Gonna do RPG Maker now (Pics!)

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I'm wondering if instead of taking the concept of pirates and adding RPG elements to it, if it would be better to take the concept of the RPG and add pirate elements to it. So you'd play as a character like Faris or Zidane who is a pirate living in a fantasy world. (I know Zidane and his crew aren't technically pirates, but they're basically pirates) Although again, the point is not necessarily to act like a pirate, just to use piratey aesthetics.

I actually do feel like Final Fantasy has captured some good piratey aesthetics in a lot of its games. Here are some of the job classes from Final Fantasy III that struck me as pretty piratey in design:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

(If you've never seen FF3, it's an FF spinoff starring Fred, Daphne, Velma and Sephiroth)

But then, I've also been thinking of using a style for characters that I call "Modernesque" which would be more like King of Fighters or Final Fantasy 7 and 8.
Or maybe specifically like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

So you would probably play as standard RPG classes like Warrior, Rogue, Wizard, etc, and for whatever reason, you (and your crew) have turned to a life of adventure on the high seas. Maybe your fantasy world has discovered a new, unexplored continent, or maybe there's been some fantastical force, like the continent has sunk underwater, like in Wind Waker. Then the item/magic system can just be a standard RPG item/magic system, cuz honestly, I've got nothing against that. My only complaint against fantasy RPGs is that they can be very cliche, which I think high seas adventure would fix, and a lot of RPGs get into these save-the-world, fate-of-mankind kind of plotlines that get really unrelateable and boring, which I can avoid.

(If you're interested in an RPG series that doesn't do that, Disgaea is pretty good at keeping conflicts personal, even when the characters become powerful enough to smash planets in half. Star Ocean 3 is interesting because even though it does eventually run into a save-the-world plot point, it's so over the top that it doesn't even make sense to the characters in-game, so they just eventually just run out of WTFs and roll with it. What I would probably do is aim for a plot line more like Thundarr the Barbarian, where the protagonists are just surviving day-to-day and not working towards any ultimate goal.)

I'm also thinking maybe airship pirates with floating islands, because the water effect is kinda difficult to get right, but then should I modify the sailing ships in some way or just shout, RULE OF COOL, and leave them to look like sailing ships.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I've been trying to do some research into historical pirates and seafarers for ideas. I'm still in an early phase of research, mostly deciding what areas I should focus on for ideas. I'm not going to make a historical or satirical game, but it's a good source for world-building inspiration.

Privateers - First of all, it seems like the most successful "pirates" are actually privateers. A privateer is issued a Letter of Marque by a friendly government, which gives them permission to raid the maritime trade of enemies of the state. As long as they refrain from raiding friendly or neutral ships, and deliver a percentage of their winnings to the government that sponsored them, they were permitted to use allied harbors and be treated as prisoners of war instead of pirates if captured, since pirates were hung or killed on sight. Privateers might also be funded by wealthy investors, who would pay for the ships and hire daring crews to do the business of bloodshed for them, in exchange for a share of the profits. Throughout history, there were also several countries or cultures that basically just condoned piracy, such as the Illyrians, Vikings, and the Barbary States. Although their raiders didn't necessarily have Letters of Marque or owe a percentage of their winnings to the state, they enjoyed similar status to privateers.

Caribbean Pirates - The obvious one. After Spain discovered the New World, they were the first to establish colonies there. Spanish treasure fleets brought huge amounts of wealth back to Spain. Spain's rivals, England, France and Holland grew jealous and worried of Spanish power, and hired privateers to attack Spanish ships and deliver their cargo into English, French or Dutch hands. Early privateer raids were hugely successful, but eventually Spanish fleets became too heavily guarded for unorganized privateers to attack, and then the European powers signed a treaty banning privateers. A lot of sailors turned from privateering to piracy. These pirates were often caught and killed within 1 or 2 years of their pirate careers, even famous ones like Blackbeard.

One of the famous locations of the Caribbean Pirate era was Port Royal Jamaica. Originally, Jamaica had been a Spanish colony, but the English conquered it and used it as a base of operations for their privateering. And as privateering shifted to piracy, it became a popular home base for pirates as well. Port Royal was famous for debauchery. Pirates and privateers were not keen on saving for retirement or burying chests under Xs, they spent their wealth as soon as their ships returned to Port Royal, on drink, drugs and women. Fresh water was rare on the island, so it was healthier to drink ale, and rum from the colonies was in good supply. The island city became cramped, with buildings built on the water or built tall, and eventually, an earthquake and tsunami knocked most of the city into the ocean. At the time, people said it was divine punishment for the debauchery of Port Royal.

French Corsairs - Corsair comes from the French term for privateer. There was a long tradition of privateering in France, and it reached a fever pitch after the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed between Spain, Portugal and the Pope, granting the Iberian powers exclusive access to the New World. The corsairs' incomes represented a major part of the income for France's navy and France as a whole.

