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WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT? (GAME DEVELOPMENT EDITION)
Posts
volke_locke
3232
volke_locke
View playlists
Closeauthor=LockeZ
Well, being featured last month caused Last King of Hyrule to get 160 downloads and 0 comments. Meanwhile my MUD got 8 new players last month, most of whom talk on general chat constantly about the game. Guess which of those two situations makes me excited and energized to keep improving the game?
I'm going to guess the downloads, because numbers have that affect on the brain, perhaps a greater pressure to perform.
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
Nope, the other one. It should be the downloads, but surprisingly, it turns out I have human fallacies after all. The knowledge that twenty people are probably enjoying the game without telling me is nothing compared to the joy I get of actually watching one person enjoy it in front of me.
I think featured games see less comments because they're generally completed, where people are much more interested to talk about a game still in the works, I suppose.
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
Nuking players' accounts for breaking the rules isn't my favorite part of running an online game.
On the other hand, surprisingly, "But I've been botting for months and it's never been a problem before!" isn't actually a very good defense when you're caught botting.
On the other hand, surprisingly, "But I've been botting for months and it's never been a problem before!" isn't actually a very good defense when you're caught botting.
Gredge109
4151
Got another game that's in post-production and almost ready for release, but I can't seem to drum up any excitement for it on the game page. That tells me one of two things, either that I don't know how to "sell" my own game and make it sound interesting, or that it's simply not a very good concept. Either way, I'm trying to decide whether it's worth the effort to polish it up then release it, or simply to throw cancelled on it and count it as a loss and move on to better things.
On a separate note, I've been looking back on my rogue-like I started working on, JRL. Had this thing going before Ace started acting up on my computer (thanks, Steam). All of the issues are resolved now but it left a bad taste in my mouth when it came to JRL. That being said, I recently had the idea to get rid of its ASCII graphics and move it to RTP. While the ASCII graphics were made by me, it seemed neat but wasn't doing me any favors. Overall, I feel the game had some pretty good concepts going on.
My goal with that game was to make everything randomized except for the maps (which I may yet randomize them should I choose to reinvest in it). I had random generation for everything including enemies and plots, and even different characters, events, and so on. The goal was to keep it short to encourage multiple play-throughs. (I may toss the plot randomization, as that was killing me to come up with different plots.) Even the name of the town where the events took place was randomized. It had some good flavor for an early game of mine.
I'm far better at crafting battle systems now than I was back then, so I can install a new system. Likely the main character will have other survivors (that are randomly select each play through) join them, as they all start at a shelter at the edge of town. As far as enemy encounters, most of them were zombies that would chase you around the map. I'm wondering if I should change these to static encounters: perhaps if a player sees something in the basement of a house they want to get, they'll be notified that they hear a zombie shuffling on the other side of the door. Then, it'll be the player's decision whether they want to fight through one or more zombies and lose resources in the hopes of scoring a good item, or to ignore the extra item all together and save their health and energy.
Thing is, I've become much better at being a game dev that when I first began the JRL project. There's so many tweaks I can make now to streamline everything, and I had developed a good bit into JRL.
I've got a day of travel ahead of me, so I guess I'll have the weekend to ponder this.
On a separate note, I've been looking back on my rogue-like I started working on, JRL. Had this thing going before Ace started acting up on my computer (thanks, Steam). All of the issues are resolved now but it left a bad taste in my mouth when it came to JRL. That being said, I recently had the idea to get rid of its ASCII graphics and move it to RTP. While the ASCII graphics were made by me, it seemed neat but wasn't doing me any favors. Overall, I feel the game had some pretty good concepts going on.
My goal with that game was to make everything randomized except for the maps (which I may yet randomize them should I choose to reinvest in it). I had random generation for everything including enemies and plots, and even different characters, events, and so on. The goal was to keep it short to encourage multiple play-throughs. (I may toss the plot randomization, as that was killing me to come up with different plots.) Even the name of the town where the events took place was randomized. It had some good flavor for an early game of mine.
