Thu 26 Jan 2012
Posted by Ocean's Dream under Game discussion
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Since I have a lot of posts on the subject of RPG Design, I thought it’d be nice to have one post that links to all of them so you don’t have to scroll through 7 pages to see if there’s one you might be interested in. I’ll divide it by section! Be aware, some topics may be old and I may not necessarily feel the same about them as I did before!
Mapping
Gameplay
Story/Setting
Misc
Don’t bite off more than you can chew
Create a game in under a month
Fri 13 Jan 2012
Posted by Ocean's Dream under Bloglist updates, Oceans game progress
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Got a tumblr now, I’m sure a few of you already know about it but if you don’t, it’s here:
http://oceansdreams.tumblr.com/
So if you have a tumblr yourself, feel free to follow! Basically, that tumblr will be used for smaller updates. Screenshots, a very short post of what I’m doing, or sharing interesting things from other users. I’m not going to do that too extensively, more for things I really think would be helpful to see.
This blog is still reserved for the bigger updates and design posts. I take recommendations on what to write too, but I don’t always get around to it, or sometimes I just forget. You can always remind me later if that’s the case.
I’ve been playing the old version of Adalyn. Lag city, but it made me get what I was doing with it and what I planned to achieve with this remake. It was a short game, and while I do want to make it longer, I don’t want to really add a bunch of filler (grind for 30 bear ears) in doing so. I’ll communicate with Rayne on the story part soon.
In the mean time, I’ve been working on adding new tiles, making some new sprites, fixing up the battle system a little bit. Trust me, I’m doing it mostly by events and I’m not a scripter so it does take a while to make sure that everything is fine. I need to come up with new animations, sound effects, and enemy AI before I can consider it ready to use.
I had a few ideas for how to plan out the map design. I could do it like the old game and have the main town and have a person bring you to the other part of the country for missions. Or have you walk around to them like a big connected area. I had thought of it as the big connected area but doing it as I did for the old Adalyn is a possibility too.
Basically, while there are some graphical updates being done, there’s still plenty of work that needs to be done so sadly I can’t say a release is anywhere near. I think it’ll go more quickly when the battle system is finished. Wish me luck!
Go over here and check out Rainbow Nightmares intro too while you’re at it!
Tue 3 Jan 2012
Posted by Ocean's Dream under Game discussion
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Sat 24 Dec 2011
Posted by Ocean's Dream under Game discussion
1 Comment
I wanted to post this a while ago but I haven’t really had a chance lately. For those wondering, a hub town in a game is when it’s the main town, and in this case, I’ll consider it as being the only town in the game. One town, what could be interesting about that? While it’s true that having more towns means there’s more places to look forward to and explore, with that one town you can really detail it more. Note: I do not believe Hub towns are always the way to go, but they can have their benefits if done correctly. I like having multiple towns too, this isn’t a preference issue.
For example, the townspeople can be more interesting. Since you’ll be seeing them more often, you can have them interact with the player more and make them feel more like characters rather than one liner signs that move. You can really get to know how they’re like, how the situations in the game affect them, maybe they can help you out, befriend you, things like that! So instead of being old man that walks around and fishes, you get to know what he’s like, what he does, what his dreams were, have him catch something for you, crack some jokes about himself, whatever! If the characters are still flat and uninteresting (or flat out annoying), having to see them all the time though isn’t gonna make that any better.
Speaking of situations in the game affecting them, that can extend to the town as well. Since you have only that one town to work with, you can have whatever is currently going on in the game be either news or have an effect on the town as well. Say for example, if you went to a water dungeon and drained out the water. Then perhaps a certain part of town will be flooded when you leave the dungeon and people can comment on it or have you needing to acquire/take a boat to get to the next area of the town. These things can open up new parts of town/close them off/modify how the town looks like/change peoples opinions on you. Perhaps that vampire hunter NPC was really please that you took out the vampire den and gives you a new weapon and talks about why he used to hunt them. Maybe what you did in a dungeon caused some enemies to leak out into the town and you have to help the guards hold it back while the townspeople are threatened by it.
