Aslanemperor

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.

So, I posted a little while and got a tentative okay from a mod for what I'm planning her, but let's make some basic rules clear:  This isn't to advertise yourself.  This is for game makers to post links and info for artists they've worked with who have shown to be able to work well with requests from game makers.  Please post your own faves here and if someone needs to find what they need, they can check here.  Please also note whether they charge or work for free.  I repeat, and can't stress enough, that this is not for self promotion.  I think that's the only reason the Mods approved my idea.  This is here as a resource to other game makers.  Also, I plan to make a separate post like this highlighting artists who provide excellent quality, royalty free music to use as I've found some seriously fantastic stuff out there!

With that out of the way, here's my recommendations:

Artist:  Zamrutzh
Link:  https://www.fiverr.com/zamrutzh?source=inbox
Services:  Zamrutz does art dealing with architecture.  Usually they like to create bisections of buildings so that you can see the building shape and a look inside the rooms.  The more detailed, the more expensive (obviously.)  I found his prices super reasonable, and his work to be more than adequate (which for me is saying something because I tend to be a bit of a control freak and micromanaged the hell out of the poor guy).  All of his work includes commercial rights, which most other artists I've looked into want to charge an arm and a leg for.  For most stuff, you'll be looking at under $50 for a picture.

Artist:  Nass1c
Link:  https://www.fiverr.com/nass1c?source=inbox
Services:  Those of you who have glanced at my game know that I GUSH over Nass1c's work!  She's done a fantastic job with portraits for super low prices, and she's great with her communication throughout the process.  She always makes a sketch before charging to finish the project, making the whole transaction feel far less pressure!  I think she raised her prices recently, but you're still looking at less than $50 for a picture.  If you need Character portraits, I can't recommend her enough!  I've been told that she won't do NSFW and can't seem to get Mecha style bodies down.

On 3/2/2022 at 2:24 PM, Tigermanexe said:

Is it possible for rpgmaker to remember data through all save states?
In example; a player reached one of multiple endings. Is there a way for rpgmaker to remember a player has reached the end even if they start a new game?

You will probably have to do some coding, but it should be possible.  Undertale was made with RPG Maker (I think MV), and it had that functionality.

4 hours ago, Rikifive said:

Hmmm a master thread like this, so to speak, could be convenient for devs looking for commissioning artists. I suppose an exception could be made.

Precisely my thought!

Okay!  I got an idea recently, but I'm afraid it might break a rule to do in spite of being a good idea.  I'd like clarification of whether it's okay and/or an exception can be officially made.  So here's the idea:

Lately I've been buying a lot of art for games.  Some of the artists I've been working with have had great quality at really great prices and I was wondering if I could make a thread for me (and others) to shout out game friendly artists that they've worked with in the same way as we have threads full of links to other resources.  The problem, of course, is that I could certainly see this falling under the "no advertising" rule and I don't want to make trouble.  If it's against the rules, I'll just move on.  I just thought it sounded like a good idea.

I was recently reminded of an idea I've had for a while.  I imagine an open world RPG where you begin as an almost powerless creature with a single weak attack.  The goal of the game is to find creatures to attack in order to steal their powers.  Eventually, you should be able to travel wherever in the map you want and be an apex predator.  I haven't thought of where the game could go from there, and I'd like to make it have content beyond just "congratulations, you're the toughest."  As I consistently say, I like to come up with designs for games I would want to play.  As a lover of complex survival style games, I feel like this would be such a cool twist!

Anybody else here interested in this sort of concept?  How would you make this more than just running around killing things?

Okay!  I'm a vivid dreamer, and I just woke up from a very interesting dream!  In the dream, I was learning the controls to a game.  Within the dream, the person explaining it said something about Star Trek, but while it's possible that there's a Star Trek episode about such a creature, I don't actually remember that.  Anyway, I remembered enough  about the game in my dream that I'm now interested in seeing it made!

At first, everything seems simple:  You're in a living ship which naturally generates damaging plasma.  Each turn, you must release the plasma or it will grow too hot and damage the ship.  Anything under the ship when you release the plasma will be damaged/destroyed.  You must make your way to your next goal without hurting things which you find important.  Sounds simple so far, right?  The plot twist is, the creature is constantly morphing its shape based on its movement!  Players must take what seems like random shape changes into account when choosing their moves!

