The Hermit

[SleepingDuck]

The Hermit
On a fine day, a hermit goes outside to chop wood. While rejoicing in his solitude as usual, he is rudely interrupted by the arrival of a wizard who wants something of him. Living in the midst of an inaccessible forest for a reason, the hermit is mostly interested in how to make this individual leave ASAP. The wizard, however, has other plans.

Game download (requires RTP) (unencrypted!)

I felt like giving this contest a try, so I downloaded & installed VX Ace Lite, opened a few tutorials, closed them within minutes because they explained too little with too many words, got an idea, and started working on it :P. As this is my very first time working with any version of RPG Maker, I'm not sure I'm using it as I'm supposed to, but man did I have a ball creating the game :D. Somehow, writing banter is much more fun if it ends up in an RPG engine! Feel free to experience the result yourself!

As for what the game was planned to be, reading the description will spoil some of the jokes in the intro, so play that first if you don't like spoilers .

Spoiler

The idea I got was to make the player control a possessed hermit that wants to return to the old state of things. By balancing out the grumpiness of the main character with a light-hearted possessor, a mysterious and somewhat absurd game designer and some random appearances, it becomes easy to write humorous dialogue. Also, the main character may choose not to cooperate and instead to hinder the player's controls, allowing interesting puzzles to be created.

Now, I specifically do not want to plan the whole game in advance. I don't know the engine well enough yet to know what is possible and what isn't, so I just let my whims come as I work and see if I can implement them. One of those whims was to make the main character complain if the player tries to walk him into an obstacle. A short perusal of the game scripts taught me this could be done with just 1 added line of script .

Screenshots


The future of the game
During the making of this contest version of the game, I found that I enjoyed the writing of banter a lot, which was great . To my surprise, however, the scripting and testing of puzzles wasn't nearly as much fun as I hoped. I usually enjoy programming, but for me, the charming part of working on this game was creating a story, and scripting took me out of that. So if there's any future for this game, it's in cooperating with someone who enjoys creating the puzzles . At any rate, I've had a great experience participating in this contest! I learned a lot, both about game programming and myself, and met a new and friendly community. I hope this is the start of a long, adventurous and humorous journey :D!

Changelog

• v0.4 (2014-02-26): Added the ending, decided to keep the working title as a real title and squashed the last few bugs.
• v0.3 (2014-02-24): Added the second puzzle and original music composed specifically for this game by WandererOfMyst!
• v0.2 (2014-02-02): Added the first puzzle!
• v0.1 (2014-02-01): Initial demo version, featuring only the intro of the game.

 

[Ellie]

That's a really unique idea for a plot, I want to see how this turns out in the end now.

 

[Stardust]

It's awesome that you're enjoying creating your game so far! :D RPG Maker is quite an interesting engine and it's very capable.

In terms of resources, I'm assuming there is a lot more available in the full version because I know VX had a lot more (can't verify as I'm also just using Lite right now). If you're looking for more music, feel free to browse our audio resources forum. Some people posted some great stuff in there. Just make sure to give credit if you use anything. ^^

I'll give the demo you posted a try when I'm able to play it! At my dad's house for the weekend with my ancient laptop, so this week I'll be back at my desktop. This sounds really interesting.

 

[SleepingDuck]

Thanks for the encouraging comments! I'll have a look at the audio resources forum, sounds good .
I'm working on the first puzzle today, though I fear my ideas will require more script modification, so I really do hope that using an external script editor with Ace Lite is allowed for the contest :P!

Edit: First puzzle added, and v0.2 of the demo can now be downloaded!
The next update may have to wait a while, as next weekend I'll be away, and during the week I have more pressing matters to attend to .

 

[LiquidMetal91]

For face alterations / face sets (or completely new sets) you can use FaceMaker by CompulsoryHero (http://rpgcrisis.net/forums/files/go/8463797d5797c9ed9655489341ba9cf5/face-maker)

Its a rather strait forward program, though the help option is in Japanese :S
If you do have problems, just PM me. I've worked with it a bunch of times.

G'luck, looks real nice. Plot is promising to :smile:

 

[SleepingDuck]

Thanks for pointing that out, I'll experiment with it when I find time to work on the game again! And thanks for the compliment !

