WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT? (GAME DEVELOPMENT EDITION)

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The monster set I'm using for my little side project Resurrection of the Necromancer doesn't have (m)any human enemy sprites. So for the human bosses I thought I could do the Suikoden Rock/Paper/Scissors duel. Where I'm having trouble the must, surprisingly, is what music to use. I'm torn between either using the standard boss music, a different music for duels only, or the musical theme of the character you are duelling.
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
My intention with my game is to release it to RMN plus a handful of friends instead of seeking out a larger audience. Does that make me a coward, or is that okay? I dunno. Insecurities and uncertainties have been dominating my mind recently.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
@Gretgor: Seems okay to me.

Pretty much done with mapping the areas I wanted to include for the next release of my super Suikoden project. Very much underpopulated with mobs (where it's possible to encounter them) and recruits at the moment, but, I can tackle that another time. For now, rest.

I know, I know, "YOU CAN'T REST HERE, MOBSTERS MONSTERS ARE NEAR!"
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
What is the public's general opinion on using mostly RTP music in this day and age? A lot of it is perfect for my needs, but I'm afraid it might make the game sound "newbie-ish".
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
Resist
Don't fucking do it
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
What do you suggest for a person that can't compose worth shit? Anything that's not "learn to compose", of course.
https://freemusicarchive.org/ or just search up royalty free music that's cheap to buy. Problem is finding something fitting for RPGs but there are ways to get creative with choices.
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 are lots of people out there who release royalty-free music and there are even sites that collect that music in one place. The Newgrounds audio portal is still as poppin' as it was fifteen years ago, too, though I'm not sure how to search by license on there.

Of course if you're just making your game as a hobby and not to sell, then who the fuck cares if it's royalty-free or not, use Final Fantasy music or whatever. Picking the soundtrack that's right for your game is important for creating the correct mood. Leaving the default zero-effort stuff is never the right choice.
author=Darken
https://freemusicarchive.org/or just search up royalty free music that's cheap to buy. Problem is finding something fitting for RPGs but there are ways to get creative with choices.


You also have to look carefully at the licenses on whatever song you want to use. It's all free to listen to but some of it has strings attached, if you're planning on using it in a project.
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
author=LockeZ
There are lots of people out there who release royalty-free music and there are even sites that collect that music in one place. The Newgrounds audio portal is still as poppin' as it was fifteen years ago, too, though I'm not sure how to search by license on there.

Of course if you're just making your game as a hobby and not to sell, then who the fuck cares if it's royalty-free or not, use Final Fantasy music or whatever. Picking the soundtrack that's right for your game is important for creating the correct mood. Leaving the default zero-effort stuff is never the right choice.

Thank you, LockeZ. If it's still okay to use SNES music, I probably will, as I have in the past. I still have most songs I used back when I was a teenager, so yay.

Speaking of bad choices, my current project is an RM2K3 ABS project. The reason why I want to make an ABS in RM2K3 is for closure, so to speak. The main focus of my current project is "concluding" my teenage years with RPG Maker 2003 before I move on to something else, probably Game Maker. I understand that ABSes usually suck in RPG Maker, due to the grid based movement and other problems, so I'm planning on cutting it to basics: no fancy combos, no special moves, just focusing on making attacking, dodging and (maybe) blocking as smooth and pleasant as possible. Luckily, I have rather advanced skills with the RM2K3 event-command "coding" system, so the actual implementation will never be a big problem.

The ABS is the only bad choice I intend to make in this project (on purpose), as a bit of a "personal challenge", for I am absolutely insane. However, I'm trying my best to avoid any other bad choices, such as using RTP music, so thank you all for your feedback on this.
Gretgor- Google: maoudamashii. Ridiculously huge selection of RPG soundtrack music for every possible style and situation, in both midi and MP3 formats. His website's in Japanese but navigable with Google translate. Everything is, as far as I could figure, royalty free for use in noncommercial or commercial games. He is the MAN.

(Also, using RTP music is not an OBJECTIVELY bad choice. LockeZ was just yelling at you. But there are a LOT of other options out there, besides using SNES tunes and the RTP tracks.)


Anyway, I was thinking...so the RPG Maker series of products has often been described (putatively) as a tool to produce Final Fantasy clones...well for a project I have under wraps, I recently calibrated the characters' parameter and experience curves to mirror those of Final Fantasy VII (it's not a fan game). The base math used by RPG Maker is not remotely similar to that of any (recentish)* Final Fantasy game. And I don't just mean common sense stuff like dumbing down the damage formula for a regular attack from

BaseDamage=Attack+[(Attack+Level)/32]∗[(Attack∗Level)/32]

MaxDamage=[(Power∗(512−Def)∗BaseDamage)/(16∗512)]
ActualDamage=MaxDamage∗(3841+Rnd(0..255))/4096

(side note: that seems unnecessarily circuitous and byzantine)

to 'a.atk * 4 - b.def * 2'.