The base of the corsairs was Saint Malo, a sea-side citadel in Brittany that was set aside for crooks and thieves in the 12th century. Saint Malo briefly tried to declare independence and become a pirate city-state, but France reclaimed it within 4 years.

Dunkirkers - 1568-1648 was the Eighty Years War, a fight for Dutch independence from the Spanish Empire. Spain managed to retain control of ports on the Flemish Coast and from there, financed a group of privateers known as the Dunkirkers. Their crews were Flemish, Walloon, Spaniard and mercenaries and thieves from across Europe, even from rebellious Netherlands. It was dutch navy policy to kill or throw overboard any Dutch Dunkirkers captured. Even though the Dutch Navy had a constant blockade of the Dunkirkers' home ports, they frequently broke through and attacked Dutch shipping, especially fisheries. The Dunkirkers invented a new kind of sailing ship, the frigate, small but fast and maneuverable ships perfect for pirate activities.

The Dunkirkers' are obviously named after Dunkirk in modern France, but also operated for ports at Nieuwpoort and Ostend in modern Belgium. I'm not sure what these ports were like in medieval times. Since the Dutch would have been in danger of Spanish ports so close to home territory, I'm guessing they would have had to be heavily fortified against both sea and land invasion.

Barbary Corsairs - One of the more traditionally piratey groups is actually the Turkish and North African Barbary Corsairs or Barbary Pirates. Mainly operating in Mediterranean, the most audacious Barbary Corsairs sailed as far as Iceland, South America and West Africa. In addition to normal piratey plundering, Barbary Corsairs were infamous for capturing Christians to sell as slaves in the Muslim World. They were keen on raiding coastal villages, so much that most were destroyed or abandoned during the Barbary Corsairs' heyday. Piracy from the Barbary States lasted a long time, well into the steam age, officially until 1830 when France invaded Algiers.

The home ports of the Barbary Corsairs were on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, named for the Berber natives. Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Rabat and Salé were city states, nominally under the control of the Ottoman Turks, but effectively independent. The natural harbors made perfect pirate bases, and the mountainous terrain gave them the ability to see far and prepare for any attacking fleets.

United States' Privateer Navy and Latin American Insurgent Privateers - As a colony, the young United States didn't have much of a navy and relied on private merchant ships turned privateer to counter British naval dominance in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Meanwhile, as Latin America began a series of revolts against changing political climate in Spain, they faced a similar problem and hired Insurgent Privateers to damage Spanish shipping, many of them actually sailing from Baltimore in the USA. I image American privateers who had made wealth for themselves during the War of 1812 turned to Latin America for new conflicts to exploit. In America, The South also turned to privateering to try and disrupt and break through the Union blockade, which ultimately strangled The South and contributed to the Union's victory.

Wokou Raiders - The original Wokou were pirates from Japan, who raided China, Korea and Japan itself. The term Wokou is a Chinese slur, meaning dwarf pirate, referring to the Japanese. But during the Ming Dynasty, a new form of Wokou raiders appeared, Chinese pirates and smugglers, using the Japanese islands as their base of operations and disguising themselves as Wokou. In an attempt to completely eliminate piracy, Ming China had banned all maritime trade, except for specially sanctioned government missions. But as the Portuguese and Dutch began trade missions to the East Indies, the promise of foreign riches was too much for many Chinese to bear, and they began secret smuggling operations. Chinese syndicates took advantage of the chaos in Japan during the Sengoku Jidai and set up bases on the Japanese Islands, near Kyushu, where the local daimyos gratefully harbored the smugglers in exchange for a cut of their profits and goods to help in their own fight for control of Japan. Eventually, some of the Chinese Wokou raiders grew so bold that they tried to conquer Chinese cities, but the Ming government had managed to charm Wokou leaders into betrayal by promising them amnesty back home in China, and using the raiders natural suspicions of each other to divide them. The famous general Chinese general Qi Jiguang also pioneered new pike-and-shot formations which proved very successful against the raiders.

One of the key locations for Wokou was the island of Shuangyu, used by Chinese smugglers to conduct trade with the Japanese and Portuguese. It was originally uninhabited and only saw temporary settlements during times of illegal trade, but eventually, as business picked up, smugglers began erecting permanent buildings. But eventually, Ming China caught wind of the smugglers' activities and cracked down on the nearby island, forcing the smugglers to relocate to Japan.

On the subject of Chinese piracy, the Portuguese actually did some fairly piratey things against the Chinese, such as conquering the Ming ally Sultan of Malacca and raiding many Chinese coastal cities when they were denied trade. There are obviously more East Asian pirates, but that's such a huge slice of history and geography I'm not sure where to start.

