ENKER'S PROFILE

An English Graphic Designer and Illustrator with a passion for gaming!

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I'm a fan of those old-school games when it was easier to pick out characters from crowds because most of the background characters were repeated. I may replace it later when I go back over pre-launch to tidy.

Blue Magic (and other "missable" skills)

Of course the easiest way to produce Blue Magic I've found is to have the monsters drop an item that when consumed by a player character teaches them that skill. The drop-rate should be low and the monsters visually cued on their sprites to let you know that they have one and are worth farming. For added clues the explanation text when the monster uses a learnable skill should differ from others. Instead of 'X casts X' something like 'X uses X' is enough of a difference to be noticable by a gamer paying attention. At least that's how I'd run it on something as simple as RPG Maker 2000. You can get more complex the further up the maker-ladder you go.

Using RPGmaker to teach R.E. to kids

I'd love to - but unfortunatly given that the children put themselves into the game in a literal sense, and make comments when spoken to, I'd have to get a lot of parent permission. The education system in the UK has a lot of child-safety clauses.

SPIRIT PATH

The game will come with a full walkthrough and there are hints in-game. The character in question has powerful special attacks that could easily kill one of the Shadow Selves before they run if needs be, so farming them wouldn't be an issue. Think of it as a less mean version of Final Fantasy 4's rare item. Oddly enough, when testing on just 2% chance, three people won the blade on their fourth/fifth try.

Blue Magic (and other "missable" skills)

Scan and Blue Magic go well with a 'Control Enemy' ability too - meaning that you can force them to use their attack in order to learn it. Similarly moves that shut down their options (anger them into just physical attacks or force them to not use physical attacks) do this on a basic level and raise chances of getting what you need.

Using RPGmaker to teach R.E. to kids

Interestingly I used RPGMaker 2000 at a Primary School with year 3 (7-8 year olds) to teach them the basics of story writing, with a clearly deffined 'beginning', 'middle' and 'end'. In groups of three they each selected characters from printouts of Charsets I made for them, named and gave them jobs, then told their stories in simple terms. The final thing had seven stories in the game and clearing them all allowed you as the player to walk around the school and talk to staff / pupils avatars. It looked great up on an interactive whiteboard on the wall of the classroom, and when they ended the year I burned 32 copies for the kids and their parents to play at home. Stories ranged from as simple as 'Tim must find all his items at home for his schoolbag before leaving for the day' to an epic quest to 'Rescue the school flag from a neighbouring school'. I don't know if they remember it now (this was 5 years ago) but I sure do.

The unbeatable battle.

I've done it - though on this occasion you had to survive ten turns and then a new member would join your party in-battle and, having him broken the monster's armour in his entrance, you'd then be able to defeat the boss. I did however program in what happens if your party is unexpectedly levelled way above anything resembling sanity for that part of the game and manage to somehow deal enough damage to him (9999 HP seems a lot to handle at level 10, but when its shaved to 1000 after an interlude that's a lot more managable) to lead to an early kill. I think for an unwinnable scenario to work it needs to make good plot sense and not seem forced. In FFX there's a sequence where Tidus is stopped by a monk with a gun, after having defeated HUGE mechanical monsters and hordes of the same, it just doesn't make good sense why this one monk would stop him dead. The unwinnable battle scenario gives you a chance to throw spells, etc at something and see them not working, and adds more credability to the plot interlude than just stopping the heroes of a game on the spot.

Blue Magic (and other "missable" skills)

I've always liked Blue Magic (Enemy Skills) but find that the character should have a reason for being able to use it or some similarly game-related explanation. Quistis in FF8 and Kimari in FF10 are examples of this, they hardly use it except on a limit-break of some description, and when they do it's almost useless. However Quina in FF9 collects from enemies in an interesting manner and the skills he acquires make him a pretty useful member of the party (and a healer for when you need one). FF7 managed to have a great thing with the Enemy Skill materia because it could be swapped between characters and it was the materia you were levelling, leading to a single equipment slot containing a lot of great spells . . . and Goblin Punch . . . Still, games such as the Breath of Fire series make getting skills something of a chore, especially in BoF4, and by the time you've got them they're quickly outdated.

So my summary? Blue Magic is great, but it needs to be something you can't just pick-up in a better form elsewhere without the work, and it needs to feel like it is a part of a game/character rather than a throw-away mechanic for completists. In closing, I did the FF7 Enemy Skill challange - beat the game using only enemy skill materia for fun/challange - and found that some of the spells I thought were rubbish were actually pretty darn useful.

Interesting Items in RPGs

I like games that keep items relevant - for example 'Legend of Dragoon' had items that restored a percentage of your max HP rather than a given sum of points, meaning that those low-level potions never became useless when the next and more potent version cropped up. Games like the 'Disgaea' series managed to make items an essential part of play too by levelling them and random-dungeon creation. Then again, who can forget Cecil using the porn . . .

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Both are gramatically correct for a villain's speech - but a good baddie always has a touch of the well spoken about him, it's more sinister than slang!