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So, as I'm making my first game and planning for more in the future, I was wondering how ya'll tackle the designing process of your projects. For me, it usually starts with a rough idea that then I write on a notebook, as well as doodling characters or mechanics here and there, to help me visualize what I'll be making. Of course then I try to make a prototype of what I'll be making, to make sure my ideas are possible. Sometimes I do the prototype first and then jot down the rest but eeehh. Of course I update the notebook as I go along, with dilaogue and cutscenes or map/level designs. So, how do you guys tackle the design of your games? Do you have any tips? A friend suggested I make a GDD and look for testers, do you bother with these aspects or ignore either of them?

Something that has always bothered me about many RPGs is how there are multiple instances where you will be going into a weapon/armour shop and spend a lot of time buying and selling stuff. It feels weird to think that the characters will hold their starting weapon and then throw it out the window for something they have possibly never seen before. This is also the case with armour, one moment your fastest character has casual clothing, BOOM, now they'll wearing shining knights armour. So after playing Blue Dragon, it gave me inspiration for how I made character stat progression. In Blue Dragon, there are no weapons or armour, instead, you have the character's dragon/soul and accessories that act as armour. My idea is that each character has their own unique weapon that they keep start to finish, whenever they beat a boss that drops an upgrade for their weapon, they can (game is still in progress, so deciding between the two) either go to a specific area to get it upgraded or it is upgraded right on the get go. Accessories will still be purchased from an item shop along with another feature in my game. Other than that, that's an idea for my game. To me, it feels satisfying to watch the little parts of characters grow as well. What are your thoughts?

You know, I was randomly playing Disgaea 5 again today and I was reminded of a recurring problem I noticed with the series a while ago. In fact the more I thought about it, the more I found it's not just a problem with this one series, but with a good chunk of the RPG Genre. Namely the menu design is kind of annoying. Kind of really annoying sometimes. Most often in ways that are pretty fixable. Let me ask you the following: If you are browsing the item menu, and you see a cool piece of equipment you want to equip, would you rather: A. Press a button or something and choose who you want to equip it too right there, or B. Press cancel, go to an entirely different menu, find the item in the list again, and then equip it? Call me crazy, but I rather pick A. Having a dedicated equipment menu is still good of course, but is there any reason not to allow you to equip stuff from the item menu too? Now you may think it's a pretty petty thing to complain about on it's own, and believe me this is just the tippy top of a massive iceberg when it comes to annoying menu issues, but it's a pretty common thing in RPGs to design menus like this, as completely segregated from one another in ways that can sometimes make it so to get anything done you have to flip flop back and fourth between menus a lot. Let me go back to Disgaea for a moment here to explain exactly how bad this problem can get. Okay, for those that have never played any of the games in the series, there are a lot of really strange but kinda neat mechanics you can use to power yourself and your equipment up. But all of these mechanics are completely segregated into their own little menus. What makes it worse is that a good chink of the things you need to do a lot are not really accessed from the menu at all, but instead the menu is called up if you talk to an NPC in the game's 'main base'. So you often literally have to run around from one NPC to another as well as flip flop between menus a lot. I mean don't get me wrong, I like the idea of a home base you can get more NPCs for that provide more functions, but there is no reason you shouldn't be able to quickly access them in the menu is there (this is something I need to do in my game too for a few things come to think of it)? In Disgaea 5 for example, you have to talk to an NPC to learn abilities (and you can only learn them one at a time even though shops and stuff let you select multiple items, but that's a whole other issue), but you need to pull up a whole other menu to equip them, and to change your class you need to go to yet another NPC. Equipment is powered up though 'innocent' monsters that live inside the item (like I said the mechanics can get really strange, you even get a good chunk of powerups from playing a friggin board game) and that has it's own NPC to swap them around, another to go into the item to power it up (for a third time, the mechanics can get really strange) or power it up in other ways and... Phew! Can't you already feel exhausted just listening to my description? It's still a pretty fun game, but would it really be that hard to make the menus flow together a little better? Poor menu design is also probobly a big reason why I dislike 'quest' systems and feel ambivalent about a lot of crafting systems. There is more to it then that really, but nothing annoys me in RPGs more then needing to go to a crappy quest menu (Disgaea 5 added quests the series and it perfectly encapsulates everything I hate about quests and crappy quest menus, as if I didn't have enough to complain about), or messing around in a crappy crafting menu (sometimes just figuring out what I can make in some games takes ages). So what should we do instead? Well, I admit it can be tricky sometimes, but I think it's mostly a matter of figuring out what the player needs to do most often and figuring out ways of skipping unnecessary steps. In the game I am working on for example, I am using a script that lets the player attach runes to equipment. Now the script comes with it's own scene that was meant to be called form the menu, but I am not really using it that way. Instead, I changed it so a rune could be selected and 'used' form the item menu, where it would switch to a mini-scene to select an item and slot to attach to. Though my original motivation was to allow runes to be attached though using them where as you needed to find a special place to detach/swap them, but functionally I could easily let you do both. I later kinda expanded on the idea by changing the item menu to be like item menus in Mystery Dungeon style roguelikes (I mean, that kinda goes without saying, as my game basically is a Mystery Dungeon style roguelike) where equips are displayed in the item menu and selecting an item opened a submenu of options for what you wanted to do with the item rather then just using it right away. That way you can do stuff like equip and unequip stuff in the same menu and give some items multiple uses (like throwing them at things). It makes me wonder how much I can get away with doing this way... but best not over rely on it. After all searching though your inventory can be a pain too. What do you guys think?