Vikings and Berzerkers - This is well outside the time frame of the normal Pirate Era, but it's a subject I'm very familiar with. The Norse were both raiders and traders, and artifacts from all over the world have turned up in Scandinavian burial mounds, even statues of Buddha and Arabic coins. The word "viking" had a very negative connotation in Norse society, meaning like "pirate", "thief" or "bully". Nonetheless, many Norse elites and nobles went raiding against the southern peoples and gained honor for it, so I imagine that the distinction is simply people who raid against non-Norse, and people who raid indiscriminately, much like the later notion of a privateer. Another term is the berzerker super natural warriors who fought naked or clad in animal skins, protected by Odin's magic instead of armor. Like vikings, berzerkers were not viewed positively, as least not by the end of the Viking Age from which we get most of our written information. It's common in sagas for berzerks to try and bully some characters into giving up there wealth or women and getting outsmarted by a protagonist. But they can't have been all bad in the day, Harold Fair-Hair who conquered Norway had a squadron of berzerkers at his command.

So the Norse and vikings are a little different for key locations because their home port was all of Scandinavia, but some of the world's key cities were once Norse raider colonies, like Dublin in Ireland and Kiev in Ukraine. In Scandinavia the island of Gotland was a key trade post between the Swedish peninsula and the European mainland.



More to come...

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Since I still need to remind myself that the "pirate" graphics pack doesn't have to be used for pirates specifically, I'm also looking into other sources of seafaring adventure. One source I'm finding interesting are trading companies, like the British East India Company (EIC), Dutch United East Indies Company (VOC) and Dutch West Indies Company (WIC). These companies were real-life mega corporations that had the authority to field private armies and wage war against enemies of the state and competitors in trade, with the EIC conquering most of India and VOC conquering most of Indonesia. The companies established trading posts that grew into fortresses and then into colonies. The VOC and EIC were even authorized to mint their own money. The companies were public traded and funded by shareholders and run by directors, and granted exclusive rights to trade in geographical areas by their heads of state.

Interestingly, this is very much like the Consortium faction I had invented for the space adventure version. I was expecting that hyper-capitalism would have no place in a pirate-era campaign, but it turns out that these shipping companies from the 1600s were a lot closer to cyberpunk mega corporations than any modern business entity.

For some chronological context, the Golden Age of Piracy is considered to be 1650s-1730s. The VOC was established in 1602 and lasted until 1799, while the EIC began in 1600 and lasted until 1853.

Much like the Caribbean privateering, the companies were established by England and the Netherlands to compete with Spanish and Portuguese maritime wealth. In those days, the Suez canal did not exist, so the only route to the Indian Ocean was to navigate past the Cape of Good Hope South Africa. The Portuguese were the first to master this route and started trading, plundering and colonizing in The East Indies, the countries to the east of Africa, going as far as Japan. Adventurers from England and Holland raised funds and paid for ships to travel to The East Indies and come back with valuable spices and other commodities. A single voyage could take years, so the companies would set up trading posts along the route, and fortresses to protect their most profitable areas from competitors. The Dutch VOC basically went to war with Portugal's overseas empire, attacking Portuguese ships and forts in addition to economic competition, basically corporate privateering. As the English and Dutch trading companies gained their own footholds in the East Indies, the three powers were constantly at each others' throats.

But make no mistake, we may think of pirates as doing some shitty things, but even though the trading companies weren't pirates, they still did some pretty shitty things. These were hyper-capitalist mega-corporations run by ethnocentric psychopaths fighting to establish and protect their monopolies over massive geographical areas. The EIC was infamous for invading all of India with an army twice as strong as the British government's and smuggling opium into Qing China to offset their trade deficit.

[maximilianos]

I prefer the 1st art style! (and i represent 100% of the actively responding viewers/readers...)

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Well, I'll take that into consideration, but it would have to depend on the vibe of the game's storytelling too. Modernesque outfits in a pirate-era setting would imply a certain level of irreverence and deference to rule-of-cool. If you've got a character in bikini chaps, you expect them to be wise-cracking and making light of the adventure. And conversely, for someone in more period appropriate outfits like FF3, you would expect them to take their adventure more seriously, and if you wanted to write a character making wise cracks or with a more modernized way of thought, it might not make as much sense.

And I was actually PMing with someone about writing the story for this game, and maybe some art projects, but they seem to have disappeared. Hopefully this is just holiday related and not loss of interest.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Another interesting maritime adventure idea comes from the ancient, (well, not ancient actually) merchant city of Venice. As we know from last time, the East Indies companies competed to create a sea trade route with the far east. Before them, Portugal had been the first to discover the eastern trade route past the Cape of Good Hope. And before that, trade with the far east had been controlled by Venice in the Mediterranean, from ports in the Middle East that were connected to the Silk Road.

Putting Venice in a pirate-era game would be a bit out of place chronologically. There was still a Republic of Venice until 1796 when their leader abdicated to Napoleon Bonaparte, but during the Golden Age of Piracy, the power of Venice was declining, its historic Mediterranean trade routes overshadowed by new routes to the New World and the East Indies, stifling the income of wealth which was its only resource. But, this is going to be fantasy, so if I want to imagine an age-of-sail world where an approximation of Venice competes toe to toe with Britain and Spain then who the hell is anyone to tell me no? You? Pffft, dream on. That said, it would also be an interesting to depict a merchant empire like Venice being slowly edged out by new oceanic empires.

