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DFalcon
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Software engineer and amateur game developer with a focus on challenging non-twitch gameplay. I set the bar for "challenging" pretty high.
Other major chunks of interest go toward reading, math and tabletop games of many stripes.
Other major chunks of interest go toward reading, math and tabletop games of many stripes.
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How do I make a Video of my game?
The demo version of Fraps only lets you record 30-second clips, but if you Google "free fraps" or "fraps alternative" or whatever you shouldn't have any trouble finding programs.
Screenshot Sesame Street (40th Anniversary Edition)
Jakester: The trouble with that dark vs. light dirt is that there's an implied elevation difference (light higher than dark) but the flat castle rests on both.
The Main Character and his Dynamic in the story
At TVTropes, you mean? There's Four Temperament Ensemble, but mixing and matching from larger or smaller groups probably happens more often.
Screenshot Sesame Street (40th Anniversary Edition)
post=106208
This is none of your fault but I just hate how squarish and boxy RMVX's maps are.....maybe thats the reason
rmvx isn't that popular?
The confusion is because you didn't put a period or any other clear separator after "reason", so most people read this wrapped-around as "maybe thats the reason rmvx isn't that popular?". Anyway.
Craze: that face is kind of freaky.
Side Quests: Why?
post=106094
Western RPGs are particularly guilty of inundating the player with a huge number of optional missions which aren't really optional. Missions that you theoretically want to do, but don't advance the story. The problem is (AND THIS IS MY MAJOR POINT POORLY CONCEALED IN THE SECOND TO LAST PARAGRAPH) that you have to do them to succeed. If you don't do the side quests, you're underlevelled/out of money/embarrassingly powerless in the face of evil. I suppose you have some lee way in terms of which ones you do, but when there is an obvious correlation between Doing Quests and Being Stronger, most people are going to choose "All of the Above" when it comes to side quest selection.
There's an enormous difference between having to do some side quests to be competitive and having to do all of them to advance. The former situation gives the player considerable control over the length and difficulty of the game. It's true that players often don't take 100% advantage of that until a replay, but if you look at that paragon of the wRPG, Baldur's Gate 2, it's pretty staggering to consider being forced to do all the sidequests available - or even receiving all of them in some linear fashion.
How long have you been working on your game?
I started programming on my Java tactics game (current working title: Oxtongue Heroes) around the beginning of May, for a class assignment. I had been thinking some of the design elements over in my notebook already, but it's difficult to date that. It's tough to say when I'll be done, but I expect a couple more months at least.
I started Aurora Wing design over Christmas break in 2001 and released the completed game in May 2005, so about 3.5 years there. For reference, I had the first battle in a demo by February '02 and the first five-battle chunk (20-25% of the game) out in a demo by May '02 or so, not that significantly different from their final versions (except that the AI was much slower). So for a while I did think I was going to hit the roughly 1.5-year target I had, but there ended up being hiatuses, slow periods, unforeseen time spent making improvements, etc.
I started Aurora Wing design over Christmas break in 2001 and released the completed game in May 2005, so about 3.5 years there. For reference, I had the first battle in a demo by February '02 and the first five-battle chunk (20-25% of the game) out in a demo by May '02 or so, not that significantly different from their final versions (except that the AI was much slower). So for a while I did think I was going to hit the roughly 1.5-year target I had, but there ended up being hiatuses, slow periods, unforeseen time spent making improvements, etc.
Page list at top of thread page
Often when reading in a thread I find myself at the top of a page, see what's there and determine I need to go forward or back a page or two. It'd be nice to have the page-turn navigation from the bottom replicated at the top.
How to Succeed
Of course I don't want to say "do something other than what you want to do", but I think some people get caught up in the notion of having their Big Project because their Vision must be Fulfilled. Smaller projects have a lot of advantages, not least that either "Okay, I'll do better next time" or "Gee, what if I fixed this up?" is a viable option. (If this sounds odd coming from a guy with one 3.5-year game - most of my small projects haven't been RPGs, and I haven't circulated them widely.)
