OCEAN'S PROFILE

author=DE link=topic=2605.msg48218#msg48218 date=1228136080
It does make sense if you consider it a way to make the game more user-friendly.
How, you ask? Simple.

Let's say you go the way of FF12 and make all monsters drop loot, which the player then has to bring to a merchant and sell for money.

Gold-dropping enemies make it all an automated process. You don't have to approach a store and then clickity click and then click some more just to sell all the junk you've been carrying. It is assumed that your characters take the loot and sell it automatically, and for the sake of convenience you get your money right after slaying a monster.

TBH I prefer the old-fashioned way. I really HATED the loot aspect of FF12 (and some other RPGs), because I never knew how much money I REALLY had ATM, and whether to stay and grind some more. Plus even if I killed an enemy, I was never sure how valuable a loot (if any) I would get.

In the end, I guess I really don't care if slimes drop gold.

Yes, I agree with this.

Plus, it's funny how the heros, who despite us knowing that they've never talked to an alchemist or anything (especially at the beginning when you're just leaving your burned town), know exactly what materials from the monster are valuable and which ones aren't. Unless they carry whole monster carcasses, which is even worse than the carrying 100 plate mails in your bag. It doesn't take a genius to know that you could get furs from some animals, though. You could solve this by having the hero have a book or something that goes over the useful materials and what they sell for. It'd also be nice to have an estimate of what you'd have before you actually go to town and sell it.

Having your inventory cluttered by useless item drops is also annoying. But making the items have a second purpose makes me save them instead of selling them thinking that I might need to use it somewhere, earning me even less gold.

I had no problems with monster drops instead of gold in Oblivion. There aren't too many varieties of things you can get, so you don't have to keep track of a million different useless items. A lot of the things can just directly be made into potions, and that's in a seperate category so you don't ever have to worry about it if you don't want to. Then, human enemies give you everything they have, so if you see one with a nice Golden armor, that armor is yours once you slay them. Human enemies are always the most rewarding ones to kill because of that.

Also, if equipment is pretty expensive, then it would be frustrating to have to grind, go back to realize that you don't have enough, then go back out and kill some more, when you could just get the money right there and then so you can tell if you have enough. Again, it's different in Oblivion since I've never had to buy equipment other than like arrows, so I could just save up for a house, which wasn't something I had to have immediately. Or save up for training and things like that. Then it's a nice feeling to go from 19 Gold to 3252 just by one merchant visit.

In Paradise Blue, I have the 4 guards protecting the main characters. They are paid to protect them, so rather than get a salary, they just get paid for winning the battles. If the creatures aren't a threat, then they aren't really getting anything for it.

Secret of Mana is probably the best for me. All the maps are connected, and there's an overworld you can go with Flammie where you can even notice all of the areas you've been to, or to go to some new ones.

The problem I have with regular overworlds are that they are so dull. You walk through the same 5 tiles, Water, Grass, Forest, Mountain, and destinations. I don't think there's ever been a non-airship time where I was impressed with a specific location in an overworld. That combined with random encounters and I tend to dread going to the overworld more than anything, and getting lost frustrates me then.

I don't even care if they do an overworld like a list choice, I'd prefer that to a traditional overworld. The only time I do really like an overworld is if you get a nice airship, that you can go lower/higher/faster/slower and things like that, just for the fun of flying.

You could have a world map that you could refer to while you are travelling to specific places. At least let there be recall points/transportation so you don't have to constantly walk through the same areas over and over. Speaking of flying, I think it'd be nice to have an overworld that looked like you were actually on a plane flying over some area, like this:
http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/3884/3248729487bc1d57ee7oly4.jpg

That is no problem at all.

Ah yes, work still gets done on this game, but I've been busy with schoolwork and some small paid projects so I haven't worked as much as I'd like on it. I've got some hopefully good ideas on this, so you could check it out here!
http://paradiseblue.wordpress.com/

Art:
Photoshop CS3 for regular coloring and digital image stuff. I actually don't use Photoshop very often because I don't like waiting for programs to load up.

Graphics Gale for when I need to layer something in a pixel art piece, need to use semi-transparent stuff, or want to zoom in more than 12x.

Character Maker 1999 is my main pixel art tool, I use this all the time. I love it, and I carry it everywhere. If I don't have my flash drive with me, I have it on my site. The palette on the bottom is incredibly helpful, as is the square/rectangle selection (all you need to do is right click on a space to copy your image, can't get better than that!)

Considering I really liked your pixel art, which of those programs do you use for it? Also, do you pixel-artists use your tablets when doing so?

Nope, I use a mouse for it. Go with a laser mouse if you have one.


On a blue moon, I'll use a mechanical pencil and a drawing pad and do drawings by hand.

Even rarer still, I'll use oil paints on a canvas and actually paint something. I think I'll try this sometime again, but it takes hours to finish a piece, so it's not something you can finish in a day.

Music:
For midis, I use Rhapsody. It's a very old program but I'll really familiar with it so it works nice enough for me.

Synthfont for converting to mp3.

Thank you for the replies!


Aries: Ram of War!

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