ramidel saying 'I haven't even -met- Akane, and already the moment I move up to the council house she asks me to be her partner.'. Can the girls actually propose to Kagome themselves?

Almost forgot, I crashed twice. When I tried 'save file' instead of 'save in new slot' the game would refuse to load any of my saved games and would crash instead. The 'save in new slot' saves work perfectly though. (By the way, it would be nice to have the more recent saves displayed first instead of having to click 'next' a gazillion times to reach them.)

When Shizu interrupted my talk with Miyu about intruders in the Academy and freaked out, the game crashed as miyako's head got blown up. (Then the next moment everything's back to normal. Is she a telepath or something?) Unlike the problem with the saves though I haven't been able to replicate this.

Also, at day 17 or 18 I was chatting with Chikako at the front yard and the text speed got screwed up, alternating between slowest and fastest. I saved and tried to continue playing but then the game got stuck trying to show Sakaki's sprite at the dorm. I managed to reload the save from the middle of the screwed-up-speed conversation and the problem got solved without me having to quit the game first, although the text speed got reset to default instead of the fastest that I had been using.

[chunderbunny]

Thank you, it works now.

The game felt a lot shorter than the original Morning Star. I'm not sure why. Less text? Shorter battles? A combination of both? Or perhaps my mind is playing tricks because I had enjoyed the original so much? I just remember that game to have been... meatier somehow. I agonized over it for hours and hours and then I just breezed my way through Zwei yesterday. Sort of disappointing. Not the game itself, just it's length.
Speaking of battles, why do we only get to see stats for Kagome and her temporary partners? Knowing how much health/meta the enemy has left would be useful.
I also think there are a few "Kagome/random venus has leveled up!" messages missing. I am told so when Kagome gets to 140HP but not when she gets to 160 (don't know if she can get higher) and there's nothing to indicate how the other students are progressing, unless I happen to partner with them so I can see their current health.
Though I am happy that battles got shorter (I never felt like going through yet another battle was such a chore this time around), I'm not sure I can fully appreciate them in terms of challenging/balanced gameplay. Either I wade through enemies so fast I don't get any sense of accomplicement, or I lose horribly time after time because some girl managed to snuff out half if not most of my health in a single hit.

And how come I never get sent to the infirmary after losing in battle training?

I guess I can answer some of these questions...

In terms of text, MSZ actually has more than the original (but only slightly), the main reason the game is shorter is the battles. There are fewer battles overall (especially at the end of the game) and the battles themselves are much shorter. The battles were the main cause of complaint in the original game, so I tried to tone them down. Not only are they shorter, but also easier. The text speed is also faster, which makes a surprisingly large difference.

As for why you can't see enemy stats, well why should you? Most RPGs don't give you this information, and I didn't want to make it too easy. Similarly you don't get any info on when other characters level up because that would also make choosing your target too easy. As for not going to the infirmary, that only happens when Kagome is defeated, (and it happens every time she is defeated when I test it).

[ficedula]

Thanks for the bug reports, I'll look into them.

"The blinking is a nice touch (how come Hikaru doesn't get it too?) but all characters seem to be stuck with the same expression. What's it called again... neutral half-smile. Or neutral half-scowl in Natsuki's case. It's like they're incapable of showing any actual feelings. Whatever happened to the cute expressions of worry/anger/embarrassment from the first game? Were they sacrificed for the sake of blinking? I especially miss the blushing."

Eh ... the expressions should still be in there, although we used them a bit less than in the first game. (Hikaru doesn't get blinking just because we overlooked her!).

"I got endings 1,6,8 and 10. Then I tried the extra mode. Oh dear. So... shoujo. So.. many... cavities. (shudders) "

Excellent, thank you

"Nice use of colors by the way. I tried playing it according to the title by concentrating on Sa-chan and her favorite activities and got the 'Perfect Cherry Blossom' ending. Why is this also reffered to as 'ending 10'? Am I to think that if I concentrate on the other students, despite the title theme, I can get different endings in the extra mode?"

Ooops! That's a typo :/ That should be ending 11 - I got mixed up because there's ten good endings, ending 1 is the 'you lose' ending. And no - as the title indicates, the PCB mode is an extra path only for Sakura.

