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LDanarkos
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I've been playing with RM2K since 2000. Been working on my current project since 2006. My approach to game-making involves attempting to do things that I've never seen in other games, and incorporating all of the elements of film making (lighting, music, symbolism, deep structure, plot twists, panning, zooming, cuts, etc.) into game making. The RPG's I've spent the most time playing are FF1 and FF6, followed by Super Mario RPG, FF4, and FF5.
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Mini-Games
Some mini-games / puzzles I've made include...
-The standard rock-rolling puzzle
-An Euler walk (To complete it, you much step on every spot of the path exactly once)
-A soccer game
-A trail puzzle (Like in Narshe in FF6. You see an object walk a certain path, and you have to walk the path identically)
-A memory game that's combined with a projectile-dodging aspect that adds difficulty to remembering details correctly.
-The on-off button puzzle where whenever you depress a button, it also toggles every button adjacent to it. The object being to set them all to the off / down position (like in Super Mario RPG)
An idea that occurred to me just now is you could have a volleyball minigame. Perhaps whenever the opposing team hits the ball, it goes up high in the air where you can't see it, random numbers are generated, and then a little shadow appears where it's going to land, then the shadow gets bigger, and bigger, and then the ball lands, and if you're under it, then you hit it back up. So you're effectively chasing a shadow repeatedly. If you want, you can modify it so that the littlest shadow appears two spaces short of where the balls going to land, then the medium shadow is one space above where the ball will land, then the largest shadow is where the ball eventually lands. The direction you're facing when you hit the ball could give you some control over where you hit the ball to (i.e. which quadrant of their court you hit the ball to), and use of the enter and escape keys could give you some additional form of control (i.e. timing a key press correctly could increase your accuracy of the ball landing in-bounds; enter could be a short-range hit that's ideal when closer to the net, and escape could be a more long-range hit that's ideal when you're further away from the net).
A less fun sub-game idea I had involved some sort of stock market system. I don't remember most of the details I had in mind, but one way of implementing it could be to invest your spare currency in commodities with a currently low market price and sell them later in the game when its price is at a peak. You could potentially make it so that certain commodities are generally cheaper or more expensive when bought in one city than another. You could make a feature where the more you horde a commodity and/or use-up it's supply (i.e. if you drink 1,000 potions), the supply goes down so the price goes up (which would make the late game interesting as the price of items would increase the more you abuse them). You could also make it so that certain in-game actions affect the supply of a commodity (i.e. you raid a diamond mine, it caves-in or something in the process, the supply of diamonds goes down and the price goes up).
-The standard rock-rolling puzzle
-An Euler walk (To complete it, you much step on every spot of the path exactly once)
-A soccer game
-A trail puzzle (Like in Narshe in FF6. You see an object walk a certain path, and you have to walk the path identically)
-A memory game that's combined with a projectile-dodging aspect that adds difficulty to remembering details correctly.
-The on-off button puzzle where whenever you depress a button, it also toggles every button adjacent to it. The object being to set them all to the off / down position (like in Super Mario RPG)
An idea that occurred to me just now is you could have a volleyball minigame. Perhaps whenever the opposing team hits the ball, it goes up high in the air where you can't see it, random numbers are generated, and then a little shadow appears where it's going to land, then the shadow gets bigger, and bigger, and then the ball lands, and if you're under it, then you hit it back up. So you're effectively chasing a shadow repeatedly. If you want, you can modify it so that the littlest shadow appears two spaces short of where the balls going to land, then the medium shadow is one space above where the ball will land, then the largest shadow is where the ball eventually lands. The direction you're facing when you hit the ball could give you some control over where you hit the ball to (i.e. which quadrant of their court you hit the ball to), and use of the enter and escape keys could give you some additional form of control (i.e. timing a key press correctly could increase your accuracy of the ball landing in-bounds; enter could be a short-range hit that's ideal when closer to the net, and escape could be a more long-range hit that's ideal when you're further away from the net).
