The Misadventures of Hooligan & Rude Boy

[islandjack]

[Edit: As no one really seemed to be offended by "My 1st Short Game," or if anyone was, they stayed away, so I've renamed this thread to reflect the name of my 1st game, as I still feel the need to rant about it. In any case, the original post is still here below with the Crude & Vulgar Warning and Disclaimer(s)]

In the interest of being a contributing member of this great Forum (and wanting to post something other than my absolute beginner's questions), I thought I'd give the low-down on the short game I'm working on while I attempt to learn the basics of RPG Maker 2.

DISCLAIMER: If you are offended by crude or vulgar humor and themes that some may consider "ADULT," please stop reading. This isn't pornography, but some of the innuendo may be considered offensive by some people, and it is not my wish to offend anyone.

Okay, now that's out of the way, let me mention that I'm a very new user of RPG Maker 2, but I love it and feel that it's the perfect tool to make the serious RPG I've been wanting to make for years. But, I've got to learn how to use this thing, and I thought that a short game with a sense of humor that my target audience shares might get my friends' interest piqued concerning the "real game."

So, this is it, "The Misadventures of Hooligan & Rude Boy in the Land of Gord." (I know that "Hooligan" was used in the Prima Strategy Guide as a demo character in their walkthrough game, but my "Hooligan" is a character that I've used many different times in many different media).

Pretty much, Hooligan and his dog, Rude Boy, wander around the Land of Gord having misadventures while on their never-ending search for good beer, food and female companionship. One day, they wander into "The Village" near the "Deep Sexy Woods" and discover that the place has recently been raided by a marauding band of "Sex Dwarves." After the general havoc has taken place, we enter our intrepid heroes who are hounded by the local "Princess." Apparently, the Sex Dwarves stole a certain "item" from her and she wants it back. Hooligan and Rude Boy are the only ones who can help out the Princess and she's willing to reward them handsomely. Unfortunately for our heroes, the Sex Dwarves have vanished into the Deep Sexy Woods, which is full of dangerous "Nymph(o)s" and "Crotch Goblins." They're going to need some help, so through a series of events, they team up with the local Pimp, Diavlo (sorry, I actually liked the movie "Doctor Detroit") who's best "employee" was kidnapped by the Sex Dwarves and probably taken to their leader's "Dungeon" (yeah, that kind of "dungeon." Oh yeah, Diavlo has a score to settle with a certain robot who's a lot like the PimpBot from the movie "The Ice Pirates."

You can all figure out where it goes from here. Anyway, I thought it would generate a few laughs. Would anyone out there actually play this game, though?

[Rodak]

islandjack said:

DISCLAIMER: If you are offended by crude or vulgar humor and themes that some may consider "ADULT," please stop reading. This isn't pornography, but some of the innuendo may be considered offensive by some people, and it is not my wish to offend anyone. ... Would anyone out there actually play this game, though?

You don't know me very well, do you?

Vulgarity is my favorite (so long as it has the humor element included and does not come off as gratuitous).

I actually submitted a demo of The Clean Underwear Quest {that's a link to my far longer story summary}.

If they can accept that here, I'm sure your's will be just fine.

And if they seek good beer... They MUST go to Belgium!! I rant about that all the time.

I like the idea of "Crotch Goblins."

Can I assume since you put "The Village" in quotes that it's a tribute to The Prisoner?

Sounds like fun.

I look forward to seeing a demo in the future.

Peace.

[islandjack]

"The Village" is actually a tribute to "The Village" from a book called, I think, "Beauty's Punishment" by Ann Rice (though written under another name). I guess it's a pretty tame book by today's standards, but decades ago when I came across it... Well, anyway, it fits the story, and my girlfriend really rallied against me naming the village "Bukake."

I've heard a lot about the beers of Belgium, widely regarded as the world's best (along with Belgian Fries, or French Fries as we, for some reason, call them...). Making a trip there is on my short list of things to do before I die, mostly for the beer. For now, I have to be content with brewing my own, which I'm getting much better at. I'm about to go an check out "The Clean Underwear Quest" summary.

(I just did, and let me tell you, I haven't had a good laugh like that in a long time. Very entertaining, and hilarious!)

[islandjack]

I realized a few days ago in thanks to one of my questions that I have actually been working on my game steadily for over a month now. I got RPGM2 for Christmas, started fooling around with it on my first two days off after the holiday and I haven't been able to do much else. Every day I've had off from work since then (except for one, I think,) I've been working on the game, and seem to put in a few hours on work days, also.

Anyway, as I said above, this was supposed to be my 1st short game. All I was going to to was mess around with the little sample game they teach you how to make in the Prima Strategy Guide, change things and figure out how to use RPGM 2. Well, what ended up happening was that a lot of my friends, and their friends started taking an interest in what I was suddenly spending all my time doing. At first, I thought that they were just concerned that I wasn't brewing beer (which was pretty much my main hobby before RPGM2), but people kept asking me when they could play it, and pretty soon they started digging out their PS2s and trying to find their own copies of RPGM2.

