Progress report

[orius]

Re: Progress report

I've been tinkering with the project a bit here and there, mostly just doing some basic scripting to set up areas. Right now I'm working on a fairly extensive dungeon to kick off the middle portion of the game. It's going to use a combination of preset dungeon screens and a custom map. I have to plot out the custom map since it's going to be somewhat complicated, and it's probably better to actually design the map on graph paper before I put it into the game.

Also did a bit of tinkering on Terrin's Hunt, I accidentally grabbed the wrong memory card and decided to look at the game and polish a few things up rather than dig out the right card. Didn't really do much there, just spruced up a small part of the forest dungeon, and added a couple of things to read in the classroom library. That's still going to be mostly a side project.

[Ωbright]

Re: Progress report

hey Orius, I haven't posted before now, but I've been following this thread.
Your game sounds unique, interesting, and fun! Good luck with it! I especially like the way you handled your characters and plot, or at least the way you've spoken about handling them, with a mind toward avoiding plot traps (including the trap of going ZANY with them to avoid other traps).

I applaud your tenacity and perseverance!

[orius]

Re: Progress report

Well, I'm trying to make it interesting. I've said before that coding is the hardest aspect of game design for me, I can do a lot of simple basic stuff, but something like a CBS is well over my head. Now some of the games that are considered the best tend seem to have things like a CBS or some kind of complicated scripting that gives me cold sweats just thinking about it. So instead, I've gone for giving the player a lot of options and I'll do what I can to make sure the monsters are at least varied and interesting. RPGM does have a lot of limitations in what can be done, and I'm doing what I can to circumvent the limitations in my own way. I usually admit my first game was kind of crappy, but I learned a lot about how the game worked while I was throwing that together, and that's where I got a lot of ideas for this game.

Story of course doesn't have the same sort of restrictions, but I'm well aware of the RPG cliches and I'm trying to avoid them. Some stuff isn't easy to avoid (like finding something for the party to do without relying on the old standby of fetch quests), but a lot of it can be avoided by thinking originally.

[orius]

Re: Progress report

I came up with a way to have the graphics for the townspeople to randomly change everytime the town is entered for variety.

And crap...I forget how I was going to do this. Hmm, I think I used the Intro Event take over the events for each person and then had a couple of forking choices that changed the graphic? Can't remember.

Anyway, I did some more work earlier. I'm maybe around 40% completion. The biggest work is the actual areas in the game, which I estimate is only 15-20% complete. Most of the areas are still pretty rough, and a lot of them aren't even started yet. The dungeon I was working on in the last post has all the prefabs in place, but the custom section right now is a big box with just 4 exits on the side. It's just enough to have the transitions put in place, but I'll fill it in later. I'm think after I do the actual story part, because there's going to be switches and stuff in there and I'll do that stuff after finishing the story to keep switches organized. Right now the last group of switches I've got are basically event flags, so I'll put them into the story, then put in dungeon machinery switches type stuff after.

Still, there are some elements that have been completed. The characters are all done, my job system thing is more or less done, the field map is done, and itemss are mostly done, except for prices and stuff that has spell effects. Then after I do the dungeons and story, side stuff and game mechanics will be done, which will include spells and enemies.

[Ωbright]

Re: Progress report

Woo-hoo!

Now to settle in for a well-earned, long winter's nap.

[orius]

Re: Progress report

Did some more work earlier. Setup another outdoor area and setup the basic structure of another town.

[orius]

Re: Progress report

Here's how I work on my dungeons.

Further up this thread, I talked about how I slapped together a very basic dungeon for a mine. Here's that dungeon in the planning stage:



As you can see, it's just a single path between two exits with a few twists and turns. Dungeons in RPGM 1 are a 65 x 65 grid, so I use graph paper that has 10 squares to an inch, mark out a 65 x 65 square on it, number it with coordinates, and then sketch out the dungeon on it. Plotting a large dungeon out like this makes things look better in the long run when I can see where everything is, because RPGM doesn't have any kind of thumbnail or preview views or anything.

This is a more developed dungeon:



Here the paths are more fleshed out, with some details on the map. Now usually I don't sketch in everything on the completed map, because it takes too much time and these grids are more useful for showing the overall layout of a dungeon.

I think this is the paper I use:

http://www.staples.com/Ampad-Evidenc...product_534602

I've also used the paper to sketch out the field map for my game, and to set up maps in RPGM2.

[Wavelength]

Re: Progress report

The quarry looks like a great design. The mine could definitely use more natural-looking twists, turns, or circles.

[orius]

Re: Progress report

Yeah, I'll be working on the mine. For the most part it's padding, an area between towns where the party will be able to fight encounters and maybe find a few chests or something. Setting up the plot is more imporant to me right now then decorating dungeons, and the mine as it exists now has all I really need for that.

The quarry itself might be tweaked too. Right now, it's just one main path with a bunch of side paths that lead to dead ends. I might want to make a few looping paths in it. The quarry though is one of the reasons I started doing things like the mine, I didn't like the time I was taking to polish it up with details.

[orius]

Re: Progress report

I haven't abandoned this yet, though with the Pav dying a long death, I don't know if anyone follows this stuff anymore.

I've finished the main dungeon outlines to the plot twist that I mentioned above, that is I have working transitions up to that point. That's maybe 75% of the dungeons I need. Many of them need to be fleshed out, but the dungeon dressing is irrelevant to the plot, so that's on hold. Now I'm working on the story. I'm writing the script up first, and then entering it into the game, sometimes tweaking the text along the way to fit in the dialogue boxes in a way that looks good. I find that it helps me to have the dialogue written out first rather than put it directly into the game first. This also involves setting up the cutscenes, which is the most time consuming part, because I test everything a lot to make sure it's working right. I'm also at the point where I'm assigning the switches to be used as event flags.

I'm still early in the story, I'm up to the point right before the party meets with Bordar, and that's only about the first hour of the game when one takes into account that there will eventually be battles. As I've said before, I'm not placing battles and making monsters until I've got the main story scripted because it's more of a pain to test things if I have to keep turning battles off.

[Wavelength]

Re: Progress report

Keep up the good work! More people may be following than you realize.

[orius]

Re: Progress report

Yes, note that it took me 4 years to set up the dungeon outlines. I've got snails and turtles telling me to move my ass here.

I also set up most of the shops in the first town, though I still have to set item prices. That will come in once I start doing the monsters. There's a silly unimportant side event I tweaked a bit too; there's this monkey hanging around in a dungeon that steals money from you and then runs off screen if you talk to it. Originally it took 10 gold, I set up a three way event where it now takes 10 66% of the time, 100 33% of the time, and just to be an incorrigible dick, 1000 1% of the time. I tested it a bit, and got the 10 and 100 results, but not the 1000. I was thinking of having the monkey throw rocks to damage the main character if the party had no money at all (continuing the dickish 1% with a rock to the head that knocked the main down to 0 hp), but I decided not to bother with it.

[1ce]

Re: Progress report


"Sheesh, what's taking this guy so long?"

I'm always happy to hear about RPG Maker projects, even moreso now since there seem to be less of them around. Will definitely play once it comes out.

[Ωbright]

Re: Progress report