RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

[JANK]

Check out my game in the Game Forum section.

[1ce]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

I'm a big SaGa fan, and although I never played Frontier, I'm a huge fan of the gameboy versions, and the system you describe is exactly like the monster system in FFL2. I'd love to see this idea pulled off.

[Guarionex]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

Wow, I loved that game. The thought of doing something similar to it has also crosses my mind. But I don't think I wouldn't have even considered of attempting the monster and robot types.

[JANK]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

1ce you should check out Saga Frontier. It's one of the best if not THE best in the series. I haven't played them all but I'm familiar with the game boy ones. I haven't tried any of the PS2 ones because I heard they weren't that great.

[1ce]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

Sure, if I can ever find them.

How do you intend to pull off such a complicated system?

[Seraph]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

I haven't tried any of the PS2 ones because I heard they weren't that great.

They're not.

[JANK]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

Sure, if I can ever find them.

How do you intend to pull off such a complicated system?

ebay is your best bet. Since it's not really popular like FFVII the prices are reasonable. For those that might be interested in how I'm going to do the monster system, here is a rundown:

As I said before there are 10 monster classes. The following is a list of the classes and their innate abilities:
-Slime: None
-Goblin: None
-Bloodsucker: HP Drain
-Undead: Battle Heal
-Aquatic: Treasure Find Up
-Bird: First Attack
-Zombie: Crit. Hit Up
-Spirit: X2 Magic Dmg.
-Demon: Counter Attack
-Dragon: +1 Attack

Skills are learned every time you absorb a monster (you can't absorb the type that your monster is currently using). The Sprites obviously also change every time you absorb a monster. It will say that you learned a new Skill/Magic every time, even if you already know it (you can't learn the same skill/magic twice anyway).

Not all monster types can absorb all other monster types, and not all enemy monsters will be absorbable at all. There will be a seperate page on each absorbable monster for every different possible absorbtion, for example: a demon can only be absorbed by a zombie, undead, spirit, or dragon, so a demon enemy event will have a page for being absorbed by your zombie, undead, spirit, and dragon version of each monster in your party. I'm currently using 3 possible monster character recruits, but one is already a dragon (considered the ultimate form) so there won't be many monsters for him to absorb since most players wouldn't even want to absorb a weaker monster with him.

This means that there is a set of status changes for each monster type absorbing a particular different type of monster. I just refer to the basic status change from the lowest level absorbtion to figure out all the numbers. If you absorb a weaker monster your stats will go down temporarily, but usually not quite as much as they raise again if you change back to your first form. This way you can raise your "base stats" by absorbing different monsters.

That's basically it. There are different monster tiers in my game too like in the Saga series although they are set for every dungeon (they don't grow along with your human characters. That would just be too much of a pain in the ass, and I don't think that memory limitations would allow it anyway). So essentially each monsters absorbtion will be unique, although I'm sure there will be a few copied events within the same dungeon.

*Edit*

I just ran into a major copy and paste bug in RPG Maker. Has anyone else experienced this? I did a few monster events with about 16 pages. When I copied and pasted these events I found that when I tested my game the original events worked properly but the copied events (modified or not) would have a bug. They would either disappear when I fought the original monster that I copied the event from, or if I fought the copied event first it would reappear at a random page in the event and the "unable to execute event" command did not work at all. I tried a whole bunch of different things but I'm almost 100% certain the bug is in the copy and paste process.

This is sort of disheartening. This means that I will have to make every single monster event from scratch.

[JANK]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

*Bump/Update*

I figured out how to fix the bug. I'm surprised that no one else has experienced this before (or maybe those that have just haven't read this thread). The problem was with the copy and paste like I thought, but it's fixable.

The monster events are using a lot of "take over event" commands to jump to certain pages for memory conservation. Even so they take up like 1000bytes per monster event. Anyway when you copy an event with a "take over the event" command, the copied event will take over the original event instead of itself. Easy fix thank goodness.

[Perversion]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

Your system souded familiar to me, and then I realized why. Those FF games I had on the monochrome Gameboy were really (as I discovered here at the Pav last year) SaGa games, renamed for an American audience.

[JANK]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

Your system souded familiar to me, and then I realized why. Those FF games I had on the monochrome Gameboy were really (as I discovered here at the Pav last year) SaGa games, renamed for an American audience.