The town can have a feel of its own. You can aid the townsmembers, have quests happen in the town itself, have things happen that isn’t in your control and all that. A person can be building a house in the beginning of the game and in the end it was already finished. Things in the town changing over time can be something that can be worked with. Perhaps one whole section of a town is under construction and later you can access it. Or have people moving into or out of the town. Some people you got to know and like can leave/die, while some new people can be introduced later. Perhaps they can even help you out in battle somehow too. They don’t always have to be there to say stuff. I’d also say it’s nice if you don’t just see everything at first, but as you go along in the game you can get access to more of it. If you see all there is to see at first, then there isn’t all that much more to look forward to.
The game feels more small scope and homey rather than a giant adventure throughout the world. You can explore all the different environments of one area rather than multiple areas. It won’t be of everyones tastes, but it will make the game feel different for it. Depending on how you make it, it can even be very welcoming and memorable. This doesn’t even need to apply to a game with only one town, mostly with towns that you can visit multiple times. I had Legend of Mana in mind even though there are multiple towns, because you can visit them multiple visits and do various quests and talk to the quirky characters.
In certain cases, the whole game itself can take place entirely inside the town or in one area. If Final Fantasy 7 ended with taking down Shinra, that would fit. Most people I’ve spoken to or heard from has enjoyed the Midgar section of Final Fantasy 7. Midgar itself was a very interesting place with multiple environments even though it’s just one city. As another example that was given to me ( not about towns), the later Castlevanias tended to take place in the Castle, even though the castle was massive and had a large variety of areas in it. It’s interesting what you can do with one area if you give it enough love and variety.
Tue 6 Dec 2011
Posted by Ocean's Dream under Game discussion
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I was requested to write something about this!
To clarify, this one isn’t about jobs you can take on in a game for money. That can be covered in a different topic. This one is about the RPG Job/Class systems such as Knight/Black Mage and all. Since it will be big, I will split it up into multiple posts. I’ll start by comparing Final Fantasy 1, 3 and 5. X-2 is not included because I’m trying to forget about that games existence.
Final Fantasy I
This is the first RPG I ever played. The system here is simple enough. You have 4 characters, you pick their class (out of 6), and you stick with it forever. There is a class change in Final Fantasy 1 but it is really an upgrade when you complete a certain quest (TAIL OF A RAT). It’s optional so you don’t even need to do it, though it’s a no brainer unless you’re purposefully doing a non-class change challenge. So if you get 4 thieves and regret it later, there’s nothing you can do other than start a new game or just continue with it. It does however lead the game to be more replayable as the players can’t try it all in the game and must replay to try out different options. That particular bit of replayability is better if the game is not too long or can be different (or beaten differently) each time you play.
With a system like this, it’s important to balance the classes and have an incentive for the player to try out the class. The variety in play styles from game to game can occur when each class has a different role to play and are not useless to the player, nor essential. If it’s useless, why add it? If it’s essential, people won’t try anything else. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they need to be 100% perfectly balanced, but that they should all have their own uses. For example, a Knight can be a high defense/HP character and focus on protecting the others and taking in damage while an assassin can have low defense/HP but high damage and instant kills and can hide from attacks. Should at least be possible to beat with the group possibilities so try not to make it so that you can’t beat the game if you picked x, y, and z classes. You have to remember, they are making the choice beforehand, without the full knowledge of the game yet.
The issue with Final Fantasy I was that the classes were very unbalanced. The Fighter was a really strong class so 3 fighters and a red mage is possibly the best team you can have for an easier time. The Ninja brought up the usefulness of the thief, but the thief class itself was pretty useless on its own, especially compared to the fighter. Black belt didn’t really gain anything from class change making them a sort of unexciting class change. With 6 classes, you would think they’d be very nicely balanced since they are very basic archetypes. It’s the first game of the series so I don’t blame them though.
