WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT? (GAME DEVELOPMENT EDITION)

Posts

Because it got swept under the rug: (and it looks cute!)
author=QZProductions
I just started spriting the first member of The Squad for my next game.



He's a mage. He's kind of a smart-ass but I love him anyway. <3
So I don't look like a crazy person:
author=grindalf
author=Arcmagik
author=grindalf
author=LockeZ
Something LockeZ said that isn't unusual.
What's wrong with you? This is a topic where we post pics of things we are working on and you are so surprised that my font needs work that you swear at me...
That's just LockeZ.
So basically he's an Ass

I'd argue he's a loveable ass... At least he told you what you he disliked about the font I guess? XD

Also his 6 basement children are alive so there's that~

Uh, I suppose I'll share things while I'm here! You should be able to see these. Well, as in access. They're a bit blurry.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3M64isn8_cIdThBaXE5WC1vYUU/view

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3M64isn8_cIeHRVbDJwNnZ6dlU/view
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
Added a special one-day-only boss fight in my Squaresoft MUD against Vincent Valentine.

When you beat him, the game tells you:

Vincent collapses on the ground, and accepts your love. Panting with exhaustion, he hands you a red and pink card. Written inside, it says, "Too much hope is the opposite of despair... An overpowering love may consume you in the end."

...And then you get a nice big pile of XP and AP.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
ah, nerdery and nihilism. i'd be okay with vincent accepting my love though
author=grindalf
author=Arcmagik
author=grindalf
author=LockeZ
Something LockeZ said that isn't unusual.
What's wrong with you? This is a topic where we post pics of things we are working on and you are so surprised that my font needs work that you swear at me...
That's just LockeZ.
So basically he's an Ass


That isn't necessarily unusual around here.
Well, to be honest, I've always wanted to make a Kingdom Hearts type of game where original characters end up meeting characters from other game worlds(not by jumping into a game or TV). Rather than a character going to worlds of a specific company (Disney in this case), the character(s) would travel a small chunk of worlds that are both from obscure games and games we all know and love. Of course, it wouldn't exactly be all original scenes because KH puts Sora in the middle of Disney character's original stories.

If this were to be created, it would do the same by putting these characters in the middle of each game's most memorable moments.For example, lets say our hero goes through this and that; eventually ending up in the Mushroom Kingdom and meets Mario as a temporary party member in Super Mario 64, or ends up in Hyrule to join Link to fight Ganondorf, Dream Land, Mega Man's World(Earth), Mobius(Sonic), Final Fantasy, and a bunch of other worlds that are being threatened by a new evil that gives villains more power than ever. It would probably take a team to pull something like this off, but its just an idea I'm putting out there.

The only reason why this idea sort of came to mind is because in Kingdom Hearts, Sora only travels through Disney Worlds and not any from FF, and I have absolutely no complaints about that or their design choices. However, It would be cool to see small chunks based on worlds from Final Fantasy such as Ultimecia's Castle from FF8 or Alexandria from FF9.
author=XBuster
Well, to be honest, I've always wanted to make a Kingdom Hearts type of game where original characters end up meeting characters from other game worlds(not by jumping into a game or TV). Rather than a character going to worlds of a specific company (Disney in this case), the character(s) would travel a small chunk of worlds that are both from obscure games and games we all know and love. Of course, it wouldn't exactly be all original scenes because KH puts Sora in the middle of Disney character's original stories.

If this were to be created, it would do the same by putting these characters in the middle of each game's most memorable moments.For example, lets say our hero goes through this and that; eventually ending up in the Mushroom Kingdom and meets Mario as a temporary party member in Super Mario 64, or ends up in Hyrule to join Link to fight Ganondorf, Dream Land, Mega Man's World(Earth), Mobius(Sonic), Final Fantasy, and a bunch of other worlds that are being threatened by a new evil that gives villains more power than ever. It would probably take a team to pull something like this off, but its just an idea I'm putting out there.

The only reason why this idea sort of came to mind is because in Kingdom Hearts, Sora only travels through Disney Worlds and not any from FF, and I have absolutely no complaints about that or their design choices. However, It would be cool to see small chunks based on worlds from Final Fantasy such as Ultimecia's Castle from FF8 or Alexandria from FF9.


Sounds like an interesting idea, though implementing characters like Mario and Link would be difficult. I imagine communication between characters would be important, and Mario and Link's vocabularies aren't exactly varied.
author=Mister_Max
Sounds like an interesting idea, though implementing characters like Mario and Link would be difficult. I imagine communication between characters would be important, and Mario and Link's vocabularies aren't exactly varied.

