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Scripter looking for Project Partner

1. Who am I?
I'm a guy in my mid-20s who's fiddled with amateur game making from time to time for more than a decade (though there were some large gaps). I have no aspirations to go commercial with game making but I would like to make a decent finished project at some point.

I specifically like working with Sphere (and now miniSphere a remake of the sphere engine). I'm a somewhat skilled scripter who can make battle systems, menu systems and game mechanics of almost any kind, my abilities in most other game; I also like coming up with new ideas both plot points and mechanics. I have a tendency to make any idea I'm involved in continually grow in complexity and extravagance unless someone else keeps me grounded however my skills in other ares of game development are average at best.

For a variety of reasons some of which should be obvious from the above my own game projects never tend to get finished or even to the point of being a playable demo; however working with someone else I'd like to think I could assist in making something great.


What am I looking for?
I'm looking for either:

A) Someone who'd like to partner with me to work on my current game project (a tactical RPG themed around defending the last surviving human town from a monstrous invasion)

OR

B) Someone who has their own idea for a game that would be best with custom systems and would be happy to work in Sphere to make that game, I will work with them and make their systems/scripts and assist in other ways too.


What's my past experience?

No completed games unfortunately, I'll bring out 3 things I've worked on for now:
1. Porting the Sphere Engine itself to run on Mac (both the original sphere engine and the newer miniSphere - though miniSphere was super easy to do)


2. Pokemon Odyssey - this was a game being made about 8 years ago now for which i was the coder/scripter only, working on this I wrote most of the script for a fully working pokemon battle system, menu system and other things; unfortunately the project collapsed as it emerged that the main developer had stolen someone else's custom made tilesets from their game.


3. My current project (unnamed) as mentioned above this is planned to be an SRPG themed around defending humanity's last surviving town from a monstrous invasion - the project is not far along at all BUT in my progress so far I've made:
- a custom map engine (Sphere's built in enginge didn't do all I wanted)
- most of the battle system including:
-- animation handling
-- zooming in and out
-- pathfinding (for fire emblem style movement)
-- stats so you can attack and kill things (or not if they have too much HP)
-- QTEs for determining if you hit or not
- a 3d animation system (currently used to display spinning rings moving in sort of brownian motion on the title screen
Here's a video of me demo-ing the above:


Potential FAQS:

1. Why Sphere?
Sphere gives me a blank slate so I can make custom systems of various kinds without "default systems" getting in the way. I almost am sufficiently experienced to do basically anything with Sphere (well nothing fully 3d beyond simple animations) but anything else :P

2. Does a potential partner need to know Sphere?
No, no prior knowledge of sphere needed to work with me; outside of eventing/scripting and a few appearance related points the rest of it will be largely the same as RPG maker.


Further information
Any questions ask below if anyone is interested in joining me for my current project and wants more details feel free to ask; alternatively if anyone has a project or project idea that that'd like me to join for give me some details and we'll go from there.

Game difficulty mechanics - brain storming

It's been a while since I've made a topic here, but I'm currently brain storming a few game mechanic ideas and would like other views on them.

The proposed game would be a role playing turn based strategy similar in some ways to fire emblem. I'm looking for thoughts and opinions on the below ideas as gameplay elements; all comments appreciated.

Mechanics I'm currently thinking about:
1. Perma-Death
A hallmark of fire emblem for a long time - BUT in fire emblem many people play with this as if it were a "game over if anyone dies" mechanic; I've been trying to think how I could implement perma-death without it just being a reset inducing feature. One idea I've had is that your army would be comprised of two seperate types of unit:
- characters: these would have a story and would level up and you would put effort into improving them etc.
- troops: these units would not have any significant story
The game would try and force you to sacrifice some units to complete most maps, the idea being that you'd probably sacrifice your troops, not your characters. Problem - would perma-death as a feature not be that relevant with these troops? How could it still feel like an actual cost?

2. Long term injuries
If a unit takes major injuries in one battle they should not be available for a certain period of time which may include the next battle. This would add a minor edge of realism and an extra point of strategy - "I can clear the map by doing X but it may mean I don't get my best unit for the next battle".

3. Kamikaze techniques
Powerful abilities that inflict either long term injury (see above) or perma-death on the unit who uses them in exchange for doing something incredible to the current map state possibly killing multiple enemies. For storyline reasons I'd like the game I've been working on to have special attacks of this sort but I cannot think of any good way to balance them. Can anyone think of any time when a mechanic like this has been good?

4. No healing
I'm looking to strongly discourage attempting to complete missions only with your best units and instead encourage players to use their entire army, so what about having no healing items of any kind with the only healing being between missions.

Hybrid game idea/concept discussion

Intro: Some of you may remember me from a while ago I was active briefly on these forums around 5 years ago then real life took me away... Anyway I have a game idea I wanted to think about and would be interested in other people's thoughts/suggestions for; there is a high chance I will not actually make this game - I'd like to but the time to actually complete a project is something I may not have, we'll see though; it will at least be fun to think and plan and make a start.

