DARKEN'S PROFILE

*blows dust off ancient readme.txt*



Currently working on: The Machine that Breathes https://store.steampowered.com/app/1126210/the_machine_that_BREATHES/ (Please wishlist!)
the machine that BREATHE...
A tunneling machine finds itself injected into a body resembling a human.

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Bringing Back a Potential RM Renaissance

So Sgt M posted a tweet that went viral. Where he made the case for buying an rm2k3 game on sale.

https://twitter.com/SgtM_Yuusha/status/1694160108559704314

It also seems to be a trend? and a "using rm2k3 in 2023" overview video made by riggy that did well views wise. Whenever a sale happens a lot of people are willing to spread the good word of an outdated but cheap alternative to the modern RPG Makers. And in the 2010s onwards it did feel like there was a resurgence with the likes of OFF and space funeral and bleep's games in the Tumblr sphere and probably a lot of Yume Nikki fangames I don't know about.

I'm wondering about everyone's outlook on this. As someone who has moved on from RM, I do think some things hold rm2k3 back a bit. Importing indexed images has a bit of a learning curve. The battle system is just borked if you don't go in knowing the problems. If you want to do anything outside of the engine's bounds you have to turn to these weird patches by some german guy. I figured this shit out 20 years ago, but from an outside view it's like the Smash Bros Melee of game engines. Where the power of nostalgia keeps it alive, but also there's weird hoops for no good reason other than it came from a different time.

We can talk about the merits of engines all we want. It'd be really cool to encourage another renaissance where there's not crazy expectations for a magnum opus RPG, but more just story oriented pixel art games made by people who don't take it too seriously. Thoughts, opinions?

Video Game Critic Wager 2023


I'm already thinking about next year's Fantasy league. I have no idea what the results will be for 2022 but they're DANG CLOSE. I've become a fantasy critic goblin. You can become one too.

How it works:

This page explains it better than I can, so we pick games we think we'll do well throughout the year (and ones that might not do well). It's not necessarily about game quality or sales, but how well we think they'll pander to reviewers (websites and magazines). Which is interesting to speculate on as the games aren't out yet and there are several factors to predict. There are some pitfalls to watch out for, if a game isn't even released this year (delayed into the next year) that will count as a zero. There are ways to drop a game before it releases, but there are restrictions on such a thing. If you're feeling risky you can also counter pick someone's existing pick. Other things to note is that I've set rereleases, yearly sports games, remasters (non-remakes), etc. will not be included. The list will likely focus on new mainstream releases. Some of the rules might be hard to keep in mind, but we'll figure it out together. The main thing is to just have fun.

How to participate:

Use this link to join:
https://www.fantasycritic.games/league/a1543979-4a7c-4066-834b-64196857c27a/2023?inviteCode=f02d439c-fe2d-499b-9bea-e0c6c6398f88

1. Sign up for an account if you don't have one (Preferably make your display the same as your forum user)
2. Ask me to invite you to join this league (Post your display name and # here) OR use the invite link: above
3. Create a publisher name (Basically the pretend banner your putting your games under, a fictional brand)
4. Wait for others to join up, draft order will depend on who joined first be RANDOM
5. We then take turns drafting, we'll probably do it passively much like a forum game than in real-time (each person will get 6 games to start)
6. Sit on our asses and wait for the games to come out and occasionally pick more up as the year goes on.

This is all done inside the system so nothing has to be organized here other than who's joining (post your display name+#). The soft deadline date for drafting will be the end of December or January, I can extend it depending on how the interest goes.

THE LEAGUE

Changes this year: I'm going to try and get rid of the mandatory yearly releases/expansion pack stuff as they kind of are mostly duds. I think it's just more interesting to focus more on new game ip or remakes (at least thats what the default slots are suggesting I put, but we'll see). Also let me know how everyone feels about secret/public bidding. I'm leaning on public as I think it can make it a little more strategic.

Entrants---

Darken
kirinja
Shinan
lordbluerouge
kory_toombs

Turn based cinematography

So this kind of a reccomendation/research topic into something oddly specific. But I'm wondering what are 3D games with turn based combat that have good camera direction? The most obvious are probably the Final Fantasy PS1 games. One of the interesting components of turn based combat is that the camera can be fairly unrestricted since most of the gameplay is done through selecting targets and skills via menus. If there's any RPG/Strategy or simular type of game out there that really takes presentation to a whole new level or did something interesting that sticks out in your mind, I'd like to know about it.



