RPGM Abandoned Grrl Power 2 [v46] [Shadowstar]

[Deleted member 207364]

I'm looking into optimizing the audio files to hopefully shrink the file size.

I think the audio can be compressed & converted to .ogg (not 100% sure if .ogg is compatible with rpgmaker xv) and then rename the file extensions to the original to avoid missing file errors. Not 100% if this will work but I'm giving it a shot.

There's 3200 audio files in total, some are a few kb others are tens of MB. I'm only compressing the heaviest files and even that is taking ages:



EDIT: In case anyone is wondering what program I'm using, it's

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.

 

[mrme]

A lot of the audio files already are in .ogg.
Although you could reencode them at a lower quality to save significant space.

 

[Deleted member 207364]

A lot of the audio files already are in .ogg.
Although you could reencode them at a lower quality to save significant space.

The thing is that many of them have a gigantic bitrates. Some are around 400kbps, some go up to 1536kbps which is just ridiculous, spotify premium is like 320 kbps. Compressing the songs will probably not affect the quality.

EDIT: Compressed the whole game down to 2.6gb, it ran without errors but no music played. Only sound effects worked, mission failed.

btw, there's different codecs for the .ogg format. I initially started with Vorbis but as shown in a screenshot above it took ages, I switched to Opus and it was 3-5 times faster and compressed 10% ish less than Vorbis. Maybe rpgmaker xv only reads Vorbis or I fucked up somewhere.

Oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[The 1★ Dude]

Is there even one sex scene in this game? I checked the images but cannot find any of it. That would explain the strange genre tags. So many non sexual genre and in the middle of it "rape" -.-

 

[PPP222]

I downloaded yesterday from the Mega link but my file was corrupted and couldn't get a bunch of the SE folder files, which crashes the game when they are needed. Probably my download messed up, and I would re-download, but can someone confirm it's not the uploaded file that is corrupted, please?


By "power" it means the ones you select with the white cloud in the right side of the character creation map. That's the mistake I made at first, so assuming it's the same for you.

Yeah that seemed to be it, thanks!

 

[slitherhence]

1) If the game title doesn't have the Completed prefix, it's still a WIP. 99% of the developers are amateur developers working by themselves in their free time. Expect bugs and dead ends.

2) The link to the developer's Patreon/website is always conveniently located in the first post for those who want more information concerning the game's development.

3) Unless a developer is active in our forums, posting bugs and development suggestions would best be made on said developer's Patreon/website.

I intended what I said as more of a (as is) review rather than suggestions or bug reports. After all, I was still thinking this game was probably abandoned... why would I be trying to reach the dev?

As for checking the Patreon... usually that's not a very useful thing to do as most Patreon pages require you to be a patreon of that project just to see any of the posts. And the introduction page is often light on details. I've gotten in the habit of not bothering cause it's so rarely useful. This does appear to be an exception though... *shrug*.

And lacking the completed tag does not mean it's still a work in progress. It could also be abandoned... which, again, is what I was asking about. Not every abandoned project is tagged abandoned on here. Especially not a single day after it was posted.

Given that this project is still in developement... I will definately be keeping an eye on it. Bugs related to in-development features are hardly something to complain about (not sure why so many here insist on doing so... seems really misguided). And, as I said, the things I mentioned in the previous post where ment to review the current state of the game... not as a critique of the game or the devs.

However, I do agree with people about the stolen art. I recognized that it was not original art right away. I did not, however, assume it was stolen as it could have been licensed from the original artist. Knowing now that the art was used without permission, I agree... that was a bad move on the dev's part. Here's hopping they learn from the mistake.

 

[slitherhence]

The thing is that many of them have a gigantic bitrates. Some are around 400kbps, some go up to 1536kbps which is just ridiculous, spotify premium is like 320 kbps. Compressing the songs will probably not affect the quality.

EDIT: Compressed the whole game down to 2.6gb, it ran without errors but no music played. Only sound effects worked, mission failed.

btw, there's different codecs for the .ogg format. I initially started with Vorbis but as shown in a screenshot above it took ages, I switched to Opus and it was 3-5 times faster and compressed 10% ish less than Vorbis. Maybe rpgmaker xv only reads Vorbis or I fucked up somewhere.

Oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hum... I could do the transcoding. I think you are probably right that VX only supports vorbis. Somewhat strange since opus is also open source... but then supporting every stream format that the ogg container format supports is somewhat unnecisary. Also, not sure Opus was a thing when VX was released.

Regardless, my system is built for video transcoding and does so rather quickly... audio transcoding is nothing for me. Give me a bit and I'll see what I can do.

