LakiLarian

Thank you both! casper667 - I will certainly try the variable method. I will simply need to play around with the exact event commands to figure out how to do what you have described, though it sounds entirely possible. One logic issue I can see with it, however, is the possibility that characters could get stuck on walls, endlessly Trying to go to the right, for example. I will see how this method handles that intentionally. Shad3 - Yes, I had a feeling it would most easily be done through scripts. Unfortunately, it appears that Jet has named all of his scripts under the Noncommercial CC License. We're in the learning/early-test development phase of a commercial project. Galv is one of the few movement related scripts that is entirely free for commercial use that I found, which means that even if the coders in my team must alter it, it is okay. (none of my code-capable people are coming from a gaming industry background (yet), so even though everyone is picking up on Ruby very quickly, every bit of pre-made script helps).

I love the way they move! Great animation! They really come to life, and when they're all alone in the air without backgrounds, the colors seem perfect. I would love to play your game just to watch the adorable animations. Maybe to help with keeping them from disappearing, simply make the backgrounds a few shades darker than them at all times? It could still be the same general color value if you're going for that particular look, but have them be just slightly brighter than the rest of the scene. (perhaps props could be bright too to give them that "interactable" look).

You make a solid point about the flipped lighting! I will definitely need to remember that when I make the normal-sized sprites. As for the portrait, I do love the high-resolution sketchy look myself (she is particularly clean-cartoon for the sake of this project compared to my graphite art). Here's what happened to it after being fitted into RM's template though.. (I tried it twice in different programs to see if it would help, but I don't think so). I feel I may need to rethink my strategy. Maybe really thicken the lines, and try sizing it down again. Making the drawings At the RM template resolution definitely doesn't work, so I just need to figure out how to make them large so they look best sized down. Or get a script to handle larger images in-game... hmmm. The assassin's front looks good so far. The clothes work well from standard viewing distance. I can see how consistent lighting will be really important on his helmet, so I'm sure the finished product will be very nice. For some reason, the way the gif plays the animation as "1,2,3,1,2,3" (instead of "1,2,3,2,1,2,3,2" as it will in-game) makes him look like he's doing a dance move based on horseback riding .

Wow, those links were like a crash course in color theory in one very quick sitting. The bit about hue shift has given me a sudden change in perspective. Thank you for posting those, charles! Now it's got me thinking about my first little sprite set here. He's a little frog creature, sentient, and often can walk about on the two hind legs. Hopping about is more for fun and expression. Here's his hopping stills... He's so tiny that any lighting effects I did are just barely visible until you zoom in. I may be doubling the resolution of my game, so perhaps that is okay, but I would love to hear what everyone thinks. Any suggestions for little creatures such as him? Oh, and the weird limb colors are a camouflage-with-nature part of their species; his legs look like wood and his hands look like stone. He will likely be getting a redesign soon to include those textures on more parts of his body, but those will be more apparent in the portrait than the sprite. To Spooky (or Mothman?), I feel your sentiment on the art style. I did the same thing as a kid. Started doing humans Yu-Gi-Oh style, then gradually found my way out of it as I grew up. Some art and figure-drawing classes and hours of practice later, I feel like I'm finally settling into an animated style that's purely mine. Here's a portrait I just did for one of my primary human protagonists; It's still full-size, so it'll clean up more when I get it fit into the little portrait resolution for the game. ( ^ also open for critique! She has a big role to play, so I want her to be as perfect as can be.) I would say the biggest difference between western animation and japanese anime-style is the handling of features. Western character design takes into account the atmosphere of the story to decide whether the facial features should be smaller and more realistic, or bigger and more expressive. It also tries to make each individual in the story have differently shaped noses, eyes, foreheads, and jaws from each other so they look unique. Traditional anime tends to be stylized to the point of eye differences being primarily in color between heroes (villains get weird, smaller eyes to signify them as evil), and all the noses are the same. Anime is streamlined to be inexpensive, yet attractive, and characters tend to have large eyes no matter how dark of a world they live in (though there have been some recent exceptions). I think your characters look fun and very streamlined! They would serve well, but if you would like to see them more in a western style, perhaps doing some experiments with eye/nose/chin shapes would be fun.

