Blog Posts

Progress Report: November '15

7/11/2015

Progress has indeed been made! Although it's mainly concerning the database. Stuff I finished so far:

all weapons
all accessories
all consumable items
everybody's base stats

Doesn't sound particularly impressive on paper, but it sure took its sweet time. Other than that, a single dungeon and a town have been finished. Mapping has never quite been my strength, but it's also important to leave one's comfort zone and start working on things that you may not like. Can't have Ocean fix up my maps for the rest of the game's development cycle, after all! With that said, have a bunch of new screenshots.

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Progress Report: March '15

26/3/2015

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You should know this by now: I never manage to update regularly. But I haven't been lazy! Get ready for another presentation video.

This footage mainly exists to prove that development is still going on. As a rule of thumb, whenever a developer starts updating infrequently and only says stuff like "the game is still coming" without any visual evidence, you can be sure that it's dead and that the formal cancellation is coming soon.

...But I digress. A couple things shown in the video that still need adjustment:

The battle sprites: Some poses are still awkward, idle animations haven't been implemented yet, etc. Even when working with sprite rips, those still are a pain.
The music: I'm currently using placeholders, the only finished track so far is the boss theme (although the one in the video is still placeholder.)
The entire area: It's currently just a test dungeon, it's probably not gonna make it into the final version.
The menu backgrounds: As multiple people have pointed out, some of them are too bright. This has been fixed by now, I just didn't want to record new footage for something so trivial.
The battle system: The most-glaring flaw is the fact that damage does display for enemies, but not for allies. I've tried fixing this myself but it didn't work, and the original author of the script hasn't responded to my message yet. (And the script's site disappeared a while ago too. Uh-oh?)

And that's about it for today. See y'all soon. Maybe.

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Retooling

29/10/2014

Between getting a new PC back in July and a friend gifting me a legal copy of RPG Maker VX Ace, I had a lot of time to work on stuff. I'm sorry for changing my plans yet again (you guys're probably used to it by now...), but I do believe I'm having this project on solid ground now. The story is the same as in the SIM RPG 95 game I planned, things have just been retooled to make it into a traditional RPG.

And since you'd probably rather want to see it, here you go:

Everything is subject to change. I think the comments in the video should explain what I missed or yet have to fix, so just enjoy this little presentation. Sprites totally not "borrowed" from Disgaea 4. Totally.

I'll post more info and stuff later. See ya!

What Pokémon Does Well

8/5/2014

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I know that the Pokémon games still have this bad "it's a game for middle schoolers" stigma attached to it. (Not that the fanbase cares a whole lot...)

However, a lot of people don't realise that it has some truly excellent design choices! Even if you might not notice this at first glance, there's a whole lot to learn from the series. So here we go~

The NPCs tell you how the game works. Many people say that this makes them somewhat boring to talk to, but c'mon! Having someone explain you how certain game mechanics work is muuuch more interesting than the regular "Today's a nice day!" "What shall I cook today?" the NPCs in other RPGs spout ad infinifum.
(as of Gen V) Pokécenters and shops share an interior. While this may result in having smaller towns overall, it definitely saves the trouble of healing up and then finding a place to stock up on supplies. Some older games like Final Fantasy V do this too (not all the time in the latter's case)
The dungeons (and gyms) have puzzles AND variety. Goes without comment, game where this completely failed: Final Fantasy IV. It has zero puzzles, and almost every dungeon is a cave.
You can save everywhere! The most-glorious anti-frustration feature ever.
Flying. After a certain point in the game, you can revisit each and every town you've been to before on a literal fly. Saves a lot of trouble. To a lesser extent, escape ropes let you warp out of every dungeon immediately.
Once new items become available, they can be bought in ANY shop. Very good when you need that potion that restores 500 HP but are currently in the beginning areas for some reason.
May/Haruka has the best character design ever. Period.

I hope this list will help at least some people design their games well.

Au revoir!

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How to make useful spells

27/3/2014

... or special abilities, skills, techniques... you get it. Basically, I've noticed that there are plenty games out there that have characters with absolutely massive spell lists, yet you'll only ever really use two or three of them throughout, because the remaining ones are 100% throwaway. So I decided to make a blog post about how to create some spells that your players actually wanna use!

