28 replies to this topic

[Heretic86]

I made a post on another forum about this demo, but I don't think it was as well received as I hope it will be here. Still working on the game. There are a bunch of areas that are already finished, but the town isn't even close, and it links straight into the map, so when you start the demo, you are already partially into the story.

What I'd like is a little feedback on the Style. Not so much on the Script Additions, those were done by other very talented scripters, not me. I tweaked them a little bit to allow for other things that I needed, but really it was only like 5 or 6 lines of code that I managed to add out of the hundreds they had done.

The Style that I am referring to is to give Characters a little more "Life". There have been quite a few games RPG Maker games that I've tried, and many of them seem to suffer from the same problem. I think their Characters are too static. It seems to me that the Characters face each other, then we as players get spammed with dialogue. There is no Character reactions. They just stand there and throw their lines at each other. I think there is a much better way to do it, and it takes a LOT of effort, but I believe that effort is well worth it. I wanted the Characters to be much more animated, make it very easy to identify who was speaking, and give them as much expression as I could with the limited resources that old RPG maker developers used. And when I say old, I mean old, old like Final Fantasy on the SNES old, not 2004.


Now, I realize the demo isnt perfect, and I'd really like to find some Script Additions for the Battle System, but so far, the Default Battle System is used, as I havent found one yet that I think will flow better with my Style, which, I dont know exactly what that is yet and am still working on developing it (the style, and the game). Please note that the "typo's" are purposeful, which should be obvious. Even the use of the word "Thier" is purposefully misspelled, and the usage is completely wrong, also purposeful. The correct spelling is "Their", not "Thier", however, the correct usage of the word should be the contraction of "They" and "Are", which is "They're", not "Their". That typo has already been commented on, but just keep in mind, it is purposeful, to establish that Character as a complete and total nitwit, or, at least, so you THINK he is...

Anyway, if you wouldn't mind trying out this small and short Demo and tell me if you like the Style of having more animated characters during cutscenes?

---

Once More, With Feeling - Demo



Download Demo Here (ignore the VX in the URL)

---

So, would you tell me what you think?

[Marked]

I think the start is well done, there's a nice tutorial integrated into the game to show you what to do - saving, equipping etc. The mapping is quite nice too.

When I got to the point were you "eavesdrop", I only realized you had to step out once the argument started looping.

Quote

I think their Characters are too static. It seems to me that the Characters face each other, then we as players get spammed with dialogue. There is no Character reactions. They just stand there and throw their lines at each other. I think there is a much better way to do it, and it takes a LOT of effort, but I believe that effort is well worth it. I wanted the Characters to be much more animated, make it very easy to identify who was speaking, and give them as much expression as I could with the limited resources that old RPG maker developers used. And when I say old, I mean old, old like Final Fantasy on the SNES old, not 2004.

I would say you achieved that, but I found the arguments (when the player walks out) a little bit too long and slightly repetitive.

And the eventing was pretty well done too. I especially thought the save sequence was quite clever

[Kiriashi]

I'm checking it out now, mostly because the name intrigues me. :3

[Kevin.ds]

Got a "Failed to extract" when i tried to extract it =(

[Marked]

I also got an error, but with the auto-install font (using windows 7 is thats relevant) but I just copied the fonts from the Fonts directory and installed them manually and the game loaded up fine.

[rgangsta]

O.o very interesting name. Going to try now.

.:EDIT:.

OMG! Best demo ever. The eventing is perfect along with the mapping. The story is good and suspenseful. Loved every bit of it.
The only thing that gave me a problem was the extracting, but I read Marked's post and I knew what to do.b

I can't wait til 2037.

Edited by rgangsta, 20 October 2011 - 02:25 AM.

[Marked]

Also I'm gonna move this to Projects & Teams.

[Heretic86]

Ok, let me deal with the technical problems first. What do I need to do for me to fix the extractor thingy? I made subfolders for different practice projects, and hit "Compress Game Data". Do I need to do something different? I'll upload a fixed version if I can figure out whats wrong...

Some people on the other forum complained they got a missing file error:

Quote

It wouldn't let me play it, it says missing RGSS102E

Suggestions on how to fix the "wont extract", "font error", or RGSS102E errors?

Edited by Heretic86, 20 October 2011 - 11:41 AM.

[Heretic86]

By the way...

Did anyone happen to notice when the little girl, Jaelle, (Gypsy name meaning Mountain Goat) was spying on them at the "you can walk across logs" bit, regardless if you walked across the log first?

[RATED-RKOFRANKLIN]

What is this game about? I normally don't try things without knowing background data.

[Heretic86]

RATED-RKOFRANKLIN, on 20 October 2011 - 12:06 PM, said:

What is this game about? I normally don't try things without knowing background data.

I dont know yet. Well, the full version anyway. This demo version was more intended to try to give an example, in my opinion, of Characters that captured that old school RPG style, where people were playing and interacting with characters that were more than just "walls of text". Mostly, however I wanted to focus on animating the characters to give them expressions and motion, and convey the story, whatever it may become, that way more than focusing on just dialogue.

