Project Criticism Partnership - Signups end April 10th!

[dadevvtsvre]

What is the PCP?
The Project Criticism Partnership is a community partnership where members join up in pairs to give constructive criticism to each other's work.

PCP's four noble goals:

• Increase good traffic in both the Concept Development and Project Discussion forum.
• Recognize and encourage good constructive criticism practice.
• Provide members with useful feedback for their projects and concept work.
• Help people make better games, art and music.

PCP Membership rules:

• Exchange of feedback must be equivalent.  Both members of the partnership must give each other the same amount of critical posts and content
• Members must refrain from these kinds of spammy posting behaviors while fulfilling their Partnership agreement.
• Members must give thoughtful and constructive criticism that aids development.  If you aren't sure what that means please look at the example posts listed in this post.
• Major breaches any of these will jeopardize your chances in taking part in future partnerships.

PCP Membership Benefits:

• Guaranteed good constructive feedback to your thread.
• Recognition for good constructive criticism.
• A chance to network and exchange ideas with other game designers.

How do I join the PCP?
To join you must have a topic somewhere in the forums (be it for your artwork, music, or game) and respond to this thread with all the information asked for by this template:

Spoiler: Join Template

Username:
Link to your topic (whether it's a game, art, music, etc.):
Criticism Strengths: (choose from Art, Gameplay, Story, and Sound and Music)
Focus: (If there is something in your project or work you could use feedback on particularly put it here)

After filling out the template we will pair you next week (on Jan. 7) with someone who fits with you the best for what you are looking for and whom you help with your strengths.  From there you will be committed by default to give each other four good criticism posts.  You may raise or lower that commitment mutually as you wish, but as outlined by the rules the exchange of criticism must be equivalent.  We expect all criticism partnerships to meet their goals by the end of the month.  At the end of January there will be a feedback thread where you can share your best partnership posts and discuss any issues you ran into, and suggests improvements for the partnership set ups.  We will run this program once a month with a sign up drive at the beginning of each month. 

If you have any questions as to what this is about or what it entails you may post them on the thread.

 

[Truly else]

... PCP is an illegal substance. You chose your words carefully to get that, didn't you?

 

[Sailerius]

This is a great idea. I hope to see it take off.

Username: Sailerius
Link: viewtopic.php?f=77&t=26105
Criticism Strengths: Gameplay, Story, (this wasn't included but) Mapping
Focus: Level design, story

 

[coyotecraft]

Username: coyotecraft
Link: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=67734
Criticism Strengths: Gameplay, Art
Focus: Story/characters

 

[action]

Username: abreaction
Link to your topic: viewtopic.php?f=78&t=66344
Criticism Strengths: Story, Art
Focus: Story, Characters, or Organization(the team and all)

 

[RadethDart]

Username: RadethDart
Project Name and Link: (Not currently working on one)
Criticism Strengths: Gameplay, Story, and Music
Focus: I will go ahead and help crit on other peoples' projects. I think that would be more beneficial for others than for me getting my projects criticized, because...well, let's just say it is tough for me to finish games because I have an active life that doesn't allow me to really finish a game right now. :D

 

[Daxis]

Username: Daxisheart
Link to your topic (whether it's a game, art, music, etc.): viewtopic.php?f=78&p=704483
Criticism Strengths: Gameplay, story, maybe music
Focus: Believability of story, its execution, how balanced the battle system is, eventing.

Ps: Shouldn't mapping be one of the criticism strengths?

 

[WeebamNa]

Username: Dustin
Link to your topic: http://www.arpgmaker.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=69303
Criticism Strengths: Gameplay, Art, Story
Focus: Gameplay, anything else really.

 

[dadevvtsvre]

Ps: Shouldn't mapping be one of the criticism strengths?

Mapping is included in the intentionally vague "Art" category. But if you feel that you want it to be a separate category, then go ahead and put mapping down if you'd like.

Also, a surprising amount of signups so far! :D

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

Username: Kuahewa Huki'ino
Link to your topic (whether it's a game, art, music, etc.): Last Legend
Criticism Strengths: Story (characterization and storytelling in particular, I'm far too cynical to give an accurate assessment of plot), Gameplay
Focus: Nothing really, go hog wild.

Part of me says I shouldn't. I'm a bitter, cynical man, and I rarely work on my project, but whatev'. If you don't mind someone so critical that he thinks that Mother 3 was a work of art and Enix hasn't put out a good game since they bought out Square, then by all means.

 

[dadevvtsvre]

Signups are complete!
In total, eight people signed up for this month's PCP, which means that there will be four partnerships. I've PMed you guys your partners and the links to their projects.

So now it's time to swap some critiques! Remember, you have until January 31st, so take your time and make your critiques detailed, specific and with some practical advice, After all, you want to receive good critiques, don't you?

