Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Sun Nov 12, 2017 11:30 pm

Okay, okay, more thoughts rocking me like a hurricane.

I've actually been thinking that, nowadays, I tend to prefer quick replay-heavy rogue-likes to traditional Final Fantasy-esque adventures, the likes of which RPGMaker is designed to produce. Specifically, I have a soft spot for outer space rogue-likes, like FTL, Prospector and Into Space. I'll also mention Star Trek Online, which my brain lumps in with the rest of them. RPG Maker's event system is pretty versatile, so even though it's not exactly designed for if I think I could manage a Space Rogue-like in MV.

It would be interesting to do a game with a combination of starship battles and personnel battles, like Star Trek Online does. Starship battles would involve modeling starships, but that's something I was going to do for the previous games anyways, and they don't need to be animated which is nice. I liked Star Trek Online's system of placing one of your crew members at a bridge station to give your ship an ability. For example, if one of your tactical officers is at a bridge station, your ship will have an ability to fire a volley of torpedoes, while if your science officer is at the bridge station, they can grapple an enemy ship with a tractor beam and prevent it from moving. But I'm not exactly sure how to do that. I think I could have you treat the bridge stations as "characters" in combat, and equip an item with the name of your crewmembers that give the ability, but then if one of your crewmembers learns a new ship ability by leveling up, or if a crewmember is supposed to gain experience by participating in starship combat, that would require some tricky event-work. Or I could have different parts of the ship appear as "characters" in the combat system, like Bridge, Tactical, Engineering and Medical, or different weapons, like the lazer cannon or torpedo tubes. These could still benefit from having a crewman attached, maybe with something simpler, like having an engineer attached increases firing speed, having a gunner attached increases damage and accuracy, etc. The main difficulty with either system would be switching from starship mode to personnel mode, cuz I'd have to remove all personnel characters from the party for starship combat and vice versa.

Since it's RPG Maker, I could try to do some kind of fantasy sci-fi hybrid, so that there's an excuse to use RPG Maker's various fantasy enemy graphics, but I think one of the cool things about space adventure is that I can go pretty far with just a few variations of the same alien races, like FTL does. This would also give me an opportunity to use Yanfly's animated enemy battlers, which would involve doing animations for everything, which is okay if there's only a few. They'll also probably be the same collection of alien anthro races that you get to build your team out of, so that saves even more time.

I'd kind of like to build randomized teams, for example, Into Space generates a list of officers with randomized names, portraits and stats, so in one game, the portrait of a cat girl is named Stripes Starbanger has skills in Piloting, Mining and Toughness, but in the next game, she's named Pussy Moonbeam and is good at Command, Engineering and Medical. And with 3D, I can easily make variations like alternate colors or different hair styles to make different characters seem more different. I know that RPG Maker has been capable of doing this since 2k3, although it can be a bit tricky. And it might be more fun to have characters that are always the same. Also, if the goal is to have porn scenes, having too many characters means I need to include a shitload of graphics for every possibility.

I think I would keep the characters and equipment pretty simple for a space adventure rogue-like. You'd have your list of alien animal races, which would probably be Fox, Rabbit, Wildcat, Lacerta, Frog, Turtle, Spurdog, Squid, Lobster, Raven, Hummingbird, Swan, and then a list of sci-fi exploration jobs, like Pilot, Gunner, Engineer, Doctor, Scientist, Security, and maybe some kind of background, like Aristocrat, Military Veteran, Military Deserter, Pirate, Merchant, etc. and the character's stats and abilities are determined by this combination. There would probably be much less emphasis on leveling up and learning new "magic" than in a normal RPG.

Making random maps and planets would be tricky in RPG Maker. It might instead be interesting to have the same galaxy map or sector map and have your starting position randomized. Each region of the galaxy could have a spread of beginner to advanced missions to do, too many to complete in a single playthrough, and you have the option to stay in your starting area or go exploring. There should also be a few advanced-only areas, like pirate havens or dangerous nebulas or whatever.

As for plot, I always liked the idea of Prospector, that you are in a frontier sector and you're just trying to make enough money to buy a planet that you can retire to after a life of adventures. Or Star Trek Online's angle of roaming around the galaxy listening for distress signals or taking missions from Star Fleet Command when necessary. I'm less interested in FTL's or Into the Star's "fate of humanity" heavy plotlines, especially not if your real goal is to get with alien anthro space babes.