I'm far better at crafting battle systems now than I was back then, so I can install a new system. Likely the main character will have other survivors (that are randomly select each play through) join them, as they all start at a shelter at the edge of town. As far as enemy encounters, most of them were zombies that would chase you around the map. I'm wondering if I should change these to static encounters: perhaps if a player sees something in the basement of a house they want to get, they'll be notified that they hear a zombie shuffling on the other side of the door. Then, it'll be the player's decision whether they want to fight through one or more zombies and lose resources in the hopes of scoring a good item, or to ignore the extra item all together and save their health and energy.
Thing is, I've become much better at being a game dev that when I first began the JRL project. There's so many tweaks I can make now to streamline everything, and I had developed a good bit into JRL.
I've got a day of travel ahead of me, so I guess I'll have the weekend to ponder this.
You won't get any xp if you cancel your stuff.
You only get the xp bonus after adding a download to a gamepage.
You only get the xp bonus after adding a download to a gamepage.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
Here's my solution to explaining how each stat works after countless hours trying to figure out how to convey this info without tutorial boxes. This is a much more natural solution that doesn't break the immersion and gives players an idea of who would best benefit from such an item.
This may seem obvious, but it wasn't for me. In this particular example, I wasn't sure how best to convey to players that attack items draw upon the Technique stat when determining damage. That's why it was put into the item description.
... but who reads item descriptions anyway? Hm...
Was doing a play-test of Nakaishi Wars. Aside of thinking that I want to break up the two battles in Mission 1 with a save-menu-screen, I think I made the second battle a bit too crazy-hard. My thought is to reduce the enemy party by one, and see what that looks like.
Thinking about multiple endings and how to make them flexible.
Basically, my game has three planned endings. And while one of them is a True Ending, I'm aiming to design my game in a way where it's a bit more difficult to lock yourself out of it. The player has multiple opportunities to put themselves back on the path, and I'm actively avoiding things like "don't forget to talk to that one guy" or "kill one monster and the run is over" that take players off of True Ending paths.
Problem is, I don't know if this is a good thing or not. Do people LIKE one-mistake-and-its-over true endings, or is it better to give players multiple opportunities?
Basically, my game has three planned endings. And while one of them is a True Ending, I'm aiming to design my game in a way where it's a bit more difficult to lock yourself out of it. The player has multiple opportunities to put themselves back on the path, and I'm actively avoiding things like "don't forget to talk to that one guy" or "kill one monster and the run is over" that take players off of True Ending paths.
Problem is, I don't know if this is a good thing or not. Do people LIKE one-mistake-and-its-over true endings, or is it better to give players multiple opportunities?
psy_wombats
13315
author=SgtMettool
Thinking about multiple endings and how to make them flexible.
Basically, my game has three planned endings. And while one of them is a True Ending, I'm aiming to design my game in a way where it's a bit more difficult to lock yourself out of it. The player has multiple opportunities to put themselves back on the path, and I'm actively avoiding things like "don't forget to talk to that one guy" or "kill one monster and the run is over" that take players off of True Ending paths.
Problem is, I don't know if this is a good thing or not. Do people LIKE one-mistake-and-its-over true endings, or is it better to give players multiple opportunities?
I'd take a page from the VN book. There's a pretty common plot structure in branching games with a big common route and then a single point where the plot splits off into individual routes/endings. Rather than having a single choice decide which fork is taken, there's usually a backing variable to determine which path. For instance, in a dating sim, positive interactions with a character would increment the variable, and then at the fork, the player would be put onto the ending for the character with the highest score.
Sounds like you already have some events, so you could potentially have them all increment a true_end variable if the kill the monster, talk to that one guy, etc, and then at the end, decide to take the true ending if true_end > 4 or whatever. That way you should be able to tune the "difficulty" as you like as well.
I personally dislike games where either 1) need a guide to see major content or 2) have to replay multiple times to get to new content.
