Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

[AcetheSuperVillain]

S'up. I need to talk. Helps me collect my thoughts.

(Feel free to respond to anything in this topic. I'm honestly pretty curious why it gets so many views.)

The Unity shit is not going well. I've made games before. I know it's hard. But this round of programming has been such a complete fucking pain in the ass shitstorm, I have been forced to question my commitment to making games at all. Every fucking time I touch it, something goes wrong. Every fucking thing I try to do turns into a fight with the machine. I can't take this. The fact is, I'm getting old, too. I don't have time in my life to learn another new thing, I need to pick something I'm good at and be good at it. I thought making games was going to be that thing, but fuck no, it is not. Fuck that shit.

So I don't know what I'm doing, what I'm going to do.

One ray of sunshine is that this may just be Unity's specific idiosyncrasies disagreeing with me and not games in general. Like I said, I've made games before and they weren't this terrible (although the programming aspect has never been "good"). I actually tried to make games with Unity years ago and I didn't like using Unity back then either. So maybe another program is all I need. There are a couple options, but one that sticks out to me is RPG Maker MV. Killer 48x48 tiles, HTML5 deployment and the magnificent body of plugins, like Yan Fly's various improvements. And before my plan to make porn for a living, I wanted to sell MV character graphics, like this one:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

I didn't, because in order to sell on the RPG Maker website, you need the blessing of the RPG Maker people, which is hard to obtain and I assume they can revoke at will, and that sounded like a shitshow waiting to happen. But, thanks to trying it, I have a pretty awesome (and pretty sexy) character system that I could use for my own games. There were also some restrictions I placed on myself for that sprite. The color palette is low so that buyers could edit them with 2D tools if they wanted, and I stuck with RPGM's lazy 3-frame yoyo animations so that they would not need extra plugins to work. But if I were making an actual game, or if I were making sprites to sell in general, not just for RPG Maker, I could go a bit more wild.

And I'm pretty familiar with RPG Maker too. As long as you're willing to play by their rules, it's pretty easy to use so I'm not worried crashing to a halt again. The main thing is that I want to put my 3D Animation Degree to use, which luckily I can do by prerending 3D stuff like the spritesheet above (did I mention that was 3D? that's totally 3D, very pleased with myself) and RPG Maker can easily show 3D reward CG renders and theoretically even movie files. So yeah, this option is getting me hopeful again.

If you're wondering what sort of game Ace the SuperVillain would make with RPG Maker, I have two very different and incredibly unfinished RPG Maker projects you can try out:
Saga City - A harem comedy adventure. The idea is you play as this Wildman who wanders into town and ends up covered in bitches. More story based. You will be told bluntly once you've reached the end.
Grind Storm - An RPG designed to be more challenging. I know a lot of people think of RPGs as purely story dependent, but I've always felt that they are games and games should be fun. So this exists to prove that RPGs really can be fun, and part of that fun is getting your ass handed to you by jungle rats. If you can reach the tower at the north of the island, you've reached the end.

And neither of these projects are how I would make an RPG "for real", they were just fun things to do with my time, back when I had some. Also neither of these are pornographic. I know Saga City is begging for it, but these were both made before the decision to embrace porn.

---

But you know, making games is still hard, and who knows if it's really worth my time. I do have some other options.

One thought I've had for a long time has been selling game assets. This is, frankly, the part of making games that I actually like, coming up with characters and worlds and animations and that. Getting paid for a game asset is more straight-forward than getting paid for a game. (especially since it's hard to just sell a pornographic game) I would also then have my own game assets around to use for whatever personal projects I want to do later.

I even have a specific game asset package in mind. I run a Dwarf Fortress mod called Furry Fortress which replaces that boring-ass tolkien shit with animal-cultural combinations, such as samurai foxes, English knight rabbits and Ancient Egyptian monitor lizards. Dwarf Fortress is basically text based, so I've always wanted to explore my world of Furry Fortress through artwork, and some game assets would be a fun and hopefully profitable way to do that. It's also plausible that I might combine FuFo game assets with RPG Maker. Make the FuFo characters to sell, and then make my own RPG that uses them.

But I could also say "TO HELL WITH GAMES!!!" and just make pornographic artwork, comics, animations, stuff like that. I mean, sure, I like games, heck, I love games, hell, I want to fuck the brains out of games, but does that mean I need to make games? If I'm going to write a story about a fox pilot getting into an all-girl fighter squadron, does their really need to be a shooting game on top of that? If I'm going to make 36 porn CGs, do I really need to make you play a game to unlock them? I don't know. The mind says, yeah, interactive content makes the story better, but not when the programs keep crashing down around me. That makes the story go nowhere.



I'm interested in whatever life advice you've got. For now, my plan is to probe RPG Maker MV and get more of a sense of what animation plugins and movie playing stuff is available.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Alright, so here is a sample of some RPG Maker graphics I could develop:

2017_10_18_RPGMV.png (84.14 KiB) Viewed 2709 times

On the left is Theevia, my 3D version of one of MV's RTP characters. On the right is Cascade, my shark girl that I've been using for games recently.

