NayusDante is developing an 8-bit RPG

[jb143]

and then profit off the work of a stranger. :)

Its better to find someone who can make GOOD music for the game.

all I can say is if a game that costs money has freely lifted music, it had better say that plain as day in the manual, or somewhere in-game.

So, when say, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra plays music by Beethoven, then all they're really doing is profiting off the work of a stranger?

I would assume that the plan would be to list it in the games credits. I don't see why poeple are making such a big deal out of it. Movies do this all the time.

Another option that indie game developers use quite often is to purchace royalty free music(and artwork). It's cheeper than paying someone to compose original music for you but there's also the chance that it will be in other peoples games as well. In which case I'm guessing some people would probally somehow still feel cheated that you didn't compose it yourself note by note, or pay a ton of money to have someone else do it.

[DuckTalesNES]

So, when say, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra plays music by Beethoven, then all they're really doing is profiting off the work of a stranger?

I would assume that the plan would be to list it in the games credits. I don't see why poeple are making such a big deal out of it. Movies do this all the time.


I completely agree with this. At the end of the day I care about whether the game is good and whether the music is good for the game. Ignore that other guy.

[Arkhan]

So, when say, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra plays music by Beethoven, then all they're really doing is profiting off the work of a stranger?

I would assume that the plan would be to list it in the games credits. I don't see why poeple are making such a big deal out of it. Movies do this all the time.


it seems like a copout is all. an original RPG has to have at least SOME original music. There are plenty of people willing to helpout with indie game projects. Having an all original soundtrack gives the game a thick amount of charm. If you're going to put the painstaking effort into a story, world, characters, programming, and art, do good by yourself and give it it's own unique score. :band:

When you go to see an orchestra, you know thats what they're about to do: Play classical music that they didn't write. You even know before hand what they're going to play most of the time. The stuff was written for orchestras to perform. Thats whats expected of it.

Hell I even thought it was kind of goony that a game like Splatterhouse used some Chopin.


Ignore that other guy.
LOL Yeah, Ignore me. I don't know what I'm talking about.

[jb143]

Just to put things into perspective, I went back and looked up a thread on an indie game development board on the cost of original music. There are many factors involved (simple tune vs orchestral epic, experience of the composer, etc...) but the general consensus is that you could expect to pay upwards of $100-$200 per minute! of original music composed for your game. Some composers on there thought that value was laughably low.

If you can find someone who can write original music for cheap or free because they feel charitable and just want to to help out AND can write something that actually fits well with your game AND can work on schedule, then by all means let them. If not, then don't worry about using public domain/royalty free music.

[Berserker]

If there's one thing you take away from this thread, Nayus, it should be that the whole notion of "design by committee" really doesn't work. Everyone has their own specific ideas as to how things should be handled. The more people you involve in non-trivial design decisions (i.e. most of the questions you've been asking in this thread), the less chance there is of anything actually getting done.

Asking for general input on things you've already completed is fine, and you should update us on progress since you've already made the thread. But I would say that when it comes to the design of your game, for the most part you'll either want to involve only a small handful of people whom you trust implicitly and more or less see eye-to-eye with, or just do it all yourself.

There's no "right" answer when it comes to this stuff, as this thread hopefully illustrates, so you really need to learn to trust your own judgment above all others. Outside input should be taken as suggestion - not solution. You're going to drive yourself insane trying to implement every little idea people come up with. And, even worse than that, your game probably won't get finished.

[Arkhan]

Just to put things into perspective, I went back and looked up a thread on an indie game development board on the cost of original music. There are many factors involved (simple tune vs orchestral epic, experience of the composer, etc...) but the general consensus is that you could expect to pay upwards of $100-$200 per minute! of original music composed for your game. Some composers on there thought that value was laughably low.

If you can find someone who can write original music for cheap or free because they feel charitable and just want to to help out AND can write something that actually fits well with your game AND can work on schedule, then by all means let them. If not, then don't worry about using public domain/royalty free music.

For this specific project though, chiptunes are whats required. No orchestration!

I could see orchestrated royalty free public domain crap if you cant find a composer for a 3D project .... but as far as chip tuning for an 8 bit era game is concerned, its a bit easier to manage. There are alot of details that are left out by nature.

Its dead simple to take a MIDI and apply VSTs to each channel.

Its only a bit more work to create songs... and then with a bit of time and effort, you can compose your own and improve your skills while doing it.

[NayusDante]

If there's one thing you take away from this thread, Nayus, it should be that the whole notion of "design by committee" really doesn't work. Everyone has their own specific ideas as to how things should be handled. The more people you involve in non-trivial design decisions (i.e. most of the questions you've been asking in this thread), the less chance there is of anything actually getting done.

Well, design by one can be just as bad (see Star Wars Ep I). Don't worry, I'm not taking all the suggestions here verbatim. This is just research.


...and of course the music will be chiptune. What else would I use?

[Berserker]

Well, design by one can be just as bad (see Star Wars Ep I).

