MEWD'S PROFILE

What do you mean by what games do we have?

Which old RM games we have on our hard drives, which games we'd want to see preserved here, or which authors we know how to get ahold of?

Personally, I think, in addition to Y's list, we could do well to get Enter the Cave, A Blurred Line, Final Fallacy, Romancing Walker, Forgotten Majesty, Blue Contestant, Wilfred the Hero and Backstage onboard. (Apparently Lys got around to sticking his games up today.)

Outside of a handful of people who have websites, I don't know how to get ahold of anyone. I'm pretty sure Legion is still pretty active in the RM community. Teo too, I would assume.

Gibmaker has his website: http://sqentropy.dyndns.org/~sej/ Which, considering that it was redesigned after the first time I saw it, probably means he is still alive. He replied to the e-mail I sent him after I played his game, even!

Kindredz, I assume, moved on. Leastwise, I tried to contact him once and never got a reply. Which is a shame because Forgotten Majesty has a special place in my heart for being such a genuinely moving game.

If we're able to cycle through characters to use them in the lead (without mucking about with battle order and whatnot) than this ought to be pretty awesome.

There sure is a lot to go over, and I am hopefully getting a much better idea of the fundamentals here. Mewd, if we go with 4 pcs, that would mean we can choose our 4 pc's classes. So we could have a party of 4 fighters or a party of 2 mages and 2 thieves. With just 3, we can have one of each (without option) and leave the 4th spot over for other cool things like monster allies, etc. The game will be easiset to balance this way imo. Also, we can realize my dream of having a giant cat (preferably yellow colored) on the team at some point. Possibly, many different types of monsters could be captured or summoned or whatev and even stored away to be to be switched later.

I like the prospect of a four party group with three classes, since it DOES offer the option for offbeat group options. You pick what you want to focus on. Very replayable and less confining. It offers the appeal of forming a party of distinct classes while still leaving things open ended.

The whole charming monsters bit isn't hugely appealing to me. The only thing that really grabs me as promising is leaving the fourth space open for story purposes. And even then, it's more fun just to have a character you are shaping.

Forgive me if this has been mentioned, but what about the World Map and general size/form of sub-maps? I think the basis of the world map should be decided upon before we discuss monster encounters. If we go with Kentona's good choice on a 4 or 5 base world, is a Hero's Realm type map (huge/open-ended) really necessary? I am not ruling this out at all btw! - - We will have towns, but what about dungeons? Other locations? What size will they be? (Sorry, more questions lol) Back to world map, and please throw in other options if you think of them. . .it can be a baldur's gate (includes encounters), or even simpler, super mario world map where all locations are absolute. Or no world map at all, except maybe one to look at when fast-traveling. These are being pulled out of my ass, can you tell?

I think a classic RPG overworld would be nice and appropriate here. In spite of the low number of towns, it would make the world feel bigger and travel more personal. Choosing locations is certianly quicker for the player, but I'd like them to feel like they're putting effort to get from place to place without doing a whole Zelda style inter-connected world. Plus, the DW4 graphics we are using are pretty much DESIGNED for overworld use anyway.

I weird notion popped into my head about spell acquisition. In the magic candle, wizards could learn spells only when coming under ownership of tomes that were scattered throughout the world, usually at very high cost. There were like 5 different tomes of magic, each with its own list of spells that could be memorized (by studying through the passage of actual time). It wouldn't be a direct translation, but what if we have tomes that have certain spells in a particular school of magic, and only when a wizard is in possession of said tome can they cast those spells. - - Assuming that we have 1 wizard in the party at all times, of course, this would make spells a bit more interesting than just having the wizard learn them at any given time upon level up. This would need a great deal of tweaking obviously. Perhaps combining this sort of crap with a skill tree that deals in schools of magic only (you can apply points to a particular school with points gained by leveling, increasing the effect or power of spells cast in that school) Plus, your lore skill ultimately determines what spells you can cast, even if you have access to said tome. Scrolls could still be used, of course (one time use). I will try to think about this a little harder, my thoughts on the matter are sort of convoluted.

This is an interesting idea. Though I wouldn't want to tie all the books to the lore ability, since that is tied to a specific school of magic and not every player would necessarily want to invest in it. (A scholar character probably shouldn't be FORCED into investing heavily into deciphering related skills to learn magic. That makes the reward for actually pursuing the skill less meaningful.)

