Heretic86

Gadzooks! You forgot the TWO MOST IMPORTANT characters in every Final Fantasy game! Vicks and Wedge! For shame! For shame!

Well, once you get around to it. I just hope you are entertained for a few minutes... If I manage to muster up the drive to finish this little project, I'll probably have an actual installer so the fonts wont be an issue of installing before the game is run, or other issues that Im probably not aware of yet.

Yeah, I love my keyboard, but my keyboard hates me. Love / Hate relationship! :P I think the medical term for my condition is Verbal Diahhrea of the Fingers, and I just took an Oral Laxative! The game design is definitely almost more fun than playing the games, if it didnt take as much effort as it does! Its like once I got an engine down, I take it, then take it to the next level beyond what anyone expects that it can do, and I havent even gotten close to my usual total domination of engines. Just to give you an example... M.C. Escher's Labyrinth. That was one of my projects. It is the most downloaded Serious Sam Deathmatch Map, period. Took about five months to build. If you have Serious Sam - The Second Encounter and decide to play this map, take a Dramamine then wait about twenty minutes before even attempting gameplay. Its that twisted! I'll definitely have to pay more attention to the apostrophes' for usage, as I completely understand what you're saying. It shows the misspellings are intentional without explaining it. Players tend to not really care about what we as developers based our decisions around, they just want a fun game to play. Trying to come up with compelling reasons for both the characters to have complex motivations, and enough intrigue for the Player to want to continue playing. Pulling off the logic that anyone can get is a challenge as well. Like if Stupid would have caused a landslide to prevent them from following, it would have exceeded my technical skills at this time. I also wanted to open up that area to the player later so I had to use something that felt temporary. Fire wasnt an option as it would end up burning down the whole forest. Overkill. But oddly enough, making Sarah more vunerable as a character seemed to do well accomplishing both a sense of sympathy for her as well as establishing a logical reason that she wouldn't / couldn't be able to venture beyond the normally "invisible walls". Broken Glass, Bare Feet, duh! Oddly enough, the removal of her shoes opened a lot of doors after I thought about it as far as logical and natural limitations. Players will normally just stomp through anything, and any sort of obstacles end up being either literal walls, or "edge of map" types of solutions. This was so freakin easy that I cant believe I never thought of it before. Sharp gravel, no go! Spiky plants? Not gunna do it! Liquid Magma inside an active Volcano? I cant even handle a hot sidewalk! And of course, anything taken or stolen in games is usually a plot point that at least the characters have motivation to try to get the stolen thing back. I'll have to rewrite a bit so her character comes across as totally embarrassed about it. That seems a lot better to me than trying to write the main character as being motivated to go after the Bullies for "Revenge" for damn near killing him, regardless if his near death experience was intentional on their part or not. Something I didnt think of before about RPG development, is that an Epic RPG seems to be many small short RPG games with overlapping stories. Go from point A to point B, here is some motivation. But before you get to point B, something else happens and you learn that as soon as you get to point B, you have to get to point C afterwards. So on the way or at point C, something else happens to continue to point D and the rest of the letters of the alphabet. There seem to be a lot of people that want to write this big epic story and come up with it in a day. Stephen King cant write an entire book in a day. Lord of the Rings wasnt written in a day. The Oddessy wasnt written in a day. Just make a short story as dramatic as possible, but leave it open ended enough that you can tell some more of the story tomorrow. Demo, yeah, you cant really win the fight. Im still considering putting in a Conditional Scene after what you saw where if you used the Ashes of the Phoenix (equivilant of Phoenix Down, bring back to life potion), you're pretty much screwed and its Game Over! Literally! Of course, if you reload, you'll ALWAYS start your save game with one of those items, so you don't have to start over from scratch, so I'll have to make it a big point in the alternate "you die" version to hold on to that thing for dear life! The point of the "you die" version is that some minor actions have long reaching consequences. I might even consider opening this up a bit for other people to develop if I like their style. But I am becoming totally anal retentive about the style. I'll have to think about that tho.

