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Game Design
File Size? Is It Important?
NicoB
24 post(s) 
- 12/10/2011 07:13 AM
- 8158 views
Hey guys,
So I've been trying to decide lately how exactly I want to implement Jose's custom songs. On the one hand, I can add them as MP3 files, but doing so will greatly increase the size of the file (the custom soundtrack is already over 130 MB large). On the other hand, I can add them as OGG files, which have the same quality and take up half the space. For the previous release, I used MP3 files but also used a program that decreased the file size with a very minor decrease in sound quality. However, I don't want to diminish any of the quality of Jose's songs, so I won't be doing that this time around (at least not for the custom tunes).
There are pros and cons to both file types. MP3s will be the easiest for me to implement, as I can basically go in and just copy them over the original files, meaning I won't have to go in and change any specific events. Also, MP3s will allows people to transfer any of their favorite songs over to iTunes if they want. OGGs are smaller, but implementing them is a bit of a pain. In order to get them to work, I have to add .wav to the end of its file name, so that the file name will say "Songname.ogg.wav" (or just "Songname.ogg). Because this changes the name of a number of songs, I can't just paste it in the game's music folder. I'll have to change every event that references that specific song, which will take some time. Also, adding .wav makes the song pretty much unplayable outside of the game (unless the user changes it back to OGG). It's also a possibility that not everyone will be able to play OGG music files without the correct codecs, meaning I'd have to include them with the game.
I'm thinking when the game is all said it done, with MP3s, it will probably be around 160 MB. With OGG, it'd be about 95 MB. So my question for you guys is:
"How important is file size to you?"
I would rather just include them as MP3s because it's easier for me and for people to play outside the game; but I don't want to do it if the file size discourages people from downloading the game.
So I've been trying to decide lately how exactly I want to implement Jose's custom songs. On the one hand, I can add them as MP3 files, but doing so will greatly increase the size of the file (the custom soundtrack is already over 130 MB large). On the other hand, I can add them as OGG files, which have the same quality and take up half the space. For the previous release, I used MP3 files but also used a program that decreased the file size with a very minor decrease in sound quality. However, I don't want to diminish any of the quality of Jose's songs, so I won't be doing that this time around (at least not for the custom tunes).
There are pros and cons to both file types. MP3s will be the easiest for me to implement, as I can basically go in and just copy them over the original files, meaning I won't have to go in and change any specific events. Also, MP3s will allows people to transfer any of their favorite songs over to iTunes if they want. OGGs are smaller, but implementing them is a bit of a pain. In order to get them to work, I have to add .wav to the end of its file name, so that the file name will say "Songname.ogg.wav" (or just "Songname.ogg). Because this changes the name of a number of songs, I can't just paste it in the game's music folder. I'll have to change every event that references that specific song, which will take some time. Also, adding .wav makes the song pretty much unplayable outside of the game (unless the user changes it back to OGG). It's also a possibility that not everyone will be able to play OGG music files without the correct codecs, meaning I'd have to include them with the game.
I'm thinking when the game is all said it done, with MP3s, it will probably be around 160 MB. With OGG, it'd be about 95 MB. So my question for you guys is:
"How important is file size to you?"
I would rather just include them as MP3s because it's easier for me and for people to play outside the game; but I don't want to do it if the file size discourages people from downloading the game.
Progress Report
Episode Two: What You Can Expect
- NicoB
- 23 post(s)
- 10/23/2011 07:22 AM
- 8459 views
Hey guys,
So it's been awhile since I've posted a real update. Don't worry, I'm still working away on the game. I figure by now I'm long overdue now for a real update of what I've been working on. So, without further ado, here's a list of stuff you can expect with the release of Episode Two.
So it's been awhile since I've posted a real update. Don't worry, I'm still working away on the game. I figure by now I'm long overdue now for a real update of what I've been working on. So, without further ado, here's a list of stuff you can expect with the release of Episode Two.
