Going through some of very, very old files on my server I came across these early prototypes for what is now the "Mega Man RPG Prototype" game. Most of these are non-interactive, display tests that experimented with different ways of showing information and bringing life to an otherwise static game idea - using HTML to build a fully realized RPG battle system with Mega Man characters. These three prototype scripts are from all the way back in November 2010, and look vastly different than what was finally settled on in early 2011 when the prototype became a playable game.

Prototype #1

This first test dealt with the positioning of battle-related information and commands. I wanted all messages displayed in battle to be visible - like a string of forum posts - but I didn't want the user to have to scroll to see what was currently happening. AS a result, I tried many different arrangements of the three boxes that would contain the canvas animations, the actions panel with buttons, and the event console that displayed all the messages. I liked the idea behind this one, but it was quite ugly and a little too confusing to stick.

Prototype #2

This second test was more about how to display each robot's current status in battle and trying to figure out how many I could fit on-screen at once. Whether or not all of these would always be visible at once was something I was mulling over, but for the sake of the prototyping process I was just messing with different colour combinations and didn't fully consider their size.

Prototype #3

This last experiment combined ideas from the previous two into a battle system that was semi-automated and would play-out like a series of role-play battles on a forum. Each player would select their combination of robots to send into battle and then submit the form and see how it all turns out. I kind of liked how this turned out visually, but the idea of sitting back and letting the game play itself felt a little silly. :P

And that's another inside look into the development process leading up to the game. I hope you enjoy the tour and understand my how much work and thought has gone into this seemingly simplistic fangame. :P

Use this thread for any and all game-related suggestions that you may have. If you believe the topic or suggestion is large enough to warrant it's own thread, you are free to do so at your own discretion.

That being said, this thread is really anything-goes in relation to how the game flows and functions, how the turns work, the features/mechanics that are available, etc. and I welcome any and all comments and/or criticisms you may have.

Please, let me and all the rest of us know what's on your mind - what could make the game better? What new ideas do you think would fit in with the existing framework and what mechanics needs to go? Tell me!

For website-related suggestions, see this thread.

Hello again! The first of this week's updates has to do with the Crash Bomber ability and how it functions in battle. I've tweaked the mechanics of the bomb to function more closely to the games and have done away with the random defense-lowering effect.



The Crash Bomber now functions more like a time-bomb, attaching itself to a target and then ticking for three turns until it explodes and causes massive damage. The Crash Bomber can be aimed at any target and multiple robots on the opponent's side of the field can have one attached, allowing for some interesting time-delayed combos.

In addition to having a weakness to Electric type attacks which cause it to explode prematurely, the Crash Bomber can be triggered at any time by the creator or any other robot with the ability equipped. Triggering the Crash Bomber early leads to a lower damage, but it can be helpful when you need to deal damage quickly.

Because the power of the Crash Bomber is directly tied to the robot who created it, other robots triggering the explosion can lead to some interesting scenarios. Imagine a Level 1 robot attaching a Crash Bomber to the target, and then another Level 100 robot triggers that same Crash Bomber early. The damage dealt by the explosion would be relative to the Level 1 creator (and therefore fairly weak) and not the robot who ends up triggering it. This can work in reverse too, with a powerful robot setting up the bomb but a much weaker one triggering it and reaping the benefits of its boosted power.

This ability had to go through some rigorous testing a debugging, and as a result it exposed many flaws in the battle logic of the game. I've corrected all these flaws and got the ability working consistently in all tested scenarios, and hopefully these changes have far-reaching effects and make the overall game more stable.

Let me know what you think everyone, and I hope you enjoy this awesome new ability mechanic. :D

A new, slightly peculiar feature has been added to the game that I like to introduce and explain for everyone. This feature was actually added several weeks ago, but I completely forgot to report on it - maybe some of you have already seen it and - if you're adventurous enough - tried it?

This new Mission Reset feature is the ability to reset all your mission-related progress in the game and start over from the beginning. This option is always accessible through the in-game Save menu - simply click "Reset Missions" for any unlocked player and all completed missions will reset/forgotten, allowing you to start over from the beginning and re-play through the story.