Which leaves the question of how to add pornography to this concept. I think the appeal of games like this is that you have a natural tendency to "fall in love" with the characters that you go on adventures with, so it makes sense to allow you to pursue these relationships with them further through some kind of game interaction. The real problem is the technical difficulty of doing 3D sex scenes for every possible characters. In the end, I may have to negociate with myself and tone this down a bit.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Mon Nov 13, 2017 11:58 pm

So I decided to see if RPGMaker MV's included Sci-Fi tileset would be suitable for making spaceships:
https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/25 ... 75f24c769d
Image

I dunno, it's okay. It's really meant for modern day, so a near-future spaceship look isn't too bad. There's a lot of things like brick walls and hardwood floors, which I mean, sure, you could put into a spaceship, but it doesn't scream futuristic. I guess I could make a joke about it, especially if it's something like pirates or space entrepreneurs, they might want to make their ships look more personalized. Also, making ships with living quarters and so on is okay, but doing more traditional sci-fi fare like an engine room I probably don't have the tiles to convey that. So I'll need to think a little carefully about how ships look.

Although, I like the idea of boarding enemy spaceships and attacking the crew, but I guess I don't necessarily have to ever have you board another ship, ships could only fight in ship-to-ship combat and away teams only go to alien planets. (and probably starbases though)
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Tue Nov 14, 2017 5:17 am

So I've also been thinking, if I find myself too unsatisfied trying to bend RPG Maker into a space opera, I could try to do the same concept with pirate ships instead of space ships. A lot of same jobs, like Doctor and Gunner were used on pirate ships, and there's stuff like an Engineer that would translate to Carpenter or Shipwright, a little less glamorous, but good enough to be useful in-game. And I can always make them fantasy pirates with crystal engines and stuff to excuse a more Trekkian approach.

*GASP*

Wait wait wait! Or I could make them Pirates of the Astral Plane, fantasy pirates that sail the starry seas through different dimensions to seek their fortune! Might look kinda like the Dorgenark from Rogue Galaxy:
Image

Although now that I think of it, previous versions of RPGMaker had pirate ship tiles, I don't think MV has any especially good ones. But there is wood, and I do have a 3D pirate themed graphic pack, which I love, so I could possibly just snap pictures of my 3D pirate ships if I can't make it look right within RPG Maker. Actually, since I like the towns and docks and stuff that come with the pack too, I wonder if I could make prerendered maps, like in the old PS1 RPGs. Cuz honestly, (leans in and speaks more softly), there are a lot of little perspective things that drive me nutz about RPG Maker MV's map tiles. Even though it's more work, it would kinda be a plus not to mess with them...

Ooh, if they are Caribbean Pirates, maybe I could do some Caribbean themed animals, like parrots and iguanas and, uh... I guess I'll have to look up what animals live in the Caribbean. Or I could steal the ones from Legends of the Hidden Temple.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Tue Nov 14, 2017 3:34 pm

So I am starting to wonder if adding pornography to a game (or a game to pornography) is an unnecessary burden. And after playing a lot of indie games on Steam, even seeing a lot of RPG Maker games, I feel like I want to get a piece of that action myself, and Steam is not cool about nudity.

But I still like porn, and such a decision would not stop me from making porn, I just wouldn't try to cram into the game itself. I could still use the 3D models and sets to do porn on Patreon or here somewhere. I've also seen a couple games on Steam where the game you download from Steam is not pornographic, but you can download a patch from the developers' website that adds pornographic content to the game. I'm really sure if or how you could do this in RPG Maker MV. For a long time, all the graphics were "loose" in the file folder, but MV started compiling it into a single exe. I'll have to look that up.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Fri Nov 17, 2017 6:03 am

Whelp, thought I'd try using the legit RPG Maker forum for advice, but they are complete douchebags. You know, kudos to Legend of Krystal for running a decent forum here, and thanks for indulging me and my ramblings.

I am going to repeat some non sexual stuff here now:

Thinking about a little world-building right now, I'm remembering an old space adventure campaign setting that I thought up ages ago for an all-human setting, I think it could work for anthros as well. There are several factions that are pretty shamelessly derived from popular space opera.

