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[Community Project] Missiongarde -- Class refining in progress

author=Max McGee link=topic=3474.msg70144#msg70144 date=1239301009
I think Wizard and Archmage should do a name switch then, at least with the set up I just gave there.

I concur. Sounds more Archmagey and Wizardy that way.

What Are You Working On?

Lost Legacy
Just finished Patch #6b, collecting data and fixing any bugs. Seriously considering my options with this game now.

Other Stuff
Pondering other game projects now, not sure what idea I want to go with. Getting inspired too much to do everything.

Just another day...

[Community Project] Missiongarde -- Class refining in progress

Summoner
Class Rank: Advanced)
Class Points: (Omitted since Max Magee did it first)
Description: Everything that is wrong with an RP---I mean, a class of mage that summons mighty creatures of lore(tm) into combat for him.

HP:
MP:
STR:
DEF:
INT:
AGL:

Battle Commands: (Explain any new ones)
FIGHT
SUMMON - Summons one of the Mighty Creatures of Lore(tm) into battle to devastate the enemy with a fancy, gratuitously graphic intensive, attack!
COMMUNE - Needed to create a link between the Summoner and Summoned Creature. Also will restore some of those badly needed Magic Points.
ITEM
ESCAPE

Spells:
NOTE: Summoners do not gain their summons with levels. Instead, they must enter a spirit circle and do battle with the elemental to gain their power. All Summoners start with one summon, usually Fire, Lighting, or Water.

The first rank are Elemental, creatures that specifically utilize one elemental trait.

(Summon Salamander - Summons a Fire Elemental for moderate fire-typed damage)
(Summon Yeti - Summons a Ice Elemental for moderate ice-typed damage)
(Summon Will-o-wisp - Summons a Lighting Elemental for moderate lightning-typed damage)
(Summon Naiad - Summons a Water Elemental for moderate water-typed damage)
(Summon Whirlwind - Summons a Air Elemental for moderate air-typed damage)
(Summon Dyrad - Summons a Earth Elemental for moderate earth-typed damage)

The second rank are the Loa, which embodies the particular element or attribute completely.

(Summon Efreet - Summons a Fire Loa for moderate-to-heavy fire-typed damage)
(Summon Wendigo - Summons a Ice Loa for moderate-to-heavy ice-typed damage)
(Summon Thunderbird - Summons a Loa Elemental for moderate-to-heavy lightning-typed damage)
(Summon Naga - Summons a Water Loa for moderate-to-heavy water-typed damage)
(Summon Djinni - Summons a Air Loa for moderate-to-heavy air-typed damage)
(Summon Golem - Summons a Earth Loa for moderate-to-heavy earth-typed damage)

The third rank is the Totems. Totems are the top of the foodchain for an element or attribute.

(Summon Phoenix - Summons the Fire Totem for heavy fire-typed damage)
(Summon Snow Queen - Summons the Ice Totem for heavy ice-typed damage)
(Summon Raiden - Summons the Lighting Totem for heavy lightning-typed damage)
(Summon Poseidon - Summons the Water Totem for heavy water-typed damage)
(Summon Nin'lil - Summons the Air Totem for heavy air-typed damage)
(Summon TItan - Summons the Earth Totem for heavy earth-typed damage)

There will be more, and some non-elemental, when I get a free moment.

Condition/Attribute Resistances: Somewhat resistant to magic.

Dual Wield? No
Mighty Guard? No
AI Control? No
Lock Equip.? No
EXP leveling: (Average)
Equipment Notes: Summoners are limited to one class of weapon. Whether this be a whip (like Rydia), a rod (like Garnet), or a staff (like Yuna), is up to the specific tastes of someone else, since I personally want to see the Summoners wield a Colt .45, or a Tomahawk, whichever looks cooler. Okay, after thinking about the whole summoning circle motif, I think that the Summoner should be limited to the Chakram, a circle-like weapon.

General Notes: It's a summoner. You can even give it a near horn on its head if you want to completely rip off Squareenix. Now to be serious, I can see the Summoners being like Tribal Shaman, dressing in furskins, wearing paint (or tatoo) depicting runes and the names of their Summon Gods/Totems/Whatnot. I would recommend that the Summoners be treated in this fashion, as it makes sense from a story standpoint that any magi that directly summons things would have a spiritual connection.

EDIT: Added more content.

Community History

I'll give just the RM Community History, and not the full 'How I Got Into Game Development History', since that is like writing another article. >_>

Before RPG Maker
Some time around 1997, aka back when Dance Remix's like Planet Soul and La Bouche were all the rave on the radio, and my hair stopped somewhere around the small of my back, I did an internet search one evening for 'Game Engine' (on Excite and Hotbot no less) and came up with something called 'Vecna's Extraordinary Roleplaying Game Engine'.

