WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT? (GAME DEVELOPMENT EDITION)

Posts

Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
@goji: Thanks, but I don't think I need it for this short game. Maybe when I finally start working on my longer game, I will need some help in the sound department, if you're still available :)
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Trying to figure out what my next project is going to be. I'm pretty sure any remake of Uchioniko that I may have had plans for has been slated to if/when I get MZ. That aside, the ideas currently running my my head are going something like this:

-Heroes of RMN?
Community-based Heroes of Might and Magic clone/tribute. Though, the scripting support this idea entails is rather daunting. Even if I set things up more like King's Bounty - The Legend, where players would only control one hero ever, and can move on the field (relatively) freely, there's still the matter of how battles are resolved, and how heroes, and the units in their armies, would interact with battles.

-Might and Magic tribute?
To be fair, there are two games that try this, to their own degrees. However, one was cut short due to being an event-game, and the other one was just too ambitious for it's own good that it's effectively canceled. I would probably aim for something somewhere between these two, if I pursue this idea.

-Marrend Plays?
A project doesn't necessarily have to involve gammak. Though, gammak has a tendency to generate MakerScore. A Let's Play thread may have the potential to earn MS, through being featured as a "What's Written" subject, they generally have not done so.
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
If a dungeon has many rooms, it is a good idea to make those rooms interconnected in a non-linear fashion so as to keep the overall diameter of the dungeon low, so it doesn't take ages to backtrack through the dungeon if need be. I mean, it makes sense, right?

However, when I've already made a dungeon into one big corridor without realizing, and I'm too freaking lazy to redo the whole thing, what should I do? I could add teleporters, but I think that'd only make it confusing to navigate.

Also, @Marrend, I personally think all those ideas are good, but a Let's Play series is my favorite since I suck at TBSes. I need to "git gud", as it is.
good for game development, its as good as C++. But if you are really considering hard core performance then go for RUST lang. But trust me, GO has all potential. you can check my video below I built a 2D RPG game in GO.
I built a 2D RPG game in GO.


wow
Classic SPAM game has always been one of the inspiration games for the user. With 21 different levels and a series of challenges in the game will bring you great relaxation.
Seriously thinking about writing up something or making a video to give advice and a tutorial on how to tackle adding voice acting to RM projects. I just love an excuse talking about adding voice acting in general and it'd be fun to talk about the process of casting, directing, cutting, leveling, and applying those lines.
@Kokoro-Hane That's a great idea! The very little experience I have with adding voice acting to a (no-RM) project was: A member of our team suggested a friend to voice act. I agreed, sent text lines + voice tone indications, got the audio file back, ask for minor changes, and put audio into the game.
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
So, suppose, in a very hypothetical situation, that I were to make a free browser game, okay? Just for the sake of the argument.

Would I be able to host it directly on my RMN project page, or would I have to host it elsewhere?
Hey, I posted on here a little over a year ago about making an RPG in Game Maker Studio. I ended up getting overwhelmed with the project and other things going on, but I'm getting back into it now. I'm still going to use GMS, but starting fresh, I understand the need to significantly reduce the scope of the project.

I've identified three main things I want out of this project:
1) The game needs to be small, and I need to make and release it in a short amount of time. I want the experience of actually finishing a game and going through the release process. I've been looking at Final Fantasy 2's bonus campaign Soul of Rebirth in the GBA version and Xenoblade's bonus campaign Future Connected in the switch version as some examples of how to do a short RPG adventure.
2) I want to learn and make sure I grasp the fundamentals of making an RPG both design wise and coding wise. I want to make sure I walk away from this project with an understanding of the basics and good practices of coding an RPG from scratch.
3) In its simplicity, the game still needs to be fun. In spite of how short and small scale the game is, it still needs to have enough going on mechanically so that someone can have a good time with it. If I'm going to throw it out there for other people to play - even if it ends up only being an hour long and only one person ever plays it - it's important to me that I'm not wasting an hour of that person's life.

Where I'm at now is balancing these three things. For example: to fulfill the first point, I was thinking a three-person party and you only get three characters. But to fulfill point 2, I wonder if I should go ahead and put in a fourth character to get experience with swapping out party members from the active party (especially in battle where I need to worry about keeping track of buffs/debuffs for a character when they get switched out). But that could come at the cost of fulfilling point 1.

