paralistalon

I think it's fine to make a quick, unpolished game. It will give you experience and may give you some needed motivation to improve it. The game may be ridiculed, but if your next game is great, I feel that people will judge the game and not the developer. If your game does suck in the end, then just don't have the audacity to charge money for it or claim it's amazing... maybe just ask for some honest criticism so you know what to do better. Personally, I would rather focus on making a great DEMO of a game than releasing the final package all at once.

I find this plot quite amusing, but I do have a hard time seeing how the gameplay would work, unless there isn't much gameplay and it's just story-based. Here's my idea to add! The king raises taxes to crippling levels, but he accidentally fixes the kingdom's economy ans ushers in a new age of prosperity. Or maybe he plans on holding brutal gladatorial games and orders a dozen lions, but the lions break free into the town and end up chasing away a random attack from a pack of rabid wolves.

I'm a fan of stat-based healing. It functions like scaling/percentage-based healing anyways (because your magic stat grows with your HP cap, usually), but it gives a stat-whore/min-maxer like me something to work for. I like the point that was made about spells being stronger than items. Since any character can use an item (again, usually), what makes having a healer an advantage at all? It's like the difference between a colored spell and an artifact spell in the Magic the Gathering game, for example.

I completely agree with KilloZapit that being able to choose a gender does tend to either make little difference or make too much of a difference with annoying stereotypes. I have been concerned about this feature in my own game. I would rather give the player a choice because I don't want to be all "you have to play a male protagonist because I'm male and assuming most other gamers are male as well," but the amount of work that would go into making sure all the text had the appropriate gender pronoun based on your choice seems like a lot considering you're going to be a silent protagonist, and I'm not about to use gender neutral pronouns (ze, zemself, etc.). And as far as the art you have to look at, the small RPG maker sprites aren't exactly eye candy anyways (and first-person battles), so I don't think you'll have a problem, lol. I don't know, maybe I could make a totally gender ambiguous protagonist named Sam and never have anyone use pronouns or make references to your gender the entire game. I don't know if people would appreciate that or be annoyed by it.

Does a good story help? Sure! It certainly doesn't hurt! It plays into the strengths of video game entertainment, where the player gets to be a really cool character in a really cool world. RPGs do tend to rely on story because exploration is a big part of the inherent gameplay, and since they tend to be grindy and about growing a character, you want some payoff where all your hard work pays off and you beat the baddest villain of the galaxy or whatever. I don't know what you mean by "intense" storyteling though. If you mean that there is just a ton of it then like others have said, it depends on if the player wants all that storytelling or not.

I think copyright comes into play at some point, because I'm pretty sure if you want to make a game about torturing Justin Beiber, you'd need his permission to use his likeness in the game.

When does something go too far? This topic reminds me of independent films because they are able to get away with putting in taboo material, whereas blockbusters get the censorship hammer to make them palatable to the masses, avoid controversy, and to maximize profits. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of indie films. I feel like indie filmakers sometimes put scenes into their movies just because it's shocking or taboo. When it doesn't work out, it comes across as pretentious... but then again, there are people who really like pretentiousness. There's some crazy art out there, but you're generally not going to stumble upon it unless you're going to seedy, underground art galleries where you will clearly be warned by signs promoting counter-culture. Sometimes mainstream movies can get away with some pretty taboo stuff if it's done right. The opening scene of American Beauty (winner of numerous academy awards including best picture) showed the main character masturbating in the shower, saying in narration that this would be the highlight of his day. It was pure brilliance and set the tone for a great movie about a middle aged married guy having a midlife crisis. Tarantino also does some provocative work to great effect. It just comes down to style and how it's used. I'm sure a scene about a period could work if handled the right way and there was a clear reason why that scene added to the player's experience. Back to games, I think a lot of it is common sense based on the prevailing social attitude. A game glorifying realistic inner-city crime? Fine. A game glorifying a specific serial killer or terrorist's actions? Not fine. A game about assasinating the president of the United States (hi FBI agent who is now spying on my post)? Not fine. A game about assasinating the president/king of a medieval kingdom? Fine again. I find that the more fictionalized the setting, the easier it is to get away with socially taboo content. For example, so many RPGs have a fictional religion in them, and they can even get away with making fun of these fictional relgions despite having very clear parallels to modern religion. But as soon as you change the name of one character to a real person, holy hell, be prepared for the crapstorm of anger from people who make their livings off fanning the rage of their viewing/listening audience. I was recently thinking about a possible scene in a game that would involve a female character unknowingly becoming impregnated by the villain, and then if she was to die, the main character would have the choice of either saving the baby, knowing the risk, or killing the baby outright. I'm pretty sure this has been done several times before (it's a great way to play with the theme of free-will versus destiny), but I then thought, would giving the player the option of essentially aborting a baby be too horrible? Would people even draw that parallel? I think one has to be very careful about letting people make any game they want. A decade back or so, there was outrage over a game that let you play as a Nazi and kill Jews. The designers of the game clearly intended for their game to encourage people to do the same in real life, so I can't defend the game under free speech.