Hey everyone! My name is Rita. I am a freelance animator and illustrator. I have focussed on Animation over the last four years, coming from Illustration and Fine Arts background. I am a professional artist of academic training and more than 10 years of freelance experience, working in versatile media. I work with both traditional and digital tools, in particular seeking to achieve collaboration between the two. I am a big fan of aesthetics with passion for detail and high-quality craft. In the process of animation, my favourite stages are character and background design. To help you get a better sense of my skills and fit, my selected work can be found here: · My website: http://www.smallinkart.com. · My showreel: https://vimeo.com/224053115. Extracts from my creative portfolio: https://www.behance.net/Small_ink. Services I provide: - Concept design - Animation - Photography - Illustration - Character Design - Background Design - Gaming Props / Assets - Hand Painted Texture - Motion Design - Logo Design - Hand Painted Fonts Contact Details: web: http://www.smallinkart.com email: amusedanimal@gmail.com

My current project is to recreate an homage version of a very old ASCII rogue-like as a mobile game. The maps from this game consists of walls, doors, secret doors, and openings. The maps also featured one-time fog of war (once explored, always revealed). In rooms, one could find things like stairs, traps (pits, shafts, energy, teleport, guaranteed monster encounters), and various magical effects (darkness, anti-magic, illusions). Based on the combination of these things, one could also find hallways and large rooms. I have started creating a whole map for this game, only to find myself asking some questions. Here is a list: Should I design a whole map, or create a unit by unit map (where a unit = rooms and hallways). If I choose unit-by-unit, can I reuse these rooms yet still keep track of where they are in the big-picture map? If I choose unit-by-unit, can I add and remove unique features via some method (global events?) to prevent visual repetition? How can I best emulate the special features of traps and magical effects on the map level? How should I best pull off the fog-of-war (any good plugins out there that are play-tested and recommended?) How can I include a "create-your-own-character" mechanism in the game? (Both visually and mechanically) How can I include mini-games? How can I include crafting? Today's post focuses on questions 1, 2, & 3 only. Future posts will cover other questions. What experiences and suggestions does everyone have in this area? I'm looking for opinions, ideas, and brainstorming; though if you have technical details of how-to, while that is most welcome, it is not expected at this point.

My current project is to recreate an homage version of a very old ASCII rogue-like as a mobile game. The maps from this game consists of walls, doors, secret doors, and openings. The maps also featured one-time fog of war (once explored, always revealed). In rooms, one could find things like stairs, traps (pits, shafts, energy, teleport, guaranteed monster encounters), and various magical effects (darkness, anti-magic, illusions). Based on the combination of these things, one could also find hallways and large rooms. I have started creating a whole map for this game, only to find myself asking some questions. Here is a list: Should I design a whole map, or create a unit by unit map (where a unit = rooms and hallways). If I choose unit-by-unit, can I reuse these rooms yet still keep track of where they are in the big-picture map? If I choose unit-by-unit, can I add and remove unique features via some method (global events?) to prevent visual repetition? How can I best emulate the special features of traps and magical effects on the map level? How should I best pull off the fog-of-war (any good plugins out there that are play-tested and recommended?) How can I include a "create-your-own-character" mechanism in the game? (Both visually and mechanically) How can I include mini-games? How can I include crafting? Today's post focuses on questions 1, 2, & 3 only. Future posts will cover other questions. What experiences and suggestions does everyone have in this area? I'm looking for opinions, ideas, and brainstorming; though if you have technical details of how-to, while that is most welcome, it is not expected at this point.

