ZEELLO'S PROFILE

Aladdin
Defeat the vermin of the underworld with the help of a fire djinn.

Search

Filter

Commercial games and creativity

Any time there's payment involved there's a conflict of interest. BUT if you're making the game by yourself, then choosing to sell it shouldn't affect the game, right? I mean you still have full control of the project and it's still a labor of love. The paycheck theory only applies if you're employed by someone else.

Game difficulty mechanics - brain storming

Perma death ideas:
1) Unit loss is mandatory even if you won the battle flawlessly. The game makes you sacrifice units after the battle. Each battle could have a sac "cost" so the player knows that they have to perma-lose at least that many units.
2) Make there be no way to reload a previous save.

Unit injury is a great alternative to perma death. Obviously you wouldn't put both in the same game.

Kamikaze is basically an extreme version of breakable items, which is a terrible idea to begin with. There's no way to balance it. Any time a player would use this they would theoretically be better off saving it for an even more difficult battle down the road. The only way to make these work is to make it mandatory to use them. (see first paragraph) Maybe like some kind of limit break where once a unit's kamikaze gauge has been filled, they MUST use it at that instant, or one of their existing attacks is replaced with it. Or you could have it triggered when the unit it at critically low HP or when they would die anyway, meaning the player wouldn't have direct control over it.

No healing sounds like a good idea. Battles would probably be much shorter as a result unless the number of units per battles is higher to compensate for it.

edit: additional thoughts:

- THEORY: Character driven games can't have permadeath, that's like oil and water. There's just no sense in having a storyline only to have the player experience the first portion of it. The player isn't going to sacrifice that just to "beat" the game. That's almost like fast forwarding through a VHS movie in order to "beat" it. Not to mention that even if beating the game was all that mattered, losing that character only makes things harder.

- FFT's countdown system is a great idea, it adds urgency to reviving characters, but the crystals they drop once they actually do die hardly make up for the death. It would've been largely the same if they had dropped nothing. Actually the best thing about the crystals was you can replenish HP/MP with them, increasing the chances of winning the battle, which adds tension to the choice between resetting and continuing. It's easy to reset the game if the battle is a lost cause anyway but the HP/MP restore crystals can make all the difference. So in general I guess any benefits to having units permanently dying is a good idea since it's like a consolation prize.

- Healing from killing is a cool idea. It might be even better in a game without permadeath since you'd be compelled to see how far you can survive on a shred of health.

EDIT:
Just thought of an idea, what about something like FFT's countdown mechanic but the character is still alive.
So let's say when a character goes to 0 HP, you can choose to have that one character retreat but if you don't, the character stays alive for 3 turns only and then dies from blood loss. (permanently)
Bonus points: The character is invincible during this phase.
Bonus points: The game is really difficult unless this countdown state is regularly exploited.
Come to think of it, there's no logical reason the character wouldn't be able to retreat during every turn during this state, making permadeath nearly impossible unless the player arbitrarily chooses to kill off that character. So I guess the best solution is to have it so triggering this state kills off the character even if the battle is won before the 3 turns are up.
Then just adjust difficulty so that the player realistically has to trigger this state in order to win difficult battles.

A permadeath with an advantage! That's the way!

[RMVX ACE] Looking for font suggestions

I use Tahoma, size 21. Although it's not 100% perfect, it has the same issue as your screenshot with the letters being slightly cut off.

But I don't mind, because it's a minor issue imo. Actually, the font in your screenshot looks fine to me also, plus it seems to suit the style of the game.

What are you thinking about? (game development edition)

There's one aspect to my game I haven't thought about all that much: turn order. For the time being I had it so all your characters go first, then the enemy, and from a mechanical standpoint this works fine, but it fails to convey the enemy and you as equals, but rather, just some game obstacle to be overcome by the player. This is especially problematic when aspiring to make rival characters.

Considering my game is MtG themed, I just had an idea, what if turn order alternates every turn during battle? So you go first, then the opponent, and it goes back and forth like that. If I wanted to go the extra mile I could randomize it so it's either you or the opponent turn 1, and it continues to alternate, meaning I'd make a global switch that checks who went first and adjust each actor's speed based on the result and whether the turn is odd or even.

[RMVX ACE] Gameplay Healing Skill Advice! - All Advice Welcome!

author=Mambratom
My first idea was to have a Suikoden style item system using Selchar's actor inventory


whoa, I've wanted something like that for a while. Where can I find it?
So far I've come upon this: http://himeworks.com/2013/07/actor-inventory/

Anyway, making a game without a healer sounds like a disadvantage, because when I think about it, it's pretty tricky to make each party member unique and feel justified in the game. By having a healer you at least get to cross one character off the list.

