Sorry if this is the wrong thread, I thought about putting it in the early development forum thing but that forum seems to indicate it's for games in early development that HAVE some development and something to show/share/test for others to critique.. I have nothing like that yet since I JUST got rpgmakerVX Ace and am overwhelmed with where to start:
Just to note, I HAVE browsed thru the tutorial forums, and am working my way thru the official tutorial (I never did find that fence tile that the writer just acts like I should know it's automatically composite and I'm sitting here wondering where the heck the fence tile even is though).
But...I know that starting off with your "dream game" is dumb, and that's not really what I'm trying to do, but I WOULD like to work on the framework MECHANICS of my dream-game. That is to say, the stuff I'll likely need to script in order to impliment. I'm not intimidated by the thought of scripting, I have graduated as a C++/C# coder, and made (an unreleased, I was just a coder not a solo developer so it's not my call) total conversion mod for unreal tournament 2k4. So I'm confident I'll be able to edit scripts to my needs and such.
I then would like to use these mechanics to develop small little games as a testing base before I start with my dream-game. But there's still a huge number of options regarding where to start, and I'm not sure where I should.
Some of the technical features I want to implement are:
1: I would like to have a party size of 5/15 (though 5/7 or something is probably enough for testing purposes).. what that means is you have 5 people out in combat at a time, and 15/7 are the total number in my entire party including the 5.. these extra characters can be exchanged with the in-battle 5 DURING battle, characters in your party who are not in the "front" 5 will passively regenerate health and/or mp during combat.
2: Additional stats implemented in the game. Stuff like a stat which governs how fast buffs wear off my characters (I don't want buffs to be like lasts 5 turns. but rather, starts off raising attack by 50%, then falls down to 40% on the next turn, then falls down to 32%, etc... If a character had a higher stat in that stat which increases buff duration, they might go from 50%->44%-38.7%.
I also would like a damage system similarish to Final Fantasy 2/4's where players have a # of attacks that are used whenever they actually attack (IIRC Cecil has 6 at level 1 when paladin), even though you use the fight command once, and you only see one attack, he actually strikes 6 times in the game's math, and damage is calculated accordingly, with 6 separate rolls of hit/miss. With this in mind, I wish to modify the accuracy stat to not just calculate the chance of hitting with each attack, but it will also determine the precision of the attack.. was it a glancing blow dealing 1/4 damage? 1/2 damage? Was it a solid hit doing 1.5damage? or a critical 2.0?
3: I want a dungeon crawlerish theme where each floor is dark until the player walks nearby to explore it, with a map button that is only revealed over time in a similar fashion.
4: Players will be able to modify the stats of their characters to some extent. Kind of like seiken densetsu 3 where your character's stats go up upon a level up, but you also choose an additional stat to raise as a bonus by 1 point.
5: both player characters and enemies will have visible action bars that fill up in battle, then "pause" the game until the player/enemy decides how to spend their action, at which point bars resume filling up until the next is full. I know this is possible but not sure how hard it will be to impliment.
That's all I can think of atm that I'm wondering if I should start on, any advice? Are there any free open-code games that do a combination of these already I can look at? I don't want to just download every open code game there is see if they do it, find out they don't, etc if I can help it.
Also, I *BELIEVE* that the music here:
http://www.rengoku-teien.com/rule/index.html
Says it's free for everyone to use in their games or whatever as they like, and that they would just like their names to be given during credits ors omething. But I can't read Japanese and google translate kinda makes it messy. If anyone is kind enough, could you read and tell me the important rules given for use in games?
New user, Advice please!
● ARCHIVED · READ-ONLY
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First you want to get used to the basics of how RPG Maker works, so start a new project and make a simple game with it, using only the default resources. Use that as your learning project, not to get to where your final game will be, but just to learn how RPG maker works in general. Make something really small just to get the hang of how RM behaves and what you can do with it. Figure out how mapping and eventing works (there's tons of tutorials on them on the forums), and how to do basic stuff like changing party members, showing pictures, setting move routes and messing about with parallax overlays. If you don't have any ideas on where to start, you can always download a game someone else made (preferably a simple one), play it for a bit and try to figure out how they did what they did, then make your own version of it.
Then, since you're a programmer, I'd recommend taking a look in the script editor and trying to figure out how RM is actually doing the things you tell it to under the hood (CTRL+F and CTRL+SHIFT+F are your friends here), and try to make some basic modification in some way. Try to take out options from the main menu, or change the size, position and background of the windows (figuring out how RPG maker handles UI is going to be really important to implement most of what you have up there). Most of it is actually pretty easy to modify once you get how it works.
Ruby is going to be fairly easy to pick up if you have C++ experience, especially if you've already seen other scripting languages, like Lua. You can find the language reference at http://ruby-doc.org/core-1.9.3/ (RPG Maker uses v1.9.3, so keep that in mind when looking through docs) and RGSS (essentially the library the engine provides, with code for things like Windows, Events and Items) at http://rgss3doc.razelon.tk/en/index.html. You can always visit the script support forum if you have any questions, especially this thread: Ruby/RGSSx questions that don't deserve their own thread.
Once you do start your 'real' project and start making your own stuff, I'd recommend leaving the combat system for last. It's by far the largest and most complicated feature you'll have to code, and you really need to get how RM does most of what it's doing to implement that properly.
In terms of learning to code specific things, instead of looking at games that do one thing or another, I'd recommend just finding a script that changes the engine in a way that's related to what you're doing. I wrote my own classes for character stats after using Nelderson's stats script for a bit and figuring out how that works. I started writing my combat engine after spending some time going over how GubiD does his, then digging through the code in the default battle system and figuring out how that works.
It might feel a little overwhelming at first, but you'll get the hang of it pretty quick, just take it one step at a time. -
Thanks, as for playing around with the software that's kinda being done while I work on that official tutorial, I found the fence now (No I'm not still stuck there I skipped that detail lol), I'm kinda upset that you cannot use the structures in the 'c' tab and customize them by adding windows and such since transparency is only applied for 'a' type backgrounds, and are incompatible (as far as I can tell so far) with being transparent with another 'c' background.
That said I decided to start boring... I'm just gonna research on how to code using ruby from scratch as if rpg maker didn't even exist, as if I've never coded before... Going to take ruby seriously like it's my first time learning any code and then I'll work from there.
As for editing scripts, I kinda started off trying to do that but I found the big giant script database thing doesn't really describe many very well, and it's not easy telling which scripts actually do what I'm looking for. I've only looked at one database thing though and stopped searching for others, so maybe if I search again I'll find something easier. But for now, just learning ruby.
Thanks again though! -
Some of the things you mention in the OP can be done using existing scripts, which would be a way of seeing how other people do them to learn from, as well as speeding up the process of your initial game. For example,
1) having 5 in battle with as big a reserve party as you like can be done using Yanfly's Party System. You just change the number at line 89.
2) can be done using the damage formula in the database.
3) can be done using events.
4) there's a nice existing script for that by V
5) there are ATB scripts which allow you to do that.
For your Japanese terms, there is a thread in Resources section where someone is offering to translate terms of use for people. I suggest you post there and ask, as you are more likely to get a reply.
Here's the link for V's level-up stats script, if you are interested. http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/17576-vs-level-up-stats-v11/ -
The script forum is more helpful than the script database, since you can usually see the entire information the author provided with the script:
http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/forum/35-rgss3-scripts-rmvx-ace/