Theevia is specifically designed to be an RPG sprite. She looks great as an RPG sprite, but would look weird at full size:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

theevia_character.png (28.87 KiB) Viewed 2709 times

Cascade is just a regular 3D character that I shrank down to RPG size. She is a little hard to read as an RPG sprite, but looks great at full size:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

cascade_character_pose.png (89.73 KiB) Viewed 2709 times

Although I am pleased with Theevia's style of sprite, I think most of the "action" would probably be in cutscenes, not with the sprites, so adopting Cascade's style probably makes more sense.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Okay, I'm satisfied that I've got animation plugins working that will allow me to do custom animations with more than 3 frames. I've got videos working correctly and pictures working well enough. (there doesn't seem to be a way to just show a series of pictures and wait for a button input. I can show the pictures behind the RPG message box, or I can put the pictures on a timer.) With that settled, I'm left to think up what characters I want.

This leaves me to think up what characters I want in an RPG. First of all the number of characters. It's tempting to want to make a game full of characters for mixing and matching, but I think that would make sex scenes difficult to organize. Like if there's 6 girls, and you can have 3 in your party at a time and you find a hot spring, it might feel weird if the prerendered cutscene involves a character that you don't have with you. So I think the ideal would be a 4 character team, maybe with 1 guy and 3 girls, oddly enough, exactly like the plan for Astro Vulpus. I thought about maybe doing it with the Astro Vulpus characters (Fox, Rabbit, Hawk and Frog) but I'm not sure if that feels balanced for an RPG game. Another idea was to use mythical creature anthros, like dragon, unicorn, phoenix, kyuubi, etc, or maybe all different kinds of dragons or dragonoids, like wyvern, tarrasque, amphisbaena, chinese-myth-dragon, longma, hydra, sea serpent, etc. I also like doing animal themes, like all american animals, or australian, or chinese, or sea critters, but for these sorts of things I like to have a big list of critters instead of just 4.

That said, it might be better to have the sexualization come from NPCs in the world, rather than the party members. So this might end up more like Knarf's Quest or Baby Sitter's Club. Your party members for the sake of combat could be completely unrelated to the characters you bone in reward CG. It might even work kinda like Pokemon or Soda Dungeon, where "you" don't actually fight, but you've got a team of monsters or mercenaries to do your bidding.

And actually, I do like a lot of RPG Maker's characters, so it might be interesting to go back to humans and do some kind of RPG Maker theme game. Maybe even a gender swap version or anthro versions of RTP characters, but then there's a giant endless list of characters I would want to do this to and it would get impractical. (Before switching to porn, I had an idea of some kind of giant reunion game, where you get all of the hero characters from the many generations, Alex, Zack, Luxes, Eric and Harold. Yeah, fuck that VX guy that's not Eric, I don't even know his name, he's not in this)

There are other gameplay considerations to think about too.

I don't feel like I need to go crazy with combat plug-ins, as long as I've got CTB or ATB, the built-in combat system is good enough for me. For a long time, there was a sort of row dynamic that I wanted, I've tried to make my idea work with Yanfly's Row Dynamic, and it's sort of there, but it's still pretty complicated, so I'll probably skip it. There are some item and equipment plugins I really like though. Usually I like games where a character can equip a few different kinds of weapons, like a samurai can equip katanas, spears or bows, a berzerker can equip clubs, axes and great swords, that kinda thing, but it's probably going to be immensely easier on myself if each character only uses one kind of weapon for their animation renders. But one of the plugins I've got allows you to put special upgrade slots on equipment, so that will allow me to have weapon-related-equipment that can still be shared by multiple characters. Grind Storm has the beginning of an equipment system that I've always wanted to make. There are certain equipment shops, "Sages", that specialize in a particular material, and you need to bring it to them for stuff. So like, "buying" an item from the Ironwood Sage consumes Ironwood from your inventory instead of spending money. This is easy enough to accomplish by fooling around with Events, but there's also a couple plugins like Item Synthesis and Multiple Currencies that could help me go deeper with the idea.

Another idea that I guess I should test is this idea of equipping a special kind of item that gives your characters a jobclass. It's possible in RPGMaker MV to have equipment that changes your ability to equip other equipment, for example, a ring that allows you to equip great swords, plus classic stuff like raising and lower stats by fixed amounts or by percentage, or granting access to magic or skills while the equipment is on. With plugins, equipment can also grant passive auras or different counter types or TP modes or whatever. So the idea is, you'd find items out in the world like Knight's Orb, Rogue's Orb and Mage's Orb that grant your character access to jobclass specific equipment, stat changes and skills. You probably find better ones over the course of the game, so like you might find Page's Orb then Knight's Orb then Templar's Orb, or possibly you produce these things by upgrading with item synthesis. A related thought was doing a game where Elements are jobclasses. So instead of a Knight's Orb that raises your defense, a Rogue's Orb that raises agility and a Mage's Orb that raises magic, a Fire Orb raises magic, Thunder Orb raises agility and Ice Orb raises defense. This could match well with the dragon characters idea. The elemental-jobclass-equipment item could also be some kind of living thing, like Djinn from Golden Sun, Espers from FF6, Shamans from Breath of Fire 2, Mana from Atelier Iris, probably some other games do it too. For that matter, a living thing could give you knightly, roguely or magely powers too.

Anyways, that's where I'm at with it right now.