Why would you ever want to reset your missions? And how is this different from the "Reset Game" button that was already there?

Well, the existing "Reset Game" option resets everything, including battle points, unlocked robots and abilities, experience points, literally everything. I doubt many people used this feature other than myself during testing, but it's always been there. The new Reset Missions button, on the other hand, allows you to reset only the generated missions in your game for a single, specific character. All robots you've unlocked, all abilities you've earned, your battle points and everything else will remain intact - just your completed missions on the Mission Select menu will be forgotten.

As for the reasons you'd want to do something like this, there are actually a few - maybe more. The most obvious reason is the ability to regenerate dynamic parts of the single-player campaign - like the battle fields. Each time a new game is started (or the missions are manually reset) the server randomly generates a new arrangement of the 8 base fields (for each player) and then decides which ones will cross with each other for phase 2 fusion fields. This is repeated for the phase 3 base fields and the phase 4 fusion fields as well. Sometimes these fusion fields turn out to be fantastic and have lots of great multipliers, but other times the two fields can cause poor multipliers or even cancel each other's out entirely - resetting your missions will force the game to regenerate those fusion fields and potentially give you a better (or worse) selection.

Another reason you might want to reset is if you're stuck in a hard spot. As you may have noticed, the difficulty of many missions increase as you progress - the first set of robot masters all start at level 2, but for each one you defeat all of them increase by one level. If you rush through the missions, you may get to a point where you feel overwhelmed and unable to continue without fighting through the boring Intro Field repeatedly. Now, you can just reset your missions and start over from the beginning - yes you have to re-fight all the robot masters, but because you do not lose your abilities or experience points it's like having a "New Game +" option at your fingertips whenever you want it. I've been playing with this feature a lot lately, and I really like how much control it gives you over the flow of your experience.

The last reason I can think of (but I'm sure there are more) would be for players who have already completed the entire game and are bored with playing with the same 30 missions. This gives them a chance to replay the game with an overpowered team (which is very, very fun) and potentially have a different selection of battle fields to play with.

I hope you guys like this feature, and aren't scared to use it at some point. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns, and I'd love to get your feedback on it and any ideas you have for how it might be useful. :D

---

Update : After realizing this feature had been accidentally removed by an emergency bug-fix, I had to take the post down. Luckily I had time to re-implement the feature this weekend and it is now present in the in-game save menu again. It will be really obvious which options are the new ones as they have colour-coded Light and Wily backgrounds. Have fun, and sorry for the delay!

The last major update this weekend is a change to the single-player campaign in the game and where Roll (and Disco) fit in. When I first added Roll to the game, I wanted her to be unlockable from the start and part of the "story", but because Dr. Wily did not have a counterpart I felt it would make the two players imbalanced. And so, I decided to add Roll but as a password-only unlock for the time being. When I finally announced Disco, she helped to balance Wily with Light but was incomplete and did not have her signature assault abilities yet. As a result I decided to make both her and Roll unlockable through password or by completing the bonus stage. Well... that's all about to change now!



Roll and Disco are now unlockable from the start of the game simply by completing the Intro Field. When you first start the game, Roll/Disco will appear in the background cheering you on and once you defeat the enemy Met she will automatically be added to your team for use in battle. This will make the early game and first robot master fight much easier (though still challenging) and prevent new players from giving up too soon.

I hope this new change will make the flow of the game more consistent and allow new players and older players alike to enjoy the prototype to it's full potential. Let me know what you guys think, and I look forward to finally finishing up the MM5 robots in the next few updates. ^_^

The next new feature I'd like to discuss are player bonuses, and it's actually pretty straight-forward. From now on each of the three players will have one special "bonus" to a specific stat in battle, applied to any robots currently under their care. That means that a robot's stats will be affected by which player is currently using it, and these stats are updated in real-time when using the in-game Robot Editor.