A less fun sub-game idea I had involved some sort of stock market system. I don't remember most of the details I had in mind, but one way of implementing it could be to invest your spare currency in commodities with a currently low market price and sell them later in the game when its price is at a peak. You could potentially make it so that certain commodities are generally cheaper or more expensive when bought in one city than another. You could make a feature where the more you horde a commodity and/or use-up it's supply (i.e. if you drink 1,000 potions), the supply goes down so the price goes up (which would make the late game interesting as the price of items would increase the more you abuse them). You could also make it so that certain in-game actions affect the supply of a commodity (i.e. you raid a diamond mine, it caves-in or something in the process, the supply of diamonds goes down and the price goes up).
RPG cliches
author=CrazeThat's a lame name. I was thinking it should be called The Great Fashion Designer Search Featuring John Rambo. That would've been a classy name. The next time a company steals my idea 5 years before I think of it, they should consult me when they're working on a title.LockeZDanarkosI would play this game
If you want to make a game where the hero kills 10,000 enemies to get revenge for someone copying his fashion designs... good luck with that.
seriously, that is the plot of this game
also, possibly shadow hearts (3): from the new world
RPG cliches
Any list of RPG cliches will typically range the full gamut of possibilities from truly cliche and trite, not even true, to completely necessary and logical, and so on. For example, the collect the crystals / orbs / star pieces / rings / tri-force cliche is not only trite, but there is thin justification for why you would even use it. A cliche about the main character being spikey-haired... not sure if that's even statistically true, are we basing this on FF7? Any cliche involving flashbacks, tragic flaws, etc. isn't a "cliche," it's an element of story-telling, a traditional part of the tragic comedy, etc.. Cliches involving the hero's village being destroyed or some other wronging is basically the necessary element of the hero having a motive to embark on his/her journey. Of course, the motive doesn't always have to be the same in every game, but the most logical motives for a possessed hero going to the ends of the Earth are also going to be the most commonly used motives. If you want to make a game where the hero kills 10,000 enemies to get revenge for someone copying his fashion designs... good luck with that.
How much do y'all like midi?
I think it's funny that every 4.5-5 star RM game I've played has been mediocre at best, but we've got people being snobby about midi music. It's almost like... let's make games that are worse than SNES RPG's in every way except a superior music file format.
I semi-agree, why use midi's if you have access to mp3's, etc.? But I've been working on an RM2K game for something like a bazillion years, and if people stopped playing it because it had a relatively good-sounding midi soundtrack, then that's just ridiculous. Might as well deem FF6 unplayable while you're at it. But yeah, if I was using a newer RM, no question I'd use mp3's. I just think it's the last thing to nitpick when every other aspect of every game is lower quality than a midi file.
I semi-agree, why use midi's if you have access to mp3's, etc.? But I've been working on an RM2K game for something like a bazillion years, and if people stopped playing it because it had a relatively good-sounding midi soundtrack, then that's just ridiculous. Might as well deem FF6 unplayable while you're at it. But yeah, if I was using a newer RM, no question I'd use mp3's. I just think it's the last thing to nitpick when every other aspect of every game is lower quality than a midi file.
Length of games, number of characters, and various other things!
lol @ 53 characters. I'm sure they all have personalities, unique combat skills, lots of background info, etc.. I'm sure the player forms an emotional connection with all of them.
Smaller projects is good advice. I've been working on my project since 2006. Such a mistake.
Smaller projects is good advice. I've been working on my project since 2006. Such a mistake.
The Death Penalty
The only death-handling strategies I believe in are...
-Don't make the player rewatch the same cut scene over and over each time. Cut scenes are only meant to be seen once.
-Similarly, don't make the player repeat anything that they wouldn't want to repeat. For example, some sort of lengthy customization with various decisions made.
-Don't set the player too far back time-wise, assuming responsible saving.
-Ideally, each time they try, they should be closer to success, due to better strategy and/or better preparation (leveling). If dying is a result of a game of chance, or otherwise a game of skill that is too luck-intensive, like playing a game of darts without any dart-throwing skill, the player could feel like there's no assurance that they'll ever get past it.
-Don't make the player rewatch the same cut scene over and over each time. Cut scenes are only meant to be seen once.
-Similarly, don't make the player repeat anything that they wouldn't want to repeat. For example, some sort of lengthy customization with various decisions made.