Imagine for a second, if you will, some RMXP developer comes along and decides to make Lord of the Rings into an RMXP game. But when the characters talk to each other, the developer just puts the two characters facing each other and the actors dry read their lines to memorize them. No motion involved. No music changes. None of those exciting little nuances that come with a perfectly rehearsed performance and grade-a acting. Its a world of difference. This demo allowed me to do that, and to practice and refine my style. I felt that it was good enough that others could learn and benefit from observing the subtleties of storytelling using character expression and movement moreso than the dialogue, and I could learn from the comments how to refine that style and listen to peoples constructive criticisms and advice into something more akin to giving a painter a paintbrush. As far as a full version of the game, hell, I havent even finished the first town (which is why it wasnt in the Demo) despite the number of story related events that take place in it. So far, most of the story doesnt stay centered in the town, as the player is expected to venture forth into other areas that are sometimes dangerous. Other things were to try to "train" the player as to what they could do with their characters, such as walking along the tops of logs so they know they can use them as natural bridges over water and other unpassable hazards. Things like that. Or that you can save at Campfires or in beds, etc. Thus, locking the player in a "Staging Area", giving them dialogue to tell them what they are supposed to do, until they finally do the simple unexpected task of "lighting the fire". Players wouldnt normally expect that they can walk across logs, or have any reason to expect that they should examine a pile of wood as the next story element without being "trained" to do so. And I thought that training should come as part of the storytelling experience, which can add length and a chance to provide story elements without breaking character or being dry by saying something like "save at campfires", being vague about it, and expecting that the player didnt totally miss what they were supposed to see or do.

If you dont feel like playing it, you dont have to if you dont want to. What I was really looking for was any suggestions and feedback from the experienced community to add that level of polish many games, even many professional oens, fail to capture. This particular map contained one of my longer cutscenes that was supposed to have the most emotional impact on a player so far in the story (go kill the monster isnt usually very suspenseful, neither are "FedEx quests"), and since this part was mostly self contained to one map, I thought I'd share and use it as a style example, so I could improve that style.

Currently, Im still looking to fix the technical aspects (mentioned above) first.

[Heretic86]

Is there a version of the Auto Font install script that is compatible with Windows 7?

[Meteor Rain]

It doesn't start for me. It says "Can't find xxxx/xxxx/xxx/Data/Fileutils.

[Kiriashi]

Heretic, you really ought to just use Comic Sans, considering its pretty much the same font. Look at all the trouble people have to go through to get fonts installed to play games.

It's silly. More people will play your game if you just use a default font.

I really wanted to check it out but couldn't be bothered to hassle with the fonts..

[Heretic86]

Kiriashi, on 21 October 2011 - 06:10 PM, said:

Heretic, you really ought to just use Comic Sans, considering its pretty much the same font. Look at all the trouble people have to go through to get fonts installed to play games.

It's silly. More people will play your game if you just use a default font.

I really wanted to check it out but couldn't be bothered to hassle with the fonts..

I totally agree. I don't want to burden people with technical problems like fonts. I do like the other font much better visually, but weighing between the technical problems vs. visual style, I'll take less technical problems.

Ok, I changed the font so it shouldnt come up with Font Errors any longer. I also grabbed a few things from the newer version that I put in a while ago, like visual cues of where to have a player look, and fixed a few bugs that I didnt catch before (one of them I needed to Ignore repeated movements, caused a lockup).

Please let me know if you run into any other technical issues, as I believe this NEW version should resolve those problems.

Meteor Rain, on 21 October 2011 - 12:12 PM, said:

It doesn't start for me. It says "Can't find xxxx/xxxx/xxx/Data/Fileutils.

I believe this may have been a Font Issue. If not, feel free to say so.

Edited by Heretic86, 21 October 2011 - 11:56 PM.

[Kiriashi]

So has the download link in the first post been updated? I can't wait tot try out your game.

They say don't judge a book by its cover, but I can sure as hell judge a game by its author. Your writing skills prove your game is of a higher quality -- and I haven't even played it yet.




EDIT:I just redownloaded it and there are still external fonts.

Reupload the new one please. :3

[Heretic86]

Kiriashi, on 22 October 2011 - 12:30 AM, said:

So has the download link in the first post been updated? I can't wait tot try out your game.

They say don't judge a book by its cover, but I can sure as hell judge a game by its author. Your writing skills prove your game is of a higher quality -- and I haven't even played it yet.




EDIT:I just redownloaded it and there are still external fonts.

Reupload the new one please. :3

I updated the file, so its the same download link.

I appreciate the compliment, but lets see if my skills are good enough to actually entertain people. Its almost funny, if there was one thing that I wanted to do, I wanted to release a demo that indicated that I am not one of the people that make demos that show up on youtube and end up giving RPG Maker a bad rap... (like this one)

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Edit:

I changed the font to "Comic Sans MS" which I thought was a default Windows font, like you suggested. Oddly enough, at the size, I cant really tell what font it is so I might just say screw it and throw in Arial or Helvetica, even though I think it won't look very good. It looks like pretty much every other Sans Serif Font...