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
There's a certain satisfaction that comes from getting the best ending if doing so was legitimately difficult, but there are a lot of better ways to make it difficult without locking players out because they didn't know not to do something. It also matters how enjoyable the game is to play through again from the beginning, and how long it is - a 45 minute long roguelike is very different from a 45 hour long JRPG.
Your game won't have walkthroughs on GameFAQs, so I think the most important difference between what you can do and what a game that's sold at Best Buy can do is that all the requirements need to be stuff the player can figure out, even if just through trial and error. Requirements like "never kill any of your allies with AOE attacks" in Disgaea (a game where the mechanics absolutely encourage and even reward self-murder) or "do a specific chain of quests" in Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song (a game where almost every quest is permanently missable) were barely acceptable on the Playstation 2 and would just frustrate anyone who learned about them in an RPG Maker game. No one would actually experience that satisfaction. Those requirements aren't really very satisfying anyway because they require you to play sub-optimally to earn.
Meanwhile something like the requirement of "get 100% quest completion" in FFX-2 (a game where every quest is marked on the map and can be done at any time, and your completion is tracked in a giant highly-visible counter) is still very difficult and challenging and still just as satisfying to accomplish, but without the bullshit.
Your game won't have walkthroughs on GameFAQs, so I think the most important difference between what you can do and what a game that's sold at Best Buy can do is that all the requirements need to be stuff the player can figure out, even if just through trial and error. Requirements like "never kill any of your allies with AOE attacks" in Disgaea (a game where the mechanics absolutely encourage and even reward self-murder) or "do a specific chain of quests" in Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song (a game where almost every quest is permanently missable) were barely acceptable on the Playstation 2 and would just frustrate anyone who learned about them in an RPG Maker game. No one would actually experience that satisfaction. Those requirements aren't really very satisfying anyway because they require you to play sub-optimally to earn.
Meanwhile something like the requirement of "get 100% quest completion" in FFX-2 (a game where every quest is marked on the map and can be done at any time, and your completion is tracked in a giant highly-visible counter) is still very difficult and challenging and still just as satisfying to accomplish, but without the bullshit.
author=psy_wombatsauthor=SgtMettoolI'd take a page from the VN book. There's a pretty common plot structure in branching games with a big common route and then a single point where the plot splits off into individual routes/endings. Rather than having a single choice decide which fork is taken, there's usually a backing variable to determine which path. For instance, in a dating sim, positive interactions with a character would increment the variable, and then at the fork, the player would be put onto the ending for the character with the highest score.
Thinking about multiple endings and how to make them flexible.
Basically, my game has three planned endings. And while one of them is a True Ending, I'm aiming to design my game in a way where it's a bit more difficult to lock yourself out of it. The player has multiple opportunities to put themselves back on the path, and I'm actively avoiding things like "don't forget to talk to that one guy" or "kill one monster and the run is over" that take players off of True Ending paths.
Problem is, I don't know if this is a good thing or not. Do people LIKE one-mistake-and-its-over true endings, or is it better to give players multiple opportunities?
Sounds like you already have some events, so you could potentially have them all increment a true_end variable if the kill the monster, talk to that one guy, etc, and then at the end, decide to take the true ending if true_end > 4 or whatever. That way you should be able to tune the "difficulty" as you like as well.
I personally dislike games where either 1) need a guide to see major content or 2) have to replay multiple times to get to new content.
Good advice. Yeah, I'm having it tracked not by one major decision, but by six, tracking two variables. And what combination of those two variables you end up with will determine which ending you get.
Success!
Though, I'm just starting to notice something awkward with the Optimize option in regards to equipment. Because the equipment in the game doesn't give straight-up stat bonuses (they are all percentile-based), "Optimize" doesn't actually equip stuff that has the highest percentile bonuses. I've an idea that could fix this, so we'll see how that works. For now, though I think I'll sleep.
*Two-hour-later-edit:
Though, I'm just starting to notice something awkward with the Optimize option in regards to equipment. Because the equipment in the game doesn't give straight-up stat bonuses (they are all percentile-based), "Optimize" doesn't actually equip stuff that has the highest percentile bonuses. I've an idea that could fix this, so we'll see how that works. For now, though I think I'll sleep.