[maximilianos]

I hope you're not quitting the animal updates right? ;D
(though I still wish you good luck on your game)

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Well, if I'm honest about it, the animal thing is almost always a sign that I'm procrastinating. I did a lot of them recently because I kept feeling anxiety about touching Unity. However, I had a rough night's sleep or something and I can't think straight enough to do anything useful for RPG Maker, so maybe now's a good time to get Real-as-Fuck...

EDIT: So tonight's episode was an Amazon jungle critter, and it got me thinking about maybe doing an Amazon river animal theme. Potential critters could be the Caiman, Anaconda, Giant Otter, River Dolphin, Arapaima, Electric Eel, Tapir, Capybara, Piranha, Paccu, Red Tail Catfish, maybe Jaguar, Jags can hunt in the water, but they're not really a river animal.

So actually, let's do the other theme lists too,

American Animals: Coyote, Bison, Alligator, Bald Eagle, Cougar, Skunk, Chuckwalla, Snapping Turtle, Gila Monster, Road Runner, Grizzly, Pronghorn, Bighorn, Raccoon, Prairie Dog, Peccary, American Badger, Grey Squirrel, Horny Toad, Kangaroo Rat, Sidewinder/Rattler, Blue Jay, American Lobster, Manatee, Canada Geese, Turkey, White Tail Deer, Caribou, (yeah, so there's a lot more than that and already too many, might split it down to something like Appalachian animals or Wild West animals, or NYC animals)

Australian Animals: Kangaroo, Wallaby, Rock Wallaby, Swamp Wallaby, Wallaroo, Cockatoo, Kookaburra, Wedgie, Goanna, Bungara, Perentie, Salty, Freshy, Aussie Magpie, Sarcophilus (Tazzy Devil), Quoll, Koala, Wombat, Bandicoot, Quokka, Bush Turkey, Emu, Cassowary, Platypus, Echidna, Yabby, Mantis Shrimp, Ghost Crab, Leafy Sea Dragon, Jack Jumper Ant, Redback, Huntsman, Taipan, Python, Mulga, Sea Turtle, Sea Krait, Tawny Frogmouth, Fairy Penguin, Fur Seal, Frilled Lizard, Bearded Dragon, Water Dragon, Thorny Devil, Blue Tongued Skink, Leopard Gecko, Blue Dragon Sea Slug (not the Glaucus one, the other one), Sharks, Sawfish, Wobbegong, Stone Fish, Box Jelly, Flying Fox, Sugar Glider, Dingo, Budgie, could also do some of the problem pest species, cats, rabbits, pigs, cane toads, camels, brumbies, water buffalo.

Chinese Animals: Tiger, Chinese Alligator, Giant Panda, Red Panda, Shika, Tanuki, Giant Salamander, Water Deer, Muntjac, Pangolin, Red Crowned Crane, Golden Snub-Nose Monkey, Saiga Antelope, Leopard, Pheasant, Wild Boar, Cobra, Water Dragon, Draco Lizard, Pika, Tree Frog, White Dolphin, Mekong Catfish, Koi.

Furry Fortress: Japanese (Samurai) Foxes, English Hares, Ancient Egyptian Monitors, Chinese (Historical) Pangolins, Indian Cobras, Siamese/Indonesian Robber Crabs (or Mantis Shrimp), Viking Ravens (or Seagulls), Pan-African Honey Badgers, Middle East/North African Gazelles, German Raccoons, Greco-Roman Army Ants, Australian Aboriginal Wallabies, Ninja Frogs, Kungfu Cranes, Pirate Spurdogs. (There was a longer list, but this is already more than might be practical)

So the idea is that the Foxes wear kimonos and wield katanas and live in pagodas, while the Hares wear tunics and wield bills and live in castles, and so on for each race. I like this as an idea for a strategy game or something, but I'm not sure how to approach the concept as a JRPG. The sensical thing would be to have each race as a separate town or nation out in the world, but then that means if your party is visiting the Monitor town, your Japanese Foxes and English Hares are all going to have Egyptian khopeshes and ankh staffs from the local shop. There is also the implication that these nations probably don't get along with each other, but the player would obviously want a diverse party, so why is your group of species traveling together and why do the nations you visit allow you in? Also, I've always imagined Furry Fortress as a low-magic setting, so it would be more of a super kungfu powers world, or sword & sorcery kind of stuff.

Mythical Creatures:
Horses: Unicorn, Pegasus, Hippocampus/Kelpie, Longma, Nightmare, Horsetaur,
Dragons: Drake, Wyvern, Wyrm, Hydra, Sea Serpent, Amphisbaena, Amphiptere, Tarrasque, Gargouille, Longma, Chinese Myth Dragon, Naga, Orochi,
Other: Griffon, Phoenix, Chimera, Kyuubi, Tengu, Kappa, Kirin, Golem, Treant, Minotaur or Ushioni, Basilisk, Kraken, Cerberus, Water Horse (Plesiosaur), Slime, Leviathan, possibly Ogre/Oni and Elf or Nymph.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

(really finding it helps to think when I'm writing)

Okay, I need to think about this more directly. If I do the jobclass item thing, it doesn't make sense to have a lot of characters in the party. 4 to fill it up, and then you can customize them however you want. So it'll be more like FF5. If the weapons are locked into the pre-render and jobclasses are determined by items, the animal/character is just representing the base stat, so I just need to come up with 4 sets of balanced base stats and animals to match.

