Onix Rift

Really cool stuff! It was interesting getting an inside peek into some of the rationale for the design decisions you've made.

The new camera looks great. It's dynamic and engaging, which adds some cinematic flair.

I also agree on your rationale for keeping the sword skills to a single key press. The less menu management you're doing in an action RPG the better, I feel. Looking forward to more.

Damn dude, you gotta switch to paint.net!

I was a die hard MS Paint user for years since it was just so simple and unobtrusive, but after switching to paint.net for like two weeks I was completely hooked and I've never looked back. It does everything MS Paint does but you get way more options if you need them, and it has advanced tools without having too many of them. Like some people use Photoshop for pixelart which is...intense, but paint.net is the best hybrid I've come across for an oldbie who can't be bothered to learn new shortcuts. Check it out. You will have to download a plugin to add "flip selection" (for mirroring sprites) but otherwise it's great out of the box.

Those default-named desktop icons and the fact that you didn't capitalize the g in "Saved games" walk hand in hand through the garden of RPGMaking, for sure.

Agreed that the screen pan looks better now, a very cool trick, especially in RM2k3. I really like the way it snaps as you push the screen edge away from enemies. It's also good because it reinforces players who have cleared the area before pushing past enemies, since they know the route. People who haven't cleared the screen won't know where they're going, since the camera will lag behind. A cool feature. I'm sure it looks even better in real time!

The run animation looks cool, too. I think maybe his leg is a *little* too far stretched out right now in the side view. Like it's at full sprint stretch when it could be at fast jog stretch, if that makes sense. It still looks good, though.

Gotta think some on the skill system, but I dig that you want it to be fast and autonomous without requiring menu pauses and stuff. I wonder if there's a way to hybridize that? Give some control to a player but also keep it fluid? It's a shame RM2k3 is so limited in keypresses and doesn't recognize long-presses, that I know of. That'd be a good fix.

Anyway, good stuff, glad to see you're still working at it. Kudos for the shoutout, haha

paint.net might be open source, I'm not sure, but it is definitely free. It has built-in plug-in support, so you just download the plugins (also free) and drop them into a folder and then they appear next time you load the program. Very easy to use and totally legit/above board. The creators intend for people to expand its usability with plugins. I like it a lot because it has really easy to use colour replacement/palette tools and it has layers but they're very simple to use. It's just like MS Paint but with added functionality if you want it, but the added stuff doesn't get in the way if you want to keep it simple.

One thing about items: in some games, healing items are automatically used when you reach a certain HP threshold. If your items are mostly just healing items, you could go that route to free up the button for skills. Like, if you have a healing item, it uses itself when you die to replenish half your HP (or all your HP, if it's an advanced version of the healing item). I know some action RPGs from Quintent on the SNES used that (Soul Blazer/Illusion of Gaia).

edit: like a fairy in a bottle from Link to the Past

Hmm, not sure how hard this would be to event but it might be cool if that happens but the skills appear as sort of a four-directional thing. Like, you're charged up, the skill is ready, you hit up and he does his powerful sword slash. Or you hit down and he throws a lightning bolt, or whatever. That way you wouldn't have to cycle, but rather have them all in front of you, and the player can select them quickly so they don't spend too much time in a menu.

edit: like the menu from Lufia 2 if you've ever played that!

edit2: I realize I'm throwing out a lot of unsolicited ideas here so feel free to ignore them all if they don't work out haha

Great development video ! Very informative ! You put a lot of thoughts in your creative camera system. I like how your implementation flows your intention (forcing the player into combat) and not the opposite. I like the risk associated with your flee system. It reminds me of FF7 where trying to flee exposes your back to the enemies. I worked on some action games (short games and prototypes) and only build one simple dynamic camera: Lya's camera looks in front of her. And I totally agree with you that the player should always be on screen.

If you want to expand the possibilities of your camera system, I recommend watching this (the most interesting part for you starts at 21:20 "Framing")
https://invidio.xamh.de/watch?v=tu-Qe66AvtY