Actually, that case sort of illustrates my point about being careful who you work with. Lucas certainly had final say, but he didn't design every aspect of the movie himself - instead, he surrounded himself with people who were completely unwilling to challenge him on anything, which is worse than doing everything by yourself because it gives you a false sense of security.

You need people who "get" where you're coming from and what you're trying to accomplish, but who are also willing to challenge you if they feel you're going off-track with something, just as you would with them. That's the difference between collaboration and subordination, and it makes all the difference in this context.

It's an extremely rare balance to find in others, which is why it's usually better to do things yourself, and also why if you ever happen to find someone with such qualities that you should do whatever is in your earthly powers to collaborate with them.

[NayusDante]

Working on some towns... I'm not really going by any kind of reference for layout here, but I'm using the FF1 tileset as a template. I can put new tiles in as they get done, so don't worry about the continued use of ripped tiles. Hey, this one's not too huge to post in the thread!

http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/3673/town3.png

This is going to be a sort of forest town that's also along the coast. I've also got a few more towns done, but I'm getting to where I don't want to show everything before it's ready to be played. From here, it's probably going to be just status updates and a dungeon floor here and there.

[Arkhan]

If your inn is also your save point, you had best put it near a town entrance as walking all around town is annoying especially when you're 3 seconds from passing out for sleep time, and you can't find the inn.


also, it makes the most sense: Inns are for weary travellers. Why have the inn buried in the depths of the town ! :angel:

[DuckTalesNES]

That is a pretty funny/cool stylistic point.

[NayusDante]

I'm not going to do THAT awful, draconian save system. That's the reason I never got into FF1 until I was older...

I didn't think of that though. I'll have to check how poison and stuff is handled in the engine, but I see where that could be a problem.

[Arkhan]

oh yeah, that too.

nothin confuses a town more than someone dropping dead while running around, arms flailing, going WHERES THE INN. WE NEED HEALED.

[NayusDante]

I've been using random fractal generators (http://donjon.bin.sh/world/) to get basic continent layouts, but a better idea just hit me for the next time I need one...

http://www.wdtb.noaa.gov/buildTraining/RPG1_2/graphics/8bitref.jpg

Yeah... the weather looks like a good RPG overworld map... That's my random thought for the night.

[Zoltor]

Actually, that case sort of illustrates my point about being careful who you work with. Lucas certainly had final say, but he didn't design every aspect of the movie himself - instead, he surrounded himself with people who were completely unwilling to challenge him on anything, which is worse than doing everything by yourself because it gives you a false sense of security.

You need people who "get" where you're coming from and what you're trying to accomplish, but who are also willing to challenge you if they feel you're going off-track with something, just as you would with them. That's the difference between collaboration and subordination, and it makes all the difference in this context.

It's an extremely rare balance to find in others, which is why it's usually better to do things yourself, and also why if you ever happen to find someone with such qualities that you should do whatever is in your earthly powers to collaborate with them.

I completelt agree.

[Jisho23]

I've got a long time to get the music done, and it's something that I can drop in and out. I don't mind using a few public domain resources, especially if if that's only a small portion of the game. Even if I did use as much public domain content as I could, it'd still be better than a lot of the crap (http://catalog.xna.com/en-US/GameDetails.aspx?catalogEntryId=9ed5605f-bc80-4afa-bd38-496c15bedf47&type=2) that's on XNA.

Really though, there's only a handful of decent games on the XNA marketplace. The RPG category (http://catalog.xna.com/en-US/gamescatalog.aspx?gr=12) is pretty lacking, though I'm happy to see a sprite-based 3D RPG was approved last week. I know other people are working on 2D RPGs, but nothing like this, as far as I know.


Here's the final overworld design. Still need to do original tiles for hills, mountains, caves, towns, towers, shrines, and castles.

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/8740/overworldfinal.png

Hey, "Don't be nervous talking to girls" is funny as hell. I'm CONVINCED the guys who made it knew full well they were making a bad FMV game and just hammed it up.

[NayusDante]

I'm trying to figure something out... When you have a small map, small enough to fit entirely on the screen, should the entire screen scroll with each step, or should the screen generally stay still? In the former, the character is ALWAYS the center of the screen, and the world seems to be moving beneath them. Off hand, I can't remember any games where the screen was ever stationary, except maybe Chrono Trigger. CT had 8-directional movement, however, and I'm sticking with 4, one tile at once.

I'm PROBABLY going with the always-scroll kind of maps, but can someone name an RPG with non-scrolling maps, or maps that stop scrolling at the edges? I'd like to get this decided before I end up with a ton of maps that need padding on the edges to make them scroll.

[NayusDante]

I'm starting to map the towers and I'm wondering, is twelve towers overkill? The idea was to have two dungeons to go through before each crystal shrine, but would it be better to consolidate it into one tower with the crystal at the top? That would still be six towers to go through, and there's going to be other ruins and caves on the main path. I want to do one puzzle for each tower, so I could do six really good ones rather than a dozen easy ones. I'm looking at other games and seeing that my location count is actually kinda high, so I'm sure I could cut it down a bit.

Does a large number of required dungeons make a game more fun, or should I focus on a few really good ones?