ALTHOUGH, if I do a bunch of Dragon Anthros, I don't really need weapons. It'll make more sense for Wyvern Girl or Hydra Girl to attack with bites or tail slaps or something. The weapon slot equipment slot could be the jobclass item, probably the elemental version for dragons. I could also do it with the Dragonny animals from the Dragonny episode, err, episodes, of Real-as-Fuck Animals. Maybe... Lancet Fish, Megabat, Cobra and Blue Dragon Sea Slug? God dammit, Ace, mythical dragons are fine, stop coming up with more ideas, GOD! Besides, this is no time for inside jokes, or self referential character selection or whatever you would call it.

Alright, fine, good, so the party is 4 dragons, I think still 1 male and 3 females. So probably the male dragon might get to be the Tarrasque, since this is an ankylosaur or glyptodont looking thing (love how I just expect you to know what those are?) and I know that I've had trouble making turtles look curvy sexy (I can do cute, but not sexy) so that's probably better for the guy. Also, Fayt Leingod and Laharl were two of my favorite RPG heroes (in terms of gameplay) and they were basically defense oriented, so I wanna try that in my own game. I wanna do Hydra, Wyvern and Longma for the gals, this is a good balance of body shapes. Wyvern and Longma would both be good speed characters, but to keep it balanced, I think Wyvern could be more of an offensive focused character, maybe a glass cannon. Longma can be pure speed, or maybe speed and defense, and then Hydra is magic user type, and the Tarrasque is defensive or physical oriented. And to reiterate, this is just base stats, so if Lightning Orb raises speed and lowers defense, the Tarrasque with Lightning Orb will be more of a balanced character.

Alright, so today's mission is to start doing some concept art for the dragon girls.



So in the back of my mind, I am kinda thinking back to my larger scheme for Saga City that I never got around to. The idea there is you get one guy (the Wildman) who has high balanced stats and a slow growth rate and not much by way of skills, and then a bunch of jobclassy chicks, the original list being Paladin, Dragoon, Ninja, Pirate, Mage, Healer. The Wildman enters Saga City alone, and ends up meeting each of these women one at a time and they all attracted to him, ideally in some kind of humorous way. (In some cases not necessarily in love, like the Ninja thief wants to exploit him for profit, the Mage likes him as a meat-shield, etc) After finishing up all the solo encounters, the Wildman goes back home and finds all 6 of them waiting for him. (In the original, the idea is that the Wildman saves the innkeeper from a gang of thieves in the opening act. Thankful and lust-drunk, the innkeeper gives him the super suite for free and forever. When the 6 playable chicks show up at the inn waiting for the Wildman, the innkeeper is torn between jealousy and needing the money, especially after she's given away the super suite.) In addition to exploring the world for glory and profit, you would periodically be presented with Duo Dungeons, where you take the Wildman and one of your honeys into a story related dungeon. At the end of each mission, you get some kind of romantic episode that brings that character closer to Wildman, and also either teaches the girl a new combat skill or teaches one of her combat skills to Wildman.

And I'm sure a lot of you are saying "Wow! That sounds like a great idea! You should make that game!" Well, maybe someday, but writing is hard, or at least, when the fountain of writing flows, it flows, and when it dries up, it dries up, and there's not a lot I can do to force it. It also takes a lot of foresight to do a project like that, planning or building things in advance, which I'm not great at, and for the purposes of LoK and Patreon, it means a long time before I have anything to show for myself. So I'd like to pick up Saga City again someday, but for now, I need a win, so I need to work on something simpler.

(I know you probably read these things and think, WTF AceSV, you write fucking mountains of text on a nearly daily basis??? I know, but that "what happens next?" aspect of story writing is a different kind of thing. Spent days staring blankly at my computer while writing Knarf's Quest and that wasn't half as complex as I would want Saga City to be)

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Concepts done:


I'm not sure about doing the wyvern like that, it looks cool but it might be hard to rig in 3D, so I might do her more like how I do bird anthros with just very long and wide arms.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

So here's the wyvern character with probably easier to rig wing/arms:

concept_wyvern2.jpg (44.4 KiB) Viewed 2670 times

I don't know if I like these wings as much. I also went looking at some more medieval images of wyverns and found some with bat ears and that barbed tongue, which I thought was interesting.

Okay, so hopefully I can start modeling tomorrow, but tonight, I want to start thinking about how equipment works. With the plugins, I have a lot of control, to the point of being a bit overwhelming at the moment.

The main thing that I've wanted to do are the Jobclass items, which for dragons can occupy the Weapon Slot and will be Elemental based. These items will be super rare, found in hard-to-reach vaults or as boss loot. Making the skill animations and the special effect graphics for them isn't my favorite thing, so I'm going to stick to the elements provided in the RTP.

