The Master Mega Game Graphics and Style Discussion Thread

So, the less original the project is the less people will play it, within the maker community it's a standard to see that games made with default assets are sadly tied to low effort games but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use them.

There is plenty of free resources out their on the web for you to spice up your XP project a little and show how different you can make your project from the other ones out their.

Even something as small as leaving the default names could have a negative feel about the game because it's something so easy you could have changed.

So will people play your game? Yes, but don't expect loads.

Will it turn off everybody? No. But there are people who will pass over games using the RTP and your game may have a harder time standing out, especially if your target audience is "people who play indie RPGs" and they have seen the RTP in other games while they're browsing.

XP has the best RTP though.

Does it have the best default actor names? :guffaw:

I only recently realized that they're alphabetical. Only took me how many years? :aswt:

It also took me years to notice that Harold, Therese, Melissa, and Lucius are "HTML." I may be the last one across the finish line, but I thought it was genuinely clever when I figured it out XD

All the makers have a pattern/meaning to their names.

MV Cover Art Characters Lores

I never knew! I think that's neat! I genuinely love when someone doing a job like that (descriptions that you figure no one will ever read, names that you know will be deleted immediately, etc) has a bit of fun with it. The item descriptions I write at work are riddled with silly things like "Tea Strainer, [Artist Name], Silver strainer for filtering loose-leaf tea as it's poured into a cup. Rather precludes fortune-telling by tea leaf." because I know that no one will ever be bothered to look at closely XD

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Upon reading the previous page and more relevant to the thread on the whole-- @NaMosca , if you're making a non-commercial project just for fun, for your own enjoyment and nothing else, then you should do what you want. If you want to use exclusively RTP and the existing systems, then that's what you should do.

But, if you're looking to appeal to a wider audience, I agree with Martin and Slaughty both. XP is far and away my favorite RTP, and--because it's older--it's somewhat less common than the other RTPs. Both of the games to my name use the XP RTP style, and both have gotten a lot of compliments on the art. I know my other XP-using friends get the same sort of comments. It's a surprisingly popular look!

However, I think you're doing yourself a disservice if you only use the RTP. XP has a great variety of tilesets and characters, for example, but the icons are a little lackluster. If your game is centered heavily on crafting, as you say, then I would strongly recommend looking for addtional resources that go with that theme! Avery has some great tiles of things like looms and forges, and her icons are incredible. Adding custom icons would be huge, for giving your game that extra bit of polish. Especially for differentiating crafting materials in your inventory! There are lots of simple, little ways like that to make your game stand out.

The thing I would specifically caution against would be using the default characters in a game without a lot of dialogue. There's an argument to be made for the fun of making a game using the RTP to see how much you can build upon it (why is Aluxes so determined to be a hero? Where did Gloria learn to heal? etc etc etc) but if you're not planning to do something story-heavy, I think you'd be shooting yourself in the foot to use the characters that come with the program as part of your core cast--especially if they're mixed in with characters of your own creation.

Just my two cents!

I think that "RTP" is the basis for editing, so it's hard to credit the person who edited it first.
I think the basic style is comparable to any other style that you'll use in Maker, so if it's less attractive than "RTP" it's bad.
There can be many edits, varying in color and image assembly, which makes it very versatile to use. Of course, a little knowledge of Photoshop is required.
I like MV because it brought some current, modern aspects in addition to the classic medieval fantasy. MZ has even better graphics, and especially the images, which are very difficult to achieve that quality, evolving a lot in the use of 2D.
About the aging of the graphics, I believe that the way to do it is to increase the pixels, every time.
I recently watched a video where characters from the game "The King of Fighters" were remodeled by an artificial intelligence, giving realistic aspects to the sprite.
The lack of drawings means that a quick use is made to fill the space, for example, you created a character and there are no graphics for him, so the term "actor" fits well for this purpose.
As the story progresses, this actor will be so linked to the character that changing the graphic concept of the character will carry parts of the actor that was used as a base.

I understand English is not your first language, and that's okay, but I can't figure out what you mean with some of your post :wink:

How? If you download someone's edit, you credit them. I don't know what this is supposed to mean.

I don't know what this means. You want to draw things larger? You can.