Less Linearity = More Sidequests
I know one of the biggest complaints of Episode One was the linearity of the gameplay. Aside from monster capturing and a few other bonuses, there weren't many other side missions or places to visit that were outside the main story. My primary reason for doing this was to narrow the player's attention to the main story, at least for the earlier parts. I wanted to wait until all the party members came together before giving the player the freedom to go wherever they wanted. Well, with Episode Two, you will given just that: freedom.
Can't have an RPG without a tournament
A lot of the fun will come from simply revisiting previous locations after having acquired all of your party members. Going back to old locations may trigger special cutscenes that reveal more about certain characters, as well as opening up a number of side missions the player can participate in. For example, visiting Lee's destroyed village or going to visit Ziggy's mother will open up a number of related side stories. I want my sidequests to stand above the stupid fetch quests and irrelevant bullshit of other JPRGs. I want it to engage the players by not only rewarding them with items and gear, but also by providing some insight into the main protagonists and antagonists that they might otherwise not have seen.
Original Soundtrack
Some of you may remember me mentioning a few blog posts ago how I had hired composer Jose Moreno, aka CastorOnline, to create an OST for Forever's End. Well, in only a few short months, he has already completed over 25 killer songs for the game!! To say the man is a talented musician would be a huge understatement.
Say goodbye to Nobuoagain
You can check out all of his completed songs for the game thus far by clicking HERE. I will continue to update the page with new songs as they are released. If you like the tunes, please show Jose some love and post a comment or send him a PM.
New Artist
So some of you may already know, but boobledeeboo won't be able to draw for this project anymore. Art school and real life are taking up most of her time these days. Although this is saddening, there's definitely no hard feelings, as she's already donated so much of her time to this game for absolutely nothing in return. She will, regardless, always remain a member of this project.
So rather than have the whole second half of the game go without any new cutscenes at all, I've gone ahead and hired another talented artist (for a price this time) to finish out the remaining scenes. This artist is in fact the older brother of our very own Nessiah-chan, everyone's favorite RM art prodigy. That in itself holds some serious bragging rights.
BOOM, baby!
Nessiah's nii-sama, aka helrious, has already completed a few scenes, like the one above. He is an extremely talented artist, and I can't wait for players to experience these cutscenes themselves in-game.
Also, make sure to check out his other works at his deviantart page HERE.
Character Exposition
I mentioned before that I would be adding sidequests that will reveal more about the main characters. One way I plan on doing this is through Party Breakdowns. This is essentially a spinoff of Star Ocean's "Private Actions," where pressing a certain key before entering a village or town will cause the party members to separate, giving the player a chance to walk around and talk to each one individually. This, in turn, will allows players to get a more detailed look into party members personalities, as well as opening the door to a plethora of sidequests that revolve around these characters.
So a mercenary walks into a bar...
There will still be a large amount of characterization and plot twists in the main story, of course. I know a number of you felt that Marcellus has been a tad too "generic evil" so far. Episode Two will shed more light on Marcellus' past as well as that of his hooded partner, revealing that there is much more to him than meets the eye.
The Grand City of Dorent
This goes hand-in-hand with more freedom and additional sidequests. However, there's a reason I've made this a separate tab: Dorent is HUGGGGGEEEEEE!!! Seriously, it will take the player quite awhile to explore this massive beast of a metropolis. The city itself is divided into three districts: the Residential, the Industrial, and the Upper-Class, each with its own set of buildings and civilians. Although any district can be traveled to directly by foot, a tram system is set up to allow players to conveniently hop between each one.
Dorent's Grand Central Station
There are plenty of things for players to do in Dorent, such as shopping, tournaments, mini-games, and sidequests. In addition, there is also Dorent's castle, which has a number of interesting sites, such as Farnstein's Monster Research Center, where players can fight with any monster they've already captured. A big thanks to the hard work of Ultima187, who single-handedly mapped this amazing city. He is truly a master mapper and will forever have my undying gratitude.
A Combined Party Front
So up to this point, most of the party members have been separated from each other for one reason or another. Well, it's only a matter of time before they all come together, and when they do, it should make for some very interesting battle combinations.
Gotta catch em' all!
