LUCIDSTILLNESS'S PROFILE

I like to write a bunch of words on small pieces of paper, then mix them all up in a hat and draw them out in a random order. I then use that name, and try to think of what kind of story and gameplay mechanics said game will have.

Let's see, my next game will be called... "Predatory Ghost Fungus Sword: Twilight of the Salamander Maids".

Time to get to work!

@yuna21
They are very nice tiles, and that is some good mapping. In addition to the height error Liberty mentioned, I notice that the lower staircase appears to have lines separating the individual sections, whereas the upper one does not. I think the upper staircase looks much more natural, so I would recommend redoing the lower one in the same way.

Hmm, you guys raise many interesting points. I'll respond to Calunio's inquiry and then give some more of my thoughts.

Do you make games for money?
No, and at present I don't plan to. Game making is strictly a hobby of mine.

Given the chance, would you work on commercial games?
It would have to be a project I was interested in, as my present career doesn't coincide with game development at all. It might be fun to at some point, but I couldn't work on it to the extent that it would interfere with my day job.

Do you aspire to make games for money one day?
Again, no. I would however like to make games that were up to a professional standard and that people enjoy. It's always nice when people like and respect your work.

Why would you NOT make games for money?
Game design is a hobby for me, as it is for others, and as a hobby there is no pressure, there are no deadlines, and there is no 'mass market appeal' to worry about. If I were working for a game company, I would have to worry about those things, which would limit my creativity severely and take all of the fun out of things.

Wow, really? Am I the only one who makes games just as a hobby and would not go commercial under any circumstances?
If I were ever to work with a team of indy developers on a project that I really liked, we might sell it for money. That's really the only circumstance under which I could see myself 'going commercial'.

None of this is to say that I think anything artistic should be a hobby or should be free; indeed, professional artists contribute a great deal to a society's culture, and they have just as much right to make money from their work as an engineer or businessman. All I'm saying is that, in my case, game design will most likely remain a hobby and an outlet for creativity.

author=kentona
Flat difficulty curves are bad and boring. It's like punishing players for making progress.

This scenario often plays itself out: taking into consideration the toughness of all the monsters, the value of the items to be found, the skills and equipment available to the player, you'll see that game designers have created experiences that get steadily harder and harder from the beginning of the game up to the very end.

Definition of the Difficulty Trap:
As the avatar gets better, the difficulty of the game is increasing at the same rate, so the player is effectively standing still from a gameplay/progression perspective.

Mistaking constant increase in difficulty for challenge is a common misconception.

In order to avoid the Trap, break up your game world so that the player has absolutely no idea how easy or how hard the next area is going to be. The value of a game that uses a modulating difficulty scale is that players have no expectation either good or bad about what awaits them around the next corner. Before, in the Trap, the player simply expects things to get worse - a major turnoff. Now they don't know what to expect, inciting their curiosity and driving them to explore further.

Follow up insanely difficult areas with simpler ones. Have times where the difficulty increases gradually and other times where it increases sharply. Even consider adding a difficult plateau period. This kind of game design will go a surprisingly long way to making your game more enjoyable.

I agree with these statements; keeping a game fresh and engaging isn't the sort of thing one can plot out on a chart, as it requires constantly refreshing and reinventing challenges. To some degree, you have to use your designer instincts. This isn't just true of RPGs; it applies to every kind of game.

It's actually for this reason that I don't like level caps or linear progression; it might help the designer to control the flow of the game, but it removes a lot of the freedom of choice from the player and makes the player feel like their progress is very artificial. This gets especially frustrating in a game like Final Fantasy VIII, where the enemies level up with the party, a system which serves only to make fights longer and more tedious. I'm all for letting players 'grind' and level up at their own pace, provided the player really does have control over their progression and isn't just 'going through the motions' because the designer just wanted the game to be longer.

For example, in the wonderful game Cthulhu saves the world, every time a character levels up, the player has a choice of which new abilities to learn and which stats to increase, which means that even if a player grinds in a given area, there is still a huge amount of strategy to be considered regarding character growth. Indeed, this system actually discourages leveling up all at once, as the player doesn't know which skills they might need down the road, and there is always the risk of skipping over useful skills. At the same time, even if the player makes a 'mistake', the game still allows for the skills of other party members to compensate, and allows for multiple methods of defeating the game's various bosses. It is a very clever game that is worth studying for any RPG Maker, imo.

You guys raise some good points; my intent was not to segregate the community into rigid 'ranks', as that sounds rather like the most awful thing ever. The idea behind the tags is that they would be entirely voluntary, and serve as a way of showing people instantly what stage a developer was at. There wouldn't be anything preventing a 'newbie' from making a game with an expert tag, and there would be no obligation to use the tags at all.

But yeah, I definitely don't want to 'rank' users.