Quick first draft:
Fire - PhysAtk/MagAtk focused.
- Burn - Damage + burn state
- Burnferno - Damage + burn state
- Melt - Damage, decrease Defense
- Temper - Increase Atk, Crit
- Firewall - Counter skill, burns attacks (requires an extra plug-in, so I dunno)
Lightning - AGL focused. Wild attacks, multi-hit, random targets, Paralysis and Electrocution skills
- Shock - Multi-hit, low accuracy, random target
- Shockning - Multi-hit, low accuracy, random target
- Heart-Stop - Chance of paralysis or insta-death
- Defibrillate - Revive dead party member
- Mega Storm - Long charge time for big damage
Ice - PhysDef/MagDef focused. Attacks have
- Freeze - Damage, chance of freezing
- Freezard - Damage, chance of freezing
- Ice Cage - High chance of freezing
- White Out - Blindness, Debuffs
- Brain Freeze - Silence, MagAtk down, MagDef down.
Earth - PhysAtk/PhysDef focused
- Rumble - High damage, low accuracy
- Rumblanche - High Damage, Low Accuracy
- Quake - Interrupt, time damage all (CTB)
- Stonewall - Raise PhysDef/MagDef
- Broken Ground - Reduce Agl all
Wind - EVA focused (?)
- Gust - Extra time damage (CTB)
- Gustnado - Extra time damage (CTB)
- Wind Walk - Gain Agl
- Fog - (dunno, but there's an animation for it already)
- Sonic Wave - Confusion
Water - ???
- Flood - Hits all
- Floodnami - Hits all
- Dampen - Lower ATK
- Cleanse - Heal Status Changes
- Life Fountain - HP regeneration over time
Light - ???
- Ray - HP and MP damage
- Raytribution - HP and MP damage
- (Or Smite and Smitribution)
- Meditation - can't act, but regain MP over time
Dark - ???
- Shadow - Damage and random status change
- Shadowpocalypse - Damage and random status change
- Sacrifice - Decrease HP over time, but increase MP and TP
Healing - ??? (Might be combined with Light)
- The normal RPG healing things
Venom - ??? (Maybe Luck based if Luck improves status changes) (Might be combined with Shadow)
- Status change skills
Guns - ???
- Probably a lot of straightforward damage skills. The RTP has animations for bombs, guns and lazers.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Continuing to think about equipment,

My original plan had been to use Yanfly's Augment system, but I'm not sure I really need it. Still seems fun, but in general, mo' stuff, mo' problems, so I should only use it if I really need it.

Since they are dragons, and probably naked all the time, equipping traditional stuff like armor and helmets won't make sense. First thought was to give them a set of jewelry/accessory slots, crown, necklace, belt, bracelet, anklet, or whatever, and then using the augment system, each piece of jewelry has a set of slots for augments. As you progress through the game, you find jewelry that has more augment slots, so like a silver necklace has 2 slots and a gold necklace has 3 slots, plus more effective augment items, like an Atk+5 chip or an Atk+50 chip. I can also have different types of augment slots, like a small augment slot and a big augment slot, or gem slots and rune slots or whatever. But this then would be lots and lots of items which is tricky to test and it can be tricky to cram a lot of items into a game.

The alternative to using augments and jewelry is to give the dragons a bunch of pokemon items. So they'll find and equip stuff like Leftovers and King's Rocks.

It's actually a little annoying how the game does equipment restriction. Instead of being able to adjust each item manually, you have to give each item a category, like light armor, heavy armor, magical, etc, and then each character (or actually class) can or can't equip each thing. Which means if you're doing something like elemental jobclasses, the obvious thing of having a "Fire" category or "Lightning" category and so on is actually pretty limiting. Say a King's Rock is an "Earth" category item, you'd only be able to equip it while you're an Earth elemental, even if a faster Lightning or Wind elemental makes more sense with it. You also can't give an item more than one category.

And with the augments plugin, you can't assign any sort of restriction as far as I can tell, so if I wanted to have an augment that allows your dragon to use a Burn spell, there's no way I can restrict you to only attaching that augment when you're the Fire Elemental jobclass item (although to be fair, that would probably be chaos). What I could do is have a Fire Elemental improve your fire spells by say 150% and decrease all other elemental spells by 50%. But I think this would only affect damage, thus wouldn't affect the utility spells that cause blindness or raise defense or whatever. I can give augments different types, so I could make the spell augments into specific Fire Spell, Ice Spell, etc, slots that only the jobclass items have.



I should also start to consider what the plot and scope of the game will be. Seems odd for a bunch of dragons to run around doing the normal human adventure. There could be some kind of problem that's so big only a dragon could handle it. Fight dragons with dragons, or maybe demons are the dragons' sworn enemy from ancient times. Could also be fun to flip it and have the dragons terrorize human towns and capture their princesses. The main thing is that I still want to be able to use the RTP's enemy graphics and not make everything myself. There are actually a lot of humans in the RTP's enemy graphics, and if we're being fantasy enough, there are enough monster types that could be allies of the humans, like Minotaurs and Wolfmen, elemental spirits, even something like a zombie could be a desperate wizard's ploy to halt the dragons. For that matter, a wizard could summon up pretty much anything. (I was thinking elves too, but there's no elf graphics)

So yeah, dragons attacking towns, castles, wizard towers, etc, to steal their princesses sounds viable. From there, I need to work out the plot, or how much of a plot there has to be. For example, what is Tarrasque's call to action? Does he attack the humans because that's what dragons do? Is he dissatisfied with his dragon life and yearn for adventure? Do the humans attack first? Does he do this on behalf of someone else, a crazy girlfriend or a dragon king? How much do we need to explore the relationship between Tarrasque and the dragon girls? Does he meet them in the course of his adventures, or are they with him from the start? What are the girls' reason for adventuring? Do they want princesses as well? Revenge? Treasure for their dragon hoards? Some feeling of loyalty or lust for Tarrasque? Perhaps each of them has a different reason. And what ends the adventure? What satisfies Tarrasque's needs, or at what point do we stop following him?

