Darth Mongoose

Okay, let's see what we can come up with here... A middle aged knight who participated in the invasion of a country 15 years ago and has since settled down with an alloted piece of land as a Landed Baron (like the Normans in the aftermath of the 1066 invasion of England) has his daughter kidnapped by a group of rebels. The rebels are former native noblemen of the country, united under the banner of the prince who is the surviving heir of the dead defeated King, who was slain by the protagonist 15 years ago. After an arduous quest to track them down and find his daughter, aided by his trusty comic foil sidekick, a wisecracking travelling bard (and theif), the Knight is horrified to discover from news on his travels that his daughter actually eloped by choice, and has since married the prince! The prince and the Knight's daughter march on the Capital with an army of rebel soldiers, mercenaries, displaced nobles and angry peasants. Their aim; to kill the usurper King! The Knight's master and friend. He rushes to the capital to bring the news to the King, but on reaching the palace and giving the bad news, is thrown in prison because he is father to the rebel prince's wife. He is beaten and humiliated and told that his daughter will be hung, drawn and quartered when the King's army reaches the rebels. He has an ace up his sleeve; mages who can cast destructive battle magic, while the natives only have access to simple healing spells and stuff. In the gaol, he meets a notorious murderess, a sorceress accused of crimes aparently caused by the King himself to stir up unrest and cause a battle so that he can beat down the unruly peasants and finalyl destroy the royal line of that country. She has sworn revenge. The bard springs them out of prison and they go to find the King, sneaking into the back of his camp. The King makes a run for it, and the team must fight through a bunch of guards and mages. Finally, they confront the King and, with help from the young prince, defeat him! um...well, it's not terrible for something I made up as I went along. Hahaha. Feel free to apply some artistic liscence and play with the setting details, add in stuff to happen along the way during the journey, etc.

It's worth remembering that, as they always say on TV Tropes, not all tropes are bad. It's important to remember that many elements of games are purely metaphors for things which, if depicted realistically, would be tiresome. An example being monsters dropping money and useful items. In Final Fantasy XII, they tried to avoid this by making monsters drop things like feathers or pelts which could then be sold, and had no real use other than to be sold. What's the point? Why not just cut out the middle man? You're gonna sell those pelts for money anyway, so why not have the monster drop money and say it's symbolic of the monster dropping sellable loot and/or items you've found during your travels through the countryside? Naturally, some idiot who thinks they're awfully clever will miss the fact it's a bloody metaphor and be all 'hurr, this game is stupid 'cuz in real life dead animals don't drop teh money and people don't take turns in fights!' An RPG doesn't have to be realistic to be good any more than a game of chess needs to be a realistic depiction of the battle it represents. Cliches become such because they work. They work so well, that everybody uses them, and I do feel it's bad to use a trope having lost sight of what that trope represents. A lot of them can be made to make sense if you think carefully about the setting. The princess in a medieval setting could well know how to use a bow if she's a keen huntress, but would be unlikely to be an expert swordswoman, as the sword in medieval times was a heavy weapon usually used in wars. For this reason, the bow has become considered a feminine weapon, while the sword is masculine. So it's a cliche, but there is a logic behind it. So long as you consider the reasoning behind what you're doing, I don't think any cliche need necessarily be bad (...even...sewer levels...maybe). So there's no reason the protagonist shouldn't be a young man with a giant sword if there's a good reason backing it up (ie. swords are better against monsters ala 'Blood the Last Vampire', or the setting involves magic which renders guns less powerful or deadly than they are in real life, or it's a sci-fi setting and people have shields which deflect bullets, but a sword can get through ala 'Dune' etc.) The cliches are only bad if they're used without knowledge of why and how they're used!

I like to use the graphical battlers. If I were a better spriter, the animated kind would be great, but I'm a lot better at just drawing, and so I'd rather have a good looking static battler than a moving one that looks shoddy. The only other option is to use the animated kind that already exists, but that causes problems if I want a battler for a new character. I feel consistency is important for game graphics to look good, and it's easier to guarantee I'll get all the characters looking consistent if I draw all the battlers myself. I admire well-made animated battlers though! ^_^;

