Search the Community

Heya there, folks! I've not been present here in some time, but now that I am back in some capacity, I've decided to share some of my music, as musical composition is indeed one of the skills that I have under my wing. I am going to start by sharing two songs for an upcoming game that I am working on. At a later point, I will likely share more! Welcome to Cuvier: This is the theme song of the first town/stage, Cuvier. I used the Donkey Kong Country soundfont as well as some recordings of my voice. Welcome to Toco: This is the theme song of the second town/stage, Toco. I used the Donkey Kong Country soundfont as well as some recordings of my voice.

I've played video games many. I've seen many different things that a certain something can do when in inventory or is a skill or a passive effect, etcetera. Lately, I've played games where it seems that a single passive ability can do different things depending on whether the player is moving, or if attacking with a certain skill, etcetera, but one thing that I've rarely seen is the detriment to the player where attacking normally costs the player Vitality/Health/HP. The only recent example of this I've played recently is in Mega Man Unlimited, when you play as Zero/Z-Prototype; all attacks cost Vitality, some more than others. Thing is, whenever Zero lands a hit, it restores Vitality. It restores 1 unit of Vitality per hit; the basic attack costs one unit, whilst the Z-Saber costs three (I think-might be four), and the Syoryuken two. Deflecting projectiles (passive ability when Zero stands still) doesn't restore nor cost Vitality. It's also the only technique Zero has that doesn't have any related cost other than double movement speed. The air dash costs two, or three I think, and the ground pound is one unit. Some enemies can be smashed in one blow from Zero, but registers several hits, thus a good way to heal. This is just something I was thinking about as something that could be a thing in an RPG or something (like if implemented into LoZ or something action-oriented), while playing MMU. For VX Ace, pretty sure there's a script out there that could enable this sort of functionality, though not so sure how useful it would be to have in a turn based game... I dunno, anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Curious how difficult something like this would be. Where you have moves activate based on distance as well as percentages for hit success. Is RPG Maker really capable of something like this with coding? Maybe with a more dynamic camera so there isn't a split screen?

(Been thinking of this for a while, ever since I saw what Flowey says if you start the game after a true pacifist ending, but I felt like writing it out. Really just using Undertale to explore a concept here though.) Hey... Look, I know what the flower said. Everyone is got their happy ending. To go back on that, to rip them out of the timeline and take them back would ruin that. You should know by now, the other possibilities? They aren't so happy. And somethings taint you, somethings are inescapable. Even if you cheat, you still would know you did it. Maybe you don't care. So yeah, taking away that happy ending seems more then a little cruel. But... Something's bugging you isn't it? Maybe more then one something. Maybe not least of all that happy or not this is still a ending. Yeah, you could leave everyone to their happy life. Except... Can you? What happens to the characters when the story is over? How do you even know if they are really happy? Or heck are even still really there? This is the end of the timeline for you... what if it's the end for everyone else too? Just frozen visions of moments and... nothing after. And really, not everyone is happy, The Empty Vessel, The Jester of Sorrow, The Scion of Hatred, The Forgotten, where is their happiness? The future isn't written yet, maybe it never will. This is where time stops. Maybe all stories must end. You can go back, to try and rip through reality, find secrets that may not exist. I wouldn't really blame you, even if others might. Isn't that better then a frozen future even if it causes pain? Maybe. Or... Or... You could look at another path in the void of possibilities, maybe even write a future yourself. Go beyond the timeline you knew, You aren't the only one looking. Maybe, just maybe, if all of you keep a light burning, someday a new path will open forward. All stories must end. Or so they say. But for every ending maybe a seed for a new beginning is planted.

Excuse My Gut - Winter Fitness Gaming Challenge So what is this? Well, a while back, I was getting requests to return to longplays. I didn't want to do it for a while because I was having fun doing themed quickplays, but I decided I would try something for the late fall/winter months. Basically what I'm doing here is I'm playing through a game in one hour increments and setting special rules for myself that cause me to have to pause and workout at regular intervals. The rules are as follows: - If I level up, I have to pause and exercise. If the same character levels up more than once, I have to exercise even more. - If I die, I have to pause and do a challenging exercise, i.e. burpees. - If neither of these happens for 10 minutes of gameplay, I have to pause and exercise. So in some cases I'm only exercising 6 times in a given video, but there have been instances where it's been 10 times or greater that I'm having to pause and exercise! I'm hoping to help people get and stay motivated to work out during the winter months when it's especially tough to even think about getting out of bed, let alone exercising. Furthermore, I'm helping to educate people about all kinds of exercises you can do from the comfort of your home with no equipment necessary. Sound good? Well, check out the first video in the series and let me know what you think... It's also important to note that the "current stats" section at the beginning will update as I improve at the gym as well. So in a way, I'm using this longplay challenge as a way to get myself into better shape as well.

