/rpgmg/ - RPG Maker General #169

I write down a bunch of numbers on paper then throw them away, Repeatedly.

I like mathmagicians, so I like them small, but not that small. Between 50 and 250 for HP/MP and between 10 and 50 for regular stats is what I am shooting for. At least with playable characters. Bosses could probably go higher, but 4 digits would be reserved for secret bosses and the final boss.

Why do they all have the same/similar color palette? Makes them blend together.

The game has a whole has a purple and green theme. It's not just them, it's most of the world too.

The story is about a world that's always at night and under starlight, so it's part of the story.

So the characters blend together along with the background? That sounds...bland. I mean the designs themselves look nice! I like cloak guy with his space face, but the fact that they all just sort of congeal into purple black and green takes away from their otherwise distinct looks.

It won't be quite that bad! Not literally all of the tiles and such are going to be green and purple, it's just a thematic thing. There are only three elements in the game which are colored Green, Purple and Black. (Star Light, Astral Fire, Umbral Void) The characters colors all have a heavy focus towards their own element. Backgrounds and things will of course have more neutral shades.

I was around back in the Fog days of VX, so I'm pretty self aware about stuff looking bland. Hopefully I can get enough work done to have actual screen shots soon rather than just talk though.

Do you prefer large cities with many houses and unimportant NPCs or do you prefer small "city hubs" with only the important stuff in there like 2 shops and an inn?

Tell me, if this was your first free moment in the game, where would you head to first?

probably the left. npcs to talk to. "always go left in a maze". and it looks busier overall

It does sound busier, yes, I'll try and place some more things to the right, although it's better this way since I want people to go left first to complete some quests.

I prefer large cities with unimportant and important NPCs, but mostly important NPCs, even if it's a small important role, I want to feel as the NPCs are somehow significant for me/the story.

The first thing that caught my eye was the green-haired NPC on the right, but realistically, I'd probably check whatever was closest.

Something about the art makes the buildings pop out way more than the people to me. I'd probably go to that inn first.

So, what exactly is a Mary Sue and how can I avoid writing my characters as one?

I was thinking exact the same, but I would go for her and then go for the other npcs to the left, after that, the inn. But I think maybe if the thing above her head is bigger it would look better, she's too isolated.

It's the stroke, I think. The npcs don't have it. The big sign from the Inn kinda makes it pop out more, too. It's interesting to know that the use of stroke can influence the gameplay, tho.

Exploring large cities in RPGs gets tiring for me, so I'd lean towards the latter. Maybe it's just me, but when I run into yet another city where I feel obligated to talk to everyone and check everything (multiple times, if it's one of those games where everyone says something different after every major event), it often saps my will to continue. I wouldn't do away with them entirely, though; I'd rather have smaller towns or a hub that's relatively small but has a lot of things going on throughout the game.

The term is used so much these days that you'll probably get a million different answers, but I'd say it all comes down to writing. A well-written character kind of isn't a Mary Sue by default. But writing a good character is easier said than done, so that's not a helpful answer.

I'd define a Mary Sue as a wish fulfillment self-insert for the writer, someone that the story just plain treats better than the others. They get the coolest powers and all the praise, and any hardship they experience is superficial at best. If you design a character thinking they're the one you'd want to be if you were in the game, they might be a Mary Sue.

But I'd say not to worry about it too much. I think writing Mary Sues is something everyone does at some point (I sure did), and like everything else, you'll get better at writing with practice. Even wish fulfillment can be a good thing; it just has to appeal to the players, not the writer.

Could you give examples of "big cities" and "small cities" you disliked or enjoyed? I think my game has a large city, and I'm a little worried about it, since I do a large amount of interactions throughout the game and don't want the gameplay to be intorelable...

Any Ruby coders here? Or know of a place with publicly accessible classifieds? I'm looking to hire someone to convert some scripts so that I can drop VX and finally use Ace but I don't want to have to go through the whole "accumulate 30 posts and get warnings on half of them" just to offer someone money.

Good night bump

Talk to pumpkin face
talk to old pink dog
talk to Brown pointy ear
read sign
inspect well
pull blue carrot
inspect swing
talk to green hair
inspect crystal
talk to ghost on bench
check out inn

After asking around about how to remove the slide between tiles from movement (pic related) someone suggested that I make the player movement function change the x,y val and the real x,y val at the same time, then the movement would get that jumpy look I am going for.
>$gamePlayer._x = xval;
>$gamePlayer._realX = xval;
>$gamePlayer._y = yval;
>$gamePlayer._realY = yval;

Anyone good with plugins that could help me out with that? I'm not quite sure where the player movement function is to change it in a plug in.
I would also need to set the $gameMap.event movement to do the same so the NPCs move like the player.