Personally I think that there's no reason a fangame should be inherently bad, but the sad fact is that they do tend to be. A lot of FF fangames disappoint me, because they either just rip off one of the games in the series, or, amusingly, diverge too far. Typically any FF game will have a new world and new gameplay, but that doesn't mean people can stick 'Final Fantasy' in their title on any old RPG, because there's more to it than that. In an FF, I expect to see certain recurring elements: Chocobos, classic monsters (bomb, cactuar, Ochu, Malboro, Behemoth etc.) classic summons (shiva, ifrit etc. Or at least a nod to them) weapon and item names (Save the Queen, Genji Glove, Phoenix Down). All of the RPG maker FFs I've played to date are either poor copy sequels, or they just don't satisfy what I want from a Final Fantasy game, which is innovation combined with familiar features and homages. Most of the fun for me, of a new FF is seeing how they work the homage elements into a new setting, like in 12, the summons were all new, but the old summon names were used for airships, or in 8, there were no character classes, but the limit breaks and character stats suggested their classes (Selphie with high luck and a random limit was essentially a 'Gambler' class, while Irvine's high accuracy and shot limit made him a 'Hunter/Archer'). So yeah, the important thing with a fangame is research. These little things matter! A good fangame ought to give you that same feeling as the original game. Scratch an itch so to speak.

Well, while I'm pondering what to do with that tileset (tiles aren't exactly my main area of expertise, but I'm learning!) I may as well post up some old battlers. I have no use for these guys. If I were to make more, they're be in a slightly more refined style, as my digital inking is considerably better than it used to be. If you want to use them, please use them! Credit would be nice, of course. (to Kate Holden/Darth Mongoose). By darthmongoose at 2009-12-01 By darthmongoose at 2009-12-01 By darthmongoose at 2009-12-01 By darthmongoose at 2009-12-01 The non-RTP sprites for these battlers are by Strawberry Quartz and Mori no Oku. By darthmongoose at 2009-12-01 When used with the custom monsters from my old thread: http://www.rmxpunlimited.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1553 Doesn't look too bad!

Okay, I've made the suggested additions, and removed some bits which, on testing, I decided were useless or superfluous. There's a nice metal wall now, which I've tried my best to make blend in with the rest of the tileset, as well as a plain one, and some more metal flooring, as well as more extra bits, such as crates. I'm most proud of my pipe editing to make a corner though! As before, suggestions are welcome. I think I'll need to edit that metal wall to make it tile properly. I'd also like to make some cool techy wall details, like holes where pipes show through etc. A girder or two would be nice too.

Okay, so I love RPGmaker, but I'm aware that the chances of my ever finishing making a game are...sadly pretty slim. So when I make resources, I may as well share them! I'm currently thinking of making some more battlers (I uploaded some to a thread months and months ago here). But first I wanted to address something I felt the XP tilesets were lacking, which is an industrial/factory set. Factories make awesome dungeons, so I wanted to compile some kind of Factory set which would fit in with XP resources. I'm not 100% happy with this just yet. I feel that I need to get some walls that have a more metallic, techy look, but don't want to just take ones from FF6 or CT, as the style won't match. Still looking for a good solution to that! I'm not the world's greatest map maker, so if you're a map maker, I'd love suggestions on what you'd like to see that's currently missing. Basically I'm trying to make this a really solid set that can be used to make cool factory dungeons and areas. If you make a good map with this, I'd like to see screenshots! You're free to use this. I essentially just compiled it from existing resources.

Ohhh. Well, that should make things a lot easier then! I can just make them how I normally would!

Have you even tried reading the help file? :huh: If you want other chipsets, try right clicking on a new area you've made, in that bottom left window, and changing the chipset to something other than 'grassland'. To make a character, you edit the details in the database section. Unless you mean, create a new character as in the sprite and stuff, which you'll have to either make, download or have somebody else make you a sprite and battler then load them into your game with the resources window. Seriously, read the help file.

Agh, it's really hard getting the battlers to match the style of the originals, though my actual drawing style isn't so different, something about the way the battlers in that style have been shaded and stuff is very distinctive, they have no internal lines and stuff, I'm not sure how the artist did them technically...grr. I normally draw line art and colour it, but if I do that, they'll look quite obviously like they've been done by another artist. How frustrating!

Sure, go for it. Anybody who wants to use these resources is welcome to. The chances of me ever finishing making a game are slim, so keeping my stuff to myself is pretty pointless!

