RPG Maker General #219

thats cool thats cool
but here's a real question
why did you have to post that picture in particular?

Thanks user, I'm sure people will appreciate it.

Feel free to repack the exe, too lazy and don't have the connection for it.

:shrug:

Studying actual programming.

That's lame, I remember playing that over a year ago and it was just a lame F2P MMO that looked nothing like that

What sort of settings fit well with synthwave music? I just bought a whole discography of it that came with a commercial license.

Probably Cyberpunk
What did you buy?

>What are you working on?
"Research". Making a sci-fi/fantasy game inspired by 80's~90's anime of that type, so looking into the kind of fashion/design themes that were common at the time.

Finally finished designing the interior of a lighthouse after being stumped for a very long time, by using an image for inspiration.

groupees.com/future80s3
$89 tier

Also, here's the Bandcamp for all their music: future80s.bandcamp.com/

The samples are pretty nice, you could make good use of these.

youtube.com/watch?v=S8aAJIIPBYw

They were mostly milieu stories with characters from earth crossing over for whatever reason to a fantasy world. So the MCs were almost always in school uniforms, if they were girls.

If it was high fantasy, guys wore bomber jackets.
Low fantasy, outfits were plain tunics. Priestly robes or breastplates.
Honestly, fantasy conventions haven't changed, just the pantones.

Scifi today is more sexy skinsuits and power-armor. Back then it was jumpsuit/overalls. The idea was that space culture didn't really have "fashion". Climate control makes jackets, shorts, and other seasonal items obsolete.

soundcloud.com/tinyghoststudios/not-cave-2
been implementing some ideas learned from my mommy, youtube.com/watch?v=fkxONd-mMRc

It's probably enough synthwave to last a lifetime of 80s-style game dev.

A while back I remember there being a link to a browser-based music creation app in a pastebin in the OP, or something like that. Now I can't find anything of the sort, anyone remember what I'm talking about?

PC battle sprites. Approaching the 3/4 done mark.

sleep

I like that you consistently post screens of your shit
but
What does it look like in motion?
Do you intend on the level trope changing at some point?
Is there any sort of story, characters?
Aside from placing, selling, and presumably upgrading towers, what control does the player have?
What's Mana for?

Sell me on this why I should play this over other tower defense games.
Oh, and why have three enemy paths if they're all the same general length and shape?

there could've been a plot, but i'm too lazy to bother with it. releasing it quickly is more important. the plot was going to be:
>kingdom has ancient dupe spell
>dupe spell on heroes to defend kingdom against constant monster attacks
>evil guy uses dupe spell on monsters to attack kingdom
>party about to kill evil guy
>"hmmph ignorant fools; king is the real evil"

>evil guy's village used as test subjects for kingdom's dupe spell
>rip village
>evil guy's been out for revenge
>each time someone's duped, lose some life force

>join forces with not so evil guy to attack castle and king
>big battle with lots of duping on both sides
>party defeats king
>party dies shortly after, from all the duping
>no more dupe spell forever; peace restored
>end
would've been pretty cool with the plot twist and bittersweet ending
evil guy badass bishi; best boi

supposed to finish it quickly enough for it to be a worthwhile time investment, though. so far, it's been ~3 months, which is slower than i had hoped.

>motion
youtube.com/watch?v=pLQl8rxZg0o
>level trope changing
i don't know what you mean by this
>controls, besides ...
that's it; mana is the resource. gold/minerals

>why this over others
not much :p

>3paths if all same
it's just to have more of the screen filled up: more enemies, towers, numbers, vfx, blahblah
and it multiplies mistakes. wrong decisions would lead to 3x the damage

Enemies and boss,will start dialogue part soon

i want the sister to be my mommy

>level trope changing
I meant if there were levels that weren't snowy, which your video proved
>it's just to have more of the screen filled up: more enemies, towers, numbers, vfx, blahblah
>and it multiplies mistakes. wrong decisions would lead to 3x the damage
can't these be accomplished by having three different paths? perhaps you could even have the paths intersect?

good night bump

sleepy time

WAKE UP!

(can't wake up)

What do you guys think about a game with no permament party members?
You will have to hire or convince other adventurers to join you for a quest.
Some of them will refuse to go on specific quests(no dungeons for the claustrophobic guy).

It's an interesting idea, but could potentially be very obnoxious. Also, how would the party interact when there's potentially six billion different configurations?

So, like Atelier Rorona? I didn't like that very much, but who knows? There's possibly people out there that like the mechanic.

Obviously there will be a small number of party members, I'm thinking 6 and you can take up to 3 on each quest. Also it will be light on storytelling.
Haven't heard of that one, I can check it out to know what not to do.

That looks surprisingly fluid. Is this MV?

Post some JRPGs with great UI design

...

