creation woes

[vespuleth]

okay, so it seems that everyone here seems to be somewhat skilled w/ rpgm2, and quite a ways into their game development. so what ideas were the hardest when you conceptualizing? what inspired your game the most?

[Dungeon Warden]

My biggest challenge was creating the Custom DBS. This required me to understand the DBS inside and out and also understand all the variables and flags as well. RPG Maker 2 keeps track of a lot of information, so if you understand where that info is stored, editing the battle system becomes much easier. I've scrapped some scripts because I found that RPG Maker 2 has an easier way to do it.

The most annoying thing is that there is no command to bring up the ability or item menus, so I have to script them myself. RPGM2 does keep track of all character items but not bag items (other than how many of an item is in the bag). Abilities are stored in the class and character databases, so the game has no variables to track who has what - it is all based on level. In order to find what ability a character has, you have to check their level. It is easier to just use the level to give characters abilities and ignore the classes and level abilities in battle. These are still useful outside battle, unless I want to scrap the default menu system. I haven't tackled that yet.

My game is somewhat based on a book I read, although I have changed the story significantly. I am a long time RPG gamer, so I am inspired by a long history of games.

[Tacticalman]

My biggest challenge that i finished
was my status screen....
I have it display one character, and when u press R1/L1 it cycles thru
ur chars.

[Jugem]

I would have to say that designing a real-time combat system that runs mainly through action scripts was my biggest challenge so far. And it's an ongoing challenge until the day I finish my game. The first boss in particular caused me the most trouble. Getting everything to work just like I had envisioned it in my mind took a lot of work, and I think I got some decent results.

Composing music isn't really a challenge, but it's probably the most exhausting aspect of game creation for me. Composing with real instruments (ie. piano) to help you is one thing. But then trying to get everything to sound good in RPGM2 is another, since there are a lot of limitations to get around, not to mention trying to find the right tempo value for each note.

[Deleted]

I agree with the tempo and music comment!! Argh!

For me I would say the most difficult thing I've done was making the Jeweler (Blacksmith of Jewelry), which was my first big, complicated scripting on RPGM2. I expect sorting the 45 possible ending scenes to be my hardest though. The most lengthy process script-wise was probably the Equipment Shop, which updates as the player advances through the game and has every equipment up to that point available to buy at all times. The other lengthy process was making randomizer scripts to give the player items (which are like Equip 1 = any of the first set of equipment, etc. and can be mixed to make 1 ? 2 1 goes to Equip 1 and 2 goes to Item 1, etc.)

The most difficult thing for me to think of was a good story for the "badguy" (and lesser extent for the protagonist). I knew from the beginning that I wanted the player to relate to both the protagonist and the antagonist through emotions and experience, and to understand and believe why each is/does what they are/do, and for my story and game not to simply be good vs. evil: save the world. Actually just recently have I finally come up with something I really like for the antagonist's story. The other difficult thing in my conceptualizing was probably how my game's gameplay would be different from its predecessors, which at first I lacked, but after KingSpoom's critiquing what I'd had and the new insight I gained in my game there of and my desire for something more to my characters than the obvious (aka depth) I started to mold the creation that is now "Paladin."

My main inspirations and influences are:

Jimmy Eat World - many of my sharing the same views, opinions, and beliefs, and admiring the depth and significance of the subject matter and stories of their songs is what led me to desire that same level of depth and significance for my game, which I believe I have achieved

KingSpoom - not as much an inspirations as an influence , him critiquing what I'd had as my game a little under a year ago resulted in new insight and understanding of important and unimportant aspects of RPGs, such as the importance of Realism and Believability (which I've now repeated to a lot of people), which greatly changed the resulting game "Paladin" to what it now has become

All of you guys at Doan's boards, the Pav, the agetec forum, and used to the gameFAQs board - obviously if weren't for all of you I wouldn't have nearly as much of a desire to make a real quality game, and that a lot of what you guys say gets me thinking differently (which is good) about my game and gives me insight that I'd otherwise lack, and that I learn technical things from you guys too

Brigandine - the one game with the most replayibility (now 15 times all the way through for me), Brigandine is what inspired me to provide butt loads of replayibility to my game

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together - one of my favorite games of all time, Tactics Ogre is possibly the one game I've played with a lot of depth and meaning to it, as well as understanding of the characters, and it showed me (together with Brigandine) that a good battle system depends entirely on how well done it is (FFT: no strategy and super-simple is what I mean), I hope to and believe I have achieved this with my game's plans and hope to manage to give the main story the same intense and meaningful feel Tactics Ogre had when I make it on RPGM2