Okay, here's your edited battler, I've tried to make the sword match up to the style and colours so it doesn't look out of place. The others will take longer, 'cause I have to draw them from scratch, but will probably be a lot less fiddly than that was! :lol:

Oh man, that list brings back memories! :lol: Haven't read it in a while. The things that irritate me are always the things that simply show a lack of common sense, emotional maturity or life experience on part of the creator. I can happily put up with gigantic swords, being attacked by technicolour monsters out of the blue and potions which instantly cure death. All those can be explained with either "magic", "awesome" or "game mechanics creative licence". What really niggle me are things like: Sewers. Why the crap must every game have a bit in the sewers? They're usually really annoying and let's face it, sewers aren't exciting looking places anyway, especially not when you have to navigate them for ages because they're set out like a maze! Sewers in games are nearly always remarkably clean, surprisingly light (think about it, who would put lights in a sewer? WHY?), don't leave the party smelling awful, get you exactly where you need to go (and nowhere else!) and, most strangely of all, are large enough to walk through and fight in! Illogical romance. Some games handle the romance well and have the relationship between the hero and heroine develops in a natural feeling way as the journey progresses (FF8 does a great job of this, and just as well really since it's quite heavily focused on the love story plot-wise). Other games, however, seem to be under the impression that it's not a proper rpg unless there's a romance element, and will throw in a female character just to be a love interest, even though she has no real reason to like the hero other than, y'know, he's the hero. Just because you've been on an adventure with a guy, it doesn't mean you're going to fall head over heels for him! If there's no reason for a relationship subplot, you could just leave it out!

I can have a stab at the battlers. I'll try to keep the style consistent to the style of the battler you already have if I can. One question before I start: What weapons do you want them with? Or no weapons at all? It helps to know what I'm drawing for poses and stuff! :lol:

That's perfect! It works just fine and the 'limit' option is gone. Thank you! ^_^

The scripts are just there, in the post by Rose. I just copy pasted them according to the instructions given.

Thanks so much! A little less simple than I'd expected, so it's a good job I didn't just jump in and start changing stuff (that would have been disastrous...) I got it working! Check it out! My menu looks all FF7-y, hooray! :lol: Thanks again, guys, especially you, Rose Skye. That's just the job. EDIT: Ah, I seem to have found a small problem though. I have no limit break system, so if you try to go to the limit menu, it unsurprisingly crashes the game with an error message. Can I get rid of that option from the menu? Or should I just try to implement limit breaks (if they're not too hard).

Thanks. A couple more here. A fire elemental type...uh...thing that kind of grew from a doodle, and a battler for the fighter 2 character. Admittedly she's not much use on her own. I ought to do a few battlers so there's a matching set. Still, it was handy as a trial run on the technique I'll be using (battlers for more detailed characters work better drawn bigger and scaled down).

I have recently discovered that making battlers is much easier than I thought it would be, since XP supports transparency, meaning I can just draw with my tablet in photoshop rather than messing around with pixels and stuff. I've started out with making some monsters. I did the goblin first, then decided to do a few classic FF monsters. Maybe they'll be handy for somebody doing an FF fangame. I'll try to think of some more monsters I could do. If you have any good suggestions for monsters or character battlers, I'll see what I can do.

I know this is probably something really simple and something to do with replacing the word 'actor' with a specific picture file name somewhere in the code for the menu, but I don't want to cause a mess delving into the code without really knowing what I'm doing. I'm not after a fancy new menu system, I just want a simple way to change my menu so that instead of the character sprites (which looks weird) I can have face graphics in their place. I've seen this implemented in demos of CMS systems, but I don't want to implement a full blown CMS until I understand what's going on with the coding myself. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hello! I've been looking through all the stuff here and I'm really impressed by the collective knowledge of RPG maker on this forum. I've been messing around with rpg maker since around the time 2k3 came out, but I've never really made a big project or uploaded anything. I used to hang out on the Skytower Games forums. I'd like to make a game with a really engrossing story and characters, mainly to balance out the fact that I'm pretty weak on the programming side (Yeah, that's awful, I have an A-level in computing but every time I try to get to grips with ruby my brain goes mushy). I'm 23 years old and I live in England. My major hobby is drawing comics, I have a webcomic and I was a finalist in last year's 'UK and Ireland Rising Stars of Manga' Tokyopop competition. Oh, and I have a degree in Japanese, which is mostly only useful for correcting fangirls on manga forums. My favourite game ever is Chrono Trigger. Maybe I can learn a little about coding from you guys. I suppose I could always pay you back with artwork or translation of Japanese or something.