Dr. Light has been given a bonus of Robot Defense +25%, Dr. Wily gets Robot Attack +25%, and Dr. Cossack will eventually get Robot Speed +25% when he's added to the game. I chose to add this to the game for two reasons - the first of which was an effort to differentiate the players a bit more than which missions and robots were available (since you can just swap them anyway) and the second reason was to make the early-game with Dr. Light a little easier and more accessible to new players, given how powerful the new Field Multipliers have made the enemy robots.

On a slightly related note, Rolling Cutter has been nerfed, so to speak, decreasing the accuracy a bit, the damage by one point, and making it strike three times instead of four to make it less similar to the Quick Boomerang.

Let me know what you guys think about this new feature - I think it's pretty fun and definitely changes the strategy a bit when deciding which player's game to master/complete first. :P Enjoy!

The first new feature that I'd like to post about this week (not counting the feature-fix post from a moment ago) are leaderboard profiles. Prior to this update, the leaderboard consisted of only a condensed listing of each players' save file. Now, clicking on any of those leaderboard listings will bring you to a full-page overview of the player and their save game. In addition to their battle points and unlocked robots, you can also view that stats of each of their robots as well as any records for how many mission they've completed, how many abilities they've unlocked, and even their most-used characters!



To see an example of what I mean, here are links to the leaderboard's current Top 3 players:
#1 : Shadownnico's Profile
#2 : nZero1000's Profile
#3 : Avocadora's Profile

This should make it easier to share your progress with your friends and even track the progress of your rivals and make the entire leaderboard experience more fun. In addition to an auto-generated description that appears at the top of the page, players have the option of writing their own bio as well. I have written my own bio as an example here, and you can write your own too by going into the Save Game menu on the website (this option is not available from the in-game save menu).

I hope everyone enjoys this new feature, and let me know what you think in the comments. :D

This isn't a high priority request, but I need some help with the music in the game. The current music in the game does not loop and honestly I had a really hard time getting it working as-is - I need someone who can be in charge of finding good quality, looping 8-bit stage music to go with all the different fields/battles that appear in the prototype and convert them to the appropriate web-formats for me (MP3 and OGG). This is mostly a find-and-save quest so long as the music is open to be saved (my stance thus far has been only offical music and fan-work that gives permission). Please let me know if anyone is interested or has any questions, and I'll fill you in on the details. :) Thank you!

Two of our super-duper amazing spriters have completed several of the robot masters from Mega Man 5 and even though they're not all done yet I couldn't contain myself and wanted to start uploading anyway. We have robot masters from both Sean Adamson and MetalMarioX100, and I think they all turned out very, very well. The personality in the poses and quality of the sprites themselves really look official and I'm honored to make them part of the game. Some colours and other minor details were edited by myself before finalizing, but the base awesomeness of these sprites is thanks to Sean Adamson and MetalMarioX100. These robots have already been added to the game, albeit in a limited capacity for the time being (just like the MM3 and MM4 robot masters) - these robots will appear randomly in both the Bonus Field and the fusion stages once you complete the single-player campaign. They do not have any of their own abilities yet, but that will change over time. Thank you both so much, and I'm very excited to give these robots their special weapons and quotes and all that other fun stuff in the (hopefully) near future! Have a look everyone - and let the guys know what you think! :D



[b]DWN-033 Gravity Man[/b] : Sean Adamson ([data](database/robots/gravity-man/))
[DWN-033 Gravity Man](images/robots/gravity-man/sprite_right_160x160.png)
[b]DWN-034 Stone Man[/b] : MetalMarioX100 ([data](database/robots/stone-man/))
[DWN-034 Stone Man](images/robots/stone-man/sprite_right_160x160.png)
[b]DWN-036 Gyro Man[/b] : MetalMarioX100 ([data](database/robots/gyro-man/))
[DWN-036 Gyro Man](images/robots/gyro-man/sprite_right_160x160.png)
[b]DWN-037 Star Man[/b] : Sean Adamson ([data](database/robots/star-man/))
[DWN-037 Star Man](images/robots/star-man/sprite_right_80x80.png)
[b]DWN-039 Napalm Man[/b] : MetalMarioX100 ([data](database/robots/napalm-man/))
[DWN-039 Napalm Man](images/robots/napalm-man/sprite_right_160x160.png)