I suddenly realized that a short quest for the Horny Princess of the Village of Bukkake (yeah, I named the starting village what I initially wanted to, once I realized that my audience wasn't offended and actually got the joke) to get her Magic Dildo back from the evil robot pimp Pimpbot by travelling through the Deep Sexy Woods (battling Crablice, Crotch Goblins & Evil Bull s) with Diavlo the Pimp and then a dongeon crawl fighting Sex Dwarves, rescuing one of Diavlo's best "working girls" and defeating Pimpbot just wasn't enough.

So, the story continued, and seems to still continue.

Well, it turns out that Pimpbot's Dungeon is also a meth lab that needs to be destroyed. There's no cold medicine in the Village because the Sex Dwarves keep stealing that, too, and flu season is coming. The Meth Cook is a particularly nasty mini-boss. Once you defeat him and Pimbot and rescue the Working Girl, she doesn't really feel like going back to Bukkake and continuing to work for Diavlo. She decides to stay in the dongeon and turn it into a Swinger's Club. Back in the Village, with the Princess satisfied, it looks like Diavlo's going out of business and his former employees are all going to work at the new Club. So, what do out intrepid misadventurers do? They decide to head to the tropics for a well-deserved vacation and take along the Chef from the local Inn ("The Come On Inn"), since he's pretty sick of his job. And no, before you ask, The Chef has nothing to do with "Chef" from South Park. He's actually my very good (and possibly Samoan) friend who just happens to be a chef but is always complaining about his job and talking about moving to Fiji.

Once you make it to the Tropics, it turns out that there's a war going on between the two islands in the chain. The King of Gord who resides on the smaller island is insane (probably from syphillis) in the Howard Hughes mold and he's trying to "subjugate the barbarian hordes" on the bigger island Caligula-style. (He's not based on the historical Caligula, either. He's all Malcolm McDowell in the movie version, if you've ever had the misfortune of sitting through that one, or the fortune, depending on your point of view).

Right now, I'm just about done working on the port town of Puerto Aldea where our anti-heroes first show up. Most of the residents speak Spanish, which makes things semi-confusing, and it's a rough town. There's a Drunk Ronin, Thug Gangstas and an angry Pig Farmer who comes after you after your altercation with his unusually large pig, the Verraco Del Rey (I had to figure out a way to use the "King Boar" enemy). It's also a big mistake to interrupt the Donkey Show in the Cantina. Of course, when in the tropics, you'll probably want to go to the beach, and if you survive the deadly La Tortugas (that can give you scurvy) you'll meet the requisite Hot Girl that wants to join your party.

Also, the town is run by El Alcalde (based on the character from the George Hamilton movie "Zorro: The Gay Blade") and his army of Muchachos who are very nasty and powerful super-bosses that like to defile your corpses once you're dead. Why would you want to go back to this town and defeat them once your characters are powerful enough? Well, a minor plot helps. It turns out that all the prostitutes in town work for El Caminato Liso-- The Smooth Walker. And Smooth Walker is the Master Pimp who trained Diavlo and created PimBbot. Of course, PimpBot was supposed to have killed Smooth Walker years ago, and Diavlo wants to know who's using his former Master's name. Only problem is, Smooth Walker pays a lot of tribute to El Alcalde, so no help there. One way or another, Diavlo is going to leave your party for a time, giving you the chance to pick up the Hot Girl on the beach and go looking for him.

This means a trip through the Hagakure, the forest of the undead where all the Drunk Ronin live (they used to be samurai in the employ of the Crazy King before he got his robot army), and eventually to the City where the King Lives, picking up clues about Diavlo's search for Smooth Walker. I haven't figured this bit out yet, but you'll end up back in Puerto Aldea to confront El Alcalde and the Muchachos. I needed a name for the Alcalde and used "Alfredo Garcia" since I was watching Sam Peckinpah's "Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia" while working on this part of the game, and really just wanted to use the line, "Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia!"

Oh yeah, since I've been working on the Swinger's Club (former first dungeon), you'll have to go back there at some point.

All right, I have the feeling I've gone on long enough for one post, but if anyone out there is listening, thanks for listening, and I'm always willing to take suggestions, even if they're "Stop playing RPGM2 and go back to playing Dragon Quest VIII."

[Doan the Nado]

This story sounds pretty sweet. It's not "let's save the world", it's funny, battles fit in well, and there seems to be a reason for everything the party is doing. The absurdity will surely keep things interesting. If you're using the DBS (Default Battle System), I merely suggest keeping random battles to a minimum, as they can get old after a while. Good luck with this game, I look forward to playing it eventually, which is a lot to say for a "quick first project".

