WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT? (GAME DEVELOPMENT EDITION)

Posts

Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
I'm still basically fooling around with this GTBS stuff, but, I'm stupid-happy with what I've got so far. For a bit of reference...



...note the lack of "Attack" command in this menu. I'm not sure if I'm going to remove the "Items" command as well, but, it'll stay for now. Also, since the "Guard" command doesn't seem to activate the skill, I did a bit of delving to see if I couldn't force the Guard skill to be used. Ultimately, I just hacked together this "Recharge" command. I dunno, maybe that's lazy, but, as far as I can tell, it works the way it's supposed to!
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
please make that windowskin more opaque so that i can actually read the text
Brainstorming a potential idea for a commercial game while at work. A love letter to the classic Phantasy Star games, but with yuri. Yeah.

I think I just prefer writing romantic two-girl friendships; more appealing to me. So they'd be literal star-crossed lovers, with the main character going on a galaxy-romping quest to find her missing girlfriend.

Plus, we really need more sci-fi fantasies. :D
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
author=Luchino
Brainstorming a potential idea for a commercial game while at work. A love letter to the classic Phantasy Star games, but with yuri. Yeah.

I think I just prefer writing romantic two-girl friendships; more appealing to me. So they'd be literal star-crossed lovers, with the main character going on a galaxy-romping quest to find her missing girlfriend.

Plus, we really need more sci-fi fantasies. :D


I would buy the hell out of this game :DDDD <3
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
I'd say yes to that if it contained some ecchi. (Just kidding, I'm not that perverted)

(or maybe I am)

(or maybe not)
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
Walking to the school library, I suddenly came upon some cool lines for dialogue. Picking up the pace, I rush over to the library and take out pencil and paper to write it down so I don't forget it.

... And forgot it all before I wrote a single letter.



Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
author=Red_Nova
Walking to the school library, I suddenly came upon some cool lines for dialogue. Picking up the pace, I rush over to the library and take out pencil and paper to write it down so I don't forget it.

... And forgot it all before I wrote a single letter.





Story of my life.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
unity and luchi should team up for the ultimate commercial lesbian scifi psuedo-rtp epic
author=Craze
unity and luchi should team up for the ultimate commercial lesbian scifi psuedo-rtp epic


I'd buy it, no kidding.
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
Just made a long list of things I have to do in my game, and I'm not exactly enthusiastic to clear it up. Sometimes, I fear I'll take, like, three years to finish what's supposed to be a pretty short game (two hours, tops, is what I intend this game to be... so yeah).
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
author=Gretgor
Just made a long list of things I have to do in my game, and I'm not exactly enthusiastic to clear it up. Sometimes, I fear I'll take, like, three years to finish what's supposed to be a pretty short game.


Be sure to add 3 years to any Target Completion Date.

Sounds like you're right on the mark!
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
Yay, I guess! xD
All right guys, moment of truth: I have this cycle that I make every year or so. It goes like this.

1. Enjoy playing some RPG Maker Games.
2. Realize how much I enjoy dungeon-diving more than anything else.
3. Play NetHack again, over and over (still haven't ascended).
4. Desire to make an RPG Maker Roguelike.
5. Get burned out because I don't know how to go about it.
6. Quit for a while.
7. Enjoy playing some RPG Maker Games again.

You see it's a vicious cycle. Of course now I'm back into the fullness of development (got a primary game I'm working on and a side project), but I feel myself being pulled back into the world of roguelikes, and desiring to put that stuff in my own games.

Problem is I have no idea to go about it, but I really, really want to do it. I absolutely love Nethack and, as the people say, how the devs thought about everything. Let's say there's a water tile you can't get across. Let's say you try to levitate yourself to get across it. So you begin to move across but, oh, that's right, you've got a succubus with you. The succubus will randomly remove your clothes because that's just something that they do. If the succubus removes your boots, because levitation is cast on your boots, you will fall. If you're over the water tile and the succubus does this, you will lose your levitation and fall into the water.

It's times like this that the brilliancy of Nethack begins to shine. All of these little parts work together so cohesively that it's remarkable how they truly thought of everything (another example, a sink tile. You can drink from it, kick it, do different things, and even drop a ring in it and it will disappear down the drain... unless it's a ring of searching because, well hey, it helps you search and find it again! Clever!).

I just wish I could do something like this, bring the dungeon diving aspect into RPG Maker, but I have no idea where to start. I figure I could start with a battle system, but then there's the whole "turn" system that I'm stuck on. Then there's design. I'm working on a tileset of my own, and I don't want it to become generic. Difficult!

Any advise (other than to stay away from Nethack)?
@Gredge109: Look at Etrian Odyssey instead - it's very much a roguelike with a more RPG Maker friendly combat system. It also has custom-made dungeons over randomly generated ones, which for your game means you'll have to deal with less variance of things. Having a handmade dungeon will also allow you to have better features in it.