Thanks! I was thinking of something along the same lines, but as an Open Source Community Project, tutorial from In Game. Basically, if you wanted to do a Mapping Tutorial from In Game, explain Layers and how to "stack", and someone else does a map for a Tutorial for Eventing, or more specific aspects, like Battle Eventing, switches, cutscenes, stuff like that, its one project I'd have to sign up for when I am available! Screwy job hours when I'm working, right now Im not however.

I think it was the Auto Font Install script, not the font itself, that was causing the issues. I still like the other one better, but its not worth pissing off people with technical issues. Non Default Windows Font - I think it looks better. Comic Sans MS Font - Less technical issues, but I like the other font better. --- Yeah, default title screen and music. Havent even come up with a real Title for the game yet. I think the story is more important than a name or title screen. Im also considering doing a looping cutscene before allowing the title screen appear with various scenes in the game, once the game is closer to being finished, and I think there are scripts for that. Thus, start the game, goes to cutscene with maybe a Prologue, then to title scene for like 20 seconds, then to another cutscene, something like that... Signs with no boxes: Intentional. I thought it would offer a difference between the character just "Knowing" something, and reading something. Does the same thing on chests and items and what not. Same thing as Zone Name. Walk into a new zone and 2 second text tells you the name of the zone. Not like people really need it, but the autorun gives me the opportunity to do other things at the same time. Random msgs from Sarah: Its optional to enable or disable player movement with the MMW script. Weird thing is that while the text is up and the player is allowed to move, random encounters dont happen. Also, touching touch events dont trigger while text is up either, so allowing player movement while moving text is up, I have to do carefully. Most of the text stopping the player from moving was intentional also, but I dont want it to get in anyones way. Rethinking some of the banter to allow movement during... Delas LOL! I never noticed that before! Apparently it was on ALL of the freakin spells! Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out. Yeah, "Deals X Type of Damage" Typos were intentional, hopefully not totally overdone. Just wanted to establish that character as being exactly as his name implies, "Stupid"! (thats the characters name, not calling anyone stupid...) I've pondered on if the misspellings were overdone, (yes thier was also intentional, should have been they're anyway, wrong usage), however, it gives me an opportunity for him to misinterpret statements later that, as usual for this character, gets them into trouble. I.E. he says "Dee Anger", "Well, I am Angery!" and does something "stupid", when it wasn't "Dee Anger" at all, it was "DANGER". I think that part of maintaining the consistency of the character, I'll have to maintain the typo's, even if they come across as overdone, but I'll consider toning it down just a bit... Smacking around seemed to fit the mood of the Bully's theme, it felt "slapstick" like, and humorous, not to be taken seriously, until... Getting dragged around, yeah, don't sweat it, its kind of hard to feel anything when you're DEAD! Oops! Did I say that? Wait... Wasn't there something in the firepit that hopefully you didn't need to use? --- I have no idea when I'll release the full game. I really don't want to overwhelm myself, because I think the quality of the project would suffer as a result, so I am not aiming for something EPIC, however, the scenarios I keep coming up with seem to be headed that direction. So far, our two main characters end up running after the little girl, who isnt quite as weak or dumb as she appears, in fact, it would probably be a really good idea to not piss her off at all, but she will join, temporarily, then betray the group when they finally confront the Bullies, at which point, the girls TRUE power is revealed, which leads the new party, consisting of our two mains, and one of the Bullies replacing the little girl, to discover that the little girl's immense power has damaged the crystal of earth (maybe crystal of water, havent decided yet, but expect a flood), Ralph finds out he lost his soul when Sarah waited too long to use the "item", and his life is directly dependant on the survival of the crystal, Sarah gets Cursed by a Gypsy, and one of the Bullies has been seeking the Crystal in order to harness its power for himself! And that would just end up being the first Crystal of several! After that, I have no idea where it will all lead to! Three more crystals? Time Warp? Moon crystals? Maybe even leviathans? I dont know yet. One of the goals I have during this little project is to make none of the characters completely good or evil, they all have their own personal motivations for doing what they do, but to do them in such a way that their actions wouldnt necessarily be considered evil if you looked at things from their perspective. It allows for a lot of plot twists, characters that are as "dynamic" as much as they can be between each other, etc. Dynamic not meaning conditional branched story telling, just that all the characters have unique relationships with each other, even the NPC's. Like Stupid pointing out that Mouth has a crush on the not so "little girl". I dont have that many maps built, as most of the time seems to come from Eventing. I tried to make sure each map was as high quality as I could make it. There are a couple of houses, 3 caves (short, like the forest), and a waterfall. The maps I seem to be able to slam out very quickly, but the way Im trying to write it requires a lot of backtracking. Currently Eventing out the big conflict between the group with the girl and the bullies, and havent totally decided how to finish the scene. This zone, still need to write Ralph finds out he lost his soul, Sarah gets cursed, and one of the Bullies joins the group. As far as which one has been "using" the bullies group to find the crystal, you'll just have to wait and see. I guess thats writer speak for I havent really decided yet! Its about an hours worth of gameplay so far... Okay, any other Technical Issues?