Final Fantasy III
This system starts you off with 4 default classes, called Onion Knights in the game. They aren’t specialized in anything yet. Once you start getting the crystals powers, you start getting classes. After the first dungeon you can change between the 6 classes you had for Final Fantasy 1. You can… sort of freely change between them, but there are some penalties. You gain points after a battle, but you use these up to change a class. It takes more to change from a fighting class to a mage class than it does a fighting class to another fighting class. Another thing is the stat boosts still apply to you when you level up. So a person using fighting classes all the time that changes to a mage will have more defense than someone who stayed as magical classes, but less MP/magic.
You can’t change between the skills, so other than the stats and the points, every class is just as is. Final Fantasy 5 will later add this but that will be its own section. So if you have 4 white mages and decide later that you want to change it, you can. In Final Fantasy 1, this won’t happen, unless you restart the game entirely. It does actually make it less replayable, but I’ll chalk that up to the tediousness of the game itself too. Final Fantasy 1 didn’t have multiplying enemies and hidden path reliance. In Final Fantasy 1, you chose your classes, and stick with it. So for the next game, you can try a different team or arrangement and see how it goes. Here, you can try out a class for a battle or two, and if you don’t like it anymore, just change back. The upside is, if you are up against a certain challenge, you can tailor your classes for it. Suppose you can’t use weapons well in a dungeon, then you can make everyone mages. You can at least still customize your team how you’d like, except…
Balance issues. This creeps up here too, but even moreso since the game is difficult (Not like Final Fantasy 1 wasn’t…). I’ll put it this way, the first town has random encounters in it that can kill you. So you won’t necessarily really afford to experiment much. Secondly, the classes are actually different in usefulness. Geomancers are very useless, Scholar is useful for one battle only, Knights are pretty okay, Mystic/Dark Knight is useful especially for certain enemies, and the biggest unbalancers: Sage and Ninja. With the variety of classes you can have, you can see people potentially using different parties at the end game… if it weren’t for Sage/Ninja classes. With these “ultimate” classes, you don’t need a Mystic Knight or Knight or Viking or Dragoon. Ninja for the attacking classes, Sage for the magical classes. They do all the other classes can do in one. Many people will just end up with Ninja/Ninja/Sage/Sage party arrangement at the end. Some classes you get are pretty much no brainer updates from the previous ones. The DS one actually rebalanced the classes a bit, giving Viking the provoke command (the NES one did not have any special commands, only was slower and lower hit rate than a Knight) for example so you might not necessarily have noticed these things because it was way more exaggerated in the NES version. Again, I do not fault them, it was an early game.
I think the points system in the NES also sort of prevented people from experimenting very much. Even if it’s just a mental thing, you still didn’t want to change much because of the cost of doing so. In a system like this, I think being able to change around as needed for the challenges ahead, and having different uses with more balanced characters would both allow for more player experimentation and not relying on the same generic classes.
Final Fantasy 5
This presents an interesting mix of classes and learning abilities. You can get points from battles, in which enough points lets you learn the next ability for your class. You can change to any class that you currently have, much like Final Fantasy 3. In fact, I think it’s very much based on it and improved upon. You can change freely between classes this time so you really can adapt to the situation. The other addition is that you can learn and transfer abilities from one class to another. They have a limit so you have to pick and choose what would be more useful for you and your class instead of just taking everything with you…. (until you’re a freelance or mime class).
What this does, is make it more customize-able and gives you your own freedom. If you want a Dragoon that can use Black Magic, go ahead. If you want to have a Blue Mage that can Drain HP/MP without using MP, feel free! Want a Fighter that can use Terrain magic without cost? Perfectly fine! So peoples play experience may not be the same from player to player or even from one playthrough to another. Unless you read a walkthrough, then it might. While not perfectly balanced, even lesser used classes would have good reasons to use them from time to time. You can capture certain enemies for a cheap win sometimes, you can put on a dancer so you can have Ribbons equipped to prevent a status effect happy enemy from hitting you with one, Blue magic is ACTUALLY useful, things like that. I liked how even things like Terrain magic have been made much better from FF3. For example, you can just have the Terrain ability equipped on another class you want to use instead of devoting an entire class to it (once you’ve learned it), and the Terrain ability does NOT backfire on you.