One of the scripts that was included with the mod I used for the Chat Bubble windows was an Auto Font Install, but I don't think it was updated for Windows Vista or 7, but I don't think it is OS dependant. If I update that script, do you think that it would be acceptable to not use Windows Default Fonts? I'm still running Windows XP, and I remember that the exploit that was used to hack the first XBox was that it loaded fonts without checking permissions, and viola, the original XBox was sucessfully modded. I figure MS probably learned from their mistakes and check file permissions on newer flavors of Windows, even with fonts...

Here is the Auto Font Install script:

Spoiler

#==============================================================================
# ** Auto Font Install
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Wachunga
# Version 1.1
# 2006-05-26
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
=begin

  Automatically installs one or more fonts so the player doesn't have to. It
  only does this the first time the game is run and the process is quite
  transparent (notification to the player is optional).

  Thanks to MagicMagor for the pointer to one of the Win32 functions.
  
  FEATURES
  - handles installation of fonts so players don't have to
  - supports multiple fonts
  - process is quite transparent
  
  SETUP
  Create a Fonts folder in the game directory and place all fonts to be
  installed within. Then update the Filenames and Names constants below,
  adding an element to both arrays for each font.
  
  This script only installs the fonts on the player's computer. You'll
  still have to refer to them as necessary within the game,
  e.g. by setting a new default as follows (in main):
  Font.default_name = [Fonts::Names[0], 'MS PGothic']
  
  This script uses the SDK, available from:
  http://www.rmxp.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1802
  
  (To remove this dependency, just delete the three SDK-labeled lines,
  including the 'end' at the bottom of the script.)
  
  This script also requires the free FileUtils module by Minero Aoki, which
  is included in the standard Ruby distribution but for some reason not
  available in RMXP. Download and place it in your scripts subdirectory:
  http://s88387243.onlinehome.us/rmxp/auto_font_install/fileutils.rb
  
  Note: if player does not have the rights to install fonts on their machine,
  this probably won't work -- but then they wouldn't be able to do it manually
  either. :)

=end

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# * SDK Log Script
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SDK.log('Auto Font Install', 'Wachunga', 1.1, '2006-05-26')

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# * Begin SDK Enabled Check
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
if SDK.state('Auto Font Install') == true

  module Fonts
    # filenames of fonts to be in stalled
    Filenames = ['KOMIKASL.ttf', 'KOMIKASK.ttf']
    
    # names (not filenames) of fonts to be installed
    Names = ['Komika Slim', 'Komika Slick']
  
    # whether to notify player (via pop-up message) that fonts were installed
    Notify = true
    
    # location of fonts (relative to game folder)
    Source = 'Fonts/'
    
    # location of fonts after installation
    Dest = ENV['SystemRoot'] + '\Fonts\\'
  end
  
  class Scene_Title
    
    AFR = Win32API.new('gdi32', 'AddFontResource', ['P'], 'L')
    WPS = Win32API.new('kernel32', 'WriteProfileString', ['P'] * 3, 'L')
    SM = Win32API.new('user32', 'SendMessage', ['L'] * 4, 'L')
    WM_FONTCHANGE = 0x001D
    HWND_BROADCAST = 0xffff
  
    alias wachunga_autofontinstall_st_main main
    def main
      success = []
      for i in 0...Fonts::Filenames.size
        f = Fonts::Filenames[i]
        # check if already installed...
        if not FileTest.exists?(Fonts::Dest + f)
          # check to ensure font is in specified location...
          if FileTest.exists?(Fonts::Source + f)
            require Dir.getwd + '/Data/fileutils.rb'
            # copy file to fonts folder
            FileUtils.cp(Fonts::Source + f, Fonts::Dest + f)
            # add font resource
            AFR.call(Fonts::Dest + f)
            # add entry to win.ini/registry
            WPS.call('Fonts', Fonts::Names[i] + ' (TrueType)', f)
            SM.call(HWND_BROADCAST,WM_FONTCHANGE,0,0)
            if FileTest.exists?(Fonts::Dest + f)
              success.push(Fonts::Names[i])
            else
              print "Auto Font Install:\n\nFailed to install " +
                Fonts::Names[i] + '.'
            end
          else
            print "Auto Font Install:\n\nFont " + f + " not found."
          end
        end
      end
      if success != [] # one or more fonts successfully installed
        if Fonts::Notify
          fonts = ''
          success.each do |f|
            fonts << f << ', '
          end
          print "Auto Font Install:\n\nSucessfully installed " + fonts[0..-3] +
            '.'
        end
        # new fonts aren't recognized in RMXP until the program is
        # restarted, so this is (unfortunately) necessary
        a = Thread.new { system('Game') }
        exit
      end
      wachunga_autofontinstall_st_main
    end

  end

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# * End SDK Enable Test
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
end

---

Edit #2

Updated the download file again (same download link, above). Removed the fonts, and auto font install script, using Comic Sans MS font. I suspect that even though the font was not in use in the game, the Auto Install Script was still referring to it and possibly causing more technical issues. I never figured I'd spend more time fighting with Fonts than actually mapping!