Edit: sorry for the double post. Wasn't paying close enough attention when I tried to add a reply to my previous post.

 

[joeblow7314]

Search for 88 girl in the interwebs and you shall find what you seek.

Thanks for that. Now if someone could reach out to that artist and incorporate (more of) her into a (Ren'py) VN, I'd be golden...

 

[Shadowstar2k]

If you guys can figure out a way to effectively compress the audio without it borking VX's ability to actually function, I will incorporate that fix into my next version. It's been a while since I've had other people offering to actually help with the game's development. Not since the Hongfire days.

I kinda hate VX to be honest, but I've tried numerous times to port it to other systems and it always fails because there is no reliable way to convert scripts, so I'm stuck with the clunky limitations of VX. These days I mostly develop other games (some of which are free - you can get them from my Patreon even if you're not a patron). I prefer MV for this mostly. But many of my older fans still like GP2, and I like working on it, despite VX's limitations. GP2 isn't a serious project for me anymore. It's more just a fun development sandbox I work on for fun. So yeah, it tends to be a bit of a mess, but I do try to make it playable.

I stopped posting links to GP2 outside of my Patreon a while back because I didn't figure many people outside of my older fanbase would actually be that interested in it. I don't have any problem with people posting my stuff around the net, as long as they include links to my Patreon. Of course, if it's something that I require patronage to access, I'd prefer people don't post that around the net. Currently, only one of my projects requires a $1 patronage to access and my $20 tier is mostly dev stuff and bigger projects I haven't officially released yet, so there wouldn't be much point for anyone to spread those around.

 

[slitherhence]

If you guys can figure out a way to effectively compress the audio without it borking VX's ability to actually function, I will incorporate that fix into my next version. It's been a while since I've had other people offering to actually help with the game's development. Not since the Hongfire days.

I kinda hate VX to be honest, but I've tried numerous times to port it to other systems and it always fails because there is no reliable way to convert scripts, so I'm stuck with the clunky limitations of VX. These days I mostly develop other games (some of which are free - you can get them from my Patreon even if you're not a patron). I prefer MV for this mostly. But many of my older fans still like GP2, and I like working on it, despite VX's limitations. GP2 isn't a serious project for me anymore. It's more just a fun development sandbox I work on for fun. So yeah, it tends to be a bit of a mess, but I do try to make it playable.

I stopped posting links to GP2 outside of my Patreon a while back because I didn't figure many people outside of my older fanbase would actually be that interested in it. I don't have any problem with people posting my stuff around the net, as long as they include links to my Patreon. Of course, if it's something that I require patronage to access, I'd prefer people don't post that around the net. Currently, only one of my projects requires a $1 patronage to access and my $20 tier is mostly dev stuff and bigger projects I haven't officially released yet, so there wouldn't be much point for anyone to spread those around.

Welcome to the f95zone.

I'm actually uploading a repack of the game @2.36GiB right now. Should still be completely functional. But this could be improved further... to do that I need a few questions answered to offset my lack of experience with VX.

• Can I change the extension of the files without necessitating changes to the game scripts? If not, would it be a significant ammount of work for you to make those changes to the game scripts?
• Is every audio file here actually used in the game? Cause there are a lot here and I get the impression not all of them are actually being used.

The reason for the first question is that there are a lot of very large uncompressed .wav files that could be transcoded to .ogg files with significant space savings and negligible quality loss. I'm currently dealing with that by letting the wav files take a significant (but not severe) hit to quality to cut their size in half... but they are still far larger than they would be at a higher quality as ogg vorbis files. However, if the extension of these files change from .wav to .ogg I would expect the game scripts to need to be updated to account for the change.

And, for the second question, I've noticed what appears to be entire soundtracks that were ripped wholesale and dumped into the music folders. I have a hard time imagining that every single audio track from multiple different soundtracks happens to be used in a location or scene. On that subject... you do realize a lot of this music is copyrighted right? I spotted both an Ah My Goddess! soundtrack and the soundtrack to The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.

 

[slitherhence]

Grrl Power 2 [v46] - Compressed Audio Version (2.01GiB)

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Ok this time I got it down to just over 2GiB. As before, I reduced all files to sane defaults... but this time I also transcoded all mp3 and wav files to ogg vorbis. As before I'm not 100% sure all audio files are working, but all the ones I tested are.

