RPG Q&A Section (Fictional Story Repost)

[Eternimus]

~These are the details I've announced so far.~

I was figuring a tech level akin to Xenogears.

The REAL Xenogears, not Xenosaga.

Xenosaga was bullshit. Not anywhere near as fun as Xenogears.

You know, some places simple city folk washing their clothes in a river, some places a cybernetic army awaits the merest command, that kinda thing. And because of each area's expertise, each area will be DRASTICALLY different than each other place. And far more realistic. For example, each city will NOT have a weapon, item and armor shop. Only bigger cities will. The other ones ~might~ have one, or even two. But the tech will be what it should be. You aren't going to find a 65,535 gold laser pistol in a backwater hick town where reading is optional.

And the characters WILL be clashing. No two will be the same. Because I hate that. Even characters of the same area will be different. And there will be both male and female. Because they will be clashing, in any one play through you will only be able to recruit a certain amount. Because not everyone is friendly, and not everyone agrees with their leader. I set very high standards for myself, even if I were to crank out a demo for you guys to play with. So I'm going to be Blizzard on this one.

"I can't give you a release date because I'll work on it as much as I can until I am satisfied."

But I will answer whatever questions you have if I deem it won't ruin the storyline.

[Goman Fox]

Hmm, I think I'll play the role of one of the inquisitive people looking forward to the game and ask a few questions that you may or may not want to reveal about your game.  Don't worry, I wont be offended if you respond with "I will not answer any of your questions, it will be more fun for the answers to be a surprise."   Or you could even decide to save the questions for answering at a later date.

1.  How does magic fit into your game?  By this I'm actually asking two questions, first how is magic handled in a gaming-sense (what is the magic system like) and how does it fit into your your world's history? (examples from other games: being extracted from espers, usable through materia, or even simply "it's just part of the world the game takes place in, just like scientific laws are.")

2.  What can we expect from the battle system?  Is it turn-based or real-time?  Any interesting unique qualities we can know about right now?

3.  Are there any plans for any bonus material after the game's completion, like a sort of "New Game+" or unlocked features like a more difficult mode?

[Eternimus]

Easy enough to answer.

1) To use it, outside of low level basic spells, you have to have certain crystals equipped. And you only get one. Each grants you a bonus to certain spells, a penalty to others. Think "runes" from Suikoden. You also can find tomes to grant spells, but certain spells you can only get from the crystal, or the book.

I.E...

Red Ribbon: Swirling fire spell. (Tome)
Eruption: Exploding fire spell. (Crystal)

Ages ago, the elders of the world learned how to manipulate forces in this world through great gemstones that were unearthed called "Pandora Crystals". The way they manages to bend the forces of the heavens and earth to their will while using one of this crystals was simply "magical" and they decided to stick with the name. The arts of "Magic" were recorded by one great seer to the next. And these tomes impart certain spells to who reads them, some of the more complex spells only available through intense study. As "magic" became widespread, the crystals became more specialized, with people looking to facet them to give more areas of amplification to the power. Each of these cuts seemed to embrace a single school, but reject the others. And as such, they became named for each of the seers who discovered the cut, seeking to empower one form of magic or another.

Inferis Crystals: Named after Brother Ignacio Ferisino, this devout monk took it upon himself to provide protection and warmth for his monestary. It seemed most beasts of the night feared the flame, and it had many practical uses aside from protection. As such, this cut empowers the flames of the world, while shunning the cold.

Kaydrin Crystals: King Kaydrinus was a very bitter man. He lost many of his family to a plague. He hated it so much, he wanted all living creatures to stay away from him, so he never had to feel the pain of loss again. As such he was called "The Frozen King" for his reaction to others. This crystal is testament to his solitude.

Ramaza Crystals: A rouge by trade, Ramaza Hyuga was referred to as "Greased Lightning" for his seemingly inability to be captured. He discovered this cut entirely by accident, breaking a chunk of the Pandora Stone off and cutting it to sell in several rings for a profit, the remainder showed its power in a prank that went quite wrong.

Arimus Crystal: Elena "Sureshot" Arimus was a well known archer. Her skill was unmatched, as was her beauty, but it was never enough for her. She wanted to fire an arrow with the flights cut so well it could zig-zag between the hoops. She spend the bulk of her amassed fortune paying jewelers to cut the stones to give her power over the air itself. It succeeded, and the crystal has been popular ever since. Most female mages use this one, for the grace it represents.

Carusha Crystal: The origin of this crystal is more of a fable. A story of the strongest bandit in the world. As the fable goes, trying to carve a beautiful figuring from a seemingly ordinary crystal, Crusher Bloodworthy, known as the world's most powerful man, a mountain in his time, made a mistake. When all his hard work fell apart in his hands, in a fit of rage he slammed his fist into the side of his cave, causing a quake and having the stones collapse upon him. He survived, to form a barbaric tribe of his followers.