[Arkhan]

I'm trying to figure something out... When you have a small map, small enough to fit entirely on the screen, should the entire screen scroll with each step, or should the screen generally stay still? In the former, the character is ALWAYS the center of the screen, and the world seems to be moving beneath them. Off hand, I can't remember any games where the screen was ever stationary, except maybe Chrono Trigger. CT had 8-directional movement, however, and I'm sticking with 4, one tile at once.

I'm PROBABLY going with the always-scroll kind of maps, but can someone name an RPG with non-scrolling maps, or maps that stop scrolling at the edges? I'd like to get this decided before I end up with a ton of maps that need padding on the edges to make them scroll.

there are alot of games that dont scroll until you are near the edge, or dont scroll at all and slide screens.

I just cant think of any off the top of my head because I just woke up.

in the end it wont really matter how you implement scrolling unless you are doing an action RPG. thats about the only time scrolling matters. Would suck to scroll and have an enemy pop right against you and beat your face in.

[NayusDante]

Ok, I'll go with my initial idea of character-always-at-center. I've gotta figure out the resolution, though, because that determines how many buffer tiles I need. I can just shift things to fit, but I can't start writing the portals between maps until I have everything where it goes.

I think I'm going to consolidate the towers. I just finished the maps for the wind tower, so all that's left is to write the treasure and monster tables, then link the maps together. There's ten floors, and two puzzles. I can't finish one of the puzzles just yet, because it relies on monster names and stuff that I haven't gotten to. I've got too many bridges connecting continents right now, so I'm going to replace a lot of them with caves to fill in the number of dungeons that I'm consolidating.

[Arkhan]

in my experience, its easier to code a scrollymap where the player is centered at all times, but the ones where it scrolls about 2-3 tiles from the screen edge look/feel better to me.

either way it is all preference and wont impact a damn thing!

[Jorpho]

Aren't you restricted by whatever this XNA RPG Starter Kit uses?

[NayusDante]

To an extent, yeah. If something absolutely doesn't work, I can change it, but I'm trying to work within those limitations. If you make a map smaller than the screen resolution, it aligns it to the right bottom corner. As long as I have enough padding on each side of a map, the screen will scroll consistently.

Working on the fire cavern, it's not a tower anymore. Uniformity makes things too predictable, so I'm just mapping as I go along and drawing what comes to mind. Organic maps like caves are more fun to do than structures like towers.

[jb143]

If you make a map smaller than the screen resolution, it aligns it to the right bottom corner. As long as I have enough padding on each side of a map, the screen will scroll consistently.


How does it handle inside a building? Idealy you would want the screen to align to the walls rather than to center to the character, otherwise you could see what's on the other side of the wall which you would probally not want.

[NayusDante]

For buildings and rooms, I'm using a separate map. Here's an example of how it's going to be...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4053/4402420230_a9781ccdc7_o.png

See how there's two doors? There's rooms behind those. Here's the map you'll see when you go through one of those doors, side by side with the main map.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4053/4402420230_a9781ccdc7_o.pnghttp://farm5.static.flickr.com/4059/4401655043_0b115a11f3_o.png

Both maps are exactly the same size, so scrolling is consistent, and there won't be a player-position shift when you go from one place to another. I'm not overly concerned about seeing the next room over in a dungeon, since the next room over might not be easy to get to. You might see what's in it, but you still need to make your way over there. For towns, since the buildings are closer together, I'll probably do separate maps for each.

[jb143]

Gotcha. Glad to see you're thinking out all this little stuff in advance.

[NayusDante]

Does anyone know of some good public domain tilesets that I could use, at least for now? I've been using dungeon tiles from an FF3 map... I found some good stuff here (http://www.molotov.nu/?page=graphics#Links), and I can use these as templates for my own stuff, but I could use a few more dungeon and castle tiles.

[mastamuzz]

Music Music and Music again Come up with your own score cause music plays a big role on RPG's, sometimes you are playing the new games but if you listen to an old school tune you want to leave the new and replay the old ( at least I do) and don't forget legendary weapons and the ridiculously difficult side quest to get them, probably not much of the old school type but makes it interesting.

[NayusDante]

I feel like sharing this new map, which I particularly like. Working on the water shrine/cave/thing and it's definitely a fun tileset template to play with. It's like the cave one, but with water! Finally, man-made structures that are fun to map...

I should note that if these maps look kinda empty, I have to define treasure boxes separately. Besides, what fun would it be if I gave away all the treasure locations?

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2722/4414961325_f7a520c8f7_o.png

[Arkhan]

its ok, most dungeon maps look retardedly bland when viewed in full-size.

Its the monster battles, and the treasureboxes that keep them interesting.

[AbnormalMapping]

I don't know if you're looking, but I can throw together a few tiles, NPCs or enemies, if you wish?

[NayusDante]

I don't know if you're looking, but I can throw together a few tiles, NPCs or enemies, if you wish?

We'll see how things turn out when I'm done putting the core game together. I really want to avoid adding outside help at this point.