Though, I've considered having a game where everyone is the same and all skills are items. The only thing differentiating the characters is their element.
But maybe the reason I had this idea was because I didn't know of a way to have actor-specific inventories, so having that might mean I have to rethink the whole thing from the ground up. (having freedom can be so inconvenient sometimes)

Can RPG Maker games false flag virus scanners?

Ok now ClamWin does detect a trojan. It also detects a trojan in the game I downloaded from rpgmaker.net, therefore I assume it thinks all rpg maker games are trojans.

As for why it didn't detect a trojan before whereas suddenly now it does, it must be because the AV updated itself since then. It no longer asks to update when I start it, it says it was last updated on the 19th, the website says I have the latest version, and when I try to update manually it actually works.

ESET Security still says the file is safe, so that hasn't changed.

I tried virustotal.com, weird site! I did not expect this, I thought it would be a download. Anyway it shows 61 AVs and they all come up safe except for ClamWin. "Probably harmless! There are strong indicators suggesting that this file is safe to use."

Edit: Is it just me or is the game.exe file the exact same across all RPG Maker VX Ace games? Both my game and the other person's game have a game.exe file with the exact same filesize of about 140 kb. I guess this means the false positive is not specific to my game or anyone's game for that matter. All VXA-made games will come up as false positives and only if ClamWin is used to scan the file.

I remove the game.exe file from the folder and scan the folder and it comes up safe, then put game.exe back in and scan it again and it detects a trojan.
Scanning the file itself also detects a trojan.
So it really is just that file, nothing else about the game is malicious.

Copyright laws

I guess we experienced some confusion over the way the question was phrased. Red Nova was simply pointing out that a fangame infringes on copyright law- whether or not you should care about this or make the fangame is another matter, although depending on the circumstances it may be very risky to do so.

Copyright laws

Drawing fanart is considered perfectly acceptable, so I don't see how game making is different from that. I had even considered making a game starring Pokemon.

By the way, someone did use Batman in a game and nobody complained about copyright infringement back then:
https://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/16862/?p=50#posts


Also relevant: (old thread from long time ago)
https://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/17929/?post=639626

Also relevant: (recent thread from page 1 of this forum section)
https://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/22707/

Can RPG Maker games false flag virus scanners?

author=Tuomo_L
author=zeello
Wait, I know, I can push the burden of proof on the person. Rather than me proving there is no trojan, they should provide a screenshot of the false positive.
No, please, no. Don't do that. That sounds super fishy and really poor decision from developer to do so. You'll burn bridges with all people who were interested in your game by doing that!

But if there is no Trojan then there's no way for me to prove there isn't one. Well, except by scanning the file myself, which I did.

Also after I asked the accuser to provide a screencap of the false positive *or* to run the scan with a different RPG Maker game, she never replied. It should have been no trouble to do either of those things, in fact I even provided a link to a game hosted on this site with a filesize of only about 40 MB, which is even smaller than my game.

You're saying it's bad publicity for me to do this, but the message I take away from reading that is that I shouldn't say anything when someone claims there to be a Trojan, I should just ignore it because bringing attention to it will make everyone afraid of trying my game. In other words, I should treat all accusations as bogus. Which is probably a good idea, otherwise any troll can derail me from finishing my game or keep others from playing it. If I feel doubt I can still run a scan in private. That's all I can do, I now realize it is foolhardy to expect to receive follow-up or closure from the other party.

author=Tuomo_L
You shouldn't be distributing using the RPG Maker installer because it's very bad.
Still don't want to elaborate what makes it bad? Damn, I scarcely know why installers exist let alone what makes one good or bad. All I know is the default installer makes a single file that unpacks the game in two clicks, no hassle whatsoever, or third-party programs required, I don't see what's bad about it. I might try other installers someday, because why not. But not a priority for me at the moment.

author=EDPVincent
It's not uncommon to get false positives of that kind with lesser known programs, so don't worry that much about it and just try scanning it with different antiviruses to see if, in fact, there is something wrong with it.
I will try that virustotal link Tuomo_L posted above.

Balancing battles

author=Liberty
high-cost MP skills that do as much or less damage than normal attacks


It seriously bothers me when games do this. It doesn't even have anything to do with difficulty- easy games are guilty of this too, but in my view that's no excuse. x(