A new item has been added to your inventories! THEME SKY (NIGHT) Changes your theme to the dark one with clouds, stars and of course, the Moon. 34.5% reduced overall brightness 63% reduced background noise 100% reduced wind 29% increased amount of stars stars have 4 additional shapes stars have 3 additional colors 14% increased Moon size 100% Moon visibility Cannot be discarded, sold, nor traded "Looking at the Sun may hurt after a while, if you have enough of that, extinguish it." You can set the theme at the very bottom of the page. Now this one was a little bit tricky, because the build-in color editor is heavily limited, or I'm just blind. Unlike with the bright theme, where pretty much everything was left by default, here I had to change these to make them darker - and I noticed, that not much can be changed to be honest. With that being said, I had to modify things manually via code. I had to browse forums here and there to locate things, that needed to be changed and then add/edit/remove some properties to/in/from these objects. I tried to cover everything, but there may be still some things left, that I could overlook. If you'll notice any terribly-looking whiteness or something else, that makes things unreadable, please let me know. So.. consider this theme as experimental for now. Please report any issues in this thread. NOTE: Text Editor / Posts / Typing Fields are kept white on purpose. I was thinking, that it will be better to just leave them without any colors. For example some colored text in posts (especially ones with blue content) could be kind of unreadable if there would be a blueish background. It would be even worse, if there would be a black background - making invisible text in default theme would give a totally different result in the darker one. That's why it's just better to keep the very default, white background. TRIVIA: The 'overall brightness' mod's value is actually not a random joke. I've took screenshots of the same page with the day and night themes, then scaled them down to 1x1 and compared the pixel's color value. It's a somewhat accurate comparison of how much darker it is than the bright theme. Enjoy the calm night!

About: Hi everyone, i want to introduce to you the software that i am developing. It's a tool that allow you to create your own character and his/her portraits for your project. It has a very simple user interface that anyone can get used to it in no time and very powerful at the same time. Let us take an overview about this software Overview: Require no designing knowledge, you can pick varies character's parts & equipments to make an unique character right away. Character size is 48x48 with 4 animations with 3 frames for each (3x4) but you can change frame rate as well as spritesheet size however you want (this require modifying of resources) Default resources are designed follow RPG Maker style, it will work perfect with this engine and any engines out there as well. Modifying/ Editing: There are two ways you can import your artwork are: Advance Import / Smart Import Smart Import require only single image to work (ex: Hair, Armor, Accessory ... ) Advance Import however allow you to import Strip Image for more complex animation For editing artwork, you will need 3rd-party software for editing image, there are many of free image editor such as Paint, Paint.NET or GIMP that you can try. Blending Color: Though i recommend you to change items' colors with 3rd-party software for best result, there is a simple blend function available that allow user to blend items' colors in Pixel Character Maker. Character's Portraits: You can generate portraits for character with 16 different facial expression, you can even Rotate/ Crop/ Move layers and Import your own Artwork (Smart Import is available here also) Here is a review video of Pixel Character Maker software: On KICKSTARTER: You can help Pixel Character Maker gain more functions & resources as well coming on Steam sooner by Support the project on KICKSTARTER. Here is the link for more detail: <removed> Terms of Use: All artworks provided by Pixel Character Maker come with the right to use them royalty free for personal or commercial projects. You are not allowed to: - Sell any of Pixel Character Maker's contents (or a modified version of Pixel Character Maker's content). - Distribute or Re-publish Pixel Character Maker's contents. - Acquire the copyright of Pixel Character Maker's contents.

What kind of ways are there to have all restorative potions (the ones in tiers like Minor Hp potion to Greater Hp potion) be useful at all points in the game while still making higher tier potions worth it? My first idea: Have them restore a percentage of the users max health but add a state that prevents them from using another potion of the same for around X turns. This way you can't spam potions over a couple of turns to reach max health while still having large bonuses to health. Though this affects the strategy around using potions a lot more, could be good or bad. My second idea: Have them restore a set amount of the stat and provide a stronger regen the for the weaker potions. So as Immediate gain is higher the regeneration afterwards is slower. Though the regen might be much more useful than any immediate gain. My third idea: Have all potions be a dice roll of gains with higher quality potions having a better chance of healing more. I'm kind of leaning away from this one as it makes even stronger potions unreliable. There is crafting in the project if that factors in. I haven't touch on potions with it yet. Thanks for the help in advance.