-Don't set the player too far back time-wise, assuming responsible saving.
-Ideally, each time they try, they should be closer to success, due to better strategy and/or better preparation (leveling). If dying is a result of a game of chance, or otherwise a game of skill that is too luck-intensive, like playing a game of darts without any dart-throwing skill, the player could feel like there's no assurance that they'll ever get past it.
Non-combat skills & party members
You can make dungeons like Zelda games where there's 10 locked doors and 10 keys. You can by-pass the need for a key if you pick a lock successfully. You can only attempt to pick a lock if the thief is in your party. If you're a good eventer and decent spriter, you can make a lock-picking skill game that the player plays to attempt to open the lock. In that case, you could make it difficult and annoying, and let the player attempt it as many times as they want. Otherwise, just make it a probability thing, and if you fail the probability check, then that's the only chance you get. You can rationalize it as the character kept trying to pick it repeatedly until he/she got tired and stopped attempted to pick it.
My interior, help me improve my design
You still have a lot of progress to make. It reminds me of how I designed maps in the beginning. Do these things on basically every map ever:
-Don't make your maps overly geometric. Meaning don't make everything a perfect grid with a bunch of rectangles and everything in alignment and symmetric. Let's go back and look at two of the previous examples...
These two illustrate the point better than the other two. Look at the shape of the floor plans. It's not very rectangular or symmetric, is it?
-Include a bazillion details. Seriously, one table? Think about including art on the walls, multiple plants, rugs, multiple NPC's, lighting / shadow effects possibly, maybe a cat or dog, put a thing or multiple things on the table like books, additional chairs that nobody is sitting in (don't necessarily arrange them perfectly symmetrically, remember?), statues, other furniture, a clock, random cracks in the walls, random pots, etc.. In bedrooms, you can have dressers, lamps, a foot stool, a pair of slippers, dirty clothes on the floor, a teddy bear, art, plants, a night stand, etc.
-Pick your floor plan and dimensions a little more strategically. What 2-story house do you know of with a giant, empty hallway on the second floor? If you picked your dimensions better, and put the bedrooms in a bit more of an L-shape, the empty hallway space could be much smaller.
-Study good maps and look for the things that they do that you don't.
-Youtube mapping tutorials. You can search something like RPGMaker mapping tutorial or RMVX mapping tutorial or w/e.
Take those tips and apply them to the extreme. Don't just make a slight little tiny improvement in your mapping. Your maps from now on should look nothing like the old maps.
-Don't make your maps overly geometric. Meaning don't make everything a perfect grid with a bunch of rectangles and everything in alignment and symmetric. Let's go back and look at two of the previous examples...
These two illustrate the point better than the other two. Look at the shape of the floor plans. It's not very rectangular or symmetric, is it?
-Include a bazillion details. Seriously, one table? Think about including art on the walls, multiple plants, rugs, multiple NPC's, lighting / shadow effects possibly, maybe a cat or dog, put a thing or multiple things on the table like books, additional chairs that nobody is sitting in (don't necessarily arrange them perfectly symmetrically, remember?), statues, other furniture, a clock, random cracks in the walls, random pots, etc.. In bedrooms, you can have dressers, lamps, a foot stool, a pair of slippers, dirty clothes on the floor, a teddy bear, art, plants, a night stand, etc.
-Pick your floor plan and dimensions a little more strategically. What 2-story house do you know of with a giant, empty hallway on the second floor? If you picked your dimensions better, and put the bedrooms in a bit more of an L-shape, the empty hallway space could be much smaller.
-Study good maps and look for the things that they do that you don't.
-Youtube mapping tutorials. You can search something like RPGMaker mapping tutorial or RMVX mapping tutorial or w/e.
Take those tips and apply them to the extreme. Don't just make a slight little tiny improvement in your mapping. Your maps from now on should look nothing like the old maps.
Resource Museum
:-) Yes. I'm not much of a spriter, so I usually resort to taking resources from the internet, except for these, and the occasional edit when necessary. I'd love to post a game, but my project, that I've been working-on for 5 years, feels like it's still got plenty more time to go. *Rushes to get it finished sooner*
Games - Tester
Games - Other
