JUDE'S PROFILE

In the context of menus, I use pointers to populate a spell menu in Necropolis's custom battle system. Since spells can be learned in a few different orders and taking up multiple pages, I needed a way to present them cleanly, without gaps. Unfortunately you still have to manually set the pictures, but pointers let me store spell IDs/costs/etc more easily overall. The spells are split into pages so that the interface matches another menu, but it can easily be switched to scrolling (think: item menu, for example) since doing menus that way is fairly flexible so long as the variables know where to look. That's just an example of how they can be used.

I find pointers very confusing to use and easily lose track of what I'm doing and getting my brain wires crossed (I have a poor short-term, working memory). The best way I've found to mitigate this is to duplicate all the variable events in Excel, so I can rapidly visualize and track what I'm doing before eventing it in RM2K3. That way I can punch a number into a field and see how everything will output if my cell pointers are set correctly. An alternative is to create a debug display in RM2K3 itself, but that takes more time.

Doesn't fit my game at all, but maybe if I make something a little brighter later on it will come in handy.

I was going to echo what Blitzen said. Locked doors usually lead me to believe can open them with the correct key.

Players get pissed off if you forget to actually tell them the door's locked, though.

Well, this is largely because the first half-dozen doors in that neighborhood were locked, and since they weren't labeled any differently than doors that could be opened, I just assumed that -all- doors were aesthetic only and couldn't be opened.

When I was in the third grade I made a "game" on one of the black and white Apple Macintosh computers at my school. It was called Pholders and it was a choose-your-own-adventure. Basically, it was just a series of folders embedded within folders, with each folder representing a player's choice. Most folders contained a text document describing the scenario. It never really got finished because I ran into some kind of folder cap. That was it, really, though I've made a few board games if those count.

RPG Maker came into my life over a decade ago. I was at a Castlevania ezboard and somebody posted a link to Don Miguel's ezboard. The big new game that was just released was called Robocks, which I thought was amazing since it was only created by two people. Of course, once I downloaded the editor and a few other RM2K games, I realized Robocks was pretty generic... weird how that works.

It was pretty easy software to learn and it is also the reason I started drawing pixels. I will say, I make jRPGs because it is RPG Maker. It kind of leads you in that direction when all of its event functions and interface lend itself to that genre. If I could just as easily create a hack-n-slash game like Diablo in it, that is probably what I would've done. Or a strategy RPG.

There are three games I've played within the last 12 months or so that have a staggering amount of content considering they were created during the DLC Era: Castlevania Lords of Shadow is like a twenty hour action adventure romp. Witcher 2 is the best RPG I've played this year, and is the polar opposite to Dragon Age 2 n terms of robust content. Deus Ex 3 took me almost 30 hours to complete. Not every modern game lacks value.