"And since I got so far into the spoiler territory:
Is it possible to blow my cover in front or the Sachikos?"

It isn't, no. Although if we'd had time to write more Sachiko events then we probably would have implemented this.

"Can Akane really betray me after agreeing to help with my mission?"

Again, no.

"I recall Ramidel saying 'I haven't even -met- Akane, and already the moment I move up to the council house she asks me to be her partner.'. Can the girls actually propose to Kagome themselves?"

Yep, that's possible (although not all the girls have this written for them - Akane's the most outgoing). Ramidel getting it on day 1 was a bug of course but it is a possible outcome.

As for the battles ... yeah. As chunderbunny said the main source of complaints about MS was the battles taking too long so we decided to make them shorter and simpler for MSZ. The problem with that is pretty much as you've identified ... either they end up being easy, or they're so short random chance plays a bigger role. *shrugs* If we ever write a third game (not my current intention - although I never planned to write a second...) maybe we could try and find a happy medium.

With regards to game length - it's approximately the same length as MS. IIRC, MorningStar was 41,000 words, MSZ is 49,000 - although that includes the bonus mode. Of course in both games it's possible to run through and miss an awful lot of text - the non-linear nature of the games mean you probably see not much more than 50% of the words on each playthrough, and if you're trying to get through the game quickly you can avoid an awful lot of events if you want. If nothing else, MS was certainly planned out better which might have made it seem to hang together better.

[elmedir]

As for why you can't see enemy stats, well why should you? Most RPGs don't give you this information, and I didn't want to make it too easy. Similarly you don't get any info on when other characters level up because that would also make choosing your target too easy. As for not going to the infirmary, that only happens when Kagome is defeated, (and it happens every time she is defeated when I test it).

Hey, I never said I should. Just that it would be useful. I guess you're right, it would make things too easy.

On another note... I'm having trouble putting the storylines together. Is Zwei a direct sequel? I mean, is the story canon or is it some sort of alternative future? And is Natsuki a clone as well (if yes why doesn't she have her own name like the others?) or is she supposed to be the Natsuki from Morning Star except older/nastier (how come she doesn't get cloned then)? How much time has passed between the ending of the first game and the beginning of Zwei?

[Vachiom]

Well, I figured I had to dig out my account here to post a comment on this, since I had pretty much created it in the first place to comment on the original game :)

I, too, am a little confused by the continuity and the story, though I'm leaning a bit towards an slightly alternate-reality future, mainly because, if I'm remembering correctly,

Shichiro gets killed and your character in the first game is Hikari, not Hikaru

. In any case, Kagome is a great lead character and this is another fun game.

As to the story, spoiler time:

It's been a couple years since the first one, so I could be remembering things incorrectly, but this game felt a lot sparser in events. It seemed that most of the time I would just have a 'normal' day without really talking to any of the other girls, only occasionally getting some plot-relevant conversations. I only had one "let's go do something" event, where Chikako agreed to teach me partial differential equations in the library later (and lived up to her end of the deal). Most of the time it seemed no one was around no matter where I went in the evenings and thus nothing interesting happened. I think that's where a lot of the "less meat" feeling came from, from my perspective at least. It mostly seemed like you just did whatever you wanted to for a month, picked a partner (or not) and beat the crap out of Natsuki. I was actually left wondering if your choices and received events made any difference to who would and wouldn't agree to help you until I went through the character notes.

A second run was a little better in this regard, since I picked up some more events related to girls I didn't see much of the first time (Miyu, Sakaki). I think I ended up with three of them willing to help me on that one, but I still have to get Miyu (which is kind of funny since I picked up Miyako immediately in the first game). It also leads me to add that the story itself probably contributes to the "less meat" feeling. The plot of the first game was heavier, with some twists, ominous foreshadowing, and a tough decision at the end. This one was pretty focused from start to finish, and nothing happened to even try and change its course. Focus isn't a bad thing, of course, but there were basically no surprises. Add to that the "empty" feeling that stems from seemingly having only a handful of random side events, and the story just feels less filling.

The 'Sakura' route was practically the exact opposite of that. Much of the empty times were filled with Sakaki, so things never really fell into the "when is something going to actually happen" category (though there were still some mostly empty days, I never hit a spot where I had days of just nothing happening, so the breaks didn't become boring). It was shorter (in days spent at the academy) but a lot happened in there, and you really got a sense that Sakaki and Kagome bonded, and Sakaki's decision to go along with the plan made sense. The CGs were nice, and the ending also caught me completely off guard, which is a good thing.