I gave the cogs a little spin. They go faster when the player takes damage and out of control when special attack is ready. Looks smoother in-game. Gif is potatoes.

That's a nice UI element, sounds like it adds a lot of character to the game.

I think it has to do with this area not sure how it needs to be modified though:

Game_CharacterBase.prototype.moveStraight = function(d) {
this.setMovementSuccess(this.canPass(this._x, this._y, d));
if (this.isMovementSucceeded()) {
this.setDirection(d);
this._x = $gameMap.roundXWithDirection(this._x, d);
this._y = $gameMap.roundYWithDirection(this._y, d);
this._realX = $gameMap.xWithDirection(this._x, this.reverseDir(d));
this._realY = $gameMap.yWithDirection(this._y, this.reverseDir(d));
this.increaseSteps();
} else {
this.setDirection(d);
this.checkEventTriggerTouchFront(d);
}
};

bump

avoid making the character perfect. make them fail at least once at something non trivial.

also what said

Would just rescaling the faceset to be the charset good for the alpha stage of the game development?

I don't know if I should make all the art first or use placeholder Googled art and work on gameplay first.

How well do you have all your gameplay planned out? Do you know exactly what assets you'll need?

Personally, I find that there's nothing wrong with making the art first as long as you've planned everything properly. You don't want to waste time making a bunch of assets that you're going to throw out later because you've realized some part of your game or other doesn't work. If you think that may happen, just use placeholders for now.

Both extremes are bad, imo. NPCs are a great way to deliver information about the world and providing you clues for your quest without having to infodump on the player at every scene. And that benefits both, the players who just want to go on with their game and those who want to learn more about the lore. The number of npcs should thus be limited by the things you want or can say in the game.

However, if you are providing lore in some other way (party chat) and you want to make Towns into Inns and stores, just make it so a menu is displayed when you enter the Town from the map.

imo its fine to have simplified hubs for unimportant places, but for someplace that's suppose to be a big deal, like a capital, should be fleshed out more.

That isn't to say you can just have a bunch of empty houses and one line npcs. The place is important, so it needs more effort put into it.

Working with 48x48 is ridiculous, but I'm applying similar artstyles as seen with Square snes games to my game.

Bamp

Is there a way to make an actors sprite sheet change with class change, I'm using default assets and plug-ins? Just so you know it's my first go at the engine. Just want to know if it's doable with default everything.

Even when you sign post things so the player can know who is important and what objects can be investedgated - they still walk around every inch of the screen pressing the action button like a retard because other games conditioned them to do so.

Again, if there really is a place that is so unimportant you have nothing to say about it, you might as well just save yourself from mapping it and just display a "Go To Inn", "Go to Item Store", "Go to Smith" when you visit it from the map.

Post progress

Here. This is why I'm asking...

Can't you do it with "Change Actor Images..." in Common Events?

Thanks, and now I feel stupid for deving while tired/clocking too many hours to notice the obvious

What is the first monster your party encounters?

I don't play RPGs as often as I used to, so my memory might be off, but:

Grandia 1 and 3 were particularly bad. The first because I found the city layout confusing and the map utterly useless, so I kept getting lost. Maybe I would have gotten used to it, but I didn't get far. The third because every single NPC seemed to have between 1-5 things to say after almost every event; I felt obligated to try to see it all, which meant talking to everyone all the time until they started repeating things. The writing was entertaining (at least in the earlier parts of the game, which were better), but it got tedious.

On the other hand, the first two Paper Mario games were pretty good. The cities in that game were just fun to explore. It wasn't the size, but rather that the writing was good and there always seemed to be a lot to find and certain things you couldn't reach yet. I never minded finding a new city, or revisiting an old one.

Trails in the Sky... I loved that game, but the cities were often a chore. They were huge, showed up near the beginning of each chapter, and ground the game to a halt every time. Each was at the center of a chapter's story and there were a lot of easily missable sidequests and secrets in that game, so going through them thoroughly and regularly felt kind of required. But it was a slow game I played at a time I wasn't in the mood for that, I admit.

So, I guess I'd say it's less about size than what you do with it, which is probably less helpful than "don't go above X NPCs". It's a very subjective thing, and I imagine difficult to get right because of that. I don't have a lot of experience designing cities myself, but I'd say to keep in mind that a normal RPG city is a complete stop to the normal flow of the game, and plan it accordingly. If it's just one, it shouldn't be much of a worry, especially if it comes at a time when the player needs a break.

