TRAVIO'S PROFILE

I make and play games - playing games I use as a reward for reaching specific milestones within my various development projects. I've played a wide variety of games, having started at the tender age of three and worked my way up over the years so that, at one point, I was actually going out of my way to find the original games (cartridges, CDs, whatever) to play.

All games I elect to review must be 'Complete' status (though games still in the process of clearing out bugs are fine and will be noted in the review itself). These games must have a download on RMN (as I pass them to my Dropbox queue) and need to be self contained - everything I need to play should be in the download, without needing to install anything (including RTPs; we aren't living in the days of slow connections anymore, people). You should also have any fixes in the download, not something I have to look through the comments for - I'm going to be avoiding them like the plague until I've finished the review.

When I review a game, I try to play as much of it as I can possibly stand before posting the review - I make notes/write part of the review as I'm playing, so a lot of what goes into the review is first impressions of sections. I'm also not a stickler - things don't have to be perfect - but I've seen many examples of things not done perfectly but, at the same time, not done horribly. I rate five categories on a scale from 1 to 10: Story, Graphics, Sound, Gameplay & Pacing, and Mapping & Design. 5 is average to me, so it's not necessarily saying that category is bad - it's saying it's middle of the road. Games within the same editor are compared to one another, not games across editors (I'm not going to hold an RM2k game to the same standards as a VX Ace game due to system limitations, but I won't let it hold back the RM2k game's rating) - unless the game is part of a series across multiple editors.
Legion Saga X - Episode ...
A fan updated version of the RPG Maker 2000 classic

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But January is the month that cares (about stats)

author=Solitayre
author=Arandomgamemaker
and wow, 647 games without reviews? Somebody has to fix that!
Yep, you better get started!

Is there a way to search just for games that don't have reviews? I'd like to give a go at some of them during my development downtime and put some reviews out.

Edit: Nevermind, I'm daft.

RPGS... you've beaten

author=Ark
How about Alundra one and two?
Both on my stack of games to play - I haven't had time to start into them yet. I don't play as many Playstation games as I used to because my system's bust, and my laptop can't support the emulators at the moment (my desktop, in storage atm, can handle both PSX and PS2 games).

author=Daria
How about Lucienne's Quest (3DO) or Monkey Hero (PSX)?

Monkey Hero I've played - at the time I wasn't in the mood to play that style of game and it went back to the person I've borrowed it from after about three hours of play. I actually do own a copy of Lucienne's Quest - the Japanese version titled Sword & Sorcery - that I bought at a pawn shop (just seeing a Japanese RPG sitting there was enough to get me to pick it up). Sadly, I've never found a working 3DO to try it on. By the same thread, other 3DO RPGs I've never played.

author=kentona
@Travio- EVO: The Search for Eden?

I used to own it - the cartridge was damaged during a move when one of my boxes was just thrown into a truck and the side it was on crashed hard against the wheel well. I lost it, Robotrek, and a copy of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest in the one go.

RPGS... you've beaten

Oh man, let's go through this list...

Spoilered because... well, there's a lot in there.

Bahamut Lagoon
Baldur's Gate + Expansions
Baldur's Gate II + Expansions
Baldur's Gate (the PS2 one)
Beyond the Beyond
Breath of Fire
Breath of Fire II
Chrono Trigger
Earthbound
Fable
Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy VI
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy IX
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X-2
Final Fantasy XII
Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
Final Fantasy Tactics
Golden Sun
Golden Sun II
Harvest Moon
Harvest Moon 64
Icewind Dale
Icewind Dale II
Illusion of Gaia
Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts II
Knights of the Old Republic
Knights of the Old Republic II
Neverwinter Nights + Expansions
Neverwinter Nights II + Expansions
Ogre Battle
Ogre Battle 64
Rhapsodia
The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda II
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time + MQ
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Paper Mario
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
Rhapsody
Secret of Evermore
Secret of Mana
Seiken Densetsu 3
Shining Force
Shining Force II
Star Ocean
Star Ocean: Til the End of Time
Star Ocean: The Last Hope
Star Tropics I
Star Tropics II
Suikoden
Suikoden II
Suikoden III
Suikoden IV
Suikoden V
Suikoden Tactics/Rhapsodia
Suikoden Tierkries
Super Mario RPG
Terranigma


... I... just don't want to go further. >_< If you can name it, I've most likely played it (except for PS3 games) and most likely beaten it.

Gaming developing and where to begin.

A personal preference of mine is to select the style of tilesets and such before you get to creating the game content, but then just use stock resources for everything else (NPCs, battlers, etc.) until you're far enough along that devoting the time to find/make the graphical resources is worth it.

Once you've hit that point, you can find and start to build stuff in your game's style (which was probably decided back with the tileset style). Now, I'm not saying to not find anything - while I'm working on LSX and not 'officially' finishing up the graphics until a lot later on, I'm constantly searching the web for graphics and experimenting with making my own sprites to see what will work, making mock-ups or in-complete versions of graphics to plug holes in the default resources.

I find if I spend the time finding/making the resources ahead of time, I tend to be more wanting to find a new game to work on as opposed to finishing up what I'm on right now. Again, it might just be my personal preference here, but I prefer to have the systems working before I make the graphics for them - for LSX's menu, I drafted it out using just regularly skinned windows; once that was done and looked good in my head, I made the actual pictures that are used as the more finalized backgrounds and just shunted numbers around a little bit to make everything fit correctly. For my battle system edits, I've got the battlers and windows where I want them on the screen, but knowing how long it's going to take to make custom battlers for the characters, and then do it for the enemies as well (or find sprites that fit the style correctly), I realize it'll delay actually making the rest of the game far longer, so I just keep working on the game with the intention to finish up the graphics later.

