Rules - Ideas That Don’t Deserve Their Own Thread

@tekiro MV Support is meant for asking for help getting something to work, not for brainstorming.

Merging with Ideas That Don’t Deserve Their Own Thread.

Two of 'em actually, but I forgot of one and didn't write it down. So the second one here is pretty minor, heh.

1) For a gritty genre (dystopian, post-apocalyptic, etc), the use of a combat drug to affect your dialogue choices. I was thinking of using an alignment system prior and the drugs forcing an alignment's choices. The three drugs are: "Jughead", a short-lived steroid that forces aggression and intimidation ("chaotic" alignment); "Absolution", an neuroleptic that forces pacifism and insight ("lawful" alignment); a baggie of cheaply-found drugs that give chill and usually "joke-option" responses ("neutral" alignment).

2) Mimics that aren't just man-eating treasure chests. Things such as animated swarms of coins, killer jack-in-the-boxes, etc that progressively get more dangerous?

@RachelTheSeeker Re: Mimics: That reminds me, I remember reading someone's concept for a D&D dungeon crawl over on Reddit. IIRC, it started as a fairly standard adventure where a couple of adventurers go into a big ol' cave to battle a dragon, except they discover along the way that the dragon has teamed up with a powerful mimic. They don't encounter the mimic until after they've beaten the dragon - whereupon it turns out that the mimic is, in fact, the cave itself.

Another idea, and one that I'm unsure if it's been answered? Do five-member parties work in VX Ace? I've considered using the Five-Man Band trope for my WIP; I'm not sure if Ace can handle those well even with scripts? I know Etrian Odyssey handled them well (especially with its Autobattle feature), and my characters are pretty straight-forward for their stats, gear and skills.

If it helps? Each character has their own niche for stats and party role; they'll only have a weapon and accessory each; each will only have three skills and a limit-break-esque "Brave Art" for their skills. I'm also aware Super Mario RPG had five party members with Mario permanently the leader, but they only allowed three for battles. Without a way for backup to replace the main squad if wiped out, I don't wanna invoke a Game Over if just three of the five are defeated. Especially so if you can swap the active party outside of battle! :v

The idea I have is to start my zombie game with narration about how things went down and asking the player questions about how they reacted to those events in the past, then using the answers to customize what skills, equipment, and party members they start the game with.

My concern is that people won't tolerate the setup and want to jump right in.

There have been games that do similar things but I'd appreciate some opinions nonetheless.

I can see the intro being alright, and I like the idea of answering questions to customize stats and what-not. My suggestion is to make it less narrative and more dialogue-based. Info dumps are usually boring, but masking exposition with in-world interactions can be helpful. Also, conveyance of what could be obtained from the choices helps. Party members seem less obvious than stats or gear.

You mean like, make it a cutscene instead of just text? Sort of like the part in the first Kingdom Hearts where you're asked personality questions by different characters and respond to them?

Something like that could work, yes~

Why not just start your game with the events you would be describing and then record what the player does and use that? I think that'd feel a lot more organic and catch the audience's attention a lot more quickly.

Something like that, yeah.

I was thinking something a bit like the generator, except for user-created avatars instead of dev-made ones.

I think the closest I can compare it to is the Mii Channel?

Thanks, appreciate the feedback! I didn't mention it before, but I was also concerned about how important it'd be to a player to know what their choices are effecting so with you mentioning it I'll take that to heart.

I won't lie. It's not the only reason I like it, but part of the appeal behind the idea for me is saving on assets and time. But if it doesn't hold enough appeal it may just be better to go that way.

@ArtistDavidHarper With regards to the 'why not just show these events' statement, I had assumed some of said events could be relatively mundane or incidental things that don't really warrant being shown, if being 'shown' them is even possible. For example, skills could be determined by 'so what do you do for a living?', equipment by 'do you have anything we could use?', or party members with 'do you know any one who might be able to help?' It'd be pretty tedious to flashback to the PC buying torches from the store, or going to university to get their degree in accountancy. :V

The only alternative to that I could see would basically to just have a questionnaire before the game starts, asking the player all of those questions and more, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon-style. As long as it's relatively short and gets right into the game afterwards as opposed to clarifying things with a needless info-dump, I don't think it would be that bad? But it might not fit the tone you're going for.

