Mega Man RPG Prototype

[AdrianMarceau]

We're back!  Yay!  For now anyway...
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EDIT:  Forget it.  The memory on my server is blowing up and the game is crashing and half-loading and just not-working anymore.  I have to take it down until I can get all these issues sorted out but given how much time I've spent trying to fix them already I'm not sure I can.  I'm so sorry.  Feel free to delete this topic.  :(
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Rather than spamming the other fan game thread, I think perhaps its better that I finally make my own and post here.



The Mega Man RPG Prototype is an ongoing fangame project with the goal of creating a progress-saving, no-download, no-install, cross-platform, browser-based Mega Man RPG that combines the addictive collection and battle mechanics of the Pokémon series with the beloved robots and special weapons of the classic Mega Man series.  You fight your way through (currently) 33 (there are more, but others are not finished) different Robot Masters in a turn-based battle system reminiscent of both play-by-post forum games and early 8-bit role-playing games.

More information about the game's mechanics can be found on the official Wiki and many more screenshots can be found on the prototype's gallery page.

(click to show/hide)

The game has gone through some pretty major updates over the last several months and now all the robots from MM1, MM2, and MM4 appear in the game as fully unlockable characters.  The internal Pokédex-like "Robot Database" has been more fleshed out, and new collectible items called Field Stars now appear post-game to make your robots stronger.  The game is very, very different than most fangames and it's definitely a niche genre, but overall I think it's very fun and unique.

My goal in posting on this forum is to find new players and gather meaningful, interesting, and critical feedback on the game's fun level, its balance, your opinion on its mechanics aesthetics, ideas you have for new content and features, etc. etc.  My (very small) team and I have worked incredibly hard on this game / prototype hybrid over the last few years and we would love to hear what everyone out there has to say.  I am not exaggerating when I say that it thrives on user feedback and contributions, and we're constantly tweaking the engine and adding new content based on user contributions and feedback from contact forms and bulletin boards like these.  With that said, I hope you will give the game a chance and if you do please let us know what you thought!

Thank you for your time and for anyone who plays the game, and I look forward to any and all comments and criticisms and I can't wait to see you all on the leaderboards!  :D

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EDIT : If you have played the game before but have not been back for a very long time, it may be worth it to reset you save file (found in the "save" menu in-game).  You will loose your progress, of course, but you will have a much better experience where things are unlocked in the appropriate order and progress makes more sense.  Thanks for playing!

EDIT2 : Updated all the links with their new URLs after the server move.  I decided to host the game on a dedicated subdomain with the new server and modularize it a bit, so now I'm going around the internet updating any posts I can find with the proper links.  >_>

[Dr. Crasger]

Looks pretty fucking cool. Just judging by the screenshots.
Is it truly in 8-bit though? All the graphical limitations of the 8-bit systems are emulated, or is it not?

Looks like it's not.

[Hallan Parva]

Dude, don't feel bad about your servers crashing. I mean yeah, of course you feel bad, but it's not like it was your fault or anything. Just remember to make a post here when things get fixed and edit the first post accordingly. We actually had a somewhat similar incident happen when Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch version 2 was released, where using Junk Shield for more than a few seconds literally generated enough lag to crash the game. The dev team freaked out about it, and hastily pushed out "v2b" within two or three hours to resolve the issue. It happens to the best of us, unfortunately.

While I'm here though, I might as well bring something up. When I went in to play the game, I noticed I had to go through an "intro field" and fight a Mettool before accessing the Robot Master stages. After winning the battle and loading up the first stage (Ice Man), I saw that the enemy parties were more fleshed-out, as Ice Man had a Peng tackle me a couple times before he entered battle. I thought this was really neat... until Mega Man's Copy Shot failed to take Ice Man's moves, he froze me in place so I couldn't switch, and I didn't have enough health to survive charging up a Mega Buster and take him down... and then Roll got two-hit KOed by the big joker.

I realize there's a new unlock system that automatically grants you party-wide and character-specific attacks, but I guess out of respect for the older players you left all of the previous unlocks still there. I have a feeling that the Copy Shot attack is antiquated at this point and is, in effect, completely and utterly useless. Is this the case? If so, why was the Copy Shot still left in the game? Maybe I should somehow restart my save file to understand how things were supposed to work, but as I have a half-finished save I really don't know what's going on here.

Other than that, I can see you poured a lot of love and effort into this game. The musical choices all sound amazing and I like the addition of stage enemies to the opposing party. Great work, and I'd love to hear from you when you get your servers sorted out.

[xColdxFusionx]

Sorry to hear that your servers are down. Memory issues and optimization can be a real pain in the ass; as the leader of a mod that's currently banned due to memory usage issues, I feel your pain. Hopefully you can get the game back up and running; it looks like a really interesting concept and I'd hate to see it die out because the level select script, of all things, wasn't working properly.