This did however have the negative consequence of having you get tons of ABP to master a class. And in some cases, you did want to do it (like XFight, 4x attack) since it was both beneficial for the skill and for your freelance/mime class since they gain all the boosts from that mastered class. I don’t think it was a problem that you had to master it, but rather how long it took which made it very grindy. It also made the characters lose their personal distinction (but was also the same for FF1 and 3) since they were blank slates rather than having a class based on who they are, such as in Final Fantasy 4. I still really liked this system and it would continue to be used and expanded on in Final Fantasy tactics.
You can see how the games progress with the class system by comparing how they were used, and see how they learned from their previous systems to make a newer one. With the next post, I’ll look at some other games job/class systems to see how they were used there!
Sat 22 Oct 2011
Posted by Ocean's Dream under Game discussion
1 Comment
You can also view my post on mapping forests here!
All I tend to see from RPG Caves is that they have you go and fight bat enemies and spiders over droning boring music while every enemy poisons you without a way for you to heal it until right after the cave. I am pretty tired of seeing caves like that, honestly. It screams “Time padding” to me because there is rarely ever an RPG that uses a cave to an actual meaningful effect other than to grind to Level 4 and fight boss while going to another town. This is not a preferred passageway for trade because if anything, using mountain roads would be better, providing more light and being safer. It could very well be that you do want a real use for it, but it would have to make sense with the world you built.
There ARE uses for caves that aren’t the FIRE ELEMENTAL CAVE TO GET AN ORB types of deals. Just think about why people would need to use a cave in the first place. Mines, to rest for shelter, building underground cities, hiding from being chased down, burial grounds, things like that. It’s not necessary to remove caves from your game, it’s just a good idea to think on why you would really need this cave. You’d want to see if you can make it interesting and fun for the player too. Interactions other than pushing rocks and fighting random encounters with deadends all over.
Really, if someone wants to have elemental caves, and has a good way to make it fun, then go ahead. However, it’s always good to think of how you can make things interesting. “What are they doing in here? What is the history of this location? What does this place mean in the world? How can I make it fun for the player?” are the types of questions you should be asking yourself.
For example, you are rushing against the clock trying to get to the town or x person in a town across the mountains before the caravan does. The caravan takes the mountain path, and you know you won’t make it because they had a head start. There are bears in the cave, but that is the shortest route as the mountain path is winding. So then they have to go through and avoid the bears as they are too powerful for your characters. Maybe even simple makeshift traps “Lure bear to x spot and we’ll take care of them so they don’t bother us anymore” could work. It’s not a perfect example, but it’s just something to illustrate something of what I mean. Instead of it being another area for the player to go around without anything other than bat enemies and spiders.
Also, caves tend to really make you feel small. I mean, there’s obviously many types of caves, stone caves, limestone, water caves and stuff and not all of them would be really grand scale (especially if you are mining into them) but it is something to keep in mind. Variety, landmarks and the feeling of progression are to be considered too. I’ve talked about this feeling of progression before. For an example: Seeing an indoor river in the cave, having narrower paths as you go, then open up into a massive room with carved statues (that was used long ago), then going up and starting to see more light and plants around with patches of sunlight coming from holes in the cave ceiling then you exit. Stuff like that could help the player get a sense of real progression in there and not just seeing walls of brown and wondering when it’ll be over.
Mainly i just tend to be upset about it because I’m been in a real cave and I have yet to see an RPG cave that felt any bit as impressive, with the possible exception of Legend of Mana, whose caves had enjoyable and more upbeat music. Like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdxoZyhwy8I
I noticed this with Threads of Fates ruins interior dungeon. It was pretty much identical passageways for part of it, but I enjoyed it more because the music was so calming and nice that i couldn’t help be more patient with it despite its downfalls. They should obviously fit the tone you’re trying to set for the cave, but hopefully that mood isn’t “Boring your players to sleep”.