Same with gameplay. RPGs are very system heavy games, and that's the appeal for a lot of people. So where do you draw the line for what to include? I'm thinking no character building mechanics on top of no swappable party members. Just have three character who each learn six non-upgradeable skills and always have those six skill equipped. They'd each have their own weapon type similar to Chrono Trigger but without all the time travel and other things that make CT great. Each have two accessory slots and accessories are all side-grades. No passives. Is that too extreme though? Should I strive to have some character building mechanics even if it hurts point 1, but helps points 2 and 3. Part of me feels I should at least try to make a very basic skill tree for each character where they can learn passives.

Same with whether or not I should have a world map. Soul of Rebirth's one town with three teleportation gates and not actually connected areas falls to far in the opposite direction for my taste. I could write a whole other post on my many mixed feelings about world maps so I'll refrain here.

So, I'm just going through process of figuring out how big is too big for a first RPG and how little is too little to actually be worth anyone giving it a glance. If anyone's got some good rules of thumb on making an hour or two hour long RPG adventure, let me know!
Was wondering about your project status. Yeah I've been tackling my own RPG battle system for the past week, I think the best way to go about it is to just make a game about each individual system (however way you can isolate it) like making a game that's just a battle gauntlet with zero exploration, so to focus on the battle system itself. Then maybe make an adventure game that plays like an RPG with no battles but multiple scenes to walk around in to see how that workflow would go (this is still just as hard as making battles). Then you work your way up making similar games but with added on features or combined stuff you've already done before. If you know how stuff generally goes it's easier to "copy paste" previous knowledge. Though every game no matter how small is always an ordeal. A game with both battles and exploration with only a single dungeon might be enough to understand it in one go.

I've been meaning to make a Grandia battle system where character's attacks are positional (characters can move anywhere and every attack has an AoE like a cone or circle). But I realized it might just be easier to make just the Grandia time gauge stuff only and ditch the positional stuff completely, or at least make the positional stuff it's own battle system to test the potential of maybe combining them later on. Or you know, cutting down the battle system or anything from outside, FF7 without its materia system (with something maybe more automated in place) is probably still an alright playable game.

But idk it's really easy to meander and hardest part for me is "moving on" to the next actual thing. I wouldn't call it a fear or anxiety but I imagine there's a procrastination equivalent to one where doing something new for the first time is the most hesitant part or actually really exciting but also easy to get lost in.
Thanks for the response! I like the idea of a battle gauntlet. My initial concept for a small RPG was a short adventure on a floating island with two towns, two caves, a forest dungeon, a tower, and a final dungeon, but I see the need to think much smaller.

Now, I'm leaning toward the idea of structuring a game around a tournament like the Glitz Pit chapter in Paper Mario TTYD. So I'd just have the arena to fight through the gauntlet and then a small town surrounding it to walk around in and buy accessories with your winnings inbetween bouts.

I have to say, FF7 without materia does not sound very fun, but that's mostly because there isn't much going on in the actual combat in that game. So if I put a lot of focus into giving enemies interesting things to do and give the player just enough skills to have interesting interactions with what enemies can do, then I think it's possible to skate by without any customization beyond two accessory slots, especially since all the battles would be one-time boss fights if I go with the gauntlet route.

Best of luck in building your Grandia style system!
author=Craze
LockeZ
Craze
LockeZ
I wonder how hard it would be to make a turn-based single-player version of the World of Warcraft dungeons in RPG Maker. That would be so rad.

I think it would be like five years of work though. And I'd quit after two months because I'd realize I have to make my own graphics.
http://rpgmaker.net/games/1410/
This is a pretty fun game. What does it have to do with the above post? You quit because of anxiety over doing the graphics?
It's a game about doing WoW's turn-based, single-player raids.

Good game
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
What are you guys' thoughts on making intentionally bad gameplay in certain parts of the game, to drive home a point about the plot or the feeling the character is going through?

There's a certain sequence in the game I'm making that I want to frame as miserable and soul-crushing for my protagonist, and my idea is to replace, only for that part of the game, the regular action-adventure gameplay with a slow one-button QTE session where the QTE randomly fails on purpose, and even simple things as "go to place" are replaced with a button prompt you need to press to go to the place (no choices, no branches, nothing). Obviously, this session wouldn't extend for too long, only for long enough to drive home the point.

My question is: if the game up to that point was really fun, would that session ruin the game, or would people understand what I was going for? Also, would it help convey that that particular stretch of the story is miserable and depressing?
@Gretgor: Only worst case scenario I can think of is if the player thought they could have done better and feel the need to restart it. Maybe thinking there was input delay or something. So they restart a save way earlier to try and perfect it only to realize it's supposed to go that way. That's like an extreme completionist personality that might bump into other design decisions anyway.

