Little details that make a game feel polished

[Anderson88 26]

What little (I mean, little) details do you guys like to see in RPG Maker games that make them more enjoyable or make them stand out just a little more than the rest?

One I like is a consistent door opening sound effect when opening a door, as well as a door closing sound when exiting a building--the latter which most games lack.

 

I'd like to hear about other minor or not-so-minute minutia you guys have.

Edited April 28, 2014 by Anderson88

[Tsarmina 2,612]

I don't know about enjoyable, but I find a lot of things important in making the game seem polished

~Easy-to-read font. SOOO important. Good example of a font: Calibri or Monotype Corsiva. Bad example: Algerian or Pristina

~Text waiting patterns. Either make me click to advance the whole way through, or none of the way through. Also, if you put slight waits between ...s, always put them, or eliminate them all. Consistency is key!

~Graphical consistency. This one can be kind of hard to master

[TheoAllen 830]

 

 

~Easy-to-read font. SOOO important. Good example of a font: Calibri or Monotype Corsiva. Bad example: Algerian or Pristina

 

I always use Calibri for all of my game I made. Dunno why, but I don't really like default font for RMVXA

 

I would like to add some then

- Character body language. If you don't use bust message, try as much as possible to make character feels alive. Not just only standing by like statue and showing message. That is why I really like kaduki charsets. Well, at least give balloon icon for a certain condition

- Consistency of graphics style. Do not mix XP style tileset with VX style. It's totally different. Just personal preference though.

- Since you "little detail", then I would like to add faceset emoticon! It's good if a game as many different emoticon for each character.

- A good text waiting pattern. Put \. after comma and \| after dot

- Skip intro. You can't guarantee that your game is free for bugs. Your game may crashes in middle of gameplay and force the player to re-watch the intro.

- SE notification for some important event. Such as when you got new items, quest log updated, etc ...

[SpookyMothman 361]

Interactive items.

 

EVERYWHERE.

 

This is easy. Just let the player interact with objects, like posters and statues and stuff. It could very easily lead to some fun bits of dialogue.

[+ Sughayyer 163]

Interactive items.

 

EVERYWHERE.

 

This is easy. Just let the player interact with objects, like posters and statues and stuff. It could very easily lead to some fun bits of dialogue.

 

Phantasy Star IV did it and it had the first talkative protagonist I can remember. It is a useful tool.

[GhandiJones 1]

Here is a list of some things I think are important for overall polish. The first 2 are absolute musts. They separate a Class A game from a class D game.

1. Solid characters and dialogue.
2. An engaging story.
3. Custom graphics, systems and music.
4. Well balanced items.
5. A couple of break points to change the game's focus. Think mini-games (chocobo breeding/FF7)

Just craft everything you make with a point in mind and with passion in your heart from the beginning. Then pore countless hours into refining it. That is where those little details come from.

 

--Oh, also... If you get tired of segments of your game after only a couple of development runs... think about your player.

Edited April 29, 2014 by GhandiJones

[Blindga 144]

Tsarmina already touched on this, but I would say consistency overall.

Don't mix visual styles. Don't mix text themes. Don't break the rules of your own game's design for fun. Get a good start and stick with it. Make it your own, and it will stand out more. A Frankenstein game with mixed or inconsistent assets is repulsive and unattractive.

 

Try to stay within a certain boundary, and don't go nuts on your resources. Themes are important.

[Spectre 829]

~Easy-to-read font. SOOO important. Good example of a font: Calibri or Monotype Corsiva. Bad example: Algerian or Pristina

I'm actually experimenting with serif fonts to prove that not all serifs are bad fonts, per se.

So far Georgia and Garamond produce pretty decent results.

 

Back on topic though, I think we can unanimously agree with consistency and some level of presentability in all aspects of your game.

What do I mean? When I say consistent, you don't have 8-bit music in one map and Hans Zimmer's original compositions, in full HD quality, in the next.

As for presentability, I'm sure we're all not the best of music or art connoisseurs, but we can tell when something looks plain bad. As much as possible, prevent this.

 

In any case, there's something I need to add in as well. The element of dynamism.

 

Have something unique to your game, or at least something people can remember it by.

Have dialogue and cutscenes that captivate the players, and make them enjoy delving deeper into your world.

Give the characters a personality, even the smallest ones, and have a good degree of interactivity.

Basically, if there is one instance in the game where the player is excessively bored, you're doing something very wrong.

