The Mysterious Cities of Gold Version 2.00 By Kévin Ouellet alias DJ Omnimaga ============ Installation ============ IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have ClearType/TrueType text enabled on your PC (similar to anti-alias effect), the game text will not be rendered properly. To fix this problem, you must turn off ClearType/TrueType to play. To do so, right-click your desktop, go in Properties/Appearance/Effects and in the second choice field select Standard instead of ClearType/TrueType. -To install the game, simply run "MCOG.exe". This will install the game in "C:\Program Files\The Mysterious Cities Of Gold", unless you specify a different directory. -To play the game run "RPG_RT.exe" (located in that folder). ============ Introduction ============ In 1982, an anime/cartoon serie came to birth: The Mysterious Cities of Gold. It was the story of Esteban, searching for his origins, and eventually he met Zia, a girl from the Mayan land, and Tao, a descendant of the Mu Empire. They heard about 7 cities of gold located in the world so they eventually tried to search for them. In their journey they had to deal with people trying to stop them, such as Pizarro army, Gaspard and Gomez. At one point they found a big Condor made of gold that could fly anywhere when sun was showing up. That way they went to the mayan land. As they approached from their goal, they eventually found the Olmecs, who were looking for the Great Heritage located in the mayan City of Gold so they stop getting older and older at insane speed. However they put the world in danger by misusing it so the gold town priest had to sacrifice his life to stop the effects of an eventual worldwide disaster. Successful in their final duty, Esteban, Zia and Tao eventually came back at Barcelone with their big gold bird. What they didn't knew, however, is that only a few days after being back, new adventures were awaiting for them... So come this role-playing game version of the Mysterious Cities of Gold, 25 years after the release of the french-japaneese TV co-production. In this RPG, Esteban hear that Gaspard went searching for the 6 other cities of gold, to find treasures and gold, this time in a foreing kingdom Southwest from Europe. However, he doesn't realise what will happen in the entire world if he profains the Godness Amirax by stealing those... This RPG features many things from most RPGs and a quite good and long storyline for a freeware RPG. If you are quick you will take at least 15 or 16 hours to finish the game, but some RPG lover prefer to explore everywhere and want to finish all side quests so if you are one you may end up playing this game for at least 30 hours! Features: -Over 300 areas to explores -10 towns -Over 90 enemies and bosses -33 magic spells -Some puzzles -Over 60 items -Many side quests, challenges, secrets and bonuses -And more! =========== How to play =========== When you start the game the title screen appears and you are prompted to start a new game or quit by default. Later, when you have saved progress you can choose to continue from one of the 15 save files. If you are not familiar with RPGs, which this game is classified as, basically in this kind of game you explore towns, castles and dungeons, talk to people to get clues or progress in the game, find items and on your way, you fight monsters and as you gain experience in battle, youleveling up. When level up and your HP (Hit points), MP (Magic Points), Str (Strenght), Def (Defense), Mag (Magic) and Agi (Agility) increases and the enemies you once found to be tough to defeat get easier to defeat. Leveling up play a big role in RPGs because the more you progress in the storyline, the more powerful the monsters are. Money plays a role as well, as you can buy items and magic scrolls with it, which helps a lot in your quest. ======== Controls ======== -Arrows: Move around, select stuff in menus -Esc: Enter/Exit the menu, Cancel -Enter/Space: Confirm -F12: Go back to title screen (WARNING: PROGRESS WILL BE LOST IF YOU FORGOT TO SAVE!) ======= Battles ======= In MCOG, like in any other RPGs, there are two types of battles: Random fights and Boss fights. The difference with boss fights is that they are triggered by storyline or game events and you cannot run away from those enemies. Those are generally the thoughest ones as well. Here is a quick explanation of the battle commands: -Fight: Physical attack on one enemy. Not always successful -Magic: Cast one of the various magic spell, which cost MP. Tao cannot use magic. -Item: Use an item in the middle of the battle. -Defend: Skip a turn -Row: Toggle character from front to back row. Back row means less vulnerable to physical attacks but your attack power is reduced as well. -Run: Attempt at escaping from battles. Not always successful. During battles, sometimes enemies will attack with spells that cause status aliments. Here are the temporary status aliments (that dissapear after a period of time), which can be healed with a tent, remedy, elixir or a recovery spell. -Paralyze: Character cannot do anything for a temporary period of time -Sleep: Same