Concept for the game: The game (which currently has no name) would be set in a world where human civilisation has largely been destroyed by some kind of demon/monster invasion as the player you would be aware of only one surviving human town (where the game would be based)

The town survived due to one individual who had discovered magic and taught it to maybe 20 others, this group were able to kill the monsters that would have destroyed this town but there weren't enough of them to protect anywhere else - outside of this town the rest of the world (as far as the player knows) is overrun by/controlled by the monsters.

Potential aspects of the game:
1. Defending the town - as a surviving human settlement the town would be attacked more and more clearly defence would be a key aspect of the game
2. Training soldiers - considering that the enemy would likely throw more and more monsters at the town training more soldiers and increasing the skills of existing ones would be an important mechanic
3. Town management - providing food for the people and expanding the town could be an interesting mechanic (and clearly would be relevant to the scenario) - population growth would be a tricky thing to implement well as significant immigration wouldn't make sense in the context and obviously if you're relying on children being born and growing up the game would have to last a very long time for any significant growth to occur there could be a fast forward or perhaps large time skips.
4. Exploring/adventuring outside of the town - dangerous world overrun with monsters... easy premise for interesting adventures.

Key gameplay decisions to make
1. Combat system - I was thinking in terms of something akin to fire emblem as the most obvious match using a small armour of overpowered individuals to fight off large hoards; probably with something like 3 distinct classes that work in very different ways requiring some measure of strategy and balance - where this may not work so well is if you're going out on quests with smaller numbers. Another thought I had was a hybrid system like Bahamut Lagoon (think a cross between Dragon Quest and Fire Emblem...)

2. How should the gameplay work outside of combat, the concept gives a lot of options - it could:
a) play something akin to a traditional RPG with you playing as one of the town's soldiers going on quests to obtain resources or the like.
b) have you play as the guy who discovered magic (though as he'll be running everything, to play as him walking around probably would be a bit weird)
c) run from some kind of management screen where you manage the status of the town/army, schedule events and other things and then allow you to step into controlling a small group for combat or quests.

3. How much is too much - there's a lot in the concept but including all of these aspects may make a game too complex/hard to get into.

Thoughts/ideas So here's the point of the topic I'm looking for other people's views on each of the 3 areas I've talked about above and also whether they think this sounds like an interesting concept for a game or not.


1. Please don't comment on feasibility of making anything, that's not the topic at this stage.
2. If you make suggestions in this topic it means you're ok with me using your suggestions in this game (if I actually make it)

Quick question about tutorials

So I've begun typing what is becoming an absolutely huge tutorial, (from no scripting knowledge to scripting everything required for an RPG in sphere is the idea) I'm wondering if there are any guidelines for tutorials, I've searched the site but failed to find any (this may be a human error on my part though I can be inept at times).

Am I in danger of passing a length limit? (When it's done it will probably be 30 pages or so)

Are there any other requirements or guidelines I should be aware of?

The projects we regret

Not sure if this is a good idea for a topic or not...

My idea is that we discuss or post links to things that we regret making, (such as naff games).

So, this is the ineptly named game, fun: http://rpgmaker.net/users/Rhuan/locker/fun.zip If anyone manages to enjoy it I will laugh a great deal, it was the product of "what can I make from scratch in 30 mins of boredom", for those not familiar with sphere, double click engine.exe (I assumed people around here will be windows users so just packaged it with sphere for windows). (controls are arrow keys and enter/return)

Mafia?

Anyone up for a forum game of Mafia? I'd be the narrator, if you want to play post your interest, if we get maybe at least 6 people (other than me) I'll assign roles (via pm) and then we can give it go...

standard "hello" topic

So, my name is Richard, one or two of you may know me from spheredev.org or from many years ago on gamingw... On the latter I ended up banned after several acts of stupidity, so uhm, I'd probably prefer it if you don't remember me from there... I've changed quite a bit...

Facts about me, I'm a Christian, 20 years old, and have nearly finished a degree in Mathematics. I live in England. I like an odd mixture of music including Christian hymns, Christian rap, and death metal and various things in between, (e.g. Metallica), I do quite a bit of reading, including books of theology some dating from hundreds of years ago and books of Fantasy, e.g. Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time", more recently stuff by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, "Way of Kings" etc).

The most recent RPG I've played through was Golden Sun, a friend leant me their GBA, it was somewhat simple but good fun, though it did seem ridiculously short for a professional RPG IMHO.

I'm experienced with the Sphere game making engine, I did the bulk of the work to create the Mac version of it, however I've never completed a game. I can script just about anything, (battle systems, menu systems, etc) but I can't make graphics I'm happy with, and I think it's technically illegal to use rpg maker rtp in a different maker... (yeah, I'm a stickler for the letter of the law)

I've mainly joined this site as, I love the idea of making an awesome game and am hoping I can find people to do that with. I don't have much time at the moment though soon will have a lot of time, and am wondering if I can either:

a) Find people to work on a game of my designing (someone to do music and someone else to make graphics), I know that as I'm a n00b here this is highly unlikely

or

b) If I could make the scripts for someone else's game, I'd want some involvement in the design process as well, but it would largely be their game but with menus and a battle system and a stat system etc made by me, if you're reading this and want a game you have planned to have a more distinct feel to it than something done in rpg maker with various borrowed scripts as the extent of your customisation, please contact me.

Anyway, this is meant to be a hello and an explanation of who I am, I've handled those things, so, that's it for now.
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