Remember the guidelines:

PCP Membership rules:

• Exchange of feedback must be equivalent.  Both members of the partnership must give each other the same amount of critical posts and content
• Members must refrain from these kinds of spammy posting behaviors while fulfilling their Partnership agreement.
• Members must give thoughtful and constructive criticism that aids development.  If you aren't sure what that means please look at the example posts listed in this post.
• Major breaches any of these will jeopardize your chances in taking part in future partnerships.

With that being said, you can use this topic to ask any questions you might have regarding PCP. Go nuts guys! Looking forward to seeing 'dem critiques! :thumb:

 

[So fist]

I see that almost everyone involved has swapped two critiques with their partners. Question is, would you guys like to switch partners for another round before the thirty-first. By the way I love what I've seen from you guys so far.

 

[coyotecraft]

Might as well milk this for as much feedback as possible. I feel like I'm at a disadvantage seeing as everyone else has some kind of working demo while I'm still at the drawing board with my project.

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

Question is, would you guys like to switch partners for another round before the thirty-first.

Sounds cool to me, there's only so much one can analyze about a single project.

 

[WeebamNa]

Switching sounds good to me.

 

[dadevvtsvre]

So we have coyotecraft, Dustin and Kuahewa huki 'ino who want to do a switchup. I'll PM you your new partners by the 21st - if anybody else would like to switch partners, make sure to let me know. :]

 

[action]

Sure, I'm in.
Another round sounds good

 

[dadevvtsvre]

I've paired you guys up with some new partners. Apologies for a bit of delay there.

 

[action]

I knew it.
I was partnered up with another difficult project -.-;

 

[dadevvtsvre]

ROUND 2

Woops, looks like I'm a bit late with this @_@

Anyway - it's February now, which means that a new round of PCP is about to begin! But first, let's check out some of the awesome critiques you guys gave in January :O

Spoiler

Well, I really like the setup, because the idea of treasure hunting is always so fun, no matter if you're doing it for academic or financial reasons, or otherwise. And I like the consideration you're making in your concept plot in which the older brother doesn't die; if there's something I realized in the evolution of my own game-type stories, it's that character story-death is entirely frivolous.

It sounds like you're revamping things to make it an--for lack of a better word, because I really hate using it in this day and age, but you know which definition I mean--epic undertaking, which is good, because the rest of your story doesn't really sound like it could fit in just a couple of hours.

The underwater thing, though (as much as other people seem to take to the novelty of it) seems a little forced, to be honest. Not so much in that it doesn't apply to your story, but more that your story could apply to any number of other settings but rather than choosing any particular one that lends itself a more-proper fit than any others, you chose the one that was "the coolest"--which, from a subjective standpoint, is great, because that's the setting you want, but from an objective point of view, not so great at all for the exact same reason.

I do like your concept art. And don't worry yourself too much about making objects separately unique from orbs. Egg-like items are shaped like that because it makes sense to the human mind.

Anywyas, here's what I have on act 1 so far:

it's really annoying that all the battles leave you barely, barely alive- you've really got to have some luck that the enemies' attacks are spread out between your characters so that you don't die and miss out on the VERY VERY valuable EXP.

The death/game over consequences are, while not severe, are annoying. The save points, while somewhat abundant enough, are located at considerably inconvenient spots. Sometimes, when I died/wasted items at a battle and had to restart, it basically meant I had to walk all over and over again to finished this one quest or whatever. Cutscenes are somewhat short enough so that the penalty for dying doesn't suck too bad, but it's annoying.

It's a very linear progression, as you know. I don't really have a gripe with that. What I do mind is that all the towns and places you go to are large to make the aforementioned walking around pain. They ARE realistic, most everything, except for a square area every now and then, but it's mostly very good mapping.
The areas are large, especially that first town you enter. The quests and puzzles thing are very annoying because it mostly involves walking around, finding things, and making sure you don't missout on the things and treasures. While this is okay enough by itself, the linear progression of the plot stops you from going back and finishing those quests, which are really needed.
Then there comes the fact that there are many, many towns and maps(well, not THAT many, but relatively, I guess). These towns and whatever are all pretty huge, with lots of NPCs to talk about. Like before, these quests annoy in that you don't know who gives a quest or not, so you have to go all over and be explorative, which some may not find too fun.
PAssing through these areas constantly made me just want to skip these areas and just just get straight to the NPCs that matter and to the battles.

Also, the mapping is very ambigous on where the transfer areas are. This is especially true when you're in the plot progression, and then you have to talk to certain people/activate certain events to continue, all the meanwhile exploring all the sides of the map to see if there's more transfer events.