I did find a few random things particularly interesting and funny, though. Miyu's character notes state "she's never questioned the role of the Academy and Section 22", which is really ironic given a good chunk of your time in the first game with her base, Miyako, revolved around poking into things and trying to figure out what was up. The Sachiko clones' comments about stealing partners and killing you for it was great, especially since my lingering impression of Sachiko from the first game was that she would try and kill me if I out-right rejected her. "Perfect Cherry Blossom" as an ending title made me laugh, too, but then I felt bad because of the ending itself :(

As to the mechanics, I think it's definitely an improvement over the first game. I'd have to go back and play that again to refresh my memory, but the most notable strategic change is that higher level meta abilities are far more practical and useful this time around. It doesn't look like the YP cost drops as you level anymore, but instead you gain more YP per round and when focusing. I think this accomplishes pretty much the same idea (making it easier to use the stronger abilities), but does make it tougher to figure out the specialties of you and your partner. You pretty much have to face them as an opponent and see what they toss out, since comparing the damage dealt by attacks can be tough when shields are up, the characters have different levels, and you're trying to bank on type effectiveness.

Physical attacks seem to do a little more damage as well, and aren't completely blocked by shields. That makes them fairly useful as decent, no YP offense. I want to say the shields are more expensive now, but in any case they seem to persist a bit longer, blocking partial damage from multiple attacks, it seems. The offensive meta, of course, is the most noticeable difference. No more multi-enemy attacks (which, given how almost all the battles end with one partner taken down, wouldn't be useful anyway), the use of abilities is far more clear (separate offense / defense categories), and pulling off a top level strike is much more practical. I was having trouble with a few battles before I noticed they were tossing those around, and my old strategy from the first game (spam first tier abilities) wasn't going to cut it anymore. Once I adjusted to make (surprisingly easy) use of them, things went a lot better.

There probably still is room for improvement, since battles are over more quickly and in some cases it can be tricky to accurately defend against taking a massive type-strong attack (e.g., the last battle). However, I think it's a significant improvement over the first one, and really needs only some minor tweaks. I guess the simplest thing would be to increase health all around, to make them a bit longer and less subject to a lucky strike. But I think defending is still kind out left out as well. The only time I really found it useful was when purposefully seeing what would happen if just my partner or just me died at the end. I'll check out normal mode later and see if it helps more there.

On the technical side, this one's running a lot better than the first one did (though maybe I ought to pull that one out and see if it goes any better now). I'm getting an error right when it starts (using version 1.2 on Windows XP, SP3), but it's just a generic "Sylph has encountered a problem and needs to close" thing and I don't see a dump file to post. This happens every time I run the game (the initial options menu loads properly, but it comes up as soon as I click 'Run game' no matter what settings I've got). However, if I run in windowed mode, I can just slide the error message off to the side and the game itself runs fine. I'm not sure if any aspect of it is missing, though -- I get sound effects, and all the visual effects and such in battles seem to be displaying properly. Saving and loading works just fine, etc. The only thing that might be missing is music, since I see that mentioned in the credits but none of it's playing. So a minor inconvenience and it doesn't keep me from getting through it.

I guess the bottom line is that the engine and the mechanics are much improved from the first game, but the actual story content is less engaging (aside from the bonus path). In all, it's still a great showing, and I'm looking forward to the next game you guys put out~

Well, I think that's enough from me. I still need to pick up Miyu, and figure out how to get the odd numbered endings (other than the obvious Ending 1). If I have anything to add after that, I might pop back in.

[ficedula]

Hey, I never said I should. Just that it would be useful. I guess you're right, it would make things too easy.

On another note... I'm having trouble putting the storylines together. Is Zwei a direct sequel? I mean, is the story canon or is it some sort of alternative future? And is Natsuki a clone as well (if yes why doesn't she have her own name like the others?) or is she supposed to be the Natsuki from Morning Star except older/nastier (how come she doesn't get cloned then)? How much time has passed between the ending of the first game and the beginning of Zwei?