Regarding the thinking of everything, there's no secret to it in Nethack - it's just very perceptive devs working on the game for years on end to keep adding new such interactions (the prime example is that throwing a Potion of Uselessness to slide around ice gives you an artifact from your god who likes that you found a use for it).

But personally, I haven't really been charmed by NetHack because most deaths are sudden powerful monsters from a corner I can't disengage from that beat me to death once I run into either a wall or another monster.

Lastly, the RPG Maker's tileset is fine for making a dungeon crawler game - don't concern yourself with that just yet. I'd be all up for more games with interesting gameplay and less whose purpose is to look pretty.
author=LightningLord2
@Gredge109: Look at Etrian Odyssey instead - it's very much a roguelike with a more RPG Maker friendly combat system. It also has custom-made dungeons over randomly generated ones, which for your game means you'll have to deal with less variance of things. Having a handmade dungeon will also allow you to have better features in it.

Regarding the thinking of everything, there's no secret to it in Nethack - it's just very perceptive devs working on the game for years on end to keep adding new such interactions (the prime example is that throwing a Potion of Uselessness to slide around ice gives you an artifact from your god who likes that you found a use for it).

But personally, I haven't really been charmed by NetHack because most deaths are sudden powerful monsters from a corner I can't disengage from that beat me to death once I run into either a wall or another monster.

Lastly, the RPG Maker's tileset is fine for making a dungeon crawler game - don't concern yourself with that just yet. I'd be all up for more games with interesting gameplay and less whose purpose is to look pretty.

This is some great advise!

I like the idea of Etrian Odyssey. I always did like the game and the fact that the combat was fast and to the point. The combat system I'm considering is one of two things: 1. the rogue custom battle system, or 2. the "checkmate" system I found in another roguelike (brief description in spoilers).
In the checkmate system, every enemy was one hit kill, and you were constantly swarmed by enemies, and the only way you lost is if you couldn't move or kill an enemy to escape being blocked off by monsters, and if there were no more moves to be made, you would be "checkmated".
Most likely I will stick with the first custom system, though, and see what I can make using variables... or a script if I can find a good one.

I was penning up some ideas since I couldn't sleep last night, and thought about a mixed design: pseudo-random maps. So at the start of the game, the dice would be rolled and all maps that the player will encounter for that play-through will be decided (think along the lines of 1 of 3 maps per major area, along with submaps, and different random events strewn about). This way I'll still be able to make large, unique maps, but they have random enemies and events on them.

Good recommendation on the tilesets, too. I'm working now on a tileset and characters (like that knight in my avatar) just to have a custom one of my own for some use down the road. As for this roguelike, I've been considering making a tileset out of pseudo-ASCII graphics, or maybe very low-bit (8x8 blown up to 32x32) tiles. I'll have more detail about this in a little later post once I start hammering things down.
After so long working on my game, I'm thinking that really it should be a sidescroller. For some reason that just makes so much sense and I think the game would be better and much more entertaining that way. Man, so many things have been redone it's ridiculous.
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
Just finished designing a logic puzzle that is going to "tie together" the three regions of my puzzle-adventure game. I'll keep it optional, so that only people willing to backtrack a bit will need to solve it.

Also, I'm wondering if I unintentionally came off as mean in my post on the New Developer Mapping Help thread. My intention was to help them by giving some "study material" for them, in the form of successful games with the tilesets they intend to use, to get some references from. Given that the person I replied to still hasn't returned, I'm starting to worry that I might have been rude without noticing :\

Gah, I worry too much.
I'm thinking of a game where at certain points of the plot, you have to choose between two or more choices, and choosing one will increase your trust score with one of your party members and grant them new skills or equipment, while decreasing your score with the others AND potentially making them leave the party for a long time until you raise your trust scores again by other means. Not only that, the choices can open up new quests related to the appeased party member while locking out the others, and then these new quests can give you more choices. The challenge is that most of the quests are branching and will never overlap with each other. I'm planning to do this on RPG Maker VX Ace, but I've never seen a game that did this. That, or I haven't explored enough of this site. Oh, and if you're gonna suggest a game, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS BEAUTIFUL DON'T MAKE IT A HORROR OR SUSPENSE game.
author=DarylSun
I'm thinking of a game where at certain points of the plot, you have to choose between two or more choices, and choosing one will increase your trust score with one of your party members and grant them new skills or equipment, while decreasing your score with the others AND potentially making them leave the party for a long time until you raise your trust scores again by other means. Not only that, the choices can open up new quests related to the appeased party member while locking out the others, and then these new quests can give you more choices. The challenge is that most of the quests are branching and will never overlap with each other. I'm planning to do this on RPG Maker VX Ace, but I've never seen a game that did this. That, or I haven't explored enough of this site. Oh, and if you're gonna suggest a game, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS BEAUTIFUL DON'T MAKE IT A HORROR OR SUSPENSE game.


Neverwinter Nights 2 has moral choices at certain points that increases the loyalty of certain party members while usually lowering the loyalty of others. I don't know if that unlocks new quests, though.
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
Something like an RPG with The Walking Dead elements? I like it.