I wanted to make character abilities different enough to where each character had his own "specialty," while at the same time, making no one character too powerful. Lee can easily absorb skills but is limited to only a certain number; Slade's spells are harder to acquire, but pack a greater punch; Elizabeth's beckons are extremely powerful, but consume both her MP and SR. When I start throwing complicated, tough bosses at the player in Episode Two, it will be interesting to see what characters they use to take them down.
Choose your killer four
I also plan to have all experience be shared among party members, even if they are not in the current active party. Ability points, however, will only be shared among active party members.
Conclusion
So that's some of the new stuff you all can expect from the upcoming episode. I'm not going to go into any new details about the main story here, as I'd rather keep most of it a mystery (although you may be able to gather bits of it yourself from the screenshots).
If you're excited about the new stuff or have any questions, please don't hesitate to comment below. It's always encouraging to hear from you guys. Oh, and if you were a big fan of Episode One, I'd really appreciate your nomination for the 2011 Misaos. Cheers!
I know one of the biggest complaints of Episode One was the linearity of the gameplay. Aside from monster capturing and a few other bonuses, there weren't many other side missions or places to visit that were outside the main story. My primary reason for doing this was to narrow the player's attention to the main story, at least for the earlier parts. I wanted to wait until all the party members came together before giving the player the freedom to go wherever they wanted. Well, with Episode Two, you will given just that: freedom.
Can't have an RPG without a tournament
A lot of the fun will come from simply revisiting previous locations after having acquired all of your party members. Going back to old locations may trigger special cutscenes that reveal more about certain characters, as well as opening up a number of side missions the player can participate in. For example, visiting Lee's destroyed village or going to visit Ziggy's mother will open up a number of related side stories. I want my sidequests to stand above the stupid fetch quests and irrelevant bullshit of other JPRGs. I want it to engage the players by not only rewarding them with items and gear, but also by providing some insight into the main protagonists and antagonists that they might otherwise not have seen.
Original Soundtrack
Some of you may remember me mentioning a few blog posts ago how I had hired composer Jose Moreno, aka CastorOnline, to create an OST for Forever's End. Well, in only a few short months, he has already completed over 25 killer songs for the game!! To say the man is a talented musician would be a huge understatement.
Say goodbye to Nobuo
You can check out all of his completed songs for the game thus far by clicking HERE. I will continue to update the page with new songs as they are released. If you like the tunes, please show Jose some love and post a comment or send him a PM.
New Artist
So some of you may already know, but boobledeeboo won't be able to draw for this project anymore. Art school and real life are taking up most of her time these days. Although this is saddening, there's definitely no hard feelings, as she's already donated so much of her time to this game for absolutely nothing in return. She will, regardless, always remain a member of this project.
So rather than have the whole second half of the game go without any new cutscenes at all, I've gone ahead and hired another talented artist (for a price this time) to finish out the remaining scenes. This artist is in fact the older brother of our very own Nessiah-chan, everyone's favorite RM art prodigy. That in itself holds some serious bragging rights.
BOOM, baby!
Nessiah's nii-sama, aka helrious, has already completed a few scenes, like the one above. He is an extremely talented artist, and I can't wait for players to experience these cutscenes themselves in-game.
Also, make sure to check out his other works at his deviantart page HERE.
Character Exposition
I mentioned before that I would be adding sidequests that will reveal more about the main characters. One way I plan on doing this is through Party Breakdowns. This is essentially a spinoff of Star Ocean's "Private Actions," where pressing a certain key before entering a village or town will cause the party members to separate, giving the player a chance to walk around and talk to each one individually. This, in turn, will allows players to get a more detailed look into party members personalities, as well as opening the door to a plethora of sidequests that revolve around these characters.
So a mercenary walks into a bar...
There will still be a large amount of characterization and plot twists in the main story, of course. I know a number of you felt that Marcellus has been a tad too "generic evil" so far. Episode Two will shed more light on Marcellus' past as well as that of his hooded partner, revealing that there is much more to him than meets the eye.
