JUDE'S PROFILE

Leviathan is really easy. Bahamut is straightforward but hits very hard, so just bring multiple forms of healing--I went with two drain abilities and Curaja, and still cut it close a few times (mostly because Steal HP was so weak with an off-record dagger).

author=Corfaisus
Fuck me.

Happy?

Fine. You win. I'm gonna go hang myself.

You do you, Craze. You make your game as you see fit. Sometimes disregarding the three-tile rule and "academia" (there's a massive difference between memorizing something and actually utilizing it; any professor will tell you this) might allow you to create your own style.

Paint by numbers. No matter what you do in RPG Maker, 90% of the work is done for you. Stop shitting on others because you're absolutely no better.

I was never here.

Still no actionable information contained in this post. Corfaisus, I don't think you even know what makes a town good and this is why you can't provide anything other than "try harder."

author=Craze
Red, you're right and now I feel silly -- but only a little, because there ARE all the houses and stuff that just kinda felt "there" imo. Even the part with the big skeleton on the bridge that had a lot to do with the neighboring town felt pretty blah to me. The only town areas that really stuck with me from CT are the starving, failing biodome, and the millenial fair (because ofc).

If anything, what Chrono Trigger proves is that if towns aren't central to your design, then you should minimize a player's interaction with them, which is what Chrono Trigger does.

author=Corfaisus
The only way it's going to become more actionable or insightful is if I'm already in your game. I don't know your game, I can't tell you how to make it. What works for your game doesn't work for every game.

Nah, you don't need a specific reference to talk about design principles--at least I don't, and neither do people much savvier than I am.

Let's talk about an aspect of layout, which is supposed to be one of your specialties, which I'll refer to as Centrality.

The centrality of a place can be evaluated by its connectivity with other trafficked places. In other words, you want to think about your town's layout in clusters, and then to plot the most important cluster central to the other clusters--this doesn't necessarily mean the geographic center of the town, but the traversable center where all paths coalesce, which is most often the geographic center or the town entrance. Intuitively, this means the item shop is in proximity to the weapon shop, which is in proximity to armor shop. This is intuitive to you because shopping districts exist in all RPGs and in real cities too. This improves the player's experience in a town because a frequent reason for a player returning to a town is to restock items and upgrade their gear. By centralizing this function, a player's time isn't wasted by having to trek from one corner of the map to the other.

However, this extends beyond shopping. If an NPC is useful for scenario advancement, it is beneficial for that NPC to also have high centrality to improve their discoverability. This is the reason you often find important NPCs standing near the inn, or prostitutes by airport motels. This helps with a game's pacing, but also cultivates and then rewards player expectations--I can find things where I think I can find them based on intuition and previous experience.

Ideally, to get the most out of both Centrality and Explorability, your centralized NPCs are not critical for scenario advancement, but instead direct players to the more hidden fringes of the map, where the critical NPC resides. This rewards a player's intuition, but also the player who wants to discover the critical path independently. This is a principle that even the first Dragon Quest understands. One of the most centralized NPCs the town of Rimuldar tells you that somewhere in town is a hard-to-find Magic Key shop, a part of the scenario's critical path.

This is just an obvious example, but it's not hard to look at design through a more academic lense without having a specific game to review.

author=Corfaisus
The answer to all the questions posed in this thread? Maximize your effort/whatever by making all towns a menu with a pretty graphic behind them. Draw one thing, throw in a couple message boxes and you're done. Now wasn't that easy? But here's the thing, that's not the answer. You don't want menus in your face all day, you want to be able to live in this fantasy world. This requires that you take the time out of your day to develop this fantasy world.

You know how I got to be so "good" (I don't think it's a matter of being good or better than others, so much as I'm finding myself less new things to learn)? People stomped on my balls with some cold hard truth. Once my balls had the time to heal, I went back and looked at my abomination of a map. I made some changes until I thought it was at a point where I wouldn't get my balls stomped on again.

A few things. First, Craze's opening post specifically states we're talking about towns that aren't just a menu. Second, "try harder" isn't actionable information. Third, you're equating tile layout with a town being good, when it's only a small aspect of it. This post isn't about how to do the least, it's about how to get the most out of what you do.