I've been racking my brain to figure out the elements I want for the "crystals," but I can't come to a decision regarding one of them. So far, I've got:

-Wind (a tower)
-Fire (a magma cave)
-Water (flooded ruins and wet caves)
-Earth (haven't done this one yet)
-?
-Time/space (the final element, a castle-dungeon with lots of illogical pathways, and after-images of the party frozen in the past and future)


For the undecided fifth element, I was thinking about "darkness," or "shadow." I'm trying to think of something that would corrupt the surrounding areas, like an "evil" element. The castle in this area is abandoned except for the vampire king, and the local town is undead, but I'm not completely decided on it. I *could* use electricity, or lightening, but that might be hard in a fantasy setting. I could split time and space into separate elements, but I'm really not sure. Or, I could go the way of Captain Planet and use "heart," but that would be a bit odd, not to mention hard to design a dungeon around. Any ideas?


I put together a monster list the other night, that's almost done. I just need a few more non-animal monsters, and maybe a few more elemental creatures. After a lot of thought, I'm not going to specifically use dur butter monster, but I am making a monster class called "fats." They'll be blobs of grease with names like Butter, Margarine, and Lard.


I've got a bit of a technical issue to tackle with the aspect ratio and resolution, especially on the Xbox side of things. My original intention was to stick with 4:3, and design it to mimic NES resolution of 256x240, but testing guidelines seem to require 720p support. Is a widescreen 8-bit RPG wrong, or would it hurt to say that TVs have always been widescreen in this universe? I won't know exactly how it's going to look until I pay for an XNA subscription, or use the key I got through my college's MSDNAA, and I'm holding off on that as long as I can.

[Jorpho]

I don't want to give too much away, but the story is about a man going back and replaying that one 8-bit RPG that he grew up with, viewing it the way he remembers it. As such, player opinion has a big role in the story.See, I'm still not sure if this means you're trying to play to the cliches or trying to subvert them.

If all else fails, standard practice is to create a dungeon where the final elemental macguffin used to reside before it got moved or stolen or whatever, leaving behind only a clue or key to its new location. (Right now Minish Cap is the first example that comes to mind.)


After a lot of thought, I'm not going to specifically use dur butter monster, but I am making a monster class called "fats." They'll be blobs of grease with names like Butter, Margarine, and Lard. It would be nifty if they had special vulnerabilities to fire - some of them turn into rare and useful healing items, others burst into flame and become far more dangerous, etc.


would it hurt to say that TVs have always been widescreen in this universe?"My TV looked so much bigger when I was young!"

[NayusDante]

"My TV looked so much bigger when I was young!"

THIS.

Thank you!

[gdement]

What are the elements that made Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, etc fun and enjoyable? What do you remember the most? What did you hate about them?

Ultima: Exodus was the first RPG I played. I love that game, as crude as it is by today's standards.
So the first appeal with that game was the novelty of being an RPG at all.
But my lasting interest with games like that was the freedom. The fact that the game expects you to explore and doesn't simply tell you where to go. It lets you build a roster of any sort of characters you wish, and face the reality that some might get killed permanently if you screw up bad enough. Trying to find important items, and struggling to reach the bottom of a dungeon was exhilarating.
Major cons: Money is broken, and trapped chests are excessive. You get the same gold for every enemy, so you're actually better off staying at level 1 for most of the game. Overworld enemies scale in difficulty as you level up, so you only need to level when you go to dungeons or to another off-world area. It's a primitive game with glaring flaws.

Dragon Warrior - I just liked it because it was an RPG. There weren't many to choose from. This was the 2nd RPG I played after Ultima. It felt linear, and almost like a formulaic beginner's game even at the time, but I liked it anyway because what else was I going to play?
Lowercase letters were nice looking, and the dialogue was better than I had seen in Ultima.

Final Fantasy - Much more story oriented than previous RPGs. Besides the story, I was impressed with the quality of presentation, including good music and such. Nowadays I'm not so fond of the shift it represents, but at the time it was a groundbreaking game.


====
Grinding was normal back then. That's a fundamental part of an RPG - slowly building the power of your characters to overcome difficulty.
If you need to grind, it means that the player has an opportunity to face difficult odds. If you never need to grind, that translates to the game being too easy and it will bore people who want to be challenged.

Newer RPGs are easier, while story has become the main element. Players of mainstream RPGs today believe they have an automatic right to beat the game. Essentially they're buying a storybook and they want to get to the end with minimal setbacks.
It was the opposite in the 80s. Story was not significant then. The general atmosphere was enough to be immersive, and the game largely takes place in your imagination. RPGs back then focused on challenge, not storytelling. The "story" was in the struggle to make your party succeed against steep odds.

[NayusDante]

I think I finally have an idea for the earth shrine. It'll be the root system of a giant tree stump. I've seen the giant tree done to death in RPGs, but I've yet to see the humungous roots hollowed out to make a dungeon.

I used my MSDNAA XNA code to get the year of free Xbox deployment capabilities, so now I can test things on my 360. I'll have to pay the $99 fee when I'm ready to submit, but this is good for now.

