CORDYNASTY'S PROFILE

I am in need of someone who can do a rough level design for a level piece I need. It's illustration based and a small job (no art skills required, just level design skills). The level is rpg top down based. It will have various rooms, but the map design will only be put across one document (whether paper or digital document like a photoshop file or hell even a Paint file). I'm looking to charge $20 for it. I'm too busy on other things right now to plot out an interesting spatial design, but I know what I want in the level.

If you think you can do it, send me previous work at cordynasty (at) gmail.com, and I'll give you details if you're chosen for it.

Hey, guys. I just downloaded the YEM engine for use. I imported all the scripts to my game project from the demo, but when I tried to test start game, the error "cannot find Graphics/ Windows/ Blue" came up. This is odd because the demo of YEM only uses the default graphics of VX (I checked the graphics folder, too, and they were all empty, so it couldn't be just a script error.

Has anyone had this problem or know how to fix it? Thanks.

I am currently in the pre-development stage of an rpg I am making and have been pondering over what type of skill system to use for the multiple characters the player will acquire through the first half of the game. Firstly, this game follows a traditional format of the story giving the player a number of characters (a total of ten in my game), and then allowing the player to make four-member parties from the characters that they have gathered thus far (which they can change at party changing stations). My initial design was just to have each character acquire skills as they level up much like your typical rpg. All they had to do is level up, and if they reach the required level, their character learns a skill that goes with their character's traits (warrior, healer, assassin, etc).

And then I was thinking some more into the process and figured that a lot of players, casual or hardcore, enjoy customizing their characters to certain extents. It's why you have the class system in the early FF games, the character customization system in Baldur's Gate, the Materia system in Final Fantasy 7, and the skill-based system in Fable. But there is a problem allowing players to customize their characters how you like: they end up making some characters the same or end up faulty doing something wrong in making the game either easier or harder depending on the choices they make. On the designer's side, that becomes hard to balance. But then I looked at another system: Seiken Densetsu 3, a Japanese rpg from the SNES days. In this game, all characters followed a set class format, yet they could choose in what areas to have their characters specialize in through going through 2 upgrades and choosing to go either a "Light" path or a "Dark" path. Technically, this corresponded to the player focusing more on defense or offense in terms of their class's skills, or going through a hybrid of the two to give versatility. In short, Light = defense/support skills and dark usually = power, offense, and lack of defense skills.

So I figured I could use that concept instead. I won't have to worry much about a player not having the right character setup to tackle the game's challenges in terms of battles while allowing the player some sort of freedom in determining how they want to create their characters. I don't mind players choosing "favorite" characters, as long as they realize that each character has their own unique feature. So if you don't have the character in the party or if you choose to not worry about them, you'll end up missing out on what they have to offer.

Anyway, the skill progression system: each player will have a hidden tech tree which has two paths: an offensive path and a defensive/support path. In battle, this corresponds to two skill commands. Let's use a character from my game.

We'll call him Richard, and Richard is a gun user who is very skilled at using these weapons, especially pistols, thus being the only one who can dual wield them. He has two skill commands: Gunplay and Support (will be given a more proper name later).

Gunplay skills deal with mostly using his pistols to do gun-based attacks, such as releasing a barrage of shots on an enemy for example to aiming to cripple an enemy by shooting them in the legs. As long as he has a pistol equipped (since there are three classes of guns in this game: handgun, medium-weight, and heavyweight), he can use most of the skills.

Support skills mainly deal with skills that help both Richard and the party, such as buffing his attack or doing other supportive/defensive skills appropriate to his "Gunslinger" class, which is mainly a mix between a Fighter and a Ranger.

Now, Richard will have these two skills outside of battle have a level, and they both start at Level 1. They can both go up to a max of Level 10. Here's where my idea comes in. When the player completes a battle, they gain a certain number of TP that depends on how difficult the enemies are at this part of the game, for ramping reasons. Using this TP, the player can choose to level up one of Richard's skill sets, as long as they have the required number of TP needed to level up. When the skillset is leveled up, the player is said to be "a little bit better." At certain levels of this skill, the player's skills in the set will get either a decrease or increase in their EP cost (the game's MP), and/or a increase in the skill's effect. When the skillset levels up, if the player's level fits the requirements for a skill or skills in the set that have been unlocked due to the skillset's new level, the player will instantly acquire the skills. Otherwise, the player must wait to acquire the skills currently provided by the skillset's level through reaching the required level for each one.

For example:

At Gunplay Level 2, the skill Bleeding Shot is available, which is an attack that causes the target to take on a "Bleeding" status. The required level for the character to be at to get this skill is Level 5. If Richard is currently level 5 or greater, he will instantly acquire this skill. Otherwise, he must wait to level up to Level 5 himself in order to get it.

There's a problem with this concept, however. A vigilant player will be able to eventually level up all skillsets to the max, no matter how much TP I ramp up. Therefore, I came up with an alternate TP acquirement system: have the player gain TP everytime they level up. This way, I can control how much TP a character can get in their entire lifetime from Level 1 to the max level, and it'll make the player decide if they want to go down one route, go down the other, or go down both equally to go for a hybrid. I may just have it where the player no longer acquires TP after a certain level, that way players don't feel obligated that they have to max the level of their character just to get all the TP they can. But on the other side, there will be players who will want to get the reward of more TP should they max their character. Otherwise, they lose more incentive to continue to level up. So if I do the TP till max level, I will at least have it to where the player will be able to maybe level up a skill up once or twice but only by that much upon maxing out the character.

So, what do you guys think about this system? Anything else I need to think about?