For reference (and because I feel like it), here are some of elements of RPG design (regardless of what kind) I find particularly interesting to talk about, both positive and negative. None of these are universal or strictly only traits found in RPGs, they are just things I think are worth mentioning. They are also all my opinion of course. Pros: Complexity - There is nothing wrong with being complex. In fact the more complicated and intricate something is the more I personally tend to enjoy it, at least as long as it's not made too hard to understand. And if that sounds like a contradiction, it really isn't. Something can be complex and be relatively easy to understand as long as the connecting points are explained well enough. But more on that later. Tendency for Abstraction - Abstraction is a very useful tool, especially in game design. The ability to take complex and/or hard to understand things and abstract them down into more easy to digest parts is perhaps one of the core essences of good game design, and RPGs often take that and run with it. Using formulas and numerical values for everything for example allows the building of complex yet easy to understand systems out of universal well understood parts. Dynamic Gameplay - The ability for the gameplay to evolve in different ways is one of the great things about RPGs. Allowing the player to take the time to improve themselves or rush things allows for a kind of dynamic difficulty, letting the player to choose between different sets of abilities allowed for a greater possibility space and greater replay value. A set of static challenges where you have a set of static abilities just doesn't seem nearly as engrossing to me as a more open system that allows the player to fiddle with a lot of approaches. Tactical and Strategic Focused Gameplay: A good RPG, in my opinion, is one where the primary challenge is about making you think about what you are doing, both what to do in the moment and in the long term for how to maximize your effectiveness. The execution isn't as important in an RPG as the thought and planning that goes into decision making. Crunching the numbers, finding weaknesses, exploiting systems, these are all vital parts of what makes RPGs fun to me. Exploration - Most of the best RPGs tend to involve the player traveling and uncovering things, always finding themselves in a new location and finding new items and abilities to play with. It tends to, in my opinion, be better when things are not necessarily explored in an overly forced linear way and the player is allowed to explore and discover on their own. This allows the game to be a bit more magical and personal of an experience then a set linear series of challenges would be. Cons: Skinner Box Syndrome - There is nothing fun about doing the same thing over and over again in order to get some reward given to you only for taking the time to do something over and over again. Even less so when it's random when you get the reward. It's nothing but exploiting a dumb psychological trick. It isn't fulfilling or rewarding. Allowing players to take the time to work on side goals and having chance factor into game decisions are fine, but grinding and farming are things that should be discouraged. Mediocre storytelling - Yes it's true, on average I say RPG storytelling isn't done very well. That's partly my feeling for most games regardless of genre, but it can be even worse in RPGs. Partly it's the rampant overused clichés, partly it's that gameplay progression and story progression are always stepping on each other's toes, party it's the often forced town-dungeon-cutscene-boss-cutscene structure, but mostly I think it's just kind of a result of the overall difficulty of writing a good story while also making a good game at the same time. Doing one or the other is hard enough, but both? Are Often Vague or Muddled About Lots Of Things - Here is the bulk of the 'later' I spoke of when talking about complexity. The thing about making something that is complex is you have to make sure it's intuitive enough or explained well enough that, even if someone can't really quite grasp the whole thing at once due to all the variables or moving parts, the bigger picture is still fairly understandable. But many many things fail to do this, leaving vital connections obscured or connecting things together haphazardly so that in the end it just looks like a big mess. And sometimes that's because it is a big mess, something that might look complex but really isn't. There is nothing complex about a pile of trash after all, it's just a pile of trash. Yes yes, if you go through the trash and try and reconstruct who the people who left it and what it tells you about them it might be a interesting result, but that's you going the extra mile to make it into something new. Lack of Interactivity - In most (but not all) RPGs the world is mostly a static backdrop filled with static signpost objects which can only be really interacted with by pressing the 'interact' button, in which case they spew out a few lines of text or if you are lucky plays a cutscene or brings up some static menu. Battles are little better, offering little more then a menu of different attacks which can sometimes only differ by what flashy animation plays. Real time action RPG battles are mostly little better and mostly revolve around button mashing and spamming attacks healing when your HP runs low rather then featuring any finesse or skill. Fact is, it seems like at least 80% of the stuff in most RPGs is simply backdrop and has no actual impact on gameplay. Mixed/Neutral: Worldbuilding/Lore Dumps - Since attempts at traditional storytelling in games tends to fall flat and games are good at fostering exploration and discovery, a common tactic is to write up setting or background plot information and scatter them around a game's world to discover. The results of this are kind of mixed though if you ask me. First of all for those that are interested in traditional storytelling, focusing on lore doesn't really replace it. No matter how fascinating and fleshed out a world is, the details of it aren't going to satisfy someone who craves an actual plot. Secondly, for the purpose of most people playing the game, a lot of the details are pretty pointless and any that are important tend to be buried under pages and pages of stuff they don't care about. It can ideally solve a lot of problems with pacing and makes exploring more rewarding though. Combat Focus - Other then a handful of RPGs (most of which are expressly trying to avoid this), most RPGs focus almost entirely on combat. And the thing is, while this is true for just about all game genres, RPGs are the genre with the least reason to be focused so much on combat. After all, RPGs are some of the most heavily abstracted types of games. Stats, formulas, and menus can be applied just as much to conversations or farming or fishing or whatever. I am not saying focusing on battling enemies makes games bad or uninteresting though, and I am especially not trying to make a big moral argument about violence in games. All I am saying is that I would maybe like to see more RPGs use their stats and other core gameplay elements in ways that don't relate to combat. Like the way a Bard in D&D is skilled in bluffing and influencing people while a Rogue is good at picking locks and disarming traps. Wild Abstractions - This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, even though I recognize maybe it shouldn't be. I just can't help but notice there are lots of RPGs that have systems and rules that totally don't make any real world sense or correspond to any real world analogy. For example in FF8 one of the main ways you get stronger is to 'junction' absorbed magic to your stats. But what does that actually mean in the game's fictional universe? I have no idea. I mean I guess storing this para-magic stuff in your body can make you stronger? And you can choose how? But it seems more like a weird gaming abstraction then anything else. Also their are RPGs where battles are card based. How does that apply to have the game's fictional universe works? Then there are games like Undertale which just kinda implicitly say "hey, this is a game, everyone in this universe kinda understands that, so just roll with it", which I am not sure if I should prase or not. I mean, since I am not often that big a fan of most RPG stories I guess it shouldn't bother me, but I guess I still kinda wanna see games as simulations of other worlds even if they aren't very deep ones. Still, creative and interesting mechanics should be encouraged so I can't really think of this as all bad. Tone/Atmosphere/Cinematics - It's interesting because for all I may yammer on about the poor quality of RPG stories and their lack of interactivity, there are few other genres of games that really tend to reach the same kind of awe, spectacle, and raw beauty that RPGs can. It's not too uncommon in an RPG for there to be a moment where the gameplay and even the story just... fall away, and it just shows you some awesome scene, or even better lets you walk through it, letting you pause as long as you wish. Powerful moments filled with almost pure emotion, where nothing needs to be said, nothing really needs to be done. You could even build whole games based around the idea, like Yume Nikki. The problem is though that it's not really an RPG when you do that, heck it's hardly a game at all. I know people rag on too much about 'walking simulators', and while part of the reason may be that they force way to much narration and story into a format that is often better with pure mood and impression, it's also that wondering around looking at something pretty isn't a very immersive experience for too long. The longer things like that last the more you will notice how it's little more then a cardboard cutout, a backdrop for a play without the play. A good breather perhaps, but unless you are playing up it's fake or unreal nature like The Stanly Parable or Yume Nikki (and sometimes not even then), people are going to lose interest in poking around your world. All and all, I much rather that those moments of awe and emotion be parts in normal gameplay. I guess that's it for now!

