What are you working on? (Game Making Thread)

[Nathaniel3W]

Dialog, cutscenes, pretty much anything to do with NPCs--that's what slows down my development the most. I just don't really like doing it. I even wrote a script that generates random NPCs for me. It works great. But I still have to write their dialog manually. And then I have to fill in the localization files for the new characters and dialogues.

Over the last week or so I finally did some more programming. That's definitely what I enjoy the most. It's the most intellectually stimulating part of game development. One thing I did was add some code to make the enemies run away for one round if you damage them for double the amount they damage you, and if you damage more than 30% of their total HP in a single round. It's more likely to trigger after one or more characters in the lance get defeated because that decreases the lance's total HP. It works really well, and it makes the battles more mobile around the battlefield, instead of a stationary slug-fest.

 

[coyotecraft]

Programming is fun. It's all writing out expressions to do what you want. And you get immediate feedback to know if it works or not.

Dialogue is...well when I say "dialogue" I really mean building drama and character arcs using dialogue. Sometimes I get on a kick about "intrinsic motivation" or "indirect characterization". Currently I'm on a kick about structure and recognizing that most RPGs have an Ensemble structure. And Assembling the Ensemble is like half the story.
The newt play the flute
The carp play the harp
The plaice play the bass
And they're soundin' sharp
The bass play the brass
The chub play the tub
The fluke is the duke of soul

But what I'm working on right now isn't much of an RPG and doesn't have an Ensemble Cast. I don't know what to call it. A fable I guess. or Parable? *googling* maybe an apologue? In a literary cycle maybe.
Ah, I always wondered why they were called "cycles" when the stories themselves weren't circular. But the reasonable explanation I came across is "circle of friends", that makes sense.

 

[coyotecraft]

Forum Topic Icons for MZ? I tried using a pixel font but it just didn't look right. A "MV/MZ" topic might is useful. But who knows if we'll have any topic discussions to really justify it. We don't get any resource request or script/plugin topics these days.

 

[coyotecraft]

It's been so long since I've drawn human characters. I'm going to need a good warm up to get back in the saddle.

Lately I've been directing my thoughts to MZ resources. I think I'm narrowing down to people of color. But "people" plural, that's the trick. Usually I just do one or two characters but ideally I need to do a set of 8. And fill a proper faceset/character sheet. But the design choices can be overwhelming. I can't make decisions~

I have a few different philosophies. If I was just doing 1 or 2 characters, I'd keep them them in the same attire as the rest of the actors. But doing a handful I think justifies a distinct cultural identity. But what? Something Moorish with turbans and cloth? Tribal/Aboriginal? Maybe something fantastic and aquatic, with scales and fins. Or demonic.
No no, I shouldn't do anything that would require more resources to support. At the very least I could do something modern and urban.

Besides that, I've also been thinking about what kind of game to make. A simple traditional story. To celebrate MZ's release. Collect the crystals perhaps? Nothing so auteur and challenging like I have been doing.
After seeing some of the "new" tilesets in the Sample games I'm feeling pretty bad. Like going through stages of grief. And right now I'm at anger.

 

[coyotecraft]

Kind of sad MZ is the only thing I've had to look forward to in a long while. There aren't any shows or movies or games or anything.
And I know it's not going to be that amazing either.

I did some prep work for future MZ resources. I'm feeling slightly manic and want to do all the things that I can think of. All at once.
I've been thinking about what kind of story I can tell with the MZ actors. Something to do with a fantasy mineral. Like Mythril or Ceruleum based on their weapon and armor designs. Just something fun and simple and purely inspired by the RTP.

I thought about doing another Wireframe Crystal to match MZ. Or since the Elemental Enemies are creatures this time, then maybe I can do a digital elemental that's an actual "trojan horse". But there's already a Unicorn and The God of Light Battler riding a horse. I briefly entertained just virus, and jumped to corona virus. But that fits the God of Light too. It's not a computer virus, but still, I'm sure someone else will make that joke. And I don't want to beat a dead horse :V
Has anyone played Digital Devil Saga?
The ATB also has me thinking about Time gimmicks. And I'm thinking dinosaurs, And clockworks. Maybe something with moon phases. Sand glasses. I wonder how my Sand Pit will look with MZ's tiles.

 

[Jason]

I'm still wanting to mess around with MV3D to make a little project, but it always feels like I'm taking on too much, even with a small scale project...

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Is it progress update time? I think it's progress update time!

Let's start with some more animation I did. I haven't implemented it into the cinematic yet because I have more I need to do.