It's also pretty dangerous to tie magic usage and learning to tome possession. Makes the player dependent on finding such tomes and would keep them from simply grinding to gain power. We could make the tomes readily available, but that might make the whole thing frivolous compared to our other options. (Learning a skill as stats and level are appropriate, or having scrolls that teach spells assuming that character fulfills the requirement.)

If we use this like a Esper system like Kentona suggest, this idea has promise. But we may need to discuss the pros and cons of everything.

I have an idea on conversation options that you might wish to consider. If we'll be including an alignment system, every conversation could potentially allow the player to select dialog options that fall somewhere between good and evil in intention. Since rm2k doesn't exactly allow for verbose respones from the player for multiple dialog-paths (unless you want to use pictures, or more precisely walls of text, that fill the entire screen) we'll need a compromise. The simplest I can think of is to have 3 options in every critical situation, one that has a negative attribute, one neutral, and one positive. Typically, each option can be used to enhance quests or other portions of the story. for example, a shady thief guy asks your party if you'd be willing to relinquish a particular item from someone's home. you can - a. turn him down right away (++) b. ask why he would need it (o) c. agree to steal the item (-). The dialog can be further expanded to a. you'll steal it only because the item is a powerful healing potion he needs for his dying mother (+) b. you'll steal it to hone your own skills (o) or c. You'll steal it because you like to steal/for the reward (--). - - We could include an option menu to have the hero always choose a specific alignment. These options could simply be - 1. Evil, 2. Neutral, 3. Good. That way, having to always choose (+) (-) or (o) at every turn of the conversation could be avoided. The player could change his chosen alignment direction at any point. Let it be known that I would actually prefer the "wall of text" apporach over this one.

Automatically answering questions to suit an alignment would take all the fun out of being prompted and making moral choices. The alignment of a choice should never be BLATANTLY obvious. It should be obvious in that you can tell whether acting one way or another would be selfish or kind, but there should be no pattern to the layout or direct indication of how the NPC will react; only your judgment. Plus, the PCs will probably never say anything outside of dialogue choices. They're just avatars for you, so really verbose answers shouldn't be that necessary (even though they're more flavorful)

It IS pretty annoying to work around the character limit in RPG Maker. One can try just giving simple straight forward options (mainly yes, no) affairs. I'm not certain what you mean by 'Wall of Text.'

Having pictures, like the screen shot you posted before, certainly makes answers more verbose, but I wonder how tedious implementing something like that would be considering how frequently you would be making choices in this game.

Walking speed - I like being able to change your walking speed during the game ever since I played morrowind and got the boots of blinding speed coupled with a permanant dispell spell. I could run across the entire island in like 5 minutes. However, I don't see how it would be needed. A run/walk option with an "always run" choice would suffice, though I am not against the former. (it could be cool, would have to see it in effect I guess)

Speedy walking speeds are always pleasant, and less taxing on patience. Really, though, we should just make sure the default walking speed is at least tolerable. The run/stamina system Kentona proposed and increased overworld walk speed travel systems seem attractive additions for the more impatient among us, but hopefully not at the expense of players who don't invest in them.

On coming across items randomly on a world map (survival skill, specifically of the forage skillset). Very interesting idea. Not much to say about it except that it's a good way to associate an actual skill with the chance of obtaining an herb, without having to actually bother the player to go about foraging (just by walking. . .very good indeed).

I had imagined foraging being more something you had to use a command to perform, since I don't know how reasonable it is for the game to randomly prompt you that you found something on the overworld (Unless there is only a finite number of predetermined foraged items to discover on the overworld, but random items would probably be preferable.) If, however, it's doable to stumble upon items in relation to this skill at random, that would be pretty cool. (I was kind of wary about bothering with Foraging because of the tedium of using a command, although such might be appealing if your party is exhausted and you are desperate for a few items on the overworld.)

We all had some fruit punch. You should have seen it. That was A LOT of fruit punch.

It tasted pretty good.

This looks useful.

Though it seems like RMXP doesn't have a range function for variable. It DOES, however, have something labeled 'batch' which looks like it serves the same purpose. But I never would have made that connection without glancing at the variable menus for all three RM engines.

Ambiguous translation in RM engines are really awkward. In the original RM2000, it took me FOREVER to realize that the 'move all' command would make the game wait until a move command was finished. Prior to that, I tried guessing how long I would need to insert a wait command EVERY TIME.