The final twist that is brought in towards the end of the dream is the introduction of purposefully allowing the ship to grow to hot in order to release a special super-heated plasma in order to cause fire that spreads when you want.  I believe that in the dream, there are certain enemy structures which can only be destroyed by fire, and sometimes you have to stop  the enemy.  In those cases, I think the key will be to create a fire that doesn't spread in such a way as to destroy your allies.

I don't imagine that this would be all that hard for a game designed with actual ability to code to handle, but since I barely handle the few lines of scripting in VX-Ace needed to track a player's movement for puzzles and that only by listening to someone guide me through it bit by bit, I am clearly not the one to make it.  I'd love to see this little puzzle game come to life and don't even really care about credit.  All I ask is that the end product be free!  Is anyone interested in turning this into more than an interesting but weird dream?

Did you read what I posted?  A reference image would be completely redundant and unnecessary.

But never let it be said I'm not capable of fulfilling a request.  This picture is what I drew with my masterful abilities with paint.  Look on with reverence, for it required almost 5 minutes to complete!

Hi there, folks!  I have a rather simple request, but one which is giving me no end of headaches to create.  What I want is pretty simple, but I keep running into issues with turning it into a proper tileset with a transparent background.  All I really need is a tileset that is just a single, large tower.  It should be the equivalent of 8 squares wide and 39 squares high.  Down the center should be a sort of pathway kinda like the one from Super Mario World, with little circles that the player would go to in order to go to the individual floors (There should be 13).  The style of the construction I'll leave mostly to your imagination.  There are two things that I ask:  The top should have a conical roof of some sort, and the bottom should have a pair of guardhouses with domed roofs.  Yes, I know what that will make it look like.  There's a method to my madness.  Past that, I encourage inserting your own fantastical details.  Even the art style isn't particularly important as long as it's obvious that it's a tower.  Any detail beyond the basics of the tower and the path is a bonus and strictly based on your own artistic whims.  I expect that an artist will have their own ideas of what it should look like and I've left a lot of the details vague on purpose to really let someone shine!  Thanks for reading!

Edit:  Ah, an important detail:  The tower is a school for witches learning magic!  The higher the levels, the more powerful the witch.  The towers above the third level are for fully trained witches with teachers at the lower levels and others going high, all the way to the top floor which is for the Head Witch of the tower (Haven't thought of what I want to call her yet as the story for this is just forming really.)  I figured that might be important for some who would want to put details that would correlate to such information.

This is great!  I'll be watching this!

Nice!  the edit makes things much clearer, thanks!  I think this solves my issue!

I kinda figured it would go into the script editor.  I was more wondering if it should be by itself, or is this an edit to the Yanfly script I'm asking about.  I kinda hoped that maybe there was some bit of shorthand the same way as when I have my character talking I can use "/N[001]" to make the speech editor understand I want to list the player's chosen name in that spot.  Wishful thinking, I guess.

Currently, the Yanfly script works so that you simply put "<attack skill: ###>" and whatever number you put in becomes the number for the attack.  I was hoping that someone knew a way to make that be a range of skills instead of just one specific one.

TP wouldn't be an issue with what I was thinking of.  I was thinking of a range between skill number slots because I tend to keep my skills very orderly.  I wanted to make it so that the player could equip different versions of the gun and how strong the spell cast would be somewhat random when using the gun.  I don't want to make it to complex and I don't want to work outside the Yanfly script if I can help it.  This is only my second game, and I'm trying to take things slow getting used to scripts.

So, I'm completely untrained when it comes to code.  Where do I add this in?  Honestly, I was hoping it would be as easy as a damage formula, maybe a single line of code.  Is this the only way to get that effect?

Hey!  I'm not sure how often Yanfly checks their scripts page for questions, so I'm posting this here as well to see if someone knows the answer.  I'm wondering if there's a way to have the script choose a skill within a range instead of a single skill.  This is for my wizard character, who is using something like the Caster weapon from Outlaw Star.  Anyway, hopefully someone has a clue on this topic.

Warning:  This post discusses adult topics, and some serious dark stuff.  Some folks can't handle these sorts of discussions for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to trauma they've experienced.  I don't know how much of these topics might come up, but I'd like to give warning ahead of time so that no one is harmed.