The empire of Venice was divided into 3 parts. The Dogado or Duchy, Dukedom, was the city of Venice itself. Next was the Terrafirma, land nearby in northern Italy. Third was the Stato da Mar or Sea State, their overseas possessions, like Crete and the Morea. The empire was controlled by the Doge, which is related to the word Duke, and various councils elected from the ruling aristocrats of the Dogado. The Terrafirma was land acquired for the sake of agriculture which the city of Venice itself had no room for. The Stato da Mar was territory captured along the trade route from Venice to the Levant, or in some cases, they were simply trading posts or port fortresses like those established by the later trade companies. Venice was famous for being a haven for free thought and full of artwork. Its republic government was relatively advanced in the Middle Ages, although not quite what we would think of as a democracy today.

Related to Venice were the Crusader States in the Middle East, which Venice helped to establish and later prospered from as a merchant city, and the Ottoman Turks, an almost invincible army of eastern Muslims who conquered huge territory in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, including much of Venice's Stato da Mar. There were several other small "maritime republics" or "thassalocracies" like Venice, such as Genoa, Pisa and Ragusa.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Okay, this has got my wheels turning at last.

Suppose you start the game as a merchant of Venice in the Age of Sail. You inherit the family business of trade through the Mediterranean, but your old trade routes are under fire from Barbary Corsairs and the Ottoman Turks are invading the friendly ports along your route. But as your family business approaches bankruptcy, you hear a rumor of great treasures to be found in the New World and the East Indies. So you decide to take the last of your funds and sail through the Pillars of Hercules to adventure on the high seas. I don't want a completely scripted game, so I forsee this intro as a kind of noob island tutorial run, maybe one that you can skip on subsequent playthroughs. Once you've reached the Atlantic, I can see a couple choices for your long-term goals. You could try and bring wealth back to Venice, and maybe bring your own fleet or fighting force to fight off the Barbary States and Ottomans back home. Or, you try to keep the spirit of Venice alive in a foreign land, by establishing a colony of New Venice in the New World or East Indies, (The game would probably let you pick where you want to establish your colony) and then you can offer people from Venice or people you meet in your travels a place on the island. Or, you could give up on Venice entirely and live a life of freedom on the high seas as either a merchant or a pirate, maybe with the option to buy a house and settle down or at least stash your earnings in a port of your choosing.

This would still be a fantasy universe, so when I say things like Venice and Mediterranean, these would be replaced with similar concepts.

I might try to establish some kind of system where you progressively unlock larger trading areas. So, at the beginning of the game, you start out with only the ability to sail in the Mediterranean, then you unlock an upgrade that allows you to pass through Gibraltar and into the Near Atlantic, then you unlock an upgrade that allows you to pass the Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies or cross the Atlantic and trade with the New World or pass the Straights of Magellan to the Pacific. Or this might not be a straightforward upgrade like buying a key, but it's something like passing through the Cape of Good Hope triggers a series of random encounters and you need a ship and crew of a certain strength to be able to pass the challenge unharmed.

Another way to think of this is that the game is kind of like a simple dungeon crawl with a hub town, but the hub town is Venice and the "dungeon" is the world or at least the sea. This probably sounds kinda boring in comparison, but I like dungeon crawls and I have no interest in reinventing the wheel. With the addition of a romance/bromance system and trading mechanic, there should be enough to keep it interesting. There's nothing worse than a game that introduces a cool new mechanic and then ruins it by messing up classing gameplay that they should have gotten right without trying (looking at you, Hoshigami).



I was about to start looking through my historical references for places to visit on your sea voyages, things to fill the world with, but then I realized I'm doing this backwards. I need to look at my available 3D resources and see what I can build with these. Which means that even though I'd love to recreate Venice in RPG Maker, I don't actually have the assets for that. I could probably handle a nice looking city with canals for streets, but that'll be as close as my Venice gets. Although some things will be less cool than reality because of this, some things will be more cool, since I've got various dungeon and crystal cave type assets that you wouldn't really visit in the real world.

[maximilianos]

so did you want to go for a more realistic game?

will there be sea monsters and mythological creatures? maybe these encounters at gibraltar and such are places watched by mosters and you need a special item to ward them off. (this is if you were going for a magic setting)

in a more realistic setting I'd go for getting a new ship capable of sea faring and with a greater cargo for food/ trade goods

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I guess I'm not sure yet. I want to familiarize myself with the reality of the age of sail because of my artistic training. You start by examining reality, and then decide how much stylization to add. I'm not sure yet how far from reality I want to go, but I enjoy all this info about privateers and trade companies and so on.