The Grand City of Dorent
This goes hand-in-hand with more freedom and additional sidequests. However, there's a reason I've made this a separate tab: Dorent is HUGGGGGEEEEEE!!! Seriously, it will take the player quite awhile to explore this massive beast of a metropolis. The city itself is divided into three districts: the Residential, the Industrial, and the Upper-Class, each with its own set of buildings and civilians. Although any district can be traveled to directly by foot, a tram system is set up to allow players to conveniently hop between each one.
Dorent's Grand Central Station
There are plenty of things for players to do in Dorent, such as shopping, tournaments, mini-games, and sidequests. In addition, there is also Dorent's castle, which has a number of interesting sites, such as Farnstein's Monster Research Center, where players can fight with any monster they've already captured. A big thanks to the hard work of Ultima187, who single-handedly mapped this amazing city. He is truly a master mapper and will forever have my undying gratitude.
A Combined Party Front
So up to this point, most of the party members have been separated from each other for one reason or another. Well, it's only a matter of time before they all come together, and when they do, it should make for some very interesting battle combinations.
Gotta catch em' all!
I wanted to make character abilities different enough to where each character had his own "specialty," while at the same time, making no one character too powerful. Lee can easily absorb skills but is limited to only a certain number; Slade's spells are harder to acquire, but pack a greater punch; Elizabeth's beckons are extremely powerful, but consume both her MP and SR. When I start throwing complicated, tough bosses at the player in Episode Two, it will be interesting to see what characters they use to take them down.
Choose your killer four
I also plan to have all experience be shared among party members, even if they are not in the current active party. Ability points, however, will only be shared among active party members.
Conclusion
So that's some of the new stuff you all can expect from the upcoming episode. I'm not going to go into any new details about the main story here, as I'd rather keep most of it a mystery (although you may be able to gather bits of it yourself from the screenshots).
If you're excited about the new stuff or have any questions, please don't hesitate to comment below. It's always encouraging to hear from you guys. Oh, and if you were a big fan of Episode One, I'd really appreciate your nomination for the 2011 Misaos. Cheers!
Game Design
Inventory Nightmare
- NicoB
- 19 post(s)
- 09/24/2011 04:55 AM
- 7407 views
Hey guys,
So as I've been working away on this game, there's one thing that's been constantly hanging over my shoulder: the inventory. Anyone who's played Episode One will know what I mean; it's an absolutely horrible mess to navigate through. For example, these were pictures Dec posted in his review:
Pretty disgusting, right? This is something I want to see fixed, but at the same time, I genuinely fear attempting. This isn't something that can be easily tidied up in just a few short days. It will likely take me months to do. I've already envisioned exactly what I would have to do to make this work.
Step 1: Type up the entire (cluttered) list of items in a text file.
Step 2: Type up what the new list would look like.
Step 3: Go through the database and change the old list of items to the new one.
This wouldn't be so bad. The next step is where it starts getting nasty.
Step 4: Go through every single event where the old version of an item was used and change it to its new location in the database.
2k3 isn't that smart. It isn't going to automatically change every event based on my new arrangement. So let's say a chest had an Extract in it, and the new layout changed it to something else. I would have to go in and manually change every instance to the new Extract inventory location. And this wouldn't be just for treasure chests. There's also the system database, monster drops, the million common events I have, every conditional event involving items, not to mention the countless random instances where I added/removed items to fulfill certain plot/gameplay requirements. This would easily take me months to sort through.
Step 5: Test to make sure every item works correctly.
Holy shit, this would be a nightmare. I would essentially have to keep a constant list of what my current items are at all times and note any and all changes made during my playthrough (and this isn't a short game, people). I wish I could believe that I'd get everything completely straight without testing, but with something this cluttered, it's way too easy to make a mistake.
Even after all of this is done, there's one last thing I'd have to do.
Step 6: Create a common event that manually changes every item to the new setup.
People with old save files will still have items based on the old arrangement of items, meaning their inventory will be completely screwed up upon loading. I would have to make an event that would automatically remove every item that doesn't belong with the original quantity of the new item. This means a whole lot of conditional events and just as many headaches. This isn't something I would skip either; I've promised myself that all save files from Episode One will work with later releases. I'm not having people replay the game anymore.