I have to say my first reaction to the idea was that it was kind of stupid. After thinking about it more, I believe the problem is just that you didn't give enough information about what the story actually was. I don't know if you plan the game to involve the player searching around for clues about her sister's disappearance, only to find out that there's a secret conspiracy, someone's trying to "gaslight" her, or that she actually was insane the entire time or dreaming or a ghost etc. It sounded more like you wanted the main character to go insane for no other reason than it was cool and a bit sick. Many games have played around with the mechanic of going insane, like Eternal Darkness, to great effect. I agree that you could get a lot of great ideas from case stories of actual people with schizophrenia. Take A Beautiful Mind, for example, and how the main character constantly saw some government agent who convinced him he was helping with secret missions. The hard part about conveying insanity is that the crazy person rarely believes they are crazy; they think they are perceiving reality and can have intense bouts of anger and paranoia at people who tell them they are wrong. Anyways, I wish you luck with developing this more!

Okay, I'll add a couple more screenshots.

Thank you for your thoughtful input! I agree a shooting target would be nice for the range. I know I've "reinterpreted" several of the tiles; I think my biggest offenders are the big white circular carpets, which I didn't know if I could fool people into thinking were tables or not. By the way, here's the sheet I used for the basketball court, free to use in anyone's personal or comercial project. You might need to tweak it a bit for your own preferences.

I have put together a script/game progression outline for my first major RPG Maker project. I am going to share it here to get some first impressions on how it's received. How excited would you be to play such a game in its current form? Is the plot or plot twist too cliche'? I felt the story should begin feeling like it was playing off the tropes of 1) OMG powerful suit granting superhuman powers and 2) X-Men danger room/Star Trek holodeck. The story would then transition into a "Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?" plot twist that was heavily influenced by Total Recall (the original!) and Vanilla Sky. Speaking of which, I really hope I can find a way to hide a three-breasted woman into the game as a nod to Total Recall's campiness. And finally, please do not copy, redistribute, or plagerize any part of the story. The story is copyright me, Steven Walker. That doesn't mean you can't use my story for inspiration, just don't blatantly steal it as-is and say you made it! Another important note on the battle system. The player's gagues are divided into HP, Ammo, and Temp. The characters use modern weaponry divided into either guns (pistols, shotguns, bazookas) or melee (swords, metal fists, chainsaws). Guns have a maximum ammo number and must be "reloaded" in battle when the chamber runs empty, but ammo is unlimited and completely refills after battle. Special attacks may consume more ammo than normal or may also increase the player's suit temperature, which starts at 0 and maxes out at 100. The higher the suit's temperature gets, the more negative effects the player will suffer, including taking damage and even self-destructing! Link to the game's first map in this topic: http://www.rpgmakervxace.net/topic/21914-new-sci-fimodern-project-1st-map-large-submarine-interior/

I really love a good Bethesda sandbox RPG (TES, Fallout 3). I fell completely in love with them after my first experience with Morrowind. I never felt like they lacked focus. In fact, the guild questlines provided a high degree of focus. It's just that the player gets to decide which guild(s) to join, which quests to complete or ignore, and in what order to do them all in. I have played some sandbox type RPGs that I didn't think did that great of a job. Their downfall was that you could do a bunch of optional quests, but the writing and focus for those quests never made them interesting or enjoyable. It was just a bunch of fetch quests from NPCs that had no bearing on anything! So I will always choose a good non-linear western RPG over a JRPG, assuming they are both well done. As others said, I wouldn't expect someone to make one on RPG maker. They do require a lot more work because you have to design alternate paths for every quest to accomodate player choice, and it's entirely possible the player will only experience half the conent you put into the game on any one playthrough.

