SLASH'S PROFILE

I'm actually an androgynous blob from the bottom of the ocean, sent by the upper caste of my tribe to live among mankind, learn your ways, and use video games to corrupt your core demographic, the 15-25 year-old video gamer.

Just like the Russians!

Ah! Sorry. It's gonna be a modern time period, so anything that would come close to that category. Mildly futuristic would probably work, or slum-looking bums would work, or steampunk-style sprites, or just everyday kind of modern dudes.

At the moment, I'm working on a project titled "Illogikal Hope". The story is pretty solid, so I've been trying to focus on the gameplay. My friend always whines about RPG bosses that involve spamming "Attack" or "Ultima" and basically rely on very little strategy beyond keeping everyone alive so they can repeatedly use attacks or cast nukes. He challenged me to create a game that would keep you on your toes.

So I did, or I'm working on it, anyway. I've tried to create boss battles with tricky (sometimes multiple) strategies involving exploiting elemental weaknesses and status effects (On bosses? Crazy, I know) as well as reactionary timing (he's going to counterattack if you attack now, or he's weak now, or if you don't stun him now he's going to wipe the floor with you). Needless to say, these bosses can be a pain in the rear for the standard "attack is the first command? A A A A A A" RPG player, especially those who can't figure out the right strategy.

However, the game is story heavy, so plot-driven cutscenes are inevitable. But I see the possibility of sprinting players skipping all of the cutscenes (which I would probably be tempted to do) if I make them skippable, then ragequitting when they had no idea what was going on.

So I came up with a compromise which I think kills two birds and a pheasant with one stone, and I'd like your opinion on it:
After you die to a boss (which I think will be inevitable for some of the harder ones), you are given advice on how to beat it, (revealing at least some key weaknesses - there is a character with "scan" too) and the game takes you back to a nearby save point. The next time you approach the boss, you are given a "would you like to skip this cutscene?" option, allowing you to avoid the frustration of another 20-minute sprite soap opera. (They're not actually 20 minutes... yet.)


It sounds like a great idea to me and would be fairly easy to program, but I'm sure it's got it's flaws. What do you think about the game design in general? Criticisms or suggestions would be helpful. Thanks :D
(and sorry for the planet of text)

I'm making a game in Rpg Maker 2k3 at the moment, with plenty of battle events to spice up the typical battle system. However, I've noticed that once in a while, during a battle, the game will skip processing the result of a player's action to hurry on to the next one. This typically happens if you assign another character an action during the battle animation of the first character's attacks. Some of the flashier attacks have 60 frames of animation, which is long enough to select "Attack" on the next character, and the first character's attack animation will show, but no damage will be done.

Has this ever happened to anyone else? Is there a way around this bug? I can't seem to figure out if it's some piece of my battle event code that's caused this to crop up or just a flaw in the program.

Good question... yea, it does. Maybe I should re-download one of the .exes?