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Tristian: Episode I?

*crawls out of woodwork to post another rambling blog post*

So, I'm posing a question to you now. I didn't want to jump on the bandwagon, but two of my most fundamental gam-mak instincts came into play.

The first one being:
Take too long to release a demo/game and your player-base will begin to lose interest and eventually just move on to other more interesting projects.

The second one being:
Release too many demos and you kill any sort of anticipation for your game by feeding the player too much info, or give away subtle clues that the more astute player will pick up later down the line.

Actually, I'm amazed the subscriber count has remained steady, given my sporadic updates. ;_;

After all, Tristian is one of those games where you really need to pay attention to the game's plot or you will quickly become lost. And it's not like Enelysion, where I managed to maintain interest for the game from the game's inception in February 2011 until the day it was completed on November 14, 2015. Nowadays, there are simply far more quality RPGMaker games out there now, and it becomes harder and harder to make your own project stand out.

But the question is:
Should I make Tristian episodic?

A few pros come to the fore when going this route:

- One, its easier to manage the project in smaller chunks, especially when going the whole custom-resource route.

- Two, the episodes themselves end on cliffhangers, which will hopefully leave the player wanting more.

- Three, playing through a shorter portion of the game leads to less repetition and by extension, boredom. Making a game too long can quickly cause the player to lose interest. Unless you're aiming for content creation and have 100000001 things to do in-game, I suggest keeping a traditional RPG around the 20-25 hour mark ( around Chrono Trigger/Phantasy Star 4's length ). I won't lie though, I kept playing through PS4 just to see the next group of awesome comic-book style cutscenes or to see what new combination attack I could figure out ( anyone who has played PS4 knows they did the combo-tech thing a full year before Trigger came out XD ).

I can only dream of a battle-system like that one day, but only ever saw it replicated once in RMXP by a user called Atoa. Anyway...

I'm planning on making the prologue and chapter 1; titled The Fall of Liguria and Parting Ways respectively, around 5-7 hours long. Tristian is going to be quite a lengthy game ( due to the way the scenarios are written ), so splitting it up into parts will probably be not only best for my sanity, but for resource creation later down the line ( I think I'm spending a little too much time on the graphics, to be honest ). Actually, the game itself is driving me a little crazy.

I love it to bits, but sometimes I wish I could just speed up the development process and start working on my sci-fi commercial game which will probably be the love-child of Phantasy Stars 2+4 with a little Star Wars thrown in...

On the downside, releasing a game in parts makes it feel rather incomplete in my eyes. Then again, if LoTL loses interest in the public eye, I can always just put a lid on the entire game and leave the completed episodes available for download.

On the A/V department, things are going well. While my pixel art is getting better by the day, it will probably force me to go back and redo old graphics which will force me into a vicious cycle. I improve at a frightfully fast level if I really put my mind to it and this is both a blessing and curse in disguise. Also, I'm getting rid of RMVX's god-awful sound effects and replacing it with RMXP's far superior ones. This simple change has brought even more life into an already atmospheric game.

As for visuals, well, that's old news. Most of you have probably grown bored of my maps by now ( same old pretty, pretty, nothing new ).




They will have their moment. One day. A lifetime of memories.



I'm also trying to improve my art overall so I can replace the Fire Emblem edits but it will be a while before my current art even resembles Radiant Dawn's excellent in-game portraits. And I really want to do more in-game cutscenes ala Enelysion ( though looking back on it, I do shrink back in horror... )

But to address the main issue again ( I know I rambled a bit but only because I haven't posted a blog in so long ).

So I pose this question to you again. Should Tristian be episodic? Tell me what you think!

And to sum up how Trianna feel about each other, I leave this song for you.




Feeeeeeeeeeeels. <3 <3 <3 I always visualise the two of them slow-dancing to this song. There's another song by Within Temptation for them, but that song's a little too spoilerific.