Whether the story is canon or not is an open question ... originally we were just going to do a Mai-Otome and never really confirm why all these characters looked the same, but then of course we decided to base everything around cloning. So consider it potentially canon?

The original game was set in the present day (present time ... ahahaaha! Man, that never gets old), whereas MSZ is set ~2080, so about 75 years gap. Natsuki is clearly slightly different because she's using the name of an original Venus directly as you noted; no, we don't explain that to the player in MSZ.

Shichiro gets killed and your character in the first game is Hikari, not Hikaru

Hikaru is meant to be a 'normal' clone of Hikari, with her name following a similar convention to the other girls. Shichiro we again don't explain, so there's a variety of explanations available there.

Perhaps if we ever do make another sequel (no current plans, but hey) some of those questions might be answered

Vachiom wrote:

It's been a couple years since the first one, so I could be remembering things incorrectly, but this game felt a lot sparser in events.

That's probably a reasonable comment, although I suspect it's a mixture of things. In terms of overall word count, MSZ (excluding the bonus path) is roughly the same as MS, so there's not significantly less content in that sense. But the events are definitely less developed, and there's not so much depth to them, basically because this time around I was doing all the writing myself rather than splitting it with Jake, and I'm well aware I didn't have time to really develop them as far as I should have :/

OTOH the bonus path which I wrote after we'd missed the March deadline anyway was a bit more like the sort of thing I wanted to write, so I'm glad to hear you enjoyed that!

Various game mechanic comments

Chunderbunny did all the work on the battle system so I'll leave him to respond, but it sounds like we at least made a step forwards compared to MS, so, good, and thanks for the comments

The only thing that might be missing is music, since I see that mentioned in the credits but none of it's playing. So a minor inconvenience and it doesn't keep me from getting through it.

Yeah, that sounds like the music isn't working at all which is ... odd, to say the least. I'll have a think about that. Glad you managed to play through anyway, though...

[Jake]

Chunderbunny did all the work on the battle system so I'll leave him to respond, but it sounds like we at least made a step forwards compared to MS, so, good, and thanks for the comments

As it goes, I still think that one of the big problems MorningStar and Zwei both face battle-system-wise is that they're inherently 'duelling' games rather than the more-traditional-for-a-JRPG 'moster-hunting' games. In a Final Fantasy game, you generally get into battles with lots of low-level enemies more often than anything else, and only get into 'duelling' battles - where you're facing off against a single enemy with a similar set of abilities to your own, with special attacks and multiple spells and a decent amount of health - every twenty battles or so.

Boss battles in FF games tend to go on just as long, and involve just as much thinking and understanding the small details of the battle system as the fights in the original MorningStar did, and if you had to fight Jenova Life over and over again with nothing but a five-minute dialogue break between battles, that would get pretty tedious, too. And I expect that if the player were allowed to acclimatise to the MorningStar battle system through a series of short fights against slimes, and only had fights against other Venuses (Venii?) sporadically, then people would have got used to it and understood it a lot more.

[ai-honey]

Aww, Jake didn't tell me he was working on another game, the giant butt face. :(

Will d/l now, let's be hoping people are easier to beat in this version. ;__;

[Ren]

Because he's not involved.
Also, I don't remember him being Ben Affleck's father, it sounds like you're trying to offend him. :3

[ai-honey]

Because he's not involved.
Also, I don't remember him being Ben Affleck's father, it sounds like you're trying to offend him. :3

.. but that's his art?

Also, I lol'ed.

[Ren]

Reused material.
There's a reason they're all clones.

Also, I didn't.

[chunderbunny]

.. but that's his art?

Yeah, it's the same artwork as in the original MorningStar, plus one new character who would have been in the original had time permitted.

Any tweaks to the art were carried out by Fice, although Jake did do the new logo for us.

[ai-honey]

Reused material.
There's a reason they're all clones.

Also, I didn't.

Fair enough.

Though why would you laugh at your own joke?

Jake is my friend anyway, I'm allowed to insult him. :3

.. but that's his art?

Yeah, it's the same artwork as in the original MorningStar, plus one new character who would have been in the original had time permitted.

Any tweaks to the art were carried out by Fice, although Jake did do the new logo for us.

Ah cool, well, regaurdless, playing through it now, t'is pretty good.