Edited by Heretic86, 22 October 2011 - 02:37 AM.

[Kiriashi]

Haha, yes fonts can be quite the opponent.

But I don't quite understand what problem you were having. I can utilize the Comic Sans MS font just fine, as it is in fact a default windows font.




Anyways I'm downloading the file again. :3


EDIT: Playing. First thing I notice is default music, titlescreen image, and windowskin.

I know you're not done, just mentioning it. xD

EDIT 2: OK so the messages are in a cool box, but the signs and stuff aren't. D:


EDIT 3: Lol at the random message from Sarah. Though that shouldn't stop the player's movement.

EDIT 4: Your fire skill says this:

Delas fire damage to one enemy.

I think you mean deals. =P

EDIT 5: One of the kids says "chek," though this seems to be intentional. As with the "owt," though that one is unnecessary.

EDIT 6: The smacking around was quite funny. :3

EDIT 7: Wow that dragging around looks painful. Good thing i'm unconscious.


Final statement.


Well that was entertaining. xD Are you going to finish this anytime soon? Your forest mapping was rather unique. Nice job.

[Heretic86]

I think it was the Auto Font Install script, not the font itself, that was causing the issues. I still like the other one better, but its not worth pissing off people with technical issues.

Non Default Windows Font - I think it looks better.


Comic Sans MS Font - Less technical issues, but I like the other font better.


---

Yeah, default title screen and music. Havent even come up with a real Title for the game yet. I think the story is more important than a name or title screen. Im also considering doing a looping cutscene before allowing the title screen appear with various scenes in the game, once the game is closer to being finished, and I think there are scripts for that. Thus, start the game, goes to cutscene with maybe a Prologue, then to title scene for like 20 seconds, then to another cutscene, something like that...

Signs with no boxes: Intentional. I thought it would offer a difference between the character just "Knowing" something, and reading something. Does the same thing on chests and items and what not. Same thing as Zone Name. Walk into a new zone and 2 second text tells you the name of the zone. Not like people really need it, but the autorun gives me the opportunity to do other things at the same time.

Random msgs from Sarah: Its optional to enable or disable player movement with the MMW script. Weird thing is that while the text is up and the player is allowed to move, random encounters dont happen. Also, touching touch events dont trigger while text is up either, so allowing player movement while moving text is up, I have to do carefully. Most of the text stopping the player from moving was intentional also, but I dont want it to get in anyones way. Rethinking some of the banter to allow movement during...

Delas LOL! I never noticed that before! Apparently it was on ALL of the freakin spells! Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out. Yeah, "Deals X Type of Damage"

Typos were intentional, hopefully not totally overdone. Just wanted to establish that character as being exactly as his name implies, "Stupid"! (thats the characters name, not calling anyone stupid...) I've pondered on if the misspellings were overdone, (yes thier was also intentional, should have been they're anyway, wrong usage), however, it gives me an opportunity for him to misinterpret statements later that, as usual for this character, gets them into trouble. I.E. he says "Dee Anger", "Well, I am Angery!" and does something "stupid", when it wasn't "Dee Anger" at all, it was "DANGER". I think that part of maintaining the consistency of the character, I'll have to maintain the typo's, even if they come across as overdone, but I'll consider toning it down just a bit...

Smacking around seemed to fit the mood of the Bully's theme, it felt "slapstick" like, and humorous, not to be taken seriously, until...

Getting dragged around, yeah, don't sweat it, its kind of hard to feel anything when you're DEAD! Oops! Did I say that? Wait... Wasn't there something in the firepit that hopefully you didn't need to use?

---

I have no idea when I'll release the full game. I really don't want to overwhelm myself, because I think the quality of the project would suffer as a result, so I am not aiming for something EPIC, however, the scenarios I keep coming up with seem to be headed that direction. So far, our two main characters end up running after the little girl, who isnt quite as weak or dumb as she appears, in fact, it would probably be a really good idea to not piss her off at all, but she will join, temporarily, then betray the group when they finally confront the Bullies, at which point, the girls TRUE power is revealed, which leads the new party, consisting of our two mains, and one of the Bullies replacing the little girl, to discover that the little girl's immense power has damaged the crystal of earth (maybe crystal of water, havent decided yet, but expect a flood), Ralph finds out he lost his soul when Sarah waited too long to use the "item", and his life is directly dependant on the survival of the crystal, Sarah gets Cursed by a Gypsy, and one of the Bullies has been seeking the Crystal in order to harness its power for himself! And that would just end up being the first Crystal of several! After that, I have no idea where it will all lead to! Three more crystals? Time Warp? Moon crystals? Maybe even leviathans? I dont know yet.