So I realized I have like 60+ games that I categorized as horror or horror themed in my Steam library and that got me thinking...I haven't done ANY twitch in a while (I was actually still working on my Mother 3 playthrough off and on), so why not have something special for the whole month of October? And then I thought hey, wouldn't it be fun if I got the whole community behind it? I'm in the process of installing about 30 or so games that I can select from and intend to twitch for at least an hour a night throughout all October, probably doing a new game each night, even if it's only a one-off. Still, that's my situation. I really only have about an hour or so I can allocate each night, with the exception of my days off, mostly because I have to wake up early on days that I work. What I was wondering is if everyone else wanted to try this? We can post links to each others' twitch accounts, update with what we're playing, etc. This will also help us all get more press, views, and even highlight horror games we might otherwise not have thought of. And that ALSO got me thinking...there are a fair amount of awesome horror games on RPG Maker (The Longing Ribbon, The Witch's House, etc.), so why not highlight some of those as well? It doesn't have to be entirely RPG Maker, but I love finding new kickass RPG Maker games. Anyway, this doesn't have to start until October, but I was wondering what you guys thought about it. I'll be following and updating this topic just in case. Edit: My username on twitch is gunsage13. I don't have any content on there right now because it's already cycled through, but you can check out archived stuff on my youtube account, which is just gunsage. This isn't a contest, but if you'd like to participate, let's all throw out our usernames now so we can follow each other! To see everything I've done so far, check out the playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYkTBSuzozCRmWovr0gMsVFUKAo1s94JK

Hello all and welcome to another new series! This one will carry on into September where I will eventually transition back to 2 spoopy, but for now, back to school time! Let's kick things off with... Also, the master list will be available here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYkTBSuzozCScXBSeo7aytaN_QrmV06Sr

Hello Dear Readers, First off thank you for making my Blog interesting, with such insightful and compelling thoughts. As always, everyone is welcome to speak here and freely address their opinions. Remember, you are the reason I write, this is the virtual slate to write thy words, to voice thou perspective! ( yes, I do talk this way, and no, I am not old ). So down to business. I have always been a notable talker on various game communities and I enjoy our conversations! So now, simple question, what do you think about virtual reality gaming. It is obvious this is our industry's next step. Is it too soon, will the world enjoy diving their minds into unknown worlds? Also please know, I am very very passionate about games, I do not under any circumstances believe "games are just games", that phrase people use is invalid. This phrase only applies to board games, video games are much more sophisticated. These are worlds my friends, worlds, living worlds of various cultures, it's no longer just a game. It is life virtualized!

Hello everyone! Since I've lost passion on my "real music" what I've been doing with FL Studio 12, I have found the joy of making music about my seconds interest; RPG Gaming of course. So. I thought I could come here and share these tracks with you guys! All feedback is very welcome! I'm NOT very productive person, so I don't have much ready songs. And making them to start to finish, can take a while. Actually I have bunch unfinished stuff, but for now, this is my only song that I have mastered, looped and uploaded on the net, so it's ready I don't have specific interest about genre, so I'll do anything between chilling town music to battle music (Although fast paced music is harder to me to make for some reason) So, here's my first creation: All my stuff I create is free to use. I have the OGG download link in the Soundcloud description of the song. But yeah, I think that's all. Feel free to listen, comment and use the stuff I upload here!