 

When your game can be described as fresh and dynamic, it is not only polished, but likely to be very well-received.

[Edel 0]

- Be sure that NPC routes don't block the player way in any circumstance.

 

- See how to reduce dialogues, specifically during cutscenes. Get ride of / modify all instances where the dialogue line doesn't give information about world, quest, character, personnality, or make the plot go forward. The more text there is, the less the player will pay attention.

 

- Add atmosphere sounds and effects.

 

- Looking how to improve feedback for the player (How does he know that he made a good / bad decision?).

 

- Looking how to reduce "dull time" : moments where he should play but he doesn't, avoiding backtrack, and so forth. 

[Spectre 829]

- Be sure that NPC routes don't block the player way in any circumstance.

Easiest fix to this: just make all pathways at least 2 tiles wide.

[Allusion 398]

This is a nice little thread~ I have some little details I've always been fond of, too!

 

• Smart use of BGS. I've noticed outside of the occasional bird or water sound effect, BGS doesn't get used in a lot of games. For me, good ambiance really helps make an area 'pop'. Example: finding a free sound of people whispering, and put it in a library map. 
• Like the OP stated, SE for opening doors and closing them--but I also like them on drawers and gates as well.
• Different NPCs. I know this can be a pain, but I really dislike it when (especially in console games) the NPCs in every town are exactly the same, but with different color hues. I know for bigger names it's to conserve money and time, but for RPG Maker games, I really like to see creative use of the generator, or the search bar, lol!

[+ Retired 274]

- See how to reduce dialogues, specifically during cutscenes. Get ride of / modify all instances where the dialogue line doesn't give information about world, quest, character, personality, or make the plot go forward. The more text there is, the less the player will pay attention.

 

- Looking how to improve feedback for the player (How does he know that he made a good / bad decision?).

 

Not too sure on these recommendations

 

1) If you want your world to feel alive not every dialogue line is going to be about the quest / where the player should go or some party talk. NPC's and interactions should be happening regardless of the players primary goal e.g. npcs in a market buying food or going meeting friends, etc. A maid who is too busy to talk because of cleaning duties etc.  

 

Also try to think of interesting interactions with NPC's rather than welcome to x location. I find developing little back stories helps bring some life to otherwise an interactive sat nav.

 

2) Lots of game's make the moral choice way to obvious which discourages players from making "wrong" choices - if you want a smarter game - all choices should be justifiable within the games context because in real life hardly anything is black and white. 

[Darkanine 116]

Dynamic dialogue, where some NPCs dialogue changes on important moments (The Harry Potter RPGs did that on GBC and it really added to the mood) and a customizable HUD, really helpful if you don't want it all to be very cluttered.

[Tsarmina 2,612]

Changing/different NPC speech/dialogue, on that matter. I don't want to talk to you and hear you say, "Tuesday is my favorite day of the week!" over and over. =.="

[Kaelan 25]

- Text properly aligned in text boxes. Seriously, so many games get this wrong, it's kind of mind-boggling. If there's padding on the side, there should be padding on the top!

 

- This goes into visual consistency and it's something I see a lot: really pretty games with ugly menus. Don't do that! It's a real big sticking point for me if I see gorgeous mapping or character busts, then awful menus. Makes me think what other parts of the game were left by the wayside.

[Anderson88 26]

- Text properly aligned in text boxes. Seriously, so many games get this wrong, it's kind of mind-boggling. If there's padding on the side, there should be padding on the top!

 

- This goes into visual consistency and it's something I see a lot: really pretty games with ugly menus. Don't do that! It's a real big sticking point for me if I see gorgeous mapping or character busts, then awful menus. Makes me think what other parts of the game were left by the wayside.

 

Great point! One of my biggest pet peeves actually. 

 

Another thing I guess is also about visual consistency. Games that look fabulous with a lot of custom visuals... but then throw in some RTP chests/items/commodities that sticks out like a sore thumb and subtracts from the beautiful-ness of the rest of the area.

[Spectre 829]

Not too sure on these recommendations

 

1) If you want your world to feel alive not every dialogue line is going to be about the quest / where the player should go or some party talk. NPC's and interactions should be happening regardless of the players primary goal e.g. npcs in a market buying food or going meeting friends, etc. A maid who is too busy to talk because of cleaning duties etc.  