If you recall the previous post about different magic systems, I still need to think about those. I am open to something that is more traditional RPG, with wizards and clerics and ninjas, but I think I would still like for a magic system to have some sort of explanation behind it, and the explanation should tie in with the seafaring theme. So like, if you've ever played Final Fantasy 6, 7 or 8, they sort of work magic into the world building. In FF6, magic comes from the magical tribe of the espers, characters learn magic by hooking up with espers, and characters with natural magic have some link to the espers. In FF7, magic comes from materia, which is extracted from the planet as mako, which harms the planet and thus creates the call to action for AVALANCHE. In FF8, magic seems to be a primordial force of the universe, and the protagonists can harness it by junctioning GFs and drawing spells from monsters and draw points.

The previous magic system idea that most sticks in my mind is the one about the Eldritch Powers, where magic comes from gods or god-like entities. It might fun if, instead of simply having fantasy gods, there is some kind of pulp god-like powers that are manipulating the world. For example, the original thought was that there is a Cthulu-like being. In the original story, Cthulu is an alien lifeform that crash-landed on Earth in ancient history. Cthulu and his kind are in some sort of stasis, but they are capable of emitting psychic signals which humans with psychic sensitivity can pick up, resulting in Cthulu cults all over the world. I think of the age-of-sail as being on the doorstep between ancientness and modernness, so it would be neat if I could think of some kind of magic that is likewise somewhere between fantasy and science fiction.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

New thoughts about magic system, maybe, as with the graphics and theme, it would make more sense to think about what resources I have available and change the game universe to match it. Gameplay first, not narrative first.

So I actually quite liked the magic/equipment system from my first RPGM-MV game, Grind Storm. Each character gets 1 weapon, 3 equipment and 3 "orbs". The orbs give you either a passive skill or a magic spell. They can also give more than one, for example, the Burn Orb could let you cast Burn and protect you from fire damage, the Freeze Orb could let you cast Freeze and add chance of freeze to your attacks, the Triple Threat Orb could let you Burn, Freeze or Shock, and so on. I would still want to incorporate the Orbs into the story. What are they made of? Where do they come from? It could be that, in this world, it's magic orbs instead of spices that are sparking the exploration of the New World and the East Indies. There might be no magic in "europe" or at least no orbs, and people are trading across the ocean to get them. Or, orbs could be a product of nature, so you might fire orbs in a volcano or in the desert, and ice orbs in the far north. This could be an interesting trading strategy thing for the player. Like if you're in the North, everything you fight is resistant to ice damage and freezing, but on your next voyage to down south the volcano, your ice orbs will give you a big advantage. (except I don't actually have a lot of biome graphics, so this is already breaking the rule of practicality) Or the orbs could be the remnants of a lost Atlantean culture, maybe not magic orbs per se but rayguns and gadgets. Atlantean relics could be rare in "europe" or they might have all been excavated already. So if magic is a finite resource, you're probably going to want to horde it rather than trade it, so trading spices and goods might be the main focus of trading mechanics and Atlantean relics are just for combat mechanics. Or the orbs could be gifts from the gods or eldritch things. If the eldritch things are indeed aliens, their gifts to their followers might be rayguns and gadgets.

I also like Final Fantasy Tactics' jobclass system, and Yanfly has a pretty extensive set of job class plugins to mimic FFT and similar games. In FFT, you can change jobclasses at will, outside of battle, so Fred could decide to be a Knight, Archer, Black Mage or White Mage. As you fight, you gain job points, which you can spend on abilities. So let's say that Fred decides to be a Black Mage for a while and earns 500JP. Fire/Ice/Thunder I each cost 250JP, while Fire/Ice/Thunder II each cost 500JP. So he could learn Fire I and Ice I or only Fire II. Once Fred has learned these spells as a Black Mage, he keeps them for other jobs, so he could switch to a Knight and still be able to cast his Black Mage spells. You would also unlock new jobclasses by gaining Job Points. So if you gain 1000JP at Black Mage, you unlock the Time Mage class, or if you gain 2000JP in Thief and 2000JP in Monk, you unlock the Ninja class. This is how Final Fantasy Tactics did it, I'm not 100% sure how much of that Yanfly was able to reproduce in RPG Maker, and I know that he added new things and he's taking inspiration from other series like Bravely Default, so I don't exactly what jobclass mechanics would be available to me. If part of the game is that you're able to recruit random characters in your travels, a randomized FFT style jobclass might be difficult, but Yanfly is usually pretty good at giving you control over his plugins.

Anyways, if I did a jobclass system, I might pick some classic D&D or Final Fantasy style classes, but I also have that list of Modernesque jobclasses from before. I think I would not have some of the more futuristic or pop culture jobs like Cyborg or Super Spy or Magical Girl or Masked Hero, but a lot of them should work. Martialist, Buster Knight, Mad scientist (more of a steam-punk one), Ninja, Pirate, Gunslinger, Esper (possibly), Fencer, Reaper, Heavy, Warlord, Medic (possibly), Eldritch, should all work, I could also weave in a couple D&D/FF jobclasses to that, like a Rogue, Red Mage, Bard, but this is already more than I would actually want.