Star Patrol - A multi-planetary police/peace-keeping force similar to Star Trek's Federation and Star Fleet.
Imperium - A authoritarian empire, similar to Star Wars' Galactic Empire, it is fueled by propaganda, its soldiers and citizens believe wholeheartedly that only the Imperator is capable of ruling. They are possibly run by Genobles.
Corsortium - A merchant organization obsessed with wealth. Kinda like Star Trek's Ferengi Alliance, but a more serious satire of the dangers of unfettered capitalism. They are possibly run by Genobles.
Pirate Alliance - Space pirates with a code of ethics and loose organization. Possibly more of a privateer force, or a former privateer force that has spiraled out of control. Possibly like Outlaw Star's space pirates which are more like the Mafia.
Hunters Alliance - An organization of Bounty Hunters that organizes jobs and payment for its members.
Space Barbarians - A warrior culture with might-makes-right ethics. They believe that living by instinct is the true purpose of life. Kinda like Star Trek's Klingons, but more extreme.
Genobles - "Genetically Enhanced Nobility" A real-life fear of genetic enhancement is that only the wealthiest will be able to afford the best enhancements and then they will use their enhancements to grow more wealthy and use their wealth to prevent others from having what they have. This could either be a faction on its own or the ruling leaders of the Imperium or Consortium.
Academy of Exploration - Kind of like an old Victorian era scientific society, they are, on paper, purely interested in the pursuit of science, but internal rivalries and lack of concern for life can cause them to act cold heartedly and destructively. The Academy can also have some Mad Scientist type characters.
*Psionic Knighthood - A cross between Star Wars' Jedi Knights and Star Trek's Klingons, they have a very strict code of honor, which may seem barbaric to outsiders. Having psionic/jedi powers supposes the existense of "magic" which I'm not sure I want for this game. They might be combined with or replaced with Space Barbarians.
*Oblivion Order - A faction that is opposed to the Psionic Knighthood, like Star Wars' Sith.
*Swarm - A race of robots that have gone berzerk and try to take over the galaxy or kill all humans or whatever. Implies the existence of at least quasi-intelligent robots, which I'm not sure I want for this game.

Possible counter idea to either the Psionic Knights or the Swarm is an organization that specializes in cybernetic enhancements and augmentations. Possibly a little like Star Trek's Borg, but I never liked how the Borg is an invincible force of nature. They should have some sense of humanity and ability to negotiate.

To keep the work load low, you're probably not going to be able to officially join any of these organizations, but they might give you missions or you might fight against them at some points. Like Star Patrol might ask for help against an invasion of Space Barbarians or the Consortium might ask you to defend a shipping lane from Pirates.

There's also the thought of having homeworlds and racial empires, like the Foxoid Homeworld, Sharkoid Empire, etc, but I feel like this is more limiting. It'd be kinda like the Gym Leaders in Pokemon, if you're fighting the Sharkoid Empire and all the Sharkoids have a specific set of strengths and weaknesses, all you have to do is adjust your party and equipment and you can breeze through them. And storywise, if the Sharkoid Empire is the antagonist, then how do you get Sharkoid party members? So it might still be fun to find a Foxoid colony on the frontiers of space, or the Imperium might send a Sharkoid legion to attack a water world, but I think the major factions should be multi-racial.

While I'm at it, let me share my current lists of animals. I've actually got 2 lists, one which I felt was more generic, and then another which was more piratey, since another version of this game concept was pirates or space pirates. Since I'm not a traditional furry, I want to offer a selection of different animal types, so I settled on 3 mammals, 3 birds, 3 herps, 3 sea creatures. My rules for animals is that I want to use only wild animals, and only small animals, since I feel weird if something like a cat and a bear are the same size.

Generic List: Fox, Hare, Wildcat, Raven, Falcon, Swan, Lacerta, Tortoise, Tree Frog, Spurdog (a small shark), Squid, Lobster.
Piratey List: Raccoon, Monkey, Rat, Parrot, Seagull, Flamingo, Iguana, Sea Turtle, Tree Frog, Spurdog, Squid, Lobster.

I'm torn. On the one hand, part of my profit plan is to sell the character graphics on the side, so being generic with the characters should give people more of what they want, but I feel like the piratey animals are a little more fun. Although for mammals, ditching foxes, hares and cats seems like a mistake.



(This post is sort of a repeat, but there are a few new thoughts)

Another thing I've been thinking about is space battles vs away team battles. Having both was one of the features I really enjoyed about Star Trek Online. In STO, you have a party of about 4-5 people. On away missions (i.e. exploring an alien planet on foot, boarding another starship) your crew hangs around with you, a lot like a JRPG party. In Space Battles, your ship has bridge stations, and you can assign your crew to them to get different abilities. So for example, if a tactical officer might have abilities that charge phasers faster, while engineers can buff shields or engines.

Doing something like this in RPGMaker would be an interesting challenge. My first thought is that away missions use the side-view battle system while ship battles use the first person battle view. Your ship has 4 stations like Bridge, Guns, Engineering, Medical or Laser Turret, Torpedo Tubes, Command Center, Shields, etc, that are really RPGM Actors and each station can equip items, like weapons, shields and a character or two that mans the station and gives it some kind of stat boost or abilities to use.