Writing good tutorials can only help people so much. I wouldnt know anything about what I'm doing without the support of the community. However, even the best tutorial can't compensate for someone that just doesn't have an ounce of artistic skill, or worse, the lack of desire to make a good map. And, that's just great! Now you've gone and whetted my appetite! What are you working on?

I updated the file, so its the same download link. I appreciate the compliment, but lets see if my skills are good enough to actually entertain people. Its almost funny, if there was one thing that I wanted to do, I wanted to release a demo that indicated that I am not one of the people that make demos that show up on youtube and end up giving RPG Maker a bad rap... (like one) --- Edit: I changed the font to "Comic Sans MS" which I thought was a default Windows font, like you suggested. Oddly enough, at the size, I cant really tell what font it is so I might just say screw it and throw in Arial or Helvetica, even though I think it won't look very good. It looks like pretty much every other Sans Serif Font... One of the scripts that was included with the mod I used for the Chat Bubble windows was an Auto Font Install, but I don't think it was updated for Windows Vista or 7, but I don't think it is OS dependant. If I update that script, do you think that it would be acceptable to not use Windows Default Fonts? I'm still running Windows XP, and I remember that the exploit that was used to hack the first XBox was that it loaded fonts without checking permissions, and viola, the original XBox was sucessfully modded. I figure MS probably learned from their mistakes and check file permissions on newer flavors of Windows, even with fonts... Here is the Auto Font Install script: --- Edit #2 Updated the download file again (same download link, above). Removed the fonts, and auto font install script, using Comic Sans MS font. I suspect that even though the font was not in use in the game, the Auto Install Script was still referring to it and possibly causing more technical issues. I never figured I'd spend more time fighting with Fonts than actually mapping!

I totally agree. I don't want to burden people with technical problems like fonts. I do like the other font much better visually, but weighing between the technical problems vs. visual style, I'll take less technical problems. Ok, I changed the font so it shouldnt come up with Font Errors any longer. I also grabbed a few things from the newer version that I put in a while ago, like visual cues of where to have a player look, and fixed a few bugs that I didnt catch before (one of them I needed to Ignore repeated movements, caused a lockup). Please let me know if you run into any other technical issues, as I believe this NEW version should resolve those problems. I believe this may have been a Font Issue. If not, feel free to say so.

Is there a version of the Auto Font install script that is compatible with Windows 7?

Lets start with your version of Windows and ask if you are running it as Administrator...

I think that it is important that people learn from their experience, whether it be good or bad. Thomas Edison would often say that he didnt figure out how to make a lightbulb, he figured out lots of ways to NOT make a lightbulb. I think that if we think a game is bad, we need to be able to identify specifically what is bad about it, and how to fix it, so that we and others dont make the same mistakes. Also if a game is good, we should study what made that game good, and why specifically it is good. Somthing I've been mulling over in my head is a bit of an Open Source Community Project. Not really a Game, per say, but more of a demonstration on how to make a map, and what determines what a good map and a bad map are. Totally evented, and smaller maps can focus on smaller options that the contributor can do without trying to handle the entire project. Like one map shows the basics of how to make a Cave, using events to literally show the player how to make a cave wall. Another map could show how to make a cutscene, and how it can be either good or bad. As being open source, it will provide reference material to anyone who downloads it, and I think is visually more interesting than reading stuff on a forum. Would anyone be interested in contributing to a project like this?