V.E.R.G.E.

At the time, I was running several tabletop RPGs for my friends, and given my long history throughout High School of designing video games, I thought that this was pretty exciting, a game engine that did the work for you, freeing up your time and creativity to develop the stories and characters. Amazing concept! Yeah, this was my first foray into game engines.

After cracking open the 7z (or was it gzip) file that contained VERGE 1.0, I started to read the documentation and play through the demo files. I was astounded by the shear awesomeness of this new-fangled engine, bedazzled by the use of its digital music (ooohhhhh..MOD, s3m, and XM...pretty) and otherwise just enthralled by the idea of making a full-scale RPG.

So I started to gather some resources, make my own sprite set via Photoshop 4.0, and hammered out a demo of a game called Nexus Quest. The demo included the prologue and first chapter of the game, giving the player about three hours of gameplay (VERGE 1.0 had no battle engine, so the demo was pretty much walking around). I zipped up the demo, uploaded it, and got rave reviews. Then one of the VERGE community users tore the demo to shreds, Darken-style, calling it the most contrived piece of cr@p ever. In response, I did what any eighteen year old artist would do when his 'baby' was insulted, I threw a frigging fit.

At least I had the common sense to do it offline.

After I stopped having a massive sh!t-fit, I took the criticism, applied it to what I knew about video games anyway, and saw that this guy had some valid points. I e-mailed him and asked him for clarification on his points of criticism, and any suggestions he may have to improve the demo. Apparently, this guy has never had a person take criticism well before, because my rational response shocked the crap out of him. He give me more constructive feedback, which I went back and applied to the demo of Nexus Quest. A few weeks later, I uploaded the demo and got even more rave reviews. (Pro-tip: Lots of mazes doesn't work...)

I set about designing the rest of the game, putting everything down into a 3 subject notebook and working long hours into the night designing the game, making maps, and otherwise getting ready for the release of VERGE 2.0.

Then crap started to happen in the VERGE community, VERGE 2.0 came out with bad documentation, the community apparently split, reformed, split again, went to something called WinVERGE, and all sorts of other things. In other words, lots of stuff started to happen to the community that made the advancement of VERGE slow to a freaking crawl. About that time I entered my third year of college, started to get serious with my girlfriend, and formed a LARP company.

RPG making fell to the wayside (and I never did finish Nexus Quest).

RPG Maker 2000

Fast Forward three years. I'm out of college, working in the IT industry, still serious with the same girlfriend, and running a successful LARP company. Everything is great, but I miss game-making. The games I have made on the side, mainly little short platformers and shooters in Gamemaker or Pie-In-The-Sky, or modding levels with the Duke Nukem 3D engine, such as making Super Mario Nukem 3D. The problem is that it's just not the same. My heart is in RPGs.

One evening, I came across a link to Don Miguel's PRG Maker 2000 site. Having no clue as to what this is, but liking the name, I downloaded a demo game created in RPGMaker 2000, started playing it, and fell in love so fast it made my head spin. I don't even remember the demo I downloaded. All I remember is that I loved this new thing, this RPG Maker. I greedily began to download every conceivable resource I could find, and soon had an army of little png and bmp files that I could use to create my dream RPG.

Since I was a huge anime fan at the time, my LARP company's flagship LARP was Animania (an anime-genre LARP held at Project A-kon), I decided to make an RPG about some of the characters in the LARP series. Without as much of a plan as Nexus Quest, but with considerably more drive and inspiration, I started to design that RPG from the ground up, with high and holy expectations.

Enter Lost Legacy.

Without a design plan, the development of Lost Legacy became very slow. Suffice to say, I hit a lot of snags, approached this game as a 'masterpiece' from the beginning, and general shot myself in the foot several times. The RPGMaker 2000 version of Lost Legacy was horrible, and never saw release. However, it did get me into the RPGMaker Community, at least on the fringes.

After seeing the way that the VERGE Community had problems, I resolved not to get involved in the RPGMaker Community until after Lost Legacy was completed. That is why I am virtually unknown, despite having been a developer since the year 2000.

RPG Maker 2003

Oddly enough, this happened in 2004...

Lost Legacy would never have been released if RPG Maker 2003 hadn't come out, and if a friend of mine hadn't convinced me to convert Lost Legacy from RM2K to RM2K3. There were just too many bugs, too many problems, and a total lack of a plan. With RPG Maker 2003, I had a chance to start over, and start over I did, actually applying my knowledge of game design amassed from almost two decades of game making.

But this is not about Lost Legacy, so you can read the full story on its development right here.