 

Also try to think of interesting interactions with NPC's rather than welcome to x location. I find developing little back stories helps bring some life to otherwise an interactive sat nav.

 

2) Lots of game's make the moral choice way to obvious which discourages players from making "wrong" choices - if you want a smarter game - all choices should be justifiable within the games context because in real life hardly anything is black and white. 

 

I find it a lot easier to just slap on an actual personality onto the NPCs. They may seem insignificant, but they are human too - they have needs, wants, etc.

Have them display and exude a strong personality through their lines, and make them feel like actual people that you would probably meet in your own town/city. Make them have varied dialogue, or catch up with news of your heroes' exploits as you adventure to different places.

 

On the topic of morality, yes, don't make the "bad" option always the harder one to pull off. It defeats the purpose of a bad option altogether.

Some games pull this off excellently; Bioshock puts you in a position where material rewards overpowers moral ambiguity, and Mass Effect rewards socially unacceptable behavior with cool cutscenes and badass dialogue.

[Tarq 746]

I like those little excerpts of text. You know, the ones that explain that the potion heals 50hp or that key is to the Haunted Mansion. But not those ones, those are lazy and bland.

Say a kid sends you on a fetch quest for his toy boomerang, it doesn't take a lot of effort to write something a little witty in the description like 'there wont be a problem returning this'. Sure, its not a gutbuster, and 90% of players will never feel the need to highlight the item and so will never see it. But I always appreciate the effort when they do.

 

As SpookyMothman said, interactivity is another case where a little effort goes a long way, but most of the points here are good ones.

[Sumnus 6]

I'm a big fan of having interactions change as the story does. I'm only about 30 hours into working on my game (which has really only consisted of one beginning quest through a small forest, and re-doing the starting town three different times as I got better with the program), and the majority of my NPCs already have second or even third pages dialogue based on where in the story the character is. For instance, if you're going to have the main character become a king or something, adding a line to turn on a "heIsTheKing" switch to change the dynamic of how the NPCs might interact with the character. They might go from talking about basic information, to saying "Hello, Sir" or "Hello, your Majesty" or something. It is indeed a very small change, but I have always enjoyed it when games did this. If your player's situation has changed, so should the world around them - especially in a single player game. Actually, a good example of this is in the original Pokemon games, how even after you're the Pokemon League Champion, you can still go back to that NPC in Viridian(?..pretty sure, I might be wrong) city and be taught how to use a Pokeball all over again.

 

Also, give value to the game beyond the storyline. This is a larger endeavor, but it's very rewarding for your player. Once I finish the main storyline, what can I do? Games like Tales of Symphonia (and many others), for example had a game mode open up after you beat the game the first time, where monsters become more challenging, new quest lines open up outside of the main quest (whatever that may have been). Have whatever happened in the main quest carry over into this mode, this is also a great tool for introducing plot twists. There is nothing wrong with being "done" with a game, especially a single-player RPG. But sometimes having a little extra after you thought you were finished is a nice surprise. And it's rewarding to actually have a few more things to do after you've gotten to the point where you're fairly advanced. And plus, it can be fun to design super strong enemies for a change, designed for this sort of thing, that might have otherwise been too difficult to fit into the game.

[+ Myst88 87]

Oooh lets see.

 

Interactive options: I'm the type of player who clicks on everything. So it's cool if the player character makes a little comment on it.

 

Nature is random: I like it when people pay attention to real life when putting in little details. In the wilderness you don't find trees and plants perfectly aligned. Or a mix of pine trees and any other types. Since pine trees tend to kill off any other trees and plants since the pine needles are poisonous. It may be nit picking on my behalf but sometimes little details like that show the player that you've put a lot of thought into design.

 

Sound effects: I love exploring pretty forests and hearing nature sound effects. It really sets the mood. Or you go to a big city and can hear a huge crowd.

[Tsarmina 2,612]

*phone dialing bee boo beep boop beep beep boop beeeeep* Windowskin engineer, please? Can I get someone to change this for me? ....Yes, thank you. It'll give my game that little flair that this topic is all about. Just make it fit my game. Yes, I can change the color myself if I need to. Yes, I will give credit. I just would like to change my windowskin. Thank you! *hangs up*

[SpookyMothman 361]

Hm... a personal favorite thing of mine is naming every NPC. Or at least most of them. They may be NPCs, but they're people that exist in your game's world; treat them with some respect.