One of the goals I have during this little project is to make none of the characters completely good or evil, they all have their own personal motivations for doing what they do, but to do them in such a way that their actions wouldnt necessarily be considered evil if you looked at things from their perspective. It allows for a lot of plot twists, characters that are as "dynamic" as much as they can be between each other, etc. Dynamic not meaning conditional branched story telling, just that all the characters have unique relationships with each other, even the NPC's. Like Stupid pointing out that Mouth has a crush on the not so "little girl". I dont have that many maps built, as most of the time seems to come from Eventing. I tried to make sure each map was as high quality as I could make it. There are a couple of houses, 3 caves (short, like the forest), and a waterfall. The maps I seem to be able to slam out very quickly, but the way Im trying to write it requires a lot of backtracking. Currently Eventing out the big conflict between the group with the girl and the bullies, and havent totally decided how to finish the scene. This zone, still need to write Ralph finds out he lost his soul, Sarah gets cursed, and one of the Bullies joins the group. As far as which one has been "using" the bullies group to find the crystal, you'll just have to wait and see. I guess thats writer speak for I havent really decided yet! Its about an hours worth of gameplay so far...

Okay, any other Technical Issues?

Edited by Heretic86, 22 October 2011 - 06:53 AM.

[Kiriashi]

Oh jeez. That's a mouthful. You must love your keyboard...

Quote

I think it was the Auto Font Install script, not the font itself, that was causing the issues. I still like the other one better, but its not worth pissing off people with technical issues.

Non Default Windows Font - I think it looks better.
http://www.775.net/~...ges/Forest1.jpg

Comic Sans MS Font - Less technical issues, but I like the other font better.
http://www.775.net/~...ges/Forest2.jpg

Well the actual origin of the problem is not really important. When I said you shouldn't bother with fonts you need to install, I mean like.. at all. No custom fonts.

I mean sure, getting an autofont installer is nice and all but... its not something people like. What would be really cool is if you wrote your own font handler, so windows isn't even involved. xD

Quote

Yeah, default title screen and music. Havent even come up with a real Title for the game yet. I think the story is more important than a name or title screen. Im also considering doing a looping cutscene before allowing the title screen appear with various scenes in the game, once the game is closer to being finished, and I think there are scripts for that. Thus, start the game, goes to cutscene with maybe a Prologue, then to title scene for like 20 seconds, then to another cutscene, something like that...

I think your current title is epic, even though it doesn't make any sense. c: If you develop the story more, and have the "Once More, with Feeling" title mean something, then that would be awesome. Like I said earlier, the title made me want to download it.

As for titlescreens, ask Kevin.ds for one once you have an idea of what you want. He's awesome at making them, and does it for fun. ;D

Also, there is a screen that skips the titlescreen. I would use that, and then event the rest, aka the cutscenes, and the actually titlescreen.

Quote

Signs with no boxes: Intentional. I thought it would offer a difference between the character just "Knowing" something, and reading something. Does the same thing on chests and items and what not. Same thing as Zone Name. Walk into a new zone and 2 second text tells you the name of the zone. Not like people really need it, but the autorun gives me the opportunity to do other things at the same time.

I see. Well I recommend using like.. some wooden board picture for the background or something, 'cause the windowskin clashes so much with your awesome white bubble speech.

I never noticed the Map name.. interesting. xD Or did you just now add it? I guess I have a bad memory. And try to use autorun as little as possible. It can drain fps massively.

Quote

Random msgs from Sarah: Its optional to enable or disable player movement with the MMW script. Weird thing is that while the text is up and the player is allowed to move, random encounters dont happen. Also, touching touch events dont trigger while text is up either, so allowing player movement while moving text is up, I have to do carefully. Most of the text stopping the player from moving was intentional also, but I dont want it to get in anyones way. Rethinking some of the banter to allow movement during...

Hmm. Interesting. I'd say go for it anyways, and like you said, be careful. Make certain sections of your map, and disable the ability for the messages to appear depending on where the player is. Or something like that.

Don't you just love game design? xD In all seriousness, I think this is one of the most fun parts of game design; figuring out things like this.

Quote

Delas LOL! I never noticed that before! Apparently it was on ALL of the freakin spells! Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out. Yeah, "Deals X Type of Damage"

You're game has to have SOME spelling mistake. It's an indigame rule.

Quote

Typos were intentional, hopefully not totally overdone. Just wanted to establish that character as being exactly as his name implies, "Stupid"! (thats the characters name, not calling anyone stupid...) I've pondered on if the misspellings were overdone, (yes thier was also intentional, should have been they're anyway, wrong usage), however, it gives me an opportunity for him to misinterpret statements later that, as usual for this character, gets them into trouble. I.E. he says "Dee Anger", "Well, I am Angery!" and does something "stupid", when it wasn't "Dee Anger" at all, it was "DANGER". I think that part of maintaining the consistency of the character, I'll have to maintain the typo's, even if they come across as overdone, but I'll consider toning it down just a bit...

