ELECTRICALKAT'S PROFILE

Oh god, where to start...

I think my gamemaking days began in random notebooks that I drew area maps in. I used to go nuts writing adventure stories, and imagining myself playing them with the gameplay of a 16-bit Final Fantasy entry. My cousins and I always built worlds with Lego blocks and imagined ourselves playing a kind of weird D&D-style game (there were no real "rules"..we just had a blast ^_^), and when they lived in a rural area at one point, we sometimes LARPed in a nearby forest.

I also had some experience with Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures, but at that time I didn't really have a PC (my cousins had it on theirs). It was fun to use, but it wasn't really when I honestly began to make my own games...I attribute that to the StarCraft campaign editor! I also played around with Clickteam's Klik and Play a little, but it didn't quite work well on my PC back then...from what I've heard about Multimedia Fusion 2's problems today, it seems like they have not really improved too much.

I've probably played more StarCraft RPGs than actual StarCraft games themselves (even more so than any other custom games either lol ._.). Toward the end of my StarEdit days, I was on my way to creating -- and finishing -- a very long RPG on StarCraft, when I was told about a fangame to a MMORPG that I also played back then (Nexus: Kingdom of the Winds) created in RPG Maker 2000. Needless to say...I was really impressed by it. I almost immediately abandoned StarEdit (actually, StarCraft entirely...) and downloaded RPG Maker, joining Don's forums and various other little RM microcosms in that world.

When RPG Maker 2003 was released later on, I eventually migrated to it, not really finishing any other games on RM2K either...heh... I didn't really stay in the RM community for too long after that, though (it began to grow too poisonous for my tastes). I continued to play other random games, but I didn't really restart on planning/creating games until maybe mid-2007, when I was inspired to create a kind of sci-fi RPG. That idea has long since been converted into something far different now...but it probably marked my reentry into the gamemaking world.

It is also when I really saw that I wasn't interested in my current college major (Mechanical Engineering, if you're curious), and I converted it into a Digital Media major. I wanted my future to be with...the games... I don't regret having taken M.E. as my major beforehand, though; if anything, it has made me much more aware of the laws of physics than most other people. A few years after that, I started to look into the RPG Maker world again, and I found that most of the places that I had known have long since disappeared. Most of today's RPG Maker communities didn't really impress me at all, but RMN stood out from everything else, so I decided to create an account here.

Now, however, I'm learning a completely different tool...Scirra Construct...having found RPG Maker to be a bit too limiting for what I want to accomplish. Supposedly it is rather hard for someone to create an RPG in Construct, but I find its eventing system to be remarkably similar to StarEdit's trigger events. As you can imagine, we have been getting along very well together thus far, so it looks like I will probably not return to using any RPG Maker anytime soon. :P

I've used CamStudio before to record some of my League of Legends games...it is okay. I would imagine that FRAPS is better (I haven't used it myself, so I can't really say), but that costs money, so if you are on a very very tight budget then CamStudio should be good enough for you. Just remember that -- as it records into AVI files -- it is limited to a maximum of 4GB total file size. If it records above 4GB, then your file might as well not exist.

author=halibabica
It's being implemented exactly the way I described. I don't really consider it a feature that can be abused, though. It's more a convenience for the player so they don't have to run all over the place to grind a little. It takes the tediousness out of tracking down enemies to fight, and even with other setups, the player is free to fight as much as they want (it's just less convenient).

Errm, to clarify, I was talking about that "press shift to instantly respawn" switch, sorry. I was thinking that could be easily abused if your players somehow found a quick and easy routine for grinding on some specific battle (even if they are randomized, except if those battles have a low encounter rate). But if you can fix this, it's definitely a possibility!

author=halibabica
I set it such that, if the monster party is run from instead of defeated, the event still turns transparent. It stays down for a fraction of the time (three seconds), but it's just long enough for the hero to move away.

I recall a Super NES RPG that had implemented something like this part: Robotrek. You could run away from one of its touch encounters, and that unit would strobe flash and act as an impassable obstacle for several seconds, rather than what you proposed. I think your version is a nice improvement, considering there were...uh, some situations in Robotrek where I really would've rather truly escaped from certain battles (i.e. situations where I am three hits away from being dead robotic scrap).

That's a pretty interesting method, Nessiah! (it would save me quite a bit of time with floor tiles...)

Thank you for posting it - I'll have to try it as well sometime.