thing than Paralyze, except that it last less longer in general and if the character get attacked, he is awaken up (altough the damage of this attack are much higher since the character couldn't defend) -Confuse: Temporarly cause a character to attack your own party members. Usually disappears if the character attack himself or get attacked -Soul: Cause the character's MP to go down by 5% everytime an enemy or party member take action in battle. Doesn't dissapear.until the end of the battle, unless healed. Here are the status that last after battle until healed. -K.O: Character cannot do anything. Caused either by HP reaching 0 or the effect of a successful Dead Smoke attack. Can only be cured with Fairy Water, a tent or a Revive magic spell. -Silence: Character cannot use magic at all. Cure with Remedy, Tent, Elixir or Recovery -Mini: Shrink down a character, reducing its attack power and defense. Can be healed the same way than Silence or temporary statuses. -Poison: Cause the character's HP to go down by 5% everytime an enemy or party member take action in battle until it reaches 1. Outside battles HP decreases by 1 every steps until it reaches 1. Can be cured the same way than silence but an Antidote item do the trick as well. IMPORTANT NOTE: In most RPGs you saw before, poison status aliment cause your character HP to go down at a regular interval, generally everytime THIS character turn ends. However, in MCOG, the HP of this character go down not only at each of this character turn, but at each of ALL enemies and characters as well. This means in a fight with 5,6,7 or 8 enemies be QUICK on healing poison status aliments, else you'll see your entire HP goes in two turns. On a good note, poison effect will never reduce your HP to 0, it will let it to 1 instead. While there is bad statuses aliments, there are good ones, which Zia can cast on party members. They all last during the entire fight, unless the character dies, and end after battle. Here is the list and descriptions. -Vigor: Double character strenght -Shield: Double character defense -Speed: Double character speed -Regen: Cause the character to gain back 5% HP everytime an enemy or party member take action in battle. Basically, it can counter poison effects and it is pretty effective in fights with multiple enemies, as HP is restored much more quickly in those. -Hyper: Raise character strenght and speed to insane proportions and make him almost invincible. When you defeat enemies, you receive experience, gold and sometimes even items. If you run away, you won't get any reward though. If all characters are K.O., the game ends and you have to restart from the last saved progress. =========== Battle tips =========== -Always keep your characters HP high and if a character dies, make sure to revive him as soon as you can. If you are in a random battle, you may want to run away if you are in deep trouble. -Always save your game, especially in dungeons where enemies use status aliments or one hit kill spells. You may die very fast at any time and progress will be lost if you forgot. -You should always keep Zia and Pichou (if you have him) in back row whenever possible. They are weak in physical attacks and have low defense, but are very important when it comes to healing. Later in the game, as physical attacks get obsolete you may want to put Esteban in back row as well if you plan to use him as mage only. -Contrary to popular belief, those power up spells such as Vigor, Speed and Regen can come very handy in rough occasions. Think about it if you're stuck against an extremly hard boss. In this new version of the game there are even bosses that cannot be defeated without using those spells. -If you feel enemies in a new dungeon are way too strong for you, come back in previous dungeons to level up your party members. Also bring full of healing items and especially tents to heal your party members. -Keep in memory places where enemies give lot of items after battles so you can save money by not having to buy them. ==== Menu ==== The menu can be useful for many things. Here are the commands avaliable from here: -Item: Allow to use items. -Magic: Allow to use magic. Only healing spells can be used outside battles. -Row: Toggle character from front to back row. Back row means less vulnerable to physical attacks but your attack power is reduced as well. -Status: Allow you to view your characters statistic points. -Save: Allow you to save your game progress. Yeah people often forget to save... -Quit: Quit to title screen ===== Items ===== There are 4 types of items: Healing items, Sources, Scrolls and Quest items. They can all be used from the Item menu and healing items can be used in battle as well (except tents). To get more information on an item, just select an item and the description will appear at the top of the screen. -Healing items are used to restore HP, MP, bad status aliments such as poison, sleep, etc. and ressurect dead party members. Here is the list: Herb: Restore 100 HP Potion: Restore 500 HP Magic Beans: Restore 100 MP Elixir: Restore HP/MP to maximum Fairy Water: Ressurect dead party