I'm trying to make a list of the code modifications that I need, and it's mostly minor stuff...
-One Tile Movement (the RPG Starter Kit is Chrono Trigger style, with terrible collision detection)
-Fade in and out for map transitions, battles
-Party follow
-Fixed aspect ratio (I'd like to render at NES resolution and scale to whatever the system res is)
-Video triggers (for cutscenes)
-Menu system optimizations

I've thought about "crowdsourcing" these fixes as a separate project, released as open source so anyone can make a decent Dragon Quest clone with it. I'm really trying to avoid the burdon of having to pay people (I don't want that liability), so I'm evaluating alternative options that don't involve profiting off others. I'm thinking about just donating whatever profits come from the game anyway, since this is more of a learning experience. I'm an artist, not a businessman. >_<

[DenDenDos]

I'm really enjoying this whole thread.

I just read through most of the thread and I'm inspired by the fact that you're sharing your project with this community, but whats even better is the lack of discouragement that exists.

Kudos for your determination. Keep it up.

[Jorpho]

I've thought about "crowdsourcing" these fixes as a separate project, released as open source so anyone can make a decent Dragon Quest clone with it. I'm really trying to avoid the burdon of having to pay people (I don't want that liability), so I'm evaluating alternative options that don't involve profiting off others. I'm thinking about just donating whatever profits come from the game anyway, since this is more of a learning experience. I'm an artist, not a businessman. >_<Judging from the overwhelming number of ambitious RPG projects out there that never made it off the drawing board, I am quite certain that if you actually want to see these fixes made, you're going to have to learn to do them yourself.

People are unlikely to give up their time for the "future profits" of something that is, at the moment, vaporware.

[NayusDante]

A quick look at the "Help Wanted/Offered" forum on the XNA boards shows a surprising number of noobie programmers looking for projects to put into their portfolio. If I can't get help there, I know one of my friends wants to get into XNA (though he's a bit lazy...).

Trust me, I've tried to be a programmer. You can even see the results (http://sourceforge.net/projects/infernorpg/). I wrote an RPG map system with tile movement and animated characters, and even made a map editor, but it was the most annoying thing I've ever done. I did it for an independent study credit in high school, and it took two whole semesters, working from scratch. I can stumble through code that's already there, but when it comes to adding functionality or properly implementing changes, I'm not cut out for it. Or to put it a better way, I'm not cut out to be a lead programmer.

[Jorpho]

A quick look at the "Help Wanted/Offered" forum on the XNA boards shows a surprising number of noobie programmers looking for projects to put into their portfolio. If I can't get help there, I know one of my friends wants to get into XNA (though he's a bit lazy...).I think you will find that every noobie programmer will end up being just a little bit too lazy for your purposes.


Trust me, I've tried to be a programmer. You can even see the results (http://sourceforge.net/projects/infernorpg/). I wrote an RPG map system with tile movement and animated characters, and even made a map editor, but it was the most annoying thing I've ever done. I did it for an independent study credit in high school, and it took two whole semesters, working from scratch. I can stumble through code that's already there, but when it comes to adding functionality or properly implementing changes, I'm not cut out for it. Or to put it a better way, I'm not cut out to be a lead programmer.Yes, it is difficult, challenging, and often frustrating work, which is why you're probably not going to find anyone willing to do it for you. Anyone willing to put in that kind of effort would probably have plans for his own RPG first.

[Arkhan]

I think you will find that every noobie programmer will end up being just a little bit too lazy for your purposes.


yes, and you are also bound to encounter jackoffs that will absorb bits of your code, disappear, and then youll see them release a game thats eerily similar to yours.

or they will literally just up and vanish all together.

its best to find people who you either know in person (so you can keep in contact), or who have proof-of-skill to show you.

[NayusDante]

*sigh* It took me all evening (7PM-12:30AM), but I got tile-based movement implemented the way I want it. I tried to decode two other samples of similar modifications, but ended up just stumbling through it myself. My method didn't add any new functions or declare any new variables, it just changes the way that movement is performed. Maybe I'll post a video tomorrow...

Worst case, I spend a few weeks (or months >_<) doing that every night until I get everything the way I want it. I could map all day, but coding makes my head hurt.

[Arkhan]

Worst case, I spend a few weeks (or months >_<) doing that every night until I get everything the way I want it. I could map all day, but coding makes my head hurt.

not trying to discourage you at all, but if you really get annoyed and don't enjoy programming, maybe you shouldn't do it. It is only going to get worse from here. You seem to like design/mapping more, so maybe hunt for a devoted programmer?

[NayusDante]

Yeah, definitely looking for a programmer. Like I said before, I'm not a lead programmer.

[Arkhan]

oh, right. :)

well if you play your cards right you wont have to do much programming at all :D

[Jorpho]

well if you play your cards right you wont have to do much programming at all :DThat's not going to happen.

[NayusDante]

I made a little video so you can see how the movement is now. As you'll no doubt notice, it's pretty rough without any kind of map transitions. This is running on the Xbox at 432x243, but I'd still like to get it to 256x240 with the proper scaling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxO5pp251xk

For comparison, here's an older video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLUF_HDOjrU) that shows the way it was before. Notice how about a minute in, the character gets stuck on the blocked tiles. It would be nice for a Chrono Trigger style game, but the collision detection kills it and makes it feel cheap.

