Aslanemperor

I'm a little confused. Is this "cultural festival" an in game event you're asking about? If so I'd say just make sure it ties into the rest of the game as a whole. An example of this done well would be the beginning of Chrono Trigger, where a festival is the backdrop for the opening plot. Your post makes it sound like there's some sort of online thing going on where people come on and meet virtually over the internet. If that's the case I'd have to know a good deal more about it than you've mentioned before deciding whether I'm interested. Your video doesn't help to explain things if this latter option is what's going on.

I voted "no" because there's no "Maybe" option. Have people who played your game commented on how much they like the music? A quick glance at Steam has most soundtracks listed around $6 USD on average. Very few go over $9.99, and this is with sellers taking into account Steam grabbing a cut of their sales. I don't know how much time and effort you put into creating this music, so I'm not sure how much you're invested in it making a profit to make up for all of that labor. That being said, a fair price is whatever people are willing to pay for the product. I would actually advise putting a few select tracks on sites like Newgrounds, Youtube, and Soundcloud. In the description, mention that they're tracks from the soundtrack from your new game title, available at wherever you are offering it. Not only will this give you a chance to see whether people like your music, you will be actively advertising your game! In the end, I think you may have to settle for offering a much discounted price. You may have better luck instead offering a "deluxe" version of your game with some sort of badge or something, and a copy of the soundtrack included. Some people will buy anything if it's a bundle, even if they wouldn't have bought the separate pieces otherwise. Finally, I'll say that for me, you'd have to be an AMAZING composer for me to consider it worth buying your soundtrack. There are very few composers like that, and the only one who I can think of off the top of my head is Nobuo Uematsu (there are a couple of others, but their names aren't popping into my head right now). I'm not in the niche clientele who really loves gaming backdrop music, but I'd dare say I represent an "average" user: I love music, I can find myself enamored with gaming music if it's done well enough, but it's not something I go out and seek. --------------------------- I truly hope your game is successful. I would really love to see more quality games being put out there. Further, I hope that people rave about your soundtrack and you discover you can get even more from it than $10! In the meantime, prepare for the harsh world that is the free market system, and hope that your time, effort, and talent have translated into high quality in the eyes of your consumers! Good luck!

Hey there, folks. I'm hoping this will be an easy one since I'm sure it's been done in other games using VX Ace and even older games. Currently, I only know how to limit item use to in or out of battle. I can't figure out how to do things like "tent" where they are conditional to being in specific places. This will be useful for my current project (which I've been dragging my feet on for far to long, I know) but absolutely necessary for several ideas I have for the future. If there's a tutorial or maybe some sort of script I'm missing, please let me know.

I have a few thoughts, but bare in mind that you're probably going to have to do some editing of tilesets. Firstly, hot weather plants are mostly up to you. Mostly when you get to close to a volcano, you're not going to find real plants because it's actually to hot. The area around the mountain will probably be what we think of as tropical plants: palm trees and plants with frond-like leaves. For the more mystical ingredient style plants, I recommend simply changing the color of flowers to be unique. Maybe a flower that is red in the center fading to yellow at the edges? Perhaps make the leaves black and red to invoke feelings of burning coals? Actual plants that grow in volcanic soil include several species of bright, colorful flowers, a few types of tea leaf (Great for potion recipes), certain types of potato, peas, bamboo (tends to grow in hot climates regardless), even Eucalyptus. Of course, I feel that primarily the alchemy ingredients you'd find around a volcano would be more in the realm of minerals and crystals rather than plantlife. Definitely include some rare magic crystals as that's a staple in fantasy crafting. For more sprites to work with, there are a few pages in the forum that have free resources (with attribution) that you can look over. It may take a minute to get them, of course, since websites don't last forever, so don't be discouraged if several links are broken. My advice moving forward is to save the resources to your computer with some sort of file name indicating the attribution that is required for future reference. If it's downloaded, it doesn't matter if the website goes down. Hope this was helpful! Good luck on your game!

