LOCKEZ'S PROFILE

This is the main character from Vindication, totally custom. Some of the other characters are pieced together or are partially custom, but the main character was done from scratch. Of course it was still done in RTP style, because I didn't want to make *everything* from scratch, and I'm not really good enough at pixeling to come up with my own style.

The top left character is obviously not the same character, but it was also done from scratch. I redid one of the RTP heroes from RPG Maker 95 in the style of RPG Maker 2003.

I also made battle poses for my main character, of course:

Battle poses page 1:
Battle poses page 2:
Battle poses page 3:

You'll notice the giant sword at the end didn't quite fit when he attacks. I had to turn that one into a battle animation.

Even though RM2K3's battle sprites are by default quite a bit larger than the map sprites, I went with making them the same size. On the downside, this meant I had to make them all myself, even for my three RTP characters. On the upside, this cut the work required down by a shitload for the eight and a half non-RTP characters, because I didn't have to pixel everyone in two different styles.

He has a giant sized graphic too, for when he appears as an enemy in one fight:

I don't like the enemy graphic. But I don't like any of the enemy graphics in Vindication except for the imperial soldiers. Which is why I use them in like six different dungeons. The fight would probably be a lot more terrifying if not for his idiotic poofy ankle pants and his god-awful hair.

Normally in most games you can only get one character as your romantic interest at a time. And I was assuming that the character who is your romantic interest is the only one with whom you can do your ULTIMATE C-C-C-COMBO.

If you can get to full power with everyone, then that would certainly solve the problem I mentioned above. It might also cheapen the feeling of importance of getting your relationship to the final level, though. Everything is always a trade-off.

Fair warning, if you make your relationship system affect battle then the player will basically have no choice but to pick the character he uses most in battle as his love interest. If you don't like limiting the player's story options based on their gameplay choices (or vice-versa, depending on whether the player thinks story or gameplay is more important), you might not want to go this route.

Also, if you have some characters who are forcibly present on the team a lot more often than others, it could get in the way of letting the player freely choose. The character who's on the team the most will be the "default" love interest, due to the fact that the player will most often need that character to be stronger.

Not to say it's a bad idea, these are just some things to think about when designing how it works.

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My most retarded idea was placing your typical JRPG storyline in a historical Eastern European context. Long story short, it was pretty retarded.

Man, that actually sounds pretty interesting. Better than a generically awful fantasy world, anyway. And a lot less overdone than western Europe. I am usually super fond of historical settings in fantasy stories. What about it turned out badly?

I applied for a game design school (Sanford-Brown College) and went to visit the school. I even took the school's entrance exam. They did not accept the ACT or SAT for some reason that they couldn't seem to explain very well. When the questions on the school's entrance exam only went up to fifth grade arithmetic and did not include any pre-algebra or beyond at all, I withdrew my application and walked out. FYI the school did not actually teach any math classes. This means they were teaching game design in such a way that no math would be involved at any point in the curriculum. That was just unacceptable.

Based on conversations I've had with a few of me friends who have studied game design, their overwhelming problem with the programs was that they never actually learned how to make games enjoyable or well balanced. All three friends (who attended three different schools) said that no actual design principles were taught. Only the technical aspects, such as graphics, programming, etc were ever addressed.

This post might be totally unhelpful to you, since I didn't answer most of your questions, but there you go.