WHAT ARE YOUR BEST TIME SAVERS AND SHORTCUTS?

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So what things do you do to substantially cut the time it takes to make your game?
cut features, dilute your design

there are no shortcuts here

realanswer: it helps to have a set of versatile and robust tools you can rely on to make things go smoother. the messagebox code i'm running was written almost three years ago but it's very modular, so i was able to add choices and tutorial features to it with almost no trouble. if i had built a total mess that links into like ten different places i guarantee you it would've been awful building anything on top of that.

the problem is that you often have to build those tools yourself, and building robust tools comes with experience, so it's not really a shortcut.

also i was kind of joking at the top of my post but really, the quickest way to cut your game's development time is to cut planned features. i don't know that you should necessarily take a hatchet to your game but you should evaluate each feature and ask yourself things like:

do i really need this feature?
does this feature only exist because i spent a lot of time designing it?
does it only exist to mindlessly meet a genre trope?
does it only exist because i like it too much to let it go?
does it needlessly complicate the experience?

etc.

you may find that you don't need a lot of things, and that can help you proceed. but if you're making any kind of content-intensive game, there aren't really any shortcuts that i've found.
Well, how about "focus on your strengths"?
When spriting people with long hair (like women), to make their facing up sprites I only add the back hair to the facing down sprites:



I made all my Marvel Brothel female characters like this, and I used this on other games too. Believe me, it saves time.
Measure twice, cut once.
It's not really a shortcut persay, but having EVERYTHING written down so that all that's left is coordinated construction and data entry helps speed up and organize the process. Organization by itself saves time.

A personal thing of mine is to build the entire foundation before even attempting the game. That means having all the resources I think I'll ever need in one folder, then dragging them into the game folder as I slowly assemble the project.
But I can see where people might become impatient and want to make game progress off the start.
Melkino
solos collectors on purpose
2021
I reuse some skill names and naming structures so that I don't have to waste time thinking of a new name for "Ice3" for every single game. It's also easier for me to keep track of them in the games' databases, and being consistent across games will hopefully reduce the learning curve for the player.

Recoloring tiles and sprites saves a lot of time too!

I don't do parallax maps (in vx) unless absolutely necessary, because it takes a lot longer than doing it in the editor. If I do one, I just stick with small interiors and battlebacks to get the job done faster.
Thiamor
I assure you I'm no where NEAR as STUPID as one might think.
63
I copy my skills in the DB, and just go and edit out the stuff I don't need, then change the name. This allows for quicker creation of skills. Also this isn't too much of a shortcut, but when saving sprites into RPG MAKER and such, I save them in alphabetical order based on what game they will be in. This will make it much easier to search through many sprites, to find the ones you need, instead of scrolling down or up a lot to find 1.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I have about 80 saved games of my game at almost every possible juncture in the game, before and after each major cut scene and each dungeon, and named in a manner so that they're sorted chronologically and still descriptive (080 - after arriving at demonshade island.sav). I obtained most of these during a single test playthrough, during which I just copied my saves to a second folder and renamed them each time I saved the game. This makes the testing process much faster, so when I edit something I have a real save right before it with all the correct switches and variables and levels and everything. Although if I make a major change then the old saves will not work very well.

The most time-consuming (and most irritating) thing for me is pixeling my animated battlers. It takes me anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes to create each frame of animation, resulting in about 8 hours per playable character or 1.5 hours per monster (since playable characters have far more poses). Skill effect animations come in second place, followed by non-animated graphics. Graphics in general are so time-consuming and annoying that they have caused me to quit several projects in the past, and may cause me to quit my current one. I'd love to hear more shortcuts for making graphics.
I'm also trying to discern NPCs that do not need to move around, so I can make only one sprite for them (facing down), instead of making 4-directional movements (1 sprite instead of 12).
^ This.

Also, to save on the MASSIVE number of variables and switches I would need to use to program the story events that progress the plot, I instead tally those which occur in chronological order and use a single variable that I increase by 10 at the end of each scene. So the beginning game dialog is set to shut off after the variable reaches 1, then the next time people talk it shuts off at value 10, etc. I use multiples of ten so that I can slide another event in between if I need to (like if I decide to add in a scene later, I don't have to completely recode everything).
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
- Using 2k instead of 2k3 so I don't have to create battle character sets
- Using charas.ex to make sprites
- Recycling maps from discontinued projects

Why yes I AM pathetic
author=Yellow Magic
- Recycling maps from discontinued projects

I hope you're asking their permission first.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
author=ubermax
author=Yellow Magic
- Recycling maps from discontinued projects
I hope you're asking their permission first.

I'm sure he means his own discontinued projects. :o
or both.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
I use a version control system, specifically Bazaar.
Version control is a pretty basic tenet of good software development practice, because it protects things from getting permanently screwed up, but a lot of RM people probably aren't aware of it. (Though it's slightly more useful when you're using text-like files and not unreadable junk like RM2K(3) maps.)
Cut Everything, Make Nothing.
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
author=InfectionFiles
author=ubermax
author=Yellow Magic
- Recycling maps from discontinued projects
I hope you're asking their permission first.
I'm sure he means his own discontinued projects. :o
aye. I'm never going to rip-off ABL or anything.
Stop opening up RPG Maker, scrolling through maps and the database for a few minutes, then closing it. I really wish I knew some cool shortcuts, just knuckle down, and do some work is the only advice I can give.

Although, someone once mentioned holding shift in the battle animation tab moves all frames at once. Didn’t know that until recently =(
Little Wing, that's very helpful, thank you!
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=DFalcon
I use a version control system, specifically Bazaar.
Version control is a pretty basic tenet of good software development practice, because it protects things from getting permanently screwed up, but a lot of RM people probably aren't aware of it. (Though it's slightly more useful when you're using text-like files and not unreadable junk like RM2K(3) maps.)

A version control system would be super helpful with scripting, I should try that software out.


author=Little Wing Guy
Stop opening up RPG Maker, scrolling through maps and the database for a few minutes, then closing it.

Oh God I wish I could stop doing that :(
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