[Magnet Dood]

I can't really tell through the database stuff, but are the MM5/MM3 Robot Masters playable? They seem to have fully fleshed out battle data, yet I never saw them on the players' side on any of the images.

Also, could you maybe fix up Toad Man's eye border thing on his sprites? It's pretty eye-strain inducing.

[AdrianMarceau]

Well, I think I've fixed most of the memory issues.  I'm monitoring it and I can see that it's still high, but I should be okay for a little bit.  Thank you to everyone who's visited so far, and for your feedback - especially those of you who shared similar stories.  That was a really tiring, burnt out night and I hope to never experience it again, but your words really made me feel less alone and absolutely pulled me out of the gutter. :)

Now to answer to questions:

@ Dr. Crasger  :  All the graphics start off as 8-bit, but go through a post-production process that adds lots of extra polish for a more unique look.  Gradient overlays, drop shadows, and other layer styles are added, for example, and I make very liberal use of webkit transforms (like rotate and skew) in the CSS for the game.  Oh, everything you see is rendered in HTML+CSS and all the sprites are just fix-width <div>s with background images layered on top of each other.  Totally overkill and probably should have used the <canvas>, but I used what I knew at the time and here we are.  :P

@ SmashBroPlusB : Thank you so much for your words.  I guess I should have realized that these things happen and you just gotta pick yourself up and try again.  :)  And as you know from the other forums the Copy Shot thing is fixed now.  Thank you again for the detailed bug report and all the other testing you've done - very much appreciated! ^_^

@ xColdxFusionx : I'm happy to report that the game is (currently) back online and I think I've fixed most of the issues.  Fun fact - after all the optimizations I did to the game's index system and its mission generation script it turns out a great deal of memory was being eaten by the leaderboard of all things.  When you visited any player's leaderboard page it loaded the entire save file into memory (so that it could display robots, player stats, unlocks, etc.) but it never cleared the data afterward.  The more leaderboard profiles you looked at the more session memory was being used.  By the time you got into battle the page just crashed prematurely and everything was ruined.  >_>  I have it loading much less now and clearing it at the end of rendering. No more session storage!

@ Magnet Dood : At the moment the MM3 and MM5+ robots are not playable.  The ones that have mugshots can be encountered in battle post-game (randomly in like-typed stages) but cannot be unlocked yet.  Mostly because they're not complete yet.  MM5+ do not have signature abilities yet, for example, and none of the MM3/5+ robots have their corresponding field created yet.  Encountering them in battle is more of a beta-tester bonus, and in the case of the MM3 robots (only) you can copy their abilities with the Copy Shot because they are actually complete.  Oh, and I'll let my spriter know about Toad Man.  See if he can fix him up a bit.  :P

[Hallan Parva]

Haha, and here I was thinking you had forgotten about us! Thanks for the updates though, and glad to know I could help.

[xColdxFusionx]

it turns out a great deal of memory was being eaten by the leaderboard of all things.  When you visited any player's leaderboard page it loaded the entire save file into memory (so that it could display robots, player stats, unlocks, etc.) but it never cleared the data afterward.  The more leaderboard profiles you looked at the more session memory was being used.  By the time you got into battle the page just crashed prematurely and everything was ruined.  >_>

Oh, god, it was an infinite loop issue. CSCC had a similar issue where it would call a script an infinite number of times for each player on the server, which would destroy servers and got us banned from being hosted.

Glad to hear you got the issue fixed, and good luck on your future endeavors! I'm having a blast with the game so far!

[AdrianMarceau]

I'm so glad you guys like it.  Since posting here we've gotten an incredible amount of new players and active ones at that, so thank you so much for playing and for all your awesome feedback.  I've been making small bug fixed and little improvement to the game since my last post - as I always do - and will continue to improve and evolve the project with all of your feedback.  Thank you!

I finally added personal messaging system to the community which has been a huge help and much needed improvement, and I've also made a bunch of improvements to how profiles are displayed and customized.  Now not only can you select your robot avatar and your background colour, but you can also select your own background image (based on the available fields) and have those choices affect the game's theme when you log in and the appearance of your name on posts, the leaderboard, and other places.  It's all pretty colourful and great, actually, and it really goes a long way in helping users express themselves in the community.  ^_^

Anyway, thanks again and I'll make sure to post here with any more major updates or answers to questions. :)

[TailsMK4]

I really have been enjoying this game, but it seems the site is down atm while I was trying to load up Drill Man's stage to fight him. Guess I'll wait a bit and see if it comes back up later. Also, I cannot wait to fight the MM3 Robot Masters. I'm anxious myself to slap Gemini Man's profile pic on my slot.  

[Zard1084]

I tried it earlier today i and i liked it.

[SMMG44]

How do you register or login to MMRPG?????


EDIT:I found it out