So I ran across a very interesting game the other day on youtube. I only watched an LP of it but I may buy it myself soon (that is i my dinky computer can handle it, which I doubt) because besides it's story being amusing it's gameplay actually looks really really interesting, even if it seems sort of short. I think there is something that is sort of interesting that the game touches on, maybe even unintentionally, that it never really to my knowledge addresses completely. So first of all, I am going to be mentioning some spoilers for the game. Nothing really groundbreakingly major I think but still, if you care about that sort of thing, well spoiler warring and such. So okay. This game, it's about running around a unfinished gameworld being worked on by feuding developers that just cannot seem to get along. There are three developers that tend to show up as the main stars of the show, while most of the others just seem to show up in backstory lore (in the form of developer changelogs and commentary on the unfinished world). It is noticeable to me that none of these three main developers really seem to actually care that much about the game it's self, or even understand what a game is and what it's for. First we have the head designer (voiced by Dr Venture of all people), who acts as the game's writer. He only really cares about the story, to the point where he is actively hostile to the players. Early in the game he decides they are entitled kill-crazy jerks who when given a weapon would just run around and kill all his carefully made NPCs. So he takes away their weapon. Despite the fact most of the game was designed with combat in mind (you never do get it back, but though shenanigans find another power that is actually a lot more interesting then using a weapon anyway). Next there is the cynical second in command that has no choice but to follow the head designer's lead even though she hates it, but can't quit due to shady cooperate dealings. She actively hates all the story focus and wants more combat and killing things. She seems to be on the side of gameplay, but I think it becomes obvious she just wants something to master. She even goes on this long story about cavemen (or woman, whatever) called "Frag" and "Brag" that seems to really drive the point about how she views games as pure competition and sport. Then there is the fan intern that flatters her way into the head designer's good graces and ends up doing a lot of the work. All she really cares about though is nostalgia, and resurrecting the past. In fact it becomes more and more obvious that her dedication to the past is much stronger then her dedication to the present. Her focus is on the exact set of symbols she remembers and the emotional responses they trigger. It strikes me that none of these developers seem to have a clue about what games are actually about. To me, games are and always have been about the manipulation of data within a set of rules. To me it's always been just the pure joy of figuring out and using systems. Exploring them, exploiting them, figuring out how they work. Bit like programing I guess, or even life it's self, but maybe with more strict rules and a bit of story for context, just enough to make you want to work to something and to let the world you are exploring come alive beyond pure gameplay mechanics. Ironically this is something that the real game (not the fake in-universe game) actually seems to do pretty well, at least for the main chunk of it's gameplay. It offers a simple, but pretty deep, mechanic and allows you to solve puzzles various ways with it. I hesitate to spoil the actual mechanic, but if you wanna know: Thing is, I am not sure i that was an idea that the game's story ever really picked up on, or i they just threw a interesting mechanic to keep people interested and drive off the "not a game" crowd. There is a lot of interesting if heavyhanded commentary, and several long speeches, about games and why people play them and why and how they are made and so on and so forth, but I didn't see anything about this, at least not directly. It even, at parts, pokes at the old idea that video games are just escapism, which always rubbed me the wrong way, but I don't think it was supporting that view and instead using it as another example of how the head designer just doesn't get players. I always thought games were important. All fiction is of course, beyond escapism. It communicates and discusses ideas, sets up scenarios, allows hypothetical to be explored. This is an important function of thought, one we need more they people are willing to admit it seems in our day to day lives. And games are one level beyond even fiction. They allow us to explore abstract models and conceptions, and allow a nuanced way to see how some choices will play out in an abstract setting. Escapism may happen sure, but people uses stories and games to enhance their minds, making them more effective for decision making in the real world as well. I guess I am rambling at this point but those are just the thoughts this game brought out of me. Lots of games do that. I think it's a good thing, it means the time invested in the medium is worth it. You know just the other day, I was thinking of making a blog entry about how I sometimes think I should just leave gaming. When gaming news depresses me I think that sometimes. But it's still worth it, and I find examples why all the time. :3 (Also: Fun fact: The game's name seems to be a pun on this which is kinda like a gaming version of the forth wall. Clever!)

Something I've always wondered is peoples preferences of either realistic games or random games. What do I mean by that you ask? Let me go over each option to give you guys an idea of what I mean: Realistic: realistic games try to push the boundary of gaming to give the player the most life like experience as possible. They usually have serious storylines, and cover real world issues.they can be set in any time peroid as long as they are accurate to the time period. Random: random games are more focused on a fun experience, not story telling and realisticness. Games like mario fit into this category. These games usually have random strange story lines, for example super mario bros' storyline in which a fat italian plumber is rescuing a princess of fungus from a turtle king with an army of living bullets. These games can obviouslly take place in any setting, and as previously stated, are made more for fun (enjoyment) then for glory (making huge steps forward in gaming). which kind do you prefer, or do you prefer both? Please answer and comment!