The really bad thing is that I can't really work on this in conjunction with other things (such as progressing forward in the game). If I get started, there's pretty much no turning back, and will take all of my focus. This will set game progress back for quite awhile.
I suppose this is one of the biggest problems with having a long production time for your first game. Once you begin to understand how certain mechanics work, it may already be too late. I didn't know that arranging the items in the database would affect it's arrangement in-game. Now I'm stuck with this clutterfuck of an inventory.
So I wanted to ask you all, how important is this to you? Can you live with a cluttered inventory or will it ultimately ruin the experience? What would you do in this situation? Do you have any recommendations?
God, I wish Cherry has a patch for this sort of thing.
So as I've been working away on this game, there's one thing that's been constantly hanging over my shoulder: the inventory. Anyone who's played Episode One will know what I mean; it's an absolutely horrible mess to navigate through. For example, these were pictures Dec posted in his review:
Pretty disgusting, right? This is something I want to see fixed, but at the same time, I genuinely fear attempting. This isn't something that can be easily tidied up in just a few short days. It will likely take me months to do. I've already envisioned exactly what I would have to do to make this work.
Step 1: Type up the entire (cluttered) list of items in a text file.
Step 2: Type up what the new list would look like.
Step 3: Go through the database and change the old list of items to the new one.
This wouldn't be so bad. The next step is where it starts getting nasty.
Step 4: Go through every single event where the old version of an item was used and change it to its new location in the database.
2k3 isn't that smart. It isn't going to automatically change every event based on my new arrangement. So let's say a chest had an Extract in it, and the new layout changed it to something else. I would have to go in and manually change every instance to the new Extract inventory location. And this wouldn't be just for treasure chests. There's also the system database, monster drops, the million common events I have, every conditional event involving items, not to mention the countless random instances where I added/removed items to fulfill certain plot/gameplay requirements. This would easily take me months to sort through.
Step 5: Test to make sure every item works correctly.
Holy shit, this would be a nightmare. I would essentially have to keep a constant list of what my current items are at all times and note any and all changes made during my playthrough (and this isn't a short game, people). I wish I could believe that I'd get everything completely straight without testing, but with something this cluttered, it's way too easy to make a mistake.
Even after all of this is done, there's one last thing I'd have to do.
Step 6: Create a common event that manually changes every item to the new setup.
People with old save files will still have items based on the old arrangement of items, meaning their inventory will be completely screwed up upon loading. I would have to make an event that would automatically remove every item that doesn't belong with the original quantity of the new item. This means a whole lot of conditional events and just as many headaches. This isn't something I would skip either; I've promised myself that all save files from Episode One will work with later releases. I'm not having people replay the game anymore.
The really bad thing is that I can't really work on this in conjunction with other things (such as progressing forward in the game). If I get started, there's pretty much no turning back, and will take all of my focus. This will set game progress back for quite awhile.
I suppose this is one of the biggest problems with having a long production time for your first game. Once you begin to understand how certain mechanics work, it may already be too late. I didn't know that arranging the items in the database would affect it's arrangement in-game. Now I'm stuck with this clutterfuck of an inventory.
So I wanted to ask you all, how important is this to you? Can you live with a cluttered inventory or will it ultimately ruin the experience? What would you do in this situation? Do you have any recommendations?
God, I wish Cherry has a patch for this sort of thing.
Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous
Vote FE for RMRK's Project of the Summer Season
- NicoB
- 13 post(s)
- 06/17/2011 06:34 PM
- 4558 views
Miscellaneous
Second Place Winner in RPG-Atelier's Game of the Month
So I posted my game on RPG-Atelier, a German RPG Maker site, about two weeks ago and got a surprisingly good response. I actually ended up getting nominated and winning second place in their vote for Game of the Month for June, which is pretty shocking seeing as my game is foreign to them. I was only three votes away from tying for first too, which was pretty cool. The nice thing is although I didn't win, I still get to have my game posted as the second place winner alongside the first place. Hot dog!
Anyway, you can check it out HERE.