I've been kinda dreaming about this idea for a while, but I'm not sure exactly where to start in creating it.  Eventually I will turn theory into a real game, but I probably won't start actual development until later this year, especially since I'm still in the middle of a project which I must finish (especially since I've spent hundreds of dollars on art and gotten some great help from the community at large).  That being said, I'll lay out the bare bones of what I've been thinking about:

A young witch in training decides to summon a familiar even though she's not a high enough rank to do so.  Another girl from her class decides to pull a prank on her when she asks for the spell and gives her a spell of demon summoning instead.  The demon summoning shouldn't be a problem, just maybe get her in a little trouble since she's not yet powerful enough to summon more than the weakest form of imp.

The witch performs the summoning and summons the main character, a lust imp.  As most imps do, he dreams of one day gaining enough power to be an archdemon with a hell all his own complete with a harem of sexy slave girls to serve his every whim.  This dream is, of course, not likely to be realized until he's summoned.  The witch, thinking that she's summoned a familiar and to inexperienced to recognize a demon, demands a contract.  This works perfectly for the imp since he can use the bond from such a contract to corrupt her and to hide his demon essence as he works to corrupt the tower at large as he absorbs the sexual energy in the place to grow more powerful.  Since this is a Witches tower, the power to be gained is much greater since it's tied to their magic!

When players begin, they will effectively be to weak to face any sort of foe, and there is danger around every corner.  The teachers are all powerful enough that if he gets to close they'll sense him for what he is and he won't stand a chance of escaping.  Even the majority of students would be able to sense him!  He must start small, doing small tasks for the witch who summoned him and trying to find ways to speed up his corruption of her so he can get her to help him corrupt others.  

Essentially, the player is the "bad guy," out to conquer the tower of witches and then use their magical power to create a new hell on the earthly plain (and sexy shenanigans ensue.)  Because he's bad, consent will be optional.  What I'd like to see:

I want there to be a day-by-day counter and certain events won't happen until certain points.  Each "day" events will be available.  There will be a counter as far as how much lust energy he's been able to absorb.  He can spend lust energy on upgrades, and eventually to grow to a more powerful form.  There will be several tiers until eventually he unlocks the "Archdemon" form.

I'd like for the option to be there to be as cruel and ruthless as one wants, but every action has consequences.  As in real life, ruling with fear generally causes more problems in the long run.  I don't want to make being cruel an end-game decision, but I'd like for the game to simply be more difficult if some finesse is not employed.  I'd also be glad to make it possible, if inconvenient at times, to make every potential enslaved witch come to him willingly (aside from the corruption he puts off that slowly makes them more susceptible to his suggestions.)  I'm put in mind of Undertale, where grinding for XP actually makes everything in the game much harder and changes the way the story plays out.  Since Undertale was made with RPG Maker, I'm pretty sure that this can be accomplished with the system.

One of the problems I foresee is with purchasing upgrades in Atk, Def, and special skills.  When the player upgrades into a new class, I don't know how much of those will stay on.  With some of the options, I figure I'll just have a locked equipment screen and change his equipment for the basic stat improvements ("Improve claws" to increase atk for instance, so it won't matter that the class has changed).  Will learned skills stick around for a class upgrade?

I'd like for most of the witches to be optional party members for situations requiring combat.  I don't want combat to be a huge component of the game, however.  I'd think I'll have a static number of actual possible enemies to defeat, and thus a limited max level.  Most of combat capability increases will come in the form of which characters the player has unlocked and what upgrades they've earned by wise usage of time.

There should be a "World map" which is just the tower.  I'd set it up so that the tower goes up floor by floor with blocks that can be removed at certain points in the story.

Mostly, I find the stories where the player plays the "Bad guy" to be rare.  Usually the "bad" is really just someone who thinks they're the good guy but willing to do certain bad stuff.  This idea really came to me, however, when I played a game that was supposed to be centered around an evil goblin, but every time he'd gain a new harem member, even though he could easily just force them to do what he'd like since he had them at his mercy, he gave them a choice.  It was all a little silly, I thought.  If I'm going to be bad, I want to be able to be bad to my hearts content.  What else is fantasy for than to imagine something different.  Of course, It should go without saying that nothing that would be illegal to depict in the US would be in the game.  This, not only because it's illegal, but pretty much all that stuff is unpalatable to me personally.

Anyway, if anyone has any insights they want to offer, either for things you think such a game should have or ways to do what is spoken of here mechanically, please feel free to comment.  I would especially love it if someone has an idea for how I'd go about getting the art without having to spend thousands of dollars.  Art is seriously the most expensive thing, especially if you want decent quality imagery.