Yes, most RPG players in America are not familiar with the Saga series because it is not popular at all. If you look at the reviews for games like Saga Frontier you'll see that people who have played it either love it or hate it. Most that hate it simply haven't given it a chance. The non-linear nature of these games can make them confusing. A lot of gamers will grow impatient with a game and quit when they don't know what the hell to do. I know I'm guilty of this. In fact I despised Saga Frontier 2 for a long time (though I've always like the first one) and have yet to give it another chance. I think replay it soon.

[Wavelength]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

I loved SaGa Frontier. Everything you've mentioned sounds pretty cool, although as I don't have a Dex Drive, I've never played a RM1 game before. Still, I'm definitely gonna keep up with the development of yours. Nice work with the ideas.

[JANK]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

Hey thanks Wavelength. Hopefully this will be the real thing. If I do get it finished and polished I'll definitely get a dex drive to upload it here.

*edit*

I guess I might as well post some more details about my game. Right now the working title is Fantasia Saga. Cheezy, I know, but it gets the point across. If anyone has a suggestion for a better name, I certainly welcome your input.

There are 5 different main character stories. Here is a list of the main characters and their story descriptions:

-Art: A treasure hunter who basically gets his butt kicked by a demon guarding an artifact. He and his companion Steve miraculously survive but the demon escapes and goes around "terrorizing worlds". Art and Steve have to try to track him down and finish what they started, but the demon always leaves the scene before they get there as well as a victim who becomes a servant of the demon.

-Lily: Daughter of martial arts master Chen Wong. One day after returning from a mission for her father he dissapears and a gang approaches Lily claiming to have killed her dad and tries to kill her. She then goes on a mission to avenge her father and gets herself knee deep in opposing the world's largest criminal empire, The Hood.

-R-JK2: A unique robot that was discarded by his creator and thrown into a junkyard. He is reprogrammed by the junkyard's resident goblin scientist. R-JK2 goes on a mission to discover his origins and find out why he was discarded.

-Ozborne: (lol...if you've played SF you'll probably laugh at this)A powerful mage from Magic Village who's mission is to get all of the magic gifts and return to face off with his brother Mordock in a deathmatch to see who will become the next king of Magic Village. Yup, this and R-JK2's story are pretty much blatant rips from Saga Frontier. Even Lily's story is similar to Red's. I told you it was a SF spin off XD.

-Valerie: An angel from a distant galaxy who is assigned Guardianship over Earth. Her mission is to create a world of balance and order. I haven't really gotten started on her story yet so that's all I can give you.

[JANK]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

Sorry I keep bumping this topic but I'm looking for some criticism or something .

I know all those stories are pretty much lame, but that's why I'm working on this kind of project. I don't want to have to care about the story. While I enjoy a well written storyline in an RPG, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not very good at making a coherent and interesting story. I always have wild ideas for stories but I don't know how to make any sense of them. I usually end up making it up as I go along and it turns out to be a hodgepodge.

[JANK]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

Okay...I don't know if I should bump again. IIRC bumping more than once is not considered in a favorable light on this forum, but I still got lots of info. to share. I guess I could have knocked most of this down with one post but I was trying to get some feedback on specific aspects of my project. Anyway, this board isn't as active as it used to be.

*More character and gameplay stuff/Update*

On monsters: I would like to slightly revise my monster class list but I would need some good sprites for different classes. I'm not really very good with Anime Maker, so does anyone know if there are good bird or insect sprites designed for RPGM1? I want to replace the Goblin class with Beast and replace Zombie with Insect and swap their abilities (meaning that Beast gets Crit. Hit Up and Insect gets no bonus). I'll have some backtracking to do with my events but not too bad.

On humans: The problem with the limitation in RPGM1 software is that I can't really do much with humans since I'm putting so much into monsters (memory limitations). However, only 3 of the 15 playable characters are monsters and 10 are humans (well 1 is an angel but she functions like a human). I have a bit of a problem for skill acquisition because the skill classes are all (10/15) dedicated to monsters.

Obviously it's not possible to have characters learn skills based on what weapons they use (it's possible to pull it off with cursed items but read the paragraph above), and once again because of the memory limitations, even having characters learn random skills after a battle is not going to work. I have a solution for the main characters in that they learn a new skill after each story boss fight, but this wouldn't be a very good idea to use for recruitable human characters. Any ideas?