I'm glad! Quick question; did you hand-draw any of the text, or are they all from a font-type presets in Photoshop/Word/etc.. (Particularly the capital H and its filigree)?

Haha! Screwdriver to bread huh? That's certainly a perfect example of obscurity! I've played sooo many adventure/puzzle games, so I've seen some doozies. I think some can be blamed on the demands of the big-wigs (i.e. Gabriel Knight 3's infamous 'adventure games are dead' cat/mustache/ID puzzle), but Indie games can certainly avoid that issue. An optional hint mechanism is always appreciated for inventory games. I also like it when games with a long run time dump objects you no longer need to avoid looking through piles of useless junk late in the game. I believe Longest Journey did actually do that, which was nice. Like you said, Era, inventory/item puzzle are a pretty big core of what makes an adventure game. Theme, sense of writing wit, and relevance can really help make them fun instead of nonsensical. (especially for abstract/psychological stories) Oh yeah, those "turn on this one and it turns off two" puzzles I just poke at like a monkey until I get a close grasp on which two-three switches need to be hit last. That's Always the answer .

Always amazing how much difference color and one little font change can do to the tone. I want to start by saying that #3 is strikingly Irish feeling to me, having been around as much celtic art as I have, because of the "of" font and the green. Celtic doesn't quite sound like the theme you're going for though . My personal favorite is #1. It is bold, but it has the cursive "of" that definitely recalls the era and theme you mentioned. The "of" in #2 is too understated, and #4 reminds me more of a product label, possibly for a fine liquor. I think the title shape is creative and eye-catching, and totally brings to mind a sign hanging from the eves of a gothic inn. I am a little concerned that the "of" is so light grey that it will disappear at times, depending on the use and background. Overall, really cool design! Love that fancy filigree bit to the left of the H. It might even call for a heavier element on the right to balance it out, but it looks very nice left-justified on the page (like the four are right now).

I love Liam's head in this image. (His hair is reminiscent of L from Death Note, if anyone has seen that.) The stylization is really cool, and I can totally tell what the artistic theme is just from the use of line. The crosshatching works well, especially across Vincent's belly area. Makes that round, fatter part of him stand out perfectly. One thing I notice is Liam's pants, around the waist. If those are jeans, they look like they're rolled inward somehow. Like the zipper/crotch line hits the top of the pants because the inch or so with the button is rolled in on itself. Clothes are a pain to draw in general, in my experience . I ask others do all the official costume designing for me so I'm forced to recreate more than my quick "but clothes are Work" doodles. On that note, I can appreciate the detail you put into his T-shirt!

I'm excited to play this! I love when dark/scary adventure games go the psychological and ambient route. They also scare the crap out of me very easily, so that'll be entertaining. "Where's Laki?" "Oh she's huddled in a paranoid mass of nerves in front of the computer, one hand on the mouse and the other trying in vain to cover her eyes."

I would like to add that in the mystery/adventure genres (which I have loved, suffered through, and rooted for many years now) there are some definite puzzle frustrations. Inventory/Combining objects: Adventure genre games usually have inventories that serve as Mary Poppin's bags, but some RPGs with mystery elements can suffer from this too. Irrelevant items sit there in the inventory long after their expiration date, and just serve as distractions when you figure you're suppose to smash one object against all the others until they combine into Something. I don't mind needing to investigate to find things that my character could reasonably need to collect, but I've seen the whole system of inventory-heavy puzzles abused and require a guide so many times, it's made me wary. However, if it could be done thoughtfully and intuitively with some relevance to the setting of the moment and story, it could be used creatively. But the numerous bad examples have been such a thorn in the side of otherwise great stories (anyone else here remember the legendary inflatable rubber duck + tape + clothesline + clamp incident?). Distance/Searching: My biggest peeve with puzzles has to be when the controls to a puzzle are far enough away from the relevant part, that you have to constantly backtrack. Like flipping a switch that opens one of three paths at a time, but to get back to that intersection from the switch takes almost a minute. It breaks the cognitive part of puzzle solving and makes you essentially wait to be able to test you next idea. It feels like punishment for not just reading a guide to get through it faster, especially if it is as simple as opening paths. On a similar note, the key/switch/button your character decides they need should not suddenly appear far off in a place you've already explored (or the character previously refused to touch, but it's still far enough off to require a good deal of backtracking). Finding it is just random busywork at that point.