The tricky thing is switching between the two systems. For equipping a party member to the station, it's simple enough to make an equipment item with the party member's name, but if you want the party member to gain experience for space battles, or if you want the character to gain new ship battle abilities by leveling up, I don't really know how to do that. Or if you want different names for the stats of people and stations, like if you want people to have Intelligence and Health and stations to have Shields and Hull. Very interested to hear any ideas on this.

I fear that even if I came up with a way to switch, it would be buggy or feel odd, so in the end it might be best to skip one of the battle systems or keep one of the two battle systems very very simple. There's a certain sense is skipping away the away team battles, since those require extra graphics (although I'm making the graphics with 3D, so it's less arduous than spriting). I would still like to have maps to explore, but the actual encounters could be resolved through text and skill checks instead of the RPG Maker combat system, akin to FTL or Into the Stars. Or something like that could be done for ship battles, the ships roll dice a few times, and if you win ship-to-ship combat, your away team boards the enemy ship to finish them off and loot it, or if you lose ship-to-ship, the enemy boards you and you fight them off of your own ship. Or I might be able to put together a simple ship-to-ship combat system using the menu selection dialog and some variables.



Also, I've been being introspective, and I think maybe part of why I keep losing interest in things is because I keep trying to do small projects so I can get something done quickly, but the small projects still have hang-ups and take a long time and I get frustrated working on something that's just a stepping stone to the kinds of huge crazy projects I really want to work on. So hopefully, going all in on a project like this is the boost that I need.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Fri Nov 17, 2017 8:01 pm

Okay, so I think I'm getting a firm sense of what combat and equipment will look like, which will help me determine what animations I need.

Each character can equip one melee weapon (dagger, knuckle, laser sword, etc) and one ranged weapon (pistol, rifle, rocket launcher, etc). The melee weapon determines their normal attack strength, like a normal RPG weapon, while the ranged weapon replaces RPG magic. MP will be called NRG and comes from the ranged weapon, so a character with no gun equipped will have 0 NRG (Maybe something like an electric eel or a zoltan could have their own NRG reserves, but I've got no plan to include such a race for now). Advanced guns will also come with different modes of fire, like rapid fire, wild shot, wide burst, charge shot, stun, etc. So you'll get a combat category called Shoot or Gun which will include all the modes of fire. I'm going to use Yanfly's CTB, so I can do stuff with speed and timing as well.

Other equipment could include some kind of shields that increase defense or evasion (I prefer energy shields to armor because then you can dress in skimpy outfits and still have good defense) (okay, yes, but now it makes sense). And a collection of gadgets that would give some kind of inherent bonus or non-shooting combat ability, like a medical kit that allows healing. Some gadgets might grant an exploration ability, like a hacking kit that allows you to unlock doors or mining or botany kit that allows you to collect resources.

That does leave me uncertain as to how to approach RPGMaker's TP system. In RPGM-MV, MP is like traditional magic, starts full and depletes as you use spells, while TP starts at 0 (or near 0) and increases whenever your characters take damage or deal damage, like a fighting game, and then you can spend TP on certain moves. It's ideal for something like Limit Breaks or Super Moves, but I'm not sure about including something like that in this game since it's a little too magical. What I might do is use TP for job or personality skills, like a commander can use TP to inspire confidence in the rest of the team, or a warrior can go berzerk or a trickster can confuse an enemy. I'd have to think about what determines this. I think it's also possible to turn TP off, but I do like the strategic element that it offers.

Last time I mentioned doing simple ship-to-ship combat with the RPG Maker event system instead of the main combat system. I had figured that MV still had the default 4 choice limit, but no, MV has 6 choices. These can be expanded upon with plugins, but honestly, 6 seems fine. And it's easy enough to have a choice that goes into more choices, like choosing Weapons goes to Lasers and Torpedoes, or you could choose Crew Powers and go to Spock's Power, Data's Power, O'brian's Power, Seven of Nine's Power, or whatever. Although that brings me to a point, that it would probably be kind of difficult to code different crew powers with the event system, so I don't know how that will work.