It's actually almost impossible to duplicate the experience curve of a (recentish) Final Fantasy game in the RPG Maker (in this case VXA) engine (base value 13, extra value 20, acceleration A 50, acceleration B 50 is I think the closest one can get in VXA). Likewise, the you need to really torque the parameter curves to their limit to get them to resemble those of a Final Fantasy game (in this case, VII). So anyway my question is...the other game I've heard that RPG Maker is designed to produce clones of is Dragon Quest. Now, while I know a fair bit about the Final Fantasy franchise, I know absolutely NOTHING about Dragon Quest. Is the base math in Dragon Quest at all similar to the base math in RPG Maker?

* While making this post I happened to glance at the damage formulae for the original Final Fantasy. MUCH closer to what RMVX(A) is working with. Also, I ain't paying no nevermind that in some Final Fantasy games, characters' inherent stat growth is either nil or negligible, and they actually gain power based on what Esper/GF they have equipped/junctioned (i.e. FF6, FF8).
It's a mix. Dragon Warrior's base damage algorithm is in fact ATK - DEF / 2 with some changes here and there. Early FF games, FF1-4, has used a Damage * #ofHits algorithm and usually adds a character's level in the damage output, usually in some multiplier. afaik in Dragon Warrior a character's level isn't a factor in their damage output. I think FF1 was a ATK-DEF * #ofHits and part of what made Black Belts and FAST so good was how high they could get their #ofHits.

Dragon Warrior spells work off of set damage ranges. In DW1 Hurt does X to Y damage, although some enemies had a % chance to fully resist it and the player could get armor to reduce the damage to a lower range. FF1 was similar but resisting a spell reduced the damage by half (or rather, if a spell "hits" and I think this was what the INT stat was supposed to add to). FF4 spells iirc followed more like an attack with a spell power augmented by a caster stat and the target's magic defense and a multiplier that works like a #ofHits including magic dodge.

idk exp levels at all, I never looked at them except for Ultima 4 & 5 where the EXP per level doubles each, but those games have a level cap of 8 and EXP cap of 9999 so it's an apples and oranges thing.

There are some key features that RM doesn't copy from Dragon Warrior. Regular enemies in DW usually have a range of HP they can spawn with and RM doesn't do that at all. Bosses and special enemies like Metal Slimes are the main exceptions. Dragon Warrior also has more spell resistance that completely negates a spell. Barring elemental immunity in a FF game a damage spell will usually do damage while in Dragon Warrior enemies can have a % resist to spells that if they don't make they'll just take full damage instead.

This is more the earlier games, NES Dragon Warriors and NES-SNES FF games, idk the later stuff very well. There's a lot of weird stuff if you really look into it. Here's a fun one: in FF4 the HP you get after a Life1 spell is affected by a character's stamina. Monsters all have a stamina stat of zero, so if you revive an enemy using Life1 they will instantly die again due to being revived with zero HP! Of course to actually do this you need to queue up a killing action and a Life1 on an enemy while you can still target them. This is exploited to grind levels on Machine Dragons in the Giant of Babil where an Alert enemy summons them: Hit Alert so it summons a Machine Dragon, queue up a Weak, regular attack, and Life1 cast on the Machine Dragon and when they all go off the Machine Dragon will die twice and give twice the EXP! Repeat until the Alert dies, you run out of MP, or get as much EXP as you want (idk if there's an EXP gain cap in battle that isn't obscene).


This post is probably littered with mistakes on how the games actually work, don't use anything in this as gospel. There's a lot of guides on how the algorithms in all these games works that you can dig up with google if you're interested. Here's AstralEsper's mechancis guide for FF1 for example and is generally the bible on how the game plays under the hood.
author=Gretgor
What do you suggest for a person that can't compose worth shit? Anything that's not "learn to compose", of course.


Learn to compose. Anvil Studio is a free program and I'm made weird music just by playing around. Also, vgmusic.com has alot of SNES songs. You can also find old folk tunes or xmas music or showtunes online.

I'm currently working on making a system of assigning a menu that tracks your current party, and chooses from who you got currently, and activates the event. So far, I've got a revive, blacksmith (partly done, I'm doing weapon repair and need to do the pricing and possibly work on making an appraise system), and a rename sub-event for it. I could probably use this to recode battle stuff (precise item coding) if it weren't insanely tedious and already really long.