Quality over quantity!

This one's very important. As I mentioned above, three pages worth of skills can be rendered completely redundant by having more useful spells.

One thing you should pay attention to is not to create spells are that are too specific to be of any help. Example: a skill that only cures poison. Then a skill that only cures paralysis. Then another skill that only cures silence, ad infinitum. This one is especially bad if you're making a game where all status effects are gone after a battle. Why not have a skill that cures all effects sans death instead? And then a single skill that revives? Much better.

If you have elemental spells it's alright to have multiple varities with different elements, but why not try to give them some secondary effects? For example, fire spells could have a 25%ish chance to inflict a Poison-type of effect, Ice could paralyze etc.

Stay effective!

If you want to maintain a small skill list, another thing you can do is make the individual skills remain strong throughout the game. In RPG Maker, you can do this by setting ATK and/or INT influence all the way to the max. That way, your spells get stronger as your character levels up.

There's also another good way to make healing techs stay effective. Make them restore a set percentage of your max HP. For example, have a Cure spell that restores 25% of your max HP. That way, it will restore 25 HP when the max is 100 and 2500 when the max is 10'000 and so on. Having variants that restore a higher percentage is completely fine. Naturally, you can also do this with items, but that's no the point of this post.

Status effects are your friends

About 75% of the RPGs out there have status effects you won't ever utilize. So, why not make poison status lower your strength as well? Or simply set it to take away a certain percentage of your max HP, like the healing example above.
And don't just make the bosses immune to all of them, that's just boring. One way to work around this is to create two versions of the same status effect, one for regular enemies and one for bosses. Simply make the enemies immune to the boss version and vice versa. Who knows, maybe this can add a whole new layer to the gameplay of your own little creation?

So I hope this post was of at least some use. I really wanted to pass this advice down to fellow game makers, so don't disappoint me!

Change of plans

16/3/2014

I'm sorry people, I know I've been both inactive and working on a different project every other time. I've really, really, really decided to only concentrate on one project and one project alone for now.

As for the other games I've talked about... ignore their existence for now. I'll decide what to do with them once I'm done with the current thingy.

A CHANGE OF HEEEART <3

So I've always wanted to create my very tactical RPG. I tried time and time again, almost always using programs that were not designed for that kind of stuff in the first place.

But then I've discovered a program created specifically for this very purpose: Simulation RPG Maker 95.

However... if you've been following my Twitter feed, you might've heard me talking about how much I loathed this abomination of a tool. It has, however, actually gotten better! I discovered a new version (titled SIM RPG Maker 95 Value!), which has a much better translation, more room for custom stuff and a few other improvements here and there to make it more user friendly. After a couple hours of tinkering, here's a very early Alpha video!

I'm having a good run with the program right now, so you can definitely expect a demo in the coming months! In regards to the plot, all I'm sharing right now is that it's about a girl called Mireille who's looking for her brother, and suddenly, things go haywire.

Now let's talk about some of the programs faults, some of which I'm currently in the process of fixing, and a couple others which can't be fixed at all.

- the default graphics are damn ugly, even if for a 90s utility (all of the default graphics are currently being replaced!)

- when using a multi-target spell, the battle animation is shown individually for every target. Gets very annoying when you're healing people. (can't be fixed, unfortunately)

- the default music is cheesy and boring (just like the graphics, it's being replaced. Unlike the borrowed graphics, I'll create an all-new soundtrack! The track from the video is just a placeholder)

- balancing things is a pain, because all characters have both their innate stat growth in addition to their Class stats. Every character MUST have a class assigned to them. This CAN be fixed, but it's tedious and requires playtest after playtest.)

I'll keep updating stuff about this game, so be sure to visit frequently!

More items!

21/9/2013

So I actually sat down and finished the every-so-important list in my game's database. I crammed in as much as my (incredibly lacking) imagination could come up with. Here you go.

Fun fact: All of these items actually exist! Except for the Paraway, that is, but paralysis in real life works very differently anyway. Another fun (or, in my case, sad) fact: My mother always made me drink umckaloabo liquid to "motivate" my appetite a bit, but it just ended up making me dread every spoonful I had to ingest. Also, eating uncooked chanterelle is not recommend if you don't want to poison yourself.