So, I've been playing a number of RPGs lately on a multitude of platforms, consoles, PC, mobile devices, even watching a small portion of a DnD game. This is mostly due to me putting off work on my own projects because I'm a lazy punk with the physique of an obese telly tubby, and partly because I've been trying to find an answer to a question I've had for awhile, the question being "Why do we always say that story is the main strength of RPGs?" This is a common opinion I hear, "The gameplay is generic, but the story is good, and honestly, that's really the only part that matters in these games." or something similar, mostly when going through RPG Maker forums. I always want to challenge this stance, but whenever I think about the metric ton of RPGs that I've played, I honestly can only ever come up with one or two examples, that I end up realizing later were just as boring as other ones. Now, this is probably just me, and I'm perfectly willing to except that. I know a few people who really like the gameplay in Earthbound and the Persona series, but I honestly feel that the RPGs that follow in the veins of these game, or other Final Fantasy esc-games, have never had good gameplay, or un-engaging at the very least. I don't really have much of an answer to why this is, even after playing somewhere around twenty RPGs in the past three weeks, but I do have a few ideas as to why. First possibility: Gameplay that never really changes. Through the multitude of games I've played recently it struck me that most RPGs never really shake things up. For example: In final fantasy 4, you learn everything you ever need to know for the entire game. There is never a time where the game throws you a curve ball that forces you to adapt or radically change up your strategy or ways of playing, even games like Dark Souls fail at this, all you ever need to do in that game is roll around until you learn the enemy's moveset and then wait for an opening. There is the occasional boss that plays with this, but it's usually only one boss and you never have to adapt again. Second possibility: Slow, or uninteresting gameplay. Let's face it, turn based battle isn't the most interesting combat, now is it? And fancy side view battles can only remain fancy for so long. It's another thing that I've noticed in most of the games I've played recently, they always have either frontview/sideview TBB/ATB systems with the normal Physical attacks, four elemental magic attack spells, light magic for healing, dark magic for curses and the like, usually poorly balanced, or lacking in any real challenge, and those that do have "challenge" mistake overpowered enemies that take five hours to kill as challenge, and not, you know, giving them some kind of interesting patterns, or strange status effects, or any kind of ACTUAL challenge. And they usually when they have ATB, then the bar takes so long to charge that it might as well be TBB. And that's really all that I have, well, at least all I have that I can actually explain without going into fifteen paragraphs like I usually do. But anyway, what do you guys think? Do either of the two possibilities seem plausible? Am I talking out of telly tubby shaped rear end? Do you have your own ideas on why gameplay tends to suck in RPGs? Or do you think that the kind of gameplay we normally have is perfectly fine? Leave a comment and discuss away!

Summary: The world is in a chaos, monsters running everywhere, you have to kill the demon lord to bring back the peace Genre: Fantasy, Hack & Slash Average Demo time: 15-30 minutes Game Progression: Done! But it's a short game. Story: A unknown sword girl is on her way to defeat the demon lord, who stand behind & control other monsters attacking the world As the strongest & most skillful fighter, she is only hope for the world. Will she defeat demon lord? Main Characters: ???: Unknow girl, using sword, cute, strong, fast Credits: Image Sources: Enterbrains, Google Music: Tri-Ace Coding: Me Animation: Me, Enterbrains (25%) Some screenshot: Note: * I'm not sure is there any another update for this :| * Control: Arrow keys to move, numpad 1 to attack, numpad 2 to activate combo mode (After press numpad 2, you have about 0,7s to input combo) * Main actor has exactly 4 skills... or 5? May be 6? Find for yourself In the case you're too lazy to find it then here are they: Sk1: Icicle Spike - DD1 (DMG x 1 - distance 3 cell) Sk2: Wheel of Stars - RLRL1 (DMG x 1 - distance = screen) Sk3: Flowers Whirlwind - DULR1 or DURL i can't remember (DMG x 2) Sk4: God Breath - RDLDR1 (DMG x 4) Sk5: ??? D = Down, L = Left, R = Right, U = Up Download Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4JMHD0HzF39LWt5MWpjUlZWalE/view?usp=sharing