Lost Oydessey is the most recent modern example I can think of (sadly). There's a neat Gears of War-esque shakey cam shot for the attacks. It does a pretty standard one for the enemies yet the contrast adds to who is the protagonist and who isn't. Still it could be better in parts. Everything's gotten more and more real time/action based since so it's harder to find leading examples that fit this style.

I invite also a discussion of what you make of it. Things that would be cool to see utilized more. Idk I'm open to any idea that's tengentally related to this. I'm not too interested in balancing how long/skippable they need to be in order to not break gameplay flow. I think that's a given thing to address regardless of the quality of the camera work and the animations. I'd like to focus on the cool shit atm.

Best City Map?



I've been thinking about cities in top down RPGs especially. They are probably the most ambitious maps to tackle because you're trying to not only portray a lot of buildings, but buildings the act as personal locales. Lots of NPCs, tons of space but also cramped as well. Tall buildings can impede movement. Ideally it feels like a dense city, and not a glorified town, but also not a glorified space with facaded architecture everywhere either.

In bigger budget games, I'd say Cyberpunk 2077 probably takes the bill for most fantastical dense high production value open world city, but it doesn't quite have that lived in landmark feel that say Yakuza has. They're two games going for different things with different purposes. In the AAA space there's just a limit to the amount of resources you can use to maintain the fidelity per square mile and so you're generally left with a lot of buildings to not enter in. I think it's interesting that one person with rpgmaker for 20 years could spend time making a more impressive city and compete with the juggernauts in its own indie way, via through the Shenmue promises of being able to go to every NPCs house and smell their socks in the drawer. I feel like that's an interesting dragon to chase.

Isolating to just top down maps, console RPGs or RPGMaker, what is the most impressive lived in city, as far as not feeling like a facade? Not feeling like just a bigger town than most, and generally living up to the title of being a "CITY". I think it can be hard to define since you could set a whole game inside of a city and just have a bunch of connected maps with that, but I'm gonna say the criteria that it encompasses one entire map. If it's like 4 really big maps stitched together sure fine, I can let it slide. The more unified the better however.

I thought about the Earthbound's Fourside), or an earthbound fangame but I feel like they're kind of cheating. In that not too many RPGs go for this and you do get a lot out of the dimensions. I think the challenge is up exponentially since you potentially have skyscrappers blocking the view a lot, so you have to build dense locales while also conveying large surrounding scale.



tldr: What are good city maps in RPGs/RM that are the most impressive in whatever way? (Ideally high in explorability ratio)

Has anyone made something as crazy as this one block map by Mr Nemo?

Loose Criteria:
-Top down perspective / 3/4 Orthographic / Bird's Eye (Isometric and Earthbound don't count)
-Ideally a unified map
-Dense NPCs, tall architecture etc.
-Bonus points for how much of it is actually enterable

Using this for research purposes, but also curiosity since very few games come to mind.

RIP to a legend: Rieko Kodama (Phantasy Star, Skies of Arcadia, 7th Dragon)



Sega Veteran And Industry Legend Rieko Kodama Has Passed Away. Normally I'm not one to super acknowledge celebrity/notable people deaths but this came to me as a shock as she wasn't that old (age 58) and the circumstances of about the knowledge of her death just kinda slipped out. Coincidentally I've had her work in my thoughts lately. She started out as an artist on a lot of notable early Sega titles and moved on to direct and produce most of the Phantasy Star games. So why don't we not only remember her but also just talk about some of the coolest RPGs?

I would describe the Phantasy Star series and the tangential Skies of Arcadia as alternate RPGs that cool kids liked. Aside from Phantasy Star IV they weren't always dominant critically or financially but I feel like the franchise has a unique flavor that isn't offered by the typical Final Fantasy. It's a bit like if SNK decided to make a JRPG (I guess Kouldeka counts? You know what I mean). A familiar RPG format approached by developers that come from an arcade background that leads to something offbeat further varying what can be done with the genre. There's something inspiring about its approach to the battle views or the way story telling was done in her work. Although she wasn't directly involved in games like Sakura Wars, Phantasy Star Online or Valkyria Chronicles you can definitely feel the influence and legacy of SEGA's earlier RPGs bleeding into them.