 

[Injury]

Interesting stuff! I did enjoy the idea of removing the fourth wall, kind of have the player recognized as being in control. The uncaring attitude of the protagonist is pretty funny. Keep it up! I want to see more!

 

[SleepingDuck]

Thanks! Removing the fourth wall came kind of naturally while writing the banter, though it's an interesting problem that I don't know the gender of the player and am therefore unable to use pronouns when referring to him/her (see the problem?) :P. Perhaps I'll ask for the players' gender in the next version, though I don't know if it's easy to use variables in text boxes.

 

[Injury]

Eh? It shouldn't be too hard. Just have a switch and if they are one sex or the other, have the dialog respond that way through a conditional branch.

 

[Ellie]

They/them/their are still grammatically correct.

 

[SleepingDuck]

@Injury: I'd rather avoid having two versions of every text box that addresses the player. Rewriting parts of the dialogue becomes tedious then . Perhaps this won't be an issue at all; it depends on where my whims are taking me :P.

@Princess Amy: Long live the majestic plural! Now that you mention it, it actually makes sense. If I'm to PM the game to you when it's finished, my target audience is strictly royal . Yet somehow, I have this gut feeling that the majority of people who end up playing the game will be part of the rabble :P. But if I end up implementing a player pronoun variable, I might as well add the majestic plural to the options!

 

[Stardust]

I played the demo and I thoroughly enjoyed it! The sense of humor about it so far is really entertaining and I really like where you're going with the storyline because it can take so many interesting routes. I look forward to seeing more of this!

 

[SleepingDuck]

Thanks for the encouragement! Glad you like the humor and the storyline; they've been a lot of fun to work on, and I hope to do much more writing before the contest is over. At the moment I'm struggling with a puzzle mechanic that turned out a lot harder to implement than I hoped :P. Guess I should temper my programming ideas a bit if I want to finish the story arc before the 28th >.>

 

[SleepingDuck]

Bump! New demo uploaded containing another puzzle, and the game now includes two original musical pieces specifically made for this game by WandererOfMyst! Thanks!

Also, I've been biting off more than I can chew lately, and am contemplating what to do with my entry for this contest. I think I'll just slap an ending on it after the second puzzle and call it a game for now. The perfectionist in me is making a scene as I write this, but seriously, I need to be careful with spending my time and energy. Too much tension in me at the moment. Meh :/.

Anyway, have fun playing the second puzzle (it's not as much of a puzzle as it is an excuse for me to put in lots more dialogue featuring further examples of the humor of yours truly) (oh, and it's scripted and may not have been done before, I'm not sure) (just try it, seriously!)! I'm off to relax and read a book .

 

[Latrans]

Just a few more puzzles based on movement and you'll be golden.

 

[SleepingDuck]

New version online, adding an ending and squashing a few bugs! Also, I decided to keep the working title, as anything else I could come up with sounded less captivating . Furthermore, this version is probably the last one, at least for the duration of this contest. Though I think Latrans is right in that the game could be finished properly with just a few more movement puzzles, I really should let go of it for the moment (d'oh!). Also, it turned out I don't enjoy puzzle-making, as I explain in the updated first post:

During the making of this contest version of the game, I found that I enjoyed the writing of banter a lot, which was great . To my surprise, however, the scripting and testing of puzzles wasn't nearly as much fun as I hoped. I usually enjoy programming, but for me, the charming part of working on this game was creating a story, and scripting took me out of that. So if there's any future for this game, it's in cooperating with someone who enjoys creating the puzzles . At any rate, I've had a great experience participating in this contest! I learned a lot, both about game programming and myself, and met a new and friendly community. I hope this is the start of a long, adventurous and humorous journey :D!

In addition to what I write there, I'd like to say a few words of thanks here. Thanks to WandererOfMyst, who composed two tracks solely for this game! I think they help the game to stand out, and support its quirky, humoristic nature . Thanks to all people who posted in my thread (Princess Amy, Stardust, LiquidMetal91, Injury and Latrans) for your participation and tips, but most of all for the encouragement. It made working on the game all that more fun! And thanks to Princess Amy for all the work organizing the contest! Don't beat yourself up about the things that seem like they could have been better, it's been a blast :D! I'm glad to have participated, and look forward to follow-up events!