That One NPC

Did someone say, "Plot"?

I can help with a plot. Allow me to first research the nature of rogue-like to better come up with a plot that fits the style of play.

LOL @ Elmer.

I love that name. Old country kinda name.

Elroy is another name I like for characters.

I miss the 2k era roster. Don Miguel and friends. ^.^

I know, I just find it funny how they gave him a name like Oscar. Very neutral, uncharacterized, as most of their RTP placeholders are. 

If there was even an Oscar....


It wasn't him. XD hahaha

@Kayzee

Other examples from my tinkered system are chests and relics (mainly for games with appraisal/identifying systems that can later turn a generic "relic" item into a random item, so as to avoid disrupting the fishing session via common event processing) only react to the "Salvage Hook" bait type. This bait has 50 weight so it plummets to the bottom quickly. But it's not just there to nab chests and relics, it can also accidentally pull up clams and lobsters.

Chum is used to attract sharks mainly, but other predatorial, meat eating fish like the bloodtail and razorfin, or even eels will consume chum bait.

Each bait type has a number of fish of varying values and sizes that will take it, meaning you have to prioritize bait types with desired targets and strategize around your tackle box and the playing field.

There are 16 catchable species, and 12 bait types, 4 rock types including a mermaid one for mermaid ponds, and 3 chest types. So a lot can be done to flesh out this fantastic minigame that also doubles as a potential utility distraction.

Yeah that was a mass sprite test more than anything. Not even all the fish are present here.

All fish types using the default, coastal background.

With his fishing game, the idea is definitely to have a higher degree of clutter so that you can't just grab the fish you want with the bait that works, every time, only worrying about line breaks. Instead you want to balance bait diets so that in order to catch a mermaid, you need an Elder Leaf, or Jelly Belly treat. However, lingering too low will cause lobsters and crab to consume the bait, just as other fish will eat it during the pursuit of the mermaid.

This creates a dynamic of patients in waiting out fish positions, as well as mastering the power meter, and control over your active bait line.

The rod strengths need balancing (very strong right now), but for a day's work, it's coming along nicely.

Sketchiness.

Final Fantasy is more mainstream than ever before, though. Only men tend to find FF nerdy now. The series is very popular among females.

Depends entirely on the quality and strength of service being fed into the wire, vs just using a wire, sadly.

Ummm. Yes?

This actually came from a game world idea I shared over the weekend. A world based on the premise of a JRPG (heavily leaning into it), classifying beings by role with Heroes at one end, Bosses at the other, and monsters & NPCs everywhere in between.

But I had the idea that if something happens to fatally wound a hero, it ascends on antagonist side. So an NPC would become a monster, a monster a boss. a Boss. . .A Final Boss. O.O

Loose Leafs are the ones I'm working on for you, and that I showed you. They are all more or less custom made dating back to their origin as a modular (compiled part by part) sprite building website. I make my own using the library file someone ripped before the site died. Sheets of generic Loose Leaf builds may exist, and many devs did deploy them because of modern scaling logic, general modern gamer appeal, a character aesthetic that departs from the RTP, as well as, well, modular design, lol.

I  can no longer locate the source where I got my LL asset folder.

But the other tall sprite style that's out there isn't modular, but has many sheets in circulation are also by Mack, and are known as Mack style sprites.

The sprites I make for you are also Mack's work, just modified a lil by me. You can research Mack sprites easily and should find results. The main difference with Macks is the slight rotation of their side-to-side frames. They angle a bit toward the camera, where-as chibis and LLs face true east or west. This makes Mack sprites a bit less appealing for games with 8-way movement because when walking north west or north east, they will still face a bit to the south west or south east.

This is the most difficult part of making a game as an indie RM dev.

WHAT DO I DO? I know what I want to do, need to do, but I don't know what order to begin in. The story is in my head, I kinda know what the setting is like, and a few characters are designed in concept. But what do you actually do first? And why? 

Most of us pick away at stuff, setting up placeholders for characters with the graphics we want for them. Placeholders for weapons and armor for them. Some of us might even set up PHs for the style of support items we want. RM has this innate ability to woo us with the assignment of graphical assets. There's a comfort in knowing you got the graphics you wanted, and they are in place. But it's so hard to solidify a game when you can't wait to tackle each and every aspect of it's design, because you're going to do it all yourself.

1. Story - Figure out the framework of your plot and story, and along with that, a bit about the style of the game.
2. Setting - You should have some of what you need to design a world setting now, hashing out more of the game mechanics and style as you work on this. Head to Inkarnate before the beta access expires and use one of the map styles to draft a concept. Cannot stress enough how this isn't your game map, it's an editable concept sketch of the world to help you along this agonizing process. You will use this to inform you in-game world, which will need some shaping around your plots and their paths.
3. Characters - Through coming up with a plot and setting, you should have a good idea who your characters are. The pot should inform your lead(s), and the world inspire some of your supporting followers (should they even exist, you know?).
4. Scripts - Once you have your concept and playable characters, you should know what you need in terms of scripts. Gather your essentials and prep the settings on those which you can with what you have.
5. Graphic Assets - Now gather the essential graphics you'll need for all of this.
6. Draft Skills On Paper - by on paper, anything but the editor. Don't make100-200 placeholder skills or items, then kill yourself filling them in later (THIS IS HOW MISTAKES HAPPEN).
7. Animations - 
8. Skills - 
9. Weapons - 
10. Armor - 
11. Items - 
12. Classes - 
13. Complete Actors - 
14. Re-Prep scripts - 

I'm tired now. By this stage we should all have it together and be ready to go.

