Arbiters From Another World

It's not often I work on this, so any progress I make feels like an accomplishment. Outside of the database work that still needs to be done (Skills and critters mostly), I've an overworld map that could still use some detail, or other work. As for the Yokoki School of Magic, it has about three maps associated to it. I'm thinking that there might be anywhere between four to eight more, depending on what I choose to do with it.

As far as equipment and techniques are concerned, there is no difference between the various classes/characters in the game. Which is fine by me. The spells, however, are another issue entirely. Certainly, there will a certain amount of standardization with the spells that just deal damage. However, a direct copy-paste of the Matsumori Days skill database is probably not what I'm looking for. Suffice it to say, I'm still uncertain about what I want to do on this front.

I'm unsure about what to do with the music of this game. I do have various MP3 files from commercially made games that are conceptually connected to this project. Alternatively, I could do what I did for Matsumori Days and raid vgmusic.com for as many songs that are conceptually connected to this game, and use RTP pieces for what I cannot find. I'm tending on the latter for consistency's sake.

You know what I miss from modern RPG's? Character generation. Before someone goes off about the Mass Effects, Dragon Ages, or what-not that's out there, allow me to clarify a certain point of character creation I miss most: virtual die rolls for stats.

As a piece of background, when I heard of Final Fantasy VII hitting the shelves, I was not wondering where the other four games were at. Indeed, I don't think I even played a Final Fantasy game until I was introduced to the concept of emulation, and that wasn't until I was in college. For full disclosure, I was pretty awed by Final Fantasy VI, and it seemed I couldn't get enough of Final Fantasy V either.

Anyway, until that point, the RPG's I played generally had the name Might and Magic, or Dungeons and Dragons (The "Gold Box" series, to be specific.) somewhere in the title. While it was possible to use the pre-made party members for these games, I never did. I always made my own team. One of the pieces of character generation was virtual stat rolling. The "Gold Box" games were fairly rigid about stats. The only thing I could do was re-roll, and hope that the numbers landed where I wanted them too. For the Might and Magic series (2 through 5), I could also re-roll stats, but it allowed me to swap numbers around to optimize the character for the class I wanted to make.

For the "Gold Box" games, one chooses a class first, which alters the minimum number that the RNG uses with some stats (Stupid Paladins and their 17 minimum Charisma!). For Might and Magic, the stats were rolled first, and depending on what was rolled, or where the stats were put, various classes became available/highlighted/visible/whatever. Want a Knight? Put a 15 or better in the Might stat! Want a Sorcerer? Get a 13 or better into Intelligence! Need a Cleric? Toss a 13 or better into Personality!

In other words, the classes I could chose was based on the stats, not the stats being based on the class/race/whatever. Perhaps I'm just completely unaware of what's out there, but what game has randomly generated stats like this anymore? Even later Might and Magic games (6 through 8) had stats based on what class/race/whatever the character was rather than looking at the stats, and saying, "This is what this character could be." (Side note: Race was a non-factor in MM2 through 5).

As a side-note, neither Might and Magic, nor the "Gold Box" games have stats that increment with level-ups. While it was possible to increment stats in the Might and Magic series, the process was not linked to leveling up (I hated the circus in Might and Magic II.). Then again, leveling up was not automatic either, but that's a different story.

What does this have to do with this game? In the end, nothing. Having characters with randomly generated stats is not something this game wants to do. However, I was just thinking that it might be possible to have characters with randomly generated starting stats in an RPG Maker game. It may even be possible for said stats to not increment save by an item, or an event. Whatever it would involve, it's far beyond my humble capabilities.

Jumping the gun from having very little experience (or knowledge) of scripts to getting a custom battle engine to work the way I want it to was probably a terrible, terrible idea. Thus, I'm using the default engine. Although, there is a theory I want to eventually test that, if it works, will at least give the summons of the game a bit more flavor than just a default animation.

I haven't written up any skills beyond the standardized STR-based skills. Actually, to be utterly blunt, I copy-pasted the STR-based skills from Matsumori Days into the database of Arbiters From Another World wholesale. Maybe that was a lazy thing to do, but it is my hope that the INT-based skills will be better overall than what Matsumori Days had.

Anyway, I'm turning my attention to dungeon design and theory. I'm slowly beginning to realize that I have no clue what I want the dungeons of this game to do, much less how I want them to look. While I could spend countless hours studying every single map in Final Fantasy VI, or what-have-you, that just sounds like a huge waste of time to me. Maybe that's not the right attitude to have, but I suppose I merely prefer to have at least a vague idea of what I want before I start researching how it was done, or could have been done, elsewhere.

My overall morale with this game is quite low, to be honest. Perhaps it's because I had such illusions of grandeur for this game, and they are falling apart under my utter lack of game-making experience. Perhaps it's "developer's fatigue", as Weird Dreams wasn't all that old when I submitted this gamepage. Perhaps it's the lack of subscribers, though I at least half-expected that. Perhaps my concentration is simply not with this game, but with another. Perhaps I'm still reacting from my experience with Aetherion. Whatever the reason, it takes quite a bit to get any amount of progress on this game done.

Outside of wanting to use a CTB (think Final Fantasy X's combat engine) and a side-battle script, I'm looking at the possible party members, and thinking to myself, "Damn, that's a lot of magic-users!"

Of course, I suspected this from the beginning, it just didn't "hit" me until recently. So, while I have no qualms standardizing the STR-based skills, what magic can do should be more variant. I'm not really sure what this means as of yet, but one of the things that Matsumori Days did in it's earlier incarnations was to attach certain status conditions to various elements. Fire had the "Berserk" and "Confused" statuses. Wind had "Stun" and "Asleep". Water had "Poison" and "Mute". Earth had "Petrify" and "Blind". Divine had status removal in the form of "Esnua" (yes, this removed all conditions except "unconscious") and "Life". Damned was utterly unbalanced, and had "Bad Breath" (yes, this caused all status conditions except "unconscious") and "Doom". I doubt I can use this exact method, but I'll figure something out.

I'm also thinking of including some stat buffs and debuffs as well, and attach those to various elements. Fire, of course, would be the STR concentration. Wind would concentrate on SPD. Earth would deal with DEF, leaving Water with INT. Generally, buffs and debuffs would apply for an entire battle, or until the opposing buff or debuff is applied. I suppose I could limit the number of turns that the all-stat buff that Divine would get, and the all-stat debuff that Damned would get, in hopes to balance things out.

There is also the matter of the summons that are bound to show up. I'm not particularly confident in making my own animations (either graphics, or the framing thereof), so I may end up just using whatever RTP animation works best for the summon in question.