DFALCON'S PROFILE

Looking at the first few posts in the thread, I have a standard response to make:

As the maker of Aurora Wing I encourage anyone considering a project of similar complexity to use something with better scripting capability.

Today I've been changing the implementation of abilities in Oxtongue Heroes to allow abilities to target things other than locations, such as units. (Previously unit-targeting abilities were targeted using location, but there are various reasons having the distinction helps.) This also prompted a couple changes to what the player sees when targeting an ability that I'll be working through.

post=111437
It's alright to use RTP if you have an unique and engaging story. But honestly I get tired of seeing it. If anybody tells you their not tired of seeing the RTP is lying.

An games presentation is just as important as its other elements.

If you truly want to make your game appeal to the masses it needs to also look unique.

I don't get tired of seeing the RTP. (Though I do get tired of the RTP music.) Sure, a nice graphical look is icing... but there are a lot of things I'd worry about there before finding a tileset to replace an already serviceable one.

If we're talking about menu design, I'd like to see more effort put into reducing the number of button pushes in battle menus. I wish more games with a static Attack/Skill/Item/Other setup took notes from the Lufia battle menu - that can get you four or five options much more quickly than scrolling down a list.

post=109991
-You don't heal after each battle. Each battle would be easier, but it would add up to a greater challenge. You get that sense of accomplishment, but to the latter end of a dungeon, the player will start skipping battles.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I find a version that often gets used problematic enough that I wrote an article about it. Basically, if you heal fully at the end of battle, once the player knows he can beat an easy fight he doesn't have any motivation to do better in it, making it more difficult to keep interesting.


I tend to think it's difficult if not impossible to balance a basic <can beat boss?: y/n> problem in an RPG so that most people will enjoy it, and this only gets harder when you're letting people come in with random amounts of experience, items, talent trees, and the like. One of the tools I think can help is movable goalposts. For example:

Tie Fighter missions have optional secondary objectives with no mechanical benefit. It's also notable that, because no state is carried between missions, you have unlimited replay of completed missions, so you can put something aside for a while and come back to it later if you want.
Some Super Robot Wars games attach a secondary objective (skill point) to each mission, with varying mechanical effect, though it usually includes some skill point threshold for opening up an extra-hard epilogue mission.
Disgaea or Lufia 2's item world/deep dungeon, where you can bail out if you get in trouble but you get better rewards for going deeper. (Though the long ones can be tedious if you're not careful.)
Aurora Wing's limited pool of revives has this effect to a large extent: it makes (secondary) character death something to be strongly avoided while usually not giving out a mechanical penalty for it. (If the player finds himself out of revives for a while, I hope and expect he'd do the last battle or two over or drop a difficulty level rather than risk character permadeath for a long stretch.)

All these let you aim for something without catastrophic results if you fail to achieve it (usually); players get the thrill of achievement if they make it, and if they don't, they don't feel robbed of what they did still manage and can move on if they like. You don't even necessarily have to give a mechanical reward: just track something publicly and players can make it a goal.