[ProgrammingAce]

This is an awful lot of work for one person, though I think you've gotten far enough into the project to see that.

Tools like Game Maker and whatever this XNA RPG maker thing is are great up to a point. They let you prototype an idea quickly, make sure the idea is actually fun before you put a boat load of work into the final product.

Where these tools fall apart is in creating a final workable game. I can see there's already a list of things that you don't like about the tool, some of them don't seem like simple fixes.

It's going to be hard to find a skilled programmer who is going to want to take on your project. Even if you do, they're going to have their own ideas and plans, they're going to take shortcuts you don't like, and they're going to tell you certain features you want just aren't possible, and then they're just going to dissapear with things half finished.

Video game design is an art run by programmers. You can make a game without an artist, a level designer, a musician, etc. You can't make a game without someone to program the code. If you want the project to be completed, you need to take the helm and be the lead programmer.

[NayusDante]

There's no "rpg maker" style software involved actually, and Game Maker is the other end of the spectrum. The XNA RPG Starter Kit is a sample game, where you get all the source code (XNA and C#) free for modification.

The only fixes left that I feel are absolutely required are the fade transitions and the video triggers. Everything else is pretty much just extra stuff that I'd like to have. Required to a lesser degree is a better menu system, but the one in place would be fine if I downscaled it and rearranged the layouts. I have to test this resolution on an SDTV, but if it looks decent I could leave it in widescreen.

[NayusDante]

An unintended side effect of my tile movement changed when random combat was calculated: never. It was supposed to check for combat whenever a certain value was zero and there was no automovement distance left, so I had to remove the check for that variable. Works now.

One more absolutely required fix would be the talk button. As it stands, you have to collide with an NPC to talk to them, which isn't what I want.

[NayusDante]

Got my 360 moved over to my retro rack and plugged into the CRT SDTV. It would appear that the 360 really likes 720p, because that's the only resolution that it will autoscale to keep the right aspect ratio. I'm sure that I could write a condition check for SDTVs to use a 4:3 resolution, but I'd rather keep the same resolution throughout. I upped the tile size from 16x16 to 64x64, scaled without filtering. That gives me a scale resolution of 320x180. It comes out to a smaller picture than the NES, but the widescreen aspect seems to be alright with my maps. On a 4:3 TV, it'll look like a letterboxed NES game.

Now I can design my interface to 320x180, and scale up 4x for the in-game assets. Since one pixel is represented as four in all the graphics, I have a bit of room to play with visual effects. I saw a neat idea (http://www.dreambuildplay.com/main/GalleryDetail.aspx?Value=pL4fyc6d5B50rpcsmGQ0TJJLn 5TZSJxnIS6xbVyz9vx689uMxxy4dJnNiPTJwZS2IqUMN7sE71M oBvtiXxEzdA%253d%253d) in a game for this year's Dream Build Play competition that used a grid pattern over scaled 8-bit graphics, and it looked kinda dot-matrixy:

(Final Saga)
http://www.dreambuildplay.com/Files/886_113844_3.jpg

I don't want to rip of that idea, but I'm thinking about something similar to make the graphics look like they're on a CRT, maybe going for a scanline look. I know I've seen some games where every other line is differently shaded or erased or something...

(Ys on PC88)
http://hg101.kontek.net/ys/ys-pc88.png

Not sure I want to see how that would look on a real CRT though. I've gotta take into account that a lot of people would play on both display types.

Now I'm wondering about the need for a talk button. I could just leave it as is and say that I'm drawing from Ys... :P

[Mattiekrome]

Simplicity

My thoughts exactly. I loved being able to sit down and play an RPG and not have to stress too much about missing certain weapons/spells/items/etc. Just enough variables to add a good bit of variety, but nothing that becomes a "job" to play

[NayusDante]

I just tried adding a grid over each pixel... and on my SDTV. It looked great on my LCD, but...

MY EYES HURT!

It just makes the whole screen flicker! So much for that idea... >_<

[jb143]

Could you overlay an alphamap image that's black with every other line(virtual pixel height) a shade of gray? Then every other line would look slightly dimmer. Or even slightly diagonal lines.I'm sure I've seen emulators do something that looked like this to simulate scanlines.

[NayusDante]

Could you overlay an alphamap image that's black with every other line(virtual pixel height) a shade of gray? Then every other line would look slightly dimmer. Or even slightly diagonal lines.I'm sure I've seen emulators do something that looked like this to simulate scanlines.

That's what I'd like to try later on. Essentially, a virtual scanline filter that isn't part of the images themselves.

I originally toyed with the idea of visual fidelity changing as the story progresses. At the beginning, when the character picks up his NegaSys and games from his mom's attic, he takes it home and plugs it into his new LCD. After seeing how hard-edged the pixels are, and how there's garbage data at the bottom of the screen, he's pretty disappointed. As the story moves on, however, he picks up a CRT on the side of the road and the game looks better (or worse, depends on taste) from there out. That might be a bit too much though...