[AcetheSuperVillain]

And after a day of modeling:


I decided to take on the Wyvern first, because I expect the wings to present a challenge. Fairly pleased, but I feel like the legs and hips need some more dragon features there. Also the wings are kinda scrawny looking, but I'm thinking I'll use animation magic to expand them when she's using them and shrink them when they're working more like arms. Although since I didn't give her hands, it's not like she's going to be using arms for much besides flying, so I dunno. I'm still not sure what to expect when she bends her elbows.



While I'm at it, I thought I'd spit-ball some plot concepts. I've got a couple permutations of a similar idea. In the end I could possibly do a story that involves aspects of a few of these.

#1: Some shithead is exploring a deep cave and finds a huge crystal. By accident or thinking it's treasure, the shithead activates the crystal and releases the seal, freeing Tarrasque from his magical prison. "Ahh!" he shouts, "After 10,000 years I'm free! It's time to conquer Earth!" Tarrasque remembers that his 3 wives or girlfriends or whatever are sealed in similar prisons. Once he has freed them, Tarrasque and the gang go attacking human castles until they've conquered the world. Each castle harbors some sort of babe with which the player is rewarded upon completing the objective.

#2: Similar, but Tarrasque is released from his prison by a powerful hot sorceress, (possibly the RTP's "General_F", if you've seen her) Once Tarrasque is released, she sends him to free the other 3 dragons, and then uses them to conquer the world on behalf of the sorceress. Tarrasque goes along with her desires initially, but then, with the help of the girl dragons, overpowers her and conquers the world for himself. Possibly, this is some kind of choice the player has, to decide when you're ready to fight the sorceress, or finish the game doing whatever the sorceress wants.

#3: Same idea as #1, but starts in the distant past when Tarrasque and the girls are imprisoned. Once Tarrasque is freed, he is motivated not by conquest, but by revenge, he seeks the gods or wizards or whatever that imprisoned them.

#4: Tarrasque and the gang have not been imprisoned, but stored away by The Immortal King of Dragons for their own protection. After thousands of years of biding their time, the power of the elder gods has nearly been extinguished, and The Immortal King of Dragons summons Tarrasque to conquer the world in the name of dragon-kind once again. Maybe there's some twist like the dragons were the gods of the dinosaurs, and the elder gods came from space in a meteorite, caused the extinction of dinosaurs, and then created humans in their own image to fill the emptied world.

And these have nothing to do with being imprisoned in crystal:
#5: Tarrasque is just a dragon living happily in his dragon cave when some shithead adventurer comes to steal his treasure. The thief gets away, but Tarrasque follows him to the local human town. The humans freak out, and someone tries to slay Tarrasque, but Tarrasque trounces him. This escalates into more dragon slayers showing up to slay him and Tarrasque finally snaps and starts rampaging across the countryside.

#6: Tarrasque moves into a new dragon cave with his girlfriend, the other two are his neighbors. Since Tarrasque starts out with nothing, he and his girlfriend have to go raiding to find gold for their dragon horde. Eventually the neighbors are impressed with your raiding ability and join up for mutual raiding and orgies.

[Kavaa7]

I would use idea #5, and tie it into the elemental orb/job class idea. Instead of a single thief, perhaps a generic band of heroes breaks in, taking one orb each, and your goal is to hunt down and get revenge on each of them.

It would also give an excuse as to why big T would need help, as he is significantly less powerful now that the orbs have been taken.

If you want to get super fancy, it also lets you do the classic tutorial-with-a-twist, where you play as the band of “heroes” for the tutorial, then swap to the actual characters.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I like the thinking. I'm actually starting to lean towards a combination of #5 and #6. Tarrasque and Wyvern move into a new cave, their upstairs neighbors are Hydra and Longma, who are lesbians (or bi-sexual swingers or whatever), which you find out later. After some time to clear out the rats and maybe some introduction to relationship mechanics or home-building mechanics if I choose to do that, the humans break in and steal something. (could be the orbs though) Maybe Hydra and Longma also got robbed, or they've had problems with the humans before and join Tarrasque and Wyvern on their trip to get the orbs back. I think it's important to write up some situations that allow us to explore the personality of each dragon and the relationships between them. Capturing and banging princesses is an idea, but if I'm honest, it's more work than banging the party members, and it's probably more emotionally meaningful to do it with people that you, the player, have a relationship with through gameplay.

I'm not sure if I want to tie the orbs to the plot, I think it gets messy and annoying when RPGs tie a gameplay element to the story. (like Meru from Legend of Dragoon finding her Dragoon Spirit at the end of Disc 2, or Final Fantasy 4 killing all my favorite characters) Especially for the jobclass orbs, I want the player to have access to a lot of them and being finding newer better ones and making it part of the general strategic decision making. So maybe it could be a small adventure, like the thieves/heroes steal the orbs, then at the end of the next dungeon, you get all 4 back, and then this is your introduction to orbs and it triggers new adventures where you find tons of newer better orbs. But I have to make sure that these things make sense within the game world too, like why do Tarrasque and the girls go on a quest to retrieve their orbs if there are tons of newer better orbs out in the world already? If the stolen orbs have sentimental value, then how do you rationalize switching them out or selling them once you find the newer better orbs?