My vote is towards four PCs at the moment.



On acquiring spells

Requiring stats to gain a spell upon level up seems a bit dangerous. What if your stats aren't up to par upon level up and you miss out on a skill you really need? It does have a slight appeal in that your character is learning them incidentally as he develops, but I've gotten burned in games where I missed the boat on getting a useful skills. (I hate learning something like ESUNA when what I really need is a basic healing spell.)

I think I'd prefer learning spells from scrolls/shops in this instance.

How would a skill-linked list work precisely? Would it be a massive list, with each spell having its cost and requisites pinned up and require the learning the early versions of spells before the stronger latter ones?

I use the term 'Skill Tree' a bit loosely. What I picture is selecting things from a list anyhow, without necessarily having to unlock branches by working your way up. I may be a bit confused, so please pardon me.


On Enemy Encounters

I suggest that we go with a Mystic Quest style encounter system for dungeons, but have random encounters on the overworld that relate to the Survival skill. I think we could have the two feel distinctly different. Dungeons are a more up close and personal affair and would be more reasonable for actually having visible enemies. Moving on the overworld is an abstract representation of travel. I imagine the walking speed being slower like in Kentona's Hero's realm game, but a survivalist skill would make things easier on those more impatient among us. Investing in the skill would increase your walk speed. Maybe you can turn this off if you are actively looking for enemies. Or maybe make these two separate skills. We could have a nature affinity stat effect path finding abilities (Walk speed on overworld) and another skill effecting the encounter rate (Which could maybe be toggled off and on, but as always, I don't know how much work that would be.

On the Chemist skill:

If Alchemy is too big of a bother, we can probably just skip it. I just figured it was an under explored avenue to consider. The spell work around seems reasonable, but at the same time that means we couldn't have potions heal a set amount, instead mage focused characters would heal way more all the time.

On Lockpick/bash and Detection abilities:

Your proposed system sounds good to me.

On disabling traps:

I wonder if it should require more effort on the player's part than just having the stat and touching the trap. But still sounds reasonable.

On Hide/pickpocket:

Since we have a Dragon Quest NES motif going on here, we can probably get away with not considering line of sight stuff. We can maybe just rate the how perceptive a given enemy/NPC is against your stealth ability. We can still bother with line of sight stuff if you're feeling ambitious, but it seems like a lot of work that we can dismiss because of our abstract graphical format.

Being able to first strike enemies with hide seems keen, but outright killing them is probably a bit too much. Being able to sneak past, pickpocketing, effecting the encounter rate and first strike seems enough to me.

On Decipher:

Good stuff. If we consistently tie dungeon design to this, we're all set. Maybe we can have it where you find a difficult to translate document, but if you 'use' it and succeed in deciphering it, it turns into a spell scroll? (Assuming we go with learning spells that way)


On Charm:

Has potential, but personally I'd rather just have a fourth party member.


On Persuade:

Good stuff. This may actually be work for me, even! But

On Run

I'm a little skeptical about this. It might be preferable just to make the default walk speed tolerable as opposed to depending upon this to speed up the game. It DOES have potential. (The one good thing about the PS1 Final Fantasy ports was the ability to speed up the game at the touch of a button.) If the default walking speed is good enough to where it is tolerable, yet this skill is attractive, it could be a good thing to go with.

On Survival:

I covered this more extensively in the Enemy Encounters topic, since the two are directly related. Encounter rate could be toggled incase you are hunting for monsters on the overworld. The level of this skill would increase the walking speed on the overworld (Presumably, you wouldn't be able to run on the overworld.) The two concepts could possibly be separated into 'Path finding' and 'Safe Travel' skills if we need more nature affinity skills.

Foraging could be another nature affinity style skill. Wherin, on the overworld, you are able to use the skill and have a chance of discovering an item at random. Perhaps depending upon the terrain type. The level of this ability would determine the quality of items and the success rate. Basically just curative items. Though this may be too clunky to actually bother with, since it might be simpler just to just do something like how thieves randomly find gold or treasure chests after battle in Kentona's Hero's Relam.

Other notes:

Man, guys, after implementing all of this, every NPC and monster is gonna be pretty complicated. Will it be simple enough to make copy/paste algorithms for most of this stuff?