Yes, the end product usually comes from a little of this and a little of that. Maybe some concept art, a color pallete, and a solid choice about the item/weapon themes will help with deciding on how the player should experience the world as well.

I think it depends on the type of game as well. For a serious story, or commercial RPG, I think original art is almost necessary to get the most respect. However, I think smaller projects, including those where the emphasis is on gameplay and not character, may be able to work with the RTP stock just fine. There's also the option of completely foregoing the portrait art, and simply placing name tags (if anyone has played Happy Birthday on Steam's workshop, for example).

Yes, I'd say to keep true to your vision and have the players properly primed for what they will be playing, I'd tag it as "dark fantasy". Diablo (specifically 2) comes to mind. The nature of the fantasy elements is creepy, dark, demonic, morbid. But the game itself is not intended to frighten the player (beyond how hyperactive their own imaginations may be). I voted for number four because it gave me the best vision of atmosphere that I love so much about playing games overall. I'm also a fan of unique confrontations, instead of classical straightforward battles, when possible. The concept of pushing back against an ethereal evil presence with spiritual ritual items sounds like it could be more challenging to play simply because I would not have experienced many games like that before. However, there were certainly things about the other three I thought sounded fun. Throughout your replies to others, I see a cool blending of the lot starting to form. The big bads will be Tough, there should be a system of learning along with the main character how the world works and how to survive, and that will involve a good deal of ingenuity and strategy. I would recommend making sure that if the game allows for creative puzzle solving (i.e. how to permanently defeat a boss) then there should be many routes accounted for with whatever the player's might have in their inventory at that point. However if it is a game with very specific ways to handle ghoulies, then learning and investigation should be encouraged, interesting, and accessible. Don't want to learn all about the awesome places and monsters through NPC dialogue alone. One thing I've learned about the scary genres in writing is that it doesn't always have to be the exact presence of the "Monster" that fills the space and torments the characters. Evil faeries and walking skeletons may need dealing with outdoors but... That House... That house no one enters. Not even the littler beasts will get within three feet of it, because the thing that lives inside... Of course, you get the players in there and have the opportunity to go all out on the theme and story the big bad boss carries. Special events and bizarre encounters could make it feel like the Building is trying to kill you, but you know it's the thing living in the attic. The difficulty of surviving the approach can really ramp up a 'dark' villain nicely. And you wouldn't need to keep track of any extended switches or variables in RM if the bizarre and challenging happenings are secretly isolated events in the coding. If need be, have the big battle start with the boss docked of some of its health, if you know the players took a swipe at it during the approach to corner it.

As a writer, I think there's a sort of charm to leaving the voices to the readers' imaginations. In RPG Maker's format in particular, I would say that artistically there are a lot of possibilities, but Reading is still the primary mode of displaying dialogue. I think one reason why voice acting in these kinds of games gets a bad rap very easily is because the player can read along with the actor, and can most likely read the whole line before the actor is done 'performing' it. That makes a bad actor worse, and a 'decent' actor boring, competing with the player's imagination of how the text Should sound. So overall, I would say voice acting is likely unnecessary during the sprite-driven portions of the game. Let the quality of the writing catch the player's interest. However, cutscenes are a free-for-all based on talent and what kind of 'pazazz' you're going for. Also, high-quality recorded noises, like "grrr" or "hrmm?" may be welcome additions to the in-game sprite scenes. Unless you're game is a comedy of the 'doesn't take itself seriously' variety. Then let the cornball commence! An odd voice may actually sell it. But mic quality, as Kidd described brilliantly, is still very important. Unless the plot somehow calls for intentionally bad mic quality... *imagines a game about a couple of guys trapped in a cell-phone commercial*