I'm also providing the script I created (and associated tools) to perform this transcode. I doubt I'll be around enough to maintain this "Compressed Audio Version". There's also nothing stopping Shadowstar2k from using this on his copy and distributing it as a smaller download to begin with... the audio quality is not noticeably worse than the original files. Anyone with a pretty decent Windows 7 or newer machine should be able to run these scripts and get a compressed variant of the audio files within an hour or two. Download it here:

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Spoiler: Old "Shrunken" Post

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[Deleted member 207364]

Grrl Power 2 [v46] - Shrunken Audio Version (2.36GiB)

Nice!

I'm also providing the script I created (and associated tools) to perform this transcode. I doubt I'll be around enough to maintain this "Shunken Audio Version". Anyone with a pretty decent Windows 7 or newer machine should be able to run these scripts and get a shrunken variant of the audio files within an hour or two. Download it here:

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Thanks for sharing the scripts! They'll probably be useful elsewhere too.

 

[slitherhence]

Nice!


Thanks for sharing the scripts! They'll probably be useful elsewhere too.

I've discovered that RPGM VX doesn't give a carp about the file extension. So long as it has the same filename before the extension and is in a format RPGM VX understands RPGM VX will use it just the same. So I'm re-transcoding ALL the files (except the midi) to ogg vorbis. I should be able to get it under 2GiB this time.

And the best part? Shadowstar2k can use this version of the script on his dev copy before packaging it for distribution. So there will be no more problems.

And yes, this should work for any RPGM VX game... and I suspect any RPGM VX ACE game too.

 

[WildCookie]

I was very excited to try this out when I saw the overview, but in the end there is nothing to do here, only chara creation, its really nice but just that.. (I got to the sewer but cant equip weapons..) : /

 

[slitherhence]

I was very excited to try this out when I saw the overview, but in the end there is nothing to do here, only chara creation, its really nice but just that.. (I got to the sewer but cant equip weapons..) : /

This game doesn't do "equiped weapons" It's still turn based, as many have noted, but combat happens on the map. The weapons you have in your inventory determine which actions you can take. And you can hot-key different actions to the 1-9 keys (only "attack" actions work this way though). When an enemy spots you he will try to close the distance and, when he is adjacent to you, will attack you... you can also attack them if you are adjacent to them. Enemies with ranged weapons will also shoot you if they are horizontal or vertical from you. I haven't yet figured out how to use ranged weapons myself.

 

[Papa Ernie]

I've discovered that RPGM VX doesn't give a carp about the file extension. So long as it has the same filename before the extension and is in a format RPGM VX understands RPGM VX will use it just the same. So I'm re-transcoding ALL the files (except the midi) to ogg vorbis. I should be able to get it under 2GiB this time.

And the best part? Shadowstar2k can use this version of the script on his dev copy before packaging it for distribution. So there will be no more problems.

And yes, this should work for any RPGM VX game... and I suspect any RPGM VX ACE game too.

Flag me @jerricho13 when you have your final compressed version and I'll post it in the op. Thanks for working on it!

 

[slitherhence]

Flag me @jerricho13 when you have your final compressed version and I'll post it in the op. Thanks for working on it!

Ding! @jerricho13 It's

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.

 

[WildCookie]

This game doesn't do "equiped weapons" It's still turn based, as many have noted, but combat happens on the map. The weapons you have in your inventory determine which actions you can take. And you can hot-key different actions to the 1-9 keys (only "attack" actions work this way though). When an enemy spots you he will try to close the distance and, when he is adjacent to you, will attack you... you can also attack them if you are adjacent to them. Enemies with ranged weapons will also shoot you if they are horizontal or vertical from you. I haven't yet figured out how to use ranged weapons myself.

Thanks for your bad attempt to interpret my post. If you cant connect 1 + 1 and understand equip weapons is the same as "hot-keying" them to the weapon equip slots aka 1-9 buttons, well, that's a problem.
Anyway, there is no way to equip weapons in my game play, so yea, this is bad.

 

[slitherhence]

Thanks for your bad attempt to interpret my post. If you cant connect 1 + 1 and understand equip weapons is the same as "hot-keying" them to the weapon equip slots aka 1-9 buttons, well, that's a problem.
Anyway, there is no way to equip weapons in my game play, so yea, this is bad.

"Equip" has a specific, known meaning in RPGM games... so anyone (who's reasonable) would have interpreted what you said the way I did. And you don't hotkey weapons. So no, you don't "equip" them that way either. You hotkey actions... as I said in the very text you quoted. And which I have done and does work. You simply select the action in question in the menu and press the hotkey you want to assign it to.

Seriously, I don't get your hostility. I was trying to help you. The game, as is, has a lot of problems. I've said so myself. There's no need to claim it has problems it doesn't actually have.

 

[mrme]

Unsurprisingly a fapping forum has more than it's fair share of sad lonely wankers