And here's some videos, one detailing what happens after the battle with Nola, one showing a large upgrade to that battle with Nola and another showing the completed bust set for the Queen of Shadows and that work on space exploration is underway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JqQDrYYGdkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ysHkeaSPjchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptAwyeAlQpg

I also removed the ability from Lumi's ENNUI empowerment to cut iFrames to a tenth, but I doubled it's damage again so now it's QUAD DAMAGE but it's still essentially a huge nerf but that's fine because doing double damage 10x as often was BROKEN.

Reducing iFrames also just causes issues easily so that's gone now, too.

I also got everything set up for the Renae and Cathy battle so all that's left now is mechanics. I've also finally made some animated autotiles that I can place to mark out passable and impassible regions so that's cool and I'll only need to use it for battle arenas where both impassible and passable exist and are on a background where boundaries aren't easily calculated.

Pjcr; as already mentioned-- has gotten me all the Queen of Shadows portraits and now he's working on Xali.

Xiie is still netless because where she lives is bad with covid right now and then Jake well... boy.

He's done stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzCkIXId6WMhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbWAoJ2zgIU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCTXTz631wwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpkLzDi9oA0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0QBZ-j_cAkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAedk-Ghb9w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gTpSaY9JGMhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNGk_ArTkTo
Xali's hero mode / battle theme, the theme for the children of calamity, Mad E. Lin's character and hero mode / battle theme, Zardari Zitei's character and hero mode / battle theme and lastly Mira Crowspeaker's character and hero mode / battle theme.

As it stands the Fantasia OST is now 90/110 tracks, meaning there's only 20 to go. Only 88 have been uploaded though.

Currently Jake works on the hero mode / battle theme of M.F. Lazarus and I've heard a demo and my gosh, it is good!

That's all for now thank you for reading and hopefully you enjoyed my content-heavy post ok bye~

 

[coyotecraft]

Gosh. Will your sound track reach 100? :haha:

Alright. Because I've got nothing better to I'm going to bed early. And Hopefully, be able to download MZ at midnight. Which will probably take a few hours to download.
And then I'll give it a thorough review. Confirm all my fears. Catalog every flaw. Cry. Use my tears to prospect for gold.

Edit: Rats. It won't be available till noon. So I probably won't get a full day of MZ until next week.

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Gosh. Will your sound track reach 100? :haha:

Ye.

"As it stands the Fantasia OST is now 90/110 tracks, meaning there's only 20 to go. Only 88 have been uploaded though."

Fantasia is a big game, it needs a big score.

Alright. Because I've got nothing better to I'm going to bed early. And Hopefully, be able to download MZ at midnight. Which will probably take a few hours to download.
And then I'll give it a thorough review. Confirm all my fears. Catalog every flaw. Cry. Use my tears to prospect for gold.

Lmaooo. It says coming August 21 for me on STEAM but that could just be them saying 'fuck you Australia'.

Wouldn't be the first time.

Oh yeah here's the OST in it's entirety as seen in the games folder.

And here's the album art, or what's been made of it.

Missing tracks are:
41 Wholesome Heart and Mischievous Spirit (Xiie has already made it, it's just a matter of time until she gets net and can send all this stuff.)
106 The Final Union ~The Legendary Battle of Gods {Theme for the first phase of Sata-N Vs YHWH. Reason this one is absent is because YHWH is a pain to draw and I haven't got around to it yet.
110 A Dream Realized ~A Victory Claimed (Already composed, I just don't know what to do for it's album art yet. It is the song from the game's Anime Opening, the credits and will be used for the final phase of YHWH.)

That's all i really got to show right now.

 

[coyotecraft]

Told you so. MZ is a mess with problems. I don't know where to being.

Just looking at this, I'm guessing there was some confusion about what was "inner body" and what was "demonic castle". Those brick tiles "demonic castle floor" have corresponding walls but they're on a different tile set. Instead the "demonic wall" is that green stuff. CLEARLY this stuff isn't meant to go together.

I want to say the Battle backgrounds are the original design specifications. But that's just a guess. If that's the case, The demonic castle truly is meant to be that fluorescent green. The "Demonic World" is all red stone, but that red stone is part of the SciFi Sets.
There is no "inner body" battle background.
The Castle and Colosseum battle backgrounds match the overworld buildings, but not the inner/outer tilesets. The Overworld tileset doesn't support a Demonic Castle or Red Rock world either.
Should I call it "Crimson?" That might make it confused with Terraria's Corruption and Crimson biomes. The crimson in that case is more organic.

