Rules - Ideas That Don’t Deserve Their Own Thread

Yeah, storytelling is hard. Without knowing the tone of the game it’s very hard to say.
My solution on storytelling was to be brief. Not trying to be an author. I did that because english is not my first language, but I think it could be a good solution for many.
I haven’t heard anyone complaining about RPGs having too few words.

Yeah, I agree, the good guy path is very easy to write and affection mechanics are very straight forward.

The "turning party members to the darkside" part is what I'm sorta lost in.

Yeah I believe if you want to make it believable you need to rationalize the "bad" behavior or idea's, you want to give good reason behind the thought process... like maybe telling a party member "It's okay to do X bad thing, because the person they are doing it to deserves it" or "It's fine to kill these people cause they're beyond saving, there's no other way, if we don't kill them now, other innocent people will die", etc.. It really depends on the situation, but you have to make it seem like the main character is rationalizing, and normalizing the "bad" deeds of their fellow party members, it makes it more believable to put a believable emotion behind this.

Like maybe your party member's family was killed by the general of X army, and when that party member encounters said general later down the road, they must make a choice to either kill, or forgive the general, who's may or may not have changed his way since then.

In this situation the main character can provoke the party member by telling them to think about all the suffering he's caused, and all the other people he's done the same thing to, think about all the lives he's taken, and how he deserves to die. or something along those lines. and to make the situation more relevant you can add a flashback of what happened, and how terrible a person the general was in that situation, so you can attempt to make the player feel some degree of malice toward the general to make them more inclined to choose to kill the general.

This could then start the party member down a darker path, because maybe later he meets someone somewhat bad, and decides, "he could turn out to be just like that general", so now he has an excuse to continue killing people he dislikes/disagree's with.

Sorry for the dark take here o_o; but this is just an example, it's best to think about each characters personality and traits individually, and think about where their weakness lies, these are things can may be exploited by the main character to begin turning them "bad".

Hopefully this is more helpful ^^ I'm not writer myself, my skills lie in programming, but this is just my take on making the situation more believable. Maybe someone with more insight may be able to provide better feedback on this ^^;

Oooh, I love that, don't worry about your writing skills, you are giving me good ideas!

I began this whole "turning party members bad" idea because I don't really like morality systems in other games in the way that they almost always just mean being a as$hole.
My thought process was that I want the player to be able to be Sauron or Darth Sidious instead of Kylo Ren.

That was one of the things I liked about the RPG Tyranny and Kotor 2 as well, Obsidian had a knack for this.

Not going to make a thread for my ideas.

Here it is, though.

Strange formulas for attack damage.

1. Attack damage based on number of times saved.

2. Attack damage based on number of steps taken.

This would be normally enemy attacks.

Oh, gosh, I had no idea this thread existed.
I must resist the urge to post all my bad ideas, but here's one that's been in my head for ages.
Catgirl is sentenced to 9 life sentences in prison for murder.
Ba doom kish!

My game features mainly two playable actors, so I decided to experiment with menu actor display. And, well, I don't really know how to feel about it, that's why I post it here

@Jobhob I really like the Spy vs Spy vibe! :kaoluv: Does yo game use pixel art a lot tho? Just askin' 'cuz I feel the pixel font you got going isn't the best fit for yo actor images?

Overworld is pixel, portraits in dialogue boxes are pixel, and all icons are pixel. Title screen, Main Menu, Cutscenes, and all that inside a battle is digital.

A little showcase (a but outdated)

@Jobhob okay, not bad, sweetie! :kaoluv: You got the style down pat, I like it! I wud still maybe fish around a bit, see if there's a font that wud be a better fit? Somethin' about it doesn't click wid me :kaoswt:

Randomly had an idea while drawing about a puzzle/survival game where you have to choose 2 out of 6 senses (1 being fictional, whatever you want/fits the game) before entering the game and only being able to use those senses to finish the game. So If you don't choose sight you literally cannot see, but maybe you can sense things or get warnings (see a little) if you choose hearing or smell.

Each sense have benefits and detriments, most of which are obvious but also gameplay stuff like not being able to taste if food is spoiled or not being able to smell gas.

Since I'm about to dwelve into some boring university stuff, I guess I could leave a small update on progress I made (mostly interface stuff)

I've been longing to create an RPG Maker game for nearly two decades now, but my attempts never go anywhere. My dream games I don't really have the skills or resources to complete on my own, so that I've decided to turn them into novels instead (which I may later use as a kind of "proof of concept" to recruit people for adapting them into games), but I still feel the itch to do something with RPG Maker on occasion. Usually nowadays I get discouraged pretty quick and drop it, but recently I've had two ideas for what I might do with RM if the urge persists.

The concepts are pretty vague at the moment, so probably this thread is the place for them. If they belong in Game Ideas and Prototypes instead, just let me know.

The Game
A game created using just the RTP material and default mechanics of a given platform, so that I don't get bogged down with seeking out specific graphics, music, or scripts/plugins, and can hopefully finish a game for once. Possibly I would start with RPG Maker XP (my first RM platform) or RPG Maker 2003 (as the oldest platform available in English), and then if I successfully complete the game I can make it into a series using later platforms for later games.

