IS THIS STORY TOO CLICHE?

Yeah, good point. RPGs are just waiting to have masterful and groundbreaking stories in them, told by skilled writers. I don't think good gameplay should be an excuse not to tell a great story, but simply that solid core gameplay is a vital ingredient.

Gameplay and story are both important but I find I can excuse less than optimal (not bad, but perhaps 'typical' of the genre) gameplay than a story that's bad. And story is a lot easier to mess up than gameplay.

That said, both require balancing.

Let's not talk graphics aside from thus: Graphics depend on what you do with them, not what they are. You can have an awesome game with stick figures as long as you use the graphics right. This is why I hate on the RTP haters. >:[

But yeah, another thing to keep in mind is that most other games focus on gameplay over everything else. That's why RPGs are special - because more often than not the story and characters and world are the main focus, not the systems and graphics (though they play a part, great writing will have you playing through a-typical systems to get to the rest of the story - not bad systems, just not great ones.)

Like I've told various people in the past - the aim of an RPG is to tell a story. If your players can't get to the end of that story because your gameplay is crap then there's no point to the game existing. Challenge is okay and in a lot of people, desired, but making roadblocks that are insurmountable is bad design and will render your game - your story - null and void.

Make a great story - definitely - but don't make shitty gameplay to go with it. The worse the gameplay, the better the story HAS to be to get the player through it.

That said, on the topic of cliches, if they fit, use them. It's not an onus to do so. Some of the best games out there use them - hell, Chrono Trigger (one of the best games of all time on many peoples' lists) is chock-full of them! It's a great game and part of that is the ease with which the story plays out - using the cliches to advantage.

Do that. Use them. Just... don't let them use you. ;p

author=Rose_Guardian
Sorry for the late reply. My browser was acting up yesterday.
I agree with you Liberty, you can make an awesome game with stick figures. That's why I get mad if some one says something to me about using RTP, or the VX Ace Character and face generator.

I feel you, my RM knowledge goes just this far and yes, you can make awesome games with those!

Yeah, graphics are definitely further down the chain of things that people care about when they're playing your game. That said, graphics are the first thing that people see, so good, unique graphics will pull more players to your game. Graphics also are a heavy factor in developing a sense of immersion, and they can provide visual interest that keeps gamers engaged. Too, the right use of visuals can do a lot of storytelling for you and make scenes have more emotional weight. You should definitely work with what you've got and don't let your weak areas stop you, but the fact is that EVERYTHING that goes into a game is important. That's why you should be smart with how you handle your weak areas.

In The God of Crawling Eyes, for example, I can't draw for crap, so I decided to limit myself to black and white, as this meant I didn't have to worry about color or shading. Then I constructed a story around that: the protagonist is color blind, you're limited to his perception, and the entire game is about how you perceive the world around you. Too, when I think of horror movies, the first thing that comes to mind are old black and white horror films like Night of the Living Dead or even old Bela Lugosi stuff, and using black and white would convey that. So, I turned shitty graphics into something that was justifiable, and it allowed me to keep production quality high while minimizing my work load. All that's to say: be smart about how you target your weak areas and you can turn them into strengths.

author=Housekeeping
Yeah, graphics are definitely further down the chain of things that people care about when they're playing your game. That said, graphics are the first thing that people see, so good, unique graphics will pull more players to your game.

I agree with you. That said, I have found entire games within the RPG Maker genre that succeed almost purely on the merit of their visuals. Ara Fell, Ib, Space Funeral, Sunset Over Imdahl, Pom Gets Wi-Fi, Yume Nikki and Miserere all rely heavily on superior graphics to grab the player by the collar and drag them into the world they have created. Such a grand feeling of exploration and awe at everything in your environment creates this real sense of wonder and achievement, and you're left feeling like, "Wow. I wish I could really live here."

More likely than not, most of your potential audience when you're designing games on RPGMaker will prioritize other aspects of the game over graphics, but to a significant extent that's probably because people who put graphics at the top generally don't get into RPGMaker games in the first place.

For all that we might draw inspirations from commercial games, we're really not targeting the same audience pool.

author=Housekeeping

author=nurvuss
I liked the aesthetic look of God of Crawling Eyes a lot. What graphic editing program did you use, Photoshop?

Nope: I used MS Paint. For the characters, portraits, and parallaxes, I just converted stuff from the sprite generator, facemaker, or VX itself into monochrome bitmaps, converted them back to .pngs, and edited them in order to fill in the gaps. The tilesets and a few other things (like the titular character) were just drawn by me with the pencil tool. Photoshop would probably make things easier, but I'm a sucker for free over functional. This is why I still drive a 97 Eclipse.

PUNK ROCK! Wow, I never would've guessed. I was using Idraw but it doesn't seem to like VX templates. Thanks for sharing!