To make matters even more confusing. Some of those, er, hellish green tiles are labeled "Other Dimension" in the help description instead of "Demonic"
And I've already spotted a few errors with the tile descriptions besides. Like a Stone wall that's a "tent"

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Told you so. MZ is a mess with problems. I don't know where to being.

Just looking at this, I'm guessing there was some confusion about what was "inner body" and what was "demonic castle". Those brick tiles "demonic castle floor" have corresponding walls but they're on a different tile set. Instead the "demonic wall" is that green stuff. CLEARLY this stuff isn't meant to go together.

I want to say the Battle backgrounds are the original design specifications. But that's just a guess. If that's the case, The demonic castle truly is meant to be that fluorescent green. The "Demonic World" is all red stone, but that red stone is part of the SciFi Sets.
There is no "inner body" battle background.
The Castle and Colosseum battle backgrounds match the overworld buildings, but not the inner/outer tilesets. The Overworld tileset doesn't support a Demonic Castle or Red Rock world either.
Should I call it "Crimson?" That might make it confused with Terraria's Corruption and Crimson biomes. The crimson in that case is more organic.

To make matters even more confusing. Some of those, er, hellish green tiles are labeled "Other Dimension" in the help description instead of "Demonic"
And I've already spotted a few errors with the tile descriptions besides. Like a Stone wall that's a "tent"

Installing it currently, it's a good thing I don't give a shit about the RTP tilesets. I will add on to this post with my own findings.

Ah~ Some good news, the database is a bit more fleshed out, unlike in MV where each tab had like four damned entries. So that's an upside.

Exp curvature remains in it's stagnant state with a lack of flexibility but that was expected.

Holy shit those icons are tacky.

There's a battler called 'Hi_monster' and I feel VERY CONCERNED.

Gotta say I am liking the lean towards more monster-girl esque designs, Lady of Death, God of Light and Caitsith being good examples.

I love the ArmyMonkey, I like to think they thought of me wwhen making it~

The Hermit looks like Master Roshi, lmao.

Alright, into the good stuff, battle backs and animation, the battle backs are incredibly useful to me given my games format, I love the floating islands in the 'clouds' one. Be very useful for Flight, a game which focuses on Fyori's adventures around spriteopia where she meets Mad E. Lin and stuff.

The animations are by far the most impressive things so far. They really went all out with the light and dark spell animations.

Tilesets look like some roblox developer's weed dream, though the clock tower is kinda cool on SF Outside. The SF Inside fixtures also grab me.

Looking at events through common events now, gold tick for baseline name box support.

Being able to check last used skill ID will make it very easy to do in-battle tutorials.

As Suspected, button input detection in conditional branches remains useless as hell despite this being the SECOND engine they've released with mouse support.

The Save Level feature on change class is interesting. The preview moveroute thing is a godsend for saving time counting up tiles.

Loving the inclusions to the pictures folder, Goddess of Death is nice. Oh Shit God of Light got a nature bust and so did the animals and Cait Sith.

Some of the changes to sound effects and BGS are pretty cool.

Now investigating the 2 system areas.

Oh, the titles look nice, and I'm liking that they have options for ATB and for message window offsetting.

OH SWEET, system 2 has some nice surprises, like easy resolution change, font integration and turning off categories for items in the menu.

The Vehicles definitely have upped their game, now with dragons, hovertanks and what looks like a spaceship between them.

Ooh~ The weapon sprites were unexpected, and i love them.

HOLY FUCK SF GATE 2 IS BASICALLY A YI DOOR.

AFGDHGKADGADASLK

So yeah that was interesting. Loving some of these parallaxes.

Just my testbed project where you play as the harpy character, of course she doesn't have an actor battler so same stuff as MV. Tried out the active time battle system and... it was alright.

Big love for the mouse working like it should have in MV, complete with the scroll button actually working everywhere it's supposed to.

It's likely I'll make Menagerie: Malicious Zeal with this thing, but that is a long ways off.

 

[coyotecraft]

Actually I'll probably make a separate thread for it. But it's going to take me some time to compile images, since it's hard to talk about this or that without reference.

Some stuff I'm realizing is missing while I'm just laying in bed not even looking at it all.
Like, there are Chinese tiles and battlers as "scifi". MV had this too. Except MZ doesn't have modern/scifi/chineses battle backgrounds to go with any of it! Of the Chinese 4 Divine Beasts, MZ only has a Phoenix. The Black Turtle, Blue Dragon, and White Tiger are missing.