Good point. However, they exactly don't have to speak. In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it was evident that actions speak more than words. Perhaps other characters could do the explaining like Zelda. You would come across Link and he's hurt by Ganon's new powers he somehow achieved. The character shows up and it's obvious that you are trying to help him so he gives a "nod" or something, heals with something and the battle continues with you pairing up with Link.

It just depends on what the design document would ensure them to do or say if anything.
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
What that means is you have to create a new custom animated pose - probably 10 frames or so - for every time the character would otherwise talk. With a one-person team, that's a ton of extra work.

An alternate solution would be: in the worlds where the protagonist has no dialogue, have the player character replace Link or Mario, instead of meeting them. I mean, if you meet them, nothing really happens. There's very little nostalgia factor that you can pull off in the cut scenes where Link and the player interact. But if the player interacts with Zelda, Navi, and Saria without Link present, then the dialogue can play out almost identically to how it did in the original games, and the player will be at the center of the story.

This is how I handle inserting the player into scenes in the Unofficial Squaresoft MUD. When you arrive in the Chrono Trigger realm, the whole premise is that Crono has been erased from the timeline, and the player has to take his place. When you arrive in the Secret of Mana realm, the first thing that happens is that the Sword of Mana starts whispering to you, and then you get banished from Potos Village after taking it.

But I also do the same thing in the realms where the characters did have dialogue and personalities: when you arrive in FF7, the realm's first event starts with Cloud falling through the church ceiling and landing in the flower bed right in front of you. Later when you leave Midgar, Cloud vanishes from the story and you take over his role for a while. The character that the player is taking the place of isn't set in stone - it varies from scene to scene. Whoever is being given a task to do, that's who the player is a substitute for.
@LockeZ

This is genius! Never thought about a character temporarily taking their place. Though, it would be cool to meet them similar to how Sora meets all these characters in the Kingdom Hearts franchise. He usually shows up at their best moments and shows what it would be like if characters interfered in fights that didn't belong to them. I stated this before, but it would have to be a team project more than anything. Similar to how people worked on Super Mario Galaxy, each person could develop a concept or world and we all collaborate on how to make them.

It could be a community project that is all made in one engine, but with all of our minds working together to come to the same conclusion. The person or group who knows the most about a certain World is in charge of developing that world. Also, what if we did something KH2 or Mario Party 2 style where the character changes outfits depending on what world they're in? Haha! I can see someone wearing overalls or a green garb or something.

Though, with the huge mix of worlds comes a huge mix of programming. Platformers, RPGs, Action games, Adventure games, Space Shooters, and a bunch of other genres. But, they would be to a very limited extent as we don't want to linger in one world for too long. Imagine being able to use fire flowers or materia. The possibilities are endless. Perhaps one day if this project comes to light, all of this could be documented for tweaking.
Trihan
"It's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly...timey wimey...stuff."
3359
Bear in mind that just because traditionally Mario and Link don't talk in their games, it doesn't mean you can't give them dialogue in a game like this. Both Mario and Link have canonically been shown to be able to talk (see Mario's Game Gallery, the Super Mario Bros Super Show, and the Legend of Zelda cartoon); although the silent protagonist concept works for their respective genres (it's not like Mario needs to talk much in a platformer, and Link is usually too busy exploring dungeons to have reams of dialogue) and the concepts kind of stuck with later games in their series, there'd be nothing wrong with eschewing that in a game that mimics the Kingdom Hearts many worlds concept.
The Mario and Zelda cartoons are separate canons from the games. Also Sonic doesn't take place on Mobius, at least not in the games. I'm not an expert on KH story but I assume that it's a separate canon from the Final Fantasy games, because of things like Cloud being a demon or whatever, Zack existing in Hercules universe rather than FF7, etc.

*hides behind flame shield*

EDIT: The trailer for the new Sonic Time Twisted fangame says Mobius, things like that ruffles my feathers. Do people just not get it or they don't want to? It's cool that they gave Knuckles the hat from the old Sonic OVA, but even in that the planet was called "Planet Freedom". So they're not even being consistent!
Anyone use blood animations? (such as blood splatter) This is the only one I could really find: http://thekingofsprites.blogspot.com/2012/09/blood-sprites-pictures-images-and-photos.html

Seems like a hassle to implement, so I keep putting it off.
I suppose some of my earlier musings on "regular" WAYTAN thread (like that idea of a horror game where you need to kill other people around you if you want to save, and vice versa) would be better suited here.

