Gun Sage (may contain mature content)

[SorcerGamble2]

"Right now, I'm just trying to work things out so that it will be fun, functional, and have a number of side quests and interactions going on with the main plot.  I'm trying to get the story and design going first because that's motivating to me.  By the way..."

understandable, we all have a different aspect of the game that we like to start with... some story, some function, some graphics, etc.

"I suppose I should have expected a response like this since I just started on it, again, from scratch a little over a week ago...  I attempted to put this in Concept Development even though it had screenshots simply because not even the first chapter is done, story-wise, and even once it is, I'm going to still have a lot of work to do to make it look "right."  It was moved."

...fair enough

"And no, I haven't played any of the completed games...I only just joined up about a week ago."

This is probably your biggest mistake.  I would suggest taking like a two week hiatus from ur project to, at least briefly, try out like 8-12 other games recently made with RMXP.  (Though not very recent, Outlaw City comes to mind.)

"Right now, I'm working with defaults.  No, everything is not set up the way I want it.  I just want to get the layout for the first chapter ready as far as story, level design, interactions, etc.  Once I'm done with that, then it's a matter of changing things up and making them look more "appropriate."  At that point in time, I will have updated screenshots and a demo."

Once you have ur story well fleshed out, character interactions, etc... if you want much better feedback for this topic i would really recommend that you spend a serious amount of time on "resource gathering"... for tilesets, charsets, facesets, autotiles, etc.... probably before you spend time on map layouts and such... or that time would be wasted.

 

[gunsage]

i would really recommend that you spend a serious amount of time on "resource gathering"... for tilesets, charsets, facesets, autotiles, etc.... probably before you spend time on map layouts and such.

Where would you recommend I get some good sets?  I mean, look, I'm than happy to do what some of you guys are saying, but I personally didn't think it looked or played that bad as is, nor did my tester.  Maybe it's because of the features?  I don't know.

 

[mawk]

You're missing most of my point. Lyrical music does not mesh well with 2D video games when it's used almost exclusively. Contemporary songs are not meant to loop over and over in the background but to be a centerpiece, and they don't lend themselves well to mood-setting unless you're trying to sync them up with a cutscene, and even then it doesn't quite fit with the relatively inexpressive graphics. I'm not telling you to use the RTP music, I'm telling you to use music that fits its intended purpose.

And if you want to convey despair, for god's sakes convey it in your actual game. Not only is the city bright and clean, full of people with happy and colourful hair, but from the dialogue you wouldn't even be able to tell that it's supposed to be post-apocalyptic or whatever. Before reading the story, I thought that it was a standard high school RPG set in a cheerful little castle town.

 

[gunsage]

You're right, there is an echo here. :lol:

 

[mawk]

I'm continuing our conversation. Give me some indication that you understand the point I am making.

 

[gunsage]

No, I really don't understand the point.  You say that lyrical music is no good in games unless it's sync'd up pretty well with a cutscene.  The problem here is, like I said, this is something I wanted to have in the game as a feature and so far, it's worked well.  "I Won't Spend Another Night Alone," for example, has worked as the simple, laidback emotion I was wanting for the base.  In fact, I should point out I've been using that every time I start this game over.  It just plain works.  As far as the battle music, since it's mostly death metal I'm using anyway, it fits well in the battles.

On top of this, I'm not just using death metal for the battles, let alone any death metal.  You're right, that wouldn't sound good.  However, what I've selected so far does sound good.  I'm saying this not only as a gamer, but also as someone that simply likes good music.  Like I said, I have an Excel spreadsheet that has all kinds of tracks, lyrical and otherwise, that have been applied to categories.  If I honestly didn't think they'd work, I wouldn't have used them.  The feel you get from each track should convey exactly what is going on in a scene.  What I'm saying is I understand what you're getting at, but I have confidence in my current selection and my tester would tell me if he thought I needed changes in it, as he's a big RPGer too.

I've also downloaded, but not implemented as of yet, a number of tracks from various other RPGs (Persona 3, Digital Devil Saga, Breath of Fire, etc.) and plan to use them or remixes as well.  I'm not saying you're wrong; I'm saying I like it the way it is.  Without any real public demo, it's hard to say one way or the other until you see and hear it in action.  You said it yourself...

I'm telling you to use music that fits its intended purpose.

I have.

And if you want to convey despair, for god's sakes convey it in your actual game.

10 Years' Wasteland track is played toward the beginning when describing the events of the past.  It lets you know some pretty dark stuff has gone down over a snowy, depressing background.  The screen pans over to reveal the main character, who's lost (actually he's in a dream, but yeah).