I agree with Sovan in spirit but not in fact. It's important to have an idea of what you're getting into and what remains to be done. But I've never turned out a list in such detail at the start of a project, and if I did I'm sure it'd be a lot different by the end.
What I would say is, be sure to get the highest-risk stuff done first: the stuff that, if you can't get it right, you absolutely will not be happy making the game without. For me, this is generally convincing myself that I have core gameplay. Don't be afraid to let several ideas percolate if you can't get past that first high step - write them down in a notebook, and you'll slowly come up with variants or additions, or be able to use parts later. Like Darken said, an idea written down is always better than an idea in your head.
I agree with Sovan in spirit but not in fact. It's important to have an idea of what you're getting into and what remains to be done. But I've never turned out a list in such detail at the start of a project, and if I did I'm sure it'd be a lot different by the end.
What I would say is, be sure to get the highest-risk stuff done first: the stuff that, if you can't get it right, you absolutely will not be happy making the game without. For me, this is generally convincing myself that I have core gameplay. Don't be afraid to let several ideas percolate if you can't get past that first high step - write them down in a notebook, and you'll slowly come up with variants or additions, or be able to use parts later. Like Darken said, an idea written down is always better than an idea in your head.
An RM fighting game...
post=103172post=103171This is an RM fighting game though, idk seems like we should be promoting RM characters rather than indie characters we all know about. Besides I'm pretty sure theres a big indie fighting game in the works (TIG).
Characters from indie games that aren't RPG Maker could be nice, too (like Quote from Cave Story).
And even they couldn't get permission to use Quote! (Something to do with Cave Story Wii, I think.)
Yeah, shortly after I finished Aurora Wing I thought about doing something like RM2K Deathmatch (a former #rm2k project, as WIP mentioned; I wasn't involved in the first attempt but I'd liked the idea). WIP got on board and we started thinking about games that could be included and things we could do and stuff like that, but we couldn't settle on the core gameplay mechanics and eventually it fell by the wayside, though I think we knew enough not to do a huge amount of work before we'd worked that out.
This isn't to say we argued vehemently, just that we couldn't come up with anything that hooked us enough to push on. If I ever thought about something like this again (a group project or a Deathmatch-like game, either one) I wouldn't make so much as a peep unless I had a much better idea of how gameplay would go.
Your First Game
If I really think back, I messed around with VB a little bit trying to get a game working before I picked up RM2K - not with a specific design, just looking to be able to implement an RPG design if I wanted. I didn't know about double buffering so it was not working very well. (VB was the engine of choice because I literally couldn't figure out how to do any non-console programming in C++, the other language I'd used. If lacking either of these bits of information seems silly, remember - this was life just before Google, nobody I knew had any more clue than I did, and it was just a hobby thing anyway.) Anyway, once I did find RM2K, which had come out not long before, it worked and had ready-made resources so I was an instant convert.
So anyway my first 'real' game was an RM2K implementation of 10x10 Minesweeper for a contest at Don's forums. I released a couple more minigame-length things in RM2K, then my first project > 5 minutes long was my SimRPG Maker game "Legend of Nennia". I don't remember a lot about it: the main characters were mostly teenagers from the same village, and I had a tiered class-change system (in retrospect, anyway, a lot like the one in FE Gaiden), with the first step of that making it into the last demo. Maybe I have it on a backup disk somewhere but it's effectively lost forever, and probably not much of a loss.
So anyway my first 'real' game was an RM2K implementation of 10x10 Minesweeper for a contest at Don's forums. I released a couple more minigame-length things in RM2K, then my first project > 5 minutes long was my SimRPG Maker game "Legend of Nennia". I don't remember a lot about it: the main characters were mostly teenagers from the same village, and I had a tiered class-change system (in retrospect, anyway, a lot like the one in FE Gaiden), with the first step of that making it into the last demo. Maybe I have it on a backup disk somewhere but it's effectively lost forever, and probably not much of a loss.
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