Hello. I just finished my first full map for my game and am really excited to share it and get some feedback! As you'll see, I used Celianna's Futuristic Tile Tiles Resource Pack (DLC off Steam) as the base tileset. I highly recommend it, as it provides a lot of variety in one tileset. The map was meant to feel large while still limiting the amount of redundancy in decorations. Near the end, I started to notice a little lag, so I had to delete a couple of unnecessary decorative events. I'm hoping that the addition of my NPC events won't gum up the map too much. I also wanted the map to feel like it made logical sense from a practical engineering standpoint (for example, the main water treatment room is adjacent to the showers, garden, and kitchen; the medic bay is down the hall from the gym). The centerpiece of the map is a giant VR training sim (think X-Men's danger room) that plays a central role in the story, with the first chapter taking place in it. I'm not entirely satisfied with the shading. I ended up trying to follow the default shading rules (entire map shaded from a light source to the left) because I liked the visual effect shading had in a couple of places, but I wanted to be consistent. I toyed around with the idea of removing shading entirely, since this was an interior map afterall. I also considered doing custom shading for each room, assuming each room would be lit by a central lighting source, or doing something else, but I didn't feel comfortable enough doing this. I used a couple of character graphics for my map that other people made- Hira's arcade machines, Avadan's mech, Rico's bathroom signs, and r0knes's weight bench and dumbells (pending permission to use them, of course). I also added the large trees and a couple bushes from the Modern resource pack. My own original creations include the punching bag, dart board, chess game, basketball court, and modified tiles to make the track circular. I plan on making and importing a paralax background for this map that's mostly a twisting mess of pipes, gears, and steam valves. This should be visible in the gaps throughout the map. This next screenshot is from the left side of the ship. In a later chapter, the ship sustains damage which results in the VR generated world to "bleed out" of the bay and into the ship itself, and the party must navigate through the ship and shut off the VR core (click this link for more information on the proposed story: http://www.rpgmakervxace.net/topic/21915-plot-outline-for-a-sci-fimodern-rpg-using-a-plot-twist/ ). I saved the greenish tiles from the tile pack to use in this map and hope that it has a nice alternate/perverted reality feel.

I got a lot of good office stuff from staples I mean the futuristic tiles set, also on steam.

I find that the most overused elemental scheme is water-fire, earth-wind, dark-light. So for me, I'd want to make sure I didn't copy this exact formula without adding at least something new and interesting. I figure that a good elemental weakness scheme should 1) make logical, intuitive sense, and 2) enhance the gameplay in some meaningful way. For the first point, the player should have a chance of guessing what an effective attack would be against a particular enemy. You don't want it to be like some of the later MegaMan games where, even after you discover that Plant beats Tomahawk which beats Yamato, you're still left saying, "How was anyone supposed to guess that?!" When done right, elemental weaknesses add an entire layer of flavor and realism. Of course a water attack beats the fire monster! But then you have to be careful... does a water attack beat a fire attack wielding mage? It seems like it makes sense, but if you think about it more, the mage isn't made of fire, he just summons it. If anything, I would suspect it might reduce the mage's attack effectiveness or render him unable to cast fire spells. Anyway, however you handle it, you don't want the player to be distracted with their disbelief. Which leads to the next point, how does your elemental weakness add to the player's experience? If your weaknesses are guessable, then the player feels rewarded with a bonus when he or she correctly guesses which attack works best. The player won't get that satisfaction if they have to try out every attack in their arsenal in order to eventually stumble upon the correct one. Furthermore, if the damage multiplier is too high for the correct attack, then there's no real variety or player choice; they just spam that one attack every time they meet that enemy, making it boring. I am a firm believer that it's a game design theory sin to give the player multiple choices if some of those choices are completely wrong and will never be used.