So before I finalize a list of animal races, I want to finalize what stats there are, so that I can make a good balance. By default, MV comes with Max HP, Max MP, Attack, Defense, Magic Attack, Magic Defense, Agility and Luck, but you can change the names of these stats and adjust their formulas. There are also hidden stats like Hit, Evasion, Critical rate, etc. So the races will not be differentiated by MP since they get their NRG from equipment. I sometimes feel like there's no point in having both Max HP and Defense since they both do the job of making it take longer to die. Final Fantasy Tactics had no defense stat, instead, equipping armor would increase your max HP and equipping shields would increase evasion. Alternatively, I could have max HP always be 100, and use the defense stat. M.Atk and M.Def don't make a lot of sense for this setting, since there are guns instead of magic, although there might be something like Willpower that allows you to defend against psionic attacks or something, except that there isn't going to be a lot of "magic" like that. (Although something like FTL's mind control device would be acceptable) I know Agility in RPG Maker allows you to act faster in default combat and get more turns in the CTB system, but I think it also gives you better hit and evasion in combat, though I'm not sure about this. It would be nice to have a separate stat for both raw speed and grace, especially for animals, since something like a wallaby is fast but not very gracefully and a crocodile is graceful but not very fast. (Grace isn't exactly the right word, maybe more like dexterity) Luck affects your ability to deliver or avoid status changes. This I do like for animals, since something like a snake should be better at inflicting status changes than a rabbit for example, but I wouldn't call it Luck, maybe Guile or Trickiness or something like that. If I can change the formulas, I could make Willpower a defense against status changes in general, not just mental ones. It might be interesting to have an Intelligence stat, for using gadgets and maybe for some exploration skill checks.

So now we've got Max HP, NRG, Atk(Strength?), Intelligence, Speed, Grace/Dexterity, Guile, and Willpower. Next step is to fill out the stats for each animal race and make sure I've got a good mix.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Fri Nov 17, 2017 9:09 pm

Okay, here's what I've got:

stats.png
stats.png (18.5 KiB) Viewed 2245 times


5 is best, 1 is worst. The numbers at the bottom are totals, so I can see that I've got a lot of Strength oriented animals and not a lot of Guile oriented animals. There's probably more mammals than I actually want, but I'm not sure if I want to narrow it down to my 3 favorites or I might just allow extra mammals. I also did stats for rabbits, but I realize I just don't much care for rabbits. Wallabies are similar but more interesting. I don't know if it's necessarily a bad thing for there to be few Guile to be in the minority, it makes sense for tricks and status changes to be kinda rare, but having such high strength in a space age game feels a little weird, so the Badger, Wallaby and Wildcat would be most likely to get dropped. I don't particularly care for Rats, but they strike me as the only good animal for exactly average stats and I do like an exactly average option in a game like this.
Last edited by AcetheSuperVillain on Sat Nov 18, 2017 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Sat Nov 18, 2017 1:42 am

Actually, I guess Foxes could be the exactly average animal instead of Rats.

Another idea floating around in my head has been to do a game with dinosaurs, sharks, robots and martians, like in the song Dinosaur Laser Fight. I could easily do a buncha different dinosaurs, martians and robots. I could make visually distinctive types of sharks, especially if I'm including prehistoric ones, but their stats would probably all be very similar and they would be less distinctive than all the other groups. Might be more fun to include other prehistoric sea creatures. Seems like a cool, funny idea, but normal animals would probably be more useful in the long run.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Sat Nov 18, 2017 8:10 pm

I kinda feel like this feels incomplete, so what I might do is up the creature count to 16 instead of 12, 4 of each type. So the mammals could be Fox (exactly average), Wallaby, Raccoon, Wildcat, as these seem like the most interesting. I can throw in a venomous snake (Cobra or Rattler) to the reptiles, to provide some more guile. Not sure about birds, maybe Ravens again. And a fourth sea creature could be lots of things, sea slug, moray, sea horse, lionfish, jelly, flying fish, lancetfish, barracuda or some kind of simple happy fish like tuna, clown fish, tang, salmon, etc. I was also thinking about maybe doing river fish and bug categories as some sort of later expansion if this project goes well. Catfish/Pleco, Pike, Sturgeon, Piranha, and Scorpion, Mantis, Ant/Wasp, Moth. Although I feel like maybe that should be balanced out with something cute and cuddly.

*sigh* I really have to tone down these enormous lists though. I just wanna do all the things!
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Mon Nov 20, 2017 9:09 am

I had a refreshingly simple time creating the mammal models:
2017_11_20_mammals.jpg
2017_11_20_mammals.jpg (79.4 KiB) Viewed 2223 times


Wallaby, Raccoon, Fox, Wildcat. Looking at them completed, I wonder if Raccoons, Foxes and Wildcats are too similar. Of course with textures, they will look more different, but good character design should be identifiable by silhouette. I would kinda like to do Gazelles, horns and hooves would be instantly recognizable, but stats would probably be uninteresting. Beavers with webbed feet and flat tails would look distinctive, and they could take over the raccoon's intelligent stat and chubby build.