The battles are very fun, although hard, and there's a shame there's a lack of them- I'm an hour or two in the game right now, there's only been about ten battles so far, all event initiated of course. One of the annoying thing about it is that the battles come two at a time very often, and that's what kills me sometimes, where I'd think it'd be just one, and then leave auria's life 1 hit from death, and the next battle kills her immediately.

There's some various other things I would add, like some very minor textual problems where the text runs off the screen, and some other stuff, but I have to go now. Seeya.

First of all, I love the idea of an underwater rpg. I've always wanted to make an underwater region in a game but never got around to it. I also like the scavenging/foraging aspect.

To add to the battle system, perhaps the player could be rewarded with items by how well they fought. If you wanted to include a grade that could work, but just something like if the player uses lighting on an enemy that is weak to lightning, some kind of little notification would show and you'd get an extra item at the end. I don't know how much you want to get into scripts, but maybe you could have all kinds of hidden combos that the player would try to find out in battle to earn items, like disabling then killing an enemy, having a confused enemy kill another enemy, or having poison's slip damage kill an enemy. Another idea is an overkill system like in FFX that would reward the player if the final blow to an enemy gave way more damage than their remaining hp.

Also, in any game, I personally hate misses. I really hate games where I have to train agility or something before I can even hit something more than half the time. I don't think misses should exist, but rather instead of a miss, have that attack or spell do some measly damage. It would let the player know that that spell's bad against that enemy, but still does something, at least it wasn't completely useless. But all that's just me having been really annoyed at missing constantly in certain games. A few misses that are sort of random are ok.

What a creative idea!
A this kind of spin-off should work, I think.

Creating a full game from scratch is difficult, and finishing this would be amazing. I hope to see this completed!

I think that a game like this might need a much more thicker gameplay than story --- seeing as it's based off of a sidequest, and with the info you've already give, it puts the thought of a strategy game in my head (although it isn't)

I also agree with CoyoteCraft on the parallel stories idea (I'm starting to think pokemon here)
You could have two completely different games for each gender, but they connect, since they meet on certain floors.

Merchants, eh? Unique antagonists, they would be. Maybe that's a good way to put them into play...

Could you give more information on the battle system - I'm confused. Is it on the maps, side view, ect? Any other information you could give would be nice.

Starting over from the beginning of the game O,O What? No... Maybe if you included different difficulties:

Easy: Easy battles, checkpoints every few levels (every 5?)
Medium: Normal battles, fewer checkpoints
Hard: Difficult battles, more treasures, no checkpoints



So...? That's all I could really critique from what you have. I'll check in every so often, put in a few words here and there. Don't give up!
-abreaction

So, for the PCP project, here are my initial reactions. Since I couldn't find any story triggers, right now I can only give some Words on things that aren't related to your characters or story.

1) Your title screen was nice in that it wasn't the garish stock screen. I personally wouldn't use Japanese characters, but A) someone already mentioned this and B) this is only my opinion after studying the thing for years upon years before realizing I preferred language mechanics and cultural shifts to vocabularies and writing systems.

2) I know it's an alpha demo, but it really kinda threw me into the middle of a city with no prompts at all which, unless you don't have any story triggers, contributed to why I couldn't find any of them.

3) Your maps are kind of prohibitively HUGE. I mean, scrolling maps give a sense of a vast world, but sometimes there's just too much to scroll through.

4) Speaking of maps, you should go into your Autotiles first thing and switch the game's Passing rules on them, because I got stuck 2 West 1 North of the starting screen because I couldn't go back to the screen I came from, and couldn't get off of the Autotile set I was standing on to go to the east.

5) Some of your background images aren't designed to be infinite loops, so they look weird when they run out of space and go back to the beginning. There was supposed to have been an attached image, but long story short, it's the island you warp to 3 West 1 North of the starting screen.

6) I did like how you made those little arrows to show that I could interact with them, either through a transition or by jumping or whatev'. A fun way to show important tiles, or that you can interact with the environment.

7) Not to slight your composer, but the song you have at both your title screen (and as your main city theme, apparently) started to kinda... y'know, after a while. You know, when a track loops over and over and it's like listening to a clock tick when you're trying to go to bed. It can drive a man insane.

I'll explore the world more later, but these are my initial impressions. tl;dr, I got no directions for navigating a map that is way too big and partially unnavigable, the music is kinda crazymaking, and you put nice little touches into it that can lend a fun sense to the game.

I missed a few of them but these were some of the critiques that really stood out.

Anyways - I've sent out a bunch of PM's to pretty much anybody who has a project topic right now. Anyone who participated in January's PCP is welcome to do so again, but hopefully we'll get a bunch of new participants, too!

Signups end on February 10 - make sure you get in before then!!

(I moved this topic to Project Discussion to hopefully get more attention, although there's still a link from Game Development Discussion)