So I was wondering if it was possible to add elements of Immersive Sims into a project in RPG maker. Immersive sims are games like Deus Ex, Dishonored, and Far Cry 2. The term is kinda broad, but I basically mean two things: 1) Immersive sims have realistic level design. They feel more like a real, lived-in place than a video-gamey challenge tunnel. The maps feel like they were designed as an actual building first before the designers decided which enemies would go where or which doors would be locked. Thief II is a good example. 2)Immersive sims allow the player to find their own way through the game. They tell you what to do, but don't tell you how to do it. Levels can be finished in multiple ways, and you're allowed to pick your own routes and gameplay style. The designers do give you some hints on how to finish a mission, but they let go of the player's hand for the most part. Obviously, you can't make Deus Ex in RPG Maker - It's designed to make JRPGs - but I was wondering if elements of this philosophy could be incorporated without the need for lots of massive overhaul scripts or excessive hassle. Your thoughts are appreciated.

So, skilling (mining, cooking, fishing, crafting) systems are a pretty common request around the forums. They seem kind of basic and stale to me; the most common forms of diversity I see in these systems are reskins (systems that functionally demand the same of the user but just have different inputs and outputs) or just increasing quantity (why catch five different fish when you could catch ten!). So I'd like to see if we can take skilling in a new direction; to have it be more than 'extra content'. But to do that I need to understand what it is that players who currently enjoy these systems find appealing and what it is that people who don't like them think they are missing. All responses are appreciated

We're just putting the finishing touches on the latest version of Ferion and are looking for a graphics artist to assist with the design of the page elements. The right person for the job would of course be rewarded, most likely with shares (the game already makes a small amount of money every month and with the new graphics updates we plan to take this to mobile). We'd love to hear from you, any questions? Thanks in advance, UltimateNewbie

As some may know, I recently started character design (4 days ago to be exact). Orc Brutes (assuming by their name) has a full offensive skillset. Orc Brutes are like mini-generals who lead much smaller units. They may lead about 3 - 6 orcs. His left arm is made of metal encase there would be any confusion. I haven't done his eyes yet (his pupils). What do you think?

So, instead of levels, I want my game to balance your strength around your weapons/armor/accessories. There are opportunities to increase your stats through one-time items and what-not, but these are sparse. I'm doing this so that sneaking around enemies is viable at all levels. If you sneak past enemies early-game, but get caught in a fight with tough enemies mid-game, you aren't hopelessly outclassed/forced to grind levels. It's a bit like Brogue that way. What do you guys think?

