OCEAN'S PROFILE

Dungeons and towns, I map them on the fly, but I have a good idea of what I want them to look like/function before hand. They may stray a bit from the original idea once I'm implementing it, but things happen. I'll give an example. For the Ancient Ruins, I planned the interior to have a stealth minigame throughout. So it's not focused on battling (with few exceptions), but rather avoiding enemies and traps, while setting some of your own. However, the looks of it ended up very different than when I first planned it. Originally I was just going for a broken down old grey castle, but it ended up as a ruined Golden mayan ruins style thing after seeing a screenshot which inspired me.

For dungeons, I keep a few things in mind, though I don't always map it out on paper beforehand (I do sometimes, not always). I see what I could do to make it different from the previous dungeon the player went through. I don't want it to feel repetitive. I take into consideration what type of area it is. I hate switch puzzles and block puzzles, so I avoid them. I design the areas based on what I like. I have a tendency to get lost, so I avoid making it too non-linear. I want it to be easy for the player to get out if they just want to finish the area. So there's a clearly defined correct path the player can take to get out. If they want to explore, the option is there.

If I feel an area is repetitive (before I go on actually mapping, this is still in the planning stage), I see what I could do to make it different. If I can't, then I don't really see the use of having 2 of the same thing, so I'll drop it. Better to work on a few dungeons and make them good than to make 30 dungeons all alike in my opinion. FF6 is a good inspiration.

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First, I decide how I want the game to play like. I have a few ideas already, but if not, usually while I'm at school something will come to me. Like, I'm playing Volleyball, then "Volleyball RPG! Let's see how it goes". I take out a paper, and draw out what I want the HUD to generally look like. It's obvious a WIP, so it can change once I get more ideas/characters.

I get the general idea, then see how the player will control it. Will it be a tactical RPG? In this Volleyball RPG, how many characters do you control, is it real time or turn based, how do I balance the characters, and things like that.

I decide based on what I can feasibly do, and how many characters work for the battle system on the amount of characters I need. If it's 4, I'll have 4 characters throughout the game. If you're looking for a plot twist where a character dies, you're not going to find it in my game. It's too cheery of a world for it to happen.

I then fill in the characters, like their description, looks and stuff. I tend to draw them so I have a good idea of what they'd be like. I also base them on people I know.

The story is the least important part to me, so planning that comes after I see that the battle system works well.

I usually use Word or Excel to place in numbers to test, to put in info, character data, and other things.

As for setting, I usually use either a modern/fantasy Island setting, or a medieval style. In the medieval one, I don't go very much to the fantasy side, so I may do a bit of research for it to get ideas.

Hmm. You may want to use the default menu, and then just have extra features either be accessed by other keys (such as number or symbols) or as switch items/skills. Depending on how your game works, a CMS might be more effort than what's needed.

Seiken Densetsu 3 is one of my biggest inspirations.
Other than that, using Floor plans and stuff are helpful to me. I've based buildings in my games on real buildings, and real floor plans. Like a Library would be based on my public library, stuff like that.

Don't have a top ten.

There's Terranigma stuff in there too, most notably the tree. The cliffs are editted SD3. The stuff I can't recognize are probably also Terranigma, or maybe from somewhere else. I didn't play Terranigma for that long.