Posts

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unity
You're magical to me.
12540
I feel like episodic games need to have a kind of rhythm to them. Each episode needs to feel like it's own complete act. Not to say that you can't have cliffhangers or anything, but that an episodic game should feel much different than a normal game just divided into parts.

If you can pull off that feeling, where each episode has some sort of story or character payoff, then I think that's a fine way to go. ^_^
Well, I grew up with the gigantic epics. A single, super long game doesn't bother me one bit. In fact, as long as it isn't padded with "Find the 7 maguffins" schlock, I prefer it.
Meanwhile, episodes don't interest me at all, and this translates to other forms of entertainment too. I'll wait for an entire TV show's season to complete so I can binge watch it, or buy all three books of a trilogy.

Anyway, that's just me. Get some better other opinions.
Ugh... Tricky question you have there.
I'm fine either way, to be honest. If you choose to make episodes, I'll play them. If you choose to make one huge game, I'll play that.
However, I'm going to be honest: I'll most likely wait for the whole game to be completed before playing an episode. I don't want to get stuck on a cliffhanger and be forced to wait for however long, wondering if X character will complete their quest, or if Y character managed to stop Z character before they did something. I kind of think of a game like a meal from a restaurant. You have the entree, but if you're then forced to wait impatiently for the dessert, the night's ruined because the staff are trying to get a quality item of food to you, and you're stuck feeling really weird because you're not sure if you should move on and wait for the dessert to be ready so you can come back to it, or continue waiting.
I'm mainly asking it from a developer's point of view though. Being a one-woman army with a great scenario writer isn't easy, after all. I feel I may have flew a little too high ambition-wise and now I'm crashing back to earth just like Icarus.

Tristian isn't structured in a way that lends itself to an episodic format, unless I go the Enelysion route and release the game in volumes ( which is really just another name for several chapters bundled together, but the final product is still incomplete ). I guess what I'm really trying to say is to manage the game in bite-sized chunks while keeping the player-base happy to see a release in when... 2017?

Will people really wait that long? I'm known for doubting myself and being fatalistic at times.

Which by then I would have just given up. It's just taking too bloody long to make this thing now, and I'm getting more and more despondent by the day. Seems a 4-year dev cycle for decent-length RM games is the norm for me. ><

unity
You're magical to me.
12540
In that case, it should be fine ^_^ I did something similar with Luxaren Allure; I released demos at three different points so I could get feedback and keep up interest, and I think it worked well :D
I'll probably release a three-hour feedback demo later this month, if going the full '30-hour epic' route. The game also has a revolving party roster ala FF4, so I'm not too sure how players feel about that.
Haha wow, I feel your pain. ;___; When you have this huge, looming opus you're trying to get out there, the development time becomes outrageous for a single person. Especially for a game as plot-heavy and visual as Tristian.

Even with the episodic format though, it can be tricky. You want each "Chapter" to be finalized enough to stand on its own, and be relatively complete when you release it. So in that sense, it's not entirely like a demo, where you can implement constant revisions based on the feedback. There's an additional quality filter that arises with each episode, if that makes sense? It's something to consider, at least.

author=Luchino
Nowadays, there are simply far more quality RPGMaker games out there now, and it becomes harder and harder to make your own project stand out.

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with this statement. When I started my own project, having "commercial" RPGMaker games that were so professional and polished was just a crazy pipe-dream. Nowadays, they're popping out left and right... so the freeware route can seem fruitless. Audiences are much less impressed by your typical Rm2k3 or VX game.

**But** you just have to trust in the quality of your project. You've worked on it this long, right? If your subscribers have followed you for 3+ years, they're probably in it for the long haul.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
or they're just there because it's really obnoxious to unsubcribe to stuff on RMN (i'm mostly kidding)

and if you're worried about it not standing out, be less typical. i've had plenty of attention with rtp-based games... i can only imagine a significantly more unique-looking game with with lesbians will do fine. you just gotta reach people outside of the rm* community!
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