Hey! I'm working on an old fashioned RPG and since I believe in making everything unique and interesting, I design each house from scratch and try to keep it different and original. The thing is, that's the number one thing that frustrates me and makes me sometimes quit and then come back to making my game at another time. But since I realized there's only so much you can do to really keep it original, I thought about just copying my previous houses and maybe redesigning a bit... since it'll be the same eventually. I'm talking about like 20 cities with at least 7 houses including shops. I was wondering how do other people deal with making a game that has tons of maps and still keep going with it? (I'm not saying I don't enjoy making my game... but you have to admit map designing is frustrating when you try to keep it at a high level)

So it's probably been at least a month or two since I worked on my last project, my first and only attempt at actually making a game with some other people, and I realized I never really talked about it with much of anyone outside the project besides one or two vague hints or did any blogs about it or anything. So why not do this now? It all started in October where, despite being possessed by a vile being of vile darkness that I of course opposed, RavenBlueIndigo decided to hold a contest. My friend Nya wanted to be in a team so I decided to contact her and see if I could help, despite being a bit nervous about working with other people. Anyway, long story short, she didn't have a game idea in mind, so I came up with the idea of a fantasy RPG based around the idea of a pre-christian Halloween holiday and the myths and legends surrounding it. Brank also joined in and was mostly responsible for finding a good tileset and doing all the maps. I named Samhain as an example though I wasn't necessarily committed to a historically correct representation of Gaelic culture or mythology, though Nya seemed very inspired by it and it seemed a lot of the monsters she wanted to add were from that origin, which was fitting since a huge inspiration for wanting to work on a Halloween themed fantasy RPG in the first place was Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness which in addition to all sorts of classic Halloween tropes and monsters (as well as more then a touch of Lovecraft) was very much influenced by mythology and culture (Slavic mythology and culture to be exact, actually all the Quest for Glory games have a huge focus on various real world mythologies and cultures). The basic plot, as it was, was that every year the barrier between worlds grows weaker, and people more or less make a big holiday/festival to keep everyones spirits up or else combined negative emotional energy can cause dangerous things to start leaking in from the spirit world in some places. The player plays a member of a secret order of hunters who's job it is to safeguard a town and keep the townspeople safe from any spirits that show up, and to keep them from panicking or even noticing anything is wrong. Though there may or may not have been some other force at work. Most of the gameplay was going to involve going around the town when a spirit/monster shows up and taking care of it, preferably quietly and cleanly without anyone even knowing it is around. Most people can't see them but their presence can still be noticed, especially by superstitious townspeople who know all about the legends of strange spirits or creatures. There was going to be a "mood meter" of some sort which was effected by how well you did at containing the spirits without the towns people noticing, as well as other things like being positively effected if you did sidequests to help with the festival, and negatively effected if to many towns people are injured/killed, if you act hostile or use too much magic in public, and so on. The mood meter mostly effects what kinds of and how many spirits show up. Sort of like how Undertale has it's Fight or Mercy options, taking care of the spirits usually meant either violently "killing" it (which doesn't always stick and just makes the spirit mad when it comes back, in addition to making a lot of noise), capturing it (which means you need to worry about how to contain it and keep it from escaping or keeping anyone from noticing it's there, but you can sometimes use captured spirits to cast/learn magic), or pacifying it (which just convinces the spirit to leave or become benign, but can be hard or flat out impossible to do i the spirit is too "evil", though those spirits will only show up if you are to negligent so panic or negative feelings spread too much). I think the over all design was a bit too ambitious, even if I purposely limited the size of the world to just one town and some surrounding areas, using a quicktravel-like menu instead of a world map. I think I may have done the most work on it, but most of it was just coding lots and lots of weird subsystems that were probably mostly unnecessary. I had the idea of NPC events that were stored in one map and could be loaded into any map dynamically, then I made some complicated scheduling and conditionals and lots of hacks with additional event pages so that NPCs (and spirits, though they were just NPCs too) could kinda move around between maps when you did. I used my old "Event Battler" script for spirits so they could be NPCs too, and made "negotiation skills" that could call different event pages of a spirit's NPC event in battle. But by the time I had accomplished most of this, the contest that this game was going to be for was already over. We all decided to keep working on it for a while, but Nya eventually had other things going on in her life she needed to focus on and I kinda never heard that much from Brank. I kinda lost most of my motivation to work on it anyway, so the project is kinda dead. I still like the idea, and some of the scripting work I did was kinda neat (if sloppy), but I donno when or if I will pick it up again at this point. Anyway MV is already out. I haven't gotten it yet and probably never will unless it goes for like 90% off on some steam sale sometime (because seriously, I don't care how good a piece of software is, I am never gonna pay more then $20 for anything, and if I had my way I wouldn't even pay that because screw proprietary software), but that doesn't change the fact that I am behind the times and the world has moved on and I am stuck in the past. Honestly I am not sure if I will ever work on anything with RPG Maker again, but I probably will. Ether way, I am gonna stick around this community a while I think. :3

How much thought do we really put in to the costume design of our characters? How much "real-world" logic are we going to allow into our game(s)? What are your personal methods? Do you give that one chick gravity-defying hair, knowing fully well that hair doesn't work that way IRL? Or do you give the island native barely anything at all, knowing fully well that he must be hella cold under that island loin cloth? I'm curious... when designing costumes, what makes YOU tick? Do YOU apply real-world logic to your outfits? Why or why not? Talk to me! (x posted)