Fallamo Crystal: The only child of a well known merchant couple, Jessanine Fallamo spent her time in books, living life through the eyes of others. When her father was lost at sea because of a turbulent storm, Jessa and her mother were grief stricken for years. When her mother decided to continue to be a merchant in her father's stead, Jessa decided that such a tragedy would never befall her family again. She discovered this cut, and accompanied her mother on voyages to keep the seas calm.

Illuminati Crystal: There is a legend about this crystal. It has never been seen, by a reputable source. Supposedly an eccentric mage became jealous over the Priest's control over the holy powers. The mage spent his entire life buying up and cutting various crystals. Supposedly the end result is holy powers perverted in a terrible way, using the holy healing powers and channelling them into devastating force. Illuminati, it was named, for the light.

Cataclysm Crystal: Supposedly the same mage that created the illuminati crystal, created this dark abomination. The rumors go it was capable of quite literally ripping a soul from its still living body, the cataclysm gem has never been seen again. Whoever finds it would have the most destructive powers in the world. The story goes, the gem had sentience. And as such, was imprisoned in the Tyrving. But, to leave it completely together would have been catastrophic, so somewhere out there there is a glimmer of dark hope, waiting for a soul to consume...

And that's all you get on the magic system. You will just have to read the story and see if you can figure it out...

2) Battle system: Turn based, FFIV'ish with a bit of a twist. And a hate system. Still working out the scripting kinks, though.

3) There is ALWAYS bonus material in my games. And there isn't exactly a new game+ planned at this time. Something similar, but there are benefits from replaying. For example: Depending on the relation of countries at the time, you can only get certain characters. But if you wait till later and get them you can get others. When (and where) you get an additional PC impacts who else you can recruit, for the rest of the game. Choose carefully.

[Taylor-MadeAK]

When (and where) you get an additional PC impacts who else you can recruit, for the rest of the game. Choose carefully.

Hopefully you're doing this in such a way that is intuitive for a player to follow.  What I mean by that is that the offered character selections will trend toward a player's specific playing style.  For example, if a player starts off with recruiting characters that result in a balanced party (equal parts of each character type: melee, mage, ranged, support, etc.), then the offered recruiting opportunities will continue to trend in that direction.  But the moment the player starts to specialize a party toward any extreme, the offered recruiting opportunities should trend toward that extreme and away from the other points.  For example:  If they recruit melees and reject mages, then over time the amount of mages available for recruiting will diminish.

Or am I making no sense at all? 

I'm probably just talkin' outta my ass, I know next to nothing about making video games.  Thanks for taking my suggestion about a hate system to heart, though.  Seeing a 2D RPG game that surprises players by having enemies that remorselessly target their most damaging characters when provoked would be new and interesting to play.

[Eternimus]

Yeah when you talked about it I stopped and thought about it and you were right. I can't recall a single 2D rpg with a hate system. And the character collection system is more like SO2's system. You find em, you recruit them. Here's just an example.

(FYI this isn't how it's going to go in the game, but it's a general idea.)

The Isles of Dionysus, Ecator's lands, are at odds with the Shadowlands. Sakephia (Ecator's Capital) despises the Shadowlands cities. Feeling is mutual. So you can recruit from inside the Dionysus Isles, but since they are at odds with the Shadowlands, you CANNOT recruit from any city near its capital of Agumennon. However news travels slowly without radio and TV, so backwater towns might not know about the extreme hate, so you might still be able to get someone from there. However, later they were deceived by a general in the Shadowlands, and find out about it. Now all sides want a piece of that jackass, so they both will ralley to the cause.

HOWEVER (And this is where the replay comes in handy.)

I was a pain about this. Each character gets certain spells/skills/whatever, if anything, at certain points in the game. If you get a character too early or too late they don't get certain skills. Plus some of the characters have a prerequisite character. So if say one is killed that you didn't get to recruit earlier, then you can't get the other one.

And each character has its own class. You can have caster types, sure. But I don't have it set as like 9 mages, 9 warriors, 9 rogues kinda thing. Each one has different skills that do different things, bonuses to some mobs and weak vs others. So each and every one will have a certain charm to it, and certain play styles will be augmented by certain mobs.

~NOTE~

I'm not totally heartless. I will add the option to dismiss characters that don't work for ya. Which will reset the triggers for the different characters which will allow you to try again. Heh. Yes, I am putting a hell of alot of work into this, but my opinion is:

"Anything worth doing is worth kicking large quantities of ass at."

Good luck figuring all this out. Heh.