 

And while you're at it, a little personality goes a long way. You can have the welcome-wagon NPC that's in every RPG village ever, but give their dialogue a little flair. Make them bitter, or really creepy. Have fun with it.

Edited May 17, 2014 by SpookyMothman

[Spectre 829]

Hm... a personal favorite thing of mine is naming every NPC. Or at least most of them. They may be NPCs, but they're people that exist in your game's world; treat them with some respect.

 

And while you're at it, a little personality goes a long way. You can have the welcome-wagon NPC that's in every RPG village ever, but give their dialogue a little flair. Make them bitter, or really creepy. Have fun with it.

For that matter, if you're going to do up nice NPCs, you might want the following:

• Personality in their speech
• Keeping up to date with recent events. Have them praise your heroes if word has reached that you've recently slain the dragon near town.
• Variance. Don't give them the same lines. A random number generator and a few conditional branches makes all the difference.
• Funny or interesting dialogue. Sometimes, this makes all the difference in the game, and gives the player an incentive to actually chat up NPCs just for entertainment's sake.

While we're at it, I really do appreciate good humor in any game. It makes the game memorable, and used correctly, can make gameplay very engaging.

[Marche 2]

Hm... a personal favorite thing of mine is naming every NPC. Or at least most of them. They may be NPCs, but they're people that exist in your game's world; treat them with some respect.

 

And while you're at it, a little personality goes a long way. You can have the welcome-wagon NPC that's in every RPG village ever, but give their dialogue a little flair. Make them bitter, or really creepy. Have fun with it.

 

I prefer not naming NPCs. It really depends on what you want the player's viewpoint to be. Do you want to player to see the world as if they were the protagonist? If so, it's not like the protagonist is going to know the names of the NPCs in the random town he just walked into. They'll likely be total strangers to him. Likewise, I like the character to feel like the NPCs they're speaking to are total strangers. You won't see a name until their name is mentioned (if it is at all). On the other hand, maybe you want the player to be a bit more omniscient. In that case, I can see where the player would know the names of NPCs.

 

I agree that NPCs should each have some personality to them. If you want the world you're creating to feel a little realistic, you have to make the characters a little realistic. Everyone has a personality. You might not see all of that personality in a brief exchange (that a hero might have with an NPC), but it's there. Or it should be.

 

I also enjoy good humor, so long as you're not overusing it (like, you're not assaulting the player with jokes in a serious horror game). It's an easy way to give your game personality. And besides that, who doesn't like to laugh? Laughing is positive. Make the player laugh and you have positive emotions associated with your game in the mind of the player.

 

One thing I want to add is in regards to audio. The audio in your game should be at an appropriate volume level. What I mean by that is: You shouldn't have one extremely loud song on one map and a soft one on another. If possible, your songs should all be around the same volume level. It makes it easier for the player (don't have to go off adjusting the volume on their end).

[flarify 128]

I tend not to name unimportant NPCs, but give them small descriptions instead: Patient Woman (who is dealing with a pair of unruly children), Ill-mannered Guard (who makes fun of you for landing yourself in jail), and Suspicious Teenager (who loiters closer to the bandit den than he really should) as examples. I mostly only name characters who will be recurring or will have a significant impact in the game. Even some bosses don't have anything other than the character's impression of them or a title, since they never thought to share their name with the player.

 

One thing that stands out to me when playing games are little sprite animations, such as ones for climbing or sprinting or death or sleep. Appropriate sound effects can add a lot as well - I've jumped into water in some games where it sounds like I just cast a water spell, not soaked half the dungeon in a thin coating of liquid. Small sound effects when a emote bubble or something is used can be rather neat as well, as long as it isn't jarring.

 

Keeping a consistent style is always nice, though I almost always prefer playing a game with a mix of different custom parts than a game that's entirely RTP (unless they've used the RTP in a really inventive and interesting way, then it's completely okay). Simple edits in photoshop to alter contrast or tone appropriately can make almost anything fit together. And it isn't just maps, but making sure the fonts, logo colors, and motifs are used consistently throughout where you may use them. For example, perhaps you want to use a picture-based title when you enter a dungeon that says "Forest of Despair". Use the same font that you did the logo, and replicate the stylizations that you used in a smaller scale. If you highlighted the first letter of the last word in your logo with a bright violet, make the dungeon intro reflect that. Of course, if it looks rather silly don't do it.

Edited May 17, 2014 by flarify