Also, I've recently been playing Gungnir on the PSP, and oh my god is it ever orgasmic. Go play it if you have the necessary equipment, seriously!

I be trollin'

12/9/2013

Haha, yeah. To all of you who played the little "demo" I posted in the last blog post...

IT WAS A JOKE

Please don't take it seriously. It's just that I've been on a massive creepypasta hype recently, and I wanted to create my own. But instead of just writing one, I decided to use my current project's engine to create a full creepypasta-type game. Don't expect there to be any closure or continuation of the story, as it was just one massive trolling effort, m'kay?

Aaanyway, I did make actual progress on the "real" thing. I'm currently in the process of prettifying the graphics, and trying to eliminate as much of the RTP graphics as possible. Here's a screenie of the redesigned message box!

As always, click for full-size.

Victoire is doing just fine as you can see. Stella is alive and well too, but she doesn't have a particularly big role in the actual game, anyway.
...maybe.

That butt-ugly, DQ-styled menu that didn't have space for words with more than four characters has been given the boot as well, in favor of a much more pleasant-looking thing.

Ignore those titles for now, they're just for testing purposes.

I'd really love to give credit to the guy I snagged those amazing character busts from, but their website disappeared the other day. *Sigh*

Also, something which I obviously can't take a screenshot of, the game will mostly feature my own, custom music. With special emphasis on mostly, since I'm not making all of the tracks. Why? 'Cause I'm lazy, simple as that!

The battle system is also being reworked, allthough that part is still in the very early stages. But I feel like a screenshot anyway!

Yeah. I know. It needs work. Note the change of resolution.

Well, that's about it for now. Time to work dat stuff! Which, in Mary-language, means to goof-off and play other games instead of being productive. You guys know how I roll by now. G'fa ha ha.

Au revoir!

IT'S FINALLY OUT

4/8/2013

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Heeey you spicy piezones! Imagine: I was secretly being productive. And after six months I finally got a demo of my newest project ready: Revenge of the Donut! I talked about it a couple posts ago, it's my first project in RPG Maker VX Ace. I hope this serves as an excuse for the amount of RTP stuff used. If not
.. uh... dunno, just don't play it!
Here's a link to the post in questionSo anyway, you can download the game here
DropboxiesIn order to run it you'll also need the RPG Maker VX Ace RTP (run-time package) which you can get on
the official website.This demo covers two dungeons and has three playable characters. I hope you'll enjoy it! Regards.

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Dragon Quest VI

17/12/2012

Fall 1992. Dragon Quest V was released and became an instant success, both critically and commercially. Plans for the sixth game in the series were made soon thereafter, but series father Yuji Horii was skeptical about the whole thing. One very day he knocked at the door of Chunsoft, the developer of all last games and politely asked them to stop working on Dragon Quest VI and handed the whole thing over to Heartbeat, which doomed Chunsoft to produce mystery dungeon games for all eternity.

And this proved to be a huge step forward for the entire series.

Released in December 1995, the sixth installment of the series was a huge hit. Cue 2010, where the game got remade by Arte Piazza, and then came 2011 where the game was finally released worldwide.

So yeah, if you haven't guessed yet, I'm gonna talk about Dragon Quest VI in this post. Yeah I know, I already did before, but t'was two years ago, so who cares? Anyway...

Dragon Quest VI is a huge improvement over the preceding games, and it's the first game in the series to actually push its platform. Or it used to at least, since I'll be mostly covering the DS remake here. But let me begin by saying this: DQVI is still a simple game. While it got a graphical and musical overhaul, it's still the same game from 1995, but that is not neccesarily a bad thing, right?

As the law of critics says, you start with the good stuff, so there we go. Dragon Quest VI is pretty. Very pretty. The game has a bright and varied color pallette, which it uses to create some very memorable scenery and moments, the first one being when you leave your house and step into the village for the first time.

Cue the sun!

It uses a combination of polygonal environments and sprite-based characters. While the sprites may be small and undetailed, the scenery more than makes up for that, and the styles don't ever clash. Some areas use both the upper and the lower screens of the DS, and you can rotate the camera most of the time as well, giving you full view of your sorroundings.