Gotta think carefully about how to do the rigging for so many models, and experiment with sharing animations between different models. And outfits. And ding-dongs.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Tue Nov 21, 2017 9:15 am

I decided to start playing around with some sci-fi outfits:
Image

For now, I am borrowing most of these outfit designs from Lee Madison, "Artraccoon": https://artraccoon.deviantart.com/gallery/ This is a normal first step in character design. If I want to make sci-fi outfits, it's necessary that I study sci-fi outfits, and I find I can always absorb and retain more information by drawing something instead of simply looking at it. Usually I would do this on paper, but for high volume projects, using CG is advantageous. Since a lot of these are too closely copied from Lee Madison's designs, this is not how the exact final outfits will look, just the direction I'm pointing in. I have a few more sources I want to absorb as well.

I need to think about how many outfits I want and need. Different outfits for the different factions, discussed earlier. I'm thinking that the player will play as a faction known as "Free-Lancers", exploring the galaxy and taking jobs for profit. So, there needs to be Free-Lancer outfits, possibly as many as PC Free-Lancers, NPC Free-Lancers and Captain Free-Lancers (for the main character), then Star Patrol, Imperium, Consortium and Pirate outfits, and maybe something like "villager" outfits. I think Star Patrol, Imperium and Consortium should have some kind of standard uniform, while Free-Lancers and Pirates are more individualized.

I was also thinking about a fun challenge I could include. Dungeon Crawl has bosses known unofficially as "uniques". Unlike a story-related JRPG boss, Uniques wander around the dungeon randomly. You can meet them unexpectedly, and they are often capable of overpowering you, making encounters with Uniques very exciting. It's customary to run for your life, make a note of their location and return once you feel sufficiently powerful to survive. I think that would be a fun, organic way to spice up the exploration of random planets, if you might find a dangerous Unique there.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Sun Nov 26, 2017 6:21 am

Image

Here is a second outfit test. This set does not represent the exploration of a single artist, like last time, but a collection of "Atom Punk" artwork I found online.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Mon Nov 27, 2017 6:22 am

Here's another one:
Image

For these, I've been trying to look at outfits suitable for the Consortium faction. I find I have a fairly clear idea of what Star Patrol or Imperium should look like, but not the merchants of the Consortium. I figure, as a hyper capitalist faction, Consortium warriors would take the form of hitmen and assassins, so a few of these outfits are assassiny. Other than those, I've tried to select a gaudy, flashy look.

Again, these are mostly designs from sci-characters I found on the internet. I would need to make significant modifications for the final version.



I've also been trying to think about what sorts of things you will be able to find on planets. The classic problem with space games is that outer space is a big thing to fill, although one of the things I enjoy about Prospector is that while space is mostly empty, you get paid just for providing map data, and when you finally find a planet that isn't empty, it's all the more exciting to discover.

Anyways, I've been making a list of interesting things that one might find on a planet:
Luxury Goods: rare herbs, woods, gems, minerals, gold, pets, food, etc.
Rare Materials: metals, crystals, etc. that are used to make weapons or operate starships, like duranium and dilithium from Star Trek. (My problem with this is that space age technology should be made from things designed in a lab, not scraped out of craters in alien planets. Strikes me as too fantasty. )
Common Materials: finding things like iron, methane, He3, etc, that are highly abundant across the universe, but useful as ingredients for various space age technologies. Might be simple sell-only items or could be used for a crafting system.
Harvest Spots: Resources above may occur in the form of Harvest Spots, like in Star Ocean 4, they regenerate over time and what you get is dependent on your harvesting skill. Mining/Geology, Botony, Zoology, etc.
Colonies/Towns: Some planets and star bases should have towns with people in them. They would probably have classic RPG shops, maybe some quests, but I balk at the thought of making a galaxy worth of little RPG quests.
Date Spots: Beauty spots where you can bring a character you're in the midst of romance with. Common stuff like beaches and hot springs, or take your date to places like Olympus Mons or the Valles Marineris.
Ancient/Alien Ruins & Artifacts: A classic sci-fi trope. I'm not sure if there would actually be any alien races beyond the collection of animal people, so it might be ancient ruins instead of alien ruins.
Wreckage: Crashed spacecraft, possibly with survivors, lost treasures, or the remnants of whatever killed the crew. Some planets might be like a space north carolina and have higher than normal number of wrecks.
Enemies: Allegedly, you'll be able to run into things like Pirate lairs, rival Freelancers, or Imperium, Consortium or Star Patrol operations. I'm not exactly sure how encounters with the major factions would play out, since you should have the ability to either be friends or enemies with each of them. I might throw in something like killer cyborgs or zombies that wouldn't need some sort of exposition to start fighting. There's also the thought of alien monster things, maybe using the default RPG Maker graphics, but I feel like alien wildlife shouldn't amount to anything that much more dangerous than Earthly animals, certainly not something that would stand up against laser guns or energy shields designed to deflect laser guns.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Wed Nov 29, 2017 7:37 pm