 

[coyotecraft]

Playing around in MZ. Made a Thief enemy that steals gold. Made a couple different "steal" skill icons. But the only one that I think looked nice was the simplest version that's just a hand. Did some mock ups of an overworld demon castle.

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Not a huge progress update like last time in regards to resources, although I've done some really cool stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d-0MEJxT4s
The fight with Renae and Cathy is done, just got a couple bugs to fix. This fight has some of the coolest mechanics I've done in a while.

Each time you are hit with a purple attack, it adds a stack of dark radius, or removes a stack of light radius if you have any, getting hit by orange attacks conversely adds a light radius stuck, or removes a dark radius stuck if existent. At each stack the screen gets either light or darker around the character, at 5 stacks the dark and light are opaque, and if phase 2 is entered with those 5 stacks, it's an instant wipe. The instant wipe is also possible if in phase 3 you fail to kill the boss in the time alotted. Corrently it defaults to 30 seconds, but i plan to make it 20 and 3 boxes of health, 15 at 2 and 10 at one.

Here are the different light/darkradius wipes happening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srs4ce63luwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfZryh-Ph3U

That's the majority of my work, there have been other things but thats the big things I can share,

Pjcr
He has gotten me the first of the Xali's, behold!

More are on the way, but that's a good idea of what she looks like in Pjcr's style.

Jake
Two more tracks composed. The big Lazarus track and then a fight theme for the grim reaper (optional boss in disk 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4LiRn-F5BQhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEkHYTOTC1A

That's about all for now, ta ta~

 

[coyotecraft]

I had attempted to make a pony template for MV a while back but only went as far as a 6 frame walk cycle and a custom frame script. Maybe I'll revive it.

Here's my train of thought that lead me to drawing Sunburst today. I was writing a post on how to balance battles, which lead to a theory about enemies with limited MP.
Then I realized, I didn't know how RPG Maker handles situations where the enemy is out of MP. Tested it out, enemies just don't do anything. Lame. So I created a skill "Out of MP" that the enemy will use when it can't cast magic anymore. Of course it's kind of dumb A.I. to try and perform an invalid action, but I think it's good feedback to signal that the enemy can't do anything. And not just frozen or glitched.
So I did that, and my mind wandered a bit, and I got to thinking about Sunburst from MLP who "knows a lot about magic, but can't do any of it". They never explained how that works.
So naturally I started entertaining the idea that maybe he just doesn't have any MP. And then ways to use a character like that in an RPG. In some Isekai manga I've read (I'm really showing off my power level today) characters with little to no MP get by with MP Sharing. They form a contract or something that allows them to channel one or more character's MP, and perform God-like miracles.
So that's my next pet project, an MP Sharing system! Because ~Friendship is Magic~ or in this case, it's MP.

 

[coyotecraft]

The MP pool thing is a little more challenging than I thought it would be. Setting a value is easy enough. But it's not dynamic. It might be how the menu refreshes. I don't know.
And my attention is divided this weekend.

I want to keep it simple, and don't want to rewrite all the status windows to display a special kind of MP.
It might be easier to do a kind of double cast skill. Pick and choose who will foot the MP cost.

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Ya girl Remi is currently working on the Planar invasion event on Zen Aneia. It's a simple breath of air after the complexity of the Nola and CathRen fights.

This map was lagging hecka but I fixed it by turning of CP_Large Sprite fix.

Now dialogue and all can play without chugging, oh also in spoilers are three more screenshots of it.

Spoiler

Alrighty let's move on!

Pjcr
Got me another epic Xali portrait, this time with her Scythe. I need to add some things but Pj's work is done as far as this is concerned. The remaining half should be in my hands in about 55 hours from now.

Jake Gamelin
This boy been popping stuff off. All the Aspect boss themes are done now. Last post we had Death, now we have Form, Light and Night. Life and Magic have been done for ages.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvTZQUA0K3Uhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXWrCeFWgoYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB-uL5UtyHA

By the time Xiie has internet back it's gonna be like christmas up in here, i currently have her makle idle animations for ever sprite she hadn't yet done any for. So that should keep her busy.

 

[coyotecraft]

So I decided to drop that "mana pool" idea. I thought it would be a simple thing to have one actor's mp reference another. But in Javascript you can't do that with variables, only with objects and arrays. I didn't want to rewrite all the functions and window displays either. But I suppose I'd ultimately have to.
So yeah, I just have a "mana link" idea instead. Still ironing out the finer details. Like, if it should be a status effect or a Special Property. Maybe link to a monster, when does the link break?