[NayusDante]

Today's update: putting maps into the game!

I've got the first three towns in the game now, complete with dummy shops. All the shops so far are empty, but they're the same in terms of layout so I can put them together now and add the shopkeep NPCs when I'm ready to. I haven't done anything for houses yet, but I will next time I get an itch to do maps. Also need to design a basic inn template. Basically, those inside maps just need several variations each that I can repeat throughout the game, customizing later on.

My big goal right now is to get the first continent completely mapped and exported to game-ready XML. That means actually designing the maps, then defining the portal locations to link them together. Towns are there, but only half the buildings have maps. I haven't started on the first castle yet. The first shrine is done, except for the crystal room (just need to export and link it). Then, there's two caves to do, which may become ruins or something else (cave is my generic term for minor-story or non-story dungeon).

Once the first continent of the game is all mapped and put together, I'm going to get the monster table finished. After that, treasure table. Then I just work one continent at a time until it's done. Eventually, I'll get to the endgame maps, which will reuse certain portions of the game in "hardmode" dungeons, maybe taking a cue from Mega Man's teleport chambers or something like that.

[NayusDante]

A new challenger approaches...

http://www.spike.com/video/breath-of-death-vii/3355846

This means that I have about a month to finish if I want to be the first RPG on there. At any rate, they're not going for completely 8-bit style, and it's more of a parody. Also, a lot of tiles look ripped in the trailer, which I wouldn't expect that far into development.

[Jorpho]

Shouldn't you be more concerned about that extremely difficult task about making those absolutely-required coding changes before you put much more work into these maps?

[NayusDante]

Nope, the map format isn't going to be affected. Everything else is in different parts of the code.

[Arkhan]

A new challenger approaches...

http://www.spike.com/video/breath-of-death-vii/3355846

This means that I have about a month to finish if I want to be the first RPG on there. At any rate, they're not going for completely 8-bit style, and it's more of a parody. Also, a lot of tiles look ripped in the trailer, which I wouldn't expect that far into development.

Im not impressed. The tiles definitely look ripped off (From dragon quest mainly), and some of the character art looks severely jacked from Chrono trigger. That vampire techie is Luca, and that dude with the red hair is totally crono.

And the battle system/screens LOOK like Dragon Quest -_-.

XNA: Letting a new era of unoriginal RPGS reign forth!

(not saying yours is)


This is like RPG Maker 2000 all over again :D. Soon there will be a ton of FF ripoffs, and whatnot, on top of whats already floating round.

Hurry up and finish yours so at least ONE unique/original work gets out there!!!. Id take a parody/nostalgia quest like you have cooked up over an "original" game chock full of blatant rips.... :(

If you're going to "bring back the 16 bit RPG era", you should invest the time into giving the presentation its own unique, character filled feel to it. You can tell a Square or an Enix game just by a few screenshots! They have a distinct style. Everyone should have their own style.

maybe I should take a break from PCE/MSX dev and do an XNA RPG also :D Its not like I dont have one half done sitting on my hard drive already... !

[pseudonym]

The style of that video looks like DW4 to me. I noticed a SOTN joke in there, that's kind of getting old at this point. I wouldn't worry about being the first, just make yours as good as you can before you release it, if it takes more than a year. Just my opinion.

[Zeboyd Games]

Robert Boyd (designer & programmer of Breath of Death VII: The Beginning) from Zeboyd Games here.

Arkhan, the similarities are intentional. Our game is a parody of old RPGs, specifically Dragon Quest (but other RPGs as well). The DQ-style tiles, the Akira Toriyama-esque character art, the battle system graphics, these are all intentional.

None of the tiles are ripped from other games, but when you've only got 16 pixels to work with (zoomed in to 48x48) and you're intentionally trying to be similar in style to a genre and era of games, there's only so many possible results that you can end up with.

I really don't forsee a glut of RPGs on XBLIG anytime soon like there was with RPGMaker simply because there's no good RPG making engine for XBLIG. If you want to make an RPG, you have to code your own engine and even for a relatively simple RPG that's going to take a lot of time, effort, and skill that most people don't have.

Anyway, I wish NayusDante the best of luck with his game and hope both of our games turn out to be very successful once they're released.

[Zeboyd Games]

Duplicate Post

[Jorpho]

Nope, the map format isn't going to be affected. Everything else is in different parts of the code.I had the impression that the difficulty of incorporating those absolutely-required changes was such that it was not at all certain that you would be able to complete them.

[NayusDante]

A bit of a status update...

I've gotten some friends involved, and development is speeding up a bit. We've got the basic story hammered out and all the important map locations decided. The story involves three heroes traveling the world to obtain the six elemental essences before the evil king does.

Where it looks like Breath of Death VII is taking influence from Dragon Quest, we're more in the direction of Final Fantasy. It's definitely taking on its own look, though, so I don't think the end product will be identifiable as an FF clone. Once we get a little further along, I'll post some stuff.

It'll be interesting to see how Breath of Death VII goes, I'm definitely looking forward to it.