You've lost me. The term "actor" is what RPG Maker uses for objects that can be in your party and controlled by the player. It's the word on that tab of the database. It has nothing to do with whether an image is assigned to the actor or not (I also don't know what "lack of drawings" and "quick use to fill the space" is talking about).

Still lost :stickytongue:

@ATT_Turan
I was trying to answer the questions from the 1st post.

What makes a graphic style age well?

About the aging of graphics... it means bigger graphics, you can notice when you use sprites from different games, the older they are the smaller.

How do you decide which direction to take your graphics?

I think "RTP" is the basis for editing... imagine a color edit, a recolor, there may be another one like it out there, so the visual identification is lost, you can notice in 3D games for example, a barrel, a common entity that is hard to tell who made it.

What styles do you prefer?

I like MV because....

How do your graphics elevate and become part of the narrative?

The lack of drawings....

Ah! It makes more sense when you include those quotes for context.

I want to make a GOOD RM game using default RTP, including free assets I can find like music and generator parts, not to sound like I'm lazy or cutting corners here, but I AM using great plugins, using MV btw, but I am VERY determined to make one.


I know I need to put triple effort in making the game, I just wanna know what you all think, I believe that you can make good games with default RTP, but you need to apply a whole truck-load of effort to make it good, thats what I believe.

There’s so much you can do! The assets are tools. Edits and additions are made to be used. The assets are there to be broken down, reshaped, molded, changed, etc. Everyone has the license to do so and I’ve always found it pretty fun! @Silver_Crusader

Does anybody know some examples of shape experimenting with the auto tiles? Like beveled edges, round, pyramid tops or other shapes? Or the wall tiles, I can’t really imagine shapes in my head, but some times fooling around with a paint programs art filters makes some weird shape effects. I can do some edits but I’m no digital artist, this kind of stuff is harder for me to try.

One of the infamous limits of autotiles is that they are very square, largely due to how they're formatted. The best way to do things that are more round in MV/Z is to use parts that aren't autotiles.... or do parallax, but I don't fully understand that stuff

I was thinking of shapes that could be within the ceiling/wall square, maybe it was Pokémon that the rock tiles sort of beveled in more that gave a round illusion.

I've been custom art for RPGMKR since 95. I tend to use the RTP as a template, so depending on the version it's just guidelines. I'm cheap so I rather template my way to get the game out faster than making a whole new style just to tell my story. Currently I've made a lot of stuff for mv style so I'm not gonna stop any time soon (i don't like the thickness of mz's lines so i've been porting...)
But I've been gaming since c64 days and coding on those so to me graphics isn't a big deal - it's gameplay mechanics. i do have art/sound direction though for each of my games so it's not all samey. palettes are a thing too.

I've made a bunch of tilesets myself, and basically the only autotile I ever make is the water tile, 'cuz I want animated water:kaoswt: The reason is what y'all outlined: I want to make curved walls. In the future tho, I wud like to make a tileset with wall autotiles but wid an option to make curved walls too! :wub

I know, for instance, that Marumugi's work has an option to mix diagonal walls wid autotiles, and I believe they do this by overridin' the autotile (by shift-clicking) and then puttin' non-autotile diagonals in the resultin' gap. Not sure tho, haven't experimented wid this at all yet :kaoswt2:

Same here, tileset and graphics are my biggest weak spot for making from scratch, so I can’t even envision well what else autotiles could do.

but I think of things like if instead of water autotiles there could be like “moving flesh” surface autotile, like the inside of whale in Zelda OoT, or a moving snake pit autotile that looks like tons of snakes wiggling around, Or flashing light wall trim like Angel Town in G.O.D would be another substitute for water autotiles.

And with the upper and lower regular autotiles, Overmap ground and trees for example, I don’t have the outright idea but I feel like there are lots of different things they could do.

I was just listening to someone vent on YouTube about all RPG Maker games looking the same because they all use the same graphics.

Now I know this is an over dramatisation to 'prove' a point. But it made me wonder just how many people who are trying to seriously make a halfway decent and possibly marketable game in RPG Maker are actually using ether default assets or assets that come in free assets packs without adding or changing anything?

From what I've seen in this site and others that demographic doesn't seem to be the majority of people.