P.S. All of the existing sprite editor threads have been updated with the new image tags, and they look great! Please have a look if you haven't already, and let the other spriters know what you think of their work. Thank you all for playing! ^_^

Robot Sprite Editors : Mega Man 1
Robot Sprite Editors : Mega Man 2
Robot Sprite Editors : Mega Man 3
Robot Sprite Editors : Mega Man 4
Robot Sprite Editors : Mega Man 5

The next updates I'd like to discuss are those to the in-game Robot Editor. As mentioned before, transferring robots between players was an incredibly painful and slow process. The June 3rd update restructured the rest of the game menu to allow for slightly faster transfer times and a way to easily regenerate missions, but I wanted to take it a step further.

Previously the entire Robot Editor would reload when you transferred a robot - a process that could take anywhere from 3 - 30 seconds depending on server load (which always felt like a very long time). Now robots can be transferred almost instantly with no reloading and only a short screen-fade while the robot is moved. This means you can quickly swap the Player field back and forth, casually assigning player-specific abilities without much effort.

This should encourage a lot more transferring among players and, as a result, more unique ability combinations in Player Battles. I hope you guys enjoy this upgrade, and let me know if you have any questions or other feedback in the comments. :)

I'd like to officially introduce everyone to a new robot that was programmed into the game last week but was kept quiet until I finished some final details and new abilities for her. Say hello to Special Wily Number 002 : Disco! Here's some concept artwork I whipped up last night to celebrate (it's not great but w/e):


Over the years Dr. Wily has had very poor luck with his own creations and those he has taken part in. Proto Man is a lost cause, Bass constantly talks back and disobeys him, and the majority of his robot masters turn out to be mildly amusing distractions at best. To add insult to injury, his long-time rival Dr. Light's robots consistently find ways to unravel his schemes and embarrass him in front of people the world over. After his most recent defeat at the hand of Mega Man - a robot the should have been incapacitated by the Roboenza but was revived by his sister robot Roll when she gave him her dose of the cure - Dr. Wily's mind began to race over what Light had that he didn't. Many things came to mind, but Roll's sacrifice stood out the most.

Why can't my robots work together that well? And why won't they ever listen to me?!

I need a robot that will follow my orders without question... an assistant like Roll but not so weak. Someone strong and powerful that I could trust as my right-hand man! No... woman! And Bass... she'd be like a sister to him - I'm a genius!

I will call this new number "Disco", and like the flashy musical genre of the 19XX's rose against the oppression of Rock N Roll, she too will rise against Dr. Light's Mega Man and his pesky robot sister! Mwhahahahaha!


Disco learns several new abilities, all of which are direct opposites or mods of the abilities learned by Dr. Light's bonus character Roll. Her Disco Buster is similar to the Roll Buster but recovers more energy at the cost of slightly less damage. Her new stat abilities allow her to inflict breaks on multiple targets at once with Attack Breaker, Defense Breaker, and Speed Breaker - acting as the parallel to the Booster abilities. Disco also learns abilities for modifying the experience, damage, and recovery multipliers like Roll, but has her decreasing them instead of boosting them with Experience Breaker, Damage Breaker, and Recovery Breaker.

Disco is an original character created by myself (almost 10 years ago!) and is the first of hopefully many that will be added to the game in the future. She appears with Proto Man in the first Dr. Wily battle of the game, and uses a variety of crippling abilities to stop your team from getting past. Both her and Roll are now both unlockable under special conditions, and they're invaluable addition to anyone's team. I hope you guys enjoy her - I spent a lot of time getting her design and abilities just right and I'm really happy with how well she turned out and how easily she fit into the overall structure of the game.

Please let me know what you think or if you have any questions or anything. Hopefully I didn't forget anything in this post - I'm so excited! XD

Hello again everyone - sorry for any bugs encountered earlier in the day saving/loading files or accessing missions - they should all be fixed now but please let me know if you notice anything else. Thank you!

