Ob Iter

In the words of an old teacher of mine,
'You have to release this some time, or you'll never release it'.

That is the development story of this game.

So i've been turning that over in my head the last few days,
what do i do with this?

As the years have wore on, the once new and shiny RM2K3 is now the older program to the newer and shinier XP, VX, and Ace makers. Still, the old RM2K3 battle system is perfect for my needs, and no newer maker has updated it. Of course i could create a custom system on a newer maker to replicate what RM2K3 offers... so shouldn't i do that? I could handle the task of transferring the resources over, and the battle formulas too, but unless i could just directly copy and paste the maps and events..., no, if i had to remake all the map designs and events it would take forever.

So i take a step back and look at my game and the RM2K3 platform. It does do generally everything i need to make the game i want, except for three factors.

1) The 320x240 pixel depth
2) The 4:3 frame instead of widescreen (i'm not a fan of stretching).
3) The 8 bit color depth

Thankfully i have resolved #1.
I found a copy of cherry's old Hq2x program and will include it with the game. Many of us have used it in emulating those old PS1 games, and it looks wonderful. The screenshot below is using it.

I am also not overly concerned about #3,
if only because the screenshot below shows how far 256 colors can go. The trick obviously, is to limit the color range per picture. This one has primarily only the greens and yellowy browns in the spectrum to share it, so both color ranges look full. If i added Blue and Red to this screen, the shared load would create a noticeable drop off in quality. Obviously i'd rather have some sort of tool or plug-in or just be using a program with a higher color depth, but i can work with this.

That leaves #2,
Which i have no idea how to work around without stretching. I suppose the individual player can make that decision on their own. If i could, i'd make my game with triple widescreen support, but, if there's no way to modify the original RM2K3, at least none that i know of, i guess i go with it.

So that brings me back to the idea of Episodic release. The more i dig into the scope of this project, i am reminded that i'll never finish it.. and what i mean is, that even if i finish this entire story arc, i've still got more stories to tell in this world that would be entirely separate games. Finishing this particular chunk though (9 chapters at the moment), is doable within a couple years.

I have minor concerns about the episodic release format. One is that i'd like to have a gameplay mechanic where the player makes choices which change variables and branch the story-line later on. With episodic release this becomes problematic because i am always making changes to this. My second concern is more simply that i am always tightening up small things across all chapters and i push forward. Maybe remaking a map, or cleaning up dialogue, or tightening a battle. I suppose neither concern is game-breaking though. I could keep tweaking things forever. Certainly asking a player to re-download 500megs in today's day and age should not be too massive an ask?

The character customization element in my game is extremely deep and i'd like to allow the player to carry their builds over from start to finish. For this reason it makes the most sense for the entire game to remain on a single platform. Still, releasing the game in chunks would make a change to a different maker possible later on with less headache. Certainly it would make it more of an option to consider. Also, giving people something to play would substantially increase interest in this project (or not if everyone hates it, haha).

Probably the benefits of episodic release far outweigh the drawbacks.
So that is what i will do.