HASVERS'S PROFILE

You can even make a whole game out of your system if you wish, as long as you don't expect judges to play it as part of the judging process. Give us a way to go only through the battles you really want us to judge, and you're good to do anything else you want.

author=Ilan14
For the way you describe it, it may look that to implement the AI feature I may need a script for that...

It should be possible only with battle events, I think. But once again it depends on your version of RM, I haven't used any since RMXP (where I am almost sure it was possible to do this sort of things in eventing)

author=Merlandese
I won't be submitting any ideas. But I'd be interested in judging. It might be nice to have a judge who isn't completely on board with the concepts in the premise. XD

Haha okay I'll keep that in mind (Sviel said he might also be interested so I'm waiting a bit), although I'd be curious to know what you disagree with. We can have that conversation here or in the comments of the blog post or by PM, as you wish. Note that I'm all for contestants turning out to have more clever ideas than mine - that's kinda the point, else I would just do it myself ;)

author=kentona
It means there is a 97% chance I will not submit anything.

Too bad. I liked your team name and all.

author=Thiamor
You build up your 999 HP, you unlock your ultimate skill which allows you to do either a lot of damage, or a lot of buffing def/off wise, or a lot of healing and you have 3 or 4 people each with a unique limit style that helps the others survive in some way.

You've got part of the idea right - it's indeed about actions becoming available at different moments of the battle (and if possible, other actions becoming unavailable).
But what you're suggesting is one of the reason why I'd like to avoid MP/Limit Breaks altogether: it would be best if there were no ultimate skills, i.e. if skills did different things rather than being the same with various degrees of power.

As soon as you have a MP gauge there is the automatic idea that "more expensive = stronger", which kind of kills the impulse to look for truly different skills.
So I would much prefer if you could drop that part and implement similar ideas without MP and without a linear scale of "how powerful a skill is" ;)

ilan> erm I will have to ask kentona for details about the event locker.

author=LouisCyphre
When you set a limit on battles, you're clearly only referring to the ones mandatory for completion, surely. It seems wasteful to design a compelling game and then not give the opportunity to stretch it if the player so chooses.

Sure, if you want to make an actual game from it, be my guest! Just do not expect the judges to play through more than a few battles before making a decision, so it seems reasonable to submit here a demonstration of the system rather than the entire game.

author=karins_soulkeeper
Do you have a tabulated criteria available?

Not really, because to be honest I have no idea what people are going to come up with. This event is at once very constrained and very freeform, so it's hard to guess. The one thing I can say for sure is that we will only evaluate your ideas and how well they translate into tactical decisions from the player's perspective.

Everything is a means to an end here, even a text-based game in html would stand a chance (provided the interface clearly and readily conveys all the necessary information).

But I will give a thought about how to grade ideas. Perhaps I could break down the score into various aspects such as: originality, elegance (no wasted effort), accessibility (clarity and interface) and tactical depth.


CashmereCat> I laughed, but if you do it one more time I will use my ban cannon! Well I don't have one, so I will ask kentona. Note that the ban cannon should be a thing.

author=turkeyDawg
Is this contest specifically for turn-based systems?

Let's say anything where there is no time pressure on the player, since it's about thinking your tactics through. You might come up with something more clever than turns, but I got nothing. It's perfectly possible to have things like simultaneous turns, though (a la Vandal Hearts, every time an ally does something, an enemy acts at the same instant), or planning for multiple turns at once as in certain board games.

Concerning the "AI": if the actions at the enemy's disposal obey the same locking/unlocking pattern as the heroes', it will necessarily make them more interesting than the usual RPG opponents (even if the AI is terrible and only picks randomly, at least the range of what it can choose will evolve in time). This is something that I should have stressed more in the rules.

Apart from that, thanks to both of you for the inspirations! I think I'll update the Inspirations section on the contest page regularly with suggestions made here in the comments.

author=Avee
If you feature battles in your game but want to be original about the way they are resolved, feature other desirable goals than the "bring enemy's HP to zero" one.

I agree and I would love to have that discussion next. Still, the whole point of the contest is that Sviel has convinced me that just that goal, and just a simple turn-based RPG, can already contain a lot of strategy if you're willing to look for it. In that case, being creative doesn't necessarily mean adding more things - on the contrary, I would think that RPGs suffer from having too many things that don't really make a change.

Edit: ninja'ed on this one ;)