What I learned making a game

[godkiller]

First thing, be creative at your own risk. Say you want to break the mold of the standard RPG, you will suffer for this. For me I wanted a character interaction driven game, boy was the programing a nightmare. Each character interaction caused a certain effect that progressed you though the game. I quickly used up all my characters the game allowed, and had to get creative about how to make the game longer. And debugging took months. I time traveled so I could get more mileage out of the existing game, effectively doubling it's size.

I am the same character thoughout the game no one ever joins my party, I did this to give the game a more action game kind of feel. But that limited the amount of items I could carry and made monster programing a real task.

To make a long story short, I love the game I created, but you may want to stick to a more traditional RPG for your first game. Your life will be much much easier. Spend most of your time making fields, dungeons, and towns. Try to limit character or action events, in other words talking to a character does this, opening a chest does that. Make the game more exploration oriented, and always keep in mind the length of the game. Mine was too short. Focus on world design and story.

You want a long and simple RPG, unless you want to torture yourself like I did.

[Deeth Irteen]

Re: What I learned making a game

Hello, Godkiller. I used to be a god once..

Anyway, this is an interesting post here. I've been tinkering around with RPGM3 for years, always coming up with some zany way to bypass problematic limitations.

I still haven't finished my first game yet, but I've learned how to create a working Materia-esque skill swapping system, as well as a fake Airship.

It's lot of hard work, but it pays off in the end.

[godkiller]

Re: What I learned making a game

as well as a fake Airship.

OK, you got me curious on that one, more details please. And not too technical, I forget all that stuff right after I learn it.

[Deeth Irteen]

Re: What I learned making a game

OK, you got me curious on that one, more details please. And not too technical, I forget all that stuff right after I learn it.

Here's the deal: I take a whole bunch of town buildings, and "attach" them by using a bunch of Invisible "Warp" events. In one of the buildings (The watchtower), I set up a pseudo-Ossilofinder (That'll make sense if you've played FFX). In the fake finder's event code, I set up a Decision branch asking where the player wans to go. Under each choice, the player is warped to a town, dungeon, etc.

In each town, dungeon, etc., there's an event that warps the player back to the airship.

[Ωbright]

Re: What I learned making a game

I think the important thing is to get to know your maker of choice, and know its capabilities and limitations well. You might have the best, most innovative and unique ideas ever, but if the maker you're using can't pull them off, then they won't matter. I encourage people to just sit down and start making something, without even trying to think of it as an amazing game, or even a "game" at all. Learn to work with the maker, not have all these ideas, and try and make the maker work with them. That can sometimes work, but it'll be a LOT of work, and almost assuredly compromised in the end.

It IS fun and challenging to try and beat the machine into doing your bidding (in those rare cases when it can actually be done), but for a first game? Not that it's impossible, but...yeah. Hard.

When I made my second game, and the ones after, I had a much better understanding of the way the maker worked, and could therefore exploit it to a much greater extent. The best way to actually GET that experience is by making almost ANY kind of game with the software.

Oh and Godkiller, if having only 1 character severely limited your item capacity (which...good lord. Even having FOUR characters, you can run out of inventory space quickly), and made enemy party-making more complicated, then maybe consider adding the ability to add more? I know this will increase the amount of work involved exponentially in some ways, and you'd need a firm grasp of variables to be able to pull it off, but maybe consider it? I know you're going for a more action feel, but the battle system is still going to be the same...just with less to look at, and less party-based strategy which are both things that help the default battle engine of RM3 to be less tedious.

Just thoughts.

[godkiller]

Re: What I learned making a game

The carrying items thing worked out because when I got to a new field the items were either gone or now worthless. And outdated weapons and such, just sell em. It's something the player has to manage, but it's no biggie. Besides there is not much challenge in carrying tons of healing stuff. There has to be some fear of death. Long story short, it works for the game I built. But I may try it if I ever make a 2nd game, the ability to add items thing.

And the airship thing, oh yeah, that old trick.

And everything in a game is "fake" btw, so it's not a fake airship, it's real and sounds pretty friggin awesome.