One thing I never really considered before was whether RTS games (probably the only genre right now that's in terminal decline) could benefit from a larger variety of status effects. The ones I've played, at least, generally stuck with units shooting/slashing at each other until either of them died (sometimes both did: in C & C: Generals, I once witnessed a Chinese Trooper & RPG Soldier from rival NPC factions start shooting at each simultaneously, then dying simultaneously, hence proving that the former are largely useless). Now, sure, such games usually also have heals, buffs/debuffs and stun abilities (Chinese EMPs or US Propaganda Leaflets), but I wonder if it could be taken further. A particular example I would like to see is having ranged fire relatively inaccurate by default (and ideally doing terrain damage when missing), but a target receiving many attacks at once going over certain threshold would be stunned by that, making the battles less predictable & incentivising existence of "spotter" unit class.

And on the subject of status effects: anyone* considered an "Echo" one? Basically, some character/enemy with temporal powers would be able to inflict it, with potentially devastating results. It would do nothing on its own, but turn any kind of attack the target receives into a DOT one. For instance, being shot with a crossbow bolt while under its influence on turn 1 will "echo" 60% of bolt's original damage on turn 2, then 30% on turn 3 and 15% on turn 4, (perhaps even 3% on turn 5, and give an achievement if a character actually gets killed by that), and same goes for all the other attacks.

* Chances are, some classic JRPG probably did that a while ago, I know.
There's one aspect to my game I haven't thought about all that much: turn order. For the time being I had it so all your characters go first, then the enemy, and from a mechanical standpoint this works fine, but it fails to convey the enemy and you as equals, but rather, just some game obstacle to be overcome by the player. This is especially problematic when aspiring to make rival characters.

Considering my game is MtG themed, I just had an idea, what if turn order alternates every turn during battle? So you go first, then the opponent, and it goes back and forth like that. If I wanted to go the extra mile I could randomize it so it's either you or the opponent turn 1, and it continues to alternate, meaning I'd make a global switch that checks who went first and adjust each actor's speed based on the result and whether the turn is odd or even.
Ebeth
always up for cute art and spicy gay romance
4390
That I hate isometric walk sprites. Why did I do this to myself.

Also that I might make a gif making tutorial since I just received a pm asking about how I made my gifs here. Would that be useful?
Currently, it's about time spent working on an RPG Maker project as an aspiring developer. I feel like my time would be better spent learning how to program an actual game, instead of being better at eventing which doesn't translate to other engines.

But the thing is, I love RPG games. If I'm gonna make a game, I'm not satisfied with just having a simple mechanic, or making a game that's fun for a few minutes, gets put down, played again over and over. That might sound good because you give players a large amount of play time but those kinds of games doesn't stick with the player, and I don't want to make that. I love games that makes the player say "That was epic. I will never forget this experience." After finishing a title.

Right now I'm wondering if the upcoming year I'm about to spend on this project I'm working on will be worth it. As long as I enjoyed it, it doesn't matter right? Wrong. I want to make it big, and if I just keep having fun without producing results I'm not gonna make that dream possible.

For some reason though, I want to keep working on this project, I can't stop. If it's a success or not, well I'll know once it's done.

For the good news, I made a huge amount of progress today! I'm really happy about that and I'll sleep satisfied.
If you go for pure programming, it should probably be because you want more flexibility and not because you think that once you got it down, you never have to learn a new "engine". Programming also gets constantly new technologies you can learn. You can just stick to one programming language and library of course, but that's pretty much the same as sticking to one engine.

------------

Right now my developing has completely stopped. For some reason I'm currently enjoying playing games much more than making them. I'm afraid I'm kind of done with working on games alone (I still enjoy helping others).
author= Kousuke-shii
Currently, it's about time spent working on an RPG Maker project as an aspiring developer. I feel like my time would be better spent learning how to program an actual game, instead of being better at eventing which doesn't translate to other engines.

Eventing will teach you a lot about programming/design logic. If you're tackling difficult stuff like a mini game or dungeon puzzle within the constraints of RM you'll be figuring out ways to problem solve which carries to a lot of other things in life. It's also easier to learn as you go. Some of the downsides of programming is that you have to start with a few boring* things that have nothing to do with game development before you actually start the game development part. But yeah learn programming if you want more control and perhaps more interest in doing the game logic from a fundamental level. Even then you'll always be struggling with challenges and learning as a programmer.

Completing a game from start to finish is also a skill in itself.

*:matter of opinion
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Alpha Island is as done as it's gonna get at this point. Maybe I should actually do up some screen shots? The description feels like it could use some work, though.

Later, though. Head's a bit achy at the moment.
I'm wondering if calling my game Black Soul is racist.