Ok, figured it out. I was overthinking it. I thought there was one array per character, there is just ONE array. def del_last_move @move_list.delete_at(0) end Updated RMXP Version of script with my additional commands of CATERPILLAR_PAUSE, Command: del_last_move and Command: clear_moves

I think they work pretty well as far as following Kiri's tutorials, however, I think that building a good map is more than just following rules laid out in a tutorial. It just seems too large and not visually interesting. Of course, I realize that some of the details get missed with screenshots. Here was a cave that I came up with, trying to focus as much as possible on visual style and making it interesting. I havent decided to keep or drop the lantern yet, and I posted those pics in another thread. Now, Im not trying to just use this as an opportunity to pimp my own stuff, or say this style is better than yours, nothing like that, but hopefully offer some constructive criticism to improve your style. Some of the things I've tried, you might like or might not, but see if there is anything you DO like and try to incorporate some of those things, and maybe try new ones. I have a lot to learn, but one of the things I have learned is that cave walls, when treated like a wall in a house, are flat out boring and dont look very natural. Cave walls usually appear to be kind of random, and have cracks galore in them. Your maps also seem to be lacking "natural debris". It needs a lot more of those extra objecs, stalagtites (mites? I always get those mixed up), local flora and vegetation, variation in ground textures with moss, fallen rock, etc. Multi Level seems to also spice things up a lot as well. Just my two cents...

I dont know yet. Well, the full version anyway. This demo version was more intended to try to give an example, in my opinion, of Characters that captured that old school RPG style, where people were playing and interacting with characters that were more than just "walls of text". Mostly, however I wanted to focus on animating the characters to give them expressions and motion, and convey the story, whatever it may become, that way more than focusing on just dialogue. Imagine for a second, if you will, some RMXP developer comes along and decides to make Lord of the Rings into an RMXP game. But when the characters talk to each other, the developer just puts the two characters facing each other and the actors dry read their lines to memorize them. No motion involved. No music changes. None of those exciting little nuances that come with a perfectly rehearsed performance and grade-a acting. Its a world of difference. This demo allowed me to do that, and to practice and refine my style. I felt that it was good enough that others could learn and benefit from observing the subtleties of storytelling using character expression and movement moreso than the dialogue, and I could learn from the comments how to refine that style and listen to peoples constructive criticisms and advice into something more akin to giving a painter a paintbrush. As far as a full version of the game, hell, I havent even finished the first town (which is why it wasnt in the Demo) despite the number of story related events that take place in it. So far, most of the story doesnt stay centered in the town, as the player is expected to venture forth into other areas that are sometimes dangerous. Other things were to try to "train" the player as to what they could do with their characters, such as walking along the tops of logs so they know they can use them as natural bridges over water and other unpassable hazards. Things like that. Or that you can save at Campfires or in beds, etc. Thus, locking the player in a "Staging Area", giving them dialogue to tell them what they are supposed to do, until they finally do the simple unexpected task of "lighting the fire". Players wouldnt normally expect that they can walk across logs, or have any reason to expect that they should examine a pile of wood as the next story element without being "trained" to do so. And I thought that training should come as part of the storytelling experience, which can add length and a chance to provide story elements without breaking character or being dry by saying something like "save at campfires", being vague about it, and expecting that the player didnt totally miss what they were supposed to see or do. If you dont feel like playing it, you dont have to if you dont want to. What I was really looking for was any suggestions and feedback from the experienced community to add that level of polish many games, even many professional oens, fail to capture. This particular map contained one of my longer cutscenes that was supposed to have the most emotional impact on a player so far in the story (go kill the monster isnt usually very suspenseful, neither are "FedEx quests"), and since this part was mostly self contained to one map, I thought I'd share and use it as a style example, so I could improve that style. Currently, Im still looking to fix the technical aspects (mentioned above) first.

By the way... Did anyone happen to notice when the little girl, Jaelle, (Gypsy name meaning Mountain Goat) was spying on them at the "you can walk across logs" bit, regardless if you walked across the log first?