Another approach to jobclasses is to focus on real world piratey/age-of-sail jobs onboard a ship, such as Captain, Navigator, Accountant, Doctor, Carpenter/Shipwright/Boatswain, Gunner, Fighter, Cook, Entertainer, etc, and on a trading ship, you might have someone like Translators and Negociators. These would be not especially combat oriented, so combat abilities would come from equipment or race. Although these might be somehow combined with the other jobclass systems, so for example, you might assign your Warrior as Captain, your Black Mage as Navigator, your Thief as Shipwright, and your White Mage as Cook. I know that Yanfly has a plugin called Extra Character Variables, but I don't have a clue how I would achieve this. Also, this system of jobclasses doesn't suggest any visual difference, like how would a Navigator look different from the Boatswain? This might be a good thing, since it's less work.

Which does bring me to a point of thought, the characters I get to do myself, so I do get to and have to decide what to make them look like. I'm still doing the animal-people, so if there's jobclasses, there needs to be an array of each jobclass. However, I don't necessarily need to make a jobclass graphic like the ones in FFT, you'd be able to tell the difference between a Martialist and a Fencer and a Gun Slinger by how they are attacking. But I would also like to use versions of the playable characters as enemies, again like FFT does, and I definitely want there to be some visual distinction between the factions. In FFT, this is done with a simple palette swap, which would be simple enough to do with 3D graphics as well, although it might not be enough if you're trading with places like China and Japan and Indonesia, I might want them to have some kind of eastern version of the same jobclasses. I would actually love to have some kind of random clothing/appearance system like SimBro does. RPG Maker is kind of set up for that, but since I'm replacing its graphics with my graphics, and I want to make much more complicated animations, I don't know if that would still work.

On the subject of appearances, making clothing for 3D characters can be difficult, and I'm still exhausted from the holiday retail season, but there is a simple way out. Everybody is naked. This is actually a conclusion that I came to for my Bosstralia characters ages ago:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Shameless plug!!!

So they would look like this, naked, with the private parts washed out, and some kind of accessory that gives a sense of personality to them. This is not just about being lazy, but also when you're making animal people, you often want to have a character with spots or stripes or tufts or some specific coloration that lets you know what kind of animal it is, and clothing covers that up. But I think if I do the characters like this, any pornography would be pretty much impossible. It's still currently my plan to get something on Steam, so that doesn't really matter too much, but it's just a bridge that would have to be burned. And it wouldn't change my plans to use the same base models for pornographic artwork on the side.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

So I've got my "Medieval Interior" set ready, which is what I plan to use for the insides of ships and houses with the pirate pack. Here's a little sample I cooked up:

And realized just now after I've rendered and uploaded everything that the corner pillar is floating off the ground. Ugh.

I rendered it in 2 types of cartoony style. I tend to be a bigger fan of the top style. Every once in a while, I see games or artwork with a hard edged, cell shaded look to it, like the second image and I want to make artwork like that, but then when I'm actually working on it and have the ability to see a scene or character in both cartoony styles, I always end up liking the top style better. But I wanted to show them both and see what people think of it.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

[AcetheSuperVillain]

[AcetheSuperVillain]

So hey, did any of you guys read my description of Town 'n Dungeon? It was an old RPG idea, originally for RPG Maker 2003, jumped back into my mind somehow. The entire premise is not relevant, but the basic idea was that you live on a bunch of magical floating islands on a far off gas giant planet called Sky, your boss was a megalomaniacal tiger who runs a tavern and sends you, her Acquisition Team, to gather resources and forcibly bring in patrons to help her business. It popped back in my head recently. So I'm still thinking that I want what we talked about earlier, you're from fantasy Venice, and you go sailing to the fantasy Spanish Main and fantasy East Indies and so on, but what if those fantasy places were on Planet Sky instead of fantasy earth?

So I'd still be using the pirate pack and dungeons and stuff, but I feel like this would give me a better excuse to use assets like the city pack and ninja pack. It also saves me from having to draw the ocean, which is is actually pretty complicated. And I would feel more comfortable with that old rayguns-are-magic system that I started with in the space adventure. I'd also feel more comfortable pairing that with Accessory Wearing Cartoon Animals than with a more historical setting. And it's not like I got tired of the space adventure idea, it's just that I don't want to make a galaxy worth of alien planets, doing pirate themed Planet Sky instead historical age-of-sail world would be closer to the original space adventure which makes me happy.

So if I use all the packs, I'm thinking that the city pack is only going to be used for big commercial hubs, like London, Lisbon, Antwerp and so on, while smaller towns and colonies use the pirate and ninja buildings. Or possibly, the pirate themed buildings are more normal and there's one hyper tech island you can visit with giant sky scrapers. And there's more in the city pack than skyscrapers, so maybe the brick buildings are normal and the sky scrapers are hyper tech specials.