But I do like the idea of the thieves/heroes stealing 4 specific sentimental items. After the deed, the heroes could split up and move to 4 different towns/castles, or hide or sell them in 4 different towns/castles, which would give the dragons a good reason to keep adventuring for a while.

[Kavaa7]

Perhaps the items stolen are eggs; after all, who better to guard them then the tank of the party. This does create some questions as to whose eggs they are (Just his & Wyvern’s? His set and a set from Hydra & Longma as a babysitter? Him & all 3?), the answer to which varies based on how you want the relationships to be at the start.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Rigging is ... well, maybe not done, but going well. First two I tried to copy the poses from the concept art. The 3D character isn't as flexible as the draw-anywhere-I-want 2D version, but I this is to be expected, and the rig is performing adequately.



Having eggs/children together, to me, really changes the story from a fun sexual romp into something much more serious, especially if you're saving those kids from danger. (EDIT: Like if you're on a quest to rescue your children from the filthy humans, you're not going to stop and plow your wife's brains out on the way) That might be best for the final episode, towards the end of the game, the girls all lay eggs, they get stolen, they get rescued, they hatch into kids and the game ends with Tarrasque and his harem settling in to raise children.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Okay, here's one possibility for coloration:

2017_10_23_wyverntexture.png (120.23 KiB) Viewed 2616 times

Cutscene size and sprite size.

This is kind of a lazy approach to doing it, but it looks okay, I think, I might change my mind once I feel more energetic. The mouth and snout look a bit weird like this, which is odd, because they look perfect in working view.



Later this week, I have a trip coming up, so this will be it for art updates for awhile. I will be bringing my back-up laptop, so if I have the energy, I plan to get some plot and dialog points started. So cheers to the nice long weekend of good work accomplished.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Continuing to work, now doing the sprite sheets for RPG Maker. I've uploaded some behind-the-scenes videos on my patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/posts/get-inside-rpg-15125173 and https://www.patreon.com/posts/get-inside-rpg-2-15125249

I didn't get as much writing done as I had hoped while on vacation. I forgot my laptop charger cable. I had paper, and wrote up a general outline, but doing dialog without copy/paste/etc had me cringing. Instead, I ended up daydreaming about how I would re-do the plot to Saga City with anthro characters. I might upload some concept art later.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Needing to write down my thoughts again.

So as you may have heard, I stopped to do some artwork projects before diving completely into RPG Maker. This has given me time to think, and I find myself mostly thinking about other potential projects besides the Dragon RPG.

Specifically, I've been interested for a while in the idea of making a race/class RPG with animal races instead of fantasy races like elves and dwarves. So like, rabbit-folk have high agility, turtle-folk have high defense, shark-folk are immune to fear and good with water-magic, etc. And these are combined with jobclasses, so you can have stuff like rabbit-knight, turtle-knight, shark-knight, rabbit-mage, turtle-mage, shark-mage, rabbit-rogue, turtle-rogue, shark-rogue. So an aligned combination like rabbit-rogue can give you a character that is the elite at its specific set of skills, while an odd combination like turtle-mage can give you a more versatile character, and maybe cover your own weaknesses. The problem is, I always want to turn these into huge crazy lists with something like 20 animals and 20 jobclasses and 20 x 20 x 2 (male & female) turns into 800 sprites and all the necessary animations. If it were a real 3D program, a costume change for different classes would be a relatively simple thing, but pre-rendering for RPGMaker would complicate things a bit.

The obvious problem with doing that is that it would be a huge undertaking, with a lot of work work work before any hint of game would appear. However, I have been thinking that I would like to make and sell game assets, and this would be an interesting and unique project for that. If I make the base models, I can start selling them, use them for artwork projects on the side, then get around to making the game myself later, (or if people are buying them, someone else can make games with them). And again, I had planned to do that for RPG Maker MV ages ago, so it's something I've put a lot of thought into.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Again, composing thoughts,

I made myself a shortened list of 12 races, 12 jobclasses. So I might try starting that. It occurs to me that for an RPG, or a useful set of game assets, I will also need some NPCs, villagers, shopkeepers, princesses, and so on. Luckily, since I have several versions of RPGMaker, I have shitloads of examples to draw from.

One thing that I've been wondering is whether to do classic RPG jobclasses or to try and make modernized ones. I had planned to do this in my Super Defense Force games, and it's another ambitious project that I'm disappointed I could never complete. The idea of SDF had originally been to make a Super Smash Bros type game that could use characters from everywhere by converting popular TV and VG stars into generic jobclasses. For example, Goku becomes Martialist, Sailor Moon becomes Magigirl, Cloud becomes Buster Knight. But as I got into this idea, I started mixing in other influences, so like Martialist would be a mix of Goku, Ryu, Tifa, Heihachi, etc, Buster Knight would combine Cloud, Ragna, Ichigo, Lyner Barsett (shut up, he's adorable), Nightmare/Sigfried, Magigirls would combine Sailor Scouts, Nanoha, etc (can't remember all the other Magical Girl genres I like right now, the one with the strawberry cat, and the one with the yin yang lacross and library girls) So anyways, I had a bunch of those, but they were designed for a fighting game and fit a bit weirdly into an RPG.

