Welcome to the official topic for The Time Machine.

A couple months ago I got into, what I would call, "an intense RPG-making mood". I started out by trying the new RPG Maker VX. It was, I must admit, a quite enhanced engine compared to 2003. It came with very nice chipsets, had a user-friendly interface, and also sported the (unfortunately underused) Ruby Scripting engine. But it had a few downsides, too. One of the big ones was: You couldn't go full-screen. Well, you could make the window bigger, sure, but then it would get that blurry, stretched-out look. And the chipsets were designed for charasets that were basically the same size as a tile; making it harder to use tall characters. After playing other RPGs around here and comparing them to VX, I concluded that 2003 was the way to go.

So I ditched the new software and got back to the basics; now I had to decide what kind of game I wanted to make. Something that would be interesting the whole way through. Something original that hadn't been done before. At the time I was reading H.G. Wells' The Time Machine for school. I really liked that book and thought that it was interesting and intuitive. Suddenly, the idea of a time travel game came to me! "That's it, I'll make The Time Machine!" And so this RPG was born.

This is with-out-a-doubt my best RPG yet, and if I was to ever give up this practice then I would choose this game as my final project. (I'm not trying to inspire feelings of quitting, however. ) I've been working on it for many months and over the coming I plan to expand it far more broad than it is now.




This is the story for The Time Machine. I've tried not to tell too much; but this will probably outline the current demo, so if you want a completely fresh game, don't read this!

The day has finally come. A time machine has been created, and Toa Tahu has volunteered to travel to the future. But when the machine mysteriously malfunctions, the Toa of Fire is trapped in a desolate future where chaos ensues and Mata-Nui is controlled by the Makuta and his Shadow Toa! Tahu must set off on a legendary mission, to regroup the Toa, recover the lost Gold Masks, and save Mata-Nui once and for all!




This RPG sports many features, some common and some... not-so.

• A real, working CMS (aka Custom Menu System)!
• Running and Jumping!
• A Lava-Surfing Minigame!
• "Enhanced" Battle Charasets; larger battle graphics with more than 3 frames!
• "Refreshment" System; get healed every once-in-a-while for free!
• "Random-Encounters-Inside-Of-Collision-Encounters";
  that means that you only battle when you hit an on-screen enemy,
  but you'll fight a *random* group/amount of monsters that could change each time!
• Kraata Catching; collect Kraata to get special power-ups!
• Puzzles and mazes!

And also, soon-to-come:

• Custom Charasets by Turaga Dlakii!
• Lots more dungeons, Koro, and Wahi!
• Lots more fun Minigames!
• And a whole lot of other stuff, too!

Here are some screenshots of the game:

The Title Screen.
A celebration in Ta-Koro.
A dangerous city.
The game's CMS.
The Lava-Surfing Minigame.




Click the above image/header to download the current demo of The Time Machine. [V1.0]

Questions, comments, and criticism are all welcome. I hope you enjoy the game!

This game was created in association with Cyan Productions. Check out our other cool games, too!

Look great, downloading.
to bad about not using VX ough, I personally prfer it.
will you be able to go back in time and ater thefuture in any way? I love time paradoxes

I can't wait to play this, should be good (it's still downloading right now)

Would you take the time play and comment on my game?

Heres the link.

Why does everybody post in anothers persons topic, only o advertise their own? Particularly here in the FCG section, it's againt the rule to do that in Artwrk 1-3, isn't it here as well?

It's not that big of a deal to me... but Airoski, Kittens is right. You probably shouldn't post such big quotes, either; it's not really nessecary to quote the first post, anyway. (If you don't mind editing it out that would be great!)

Looks cool. I might download if I get rid of some junk on my computer. What sprite kit did you use?

I'm using Cyan-exclusive charasets at the moment (soon to be using Turaga Dlakii's); I'm using some of Emzee's chipsets, but I've seen them elsewhere on the web, too; and for battle charasets I'm using Rayg 2.5.

Same spriteset as me.

2003 can go full-screen? I should've used it...

Installed; when I attempt to run it, it says "The RPG Maker 2003 Runtime Package is not present or not registered.".

You'll need to download RPGMaker 2003s RTP (Run Time Package) google it.
Can't give link

Takua95, nice topic you put up! Anyway, before this game gets put on the website, I need you to visit this site and give a rating for it. It'll make the game seem more professional to outsiders. Never mind I just did it for you, since I played through it already. Thanks.

Would you like this in the Library?

Played through it, it's surprisingly short, but very good, you use the pause text action a lot. I'm going to make my guess at your animation system, battle animations am I right?
EDIT: That balancing needs a bit of a touch up, instead of facing 4 Rahkshi first, then 2, then 3, it should be 2,3,4 and you should get a bit more EXP, Shadow Tahu was insanely hard, I had just barely any health left, and only got 45 EXP.

I would also like to introduce the Mirror Download. More likely to stay up.

Gah! Another game topic to stomp my poor topic down! No, just kidding...
Shadow Tahu made me so angry, I actually cheated. I opened the game in RM2k3, and that's the only reason I won. =D
The game looks nice, the storyline's unique and great. Gameplay is pretty basic, but whatever, that's the last thing I take into consideration. The demo generally was so short I wanted to check wheteter accidentally there is some future material in the game's files. Unfortunately, no.
-TD

Yeah, I was kind of expecting some response like this. I am aware that it's short and probably not worth the foot-print. I'm going to have a lot more play time in the next demo; the highlight of this first one was to show off the features and the capabilities of the game. The next demo should give you a good dose of exploring, more complex battling, and probably more dungeoneering; aka fun stuff.

I'll be working on the battling a bit... I won't fall into the trap of a CBS but I'm going to be rewriting values, etc. Just to make sure you don't get to strong too fast and so that you keep in pace with the monsters. I'm debating on the text pauses, as they seem have doomed me for the past years. The story is going to take even more leaps, for the better. I'm trying to make it follow-able with familiar faces and the such.

I'll be basically cleaning up a few things from V1.0, but the bulk will be new stuff for V2.0.

And yes, Emzee, the library will be great; the rating might have to be updated every big release or so, though.

As I said before, you should probably look into improving the characters, it's hard enough to beat the enemies as it is...
oh and what are Kraata for?

They're going to come into play soon... with them you'll be able to access secret areas and get special items. Your best bet is to collect all 6 of each type.

Ah, I seem to have forgotten to include two things under "Features". I'm adding them.

Yeah, I hope the next demo has a lot more gameplay in it. Even though it'll take longer, I've noticed BZPers here are actually capable of waiting an extended amount of time if they really set their mind to it. I hope progress goes well.