Hey, so I could be interested in working as a team on this game. I'm going to start looking for people through the RPG Maker website, if anyone here on LoK wants to give it a shot, let me know. If you don't have an LoK account, I can be contacted through NewGrounds https://acethesupervillain.newgrounds.com/ or RPG Maker Forums https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.ph ... ain.92307/
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Fri Dec 01, 2017 12:20 am

SUCK IT SPRITERS
3D ROOLZ
ImageImageImage
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So I decided I want to make some sprites to hopefully attract people to work on the project with me. This will also give me an opportunity to feel out the process and get a sense of what I really need to do to get a game done.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Thu Dec 07, 2017 12:13 am

Boy Time:

2017_12-06-male_all.png
2017_12-06-male_all.png (116.54 KiB) Viewed 2165 times


Portrait size, battle size and map size. At first I was thinking of making their heads smaller for portraits and larger for map sprites, but large heads all the time is starting to grow on me.

So when one thinks of sexy men, one usually thinks of wider shoulders and narrower hips, but this is a wallaby and wallabies have slender shoulders and wide hips compared to other animals, so this will be more evident in other species. But this probably isn't the final version of anything yet. For now, I'm working on getting a male/female set done for at least 2 species and at least 2 costumes. This should help me understand what needs to be done for a whole game's worth of graphics and give me something to show off as I try to attract people to work with me.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Tue Dec 12, 2017 1:30 pm

Hey, so ... remember how I once kinda mentioned maybe pirates instead of space adventure?

I've been trying to think about this project practically and if my goal is to really be commercially successful on Steam, I can't be trying to make do trying to pretend RPG Maker's tiles will work for spaceships and alien planets. I also mentioned that I have other hang-ups about RPG Maker's tile sets. It's got a lot of perspective errors and doesn't always mesh well with my 3D prerender characters.

So, if I'm going to take this seriously, I need to use my own environment graphics too. And I don't have a galaxy worth of sci-fi environments, and I don't want to make that much either.

But I DO have pirate graphics.

(Click for full size)
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These are some "photos" of the demo scene that comes with the pirate pack I bought. There are definitely some things I want to touch up. The water effect is not great, the rocks and trees are too shiny, islands should not be made of sand, for example. But, this is a way better starting point than anything I have or could find in sci-fi.

Hopefully, this doesn't have to represent a major change in plans though. You can trade from island to island instead of planet to planet, you get a pirate ship instead of a space ship, jobs like captain, gunner, doctor, navigator are still valid in a pirate setting and something like engineer is just changed to carpenter or shipwright or whatever. Also, I call this setting "pirate" because, duh, but you wouldn't necessarily have to play as literal pirates, you could just have a boat and go on adventures in a tropical paradise without raping and murdering people. Although, I guess I don't see why you wouldn't.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby maximilianos » Tue Dec 12, 2017 2:16 pm

Boat-like spaceships and landning partiets make me think of uchuu senkan yamato. Make me a game adaptation!!

...other are allowed to comment right... (realized no one but you is posting. That or you remove all other posts)
I often find myself thinking that most people are utter shite. I try to be positive and prove myself wrong. So far I've yet to succeed in doing so.
On the otherhand: I know a few of the actually great people out there and that makes me happy enough.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Tue Dec 12, 2017 9:43 pm

Yes! Please comment! I get lazy if I think no one is paying attention.

I thought about pirate ships in space. My example would be Rogue Galaxy, VB mentioned Treasure Planet, I hadn't thought of SBS Yamato. But the problem is with making places to go. If you're in space, you expect to see all kinds of different alien worlds and starbases and such. You expect a Star Patrol ship innards to look different from Imperium or Pirate ship innards. And I just don't have graphics for that. Not enough to make it good.

