Greetings, Chrono X Fans. I am here to deliver a very special message to all of you. I’ll be telling you of some dark secrets we had while making this demo. I’ll also be stating the plans for the upcoming demo that Max is almost done with! It will be quite a lengthy post, but after reading it, I hope the people who went on our chat and complained will understand what we had to go through (yeah, we are looking at you).
Click the “Read More” portion to continue.
- A Tearful Farewell
On May 15th, we lost someone on the team who had been with us since the beginning– someone who became like a brother to MaxRock. Yes, his name was Tommy. On that day, he stepped down as co-leader and Main Spriter for the Chrono X project. I will not go into too many details as to why, but take our word for it that it was a very good personal reason. And we all respected it. With Tommy gone, the team needed to be reorganized. I, Killer336, was elected to take his place as co-leader. I will do my best to do what I can to help Max. To end this on a happy note, I will simply say that Tommy still helps us out from time to time. Though, he does not really help plan for the game. I valued his input, but that is how it is.
- Development Dilemmas Due to memory management problem in GameMaker (GameMaker is not recommended for creating huge, lengthy RPGs such as this), a lot of the code had to be rewritten. Meaning, that Max had to take some time off from developing the story content to find a way around that problem.
Max found a way around the erroneous memory management; fixing previous bugs while rewriting the code. It is still unclear if we will remain with the version of GameMaker we are using right now, or update later, as a new version of GameMaker was released a few months ago. In the newer version, a lot of functions are obsolete, meaning more code revisions would be needed. Please keep this dilemma in mind while I delve deeper into this debacle.
Not only this, but sprites had to be redone. Placeholders were used for the 3rd demo to save on development time. Couple this with the new content and the lack of spriters we have, it took a long, long time. Especially since Chapter 2 (towards the end) was quite demanding in terms of new sprites. As you all are well aware of, Chrono X still could use skilled spriters. To a lesser degree, Max’s real-life problems interfered. But, he is taking care of them as we speak.
- 4.1 and 4.0
To further clarify, 4.1 is the updated version to 4.0 that we are planning. In order to not keep you guys waiting for a few more months (you guys would nerd rage and you know it), we decided to put some stuff from 4.0 into 4.1. Now, due to server hosting problems, we had to hold off on testing online mode. We came up with a way to have a near-perfect online battle experience, but, if you want this integrated into your demo, we need to do some more work and tests regarding it. JUST so you guys do not have to wait another few months, we are releasing 4.0 out first. 4.0 will contain both game chapters and all the stuff we promised save for online mode, and few other nice polished things that we think would look good. 4.1 will come a bit later and will contain all the bonus stuff we wanted.
So, why should you play 4.0? Because Max rewrote the save system! Yes, you guys can continue the game in a newer update without having to restart like last time. This means you Chrono X fanatics can help contribute by finding bugs and play the updated versions without any fear of losing your save. The only consequence is that if we fundamentally change how the game is coded. In that case, your save will not update. But I do not think that will happen. You should still play 4.0 to show support, help us squash bugs, and because you are not losing anything by doing so. We WANT you guys to play 4.0, that is why we are not holding the release date back again.
Sorry to keep you guys for so long. The next home page news post will be the release of Demo 4, I promise. Killer336, out.