After reading them a bit, and thinking about it, I realized that you were using the typos as a way to tone the kid's character. However, I do think it is overdone just a tad. >_<"

Maybe use apostrophes to signify the slang speech. For example, if someone says "u can kill em with the 50 cal" as opposed to "You can kill 'em with the 50 cal." it becomes more obvious that the 'em wasn't just ignorant writing.

Does that make any sense? >___< lol. Anyways, it's up to you over course, but my advice would be to lower the "typos" a bit.

Quote

Smacking around seemed to fit the mood of the Bully's theme, it felt "slapstick" like, and humorous, not to be taken seriously, until...

Getting dragged around, yeah, don't sweat it, its kind of hard to feel anything when you're DEAD! Oops! Did I say that? Wait... Wasn't there something in the firepit that hopefully you didn't need to use?

Well you did it rather well. Most people don't pull cutscenes off very well in RMXP. The use of the jump command was a nice touch with the shoes and stickyburrs "or whatever you intended the's to be.

I couldn't keep myself from giggling. xD Wait a second... did I not finish it? o_0 Is it possible to not get beat up?

Le' gasp! D: I guess I need to retry tis..

Quote

I have no idea when I'll release the full game. I really don't want to overwhelm myself, because I think the quality of the project would suffer as a result, so I am not aiming for something EPIC, however, the scenarios I keep coming up with seem to be headed that direction. So far, our two main characters end up running after the little girl, who isnt quite as weak or dumb as she appears, in fact, it would probably be a really good idea to not piss her off at all, but she will join, temporarily, then betray the group when they finally confront the Bullies, at which point, the girls TRUE power is revealed, which leads the new party, consisting of our two mains, and one of the Bullies replacing the little girl, to discover that the little girl's immense power has damaged the crystal of earth (maybe crystal of water, havent decided yet, but expect a flood), Ralph finds out he lost his soul when Sarah waited too long to use the "item", and his life is directly dependant on the survival of the crystal, Sarah gets Cursed by a Gypsy, and one of the Bullies has been seeking the Crystal in order to harness its power for himself! And that would just end up being the first Crystal of several! After that, I have no idea where it will all lead to! Three more crystals? Time Warp? Moon crystals? Maybe even leviathans? I dont know yet.

Well it sounds like you have a good idea of where you're going to go from what you currently have, and that's great. You don't have to have the whole thing planned out, really. Lot's of good RPGMaker games are made up by the authors as they go along. You can be sure that I will be keepin' up with this game. =D

Leviathan?! Fricken hecks yeah. Lol. Not sure how you would do that in RMXP... I guess you could go inside it with the secondlast tileset. Eh? EH?

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One of the goals I have during this little project is to make none of the characters completely good or evil, they all have their own personal motivations for doing what they do, but to do them in such a way that their actions wouldnt necessarily be considered evil if you looked at things from their perspective. It allows for a lot of plot twists, characters that are as "dynamic" as much as they can be between each other, etc. Dynamic not meaning conditional branched story telling, just that all the characters have unique relationships with each other, even the NPC's. Like Stupid pointing out that Mouth has a crush on the not so "little girl". I dont have that many maps built, as most of the time seems to come from Eventing. I tried to make sure each map was as high quality as I could make it. There are a couple of houses, 3 caves (short, like the forest), and a waterfall. The maps I seem to be able to slam out very quickly, but the way Im trying to write it requires a lot of backtracking. Currently Eventing out the big conflict between the group with the girl and the bullies, and havent totally decided how to finish the scene. This zone, still need to write Ralph finds out he lost his soul, Sarah gets cursed, and one of the Bullies joins the group. As far as which one has been "using" the bullies group to find the crystal, you'll just have to wait and see. I guess thats writer speak for I havent really decided yet! Its about an hours worth of gameplay so far...

Another great example of character development. The all-evil baddie cliche has almost become boring. Cliche's aren't always bad, and people actually avoid them too much, but having characters like you mentioned sounds really interesting, a lot more so than super cliche RPGs.

I can't wait to see more of your maps. That's pretty much the main reason I play RPG Maker Games -- to see what other people can do.

Whoa whoa whoa. Spoilers! Lol. Warn us next time. :3

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Okay, any other Technical Issues?

Nope.

I hope I sufficiently kept up with your expansive post.

[Heretic86]

Yeah, I love my keyboard, but my keyboard hates me. Love / Hate relationship! I think the medical term for my condition is Verbal Diahhrea of the Fingers, and I just took an Oral Laxative!

The game design is definitely almost more fun than playing the games, if it didnt take as much effort as it does! Its like once I got an engine down, I take it, then take it to the next level beyond what anyone expects that it can do, and I havent even gotten close to my usual total domination of engines. Just to give you an example... M.C. Escher's Labyrinth. That was one of my projects. It is the most downloaded Serious Sam Deathmatch Map, period. Took about five months to build. If you have Serious Sam - The Second Encounter and decide to play this map, take a Dramamine then wait about twenty minutes before even attempting gameplay. Its that twisted!