So, Fallout 4 has been out for, what, a week now? Something like that. And, unsurprisingly to people who people who know me fairly well, I have some gripes with the game from what I've seen and been able to play at a friend's. The opening feels rushed as possible, the settlement building is somewhat poorly implemented and clunky, the writing ranges from good to terrible and the dialogue system is really stupid. I really don't have a problem with the voice protagonist... Did you hear that? That was the Fallout hardcore audience collectively gasping and screaming death threats. But, yeah. I honestly don't have a problem with it, I've always kinda found blank slate characters to be boring, and I find adding a voice and slight bits of backstory like F4 does always helps your character to feel more like a character. No. The thing I hate is the dialogue system, but not for the reasons you might think. The above image shows the F4 dialogue system, which I found on a sub-reddit for the game. We all have at least some idea of how this works and where it came from, right? If you don't, then allow me to spend a few seconds to explain. This dialogue system is a sort of modified version of the wheel dialogue system which was made popular by the Mass Effect series. The wheel system has a wheel with six options, top right, middle right, bottom right, top left, middle left, bottom left. The system you see up above doesn't really have a designated name, as far as I know, but I know a few people who refer to it as a "Press Action Dialogue System." While that does sound slightly over long, when you could just called it a Press Speech System, I'll be using this for the rest of the post. The above picture shows the ME dialogue system better then I can explain it. As you can see, there are a few things of note. The top and bottom left are greyed out while the rest are a light blue. This is because those two that are greyed out are questions that are there for some additional information and they have already been asked. Normally, these kind of questions would be in the investigate option, which would open up a secondary version of the wheel with only questions and a "Cancel" or "Back" option that will take you back to the main wheel. The right side of the wheel is only for dialogue options that will progress the conversation onto the next dialogue branch(top right, good, middle right, neutral, bottom right, bad), usually with another investigate option and another three options that will progress the dialogue again. See how it works? Good. Now. How does the Press Action Dialogue System work? Well, it works on similar principles, but almost always screws it up. The way the system works is that you have up, down, left, or right to choose your dialogue choice. Up being a question, down being bad, left being sarcastic and right being good. This sounds perfectly good, right? Well, it would be. But only if the game could actually stick to the logic of up being a question, down bad, left sarcasm, right good, but it doesn't. Mass Effect ALWAYS maintains this internal continuity about how the options work. The right side of the wheel always has options that advance the dialogue, left always has questions (technically it will have a dialogue progressing option on rare occasions, but those are always colored differently to let you know that they progress and don't just question.). Fallout 4, on the other hand, is all over the place on what the four options do. In the beginning of the game, it sets it up like the ME dialogue systems, but then it will just randomly decide that up is now a progression choice and not a question one, right will suddenly be a jerk response for no real reason, left will be serious and lacking humor, and down will suddenly be sweet. I know that some of you are wondering, "So what? This doesn't really matter, does it?" This matters very much, especially from a player stand point. You see, the beauty of the ME system is that it is almost subtle in how your decision making becomes second nature. Because of the way everything is layed out, you know exactly what you want to do in a dialogue, and the descriptions are usually descriptive enough that you will be able to discern what your character will say. F4 seems to lack this understanding. Constantly changing what options do what is annoying to many people are causes them to have to break their concentration on the game itself and carefully read through every option to make sure that they don't choose an option that don't want. And even that fails sometimes because the descriptions are completely useless a majority of the time. The most you'll get is a brief piece of text from the sentence that goes with the options, which tends to tell you jack about what you will actually say, or it will just give a vague description that still leaves you in the dark. This is an important thing to remember for those of us who think about implementing such systems in our own games; if you have a system that operates like either of these, having a ridged way of how the options work so that your players are never left wondering, "Okay. What in the flying (insert profanity) are these options going to say, and why do they always change!?" -LS

Reworking some of the character designs for my Soul Forge game. Some of these characters have gone through multiple redesigns others I have a pretty good grasp on what I want them to look like and they haven't changed since I first sketched them out. One particular character I've been unsatisfied with is a young girl named Dori. She's 14yrs old with long blonde hair, brown eyes, and wears a green dress. She's generally a happy-go-lucky person with an outspoken attitude. I've redrawn this girl like 3 times already. I'm the most satisfied with her latest reincarnation. Now I just need to make a sprite that generally reflects the picture of her that I've drawn out. Previous drawings of her did not reflect the personality I had imagined for her in my head. She looked unhappy and her clothing was too formal/stuffy. She's supposed to be a priestess in training so she has an advanced grasp on using "Light" magic but she's also surprisingly strong and prefers to attack using over sized hammers and clubs. The other thing I've been working on is a Mushroom Hunting side quest. The objective of the side quest is to collect a rare species of mushroom that happens to be sentient and return it to a guy who calls himself "The Mushroom Sage". He gives up rare items in return for the mushrooms collected. The trick to collecting the mushrooms is that you have to beat them in battle but doing so isn't so easy because they're really quick and immediately put up defensive barriers to protect against fire elemental attacks, which they are weak against. Furthermore, when their HP gets below 50% they will prioritize running away from the battle which does not count as a defeat for collecting the mushroom. It's a simple enough premise and the player will have multiple opportunities throughout the game to except quests from the Mushroom Sage. The more mushrooms you collect for the sage the rarer the items you receive for completing the quest. Certain rare armors and weapons will only be obtainable by completing these quests. My next order of business is to complete a cut scene I've been working on for almost a month. RL work/responsibilities keeps getting in the way but what can you do - bills must be paid.