Skies of Arcadia is also notable for being the first RPG to really take advantage of hardware beyond the typical ps1/saturn hardware limits. Detailed in this clip here of Rieko Kodama talking about the environments and the added bonus of having an actual draw distance it's easy to forget how far RPGs have come. Sure FFX would come out a year later but there's something about Skies behind the character camera view and the sky island setting that left a lot to the imagination. Unfortunately due to the failure of the Dreamcast it's hard to justify putting budget behind such a type of game (something she sadly blames herself partially for).

There's also the 7th Dragon series which I have not gotten around to playing but is a collaboration between her and an Etrian Odyssey developer that also goes for an alternative vibe that's clearly indicative of Rieko's career and track record. The first game on DS is fans translated (and I believe just about any other game has some means of English availability), so it's a good time as any for me to actually get around to playing it on a weekend break or so. Also forgot to mention another game she directed Magic Knight Rayearth RPG on Sega Saturn of all things.



Anyways, life is short, and can get shorter. So while we're living and breathing, might as well give some thoughts on the most baller RPGs on the planet and appreciate the time we have left.

Velsarbor's Demo was translated and I had no idea

So since 2020 Velsarbor has been translated from German to English. For those of you who played it back in 2005 and might have gave up understanding what was going on: you can now give up your 17 year long diligent journey learning German. One thing worth also noting is the demo is pretty sizeable, it's was updated up until around 2007 or so at a whopping 300 maps. So even if the game isn't complete it's still worth checking out for inspiration/nostalgia. Much like whenever a SNES translation comes out it feels like playing a retro RPG for the first time again. It also feels still relevant given that this game was made by the creator of Crosscode, a current day indie RPG success.

Translation here: https://github.com/WatDuhHekBro/VelsarborEnglish

Download Prepatched (Thanks LBR): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aDSAlA4xq3VNgkysrODIQwhOkyC911Xg/view

I talk over some footage to mark the occasion:



However I also made this topic to ask folks, what were your memories/impressions of Velsarbor? Any non-english RM games you still wish were translated? I'm writing a retrospective on this game and I figured some oldbies that are still here might have something to add. This translation needs more fanfare!

How to fix thief

Been thinking about this and realized this is pretty relevant. Okay so the Thief archetype right? Either a character or class in an RPG where they typically have the steal skill and maybe a high dodge rate, weak melee damage but generally speaking they suck compared to the straight up gigachad warrior that can just end the battle quickly instead. They are usually a joke and contribute nothing. Keep in mind I'm talking in complete conventional classic JRPGs like DQ3 or FF1 where the balancing is usually in the raw stats and fairly straight forward battle system.

What I'm wondering is, is it possible to balance them in a fairly conventional RPG (say a classic Dragon Quest or FF) without compromising the "class fantasy". By balance, I mean is there a good enough reason to pick one over the other classes to the point where meta knowledge players would at least have debates about it. By conventional I mean an RPG where you don't invent a brand new mechanic or crazy skill to make them useful. Are there any examples of RPGs doing it before, RPGMaker games even? I'm kind of thinking from a more: stuck with RM2K3 but you can at least change the formulas sort of design problem. Maybe you can add a skill or two, but you're taking turns whacking each other and thats what the battles boil down to. MMOs have mostly ""solved"" this by simply just changing the role dynamics to make room for more roles. That's too easy though, I want to make the stat components like dodge and stuff matter rather than delegating it to the warrior to threat whack a mole.

So I'll tackle some components on what sounds good on paper, but also kind of what makes them suck.

Low damage
RPGs are really just about dealing as much damage as possible, and they simply do not offer this or enough of this. They have to do something though right? One idea is to simply just make them wildly accurate or give them an option to use bows for outright 100% accuracy. Basically like high def low MDEF enemies. Now the overall RPG would probably blow if the main fighter class missed all the time, but maybe have certain monsters have a high dodge rate. The fighter can still kill them but, for some sections of the game it just helps to have a thief around. Generally though I find console JRPGs tend to be careful about making misses too frequent (this is super evident by games like FF8 where Squall cannot miss! He starts at 255 hit at the start of the game!) but if misses aren't frequent a character that specializes in not worrying about it makes it a moot point.