Thinking about this is making me want to start making something again.

>Trails in the Sky... I loved that game, but the cities were often a chore
I played TiTS for two hours and barely got past the tutorial (sewer) dungeon. The cities are so big, they're distracting

Do it user

if you have "one" large city than that's probably fine. the main town should always be a little bigger than the normal towns or villages. Let your party stay there for a long time and only allow them to explore it partly (spend night at inn at first, visit castle tomorrow).

Personally i really like the star ocean 2 towns, their designs always felt unique and different. (bridges,stairs, water, weather, nature, music, different kinds of stores) Making them distinct is the most important thing in my opinion.
Like someone else said: trails of towns are waaaay too big

Evil bumpy

Do you ever go look at the RPGs on steam and wonder why you don't just churn out some trite RTP filled game to make cash like others do?

I don't want to remembered for making a super trashy RTP rpg maker game
What makes me angry is that some of them actually earn money

I designed a new monster, based on a tardigrade. He's gonna have through-the-roof defenses, obviously.

Thoughts? I'm pretty proud of his design

Very nice, though there are a few stray pixels here and there. I love this art style!

What do you guys think of the other engines made by enterbrain? i think 2nd Fighter maker is pretty dope.

Thanks user! I've kind of come to embrace stray pixels; it's something I gotta work on.

Here's my whole monster collection so far, minus the bosses.

Have you been drawing on the draw threads on /v/ by any chance?

No, why?

Your style reminded me of someone from there.

What does your MC do after the end of the game? What about the rest of the party?

they can finally afford a meal, so they eat

He moves in with his love and they live happily ever after.

It's not time to die, bump.

Do you gives your characters surnames?

It depends on who died in the end!

I tried drawing my world map with pastels. Not sure how I feel about the result.

I kinda like it. The whole game would need to look like this however.

No

Yes.

But thou must.

I'm planning to, but din't decide which names I'm going to be using .

Not a chance. Instead I envy the designer's ability to actually finish games.

How many plugins is a healthy number to release your game with? I'm using 65 and a little scared

Fewer is better for stability. Don't go looking at plugins for feature ideas to put in your game, but use them to achieve a vision you have that the base program falls short of.

Rate my Pokemon Essentials MV offering so far.

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Might fill it the blanks with fan tiles, but thats after I get the regular FR/LG in there first.

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Everything sorted for MAXIMUM SPACE!

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And thats it for the Outside.

Which one is your favorite?

Wait, you did the Pokemon set yourself?
If so I'm really impressed.

They all are pretty great, if I had to call a favorite I would say top middle because she is so happy.

user, I think she's crying...

I was just thinking of a game idea earlier (and wrote down some notes about it too). I was thinking of maybe making an NES-styled Pokemon game, under the premise that it would be like, a Pokemon game that came out before Red/Green in some parallel version of our world. It would be made with the idea of having it be more limited than Red/Green, so Red/Green would seem like they had new and exciting content compared to this one, as if they were actual sequels to it.

Some of the notes I'd come up with:
- Pokedex is 70 Pokemon, all out of the original 151.
- No starter choice. You get Rattata and you'll like it, bitch.
- Most third forms of Pokemon don't exist, such as Pidgeot, Golem and Machamp.
- Single types only. Pokemon with dual types are changed to single (for example, Pidgey is just Flying).
- Ice, Psychic, Ghost and Dragon don't exist.
- Only 4 badges to get, and there is no Elite 4, just a champion.
- No evil team and no rival.
- No TMs or HMs. This also means no Surf or Fly.
- Level cap is changed to 50. Stats and moves are adjusted to reflect this change.
- Battles would be totally front view, without seeing your own Pokemon, only the enemy Pokemon against a black background.

I think it would be neat.

Why the god damn fuck would you enjoy a more limited version of anything ever god damn
fuck

Ever played Gang Garrison 2? A 2D platformer version of Team Fortress 2 is more fun than you'd think. At least it was, when people still played it.

Looks good to me, though I haven't tried it in the actual maker. Still, nice work.

While it certainly could work I'm not sure if I would like to play it.

Live

I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and actually start practicing art one of these days. Most of my ideas just wouldn't work with the RTP, and my minor sprite editing skills aren't exactly enough.

Hopefully it's not quite as hard as it looks.

If it's pixel art is quite easy! For tileset you can just use simple tilesets as base (the ones that come with rpg maker are complicated, but the ones in Undertale are reallyyy simple, for example)

This was mentioned the other thread so maybe somebody will be interested. Ao Oni anime shorts are out in your favorite animu streaming sites.