Some of what I intended to cover would count as mundane, but some wouldn't be. But making them all mundane things people wouldn't want to play through could be the answer to making it more palatable if it ends up being an issue.

I didn't know Pokemon Mystery Dungeon did something like this, I'll definitely have to check it out for reference. Thanks for the insight!

That would be cool! Getting use out of the generator for custom-made characters seems like fun. IIRC there's at least one character creation script for Ace that does similar; could be one for MV as well?

I'd just like some feedback on this character design.



This is Deedee, the main character of a game I'm working on. She was some loser's MMO avatar, but that guy woke up as Deedee (along with half a million other users from the same server) and she had to... adjust to life in Mundus. And to suddenly being female, looking like this, and being able to punch an owlbear through a wall - honestly, all these are upsides as far as she's concerned.

I'm interested in knowing what this design conveys, how strong it is, things like that. I'm not as worried about the execution as the idea (since I'll probably get someone else to do the final art); I'd like advice on the color scheme, costume design, what I'm conveying about personality.

Looks pretty strong to me! I see a confident, boisterous personality wrapped in what looks like the latest shaolin-inspired expansion in an MMO, which sounds like what you were going for.

Though having read your introduction MAY have colored my opinion a bit.

Hi! So in my project I'm working on a big theme is classism, and a sharp divide between the upper and lower classes in the main city. I'm brainstorming now on ideas for what to call the classes. For the upper class I'll probably just stick with the classic 'nobles', but for the lower class I haven't decided yet. Some of the ideas I have are based off of different cultural/historical words for peasant.

I'm leaning toward 'plebes' or 'proles' (derived from 'plebeian' and 'proletariat' which meant commoner in ancient Rome). Which do you think sounds better, or (honest feedback) do you think neither sounds great?

I'd love any feedback or ideas. Thanks!

Nobles & proles sound pleasingly alike, like two sides of the coin. I'd stick with them as a starting point! :biggrin:

Scrollmaster Leveth

Synopsis: 60 years ago, while the use of magic was unbanned with the discovery of wands, the world adopted this new energy into their lives. Its influence, over the years, started giving special abilities to newborns: some have the innate power to enchant spells from wands into scrolls, and others can assimilate said scrolls to cast without holding a wand. The life of Leveth changed very suddenly when he found out he had this second ability. Previously a researcher in magic in the castle of Gellfa, his task is now to intervene all over the world to study magic phenomenons and expand the library's collection of scrolls.

Scrollmaster Leveth is an unapologetically RTP game, with mechanics that keep the game fresh. The battle system, for example, keeps most of the vanilla look and feel but introduces a twist to make it a lot more strategic than the plugins people overuse: please welcome my creation Turn-based 2.0, powered by events, Action Points, and longer turns.
Team up with 2 adventurers out of 7 distinctive classes to assist you in your missions, and switch out at will thanks to the EXP for reserve members mechanic. If you need an Executioner to hit hard and finish off enemies, Banor is your guy. If you want a Berserker to take a lot of hits and get mad in the process, Jen will be your best friend. There's synergies between them!
While anybody can use wands, have the enchanter make scrolls out of them and Leveth will be able to use their spells and keep wielding his weapon. Got some spare scrolls? Anybody can use spellbooks as well! Get the right ones together, and your allies will be able to unleash a flurry of elemental attacks at your foes.
Go on missions to serve the kingdom, your own pockets, or keep the scrolls to yourself for power. The shadiest people know about the shadiest places, so who knows who you might meet if you go down a darker path?
Go on an adventure to fight bandits and monsters, and clear your path towards the answers to your questions. There's some secrets to uncover, and mysteries only your investigations can solve.

This is not a complete game, just the first part of many. No screenshots, hence the absence of a standalone topic. This demo has a runtime of at least 3 hours. The last dialogue in the main storyline will tell you that this is as far as we'll go for now.
Trigger warnings: RTP everywhere, more absent animations than present ones.

Download from Google Drive