I'll definitely have to pay more attention to the apostrophes' for usage, as I completely understand what you're saying. It shows the misspellings are intentional without explaining it. Players tend to not really care about what we as developers based our decisions around, they just want a fun game to play. Trying to come up with compelling reasons for both the characters to have complex motivations, and enough intrigue for the Player to want to continue playing. Pulling off the logic that anyone can get is a challenge as well. Like if Stupid would have caused a landslide to prevent them from following, it would have exceeded my technical skills at this time. I also wanted to open up that area to the player later so I had to use something that felt temporary. Fire wasnt an option as it would end up burning down the whole forest. Overkill. But oddly enough, making Sarah more vunerable as a character seemed to do well accomplishing both a sense of sympathy for her as well as establishing a logical reason that she wouldn't / couldn't be able to venture beyond the normally "invisible walls". Broken Glass, Bare Feet, duh! Oddly enough, the removal of her shoes opened a lot of doors after I thought about it as far as logical and natural limitations. Players will normally just stomp through anything, and any sort of obstacles end up being either literal walls, or "edge of map" types of solutions. This was so freakin easy that I cant believe I never thought of it before. Sharp gravel, no go! Spiky plants? Not gunna do it! Liquid Magma inside an active Volcano? I cant even handle a hot sidewalk! And of course, anything taken or stolen in games is usually a plot point that at least the characters have motivation to try to get the stolen thing back. I'll have to rewrite a bit so her character comes across as totally embarrassed about it. That seems a lot better to me than trying to write the main character as being motivated to go after the Bullies for "Revenge" for damn near killing him, regardless if his near death experience was intentional on their part or not.

Something I didnt think of before about RPG development, is that an Epic RPG seems to be many small short RPG games with overlapping stories. Go from point A to point B, here is some motivation. But before you get to point B, something else happens and you learn that as soon as you get to point B, you have to get to point C afterwards. So on the way or at point C, something else happens to continue to point D and the rest of the letters of the alphabet. There seem to be a lot of people that want to write this big epic story and come up with it in a day. Stephen King cant write an entire book in a day. Lord of the Rings wasnt written in a day. The Oddessy wasnt written in a day. Just make a short story as dramatic as possible, but leave it open ended enough that you can tell some more of the story tomorrow.

Demo, yeah, you cant really win the fight. Im still considering putting in a Conditional Scene after what you saw where if you used the Ashes of the Phoenix (equivilant of Phoenix Down, bring back to life potion), you're pretty much screwed and its Game Over! Literally! Of course, if you reload, you'll ALWAYS start your save game with one of those items, so you don't have to start over from scratch, so I'll have to make it a big point in the alternate "you die" version to hold on to that thing for dear life! The point of the "you die" version is that some minor actions have long reaching consequences.

I might even consider opening this up a bit for other people to develop if I like their style. But I am becoming totally anal retentive about the style. I'll have to think about that tho.

[ForeverZer0]

The problem with the Auto-Install Font is that the game has to be run as an Admin to make it work. On top of that, I don't think new fonts are registered with RMXP after they install, so the game needs restarted. It will probably just be better to provide the fonts with the game, and instruct the player to install them before playing if they would like to see the game as it was supposed to be seen.

I haven't played it yet, but I downloaded it, and probably will get a chance to try it out a little later, so I can't really make a comment on the actual game at the moment. Looks good from the screenies, though.

[Heretic86]

Well, once you get around to it. I just hope you are entertained for a few minutes...

If I manage to muster up the drive to finish this little project, I'll probably have an actual installer so the fonts wont be an issue of installing before the game is run, or other issues that Im probably not aware of yet.

[Marked]

For the demo you probably just want to use the default fault to maximize compatibility. There are probably a few who downloaded it, couldn't get it working and left it. If you want more feedback, that's probably a good idea.

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If I manage to muster up the drive to finish this little project

Then why do you want feeback? I feel you owe me more gameplay now..

[Kiriashi]

Heretic86, on 22 October 2011 - 12:26 PM, said:

Yeah, I love my keyboard, but my keyboard hates me. Love / Hate relationship! I think the medical term for my condition is Verbal Diahhrea of the Fingers, and I just took an Oral Laxative!

The game design is definitely almost more fun than playing the games, if it didnt take as much effort as it does! Its like once I got an engine down, I take it, then take it to the next level beyond what anyone expects that it can do, and I havent even gotten close to my usual total domination of engines. Just to give you an example... M.C. Escher's Labyrinth. That was one of my projects. It is the most downloaded Serious Sam Deathmatch Map, period. Took about five months to build. If you have Serious Sam - The Second Encounter and decide to play this map, take a Dramamine then wait about twenty minutes before even attempting gameplay. Its that twisted!