I’ll leave with some interesting cave pictures!
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/photogalleries/giant-crystals-cave/
http://imgur.com/gallery/x7Li9
Tue 18 Oct 2011
Posted by Ocean's Dream under Oceans game progress
[2] Comments
Lately, we’ve been having workathons over at Meridian Dance. Basically, a few hours a night to work on your game while someone livestreams their own game progress. Helps you get stuff done! I was doing various commissions and wanted to take a break and work on my own projects.
I implemented the new ammo system for Adalyn. If you have played the old Adalyn demo, you had to go by ammo pickups or buying ammo because your weapons had an ammo capacity and could run out of ammo. I changed that system and now you can shoot up to a certain amount, but then you have to reload. Each weapon has a different attack speed, reload speed, amount of shots before reload, and range. This is mostly implemented, with some slight bugs upon entering the battlefield depending on which weapon you have equipped.
Also, items are implemented. I want to put a cap on them so you don’t go hoarding them all but yeah they all work fine. You have stuff like Tigre Tequila which boosts Attack power with a chance of getting Drunk, Wine for regenerating health, Blow Needles for attacking in multiple directions, Lasso for stunning, Cloak for evasion and things like that. Those effects work. Also have 5 enemies max in a field instead of 3. I won’t always use 5 in a battlefield but at least that is possible.
The sprites other than Adalyn are placeholders. I used a Poison Sack (a future enemy drop…. oh yes I forgot I have to apply enemy drops) to poison all the enemies so the damage numbers pop up for each of them.
What’s needed now is to have enemy item drops, animations, enemy AI (other than move up to the player and attack), and some fixes to the weapons (mainly when starting the battle) so then I can start placing the battles around the game. The issue is mainly that they are built onto the map so I can’t really go making lots of maps until I have the battles in because they are part of the map.
Then I will need to do tilesets, sprites, and fix up the menu system. I have a better idea for it than I had before so I’ll be getting to work on it.
EDIT- Got someone to try the newest battle demo. It doesn’t lag like the old battle system for the demo did, which is a good sign.
On non-Adalyn news, I added Broken Moon blog to the links! Also made a guest review for another blog, reviewing FF12. Also have a guest post on Final Fantasy adventure which some of you might have read already, and Threads of Fate. Have some commissions to do so I’m closing future commissions for now.
I will likely have more info soon on Alcarys Complex, a game by Pasty that I am making the graphics for. I’m a busy person!
Sat 1 Oct 2011
Posted by Ocean's Dream under Bloglist updates
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I want to raise up a bit of money, so if you can, feel free to help me out! I’m also job hunting as well and I have previously had interviews but still have yet to hear from any.
So what I’ll do:
64×64 pixel characters, they’ll look like this. Static, no animation. They are $8 each for that.
Or Icons. They are 75 cents each icon, up to 32×32 each.
Or if you want, donate to the site, I would very gladly appreciate it. Any little bit helps. My email is 
if you want to ask me for either icons or the characters.
I am also working on Adalyn and Chain of Retribution, as well as some commission work. I will be posting an update blog post on Adalyn later, as well as a Cave map one (which I will have soon). Will be pretty busy but when you are unemployed, it’s better to do something rather than just waste it.
Tue 27 Sep 2011
Posted by Ocean's Dream under Game discussion
1 Comment
I was asked to make a post on mapping forests. It’s most important to determine what kind of forest you’re doing when you start it. If you are an artist, it would help to sketch up a design for the forest that you want. It will help give you an idea of how the general look will be like.