So obviously, I need to play around with these packs and see what it looks like to have them floating in the air and see if I feel the need to add anything to the pirate ships when they fly around. I never liked the Final Fantasy technique of turning ships into blimps, so not that.

And stop saying "So". God the fuck dammit, man.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I dunno, Ace, that sounds cool and all, but won't it be hard to do? What if you can't rock that hard?

Then I guess I'll have to rock harder.



I'm pretty hard right now.

[maximilianos]

Oh, I've been too silent. Now you're talking to yourslef!? D;

the c'thulu idea was kind of like what i had in mind. have you seen the magus bride (an anime. mahoutsukai no yome in japanese)? in that story there are 2 types of magic users.
1. sorcerers. they use their own power.
2. mages. these rely on the power of various fairys to use magic. in other words, if you have a lot of fairy friends they can enable new magic for you. (wind fairy for sailing, water for calming water currents maybe... etc etc)

especially #2 seems easy and diffrent from many ideas floating about today as you have to find and befriend fairys to unlock new magic.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I haven't seen the Magus Bride, but this concept is reminiscent of Dungeons and Dragons' differentiation between Wizards and Sorcerers, which is the kind of magic I'm trying to avoid in a piratey adventure. Technically, in 3.5, I think Sorcerors have innate magical power, like hereditary gift or bitten by a radioactive spider, that kinda thing, while Wizards gain their magic through intense study and meditation. In D&D5, I think wizards and sorcerors are still like that, and they add Warlocks, which gain magic through a pact with an otherworldly entity, fairies, cthulus or demons. (But not gods, since that would make them a cleric, or with nature, since that would make them a druid)

But I think, if Planet Sky gives me an excuse to use the raygun/gadget magic system I dreamed up for space adventure, then I'd rather use the raygun system. Since I have it mostly planned out, it's more comfortable than starting something new. The idea was that each character equips a melee weapon, a gun, a shield and 3 gadget slots. The melee weapon determines your attack animation, like a normal RPG weapon. The gun gives you a set of magic spells, so like a heat ray gives you fire spells, a freeze ray gives you ice spells, a stun ray gives you paralysis spells, etc, and also sets your NRG, which is basically MP. The shield boosts defense or magical defense or evasion, depending on the exact model, like RPG armor, but it's explained away as a forcefield, so you can run around naked or whatever and still be protected. Then the gadget slots either work like Orbs from Grind Storm, or like Final Fantasy accessories or stuff like that. Guns could theoretically just be a type of gadget, but I was thinking I might try to use RPG handedness to make two-handed weapons, that consume both your melee and gun slot, like a bayonet weapon that's a combination melee gun, or a big two handed sword that takes over your gun slot or a big gun or pair of guns that takes over your melee slot.

EDIT: Oh, right, but since you mentioned the word Sorcerers, I have been thinking recently about Sword and Sorcery type settings. To me, this is mostly Thundarr and He-Man, which I think are probably pretty different from live action movie S&S, but the basic premise of S&S settings is that magic is very rare but very powerful, only a few special characters have access to magic, and in general, the scope of S&S plots is usually limited to personal matters, revenge, adventure, etc, rather than trying to save the world from all powerful evil forces. In general, Sorcerers in Sword & Sorcery settings are bad guys, but there's usually one or two good guys. Anyways, as far as this project goes, I might do it like that. A few sorcerers exist, getting one on your team would be a big deal and there are sorcerers out in the world that can wreak havoc on you, but most "magic" is in the form of "technology", rayguns and gadgets and flying ships and so on.

[maximilianos]

Judging by your choice of examples I'm assuming you've played at least a bit of RP. As a fellow RP-person I hereby give my seal of approval (although I've only played pathfinder, dragon age- setting RP, and other minor settings. I've also read the core rule book for starfinder (which is interesting as it tries to fix the imbalance betweed the powerlevels of mages and martial classes. normally mages suck early but kill everything in a 1 vs 1000 in late game, while martials rule in early game but become nothing more than extra preception rolls and meat shield in later levels).

I just found out a feature I wasn't aware of. if you accidentally go to a different url when writing a post, it's actually saves for when you return (thank whoever coded LoK forum for that)

[AcetheSuperVillain]

So I know this is the first time you've heard of it, but to me, Planet Sky has been in the back of my mind since, shit, over a decade, back when I started making games, and it was always supposed to be a completely bonkers fantasy world that defied conception. And so, filling Planet Sky with Planet Earth anthro creatures doesn't feel quite right, I need something more fantastical. They will still be anthros, just things like kyuubi instead of fox, or dragon instead of lizard. Being me, I apparently have a list ready to go.