Not only is the city bright and clean, full of people with happy and colourful hair, but from the dialogue you wouldn't even be able to tell that it's supposed to be post-apocalyptic or whatever.

And you're absolutely right.  Trust me here...I'm building this up.  You get a lot of character interactions, familiarity, then you lose everything to establish a true enemy and purpose.  You know how in Xenogears you're given a small, quaint town with plenty of people, a marriage is getting ready to take place, everything seems so peaceful...then HOLY CRAP!!  It's kinda like that.  Again, it'll probably make more sense once I release a demo, but I don't want to spoil too terribly much. :smile:

 

[mawk]

It's entirely possible that you've implemented your lyrical music well enough to avoid jarring the player, but it's really not your call to make -- as the game's creator, you already have the intended atmosphere of any given scene in your head and have behind-the-scenes understanding of everything that's going on. This is the sort of thing the player determines, and while it's no hard-and-fast rule that lyrical music can never possibly work in an RM game, I've never yet seen lyrical music implemented in an RM game in such a way that didn't completely ruin the moment with campiness or jar me out of my suspension of disbelief because I recognized the song. I suppose in this regard I'm looking forward to a demo so that I can see how it's executed.

Some other things:

Maps. You have an abundance of huge empty space and the whole place looks very boring and plain. It doesn't matter if it's a scrubbed clean military base, even those use space efficiently and have little oddities on the walls and floors to look at now and then. Check out the Mapping Improvement Thread in RM Discussion (I think that's where it is, at least,) it should help you a great deal in this regard just to look around and see what people consider "good" and "bad."

And stop giving each screenshot its own individual spoiler. Having too many unnecessary spoilers really takes away from the aesthetic appeal of a thread. Generally speaking, you should only need spoilers to save space -- if an entire section takes up a large amount of vertical space (i.e. the entire screenshots section,) then it's fine to use a spoiler, but if all you have is a paragraph or two or a single image, you're just hurting yourself by slathering gray boxes everywhere and making the reader click something every time he gets curious.

 

[Despain]

There are seriously bigger problems with this than the "lol half-H tables". That kind of stuff is really nitpicking and missing out on some of the bigger issues with the project, problems that come in TONE and ATMOSPHERE.

I'm not saying that anything here is BAD and I apologize if I was being rude in my first couple of posts here. But your game's title and summary promises something very different than what your screenshots show. Everything sets up the game to feel very futuristic and post-apocalyptic, with guns and computers and all of that stuff. The BRIGHT and HAPPY CHIBI ANIME RTP graphics, however, don't reflect that kind of atmosphere at all.

 

[blibla48]

this sounds interesting and i like the title and the story
and if  you want i could help you making battlers and a title screen
(since i'm more of a artist then anything else)

 

[gunsage]

Oh, cool!  Yeah, I could definitely use some help with the artwork.  I researched a few sites that have some tilesets I like, so there's that, but at least having a better title screen would be nice.  I was considering drawing it myself, but I'm not that great of an artist.

 

[blibla48]

oh uuuh here's my deviantart page maybe you'll like it
http://blibla48.deviantart.com/
anyways if you're interested just tell em so

 

[gunsage]

Hey guys! I know I haven't been very active on here, but I wanted to update and let you guys know I have a demo available!

 

[Meness]

I have been reading the story, and it's interesting. I'm going to download the demo and give you my thoughts later.

 

[Meness]

I've been playing it. I'm glad you removed the lyrical music except from the intro, which works.

Your mapping, mmmm, not that good. try to make your indoor maps more cramp and small, it looks really good that way. If you really want it to be big, you're gonna have to fill up all those empty spaces. Even the town is too empty with sometimes randomly placed tress and stuff.

Oh and I don't know whether this is the end of the demo or a bug, but when I enter the clinic, I get a lock direction event. So I got the key, but I can't really face the door. So yeah.

Overall, I like how you set up your events, oh and learning skills by getting them hit at you. Try to improve your mapping, and get more not-so-RTP tilesets. I would give this demo a 2.5/5

 

[gunsage]

Yeah, I've heard the mapping isn't that great. I didn't realize the game locked in that part, so thank you for telling me! This is probably because I implemented the run function late, meaning I have to go back and double check events to ensure they definitely turn off running before the event starts, then turn it back on during appropriate moments.

I am using more interesting maps as time goes by and planning on revamping the town map, but I also realize that will force me to redo a LOT of the eventing, so I had been putting it off for now. I won't be correcting the mapping just yet, even though I know the RTP is very off-putting, but I will have it revamped when I have an official demo ready.

Also, I didn't completely remove lyrical music, but what I have done instead is opted to use a lot less of it. Mostly you get lyrical music during boss fights (which there are a lot). Thank you for your review!