I can't say I got as much done this year as I would have liked
I completed about a quarter of the enemies in clay and then stopped working on it. Then I started recently and made progress on the new chapter 6. I'm adding too much probably. But yeah, there will be a Christmas Present this year, it's not a present hunt like last time, I'll release the opening prologue which I'm sure many have already played, but I added a lot of different things. I'm hesitant to release the latest versions of Aptos Adventures 1 and 2. They are very close to complete, but if you play it now you probably won't want to play it later when it's done.
Oh, so AA1 is maybe 90% done. What I should be working on is the suit system not all this new stuff. But SOME progress on that was made...in January.

AA2 is like maybe 75% done? I'm trying to restrict how much I add because it's already longer than the first game!!

Hopefully I'll have time to finish these games. Then I can release them together as like the Aptos Adventures Saga or something, cuz there's only going to be two.

History: I started working on this game way, way back in 2001. I had a bunch of projects and wanted to actually finish one. Since then I have worked on it on and off when I had time. In 2003 I switched to Rpg maker 2003. in 2006 I finished it, but there were bugs and the sidequests weren't finished.
I don't think it's the best game ever made (that's AA2  :P but if you like games that don't take themselves too seriously like OMGZ final fantasy ripoff 9993984 then I think you'll like it. It's kinda like Earthbound. There aren't too many funny games out there anymore so I wanted to make a game that could be funny.

Story: The story is somewhat LOOSELY based on my life in high school. Most of the characters were my friends from high school and it takes place in my hometown of Aptos, California (though it looks nothing like it) located in the greater Santa Cruz "Archipelago". The year is 20XX, (okay, like 2003 if we're going by which of my classes are in the game  ​)
Nick is an ordinary high school student about to start his first day of a new semester. Meanwhile his family is kidnapped by a vengeful teacher. What begins as a quest to rescue them unfolds into an EPIC BATTLE TO SAVE THE WORLD. Yeah, it's cliche, but what do you expect, I was like 16 when I started making this.
Aptos Adventures 2 will have a way better story, instead it's an EPIC BATTLE TO SAVE THE UNIVERSE.

Characters:
Playable
--------------
Nick- My alter ego and main character. Weapon: Giant Pencil. special: pencil attacks
Cooper- Nick's twin brother. He's 10 minutes older than Nick. Does that mean in 10 Minutes Nick will gain his knowledge? Nick and Coop can team up for specials
Brett- Friend of Nick and Coop. Searching for his lost brother riley.
Ethan-Friend of Nick and Coop. Searching for the lost kingdom of Jewjinia. (I'm being anti-antisemitic, not antisemitic, there's a difference)
Riley- Brett's long lost brother. Last scene in the Snowfalls region....
Tobin-A mysterious alien whose world has been enslaved by Welshbon and Goobindos. Not much is known about him other than he's a good guy
Satchel- Nick and Cooper's family dog. (Hidden character)

Non-playable
---------------
Good
----------
Crazy Nerd- Offers advice and items. Seems to know it's only a game...
Alex- Nerdy kid that sells items since there aren't too many towns. Think Toad in Mario RPG
Question Mark Guys- A mysterious race who speak like yoda. They wear black bodysuits to hide their true form. Friends of Tobin.
------
Evil
-----
Cody- A slovenly creature, Cody's dungeon is not a place you want to enter...
Goobindos- Not much is known about Goobindos or his race. They seem to snort alot and like pink. Enslaved Tobin's world
Welshbon-Cooper's 10th grade physics teacher. Lives only to make his students fail. He takes revenge on cooper and captures him and his family

Game Features:
-SUITS. Think jobs like in Final Fantasy 5/Tactics.
-Voice acting for cutscenes.
-Action Battles, action minigames where you have to take down a boss or solve a puzzle
-8 chapters, the game is about 30 hours long, but if you don't use suits, it makes game harder and 10-12 hours long (short but sweet. I hate games that have filler
-Newgame+

Features in COMPLETE version:
-bug-free (is that a feature?  ​)
-More voice acting
-more cutscenes
-more story (and more importantly no plot holes)
-fleshed out sidequests
-The SUIT system I originally intended


Suit System
Screenshots:

Before!


After!


Some enemies


Some suits


In a tank battle


1984


A battle with some....weird creatures


Nothing is free in life


Virtue of thee blue savepoint


In short? Yes.



You can't breathe underwater!


So get this air rings







Can you reach this screen? ??? It's a secret!

Estimated Completion: 75%




Estimated Completion: 90%
Let's Play by Toddfuckingaudas (Old version, many aspects have/will be changed)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bUfXWTZKs0
 
and more videos on my Youtube channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/nickmasterx

DOWNLOAD: Note: I'm very hesistant about releasing the full thing. This is the DX version which is inferior, there are many things missing. If you wanna help bugtest, email me at [email protected]
DX BETA:
http://www.mediafire.com/?xvpmfyttz4x

Christmas '10 Tech Demo:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sv8dxrdkk0cnwea

Video- Christmas '10 Tech Demo Walkthrough:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg1zrphbIYc&feature=channel_video_title

I just finished ALL of the graphics for the suits, and most of the abilities (except for the field ones like MP+10% ect)
I did finish HP+10%. Now I'm working on the Suit menu system. You will be able to view very detailed
statistics just ripped directly from the Rm2003 class screen for each suit.
Once this is finished I'm going to just go through the game fixing bugs and adding a lot of
cool stuff. You'll see
I also started playing around with clay, I might make clay cutscenes using the movie feature, but
my iPod cant do start and stop so I might just use picture files.
They actually scale down very well to make facesets.
This is just a test:
http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/3238/screen2ys.jpg
PRERENDERED!!!
I'm not going to make facesets for the main characters because
that would require me to rewrite all of the text to fit.
But I might do it for the bosses.
Since the suits will be completely done in a few days,
that means balancing and adding stuff and debugging
are all that will be left.
Im shooting to release it at Christmas if not earlier.
It'd make a good xmas present 
Oh by the way, the Wetsuit is now the Fart Mage suit.
lol

This look sweet! Modern games are my kind of thing.