*Two-hour-later-edit:
 | Awwwwwww yeeeeaaaaaahhhh! |
LockeZ
Meanwhile something like the requirement of "get 100% quest completion" in FFX-2 (a game where every quest is marked on the map and can be done at any time, and your completion is tracked in a giant highly-visible counter) is still very difficult and challenging and still just as satisfying to accomplish, but without the bullshit.
I almost agree, except you only get +1% if you join Nooj's rebel army instead of Baralai's New Yevon. And Nooj sucks, so I lost that 1%...
...I think you get the bonus ending at 98%+ though.
edit: nope you need 100%, such BS. there's a LOT of missable stuff in x-2, too, if you look at it again =/
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 may have mentally blocked out the bullshit.
What's a game you can get 100% completion in for a better ending, that has no missable stuff? Mario Sunshine, I guess. Even though the "secret ending" is just a postcard showing all the characters. A lot of collectathon games probably do the same thing.
I think that's a solid way of handling a "true" ending.
Now, if you have an ending that isn't acutally better, just different, then some esoteric shit might be more justified. Like the ending in Suikoden II that you get by abandoning the main quest 3/4 of the way through and fleeing to live alone in the countryside.
What's a game you can get 100% completion in for a better ending, that has no missable stuff? Mario Sunshine, I guess. Even though the "secret ending" is just a postcard showing all the characters. A lot of collectathon games probably do the same thing.
I think that's a solid way of handling a "true" ending.
Now, if you have an ending that isn't acutally better, just different, then some esoteric shit might be more justified. Like the ending in Suikoden II that you get by abandoning the main quest 3/4 of the way through and fleeing to live alone in the countryside.
author=LockeZ
Nope, the other one. It should be the downloads, but surprisingly, it turns out I have human fallacies after all. The knowledge that twenty people are probably enjoying the game without telling me is nothing compared to the joy I get of actually watching one person enjoy it in front of me.
I can sorta relate. Happup only has, like, four people consistently comment on it, but I'll be damned if those four consistent commenters don't make me the most excited mini gamedev out there.
I've been thinking of scrapping the text in Happup entirely in favor of bubbles filled with small pictures to tell the predicaments, to keep the weird, mysterious vibe of the game going.
Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
7874
Experimenting with character customization in a rather unconventional way, by turning shields into weapons. I want to see how adding INT boosts and a chance to stun to shields might change their usage for mage type characters. Also, all characters will now be dual wielders by nature which will affect the strength of using two double-hitting quick weapons over one single-hit heavy weapon. This will also change how players view the differences between scimitar and claw weapons as claws are already a two-handed weapon with their core benefits being a higher base strength per tier and added status ailments inflicted on attack.
A necessary sacrifice here was removing Raw (a strictly melee-affecting status) resistance from shields and relocating it to gauntlet accessories, but I feel this will help further develop melee vs magic strategies.
A necessary sacrifice here was removing Raw (a strictly melee-affecting status) resistance from shields and relocating it to gauntlet accessories, but I feel this will help further develop melee vs magic strategies.
Thinking a little bit about NPC dialogs in Oracle of Askigaga. Also, how exactly I'm going to do the Temple of the Spirit.
DBAce9Aura
52
This freaking article has been on my mind for a while: http://www.angelgriffin.com/what-makes-many-intelligent-aspergers-seem-so-aimless-and-lazy-and-what-strategy-actually-works-to-keep-them-moving-in-a-meaningful-direction/#.V3wA5NVrgwy
That said, I've been trying some productivity tricks to get me to buck this ugly procrastination trend of mine.
That said, I've been trying some productivity tricks to get me to buck this ugly procrastination trend of mine.
As my game is entering its beta stages of development, I'm really hoping that I didn't stretch it too thin. It's using close to the default battle system and only has two party members, so I hope it will be enough to keep people engaged throughout the 3-4 hour run time. I'm running out of boss ideas, too.