As for magic learning. As I mentioned before I am taking a rip from SF with the magic gifts. Some characters will have an innate magic gift (that is they will learn spells from leveling), but all humans will gain every spell in a particular magic class when gaining the gift for that type of magic, except that humans with the "Magic User" class (all human classes are innate and character specific) will gain a more powerful version of one of the spells that non-"Magic Users" get. For example: When you complete the quest for Fire magic, every human character (whether you recruited them or not) will learn all Fire spells. However, the best Fire spell for non-magic user characters will be Fire 3 (or something...I haven't actually finished this yet), but instead of Fire 3 the magic users will get Molten Blast (or w/e).

On the subject of Human skill classes, here is the list for all the non-monster classes:
-Treasure Hunter: Treasure Find Up
-Fighter: Counter Attack
-Magic User: X2 Magic Damage
-Angel: First Attack
-Robot: Critical Hit Up

Here's a list of all playable characters in the game, their skill classes, and their area of expertise in weapons:
-Art: Treasure Hunter, Bow
-Steve: Treasure Hunter, Gun and Sword
-Lily: Fighter, Fist, Cure Magic
-Sybil: Magic User, Cure Magic, Gun
-Mordock: Magic User, Mirage Magic
-Ozborne: Magic User, Mirage Magic
-Slime: Slime
-Zenobob: Goblin (Beast if I revise the monster classes)
-R-JK2: Robot
-Steam Bot: Robot
-Valerie: Angel, Cure Magic, Sword
-Dark: Fighter, Sword, Status Magic
-Melee: Fighter, Sword
-Wrestler: Fighter, Fist
-Galamoth: Dragon

Just about all humans except the Fist fighters Lily, and Wrestler can use either swords or guns, but some (as listed above) are better with swords and some are better with guns (i.e. they learn skills relating to those weapons). Once again I'm not sure how I'm going to do the skill learning thing for non-main characters, but I'll let you know if I decide on something. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Some characters can use 2 hands while others have a cursed shield called "used hand". Fist fighters have a cursed weapon called "Fist" and they cannot equip guns or swords. Monsters can only equip accessories like in Saga Frontier. Robots can only equip special robot only equipment with the exception of weapons, although only R-JK2 can equip swords.

Now for a list of the magic gifts:
-Fire Magic: gained at the Fire Shrine
-Ice Magic: gained at the Ice Shrine
-Lightning Magic: gained at the Light Shrine
-Cure Magic: gained at the Cure Shrine
-Status Magic: gained in Paranormal World
-Destruction Magic: (haven't decided where to make this quest yet)
-Mirage Magic: Innate to Ozborne and Mordock. Only they can get it.

List of locations so far:
-New Work: The Koorong of Fantasia Saga, although design wise its more like Manhattan
-West World: Largest continent/world
-East World: The "Asian" type world
-Trash: The Scrap of Fantasia Saga complete with a junkyard
-Mine World: A small world with a town that has 3 houses and a cave
-Magic Village: Where you learn about magic and start the quests for magic
-Swampland: You get one of the 3 rare artifacts here (I'll continue this below)
-Monster Island: Island that will kick your butt if you're not prepared for it. You can recruit Galamoth if you can beat him (he'll kick your ass..lol)
-Paranormal World: Only accessible if you're looking for the Status Magic gift. It's like a bizzarre, abstract ghost world.
-Secret Island: Location of the Light Shrine. You need permission to get there.

Some of those worlds are single dungeons and others are field maps.

Continuing on the rare artifact bit above: There are 3 rare artifacts that you can get. Each guarded by a tough boss within a dungeon. They are basically infinite cure items. The Vitality Rune heals 50LP (HP), the Eternal Lamp revives, and the Book of Vigor cures status ailment.

I think that's it. Hopefully that mouthfull will get some responses.

[Manji]

Re: RPGM1 Saga Frontier spin off

all i can say is i like SaGa Frontier and i think it would make a decent adaptation anywhere in the rpg maker world. i support your efforts, i just dont have a dex drive or any way to play it.

go for it. its really fun to make the things we love and enjoy. SaGa Frontier makes a good inspiration.