So in case anyone wants to weigh in, here is my modernesque jobclass list:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Martialist (alt. Chion, Iron Fist) (Goku, Ryu, etc)
Magigirl (or Magikid for gender neutral) (Sailor Moon, Nanoha, etc) (Males would either be like Tuxedo Mask or boy-girls, like Subaru or Bridget)
Buster Knight (alt. Blader, Zambator) (Cloud, Ragna, etc)
Cyborg (Megaman, Kosmos, Samus)
Spy (James Bond, Fujiko Mine)
Masked Marvel (alt. Vigilante, Captain Hero) (Super man, Captain America, etc.) (Specifically, cloak of flight, shield of might)
Mad Scientist (Rick Sanchez, etc)
Ninja (there's a lot)
Pirate (there's a lot)
Desperado (gun-fu type character, Clint Eastwood, Antonio Banderas)
Rocker (magical guitar warrior, I-No, Nekki Basara, Ember)
Esper (alt. Psychic, Psion) (Sabrina, Absolutely Lovely Children, etc) (Actually, I've always had a hard time finding a specific "look" for this type of character, I often default to looking like Psychic type Pokemon trainers)
Kickster (chinese kungfu, kick heavy character, Chun Li, Jam Kuradoberi, Ma Renka, Lei Fang, Ling Xiaoyu, etc) (in SDF, one character was one gender, so this might be combined with Martialist, but it is a distinct character archetype)
Fencer (lithe, nimble sword fighter, Marth, Ky Kiske, Utena, Cutie Honey, etc)
Reaper (Scythe wielder, modern Shinigami/ghost hunter, Bleach, Soul Eater, etc)
Fighter (Mecha-musume in design, the idea was to do an ode to scrolling shooters with their moveset)
Heavy (big guy character, Hulk, The Juggernaut, Zangief, Potemkin, Iron Tager) (Not sure how this would work, since it implies a body change. Might be able to do some kind of scaling trick, but it would probably look weird) (also females)
Medic (modern nurse, doctor type character with healing abilities, or in the fighting game version, syringes, scalpels, reflex hammers and so on, GGX Faust, Skullgirls Valentine)
Warlord (Ancient, pan-asian warrior, Glaive/Spear User, Guan Yu, Seong Mina, etc) (So I know this doesn't seem as modern as the other ones, but I feel like it's a classic monster-of-the-week to have some kind of ancient chinese guardian awaken from their tomb and terrorizing the modern world with super kungfu weapon fighting)
Kendoka (Katana user)
Chef (a joke class, but I could still pull it off, fighting with knives, frying pans, flames, etc)
Rider (sort of a joke class, someone in a Stig outfit with a motorcycle or hoverboard that used their ride to bash people in combat) (Could instead look like some kind of biker gang, skater gang outfit)
Psionic Knight (alt. Jade Knight) (a jedi, psionic saber, force pushes, shoot lightning etc)
Sentai (Power Rangers/Super Sentai, Kamen Rider, etc) (The problem was not sure how to differentiate there fighting style from the other fist-fighting characters, also for animals, the helmets would be difficult)
Eldritch (wizard/warlock/necromancer/cultist type character, Teen Titan's Raven, Skeletor, Dr. Strange, etc)

For their original Fighting Game form, someone suggested that I could expand the content by doing a secondary weapon type for each character, so like Martialist could have fists for main weapon and staff for secondary weapon, Cyborg could have 1st gun arm, 2nd drill arm, and so on. I like this as a good way to include some more creative stuff, and I do have a complete list of secondary weapons for each job.

The other plan for Super Defense Force was to do a few non-human characters, like Kaiju, Super Robo, and Alicorn, which would be kind of like Super Smash Bros' larger characters like Bowser and Ganondorf. This wouldn't quite work for a race-class system though.)

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Oh, yeah, I forgot. I think part of my current lack of interest in the Dragon RPG, aside from wanting to do the other thing for years, is that I'm not a huge fan of plot-dependent video games. I am a man tempered in the flames of strategy, rogue-likes and arcade games. I like RPGs for their gameplay, not their storytelling, and a badly integrated story can really kill an RPG.

I like this idea of a dragon couple moving into an apartment and getting robbed by adventurers, but let's face it, this is a story idea, not a game idea. The story doesn't need to be interspersed with gameplay. Good VG story telling would be more like what I wanted to do with Astro Vulpus, where the act of interacting with the characters through gameplay gives them a sense of personality and makes you want to interact with them further through the story scenes. I might do the dragon couple story as a pure story comic or cartoon, but I think I want something else for an RPG Maker game.

Speaking of Astro Vulpus, it might make sense to once again fall back on that concept. After all, it's the same concept of 4 characters fighting along side one another. It might also be interesting to work with that other top-down WASD plan where you are a group of sexy outlaws banished to a distant planet, gathering materials from the alien wilderness to build yourselves a home.

I don't know. I need to think about it.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I made a little test graphic for this concept:

anthro_raceclass_example800x.jpg (105.54 KiB) Viewed 2545 times