Other notable inspirations and influences are Chrono Cross, Saiyuki: Journey to the West, Mario RPG (SNES one), Star Ocean 2, Final Fantasy 7, and every RPG I've played, whether it showed me what not to do (SO3 !) or what to do for my game

And finally, RPGM1 for getting me started into wanting to make my own game and RPGM2 for making me more serious about it

My biggest influence though is my own life (as far as stories and characters go, many of the characters' stories are my own from my life, or based on them)

[Draygone]

I'm not real far (AT ALL), but the hardest thing for me will probably be creating the CBS. Especially giving everyone their attack animations (I had to come up with this idea that one ninja character has blade-shoes, and uses the flip to attack). Doesn't help that the majority of the RPGM2 character models don't have animations that involve raising only one arm.

Inspiration? The graphics of RPGM2. I wanted to create a game with a non-comic storyline, despite the LEGO look and usually bright colors.

[vespuleth]

the hardest thing for me is actually extra features. im a writer, and i can tell a great story (one of these days ill post some stuff to read, til then just take my word for it), but i have a hard time making the player not feel confined by the story. i havent even thought about a nonlinear rpg yet, as i dont know if id be able to make a game w/o a prevelant story.

the most time consuming thing was to get the vtcs (vicious tactics combat system) to work right. when i did, you bet i saved it, and put it on my harddrive (on my ps2) in case my memory card corrupted.

my inspirations are: history, Raymond E Feist (a writer), Lloyd Alexander, (a writer), C S Lewis (a writer), Joel Rosenberg, my brother, FFT.

has anyone read any of the books by any of these authors?

Lloyd Alexander wrote the 'Black Cauldron' series, Feist has written tons of books about a world called 'midkemia', C S Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, and Rosenberg wrote the 'Gaurdians of the Flame' series, in case you may have read the books, but didnt know the author.

cool.

[Dungeon Warden]

I've read the whole black Caldron series and all of C.S. Lewis' novels. I've read some of Feist's works, but none of Rosenberg's. I also read many of Terry Brooke's series of novels which I also enjoyed. I have many other influences, to a greater or lesser extent.

[NASH7777]

Oooh, the hardest thing...idk, but creating the line of site for the enemies in my MGS genre game was very dificult. Cause it has to check for everystep if it can see you, and hey what if your in its line of site but there is a block in th way hiding you? Yup had to figure that all out too....
The most exciting was coming up with my Zelda CBS game. (which I'm still currently working on) When I first got the game I would never have dreamed something possible. But as I started to play the Fuma game I saw that pushable block in the beginning town and I was like wow, that's what I tried desperately to do in the first one with little avail. That's what sparked my imagination, I looked at the script and how they made it (they made it way harder then they needed to....) and I was like I could do that. Then my games got more and more complex as I made them. Then i got to my Megaman Legends game where I started my active in-game battle system, horrible battle system as I made it, but it got me started for my game after that was the start of my Zelda CBS game, and It's come along so well ;D
(I wonder if anyone will read this?)
Well I hope that may have inspired you to go out and make any kind of game you may imagine!
neonash7777

[Doan the Nado]

The hardest thing for me so far was just getting to know how to use RPGM2 in general, as the learning curve is definitely pretty steep. The hardest thing for me now, however, is map creation, as it is overly complex and I absolutely loathe the creation of my game's necessary maps, of which there will be plenty.

[Deleted]

If you shrink the party members down the map looks a lot bigger and one map can suffice (I find). Making the party members smaller is also good because normally they're the size of whole towns, caves, mountains, etc. Any ways, good luck, I know I'm about 2/5 done with the map and it's taken a long, long time.

[Draygone]

Back when I was creating Jester's Hunt, creating the semi-realtime battles was very difficult (not so much the bosses). After trying to decide which of the few models work best where, and figuring out what sort of attacks they could have and the animations that would go with them, I then had to...
Make sure they died when their HP reached zero...
Mr. Knight died when his HP reached 0...
Make it so you could use certain attacks only when you learned them...
Make sure that if Mr. Knight's MP was 0, that attacks that used MP could no longer be used...
Make sure that all status affects worked...
Make sure that all the monsters were revived after crossing the "respawn points" I created (some enemies were duplicates of others, and I had to create these point so that defeating one enemy wouldn't result in all its duplicates being defeated)...

There was a lot to keep track of. It became easier after the first few monsters (once you get the framework down, it's easy to edit each one a little to make it more unique), but it was still a long and hard process. Didn't help that some key features for these battles had to be faked because of a lack of some things in RPGM1.