Kyuubian - Fox people, but with 3 eyes and 9 tails. 9 tails are going to be a pain in the ass to animate, so they might just have 2 tails, like Tails, but there will be other ways to cheat, if it comes to that.
Longmaian - A dragon-horse, reptilian with hooves. I've made Longma characters before, there's the one from earlier in this topic and the one from my mostly text adventure game.
Nymph/Dryad - A plant person, but actually, probably like the Hydra character earlier in the topic but with venus fly traps for hands, and other plant-like features.
Abyssian - A sea creature hybrid, probably mostly shark and squid.
Scissorian - A bug with scissor hands.

And then a few vague ideas:

I want something with feathers. This might be a bird person which is based on a phoenix, roc or thunderbird, or it could be based on a fantasy creature like a gryphon or hippogryph, or it could be a dinosaur with feathers, either a raptor or a tyrannosaur. There's also a heraldic critter called an enfield, which is like a fox gryphon, but that would have to combine or replace the kyuubi. Oh right, and then there's owlbears. So I want to point out that most of these race ideas would probably be light and agile, but a roc, tyranno or owlbear could be more of a heavy character, if I need that. And actually, I quite like the idea of the roc (or maybe thunderbird) as a bruiser bird, since I do like subverting expectations.

Some kind of robot/cyborg race. Actually, what I need is a race that make use of the skyscraper pack that I have. The original Planet Sky had a race called the Mekka-Jin which were like samurais and ninjas with robotic body parts and power cables for tails, but I don't need the ninja/samurai component this time. Another idea is Candroids, my word for R2D2-like robots, which I could make cute, but not sexy, so they'd be the only race in the game which isn't sexy, though still probably hilarious. But then, the race with skyscraper technology doesn't have to be robotic, and I'm thinking actually it would be cool if a dinosaur race, raptors or tyrannos, got the skyscraper gig. They could also be dinosaur cyborg. Dinoborgs? Cybersaurs?

I thought I should have either goblin/orcs or vanara (monkey people), but neither of those seemed as cool as all the kyuubies and longmas and stuff. And then I thought, wait! what if I combine them? Monkey Goblins! Goblinara? No, that sounds like red sauce. Monkblins? I don't know. I thought that maybe the goblins/vanara might be the ones to live in the skyscrapers, since the original concept of Planet Sky had steam-punk goblins (which there won't be any steam punk now because I got no steam-punk graphics) but I think if they're combined, then I'd have more fun with them as a wildman, barbarian, caveman type race (which I do have graphics for). If they live in caves, I could call them Troglodytes. Cavernians? I was also thinking about molemen as a race, but I think 8 is a good place to stop. But maybe moleman monkey goblins? Nah, that's probably too much.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Alright, today's goal is to take a mental inventory, or actually I guess a written one, of all the different graphic packs and all the different potential game locations that I could make with them.

(Some of this probably won't make a lot of sense to you guys, since you can't see what I see, but I need to write it down somewhere and it might as well be here. I might take pictures for you later.)

Pirate Pack:
Pirate Town (Shanties)
Pirate Town (Brick)
Pirate Island Mansion
Pirate Fortress (actually more of a navy fortress)
Docks, Pier, etc
Jungle Island (boosted with plants from other packs)
Sand and Rocks (maybe a beach scene? wait, a floating island beach? floating island lagoon?)
(There are no indoor assets in this pack. Visiting inside the mansion, fortress, houses or shanties will need assets from the other packs, however, this should be doable. Same story for going inside ships. )

Ninja Pack:
Ninja Village
Ninja Mansion/Castle (the same buildings in a different arrangement)
Sakura Forest (pink trees) (possibly obsolete due to other plant packs)
Rice Paddies
Stepped Terraces
Snowy versions of everything
Bamboo Forest
(Again, there are no indoor packs, but none of the packs I've been able to find would work particularly well as Ninja houses/mansions/castles. I might make these assets myself, in which case I might see about adding some temple stuff.)

Big City Pack:
Metal Glass Buildings
Brick Buildings (theoretically, brick buildings might mix with the pirate pack buildings, while sky scrapers are reserved for hypertech cities)
Parks
Shops, Mall
Roads, maybe a raised highway
Possibly some kind of subway or sewer
(Same story, no interiors, but I have stuff from other packs that should be useful)

Synty Dungeon Pack:
Stone Dungeon (and possibly split that between medieval grey stone dungeon and jungle yellow stone dungeon)
Cave Dungeon
Goblin/Barbarian Camp
Medieval Machinery, alchemy lab, buzz saw traps, not-to-50-machine, etc
Underground Forest
I think there's supposed to be a magma cave version, but I haven't been able to figure how to set it up.

Indoor Packs:
(There are actually several small indoor packs)
Inside ships (basically, wood dungeons)
Medieval House/Tavern/library
Inside Stone Buildings, i.e. navy fortress, ninja castle)
Modern House
Modern Office

And then I've got various plant/outdoor packs that could probably do me a jungle, swamp, elven forest and desert. There's an interesting set of plants that all frosty with snow, so a snow forest, ice forest is do-able. And enough rocks that I could do a rocky wasteland, quarry or mountain top area.