Hey guys! Are you totally hopeless when coming up with side-missions? Do you have trouble keeping your brain in check and constantly having to double-check what you've done and what you haven't done when it comes to side-missions? Is your brain generally a clusterfuck to work with? Are you also totally hopeless when it comes to balancing your dungeons and game as a whole? Do you forget what status effects you've already used and what you haven't? What elements are over- and under-used? If you're like me and answered "yes" to all of the above questions, I have good news to you! Here are 2 tools I made mainly for myself, but they are made in a way that everyone can use them easily. SIDE MISSION GENERATOR Using this simple graph you can generate a huge amount of side-missions on their bare bones level. Knowing who you're working for, what you're doing, and why -before- you start writing anything, can help you tremendously to come up with new and exciting little stories. Next up, balancing multiple dungeons over the course of your entire game can be tricky. If you use the following tool and write down to each of your dungeons all the bare bones information from the tool, you can easily see what features you've already used and what features are under-used. DUNGEON BALANCING TOOL These are probably not for everyone, but I hope some of you find these little tools useful. I find it so much easier to have something small like this to kick me forward on the design table. Leave comments below if you found this interesting or helpful.

Note: The character busts that are posted here could be used by anyone, for reference or for your game, just don't forget to credit me. The image above is a GIF. **Updates Wow. It has been a while since I last posted. Well, a lot has happened... Serious stuff. I can't work on art for months, but I did try to work on the story of my game. And now, I'm working on the battle sprites. So.. yeah. This is my first time trying to do a battle sprite from scratch. (First frame of the idle pose) This isn't done yet, though. But once I'm finished with this, every other pose will follow. Comments are appreciated. >> >> Edit: Did I mention that I hate the boots? And that I suck at color palettes? :I Comments please? Library of Finished Works Progress Database Character/Concept Designs Sketches (Please do critic these too.) **new

Hello guys I'm working on a game using somewhat of a bust/bubble system. It looks like that: Thing is (and it may be just me) to my eye it's kinda... empty; Like something is missing. ..so i came up adding a small semi-transparent frame with the character's name on it to fill the emptiness. Looks like this: ..and because this is a dark map, i've added the same pic with a different background so you can see the difference better. without the frame... ..and with it. or even darken the background while the bust pops up? Aaahh, so many ways to do things. I need to choose one to move forward with the game. But which one? What do YOU think?

Hi there! I started to experiment with Parallax Mapping and i do this for the first time, so i really would appreciate your thoughts/opinions/feedback about it. Thank you for reading! Original designed in Ace: Version A: Version B:

Not to be anti-intellectual or anything, but I do sometimes question the wisdom of actual academic ideas of video game design. Partly because serious academic interest in the subject still seems like a relatively new thing, but also because I sort of worry it may be too reductionist. The world of video games is now more then ever right in the middle of sort of redefining it's self and what a video game can be, and I am not sure if the formal teachings really mesh with the reality right now. Let's take a example. The game Portal was based heavily on a game designed by students. Now Portal is a great game, and I don't think anyone would argue about that. But Portal seems to be a product of a very formal idea off how games are made and what a game is. I have seen quite a few student games that follow the same kind of idea, you take a single mechanic, work out the implications of that mechanic, and design the whole game around that. Which is fine, it works and lets you explore a mechanic to it's ultimate end. It's neat and tidy. But I think it would be a mistake to design all games that way. As a counter example, let's look at Dwarf Fortress. It's a messy messy game. The UI is a mess with lots and lots of menu options and keyboard shortcuts. The gameplay involves tons and tons of mechanics haphazardly thrown in for no other reason then because the designer can. And yet, while it would be wrong to say it's an objectively better game then Portal, in my eyes it's at least a more interesting one. And then we have Minecraft which sits somewhere in the middle. And we have lots of art games witch exist totally outside the whole spectrum. My point is this: I am just not sure how much game design classes actually tell you about the vast world of game design and all of it's many incarnations. I am too old to take them myself, and don't have the money anyway, so I guess I will never know. There is a heck of a lot going on in game design that seems to go outside the formal patterns. I guess this is probably true of literature and film studies too though, so it probably isn't anything new to say that. Really, if you ask me, the whole collage system is practically a scam anyway, at least in the USA. It just costs too much money and doesn't do enough to prepare people for the real world. But that is a whole other problem that I have been rambling about for years. And also the whole job market.