I do have a bunch of different genre environments though, the pirate one, an urban one, some outdoor jungle and desert type stuff, some fantasy cave and dungeon type stuff, an outside but not inside samurai-era one, and an inside but not outside sci-fi one (which I used in Unity a little bit). And there's more that I could obtain if necessary, whereas with sci-fi everything is too expensive and not quite what I need. This would all seem kind of silly in space, but it might work for a genre bending adventure like Smash Bros, Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy Legend 2. That said, I don't know if that would be worth the extra work. I feel like I could do a perfectly good pirates/age-of-sail type game without all that other stuff. Maybe with ninjas though.
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Re: Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

Postby AcetheSuperVillain » Fri Dec 15, 2017 10:00 pm

So I'm trying to think about how "magic" would work in a pirate adventure. I'm talking about the RPG strategic aspect of it, using points for extra powers, for example how the "magic" for the space adventure was going to be ray guns and gadgets. But it's also worth thinking about "magic" in world building, it's certainly common for pirate adventures to have some aspect of the supernatural, like the cursed gold in Pirates of the Caribbean or the Gum-Gum fruit in One Piece, or at least a belief in the supernatural, which is central to the plot of many pirate adventures. And again, although I say "pirate", I don't necessarily mean everything in the game or world revolves around pirates, just piratey age-of-sail.

So let's start by saying I don't want traditionally RPG magic in a pirate adventure. I've seen that before and it just doesn't feel right. But I think RPG combat really needs the strategic aspect that "magic" provides.

Guns & Gadgets - That was the plan for the space adventure and pirates certainly had guns and gadgets. Back in pirate days, guns were one-shot weapons, and they also carried items like grenades, grappling hooks, boarding axes, and in a fantastical RPG, something like a compass or spyglass could have some kind of special ability in or out of combat. But this would be hard to tie into a single MP pool. A spaceman with rayguns and gadgets could believabley use the same pool of energy to both shoot his freeze ray and work his scanning device, but a pirate can't use the same pool to use both his gun and his grenades. There are RPGMaker plugins for Pokemon PP style skills, but then you might as well just have an item in your inventory for most of these tricks.

Jobclass Abilities - Different characters might have different abilities based on a piratey jobclass system, like a Captain or Quartermaster can inspire the crew, a Doctor can heal wounds, a Gunner can fire super shots, etc.

Super Kungfu - You could maybe use up MP or TP to do a super fighting move, like a Triple Slash or Renzokuken or whatever.

Curses & Enchantments - More of a world-building thing, there might be an item that is cursed or enchanted or both to give a character a supernatural ability. Because I'm not wild about Pirate Wizard Gandalf Greybeard holding his staff in the air and casting Fireball at the Spanish treasure ship, but I don't mind so much if a rum bottle recovered from the wreck of a pirate ship that caught by a fire has the ability to belch out flames in combat.

Atlantean Tech - One thought is why not just let the pirates have ray guns and sci-fi gadgets like the space adventure was going to have, they could be pirates in space or live in a futuristic world. Well, the problem with being in space is that you would still expect to fly around in space, visit weird exotic planets and places, and that's still the kind of thing I don't have art assets for. If the pirates are just in the future, it doesn't make sense to me why they would still be running around in wooden ships or living in colonial mansions or seaside shanties, which is what I have assets for. But, I could believe in a world where adventurers with pirate era technology are uncovering artifacts of a lost "Atlantean" civilization that did have the technology to create ray guns and super gadgets. I'd have to think about how available Atlantean technology is. Is this something that you can go into any Atlantean tech shop and purchase, or something you can only find in ancient temples or in the holds of well-guarded treasure ships?

Psionics - Another type of magic that I don't feel is quite so mismatched would be Psionics, as long as it were done delicately. Although I'm not wild about Psionics from a story-telling perspective, I do like the idea of Pyrokinesis, Cryokinesis and Electrokinesis, since RPG Maker comes with assets for Fire, Ice and Thunder magic and it seems like a shame not to use them. But if I embraced Psionics, my preference would be to focus on more subtle arts, like using telepathy to beguile an enemy or telekinesis to throw a sword and return it like a boomerang. Since ghosts and pirates often go together, maybe some psychic powers could work like Danny Phantom's ghost super powers.

Eldritch Arts - There's possibly some sort of massive supernatural force, like a Cthulu creature, that can grant its followers supernatural powers, maybe in exchange for loyalty or for some kind of curse. There could also be some kind of war of the gods going on, some kind of Elder Thing Cthulu-type creature of the sea, a Christian-like Holy Father or Holy Mother god from the Old World, and some kind of Spirit of the Jungle or Earth Mother from the New World. This would also come with the question of availability. Would every character require the allegiance of a god-like entity, or would this be specific to certain character types like Wizards and Clerics in older RPGs. Would the gods cancel each other out? Like if you learn Elder Thing magic, can you also learn Holy Father magic? Or if you have an Elder Thing follower in your party, does that mean you can't have a Holy Father or Jungle Mother follower? Do you risk losing your powers if you do something to anger the Elder Thing?
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