LOCKEZ'S PROFILE

LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
The Unofficial Squaresoft MUD is a free online game based on the worlds and combat systems of your favorite Squaresoft games. UOSSMUD includes job trees from FFT and FF5, advanced classes from multiple other Square games, and worlds based extremely accurately upon Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and Final Fantasies 5, 6, and 7. Travel through the original worlds and experience events that mirror those of the original games in an online, multiplayer format.

If a large, highly customized MUD, now over 10 years old and still being expanded, with a job system and worlds based on some of the most popular console RPGs seems interesting to you, feel free to log on and check it out. Visit uossmud.sandwich.net for information about logging on.
Born Under the Rain
Why does the jackal run from the rain?

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MUDs

Anyone play MUDs here? They are basically text-based MMORPGs. I am looking for some good ones, as I enjoy being able to chat as I play a game (especially being able to chat with its creators as I play it). I thought this would be a great place to ask, since they have a lot in common with RPG Maker games, being RPGs created by amateur game designers.

Right now the only one I play is the Unofficial Squaresoft MUD, which I actually help build, and which is completely awesome but I want to branch out more. I have played some of the other really popular ones, but I'm interested in the opinions of people here, since I think other RPG Maker designers are a lot more likely to enjoy the same things as me - combat strategy, engaging characters, story-driven gameplay - instead of endlessly deep roguelikes that focus entirely on customization and grind. UOSSMUD is one of the only ones I've found where anything other than the character customization actually captured my interest. Not that customization isn't great, but it doesn't make a game by itself.

Discussion isn't drama.

No comment is ever nonconstructive. Everyone says everything for a reason. If you can't see past your own personal self-esteem issues to perceive that reason, then that's your own fault. Every comment serves a purpose, and you might disagree with that purpose, but that's not an excuse to ever get upset that they simply said it.

DOING IT! - WEEK ELEVEN - Equipables

Also, I'm thinking of adding a koosh flail as a low level whip.

Rm2k3- Can you make your hero target specific cords?

Hmm. Yeah, so here are your options:

1) Edit the map and remove all potential obstacles from the area. Have the hero walk to the target coordinates via Kazesui's method.
2) Temporarily turn on phasing mode (which lets something pass through objects as it moves) and have the hero walk to the target coordinates via Kazesui's method. Be sure to turn phasing mode off afterwards. This will probably look stupid, since the hero will just walk over cliffs and walls and trees.
3) Teleport there. You probably want to use a fade-to-black-and-back method of teleporting.
4) Give the player control of the hero, and wait until the player walks to the location you want. Start the event when the player steps on the right tile.
5) Code up an incredibly complex system of automatic best-path detection. Share it with the community afterwards and we will all love you long time.
6) Use conditions to make different paths for all the different places the hero could be standing. You will probably only need a condition for each obstacle, not necessarily for each tile, if you're smart about it.

Discussion isn't drama.

post=149598
I think the main problem we have with criticism is that much of it is posed in a very direct way...

When posting criticism, the goal should not JUST be to provide feedback in a constructive way, but to also not sound like an all-knowing douche when you do it. If there's no mix of "I like this, AND I like that", many people are bound to construe the comment as "this sucks and I can do better, here's a tip from a pro".

I cannot possibly disagree more strongly. If people aren't able to take direct criticism, they should go back to preschool until they are. The goal of language is to communicate information, and I should not have to couch my language with things I don't mean or that aren't related to my point just to get you to listen. If someone gets offended by someone else, there's roughly a 99.9% chance that the person who feels offended is in the wrong.

post=149598
The only thing that breaks my heart is to see comments like "I was gonna play this, thanks for preventing me from wasting my valuable time".

Sometimes a comment can be useful for this purpose, like when they tell you important information that the game description leaves out, like... oh... the fact that it's a dungeon crawler, or that it has 10 hours of puzzles. There are lots of people who don't like certain types of games, and I guess that's legit, though complaining that a game is of a genre you don't like is kind of dumb. But when the comments are just talking about difficulty or balance or something, yeah, that's pretty dense.

Multiple love interests in a serious rpg... Does it work?

post=149327
post=149204
I've never seen an RPG that was a romantic comedy or an interpersonal drama. They pretty much tend to all be action plots. If you know of an RPG where the story is entirely about interpersonal relationships and has no fighting or espionage or villains, let me know.
This indicates you don't appreciate stories in RPG's at all, short of whatever makes it a war simulator. I don't think we're asking for a decent romantic comedy in RPG Maker format, we're looking to take a step up from token romance in games. Why not make them more interesting?