Currently also thinking about making a full blacksmith sidequest thingy so you can forge weapons. I'm probably insane, cuz that's super feature-creep and basically 40+ extra items, not counting weapons.
Got the RPG Maker bug again, so I'm restarting my game from scratch. Actually going to write out an entire script this time, instead of pantsing my way through it.
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
author=bulmabriefs144
author=Gretgor
What do you suggest for a person that can't compose worth shit? Anything that's not "learn to compose", of course.
Learn to compose. Anvil Studio is a free program and I'm made weird music just by playing around. Also, vgmusic.com has alot of SNES songs. You can also find old folk tunes or xmas music or showtunes online.

I'm currently working on making a system of assigning a menu that tracks your current party, and chooses from who you got currently, and activates the event. So far, I've got a revive, blacksmith (partly done, I'm doing weapon repair and need to do the pricing and possibly work on making an appraise system), and a rename sub-event for it. I could probably use this to recode battle stuff (precise item coding) if it weren't insanely tedious and already really long.

Currently also thinking about making a full blacksmith sidequest thingy so you can forge weapons. I'm probably insane, cuz that's super feature-creep and basically 40+ extra items, not counting weapons.

I have played around with Anvil Studios for long enough to determine that I'm not a good composer... I'd need some actual classes or something, I dunno.
I have no musical training. But I apparently have some sort of knack for making musical patterns (at one point in college, I played the first eight or so notes by ear of "Angel's Fear" of Secret of Mana and the opening Ashtar sequence for Ninja Gaiden II). I'm horrible at about four instruments (guitar, harmonica, piano, and accordion, tried them all). What I learned to do was a couple of tricks, and I can figure stuff out okay by ear. In other words, I'm terrible at playing music, because my hands and such are clumsy, but I have creativity and a sense of how things fit together despite no training that I'm okay at composing.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/oXkHNyMP6H3n/

  • Repeat a pattern (say five notes) then gradually move the notes up or down, a note at a time
  • Make a pattern then a few notes later make another pattern with another instrument (there's a sort of art to getting music to blend well)
  • You can end songs in a few ways: smash notes together, kinda fade out, reduce tracks.
  • You can learn some about music from looking at songs and how they're put together.
  • Music CAN be terrible sounding under certain circumstances. Horror genre songs in particular can be made to sound jarring. Slowing down rapid notes can produce a different song (for instance, one of my tunes is like 1/8 notes, then I slow it about 50% and it sounds more normal).
  • Also, if those tips don't help, here's this guide

I'm a big believer in learning by doing. Trying five bad songs will help you learn by trial and error how notes fit together, even if the harder things like rhythm seem out of reach.

author=GRS
There are some key features that RM doesn't copy from Dragon Warrior. Regular enemies in DW usually have a range of HP they can spawn with and RM doesn't do that at all. Bosses and special enemies like Metal Slimes are the main exceptions. Dragon Warrior also has more spell resistance that completely negates a spell. Barring elemental immunity in a FF game a damage spell will usually do damage while in Dragon Warrior enemies can have a % resist to spells that if they don't make they'll just take full damage instead.


As of Ace, RPG Maker has this functionality baked in (the second one/the one I bolded).
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Allowing players to select window styles might be a thing I might want to think about for a certain Suikoden tribute.
Told myself that I would keep the new postgame content for Brave Hero Yuusha EX on the simple side of things and then I went and made practically a whole 'nother short game's worth of assets. Whoops.

I need a nap.
I'm currently thinking of what I want to do for my second game, trying to make it all original. The first roadblock is just...deciding on what TYPE of game it'll be, whether it be another RPG (albeit one that won't take 12 years to finish and not be 60 hours long...), a Zelda-style game, a beat-em-up, a puzzle game, etc.. This is coupled with deciding who will be the main character this time around (I WOULD like to keep Hope as my main character from the previous game, but the main issue is she's normally a pacifist (the previous game that I finished is...actually not canon at all, excluding any information on the OCs from that game that carries over), so that would make it exceptionally hard to do a RPG or Zelda game with I think. And I'd rather not do an Undertale rip-off personally. Hm....

The next, big obstacle is making sure to do the assets without using pre-existing assets like I did for this game (aka using ripped sprites from Final Fantasy, Touhou, fighting games, etc.). Of course, that's a WHOLE OTHER mess and what'll probably prevent me from ever doing another game in general...