The next update would be to the ability buttons displayed in battle. Previously these were pretty straight-forward, displaying the most basic of information about an ability - power, type, name, accuracy, etc. The buttons still show the same information, but thanks to this update the information is more accurate than before. That is to say, the "power" of the ability is now updated in real-time based on the current set of field multipliers and the user's core type.

As an example, the move "Leaf Shield" typically has a power rating of 30, and that is the power that shows up in the ability menu during battle. However, if there are any conditions on the field boosting or breaking down this amount, they will now be shown directly on the button. Abilities that have had their power increased will have a faint green colour to the power amount, and abilities that have had their power decreased will appear in a faint red. Leaf Shield, for example, might appear with a power of 45 instead of 30 when equipped to a Nature Core robot, and if used on the appropriate stage (with a 2x Nature modifier) the ability could go as high as 90!

While this change does not affect any of the mechanics of battle, it does make it much easier to see which ability is the most powerful/useful at any given time. Please let me know what you guys think and/or if you experience any bugs, questions, or other oddities. Thank you for playing! :D

The way the prototype's game menu works has been revised slightly, though the changes have some far-reaching effects I think everyone should be aware of. Let me explain why this change occurred, and how it will change things moving forward.

When using the Edit menu to equip your robots with different abilities you also have the option to transfer them between players (as you likely already know). You may have noticed that the entire game menu is reloaded when this transfer happens, and that is to ensure that the player select and robot select screens are refreshed with the recent changes. Unfortunately, reloading the entire game menu means reloading both players mission select screens (which can be huge) and their robot select screens - naturally this made the process of transferring robots very tedious and time consuming.

Obviously this was not optimal and needed to be changed, so I did something about it. Now player selection, mission selection, and robot selection are all generated at the time they're needed and no sooner. This means instead of having everything available from the get-go when the page loads, it will instead load as you click around. If you click Dr. Light in the player select screen, it sends a request to the server for Dr. Light's missions, waits for a response, and then opens the next menu/step when it gets a reply. The same is true for the robot select - once a mission is chosen it asks the server which robots are available for that player and then moves onto next step when it gets a reply.

Because of this change, the prototype's main menu loads a bit faster initially (because it doesn't have to generate everything at once) but it does take a bit longer between menu selections - no longer will the transition from player to mission to robot select be super speedy and fluid - now it has to contact the server with each step to ensure options is up-to-date. This might be a bit annoying to long-time users and can create problems if you're click-happy and don't wait for the next menu to load, but those are the breaks. At the very least, transferring robots between players should be much less hassle and less time consuming.

An advantage to this change, however, is that dynamically generated missions can be re-generated simply by going back or forward one step in the menu and then coming back to it. Don't like the number of Mets appearing on the Intro Field? Go back one step and then load the mission select again - the battle is regenerated and the number of Mets will likely be different. Don't like the particular set of modifiers appearing for the Bonus Stage? Go back one and then reload the missions - it will be regenerated each time.

I'm sure there will be issues with this change but I think overall it will be for the better. Please let me know if you experience any problems (other than longer waits, of course) and I'll do my best to get things sorted out. Thank you for playing! :D

A few abilities have had their power tweaked slightly, the most notable are the three Booster abilities - Experience Booster, Damage Booster, and Recovery Booster. While they used to boost things by 50%, they have been changed to only boost 30%. This was partially to prevent them from being too strong, and partially to make them more consistent with other (future) abilities that I'll describe in a later update.

For those upset about the decease in power, you'll be happy to know that the actual limits for field multipliers has been revised as well. Previously, none of these stats could go above 2x (even though elemental field multipliers can be seen in the 4x and even 8x range) and there was no limit for a minimum (meaning, theoretically, you could to or below zero). This has been changed so that all multipliers can be from 0.1x (never reaching absolute zero) to 9.9x (never reaching a full ten). Now it might take longer to get your Experience up, for example, but the total limit is much higher.