I think the only real issues with QTEs as an emotional state is that they typically have a win/lose condition and a timer. As opposed to maybe a soft puzzle where you either solve it or leave it as is. If the puzzle is clearly setup to be impossible to solve you don't have the extra possibility leaking in the back of your mind. Whereas QTEs have a possibility you can't possibly know unless you try it again. If the failure state is mandatory then you'll always wonder if the success state exists (though less likely the other way around).

I would look into Florence (watch the gameplay even) because that game is very much all about setting up some really basic mechanics (not quite QTEs but not full blown puzzles either, events without the quick time I suppose) that relate to characters emotions but when they breakdown or feel frustrated the mechanics become clearly impossible to drive home a point. As far as I know there's no way to lose or to be setback in the game, you just sort of go at your own pace. So it's pretty bullet proof in avoiding the player going "Wait was I supposed to do that differently? Let me restart to make sure"
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
author=Darken
@Gretgor: Only worst case scenario I can think of is if the player thought they could have done better and feel the need to restart it. Maybe thinking there was input delay or something. So they restart a save way earlier to try and perfect it only to realize it's supposed to go that way. That's like an extreme completionist personality that might bump into other design decisions anyway.

I think the only real issues with QTEs as an emotional state is that they typically have a win/lose condition and a timer. As opposed to maybe a soft puzzle where you either solve it or leave it as is. If the puzzle is clearly setup to be impossible to solve you don't have the extra possibility leaking in the back of your mind. Whereas QTEs have a possibility you can't possibly know unless you try it again. If the failure state is mandatory then you'll always wonder if the success state exists (though less likely the other way around).

I would look into Florence (watch the gameplay even) because that game is very much all about setting up some really basic mechanics (not quite QTEs but not full blown puzzles either, events without the quick time I suppose) that relate to characters emotions but when they breakdown or feel frustrated the mechanics become clearly impossible to drive home a point. As far as I know there's no way to lose or to be setback in the game, you just sort of go at your own pace. So it's pretty bullet proof in avoiding the player going "Wait was I supposed to do that differently? Let me restart to make sure"


Yeah, I guess you're right. Problem with QTEs is that it's hard to communicate that they are supposed to fail on purpose, so the players might be compelled to try again and again and again and eventually file a bug report because they think it's a bug.

I'm gonna check out Florence, maybe it gives me some ideas on how to make that particular part of the story.
OzzyTheOne
Future Ruler of Gam Mak
4676
Currently thinking about how much I'll be able to get done on this project that I have a self-imposed deadline for, a deadline which happens to end in 3 days. I know I'll be able to deliver something as long as I keep working hard and fast on it, but the days getting shorter and me really wanting to not fail on this deadline is slowly getting to me.
Thinking about combat of Reindeer Story feel unique and distinct. I'm making it in Gamemaker2 The Battle system is like Deltarune's but without the spare mechanic and with the characters themselves running round the Battle Zone while the enemy attacks rather than a heart.

I mostly focused on the typical bullet patterns for the prototype. However I'm experimenting with and contemplating having certain enemies spawn the Battle Zone/Box the player has to run around in during the enemies turn.

Some may just be static and take up a section of the battlefield, some wander aimlessly, or bomb enemies that explode if the player gets near(a bomb). To make it a bit more hectic while you're dodging bullet patterns from standard enemies. I might even make some encounters just a bunch of enemies in the box.

I'm thinking I could make some more engaging encounters if the player has to decide whether its worth it to clear out a certain enemy in in the battle box first or focus on the ones outside the box firing bullet patterns.
OzzyTheOne
Future Ruler of Gam Mak
4676
Oh, that does sound like an interesting idea! And giving the player "priority" targets based on the enemy's move set is always an good thing I'd say. I know that whenever I play a game and a group of enemies has this one enemy that has a nasty attack or can inflict a nasty condition, I usually go for that one first to make the rest of the battle easier.

I think that the the idea of there being enemies inside the box and outside of it can add a healthy ammount of variety.
author=OzzyTheOne
Oh, that does sound like an interesting idea! And giving the player "priority" targets based on the enemy's move set is always an good thing I'd say. I know that whenever I play a game and a group of enemies has this one enemy that has a nasty attack or can inflict a nasty condition, I usually go for that one first to make the rest of the battle easier.

I think that the the idea of there being enemies inside the box and outside of it can add a healthy ammount of variety.


Yep, that's the equivalent of what I want to do with it.

Plus like you said it adds variety of potential encounter set-up, since it allows battles with enemies just outside the box, battles with enemies just inside or battles with a mix.