member with half HP Antidote: Cure poison status Remedy: Cure all status aliments Tent: Restore everyone HP/MP to maximum, resurrect them and cure all status. Cannot be used in battles though. -Sources are used to increase a character status permanently, like maximum HP, MP or Str, Def, Mag and Spd, which can be helpful since some character stats stay low even at very high level (For example, if you wanted Zia to become an amazing warrior like Tao, just give her every Force Sources you can find). -Scrolls allow characters to learn magic spells. Esteban can use all offensive spells besides Dark and Light elemental ones. Zia can use all healing and power up spells as well as Dark and Light elemental offensive spells. NOTE: Pichou doesn't need scrolls to learn spells as he learn them as he levels up. He can also use all 32 spells both Esteban and Zia can use. === FAQ === Q: What did you use to make that game? A: RPG Maker 2003 (french version) for the game. Other programs were used during productions as well for various things, which is more detailled in the "Credits" section of the readme Q: Do I need RPG Maker 2003 itself or the so called RTP library installed on my computer to play this game? A: Not at all, altough the installer creator that comes with RM2K3 doesn't work, just adding a special line in the ini file makes the game independant from the RTP libraries or RPG Maker itself so you can run it fine even if RM/RTPs aren't installed. Q: Is Mendoza, Pedro and Sancho in the game? A: No, Mendoza, Pedro and Sancho would only come for gold (like in the original Esteban adventures) and when Zia would let them know about the curse they wouldn't come. Q: I'm stuck in the game, can you help me? A: For that, I would rather prefer that people ask directly on the Omnimaga forum at http://omnimaga.org, it is much easier for me to awnser and other people can help as well, not to mention that once a question is awnsered it can be used as future reference as well. This is the reason why no e-mail address is provided with this game. Q: In this readme, you talk about how Pichou should be put in back row and how he can use all 32 magic spells, but in the game he doesn't even come with the 3 kids. What the hell? A: Instructions on how to get Pichou to join your party are revealed right after the ending sequence when you finish the game. He can learn all Esteban and Zia spells (except for one) and unlike the others who need to read magic scrolls to learn them he can learn them only by leveling up, so you can access ultimate spells without having to find the scrolls to make Esteban or Zia learn them. ==== Bugs ==== Technically, there shouldn't be any major bugs, but there is some minor things you may notice while playing the game: -In battle, if a character is killed, paralyzed, confused or put asleep when the command menu (Fight, Magic, Item, etc.) is open, the menu won't disappear. The cursor disappears until it's another character turn though so it won't cause any problems at all. -In the status section of the menu, the left part is in french. This is because I used the french version of RPG Maker 2003 to make the game and this part of the status menu is not editable from RPG Maker 2003. Not that there is anything much important in this section anyway. There is also a big empty square below the stats, in RPG Maker, it is meant to be the character equipement (weapon, armors, etc) but MCOG doesn't have those. -TRUETYPE/CLEARTYPE MUST BE TURNED OFF WHILE PLAYING ELSE YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO READ THE TEXT!!!!!! To turn it off Right-click your desktop, go in Properties->Appearance->Effects and in the second choice field select Standard instead of ClearType/TrueType. ======= Credits ======= -First of all I would like to thank Bernard Deyriés, R.T.L and N.H.K for creating the original anime serie. I listened to this serie since I was 4 and today I'm still listening to it sometimes. Plus, without MCOG, this RPG wouldn't exist either, eh? -GPI for their Charas.EX program, which allow to create RPG characters very quickly with over 10000 possibilities. I used it to create the olmec ancestors sprites as well as Esteban, Zia and Tao sprites. -Enterbrain/ASCII for making RPG Maker and those who translated it in french. I thank the original creators as well for those amazing tiles/sprites (well, some tiles are by me, but at least 60% of the artwork in MCOG RPG is RPG Maker's.) -The people at http://www.citesdor.com (french website) for hosting almost the entire collection of MCOG music (altough some songs seemed to have been recomposed from scratch but they sounded almost like the originals anyway) and all other people with MCOG sites. -Nitacku for helping me fix a bug that caused the new version of the game to crash when exiting the first cavern, which was caused by the new mp3s. He patched them and now it should work. -Everyone at Omnimaga -And to anyone I forgot... oh and you for playing this! © 2007 Omnimaga. MCOG, characters and music (except the final boss music) are © 1982 R.T.L/N.H.K. Visit http://omnimaga.org for more games and other stuff.