With RPGMaker 2003, I became more involved in the community as a whole, still not as deeply as I am today. But Dark Dominion, Gaming World, Gaming Ground Zero, and a few other sites had be as a registered member, where I would ask questions, download resources, and participate in conversations. Nothing ever lasted, though, I was too intent on finishing my game.

Around 2005, I started design of my second game, Threshold, as well as started Game Design School. For Threshold, I applied the principles of game design, including making a Game Design Document, from the very beginning. This would, in the end, result in a much tighter game being released in a much quicker fashion.

Lost Legacy and Threshold released

In 2007, Lost Legacy went Gold, and one year later, Threshold went Gold. Both games were released on my company's website. Only Lost Legacy was released into the community, on RRR's forums, were the fan-game-ness of it caused most of the members to LOL the game right off the boards. They also didn't approve of me distributing the game via CD (and charging for shipping).

Of course, this was before I was aware of stuff like megaupload, and hindsight being 20/20, I can agree with that criticism now. Being in my thirties by now, the negative criticism didn't get to me, but it also gave me a message that the RM Community didn't approve of my work, so I retreated for a while and worked on finishing Game Design School.

Amaranth Games

In late 2008, I got an email from someone from Amaranth Games, telling me that Lost Legacy was very popular there, and that people were stuck on some of the puzzles and needed help. Quite amazed, I went ahead and got back into the RM community on Amaranth, and started to follow support my game, patch it, and help develop a walkthrough for it. So, I guess you could say that Amaranth was my first REAL foray into the RM Community, and that was in the summer of 2008.

Real Men Network... >_>

One of the players of Lost Legacy emailed me one day and asked me why I don't promote my game more. Not really having a good answer, I agreed to start promoting my game at other sites. While doing so, I was also hunting for a community to join. RRR was suggested, and I politely declined. GW was suggested at the same time that RNM was suggested, so I flipped a coin and decided on RNM first. It was also the site that this player recommended, citing it as being the 'least elitest'.

That was three months ago. I added Lost Legacy, got involved in the forums, chatted some on IRC, and decided to write articles for the community.

And that's about the size of it...

Need a little help

Another thing you want to do is just zip the game up manually from its root folder (That's the folder with all of the Music, Pictures, Charsets, etc folders in it, plus all of your maps) into a single zip or rar file. (I use WinRar and not WinZip). Do that instead of clicking 'Build Game Disc' in RPGMaker 2003. I've seen that the 'Game Disc' feature can lead to unpredictable, and in some cases buggy, results.

Just make sure that you don't include your save files! ;)

[ARTICLE UP!] Educated Choice Awards!

WARNING: Strongly worded opinion here.

The 'Educated Choice Awards' is highly comparable in concept to the 'Screen Actors Guild Awards', in that it relies more on a judgment of peers within the same craft than it does on popular opinion, or the highly political votes of a single board of non-peers. Either way, it has the potential to become extremely elitest and cliquish.

While I trust the judges mentioned in that article to be unbiased and fair, and it seems to be that way for this initial implementation, I urge a sense of extreme caution to Kentona, Holbert, WIP, and anyone else who spear-heads this endeavor. I also advise, and I mean this in complete sincerity, that the judges be different each time, even if being rotated from a pool.

Ultimately, whatever those responsible for the 'Educated Choice Awards' decide is up to them; however, unless a sense of unbiased is clearly implemented in the beginning, this award will, sooner or later, breed a sense of elitism, create a feeling of cliques (or inner circles), and possibility breed resentment from otherwise easy-going designers.

(And as an aside, to quell any responses of this nature prematurely, I do not personally care if anything I have created ever wins a Misao, an EC Award, or even any accolades. While I like praise, that is not why I am here. I am here to make games, help others make games, and enjoy intelligent conversation. My success and happiness as a Game Designer does not rest on the approval and praise of others, but the fulfillment of my art.)

Understanding Fun Game Design ~ Case Study: Tetris

Blitzen,

This is one of those times when I honestly have nothing that I can say to add value to something someone else has said. This case study clearly indicates the qualities of Tetris that make it fun to play. Grand job!

[Community Project] Missiongarde -- Class refining in progress

How could I get in on this whizz-bang? Just post? Or do I have to pass the Challenges Three first? :D

Community History

author=Max McGee link=topic=2342.msg40911#msg40911 date=1225388206
Does anyone else even REMEMBER Dark Dominion??

Do I ever! I owe most of my best resources to DD.

Me history to come later.

EDIT: Okay, that was badly worded. What I mean to say is that when I was first developing Lost Legacy (and later other games), I would spend hours surfing for high quality graphical resources. Dark Dominion's resource library was just incredible (for me at the time), so I ended up downloading a lot of things from them.

Favorite Battlecries

"I REGRET NOOOOOTHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!"