What do you mean? Like Pokemon where all your fighters are optional.
That's fine. You still have train them.

I have played a SIM game where you run a bar. As you spend money and add more expensive drinks, tables, ect...better recruits appear. Those recruits go as far as they can into a dungeon but they'll ultimately die. You're just grinding for money, to get better stuff, to get farther into the dungeon, to make more money, to get better stuff.
It looks like an RPG. But the characters themselves don't progress, it's the bar. This is what you'd call "rpg-elements". Once you get further along, you can custom equip recruits with a small selection of amulets for more Mana or Sleep-Poision immunity which are what ultimately ends most dungeon expeditions- they last longer, net you more money.
But it's all optional. The name of the game isn't efficiency. There's nothing rewarding about the dungeons. just higher levels means more money faster. But you could theoretically MAX the Bar out by repeating the lower levels enough time. That's what makes it a SIM and not an RPG.

I knew someone would post P5 in the first three.
It's indeed quite nice tho.

Having to train them is a chore. Equipping them also seems like a raw deal

bump

They're all fundamentally the same.

There will be no levels, esentialy you are LV1 the entire game.
It's going to be all about the equipment(interchangeable between heroes).
I'm thinking of unequipping everything at the end of a mission.
Maybe upgrade a hero by doing his quest or something(nothing major).

>Maybe upgrade a hero by doing his quest or something(nothing major).
this scales very badly as you get more characters. There's a reason Suikoden never did it, and even those games were pretty stuffed with party members.

I hope equipping is not going to be an exercise in pain?

>intersections
i don't try too hard when coming up with stages, but i do already do that on some of them

yeah, mv. it'll lag if you have too many attacks occuring at once
>constantly creating new windows for the damage popups
>drawing their contents
>adding them to the scene
>then removing them from the scene
or if there have been ~4000 enemies spawned. The event cloning script I use just erases events in the same manner RM erases its traditional events, so it actually gets kept in memory.
I do have solutions to both, but I'm likely going to just be keeping the stage lengths short enough to not hit the 4000 mark. The damage popup lag is something I need to get to eventually, though.

Updated an old sprite. Original on left, newer version on right.

Which do you prefer?

I like the one on the right more.

Thanks user.
It works, although the crack is twice as big as the original file. What's it laden with, dolphin porn, russian botnets and CP?

As for 1.5.0, I'm especially happy with the new plugin manager.
Relevant for 1.5.0: youtube.com/watch?v=qyweorBVa94

>There will be no levels, esentialy you are LV1 the entire game

Sounds pretty boring desu, I like the idea of having my characters get stronger regardless of what they're wearing

Anyone here use Smile Game Builder?

The DRM system they used compresses the executable, so this is probably close to the original size.

MV is basically a HTML5 game creation tool. That's how it can be completely cross platform. But the downside is that it has to embed an entire browser engine for each platform. This bloats the file size. Note that deploying a completely empty RPGMV game for Windows gives you a 46MB .exe file: that's because the browser engine is just that big (Chrome's engine weighs in at about 49MB).

You can reduce the file size of the game executable (or most other executables, for that matter) by using UPX, a tool that compresses executables.

I am trying it out currently, making 3D models is hard.

hard as in you need to learn a bunch of things or hard as in the UI is not helpful?

Well the 3D character maker for Smile Game Builder is only the default blocky characters which I have no interest in whatsoever. So if you don't want those then you have to learn a bunch of things.

RPG maker devs be like.

I'm lactose-intolerant. So I use alternative gameplay such as Almond or Coconut milk. Watch me sell it as a dairy product anyways.

Would you be interested in playing a game made entirely out of sliding ice puzzles?

You can do RPGs without levels, as long as your characters get stronger over time you don't have to have levels.

Sliding ice puzzles are fine but a whole game of them? How long is the game?

It seems to support 2d flat sprites, so you can start from there and work your way up, I guess.

No, I wouldn't.

I don't mind RPGs without levels, including stat gains. I vastly prefer games where equipment is the main focus even.

When you want to reduce your character's damage so that you can make a combo video, you just wear garbage equipment.

When you want to force a gameover so you can get the rape ending, you just remove your armor and spam defend.

When you want to do a challenge playthrough, you don't need to enforce wishywashy soft rules to circumvent level ups reducing the challenge difficulty.
>you're only allowed to reach THIS level in THIS area
You just keep using the same equipment from start to finish.

I also find it a lot more fun improving your equipment than it is to improve your characters. Like even if you have a stat-allocation system, choosing to put points into STR isn't as satisfying as
crafting a weapon, then perhaps enhancing its upgrade level, and slotting gems into it. Maybe you can fuse items into that base weapon, and change its internal properties. Maybe there are equipment skill interactions that make particular equipment sets optimal.

I'll try to keep party members to a minimum.
Equipping takes less than a minute.
As this user said I can work something out.