I'm finding all kinds of quirky behaviors with MZ. For example, if you have a skill with the scope of Enemies only, but also set for use it outside of battle, then you can use it on your Allies.

Then I came across this graphical error.

It's not a misaligned sheet. MZ just seems to draw Status icons wrong when the window contents height is an odd number. I spent all night trouble shooting that. I'm not entirely sure if it's my computer or not.

I've tired deploying the game to play on another computer or in a web browser. But I can't get it to start. Seems to be something wrong with the Effekseer.js,

 

[coyotecraft]

So my Manalink system is now an official plugin, but without any settings. There's still things I want to tinker with.
I want to go full blown Dragonheart. Where a pact with a Dragon might bind their lifeforce aka HP. Naturally a mana link with a unicorn would bind their MP.
But right now it's just delegating the MP cost to another character. On my to-do list is restoring MP as well. Drinking "magic water" or whatever should restore the linked character's MP as well.
Currently it's more parasitic than symbiotic.

I cleaned up my drawing of Sunburst to use as a faceset. MZ does have a unicorn and dragon battler. But Sunburst is my muse.
I'd like to make an animated SV unicorn battler in the future too. However, just like MV, MZ doesn't give you any options to customize the shadow it places under the battler.
It's really tiresome that all the resources I want to make require a plug-in of some kind.

Let's see, other little things I did through out the week... I experimented with maps. Started to rearrange the tilesheets but the more I look at it the more I think it's unfinished.
I was able to get MZ to play in my browser. It seems the trick was to turn on Hardware Acceleration in Chrome.

I had started recreating some common event systems I had made in MV over to MZ. But I realized they're kind of touchy, being a hybrid of Event commands and scripts. I mean, I thought it was neat how I could populate a choice window with a list of items, maps, ect... and I was using that for a "debug skill" to generate items, and transfer to other maps.
Only it dawned on me that for item management I could just call a shop window. Doh!

Oh yeah, I've been using a premade world map for other demos. I created a Weather Changing system based on region id. So when you step into a snow field, for example, it starts snowing.
Also, I realized how dumb the weather effects are in RPG Maker. it's got 3 choices. Snow, rain, and storm. But Rain and Storm are basically the same thing except with different sized droplets.
They really should have considered developing new effects. Fire rain? Lightning bolts? Sandstorm?

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Sorry I didn't report earlier.. but ah! I wanted to get this big epic event done before I announced my progress.

Remi-chan
Huge progress on the main story. The Planar Invasion Event is Finished, and so is the next two events. Admittedly, Xali's introduction isn't over yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNx7EnzcIFkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBcv52oDizshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCnXoTRfgcQ
You might notice in that final video not one but two pre-rendered cinematics exist. I can show those too, I suppose.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNHVOUOMm1Ahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jyp5ZAWKFao

Pjcr
As the latter of those videos above will demonstrate, he is done with Xali's, and is currently working on the Enma: Ashe.

I've also been using pre-existing resources to make a placeholder for Svoli Serazen, as I will need her for a scene that's coming up very soon... Where her, Esperia and Pep have a vicious 3 on 1 with Xali.

Faceset:

Xiie
She is still unable to send work, however, that didn't prohibit me from making a placeholder sprite set for Svoli Serazen.

Jake
Hoo boy. He's four tracks away from the finish line, The Two final boss themes and two ending themes are all that remain. Of 110 tracks he is at 106. The remaining tracks are 106, 107, 108 and 109.

Here's the immense number of tracks he's gotten done.

The Hero Mode / Battle Themes for the protagonists of Terra, Valin Jaeger, Nikki Hirogashi and Trixie Valenthart. (The other is Kyoshi Leonova, and he already has 12 Pride of the Green-coated Grandmaster ~Ace Pupil)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljRqmmqX6ushttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp5BOqoM_gkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28AjJhWTyn8

The themes for the Land of Ghosts, there's an optional boss fight with the four ghosts in Boned, King Richard and Dibella. They all got special attention in the OST.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTUxeoaEXTohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isS9_6tBs_Mhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKQfxQXNV0Y
With those last several done, only endgame is to remain.

And it is off to a tremendous start. Here is both Yi and Wi's second phase and final spellcard themes. In other words, all of Yi and Wi's themes are done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCFPuuKboQ8http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8S3zgapIio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5mYnPxRTeIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkS1wPmn6M4

And last... though far from least.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al2zQFczFR8
You. Have. Welcomed. Hell. Or the theme of YHWH.