Everyone has seen a generic forest in an RPG. How will yours be different? We’ve seen the foggy dark forest and the bright and full of trees forest. How about one where you go from above the ground to under ground by a big tree root system? Or having the forest be modified by deforestation? -TFT
Basically, don’t rush into the map. You don’t have to necessarily get out graph paper and plot out every tree or plant but it’s good to plan beforehand. A good way to go about it is to simply ask questions to yourself. What kind of forest is it? Dark, swampy forest? If so, then why do they have to go through there? If it’s between 2 towns, how do they trade? If by a river and boats, could the player do the same? How do you use boats as a gameplay mechanic? Maybe you have to navigate snake and crocodile infested swamps and don’t have the bigger safer boats that merchants generally use? Or maybe you can go in the safer merchant boats but it gets shipwrecked?
It’s not an example from my game, but that should help give you ideas for the area. Enemies have to make sense in the environment. Traps, puzzles, story, design, all of that should at least be plausible (or fun, though they are not mutually exclusive) in the environment you place them in. Think about what nature and wildlife would exist there. To really make it feel alive, you should add birds, small animals and other sprites going around their own business. A good thing to note is if you have touch based encounters, to differentiate the random wildlife from the enemies. You might have bird enemies, but if you use the same sprites for regular birds and enemy birds, people might assume all wildlife is out to get them, or assume it’s just in the background and get attacked.
Your area being a forest means you can still use heights, especially if it’s on a mountainside. I can’t say x is a best way to create a forest, but you will want to keep a few things in mind:
A) Where can the player walk? Don’t change the rules and have the player walk under some tree tops but not others. Keep a clear path where the player can walk.
B) Have the forest feel bigger than the player can explore. You can always block of players paths with stones, fallen trees, cliffs, water, or many trees together, but they should feel there’s more to the forest than the part they travel. I wouldn’t go too crazy or else people might assume they are missing a hidden path or something.
C) How open or cramped the maps are change the atmosphere of the forest. It can make a difference between feeling like a stroll in the park and a claustrophobic forest.
D) I covered this before in another mapping topic. Landmarks. It still applies here. If a forest looks pretty much the same wherever you go in it, the player can get lost easily. Vary the landscape, vary the plants a bit depending on where you are. Maybe you’ll have one open area in the forest map so people will notice where they are if they ever return back to it.
Also:
Forests are random and organic so make a super crazy path outline (conducive to the gameplay intent of the area of course) and then build the forest around it, and never ever neglect the concept of elevation because forests can be incredibly dynamic and layered gameplay areas when a lot of thought is devoted to hills, cliffs, slopes, trees fallen across a crevice etc. Water such as creeks, rivers, waterfalls, ponds can add a whole other dimension to your forest. -Ciel
Forests tend to only be an RPG dungeon for people to put random battles between towns. As a developer, you need to think more of it, not just designing a dungeon for no real reason. It has to be driven by what is happening in the story and something interesting to the player, not just pointless filler.
Tue 20 Sep 2011
Posted by Ocean's Dream under Game release
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Me and a few friends decided to do a game from Wednesday to Monday. So I released a private version to them, and went to fix it up a bit. Took a little longer to fix it up and just add the ending that I didn’t get to finish then. So it’s a total of 10 days for this game.
You play as 3 girls who are guarding a Mayor to his destination out west, where he is overseeing a war going on. After that, you can take on quests to raise up the money you need to free someone. Mina, a city Guard; Tonia, a Rune Knight; and Dylena, a Medic form the team.
Mina Mazzin
Age: 25
Personality: She’s both energetic and laidback. She tends to be hungry and comes from a rather poor family. She joined as a guard when most of the people have left to fight in the wars out west. She’s the fastest one in battle and is a decent physical attacker.
Tonia Arrison
Age: 29
Personality: She is more impulsive and more serious than Mina. She trained as a Rune Knight, which is both a powerful and magically adept warrior with high defense and can play either roles well. However, she is a lot slower than someone like Mina.
Dylena Geraci
Age: 32
Personality: She is calm but thinks the most of the group. She already has a husband who was sent out to fight as a Soldier. She is a Medic and has various ways of healing and buffing.
Feel free to comment and give suggestions for future games, but this was mainly a short break before I get back to Adalyn. Feedback is still okay though!
Credits are listed in a textfile in the project folder.
Download here