That sound pretty good, but i want to make sure that equipment is not mutually exclusive.
Sword 2 can't be better in every way compared to Sword 1.

I want the most generic, trope filled RPG maker game ever. Can someone point me in the right direction?

Careful.
Levels are just plateaus that still involve character stats. That's the real character progression. There's a difference between Character growth and Equipment Upgrading.

It's like SIM games.
A racing Sim. You race for prize money, you upgrade your car, to enter more races, to win more money, ect...
The car isn't a character.
Weapons aren't character growth.

Is this idea worth it?
Making the game episodic and free and ask for donations to support the game?

There are a few issues I'd be getting with making this all on one package, like having to beta test a hours long game just to fix some text over and over again, amongst other engine-specific things like stuttering and lag.

>mutually exclusive
what did he mean by this

>worth
no

your work is definitely commercial-worthy. just persevere, and i guess optimize the way you playtest things.

This. If I had money I would throw it at you, but since I'm broke I can only offer advice. One of the best ways to play-test things later in your game is to make a debug room that you always start out in. You can test anything you like in that room without messing up anything else in the game. And if you need to test something in a later part, you can set a transfer event to wherever you need to go and just turn on switches and change variables manually to whatever you need them to be. It's what I do and it works quite well. I also have an in game save to make ABSOLUTELY sure things work in context.

Though do make sure you remove the debug room or place the player where you need them to start at haha. I've almost forgotten to do that a few times.

If you're gonna do that, here are my suggestions

Characters aside from protag don't level up or have equipment other than maybe accessories
They're all tagged with easy to understand classes and roles
Perma-death
Protag's death is instant game over
Protag can have his class chosen at the start of the game and may have one opportunity (or rare opportunities) for a reclass/promotion
Have negative party member traits like claustrophobia be easily conveyed as well, such as pacifist healer being unable to attack, or arachnophobic knight running away if he gets hit by a spider. Basically nothing too complex.

IIRC, LISA 1 also runs on a temp allies only system. I also recommend you look into popular roguelikes for handling impermanent and probably random content

Okay, thanks for the advice.
I'll try to improve on the ways I playtest things.

...

don die pls

I'm working on a game entirely in the basic UI's graphics, it's laughably bad and it's grown on me.

I'm talking 8 tables in a row, clearly separate, and all characters act like it's some harry potter full length table. Clothesracks treated like punching bags. roasted pigs growing in a garden and everyone tells you it's totally pumpkins.

My question is this: If I want to make the game free for a bit cause I think it's campy and fun, is there any licensing I can do so I can make it stay mine, no reproduction or redistribution, and reserve the rights to make it commercial one day?

I want to be able to give it away for free, or charge for it, but keep it as mine no matter which I do. Too many spooky stories of people's games suddenly getting remaid and showing up on adultswim.com or something

Is that the wrong way to use it? And I did give an example of what I meant.

You could release it for free on Steam and later release a remastered version or something.

You say some pretty nice things, maybe limiting equipment is a good idea.
Perma-death is too hardcore for me, I'm thinking if they get knocked out, they won't be able to adventure for a while.
The protag will be a prim and proper priest(the only one), so that the party always has heal and cure.
I've got a lot of research to do, not really familiar with this.

Perhaps Paladin would be better for protag, you'd have both healing and steady damage

Maximum length for random encounters?
Minimum time between them?
Was thinking a minute or two for a situation where you get fucked up a little, and 10-15 steps between encounters.

Finishing some areas!

...

Your art style is nice and pleasant so see.

Hell. No.
Randumb encounters should be few abd far between.
10-15 steps feels like every other step, add another zero to that unless your game is one coridor.

kind of like FFT/FFTA, with one to three main characters and the rest you recruit them, except with stuff like permadeath?
I like how this guy puts it
Except for the non-leveling thing
But that's just a personal prefference cause I'm a slut for grinding.
It can be very interesting if you manage to make it balanced only with the equipment (characters that aren't the MC should be very different and with many different abilites and whatnot)
Now that I think of it, MH doesn't use levels and it's grindy as fuck. If you add procedurally generated allies with different perks to it you're giving it a shit-ton of replayability

Gah, Starcraft Remastered released today. 15$
I want to go back and make an RPG map in it so badly.

soundcloud.com/tinyghoststudios/cave

Nice and catchy

soundcloud.com/iwilldevouryourkittens/luciforge

Aside from ease of implementation, is there a single positive to random encounters?

Enables faster grinding for those who are into that. They're practically synonymous. More exp, gold, items, etc. if the encounters are good for those.

You can design maps without having to worry about fitting the encounters into them.

Thanks for alerting me of Yanfly's 1.5.0 version. That fixed all my loading problems. I should really sub to his channel one day, but I don't want to keep installing every new plugin I see.