REDMASK'S PROFILE

I'm wondering why horror seems to be so popular in RPG Maker games. Is there something about RPG Maker that lends itself to making these types of games or is it more just about the tastes of the people using RPG Maker?

I don't have an issue with it. In fact I find some of them very interesting. I'm just curious to hear others thoughts about it.

So you know how people complain about Navi? Well as a game developer I've begun to realize that despite people always complaining about Navi and Navi like characters, apparently Navi very much needed by a lot of players.

Yes I'm saying Nintendo is right and Egoraptor is wrong.

Despite my game already having tons of hints and ways to get directions, it seems like people will still need their hand held from time to time. Which is fine. I'm not saying that to be mean, I'm just acknowledging that not everyone thinks the same way. And that's why modern Zelda's not only have Navi like characters but also special Sheikah Stones that work as a walkthrough.

I've recently heard of statistics that say about 10% of people finish games. That's pretty sad. It's also why I'm starting to feel it's important to add even more guidance in my game.

I'm adding an option to my Call Clua spell which lets the player ask for help based on the current Map ID. It seems to work well so far. It's basically an in game walkthrough.

Here's what I'm worried about though. This Common Event will need to give text for hundreds of Maps. So my question is do you think an event this big will crash the game?
It will only display text for solving the current Map your on so maybe it'll be fine but if RPGMaker XP loads the entire common event at the same time I'm worried about crashes. If this does happen does anyone know of a possible solution?

What part of one of your games have you had to remake, fix, scrap, or tinker with the most?

For me it was my Last Boss. It was one of the earliest things I made It had two stages to it and both were way too hard to predict in order to dodge.
So I completely scraped it.
Next I had an idea that I would make the Last Boss kinda like a bullet hell type thing but that mostly stayed as a concept also got scrapped.
I eventually came up with a 6 stage final boss which later got cut down to 5 stages.
The first four stages tasked the player with using the 4 elemental spells they learned during the game. Then they got a chance to save and the final form let the player use all the spells to their advantage.
So that's the version I went with when I released my game but every time I re-released the game I kept tinkering with this boss to make it easier, largely based on the feedback I got from my play tester, RedNova.
Not sure if I'll tinker with the Last Boss again in the next update. It's pretty good now but who knows I do like to tinker.

So, what thing in your game did you have to constantly work on?

So while working on an update, I recently filled in a dead end with treasure because it always annoyed me that nothing was there. It was a curled peninsula that looked nice but had no function. It was part of an area that had a lot of events so I didn't want to burden the map with more stuff potentially slowing it down. I wound up cutting off the normal point of entry to this area and instead made it accessible from a different map thus allowing me to put in more events without worry of slowdown.

This got me thinking. Is there ever a good way to include a dead end? I remember Final Fantasy II (Japan version of II) had doors that led to empty rooms. The only thing of note is that those rooms had a higher enemy encounter rate. So you could argue that those dead ends served as a punishment but personally I found them to be pointless.
So what are your thought on this? Also how long must a path be to be considered a dead end to you? Obviously a path that is say 10 tiles long with nothing at the end would be a dead end but what about a path that's say 3 tiles long? Is that perhaps just a decorative alcove in your mind?

For me, if there is a direction a player can go I try to have something there for them. But I'm curious to see if anyone can justify a purpose for a dead end.

Making a whole video game can seem like a daunting task. There have been times when I got nothing done because I was spending too much time looking at the big picture. When working on your game sometimes you need to clear your mind of the end goal. Just pick a small thing that you can do now and work on that. After you finish that small thing whether it be a single graphic or part of a puzzle or a section of a room. Congratulations! You just made progress. Keep making these small steps and eventually you'll have made the game you wanted.