High dodge
This is the similar problem with the last one, yeah it's cool to avoid damage outright completely, but in a tense endgame scenario it sucks to have a character die due to bad luck as opposed to a character that can take multiple hits anyway. But the principle solution still applies, have enemies that are usually accurate and high damage, miss the thief most of the time. With a multi hit formula system you could probably mitigate the one time the thief actually gets hit. There are just maybe fights where it would be handy to have a thief in the front row.

First turn order

So this really depends on how the battle is structured. But generally speaking a character that can act first is pretty fast right? Problem usually is that beyond throwing a healing item out a typical thief can't really do much to turn the tides much. But again, with some monster encounter design, what if you had an enemy that was pretty fast, did a lot of damage but only has 1 HP. I kind of like this more because it relies less on making chance based mechanics to be more prominent in favor of something that can still be solved by a mage or fighter but, it'd just be very late and not ideal. There could also be a thing where making the first hit in a fight is always a critical strike. Picking a thief based on this is also a little more apparent to the player, avoiding the "okay how useful is the dodge stat?" choice paralysis.

Steal
Okay does anyone like this mechanic? They tried really hard to make it the whole point in FF9 where some of the best equipment can be stolen by the main character. However it's mostly a chore, you waste a turn to potentially not be able to steal it assuming the feedback is any good. Then when you do steal something it's just something you could have gotten in the shop. Even when your eyes are glued to a guide telling you which bosses are worth stealing from it's kind of just delaying the battle to do this one thing that has nothing to do with actually winning the battle.

There's probably a million solutions, make steal also do damage, make attacks have a chance to give you money. Make stealing a debuff or "strip" skill that could especially work on high def high mdef enemies. etc. Though is does beg the question of increasing the overall power of the party as a decent role. FF5 has tons of utility (run speed, hidden passages, 100% escape) for the thief sure, but generally speaking they still really suck to have in the actual battle, so much that I've seen people swap classes when they get to a boss. I don't know if it addresses the class fantasy as much one would think. None of the other classes typically have a weird utility crutch to rely on, unless you think magic is some kind of bullshit.

--------

I'm rambling but my not so great take is to just add in enough problematic (probably just annoying) encounters that having a thief would make for a better experience in them but worse in others. What are your thoughts? Are there ways to make thieves useful beyond reinventing the whole foundation of the game? Have they been useful in games before and I just don't know about it? Is there a case to be made for "just make a better RPG where speed isn't a dumb dice roll stat"? Comment in this thread below (please and thank you).

Dialogue choices in games

I've been mucking around with RPGs with social aspects to them, mainly WRPGs like Disco Elysium and New Vegas, but also some standouts like Persona 5. One thing I don't find much point in though is dialogue choices, I find myself not really leaning into a role. The worst being is the good/evil options which boils down to basic morality I don't care much for, which sometimes can lead to character inconsistency if you care too much about it. Persona 5 has a semi-mute character where you can choose between 3-4 things at key moments that don't have much consequence. However it makes me think about what would make for the most interesting reaction, rather than having choice paralysis. The drawback becomes why would you NOT pick the smartass/joke response every time? Playing it seriously feels like the boring canon thing, but also makes me think they should have just written an actual personality for the protagonist.

Another thing I don't understand is why so many games feel the need to have optional exposition dialogue where you either exhaust the list of available choices or don't bother. Sure some people might want to skip all the world building and what amounts to quest giver reminder thing but I'm always compelled to check it all anyway just in case. In a standard JRPG this is equivalent to talking to every NPC but at least I'm not standing in the same room listening to the same character go on and on. Stopping and giving me choices just impedes what could be a smoother/tighter exposition anyway.

Then there's the issue of the charm stat that can just mind control NPCs into giving you what you want. New Vegas thankfully made this into a threshold stat meaning if you have a high enough number you don't have to risk a disappointing dice roll. But if you do have it, why would you NOT pick the charm option every single time? Disco Elysium brought it back to dice rolls and has multiple stats for personality/intellect. It has an interesting way of making the stats into actual advisors, a voice in your head representing logic for instance will nudge you into not selecting certain stupid options. So there's at least some direction on what to say and what outcome it'll actually have. It does still loop around to just picking the option that would have the most fun outcome, and generally I feel like I'm missing out if my 50% roll didn't go well.