To put it another way, it implies that a game which revolves around combat must have a story with revolves around combat. If the two are disjointed, then one or the other seems superfluous. The story should drive the game, and the game should drive the story. To make them have almost nothing to do with each-other would be ridiculous, and would make a game feel like it had a very bad story, even if the story were excellently written.

As I said before, I think a story should not flesh out the parts of it that are not its central theme. It makes the game feel disjointed, like a... clusterfuck, for lack of a better word. It feels like things in the story and/or game don't serve any purpose. If you want to make a game where the story has nothing to do with combat, then the game should also have nothing to do with combat. If you want to make a game where the entirety of the meaningful gameplay revolves around preparing for battles and then engaging in them, then the vast majority of the meaningful story should revolve around preparing for battles and then engaging in them.

This is not to say that Bruce Willis can't get the girl at the end, or even that he can't be driven by a strongly romantic motive. But if 50% of a Bruce Willis movie were spent showing and building and evolving his romantic interests in the gorgeous regional manager he just met, and the other 50% were spent launching cars into helicopters, it would be a nightmare.

DOING IT! - WEEK ELEVEN - Equipables

THIS TOPIC HAS VERY LITTLE TO DO WITH EQUIPABLES.

I will now annex this topic in the name of bad puns.

Weapon name: Pistol
Description: The reproductive section of a flower.

Weapon name: Backstabber
Description: A knife used by politicians.

Weapon name: Steel Edge
Description: The rest of it is made of steel, too.

Weapon name: Tanto
Description: Up, then across.

Weapon name: Orichalcum Blade
Description: Man, I hope that's spelled right.

Weapon name: Totally Sweet Dagger
Description: Sometimes stuns the enemy with pure awesomeness.

Weapon name: Blood Scimitar
Description: Doesn't absorb HP. Not even a little bit. Sorry.

Weapon name: Miracle Whip
Description: Holy damage. Goes great on sandwiches.

Weapon name: Sage Staff
Description: Useful for casting Thyme Magic.

The above weapons are all actual items in my game.

Discussion isn't drama.

Personally, if an employee of mine ever failed to tell me when he thought I might be wrong, I'd fire him. By not arguing with me, he is showing that he does not care about making the product the best it can be.

Any time you frown on someone for pointing out the problems with something you decided or created, you're basically saying that you don't care about your decision or creation being improved in every possible way. This is okay if it's something you've abandoned and given up on in favor of other projects, or if there is a severe time constraint that prevents you from working on it any more than you already have. But for something you still care about, why the FUCK would you ever want people not to tell you what they perceive as problems with it? And it also makes me absolutely furious when people fail to talk to me about things I'm working on. I wish my game page had another hundred comments listing all the problems with it and arguing about the best ways to fix them. Though I realize most people have their own games to work on and don't have the time, you'd think they could at least spare ten minutes arguing with me after spending 15 hours playing the game.

DOING IT! - WEEK ELEVEN - Equipables

In an RPG or strategy game, all you need to do to win is know what the optimal strategy is. If you tell the player what the optimal strategy is in all cases, then they can never lose, unless the optimal strategy still has a random chance of causing them to lose. Which is generally considered bullshit.

When I say information-hiding, I don't mean not telling them basic info like the fact that a certain weapon inflicts poison. That can get really annoying, although I know there are a lot of people who enjoy playing games like Nethack that tell you absolutely nothing and the entire game is about discovery. But for most of us, if you hide too much information, then the player can't form any intelligent strategy at all. The things most commonly hidden are things like damage formulas, exact success rates, enemy defenses, and the tactics that enemies use.

As an on-topic example, a hat's description doesn't really need to indicate that it will reduce enemy damage from (300-400)^(enemy attack power/87) to (300-400)^(enemy attack power/91), except for enemies with armor piercing abilities, who will ignore the hat, or that have been buffed with Bravery status, whose final damage will be raised by an addition 1.1 exponent. It's enough to simply say that it increases defense power by 4, and leave the player to wonder what that number 4 really represents in the damage formula.

DOING IT! - WEEK ELEVEN - Equipables

If working with XP or VX, you can simply show all of this info as comparisons to the player's current equipment, the same way it compares attack and defense power to the player's current equipment by default. Granted, it takes up a little more space in the shop screen, but you didn't need the font to be that big anyway.

With that in mind, why would you ever list the weapon's main stat in its description? You can see them when buying or equipping the item, even in the default uncustomized screens. Even in RM2K3 you can at least see a comparison, though it's only an up or down arrow instead of numbers.

There's something to be said for players having to figure things out, too. For a strategic game like an RPG, figuring it out is the entirety of the challenge. So if you tell the player absolutely everything, then your game has no challenge and it's basically impossible to lose. Just don't take the information-hiding too far, or you'll end up with Nethack. There's a balance somewhere in the middle.