[Taylor-MadeAK]

Dismiss characters?  Are you implying that there will be a limit to the number of characters you can have recruited at any one time?  How does that fit with the "gotta catch 'em all" mentality that players like Fox have?

With that many characters, what kind of party setup are we looking at?  Four character party?  Six character party?  More?  Less?

Separate front/back rows?  That seems pretty required, to me.  I liked how FF6 handled that, actually: all characters can be put either in front or back, regardless of vertical position in the party lineup (a la FF4 & 5).

As for hate, it just makes sense to me for your enemies to be able to use basic strategy on your party like you do with large groups of enemies.  If you, the player, are facing a group of six enemies and one in particular has the ability to wipe the floor with your ass, you're going to target that bastard with everything you got to kill it in the first round if possible.  The enemies should be able to do exactly that, if you ask me.  They do it in MMORPGS, but not in a 2D SPRPG to date that I know of (FF12, however, does it...but that game takes a lot of its features from FFXI).

[Eternimus]

No, you misunderstand me. There isn't a ~limit~ to how many you can have. But you can't have some if you have others. On the same note, you have to have some of them to get others. Let's use some of the people here as an example.

If... let's say TM is a gay basher. (I know you aren't, but this is an example.) He tells everyone they don't have to be gay. Preaches you can change. You couldn't recruit Scooter, cause Scooter wouldn't put up with that sh**.

Oni doesn't want to participate. Far as he's concerned, someone else can pull his weight. Brewer TM decides to participate and decides to go. Oni would eagerly join, even with the gay bashing, for the booze. And then you could recruit Fox and Kritter, cause Oni would use them as meat shields.

However Kritter wouldn't go if I was going, because I creep her out cause I flirt with her. However, if I was going, Crimson would be recruitable, cause she'd want to follow me.

Basic concept.

Party size is 4, and odds are I'll have a front row and back row. But once again, still trying to script the stuff is a pain. Not used to this scripting language. But I'm getting it.

[Goman Fox]

TM's mention of rows gave me an idea I figured I'd share, because it's something I've only seen once in a game (one of the Breath of Fire games I think) that I would love to see again.  I figure if you can't use it in this game or don't want to, maybe it'll fit in better in a future game you can make.

Anyways, the idea is special battle formations that give your characters different stat adjustments in combat.  For example, if you have a party of four, you could make a defensive formation where three party members stand in front of a single party member, giving that one party member a massive boost to defense, while weakening their attack, and possibly smaller changes to defense/attack for the members in front.  Or maybe with the hate system, instead of just getting a defensive boost, it would make monsters less likely to attack the one in back since it's harder to get to.

I'm not sure what all formations could be used, but I would think that in the beginning you would only have the basic formation and maybe one or two others, while the rest would be acquired later in the game.  For example, you could maybe learn of formations by reading tactical books, or finding NPCs that could train your party.  Maybe you could even have one recruitable character be a Tactician that would really suck in combat when it comes to attack and defense and such, but having them in your battle party would unlock certain great formations that wouldn't be available any other way.

Or, another idea I had, is that if the majority of the party members "match up" well, certain formations would become available.  Like, say, your party mostly has a military background, they may use certain formations that use their expertise.

Formations wouldn't even have to be useful to every player either, maybe some would only fit certain play styles.  Like maybe, using the example I used earlier, if one character is being protected by three others, instead of boosting defense, maybe it could be used as a way to help the back character, a "mage" or "archer" type, concentrate/aim their attacks and boost their attack power.  But since they would be focusing more on attacking, they would probably lose a huge amount of their defense.

Anyways, that's all I had on that idea.  If you haven't already planned out your entire game's list of features and use it, awesome.  If not, it's an idea that you could use someday if you wanted, or even just a written record that I can look back on if I ever make a game.  But I do have a few more questions, since I'm really curious about this game.

You mentioned before that decisions you make in the game affect it directly.  Does that mean that the storyline can change drastically if you make different decisions in different playthroughs?  Like will the main conflict of the story be different, or is it like taking different paths to the same general ending (same main villain or whatnot).

Also, this is just personal curiosity here, will there be any characters that have uses other than battles and such?  I've always loved the semi-"useless" characters in games that actually do have their own unique purposes in battle and such.  Stuff like the Tactician I mentioned, or Merchants (sometimes found in Dragon Warrior/Quest games).  Maybe characters that distract the enemy, or confuse it, or study it to help the party exploit weaknesses.

Another thing, will recruitable characters get time, through the main story or sidequests, to really develop aside from when you first pick them up?  One thing that always disappointed me about the Suikoden games is that aside from the characters you pick up during the story, you don't really ever learn much about the other characters.  And even the ones you pick up during a story generally stop talking in major scenes after you get them.  Something like FF6 would even be cool enough, like if you bring certain characters to certain events, or just doing their own personal sidequests, you learn more about them.  LOL, every time I play FF6, I always bring Sabin and Edgar to Figaro Castle together as soon as I can just to get the cutscene about their past.  And after that, I always bring them along when meeting Setzer the first time for the little comment about Edgar's double-sided coin.