Get on my horse, my horse is ama- nevermind.

The game manages to create a vibrant world, which looks just as good, if not better than the original SNES version (which already was a very pretty game for its time). While the sprites may not be all that attractive, there is some really nice animation here and there, but it honestly makes you wonder why there isn't more of it, but that's a different story.

The real deal lies in the battles, however. Those have some really nice 3D backgrounds and some of the most smoothly animated monsters ever. The slimes will playfully bounce right at the screen, those pink guys will perform a silly dance and so on. The monsters also animate when they're idling, which makes the battles feel so much more lively. The weapon and spell animations are gorgeous as well, with every single weapon having its own, same goes for the spells. The best part- almost none of these animations were reused from the previous game! (Sadly only almost, a couple weapons are the same)

Complete with wacky enemy designs!

As you can tell from the screenshot, the battle system is first-person, meaning that you never get to see your party members in battle. While this does mean that there's none of the dynamic camera movements á la DQVIII and IX, it does make the whole affair a lot faster, which makes the level grinding a lot more bearable. You can make the battles even faster if you so desire.

I just noticed that both screenshots show the same party formation. Heh.

The other good thing? The soundtrack. Oh yes, the soundtrack. Music has never been a problem for the series, and this game is a good example of some of the series' best composing. As with all installments in the series, the soundtrack is lovingly bizarre and damn catchy. While there aren't all that many tracks in the game (about 16, allthough the OST doesn't have them all) they're all very well composed, and the sound quality is great, especially for the DS's limited capabilities.

Here are a couple of examples:

Battle Theme

World Map

Tower Theme (SNES version)

The music may become a little obnoxious, depending on how long you're stuck in a certain area, but it's definitely not as bad as certain other examples.

So it has good graphics and nice music, anything else there to keep me going? What about the gameplay?!

Well first of all- yes, there's another great thing about the game: the translation. Just like DQIX, it was translated by Nintendo, but there's not much of a difference between Square's translation of the last games and Nintendo's version of VI. Which is good, since the translation is excellent. The dialogue has a ton of flavor- or should I say flavour? Everyone speaks British English, which is a better decision than using Shakesperean English in my opinion. There is a lot of humor everywhere, the item names and descriptions are punny, and it's fun to talk to all the different NPCs. You can also talk to your party by pressing the B button, with the dialog changing after every small event, sometimes even after talking to the aforementioned NPCs.

So is there a bad thing about this game?

Yes. For once, no matter how great the translation is- it fails to cover up two things: the characters are still boring and the plot is still bland and lacking. While the start is mysterious and all, it quickly boils down to a generic "defeat the evil monsters that seek to destroy our world" thing. The game does try to shove in some unique things- like a second "mirror world" to explore, but in comparison to the last two game's unique storytelling methods, this one just falls flat.

But even if the characters are somewhat boring, they're not unlikeable. Most of them are fairly sympathethic, actually, but they don't interact much with each other. Actually, some of them stop talking alltogether once they join you (safe for the party chat of course).

And that being said, I can finally get started on the gameplay. As I said before, it's still the same game it was in 1995 gameplay-wise. There are still random encounters. You walk from plot point A to B while fighting monsters, grinding EXP and money and buying new equipment for your team. The remake added some random minigames that actually use the touchscreen (the first of the DS remakes to do so, in fact) but they're nothing to write home about.

You'll also spend a good chunk of your time levelgrinding, and the equipment prices are also ridicolously high. Couple this with the rather small status boosts the level ups give you and you're in for a grind.

The menus are also pretty much the same as back in 1995, except for a graphical update, naturally, making navigation a lot easier.

So there is pretty much no complexity in DQVI. Does that mean simplicity is bad? Definitely not. It's still a great game, even if it's a bit dated.The graphics and music are lovely, and the battles are fast enough to avoid feeling like a chore.

Also, on another note, Arte Piazza have recently announced a 3DS remake for Dragon Quest VIII, and they will finally drop the random encounters and give the game a huge graphical update, so expect to read about that one some time in the future.

So that's all about DQVI from me. Au revoir!

...whew, can'

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