Ok, I have a GREAT idea, I think. It would be REALLY time consuming and complicated, but I think in the end it might actually be a completely unique project. So, here are the basic ideas: The game would start with the main character coming down stairs in the morning. His mother is making breakfast and asks him to help. She needs three things: Eggs, Flour, and Milk. In this, everything is a pretty standard fetch quest like the beginning of virtually every other RPG. Eggs and flour will be relatively simple. Eggs simply require that the character search piles of hay for hidden eggs (something anyone who's ever raised chickens knows happens more often than not). The milk will require a milking minigame. The flour will require the player to pick the wheat, then do a wheat grinding minigame. The ingredients are brought to their mother, who uses them to make pancake batter. She will then hand them the ingredients and have him do a pan frying mini-game! This is to introduce one of the main aspects of the game: Cooking! There will be a major overarching storyline, but much like games like Pokemon, the storyline isn't actually the point of the game, but rather a means to draw the player to new areas to discover and grow. The true central premise will be around Preparing and cooking food. From start to finish, players will be able to manipulate ingredients for quality and suitability in specific recipes. Hunting different creatures can lead to obtaining specialty ingredients (even special wood to use for the fire). What's more, the object won't be to always get the high score in all the minigames and obtain all rare ingredients! Some recipes require that an ingredient not be ripe, like Fried Green Tomatoes. Some recipes will require the ingredients to be almost rotten, like bananas in a Banana Bread! Flour might need to be ground at a lower score in order for it to be more coarse for Whole Wheat Bread, and actually usually will be best at a medium score. Whipping heavy cream will also require a medium score in the mini-game as whipping cream to much will turn it into butter! The quality of a dish will be graded based on the ingredients included, the preparation methods chosen, and the mini-game scores. In the other aspects of the game, food will be a recovery item, and really just needs a basic level of competency to be useful in that regard. The main character will be able to use a variety of weapons, and which weapons they use will effect the quality of the ingredients. For instance, a club will be useful to make certain monster meat tender. A knife may be needed to properly harvest more delicate meat. Which sort of magic you use on different slimes will effect the quality of the gelatin you harvest. As you play the game, there will be dialogue which effects secret scores, things like kindness, rudeness, intelligence, etc. These scores will have an impact later in harvesting the rarest of ingredients. The ultra rare ingredients will consider multiple factors when determining the final quality of the ingredient, sometimes even the results of a battle (weapons and party members used, how many rounds, etc). Imagine this: A rare fruit that requires A: A high kindness score, B: Main Character using a knife and knowing the Precision Cut skill, Harvested as early in the day as possible when it ripens, defeat of the guardian beast with nothing "shaky" which would be a secret quality on weapons and skills. Normally I like to make everything I make free, but this would probably require a team at least a year to finish, even with so many ideas already in place. That being said, I don't think anyone would hate the idea of paying for a game this complex. Anyway, what do you think? What sort of system would you use to build something like this? Would this be something you would want to try working on? (To be clear, this is not me recruiting, simply gauging interest as I am not in a position to even start working on it yet)

I'm also down for helping with story, ideas and dialogue. I can do some eventing and map building as well. I can build a story about just about any topic. I'll check you out on discord when I have more time to discuss details.

That's so great! And you got it done fast! Thanks! BTW: Currently working on eventing. it's a slow process, but the first "dungeon" should be done in about a week or so.

@That One NPC I've got another mission for you! I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier. This character is one who is set to be recurring as he's one of my favorite characters I ever designed. Dr. Edwin Martinique is a multiverse hopping mad scientist geneticist! He's unique in the fact that he's not really 100% human anymore as he tends to replace parts with "upgrades" when he can. I need a character sprite for him in this game because he's actually going to operate a special shop in the game selling potions and secret upgrades.

This sounds like something that would require quite a bit of code. I'm sure it could be done, but I'm not aware of a system like that available on any of them. BTW, which RPG Maker are you working with? There are certainly a few different battle systems and battle system upgrades to vary the combat in your game, I'm just not familiar with any that does that. Who knows, though. Maybe you'll inspire one of the coders that lurk in these forums.

I particularly like the second idea. I'm planning something a little like that for far in the future once I've gotten much better at making games. I have the bare bones of a game where the main character is a rogue who is actually weaker than 90% of the creatures he's going to be facing. In order to win fights, he has to fight dirty by ambushing them and using a variety of nasty tools. The player would have the ability to set traps, sneak, etc. If they try to charge an enemy head on, they would most likely die. I also like the idea of building a hero from the ground up. I feel like the job system from "Once Ever After" would be ideal: The player can go to NPCs to learn their job, each of which has unique skills and strengths of varying degrees of effectiveness. So, you might learn some basic fighter stats from a town guard, learn more effective fighter stuff from a Knight, and finally maybe have to hunt down an old warrior hermit who can teach you to be a specialist swordsman of some sort. You'd really have to invest some energy into becoming a "hero," and it would make the ending really feel more earned. I could totally see either of these turn into an epic game that I'd pay good money to play.

If you got the coding skills, I'm happy to help with plot issues. Roguelike can be pretty much anything as far as plot goes, so the sky is the limit. Contact me when you're ready and I'll work up a storyboard with you.

As I'm working on my game, I've run across some fantastic artists offering free tracks to be used in any sort of project. I'm putting up some links to a few. Please make sure you read the descriptions. While a lot of these are okay for commercial use provided that you credit them, some require a license. Most require credit for any project. White Bat Audio: This playlist has a bunch of royalty free heavy metal tracks that are great for big bad boss music! Ryini Beats: https://www.youtube.com/c/ryini This artist mainly makes their tracks for freestyle rapping, I've found quite a few of them to be excellent for a variety of game instance, from metal for battle music to calm guitar music for field or town ambience! Most of his stuff is free, but take a glance at the descriptions and titles as some of them require a license. I think all of his stuff requires a license for commercial use. I'm going to add to this as I find stuff, and encourage others to share resources they've found.