[NayusDante]

A lot has happened lately, and the game is still progressing at a fast pace.

Working with friends has its benefits, but it also has setbacks. We've designated Monday night as a dev night, and we've been following through with it for a while now. The only problem is that it's 75% spent hanging out, not developing. Still, in the time we do spend working, we're getting a lot done and it's shaping up nicely.

The worldmap that I posted has evolved beyond recognition. Right now, it's going through one final redesign, getting more evenly spaced out and moved around.

-All of the locations on the first two continents are mapped. The rest of the world is about 1/2 finished if you count each continent individually. Once I map out the sketches we did last night, we'll have about 75% mapped out overall. We haven't touched endgame or sidequest maps yet.
-Worldmap tileset is 90% done.
-About 40% of the monster sketches are done.
-We finally decided on a company name, one that we've actually owned the domain for forever. Website should be up in the coming weeks.

[Jisho23]

maybe I should take a break from PCE/MSX dev and do an XNA RPG also :D Its not like I dont have one half done sitting on my hard drive already... !

Fo' reals?

And I'm gonna hold out and hope Breat of Death VII is good. But , no offense Zeboyd, the quality of the jokes put in look like the same quality of movies like "Meet the Spartans." Just quoting something funny from elsewhere (especially a joke that is old) doesn't make for good humor.

[Arkhan]

Fo' reals?


Yeah all it needs is a finished battle system. It was an Ys style.

I have bits/pieces of the battle system that could be plopped in and worked with....

and then I would need.....playtesting and polish!

the game was mostly mapped out already, with populated towns, talking NPCs, shit like that.


but.... I got bored, and started doing PCE / MSX stuff instead. I figured why fake it. Might as well do the real thing, lol

[NayusDante]

Breath of Death VII came out today, and it looks pretty good. It still bothers me how similar the tiles are to SNES Dragon Quest, but I haven't sat down to play it yet. Definitely looking forward to it.

I'm actually surprised that it made it through playtest so quickly. I thought an RPG would take longer than a few weeks.


I tried to work on one of the castles this afternoon, but I didn't exactly have the most motivated mindset. This might be the stimulus I need to really get to work on finishing the maps I have on my to-do pile, especially if I want to meet my (personal) deadline of April 30 for preliminary map design. We've been doing map sketches together, but that hasn't been progressing as quickly as I'd like, so I'll probably at least make placeholder maps by myself and we'll just spend more time going over them when we get to the detailing stage.

[Jorpho]

Does this mean you're not worried right now about that custom code you were wondering about? (Because you should be.)

[NayusDante]

As far as customizing the engine, I don't think we'll have any trouble. If all we added were screen fades, video triggers, and party follow, I'd be happy with it.

I just played BoD for about two hours, and it's actually pretty good. They definitely put a lot of work into the code (more than I expected). It doesn't feel like an 8-bit game though, and the music takes away from the console-feel.

BoD feels more like a fun pick-up-and-play kind of RPG. The run button is always available, menus are extremely quick, and it's really quirky. Our game is (and has been from the beginning) a "heavier" experience. In a sense, the difference is like Dragon Quest to Final Fantasy. I'm not going to say ours will be better, because BoD is actually pretty good at what it sets out to accomplish.

[Jorpho]

I don't think we'll have any trouble.Sometimes I wish I was just a little more adept at image macros.

[ProgrammingAce]

Sometimes I wish I was just a little more adept at image macros.

Let him make the game how he wants to do it. He knows how much work is ahead of him.

Honestly, there's absolutely nothing wrong with cutting features when the development time is going to take too long. AAA titles do it all the time. Halo 2 cut out 4 levels and half the gameplay. It's not fair to hold an independent developer to a higher standard then a multi-million dollar title.

Take a step back and let him make his game.

[jb143]

Do you have a job opening for a programmer? Because I think Jorpho might be looking. ;)

Actually though, it's pretty common for game designers to iron out story, maps, graphics, music, and everything else in the game before work on the programming even begins. It's called a design doc. That way you know exactly what you need to program instead of reprogramming everything anytime an aspect of the game design changes. I can tell you one game that didn't have a design doc. Duke Nukem Forever.

[Jorpho]

Do you have a job opening for a programmer? Because I think Jorpho might be looking. ;)Oh, I ain't goin' near that crap.


AAA titles do it all the time. Halo 2 cut out 4 levels and half the gameplay. It's not fair to hold an independent developer to a higher standard then a multi-million dollar title.Maybe AAA titles do it all the time, but like I've said, there have been many, many indie RPG projects, some with all kinds of extensive planning and ambitious scripts, that have died completely because in the end the programming was too difficult for the people on hand. Just look at Arkhan - though admittedly that might not be the best example.


I can tell you one game that didn't have a design doc. Duke Nukem Forever.DNF's problem was that the creators kept trying to keep up with new technology. We can't really say for sure whether they kept waffling on ideas.

I can tell you one game that did have a design doc: Doom. Oh wait! Most of the Doom Bible got scrapped in development!


I'll be quiet now.