I havent played the map but one of the things that I can tell just from the static screenshot was the map itself isnt static. There is some wildlife, a couple of birds mainly is what sticks out. Its that level of polish that seems to be lacking. I'll have to try incorporating more wildlife, and try to make it look natural, like it actually belongs there.

Ok, let me deal with the technical problems first. What do I need to do for me to fix the extractor thingy? I made subfolders for different practice projects, and hit "Compress Game Data". Do I need to do something different? I'll upload a fixed version if I can figure out whats wrong... Some people on the other forum complained they got a missing file error: Suggestions on how to fix the "wont extract", "font error", or RGSS102E errors?

What is this strange "Sarcasm" thing that you speak of? This word bewilders me! /sarcasm But absolute kudos, your map looks absolutely incredible!

Found it on a different forum. It doesnt necessarily mean that it was original... http://rmrk.net/index.php/topic,34550.0.html

How about a Cave? That is, if you are still interested in the practice. I posted a screencap of a cave I made, but I would like to see how our styles vary, and what we might be able to incorporate from each others style and come up with an even better looking cave...

Lol@morrowind! I totally agree that very skilled people would and should expect adequate payment for their work. And Im asking for more work. What I was thinking of also while I was writing that is a way to make it easier for everyone, so the most skilled of us can pump out high quality multiple poses for individual characters with less effort. Hence, the Rendering. I came across this last night after thinking about it: http://www.d-grafix.com/?page=spriteforge Of course, rendering sprites might cause conflicts in the visual style if they look "too realistic", like throwing a sprite of Donkey Kong Country into the original Super Mario Bros. Other problem is now I'd have to learn modeling too.

I am honestly blown away by your compliment! The Style isnt that hard to do, just fake cracks in the walls with the current default tilesets. The tiles will have to be stacked a little bit, for example, the top of a wall slightly lower on the screen should obscure the bottom of the wall that is slightly higher on the screen. Just use layers 2 and 3 to pull that off. Now, the style itself isnt that hard, only problem is it does require more effort and more work to do. The Light Effect is totally optional, and very easy. Its just a black picture with a round spot in the middle that was selected, feathered by about 25px, then deleted, so that part becomes transparent (photoshop). If you use a light like that, set up your map so the player is never less than ten tiles from the edge. That way the light doesnt stop "following" the player. However, I think the most important thing that can be said in this thread is to Learn the Value of Stacking Layers! --- Edit: THIS is what I mean by Layers! (Map isnt mine)

Seems to work perfect now! Thanks!

http://www.videogamesprites.net/ChronoTrigger/Party/Marle/ I've got a question for the Spriters out there. I know it is a lot of work to make GOOD looking ORIGINAL sprites. I've tried and failed many times. For some people out there, they seem to be able to just flow thru their fingers and thru their mouse and become incredible with what appears to be very little effort! I know from experience that it does take a lot of effort to become that efficient, and many people often mistake their experience and efficiency as being easy. One of the troubles that I find in a lot of games is that the Characters come across as being very static. Not animated. During cutscenes, usually two characters just come up to each other face to face, then we get tons of dialogue to read. I'm trying something different, trying to rely heavily on Character Animation to convey the emotions of the characters to the player, but I run into the same problem time and time again when I try to use RMXP to create those animations. RMVX is even worse since they cut out one of the walking frames of animation, so to me VX feels like an absolute step backwards. Now, trying to rely on Character Animation, I am pretty much stuck with using one of the frames of Walking Animation to animate the characters during cutscenes. But what I am really wondering is if any of the Spriters would be interested in creating characters with a LOT of different poses, like the Marle sprite I linked to as an example. I would have embedded it, but the website requested that we dont hotlink since they have to pay for the bandwidth, so if you are interested, click the link. But do take note of how many different animations Marle has, more so than just the Walking and Fighting animations. Things like shaking their heads NO or YES, jumping for joy, climbing, kneeling, handstands, the butt slap (maybe she farted, I dunno), hands up in the air, etc, they all took a lot of effort to create, and look fantastic. I dont know if any of you have ever played the game Chrono Trigger, but if you haven't, I HIGHLY recommend playing it, just to get a feel for what Animated Characters can do for a game. At the time it was originally released, Chrono Trigger had the most animated characters ever seen in any video game, period. And it showed, because to this date, I dont think a sprited game has been produced with the massive number of animations that all of their characters have. And, to this date, it remains my favorite game of all time. And a LOT of people agree with me on that, even GameSpot said it is the BEST RPG EVER. Better than Dragon Age, better than Morrowind, better than almost everything released today. WOW doesnt count as its an MMO and they have a nearly unlimited budget, we dont. However, how would you Spriters feel about making sprites with as many animations as Marle? I know I would use them, if the character fit my game (robots dont tend to work to well in mideval times, and ninjas dont fit in an a post apocolyptic world), but I think that would add a TON of value and earn you a ton of respect for those of us who want the extra animations to use in their games. I understand that you wont want to do a ton of work for a character that may never be used, but I've seen some pretty incredible sprites out there, and some absolute crap ones, for example, ones that are produced on the backwater sprite generator that people claim to be their own work. The thing is, Backwaters sprite generator isn't that bad, but so many of the characters look TOO similar to the rest. I almost wish we could start a community project, like Backwater, that offered a ton of different animations, like the Marle Animation I linked to. Maybe rendering them would be easier, treating things like clothing, hair and swords like objects, and it could render different poses. Just something to speed up the process and make it more rewarding for producing something that may not be used, like an attachment, without having to do the work of redrawing the same character 50 times, and for each of those 50 times, up down left and right poses. Just curious how everyone would feel about that?