Atmospheric World Maps

While looking at my world map in game to get some thoughts for this, I actually had the sound engine glitch and remove one of the tracks from the MIDI I'm using - and the new sound turns out far better, so now I'm considering editing the file to remove that track all together. It gives the map a slightly more atmospheric feeling. Thanks. ;)

It's hard to compete with the Chrono Trigger world maps - the sound and graphic designs on them were amazing for conveying the sense of that particular era. There's nothing quite like Ruined World (the 2300 AD music) combined with the shattered tileset and whipping 'snow' to really drive home the hopelessness of that future. Corridors of Time gave an exotic and relaxing, almost hopeful futuristic feeling to Zeal. The only music I wasn't thrilled with is the 1000 AD music, because it really doesn't set off that particular era for me - the Medina Village music was much more suiting to the era in general, for me. A bonus these maps also have is that, since there's no random battles there, they can focus on portraying the exact atmosphere of the world as opposed to also serving as an obstacle and players get a chance to actually take in the world without risk of having their attention being drawn to the pressing matter of a random battle.

Sadly, I don't have any new games to present to show against the sheer awesomeness of Chrono Trigger's world maps.

But in terms of making a world map, they need to convey a sense of the world's feeling as much as anything. If the world is grungy, dark, and on the edge, it should portray it - with a fitting tileset, music, and atmospheric setting. If you're running a high fantasy game where the heroes are shiny, and the cities are shiny, then the world map should be bright just like them - once again with a clean looking tileset, some bright chipper music, and probably no need for atmospheric effects like fogs or whatever. The world map should try to drive home the atmosphere of your world as a whole, with all the aspects available being used to their full potential to do so.

What's in a Name?

The way I'm doing it with LSX is to picture the world more as the real world - people pick names not necessarily from the culture and it sometimes looks a bit jarring side by side, but hey, the world's mixing together. That, added to the fact that there aren't actually these places in the game world (there's no Asia, no Far East, etc. etc.) gives a bit of wiggle room as well - the naming conventions are inspired by real world cultures, but they're not identical. (There's also bits and pieces of the custom languages of the world that fold into names, like Jugodin and such).

There's a number of towns and locations, just in Garalas and Meluvet, that have conflicting cultural names - Yamota Village sits next to the Murphey Forest, while Norita Hold lies just to the northeast of Bargon City. The reason these names mix together is because the world's mixed together - the cultures aren't necessarily separated and they've begun to mix in some places (especially the Midlands, which history in the game is indicating has been invaded and settled multiple times over the course of history). At the same time, I've got some segments where the region is clearly resisting any intruding names - for example, the new country of D'Alessio, where all the names are based in French and Italian stylings, and the indications of a small culture in the Mantis Wastelands (again, something new I'm adding).

It comes down to more whether the names make sense in the context of the game world cultures as opposed to whether they make sense in the context of the real world cultures. If it's commonplace for people to mix cultural styles in their names in the game, then it really shouldn't matter if they're mixed. But if there's one character, particularly a main character, named that way while no one else in his culture has that style of name mix, then you have a problem with the way the world is built - you either need to change the character's name to fit his culture or fold that naming convention into their culture as a whole.

lsxbattle3.JPG

Hah - yeah, I'm just using default RTP graphics for (almost) everything until I can get the main parts of the game finished, and I had to shrink the battlers down using scripting to get them to fit for the time being. The actual graphics are going to be one of the last things I worry about, especially for situations like this that're going to require almost entirely custom built graphics.

... now that I look at it, I realize that player battlers aren't affected by the screen tone. I'm going to have to adjust the viewport they're draw on.

Legion Saga X - Episode One: The Children of Prophecy

Thanks a lot for looking for them - I've looked around the internet trying to locate them (and I've found a couple, but none that were used for characters in the first LS, oddly), but the site that appears to be the source is no longer working. This page has a link to what I believe to be the site that had them at one point, judging from the icon on the Materials page, but the page it leads to no longer works.

That article is where I got the download links for the games for my laptop and my last couple of play throughs, actually - and as a small note, the version of LSIII on there isn't the final version, even though the story part of the game is complete. I know there's a more complete version that was put out with Cardico completed, as I've played through that copy before.

Legion Saga X - Episode One: The Children of Prophecy

The title partly came out as is because of a long standing discussion with friends about which letters out of words look best on acronyms - LSX is a much better acronym than LSE. LSXP might be a potential, but after seeing how the logo turned out with just the X, I'm kind of hesitant to change it now. Plus, it sounds about as good as Legion Saga R ever did - the R and X are really more of a 'this is the version' indicator. In fact, the in-game 'title' still only calls itself Legion Saga.

My last full play through of the series ended about three days before starting this - I ran through them, and continue to play through them (yes, I'm in the middle of the original LS at the moment, again, as well as looking at the original games in RM2k), looking at the world, what people say, the timing, that sort of thing, to see how well it will port over or how I can improve upon it in a new engine

I haven't found any character sets in the hi-res XP style, just the original character sets expanded to fit the new requirements of XP, and they look terrible on the tilesets. Plus, a number of characters have had/will have their appearances changed - Eva, for example, is now a brunette and not a blonde. I'm not sticking strictly to a design aesthetic that was chosen because of the resources available at the time - think of it as similar to how Final Fantasy 2 and 3 were updated when they were rereleased (not the games we originally got on the SNES as 2 and 3, but the original Japanese ones).

Anyways, I'll be taking any questions, comments, criticisms, and responding as best as I can as often as I can.

lsxmenu2.JPG

I'm not 100% on where the equivalent of MP is being displayed yet - I'm still experimenting with it in my mockups, which is why it's not yet displayed in-game.