@Rikifive What you've described is what using RM is for 90% of people. Were it not for the task of making a good, modern game solo being essentially a herculean task fit for Toby Fox alone (who STILL had his share of help despite the legend), most people who use RM would have a catalog of games in their portfolio by now. From golden era games with simple mechanics to a robust RPG or two.

It's just not that simple. You have to be possessed with an other-worldly willpower and have the conviction to back it up every single day. Few can do that without at least one other human being to assist in some capacity.

I'm done with RM more or less because the culture is wall to wall aspiring solo artist, or wanting a to be paid to do a small body of work as 3rd party, simply jocking for another credit in a game that may or may not ever be released. 

I have no choice but to look to things like Unity to make a profitable game that isn't defined by the limitations of its design engine.

Avery's iconset is the only viable replacement for the "Big Iconset", and does not allow commercial usages without expressed permission.

This makes it very rough, and one is faced with the task of editing the RTP sheet to produce what they need.

There's something about it we all like. My poison isn't so much the person from a boring, mundane present returns to a beloved historic era to mingle among the subjects of their scholastic obsession, but more the mysterious figure returns to present from future. I love a good bootstrap paradox. Ugh. I just peed a lil typing it out.

And in terms of multiple timelines, I admit that when it comes the nature of our "universe" we know virtually nothing. Negative nothing. Most likely never will. We know nothing about what our universe is. Where it exists, how it exists, etc. So in that regard, there may be some sort of multiple timeline thing going on in multiple universes. However. to suggest that our universe is capable of producing multiple timelines depending on variations in occurrences and major catalyst events, suggests that time is more than a side effect of the relationship between mass and space, or what we know as gravity. Being in a stronger curvature makes time appear to move slower. Key word appear. It's all relative to the observer. A planet with 10X gravity with the exact same axis and orbit as Earth, would experience a calendar year at the exact same pace. Theoretically it wouldn't "feel" or "seem" any longer.

Time was a way for humans to measure increments of motion around the sun. There is no force to create timelines, because there really is no timeline at all. There's just the universe, the energy and mass within. Energy, matter, motion.

But in story telling, bad troupes and gimmicks definitely do exist. IN good writing you definitely want to avoid these whenever possible.

Think of the classic time travel troupe. Man (or woman) comes back from ruined, apocalyptic future with charred remains of child's toy. He (or she) helps members of the yet to be ruined present, prepare for and stop the impending apocalypse. Now as proof that the scary-bad future he (or she) came back from was actually changed, the charred teddy bear either becomes undamaged again, or disappears from his (or her) hands before he (or she) uses their time tech to return home after thanking our present day heroes.

You're probably thinking most time travel plots aren't so dumb, but that was literally Cable's arc in Deadpool II.

Problems with this nonsense? 

1. It's nonsense.
2. If the future in question was changed, he or she) would never have come back at all.
3. more realistic and accepted temporal mechanics in fiction tells us a new timeline would have been created when the catalyst event was prevented, creating a new and decidedly un-apocalyptic future.

No matter how you tackle time travel, it never holds up to questioning. You couldn't even go back without theoretically making a new timeline the second you arrive in the past or future. (Problem being there is only 1 timeline because, again, "time" doesn't exist)

I had an idea for a quest like that before, a comical twist on the timeless classic.

It began with the heroes entering a town, and hearing rumors of the young princess having gone missing. When they speak to the King they find that a cryptic letter arrived begging for help, explaining that they are in the cave. Everyone assumes the dragon must have the princess captive, but when the heroes arrive, they find that the dragon actually wrote the letter, begging the King to take his daughter back. The entire time she has been redecorating his cave, playing dress up and having tea parties, ruling the roost, as it were. She's a very, very powerful magic user due to her mother's blood, and therefor maintains the upper hand. The heroes would have to somehow help her understand that her new "friend" is suffering because of her bossy, authoritarian ways and extended stay.

I really, really liked that quest idea, and thought about  ways of doing a boss battle with her where the player has to get more creative and come up with a work-around for actually hurting her. I also thought about maybe in the end her somehow getting a dragon egg she brings home.

I'm glad you caught the multiple layers. Not everyone fully gets my sense of humor.

It's

My

Kryptonite

Another quick update. I made a simple star logo, doing them (team insignias) myself might be viable.

Inspired by the bit of work I had been doing on those racing sprites, I began working on player models.

the visor and mic was for captains and alternates. Was thinking about putting a visor on all helmets. I was going to add a C & A patch for Captains and alts, as well as jersey number paper doll layers.

I want to flesh out a league of teams, and develop a league system that generates random players for pick-up, development and drafting.

I am also thinking about player created teams. 

I was going to say pretty sure yes, as I've seen other section for non-RM developments and content. But it seems it's been covered by a proper authority.