One last quick question for now:  How are you making this game?  Are you using a basic helper program, like an RPG Maker program, and adding tons and tons of custom content to it, or are you making it without a game-making program?

[Eternimus]

Formations are a pain in the ass. I dunno if I'll put them in this version. Front and back, probably. But there are characters whose entire skill set is either status effects or debuffs.

Yes, the storyline will change. The basic problem will remain, how you get to the end will differ, and if all goes according to plan, the game's ending itself will change, as will what you do at the end.

And I always have some, if limited, character development. Cause no one wants to play a game where "Why the hell is this guy helping? Why does he even CARE?"

And finally, I finally decided on RMVX/XP with Ruby script.

[Goman Fox]

And finally, I finally decided on RMVX/XP with Ruby script.

Is the Ruby that RPG Maker programs use (RGSS/RGSS2) similar enough to Ruby that you learned how to use it from knowing how to use Ruby first, or was there anything specific to RGSS that you found that helped you figure it out?

I've always been curious to try making a game in RPG Maker, but since I don't know how to use the scripting language in it, I never did any serious projects with it.

If it was just knowing Ruby that helped you, do you know of any really good sources to learn Ruby from?  Any specific books or sources that you found to be more helpful than others?

[Eternimus]

To be honest, most of my expertise with Ruby comes from reverse engineering other scripts I find online. Outside of me using RPG Maker and scripting in that, I usually didn't. Granted, I toyed with some basic scripts before, but never enough to make a game with. If you want to learn, best way for me personally, is to take someone else's hard work apart, find other scripting lines with other programs, and then improve on the system when you know what you want to do. Add what you need, take out what you don't, but never EVER just copy and paste. Then you learn nothing. Take some time with a few scripts first, before you try to dive into a game.

You ~can~ make a decent game with RPG Maker without knowing a single line of code. And that's how I started. With RPG Maker 95. On a PS1. And with a good story, you may be able to keep players' attentions for a certain amount of time. Long as you keep the game fairly fast paced. But, though you can make a simple game with RPG Maker, if you want it to stick out, then custom content is a must. Thus, the scripting. If I just wanted to use RPG Maker's basic stuff, I could have a fully operational nearly bug free .exe file in a week or two. But, just being "average" isn't good enough for me when it comes to making games. I'm going to have my own company one day, so mediocrity has to go.

[Taylor-MadeAK]

Scripting is also the only way to have even simple dialog cut scenes in a RPG Maker game.

[Eternimus]

Actually, that's not true TM.

Just using the basic events you can have a transitional cut scene, where dialogue pops up all over your world into different maps, like the whole back story for my game? If you want I can teach you how to do that without ruby. That I spent a lot of time figuring out cause I didn't start with the scripting ability. RM95? I was only like 13. Maybe 14. I was still toying with DOS and BASIC. I can do some damned impressive stuff with just the basic events in the RPG maker things. You just have to be REAL creative to make it look good. I can even make an opening basically 2D movie clipping that scrolls around your map as it tells you stuff, goes into someone's castle, and starts a combat where you get curb stomped. Then the combat ends, some more dialog, and then you start the game in an infirmary somewhere in the mountains. Even with audio dialog.

[Goman Fox]

To be honest, most of my expertise with Ruby comes from reverse engineering other scripts I find online. Outside of me using RPG Maker and scripting in that, I usually didn't. Granted, I toyed with some basic scripts before, but never enough to make a game with. If you want to learn, best way for me personally, is to take someone else's hard work apart, find other scripting lines with other programs, and then improve on the system when you know what you want to do. Add what you need, take out what you don't, but never EVER just copy and paste. Then you learn nothing. Take some time with a few scripts first, before you try to dive into a game.

That actually makes a lot of sense, it's just like learning any other spoken language, the best way to do it is to actually experience it (speaking it/listening to it being spoken), while reading about it in textbooks and such might work too, you would probably learn slower and eventually hit a block where you couldn't learn more from a book.  As for "copy and pasting", the only good I could see that doing is memorization (only if you're copying it by hand of course), which leaves you inflexible in spoken languages, and is damn near useless in programming, lol.

I think I'll have to brush up on my Ruby basics and do what you suggest, looking around on some RPG Maker forums for scripts that are posted and try to figure 'em out.  I know there are some features I'd like to see in my own game that actually have full scripts posted, so that would probably be a good start.

[Eternimus]

In my studying of Ruby, I came across some Ebooks about it. I harvested them promptly. If you would like I can send em to ya.