Lastly, I fixed a few miscellaneous bugs for certain abilities - the main one being the Atomic Fire. The 10% boost to attack you got after each use was being affected by the Recovery Booster (when it shouldn't be) and that screwed up the calculations for when the Atomic Fire was removed. This has been fixed, however, and should function normally now.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns, and enjoy!

This next update is in regard to the Credits page and how it's been tweaked - some of the descriptions have been rewritten or modified and each member that has a registered account also has their display avatar listed next to their info. These avatars are linked directly to your save game, so if you change your avatar for that you'll change it on the Credits page as well. If you are listed on the page but are not linked to your avatar, let me know your name on the credits page and which save file it should be linked to. Not a huge update, but it certainly makes the page look more attractive. Let me know your thoughts, and thank you SOOOO much to all the contributors. :)

Hello everyone! Apologies for the delayed update - I have been working on the game/site consistently but did not want to post about it until I got all the bugs ironed out and the features "finished". I have now completed this batch up updates though, so I'm going to make several posts about them throughout the day.

The first order of business relates to the animation of the field backgrounds. Previously, animated field backgrounds were created as one large image with multiple "frames" stacked on top of each other and then moved around with Javascript and CSS.


While this made it easy to create the animations, it also meant very large file sizes and forced the browser to do more work during battle. Now all field backgrounds have been converted into animated GIFs, meaning that the animation will be more consistent, smoother (in most cases), AND the main website's banner (above) will also be animated (if applicable).


It's a small change as far as you guys are aware, but I think it adds a nice touch to the website's banner when one of the animated ones appear. Let me know if you have any problems and anything, and look forward to more updates throughout the day! :D

Hello everyone! I'm excited to announce the launch of an "official" Facebook page for the Mega Man RPG Prototype! Having a Facebook page will allow easier discussion of the game and better exposure for the project. I encourage you to visit the page and "Like" it to show your support, but even just stopping by and leaving a comment would be much appreciated. :) Look forward to seeing you all on the page!
https://www.facebook.com/megamanrpgprototype

P.S. An official post about this weeks updates is forthcoming, but I'm sure some of you have already noticed some changes. ;)

Because the scope of the Mega Man RPG Prototype is so big, it naturally requires a whole team of sprite artists and editors. Please use these editor threads to review to current list of contributors to the project and apply for specific robots to edit yourself.

This discussion thread relates to the Genesis Unit that appeared in the Sega Disc Drive exclusive Mega Man : The Wily Wars and will be updated periodically as new artists are added to the project and/or when new characters are claimed.


[b]WWN-001 Buster Rod G[/b] : MegaBossMan
[b]WWN-002 Mega Water S[/b] : MegaBossMan
[b]WWN-003 Hyper Storm H[/b] : MegaBossMan

Adrian 2k19 Edit: This thread has served its purpose and can now be closed. Thank you!

Because the scope of the Mega Man RPG Prototype is so big, it naturally requires a whole team of sprite artists and editors. Please use these editor threads to review to current list of contributors to the project and apply for specific robots to edit yourself.

This discussion thread relates to the robots masters that appear in the Gameboy spinoff Mega Man V and will be updated periodically as new artists are added to the project and/or when new characters are claimed.


[b]SRN-000 Sunstar[/b] : Rhythm_BCA
[b]SRN-001 Terra[/b] : Rhythm_BCA
[b]SRN-002 Mercury[/b] : Rhythm_BCA
[b]SRN-003 Venus[/b] : Rhythm_BCA
[b]SRN-004 Mars[/b] : Rhythm_BCA
[b]SRN-005 Jupiter[/b] : Rhythm_BCA
[b]SRN-006 Saturn[/b] : Rhythm_BCA
[b]SRN-007 Uranus[/b] : Rhythm_BCA
[b]SRN-008 Neptune[/b] : Rhythm_BCA
[b]SRN-009 Pluto[/b] : Rhythm_BCA

Adrian 2k19 Edit: This thread has served its purpose and can now be closed. Thank you!