[islandjack]

Thanks for the words of encouragment, Doan, and the advice. Something I realized last night and that was cemented by your suggestion of "keeping random battles to a minimum," was that my target audience for this game really isn't an audience consisting of a group of people that play video game RPGs. My wife, who is probably going to be the first person to play the game in its entirety (once completed), the closest she's ever come to playing any video game even remotely like an RPG is "Kid Chameleon" on the old Sega or "Gauntlet Dark Legacy" on PS2 (that I picked up in a pre-used bargain bin so we'd have something to play together. I gave up on it about halfway through, but she played it for days and nights until she beat it, probably the only video game she's ever actually finished. Of all of my friends that have expressed an interest in my game, there's only one out of twenty that has ever played a video RPG, and that was Final Fantasy 10. I had just assumed that everyone who had a Playstation and/or a Playstation 2 had played Final Fantasy 7, but these guys and girls have pretty much just messed around with shooters, racing, fighting and sports games.

While I realized that the controls and game play AREN'T going to be intuitive to them (they'll seriously have no idea that you're supposed to talk to people in the population of the game, or how to talk to them, what button to push, and the first time they get into a fight, it's going to be "what the hell do I do now?"), I was still taking for granted that they would be expecting random battles. You play an RPG or two and you know that if you wander around some place or you're going from one area to another, you're going to get into a random battle. I'm still excited that my game is going to be a learning experience for a lot of the people who get to play it, but Doan is right, too many random battles are going to get boring for people who expect them, and overwhelming (and then boring) who those who don't.

I'm glad that I've so far taken the time to test play each of my maps that have random battles, adjusting their frequency so they're just to the point where they slightly annoy me. We'll see if I've done my job when my wife gives it a shot. If she gets to the point where more than once, she's tosses the controller and says, "this sucks, I can't even get to where I'm supposed to be going," I'll have to lower the odds again. But we'll see and I'm glad that I'm considering this now.

I'm also glad that someone pointed out that this isn't a "save the world" game," because I highly doubted that anyone in my audience would want to "save the world." That's why I kept the characters simple, Hooligan and Rude Boy, a guy and his dog looking for good beer and trying to score chicks. Diavlo, a funny pimp, is pretty much the only driving force of the plot. The Chef, Duso, is just some dude that hates his job and quits so he can go hang out on a tropical island. The Hot Girl just wants to party. Lucky for me, my audience shares my sense of humor and have seen the same bad, obscure movies from the 80s.

And so, to update anyone who's listening, I've finished the Port Town of Puerto Aldea and its events, and thanks to Bigfoot, Doan and Rodak, I can finish the Swingers' Club (or at least most of it) today. Bigfoot and Doan helped me out a lot in getting the population of the Club to be doing what I need them to do, and probably inadvertently, Rodak helped me realize a name for the Club. Up until now, it was just "The Swingers' Club," but I'm going to have to name it "The Motion Slot." I'll have to explain it to those who have never used RPGM2, but if I ever get this game finished and can get it out to the people around this forum, somebody will get the joke. But, I'll worry about getting it out after I get it done.

[Rodak]

I love "The Motion Slot" as a name for a Swingers' Club!

This promises to be a fun game.

Peace.

[islandjack]

Thanks for the continuing encouragement, Rodak (and, of course, everyone else who's not saying "give up!")

Anyone who's been following this debacle already knows that last week I was temporarily miffed when I ran out of memory, but good advice and suggestions have cleared up that problem for the time being, and forced me to consider that I might not want to chuck each section of my game so full of everything that I can possibly think of at the time.

The Swingers' Club has been officially renamed "The Motion Slot," but as it doesn't show up until the mid-point of the game and only 30% is complete, I'm working on something else, namely the aformentioned Ronin Forest, the Hagakure. This probably comes from the fact that the mail is very slow up here and between Netflix deliveries, I'm sometimes forced to go to the local movie store and rent something that I've already seen but don't own yet, like Jim Jarmusch's "Ghost Dog: The Way of The Samurai." I can now count that film as another obscure influence of this game, along with the actual book "Hagakure" by Yamamoto Tsunetomo (translated by William Scott Wilson). The idea is that these Ronin (once samurai in the service of the King) are really just drunk screw-ups, but they had something to believe in (the Way of the Samurai) so they were taken seriously. Of course, now they're outcasts replaced by robots... wait, weren't they robotical before, when... well, you get the point, and at some point, hanging around with drunk screw-ups for a little while can be fun.

That's my update for the time being. Back to "work."

[Neo Samurai]

I enjoyed reading your story. It is very original and I agree with Doan that it's not just another "save the world" game. Some of what I read was pretty funny as well.

...and those poor Ronin, being replaced by robots.