Caves are kind of hard to do if you've never done them before. Here is one I am trying... Personally, I think the default cave walls suck since they are all convex (go out), and no concave (go in), and only get sharp concave corners. The only thing I could think of to do at least to make the walls more interesting is to use all the convex tiles to create what appeared as really deep cracks in the walls that players couldnt explore because the cracks were too small to fit through. The pics Im posting allow the player to see that there are definitely cracks, and makes the map feel very very confusing, although it is actually excessively simple. And I know a lot of people will say the "light area" is too small, and it is small, but there are no points in the map where you cant see both edges of where you are allowed to go. So it feels really dark like you cant see anything, and confusing, because of all the "cracks", but really its easier than it looks. The excessive black around the edges is due to the "light area" thing. Its basically just a picture that stays in a static position, and if the player walks close to the edge, they walk out of the light, so it doesnt feel like the player is carrying a crappy light. The only other thing that I would suggest is to really figure out your layers. One single tree does NOT need to have every part of that tree on the same layer. Thus, you can "Stack" trees in front of each other. Your foremost tree will be layer 3, and put the BOTTOM of another tree behind it on Layer 2, but for the TOP of that 2nd tree, put that on Layer 3, and put yet another tree behind that. The thing I think your maps lacked the most was the Layer Stacking. A tree or other larger objects partially obscuring a house or other objects, and seriously just Stack the shit out of everything! Expect a few problems to occur however. Such as if you put a tree next to a fence, you might find that your character can "walk thru" the fence due to the shadow from the fence. It is logical that "shadows" cover other objects, but when that is done in a game enviornment, it causes side effects. Two solutions are either to not do it, or to use "invisible unpassable events". I've edited my databases to make one invisible tile Unpassable, and only use that tile when the passing bug occurs. Those events, make sure to uncheck the "Move Animation" but dont go crazy with events or your map will lag. Try to use them sparingly. Also, since I've tried the whole go crazy with Stacking Layers thing, I've run into a few instances where I found it necessary to use an event as a 4th layer, just for the graphic. Like trying to make a very dense forest. But, at most, I'll use 10 events for graphics on an entire large map. One other thing that I learned from experience is that if you are stacking trees in an area that you are NOT going to see the ground at all, you can use Layer 1 for Tree Graphics. Its only when you need to see two different elements, such as a partial corner of a house that you have to "stack", but dont just use one stack, use double stack and triple stack, and even the rare quadruple stack which will require Events as graphics. If you really want to learn how to make a good looking map, try making a Forest that you do NOT expect to be playable. Just make a forest and make it as dense as possible by putting each tree on multiple layers. This is just for practice, but try making a forest as dense as possible, and post a screenshot of your forest so we can see how successful you were.