I'll definitely have to pay more attention to the apostrophes' for usage, as I completely understand what you're saying. It shows the misspellings are intentional without explaining it. Players tend to not really care about what we as developers based our decisions around, they just want a fun game to play. Trying to come up with compelling reasons for both the characters to have complex motivations, and enough intrigue for the Player to want to continue playing. Pulling off the logic that anyone can get is a challenge as well. Like if Stupid would have caused a landslide to prevent them from following, it would have exceeded my technical skills at this time. I also wanted to open up that area to the player later so I had to use something that felt temporary. Fire wasnt an option as it would end up burning down the whole forest. Overkill. But oddly enough, making Sarah more vunerable as a character seemed to do well accomplishing both a sense of sympathy for her as well as establishing a logical reason that she wouldn't / couldn't be able to venture beyond the normally "invisible walls". Broken Glass, Bare Feet, duh! Oddly enough, the removal of her shoes opened a lot of doors after I thought about it as far as logical and natural limitations. Players will normally just stomp through anything, and any sort of obstacles end up being either literal walls, or "edge of map" types of solutions. This was so freakin easy that I cant believe I never thought of it before. Sharp gravel, no go! Spiky plants? Not gunna do it! Liquid Magma inside an active Volcano? I cant even handle a hot sidewalk! And of course, anything taken or stolen in games is usually a plot point that at least the characters have motivation to try to get the stolen thing back. I'll have to rewrite a bit so her character comes across as totally embarrassed about it. That seems a lot better to me than trying to write the main character as being motivated to go after the Bullies for "Revenge" for damn near killing him, regardless if his near death experience was intentional on their part or not.

Something I didnt think of before about RPG development, is that an Epic RPG seems to be many small short RPG games with overlapping stories. Go from point A to point B, here is some motivation. But before you get to point B, something else happens and you learn that as soon as you get to point B, you have to get to point C afterwards. So on the way or at point C, something else happens to continue to point D and the rest of the letters of the alphabet. There seem to be a lot of people that want to write this big epic story and come up with it in a day. Stephen King cant write an entire book in a day. Lord of the Rings wasnt written in a day. The Oddessy wasnt written in a day. Just make a short story as dramatic as possible, but leave it open ended enough that you can tell some more of the story tomorrow.

Demo, yeah, you cant really win the fight. Im still considering putting in a Conditional Scene after what you saw where if you used the Ashes of the Phoenix (equivilant of Phoenix Down, bring back to life potion), you're pretty much screwed and its Game Over! Literally! Of course, if you reload, you'll ALWAYS start your save game with one of those items, so you don't have to start over from scratch, so I'll have to make it a big point in the alternate "you die" version to hold on to that thing for dear life! The point of the "you die" version is that some minor actions have long reaching consequences.

I might even consider opening this up a bit for other people to develop if I like their style. But I am becoming totally anal retentive about the style. I'll have to think about that tho.

I think I wrote enough in my last reply to be allowed to just say..


=D

[Heretic86]

Marked, on 22 October 2011 - 09:23 PM, said:

For the demo you probably just want to use the default fault to maximize compatibility. There are probably a few who downloaded it, couldn't get it working and left it. If you want more feedback, that's probably a good idea.

Then why do you want feeback? I feel you owe me more gameplay now..

Workin on the gameplay. Now that the technical issues appear to be resolved, was the style acceptable? Heavily animated characters, hints, visual cues, your conversations being observed by other characters, etc.?

[rgangsta]

Animated characters would look nice.
What type of gameplay are you going for?

[Heretic86]

The type of gameplay I know sounds extremely vague, but entertaining fantasy story driven gameplay, focusing on the story being character and world event driven (get to this town for next part of game, but not rushed). What I am thinking is that the dialogue is heavy in the beginning as there are lots of short expected tutorials, sleep and save in beds, this is how to do this and that, then as the story progesses, taper down dialogue to be more exploration and combat driven towards the middle of the game, more open instead of very linear like this particular map is. I know it doesnt really sound that exciting as that description is extremely vague, just want to make it entertaining for the player. I would like for the Player to be able to relate to each and every character in some way shape or form, even if those characters are the "enemy", the Player I think should be able to relate to their point of view and understand their motivations as not necessarily being good or evil, but reasonable.

Im also keeping an eye out for a better NON ABS Battle System, but something with a bit more "spice". Not necessarily a side persective or Active Battle System, just a wider more detailed combat system. I can already do dialogue during the combat sequences with the current Scripts, but those will probably be minimal. I just think the Combat needs to feel a little more rewarding, as well as being able to do it as quickly as possible, which is one of the good things about the default battle system.

I'd love to be able to have a lot more map Character Animations than I currently have available, and would probably need a lot of help with that, so I wont ask or expect that much work from anyone. But that would be the Style I would love to aim for.

I've tried to fix as much of the current style issues as I can, excluding giving the Wooden Signs a Wooden Background, but I do want to do that because it is an excellent suggestion. But just in regards to this map, do you have any other suggestions in regards to the Style of the gameplay? Characters that chatter quite a bit (to be toned down in the future), and guide the player towards their goal with that Dialogue?

[Heretic86]

Bump.

Demo given a massive update. Whole new Dungeon called Lightgeist Mountain, Work In Progress, however you can Play the Dungeon.

http://www.rmxpunlim...in-progress-xp/