So, from what I know of Warlocks, each patron effectively changes the class's primary benefits to a large degree. This is actually a really easy fix.  You can change a character's class through an event.  Depending on how you want to do this, you simply give the player a choice when the time comes of which patron they want.  When they choose, activate the change class event to the chosen version of the Warlock.  Each version you choose will have the perks and skills you want, and your player gets to make the choice of which version they want like you're thinking.

(Edit:  Forgot to clarify:  The "Change Class" is on the third page under the "Actor" category)

((Edit:  I feel really stupid.  Apparently I was misunderstanding the "Span."  I was thinking "Moment" meant it would only be running for the specific moment, but apparently that means it runs once every moment (or indefinitely).  Guess it's fixed now?))

I find myself having a really annoying problem.  I have designed the first battle for my new game which is effectively a quick intro to the character.  The bad guy throws out an insult, the character states that he'll use his "quickdraw" skill to get the first attack and put down the enemy with a single shot.  Seems simple, right?

Apparently not.  This text displays, but the event never ends.  It loops indefinitely!  I know it's possible to have speech in these games without an infinite loop, but I can't figure out how to end the speech event!  Usually when I make an event that "speaks" it ends when the speech ends.  I've tried switches and the "exit event processing" so far, but I'm at a loss for what else to do.  If you know what I'm doing wrong, please tell me.  I've included  a screenshot of the event.  The switch is SUPPOSED to activate a black event page the same way I would if I wanted to have a one time event like a treasure chest.  I've tried changing the span to all three options.  So far, nothing works.

Hey there!  I'm busy working on monsters for my game, and I'm wanting some input on damage calculations.  In my old game, I ended up with a lot of feedback that the damage was FAR to high.  I had certain random encounter monsters one-shotting party members, bosses doing spells that would wipe the entire party if they didn't grind, and doing just a ton otherwise.  I've decided to give these characters more HP, but I still want my game to be a challenge to the players.

I'm hoping that some of the more experienced developers have some insight into what works best in terms of damage rates to HP and defense and such.

If it's relevant, the game I'm making has four main archetypes:  The gunslinger who is fast, with medium damage, the Marshal who specializes in shotguns that fire for weak damage that hit all enemies, The sniper who is slow, but has a high crit rate and high damage against single targets, and the caster who is the mage archetype.

Any ideas on making a consistent battle system would be appreciated.  I'll try my best, but since I've only ever made one game and it was only middling successful, I feel I'm a long way from being sure of myself.

If you're willing to do a bit of simple scripting, there are some youtube tutorials (including the necessary scripts) on sliding ice puzzles.  The item collection is much easier than it sounds to implement as it just recalls simple eventing (Conditional Branch> Item "Item name" in inventory = activate whatever your goal is).  I used it for two different puzzles in my little gamejam game, one for collecting insects to feed to monster flowers, and another where the character needed several keys (I think it was 5, but I'm to lazy to go check, and it's irrelevant).  Personally, I found these to be way to complicated when I made my last game because of time restraints, but I've been thinking of finding a place for them in the game I'm working on now.

While it's a bit complicated, there is always the puzzle where you have to move several rocks onto the proper switches that is quite a bit more complicated than the really simple moving rock puzzles (and tedious on the part of the developer.)

I had some fun with a pretty simple puzzle that was all eventing in which the character had to jump from platform to platform to get to their final destination.  I added in a key element and it made it a complex maze that was far more difficult than it looked on first glance.  The same sort of eventing that created this could also be used to create teleport mazes (like the Saffron City gym in Pokemon Red/Blue).

Traps can make a maze more interesting and can also be done 100% with events with a wide variety of potential consequences for players activating them.

Adding layered switches can bring a twist to the traditional "Find switch to open door, enter door" puzzles.  I set up a puzzle with events only where switches opened doors of the correlating colors and closed other doors of a different color.  This meant that players had to spend time figuring out the right order to open various doors if they wanted to move forward, and especially if they wanted to get the juicier treasures.

Finally, a fun puzzle that has been used but is a great puzzle built into mazes is the "identical room" maze.  All of this, of course, takes a lot of extra work because you're creating dozens of maps instead of a single one, but it's so easy to copy/paste maps and then just edit the transport events that it's not as much extra work as it seems.

Now, there's a bit of a cheat as well, as a puzzle can seem different to the player in spite of being essentially the same puzzle simply by messing around with the look and lore of it.  Instead of boulders that need to be moved, maybe animals and the movements are more extreme.  This idea is fun because you can also include trick puzzle pieces that throw players into a battle.

I hope this helped!