Just curious, how much graphics are original?

At present its only like 10%, granted I did mix a bunch of chipsets myself.
For the complete version I'm going to draw some chipsets and
use some of the chipsets Ive drawn from Aptos Adventures II
to be more coherent with the planets you visit
(in aptos Adventures II Tobinia looks completely different and
has a custom chipset)

I thought it would be cool to use claymation for the enemies, granted I have almost 100 unique enemies, and it clashes more than the regular drawings I did, but take a look at the difference between these:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us


Uploaded with ImageShack.us


I dunno its too time consuming. This one gnome guy took two hours to make.
I might just do it for bosses, ya know how in Final Fantasy 6 the bosses have a more detailed image rather than the regular sprites

Ah, fuck it. I'm going to do clay enemies cuz it looks awesome! 98 more to make

I haven't finished this game yet, but so far it's awesome. It's probably my favorite RM2K3 game
There are still some things that annoy me, though. The suits seem to be useless, mainly because the skills you get from the suits are weaker than the characters' main skills. For example, Fire 3 does less damage than Death By Dreidle (the second Jewjitsu skill Ethan gains) and you lose your main skills you learned after equipping a suit. Also, Riley seems to be the most useless character. He has no unique skills unlike other characters. There's not much unique about Riley other than he uses snowboards as weapon and he has little bit higher intelligence/magic stats compared to other characters.

I haven't finished this game yet, but so far it's awesome. It's probably my favorite RM2K3 game
There are still some things that annoy me, though. The suits seem to be useless, mainly because the skills you get from the suits are weaker than the characters' main skills. For example, Fire 3 does less damage than Death By Dreidle (the second Jewjitsu skill Ethan gains) and you lose your main skills you learned after equipping a suit. Also, Riley seems to be the most useless character. He has no unique skills unlike other characters. There's not much unique about Riley other than he uses snowboards as weapon and he has little bit higher intelligence/magic stats compared to other characters.

Yeah what you're playing is the Beta. I'm working very hard on the "complete" version.
Its gonna be way better!!!!!

I'm not sure if I will finish Aptos Adventures: Complete by December, so I'm going to release
a short funny tech demo showing what I've added, you can only go to campus and Aptos.
It's going to be a Christmas present
and there's gonna be secrets and its gonna be funny! And you can see all the cool features I added.
Its really going to be an entirely different game almost. I'm adding SO much. You can interact with
everything, Nick responds to everything NPCs say, ect!

I made a UNITED NEGRO FUND FOR ACKNOWLEDGING THE EXISTENCE OF BLACK PEOPLE IN A JAPANESE RPG
to which you can donate money, if you donate enough you might get something
Talk to black people in the game to donate.
This is based on someone's review of my game, the only accolade I received,
saying the rest of my game sucked. Fuck that guy he probably never even completed
a game before and he's an Earthbound hater. Anybody too blind to see how groundbreaking
Earthbound was should be lined up and shot.

I'm fixing so many continuity errors, and making the game alot more nonlinear. It's gonna be awesome!
So if you play the beta version keep in mind even though it mentions the suits a lot,
THEY'RE NOT IN THE BETA. Sorry, please be patient.
I've been working on the game like 4-6 hours a day.
Trying to make progress.
In a lot of ways I prefer Aptos Adventures I, even though it's less professional than Aptos Adventures II.
Because the world is smaller, I can make it a lot more nonlinear and hone the game to perfection
and balance it. That's going to be VERY difficult with Aptos Adventures II.
Aptos Adventures II in it's demo form is already twice as long as the first game, with double
the amount of maps!!
AA2 is on hold until I finish Aptos Adventures: Complete.
Thank you for your patience.
THOUSANDS of Question Mark Guys are beta testing, led by my friend Todd who's doing the let's
play videos on Youtube.
Tobin himself is taking time off from the Tobinian Senate to oversee the development of
AA:Complete.

The Christmas demo will be set on the AHS campus and maybe aptos village, you can see all of the things I've added, mostly the features. Might make some minigames too. I don't want to release the whole game until it's completely bug free and done. Besides, Aptos Adventures DX is up, so if you want to check out the game you can, albeit with an incomplete version.
Or play the Aptos Adventures 2 demo to tide you over. It's already the same length is the entire game of AA1, probably longer.

Aptos Adventures Christmas demo coming 12/25 no later than 5 PM PST

Gah hang on i'm still fixing stuff. Might be done at 6 pm PST

Okay I'm uploading now

FINALLY DONE! Just in time! I hoped to include the suits in the demo but
I didn't finish it in time. I might make a second tech demo. Anyway,
I've hidden presents all over the campus.
Can you find all 50 ?! Good luck and merry Christmas!!!
http://www.mediafire.com/?ladi0m18nmzty72

Let me know if anybody needs help finding the presents

Making progress on the demo with the help of Todd Audas who's doing a Let's Play of the Beta DX version. Check his Youtube channel toddfuckingaudas.
Hopefully I'll be nearing completion by summer. Then I can work on Aptos Adventures 2 again!
I made a Xmas '10 tech demo walkthrough http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg1zrphbIYc&feature=channel_video_title

I've been watching Todd's AA videos. He's a kewl guy.

new videos on my Youtube Channel! Mostly of chapter 6 and the new stuff, check videos from years ago if you want to see other stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/user/nickmasterx