I have recently begun re-playing Skyrim, and Dragon Age: Origins, while at the same time starting a first play through of FF13. It was while playing these three RPG's that I realized just how much the focus in all of them varies. In Skyrim you are the only person who can stop the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy that say that a dragon will destroy the world (real original, by the way), but you can completely ignore this responsibility by wandering around the wilderness catching butterfly's, and killing bunny wabbits. This game, like most sandbox games, lacks a certain amount of focus on the story, and goal of the game by allowing this, but gives the player the ability to do almost anything they want to do. Meanwhile in Final Fantasy 13 the party has been cursed by some great magical being, and have to complete a certain goal in order to keep from turning into terrible creatures, this is what you spend the entire game doing. This game is very focused, but at the expense of player choice, there are no dialogue choices (that I've seen so far), no optional path, no NPC interaction outside cutscenes, and you are constantly being pushed down an annoyingly long hallway. And in Dragon Age: Origins your character is part of an ancient order of warriors who are the only ones who can save the world from the evil creatures known as the darkspawn (yes, that really is what there are called, and again, real original), this is the primary goal of the game, but on the way to accomplishing this goal you run across a number of snags. Your entire order is betrayed by a general who then plunges the kingdom into a civil war, the only way to stop the darkspawn is if the land is united against them, so you have to start a recruitment drive for your own army to take on the general's army. This simple sounding goal leads you across the entire kingdom to haunted forests, a giant tower that is overrun by demon, a massive underground city, and so on. Whil you do this you can also choose to help towns with bandit troubles, food shortages, and acquiring armaments to to protect themselves with. This game is, once again very focused, and has a very clear goal, but that goal is constantly getting side tracked by other goal that lead to the main one, along with various side quest's, and fairly open maps. My question to all of you is this: Do you prefer a game that is very focused like FF13, a game that lacks much focus in favor of player choice like Skyrim, or a game like DA:O that is a mix of the two? Leave your opinions below.

I've recently been replaying some of my old favorites from when I was a kid. Mostly JRPGs, but also puzzle games and a few side scrollers. Final Fantasy Legend II was my favorite game - ever - when I was still in school. While everyone else was droning on and on about Bulbasaur, Squirtle, and Charmander, I was locked into a quest for the 77 magi, following in the footsteps of my virtual father, fighting evil, and having a great time of it. For my birthday one year, my dad's gift to me was - what I though at the time - an unusual game where the goal was to move boxes into a certain position in order to advance to the next level, and ultimately save the girl from the clutches of the big bad. Thus was my introduction to Sokoban, and a second love was born; that of puzzle games. After nearly wearing out my dear old FFL2 cart, I decided to save up some of my hard earned, and quite meager, allowance to buy the first in the series, Final Fantasy Legend. Wow, what a difference! The difficulty level in the first game vs that of the second game was staggering. For one thing, perma-death was a thing. Also, unlike in Legend 2, Legend didn't give you an opening cut scene to explain what was going on. I was on my own, and things didn't work out so well for my parties. I forget how many TPK's there were, but allow me to assure you, there were a lot. Another thing thet irked me was my tendency to forget to save before entering a dungeon. After high school, I still had my old Gamebrick, but it was starting to show the signs of it's age. So, with the proceeds from my first part time job, I bought myself two things: A Game Boy Color and a Super Nintendo. My mother was less than amused by my purchases - not that I cared much, by that time of my life I rarely listened to anything the biddy had to say anyway (Respect your parents, kids!) The games I got for these shiny new systems? Super Mario World was a given, but it was soon abandoned in favor of Super Metroid, Secret of Mana, and Final Fantasy VI. Also, for the GBC, I got Metroid 2: The return of Samus, and Battle Toads. Yes, Battle toads did scar me for life, just like it scarred everyone else, but God, were those great years for gaming. When I moved off to college, my old systems went with me, and I was introduced to the idea of competitive gaming with such gems as Super Street Fighter 2, Mario Cart, and other multiplayer affairs. Yeah, I had it pretty sweet growing up, I guess. And replaying these old classics? Wow, the memories.