Then there's the whole social skill aspect, making social skills an actual challenge to overcome which I personally think is impossible. You either make it a combat with the context change to resemble a sort of debate or information exchange or really abstract it out into something really mucky that's different from combat but not at all from how talking to people irl actually works. Video games aren't very good at simulating social interaction. What makes the Persona series works is that it doesn't even really attempt it (sans demon taming in 5) and just makes it about choosing which characters you want to spend time with based on which ones you like (or who you think gives good benefits). It's more social life simulation than social simulation. The strength being that the writing of the hangout scenes carries the social aspects even though it's static. So I mean, it loops back to CYOA linear story telling being a solid and consistent format even if a bit rigid.

One weird idea I have is just give your customizable character personality traits or stats that affect some dialogue moments but there's no choice given or maybe not even a warning. CYOA driven by your actual character rather than you the player choosing on the spot. The story just unfolds before you based on choices you made at the start and acts like an autopilot. There are still a ton of possibilities but you're not allowed to branch unless you somehow change your character's personality (whoa maybe character growth?). This will probably cause more problems than it solves, as it doesn't give much feedback. There could be a little "Your high wit stat made this joke possible!" notification. Conversely the game won't tell you what you missed out on. Still it could clash with the writing. A level headed protagonist might suddenly overreact in situations if they have a high neuroticism stat or something. Which causes inconsistency especially if its built to have zero consequences. Although if you had the time it'd be interesting to see if the plot causes were brought about by different possible traits. Plot points still happen but they're brought about by different flavors of your snowflake personality.

Anyway, enough rambling. I want to know what YOUR thoughts on dialogue choices are in general. Especially from a player's perspective because I'm wondering if I'm the odd one out here. Though this is a pro-JRPG place I imagine there are some takes on the matter. Any thoughts appreciated.

Video Game Critic Wager 2022



We did something in 2020. Last year I didn't do this because I was tired and quite busy. But now I'm pretty bored lately and would like to do the great privileged past time: betting on video games scores. It's fantasy football but for video game nerds.

How it works:

This page explains it better than I can, so we pick games we think we'll do well throughout the year (and ones that might not do well). It's not necessarily about game quality or sales, but how well we think they'll pander to reviewers (websites and magazines). Which is interesting to speculate on as the games aren't out yet and there are several factors to predict. There are some pitfalls to watch out for, if a game isn't even released this year (delayed into the next year) that will count as a zero. There are ways to drop a game before it releases, but there are restrictions on such a thing. If you're feeling risky you can also counter pick someone's existing pick. Other things to note is that I've set rereleases, yearly sports games, remasters (non-remakes), etc. will not be included. The list will likely focus on new mainstream releases. Some of the rules might be hard to keep in mind, but we'll figure it out together. The main thing is to just have fun.

How to participate:

1. Sign up for an account if you don't have one (Preferably make your display the same as your forum user)
2. Ask me to invite you to join this league (Post your display name and # here)
3. Create a publisher name (Basically the pretend banner your putting your games under, a fictional brand)
4. Wait for others to join up, draft order will depend on who joined first
5. We then take turns drafting, we'll probably do it passively much like a forum game than in real-time (each person will get 6 games to start)
6. Sit on our asses and wait for the games to come out and occasionally pick more up as the year goes on.

This is all done inside the system so nothing has to be organized here other than who's joining (post your display name+#). The soft deadline date for drafting will be the end of January, I can extend it depending on how the interest goes.

THE LEAGUE

THINGS TO NOTE: Remasters and ports are off limits (Remakes like RE2/FF7 are fine) (you can check the banned tags in the options list), bidding is now public, it's also possible to trade games but the feature isn't in yet. Also there are some required tags to make things more interesting like having to pick at least 3 new gaming franchises/ip)

Entrants---

Darken
lordbluerouge
Shinan
Jeff (outsider)
Liberty
kirinja
kory_toombs

Captcha for posts?

Seeing a lot of bots around these parts, I reckon we could just put a captcha for regular forum posting? Probably won't keep everything at bay but idk, might as well.

Drawback is having to captcha per post but I personally don't mind it and other forums do it as well.
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