The game would probably be built around heroes completing various quests to explore different areas (or worlds) and take out (vanquish, hence the title) specific monsters. Characters, settings, items, skills, and creatures will all be determined to some degree by the given RTP, though I hope to give it my personal touch in terms of terminology, drawing in part on mythology and classic fantasy literature as well as my own imagination. I'll probably also experiment with the various event types and include some hidden surprises for players.

The Plot
Plotwise, my ideas are still vague. Heroes will be gathered together from different places and possibly times (different worlds, perhaps), or something to that effect. Maybe I could do a pseudo-sci-fi thing involving people in virtual reality, artificial copies of famous heroes, etc. Probably the game will not be plot-heavy, though I know myself well enough to predict that I'll continually expand and embellish it as I go along (hopefully not to the point where I get overwhelmed and give up).

Questions
Anyone reading this post ever try an RTP-based project like this? Is it a good idea for a first game, or just a waste of my time? Any plot-related suggestions would be welcome.

Theme and Setting
I've had the idea to make a horror game for some years now, of the type sometimes derisively called a walking simulator. More recently, however, I had this idea, which I'm still trying to work out the details on. The mood will be either horror-adjacent or merely spooky, with the protagonist and other characters getting caught up in a supernatural situation from which the player's goal is to rescue them. Probably what I'll do is have them drawn into another plane of existence (the Dark World) from which they have to free themselves. Unlike Vanquish, I'd prefer not to rely on the RTP for this game, at least not entirely.

Tone
Strange to say, but the tone of the game is one of the things I'm most iffy on. On one end of the spectrum, it could be fairly lighthearted or even comical, along the lines of Luigi's Mansion, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, and Grabbed by the Ghoulies. One thought I had was that it might be based on various misadventures and jokes from my and my friends' gradeschool days. At the other end of the spectrum, the game could be dead serious, even dark, dealing with death and other more mature topics. At the moment I'm thinking that the final result will probably fall somewhere between the two extremes, but exactly where is difficult to say.

Gameplay
Since the idea's so new and undefined, I'm also unsure what kind of gameplay should be involved. Definitely there will be some element of exploration, and dialogue among characters. Whether there should be anything beyond that, I'm not sure. I could make it a puzzle game along the lines of Ib. Will there be combat involved? If so, it could be either of the standard RPG variety or something a little more unique. Maybe combat options are limited, or it's not always useful, so that players have to choose between fight and flight (and stealth?). They might have finite "ammunition" of whatever kind, or certain items/weapons may only work on certain enemies.

Questions
Really I'd love to hear anyone's input on either the topic or tone or gameplay. Of the various options I've mentioned, what would most appeal to you personally as a player? All suggestions are welcome.

Thank you for taking the time to read all this!

For #1, that is one of the most generic and non-conclusive descriptions I've seen in a while.
There are too many all RTP games to count, so yeah, it's been done.

For #2, same thing. I like Luigi's mansion and other generally funny things. I don't like horror, and definitely not anything that does the "Ooh, look it's funny! Cute! See! Oh wait, **** you never mind we're talking about trauma now". I'd say choose one or the other. (Dark humor is different, BTW)

I guess to summarize, there's nothing to really comment on. It's just too generic.

#1 is less for the benefit of others than for myself. That is, it's mostly for practice and just being able to actually finish a game. So I'm less concerned with it sounding super interesting and more with whether or not it's worth doing for my own development.

Then if that's the case, then yes, there's no reason to switch out the graphics aside from personal preference.

Not sure about copyrights on titles, but you might need to get on the phone with Platinum and/or Sega's lawyers



Less likely, depending on how litigious Activision is about games that can be abbreviated to CoD, you might also need to get on the phone with their lawyers as well.

Valid things to consider. Just to offer thoughts:
IP law generally prohibits getting a trademark on common words. Obviously, you can use the various online tools to check.

But it would also be a question as to whether the game is at all similar to the existing one, even if the word is trademarked for their specific use.

That wouldn't be a thing unless they also trademarked the abbreviation (in which case, you simply wouldn't use it for marketing). There's no ability to say "I'm going to prohibit any combination of words that can be abbreviated to these letters."

Besides what ATT_Turan mentioned, I doubt that I'll ever rise high enough to be on Sega's radar.

Anyway, I know that there's not much to the two ideas at this point. It's why I posted them in this thread, after all. If there's nothing really to be said about them right now, then oh well. I'll just let it drop until things start to crystallize more in my head. Just thought I'd put it out there on the off chance anyone had some advice. Thanks for reading, anyway.

Planning to add ghost enemies to my game, so I might as well share my take on ghost enemies to get some feedback if possible.

Since I don't have damage elements I think of separating ghosts into ghost (main part, fairly tanky, does all skills) and physical parts like hats/weapons/etc (doesn't do anything, dies with ghost, easier to kill, debuff or seal certain ghost skills when destroyed)

So you can either try to brute force/dot ghost itself, with risk of being taken out faster
Or take out other parts first to make ghost more vulnerable, but prolonging battle in process (which is also risky, since you may run out of resources and lose)