level balance help!!

[Duel]

i need help on balancing my character's levels. Problem 1.-magic balance. -I cant create my magics so they balance with my levels?? Goes with the same for the weapons and armor. HELP

Also- Need help with what do do first. what do i do first!! create Skilss or feilds or ECT.....

[ChaosKnightXD]

i need help on balancing my character's levels. Problem 1.-magic balance. -I cant create my magics so they balance with my levels?? Goes with the same for the weapons and armor. HELP

Also- Need help with what do do first. what do i do first!! create Skilss or feilds or ECT.....

Just keep adjusting things in your magic and armor and weapons until they balance out. Its a process of trail and error for me most of the time. Here is the damage formula for regular attacks, ATK-DEF divided by 2.

As for what you should create first, here is what i do.

1) Name the system and scenario data.
2) Title Screen
3)Configuration Settings
4) The abbreviations for things like strenght and defense(forget what section thats called)
5) Party Members
6) Items
7) Magic and Skills
8) Classes
9) Monsters
10) Dungeons
11) Events
12) Test the game for bugs

I dont use the Field editor because it looks crappy.

[MagusMartovich]

dont use the Field editor because it looks crappy.

Okay, I agree it isn't like a Final Fantasy field in any way shape or form, but its not too evil... You can't create exactaly what you want but you can do your ideas justice with it. And as an added bonus you can set location to be "locked" until certain events have taken place (via switches) to prevent your heroes from going straight to the end right at the begining of the game! Oh yeah: its good.

[ChaosKnightXD]

I link all my towns and dungeons together using custom-made fields made with the Dungeon Editor. Its much better than using the field editor because I can make towns change over time.

For example if I want a town to be destroyed by demons at a certain point of my game, all I have to do Is add an extra page to all events that make you enter the town, and on that page I put switch that turns that page on, and when I turn the switch on it goes to the second page so it takes you to the destroyed version of the town whenever you step on the event rather than the un-harmed version.

I dont think I explained it too well but thats the best I can do.

[Draygone]

I'm not too thrilled with the Field maps either. Makes it difficult if you want an area to be a river or a mountain range, yet you're limited to what pieces have those.

Anyway, pretty much trial and error. Just keep altering the stats little by little until they're just right. You'll also want to pay attention to the stats of party members and monsters. Party members shouldn't gain stats too fast, and monster stats shouldn't be all over the place within a single dungeon (unless you specifically wanted one that had insane defense, HP, or whatever).

As for the flow, I start off with changing the editor's music to 0: None. Because while I like RPGM's music, none of it is good enough that I'll want to listen to it for hours on end. In fact, while I'm not doing anything sound-related, I pretty much have the game on mute. Those bleeps and bloops in the editor are really annoying (especially when creating maps or inputting text). Also, I change the cursor speed to 1.

Next, I name the game's title and scenario, choose the title screen, and selecting what sound effects (if any) I want to occur when you scroll through text, level up, and bump into objects. And I'll do a bit of renaming of the stats. I'll always change Gold to whatever name I want the currency to be, and M DEF I'll change to RES (resistance, since the stat is for resistance to bad status effects, and NOT related to spell damage in any way). The four Magic types (Magic A, Magic B, Magic C, None), I'll rename to whatever elements I feel the game requires (if any). All other names I'll change if I feel they need to be.

Then comes the party members. I choose their names and graphics, but leave their stats alone. I always save the stats for much later, that way I'll know how long the game is and can figure out how fast monsters and party members need to grow in strength.

Next I'll come up with the basic items and equipment, along with some spells my party members will learn.

Dungeon, event, and monster creation are then done all together as I go along in the story. Create this dungeon/town/whatever, put in the events, and choose what monsters will be in the place (if any). If I find my story requires the use of any special items (like "Artifact") or spells ("Ultima"), I'll add those.

After all's said and done (and I made sure that the game is bug-free and typo-free at this point), I'll finally start figuring out the stats of party members, items, equipment, monsters, spells, and classes (if I decided to use any). Then comes another full playtest to make sure balancing is correct. Then the last step comes, where I ask someone here or at the Mag to help playtest. This is important when it comes to difficulty, as you'll have a much easier time in your own game than others will, since you know what to do and they don't.

I'm sure I missed a step or two, and I might mix it up a bit from time to time, but this is generally how I go through with the game creation process.