Off-Topic Boards > Non-Lemmings Projects

Adventure School: my RPGMaker project

(1/3) > >>

Proxima:
19 December 2018: Updated to version 0.1.5!

So a long time ago, inspired by the fun I was having playing namida's RPGMaker game, I decided to have a go at a project of my own, and ccexplore asked me, when I'd got far enough, to post a demo of my project. Well, I've now finished the first dungeon. I'd hoped to get further than this before posting a "demo", but given how long it's taken even to get this far, I feel I may as well post what I have so that you can see what I'm working on. It should take around half an hour to reach the end of currently playable content.

Adventure School is a not-very-serious game set in a school where young people train to be adventurers. In the playable content so far, you go through a couple of training dungeons, and there's some interaction between the characters, but not much in the way of plot. It won't stay like that for the whole game -- the plot is planned to get much more intense and intricate -- but only faint glimpses of it are visible as yet.

As with namida's game, you will need to get the VX Ace RTP from here.

And finally, the download link for the game itself: right here.

namida:
I had a go at this, completed the tutorial dungeon and started on the real dungeon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSywUiISdHs (Still uploading at the time of posting this)

I'll continue this later in another video, but so far, I'm quite impressed. :)

namida:
I finished the demo (I think). Not 100% sure because there was no clear indication, just a door that had been opened but I couldn't pass through, and the timing of this fits with you saying the other day that you had finished the first non-tutorial dungeon.

I go into more detail in the video (Part 2 of which is uploading as I post this), but in short - overall I'm impressed, but there are a few things I think need attention:
- My absolute number one criticism - the lack of any turn order display. As far as I can tell, this game is working off some kind of CTB system (or possibly an ATB variant where time passes instantly between turns, and not at all during turns - which I would in turn argue is just a very simple form of CTB), and generally, knowing turn order is quite important in such systems, as manipulating turns is often a big part of strategy. (Or maybe I've got the wrong idea altogether about how the battles work?)
- The teleporting under bridges / through doorways that don't lead to other maps, seems weird. With a little bit of eventing, it's quite simple to make them appear either under or over the character depending on which way you come from - basic setup (using a top-to-bottom bridge for the example) is "on touch" events on the four surrounding squares, with the above and below tiles turning a switch off, and the left and right tiles turning a switch on; then, the bridge tile itself will have two pages, the second of which is activated by that same switch; neither does anything, but the first page has the display set to "below hero", the second to "above hero".
- The regular encounters seem a bit unbalanced.

That aside, I also noticed a couple of bugs:
- I don't know what triggered it, but fairly early in the 2nd video, the game crashes.
- There doesn't seem to be any logic as to when Poison damage gets applied or doesn't get applied. I had one case where an enemy attacked and inflicted Poison, and then the character took Poison damage immediately after this, for example.

Proxima:
Sorry about that. There is a "you've finished the content so far" message when you pass through the now-opened door in the top-left... it's just that you couldn't actually get there in the uploaded version because of a tile passability issue.

I've started working on the next dungeon, but I'm also fixing issues in the first dungeon, so some of these criticisms will be addressed with the next upload :)

Dullstar:
First impressions:

Unsurprisingly, it's very standard RPG Maker content, and doesn't really stand out from generic RPG Maker projects. In the bullet points below I'll go into more detail about how that can be fixed.

Here's some thoughts on the game. Apologies if anything comes across as harsh. I've tried to avoid mentioning anything problematic without also suggesting a change.

* The tutorial isn't clear about item conservation. The starting equipment for the main game appears to be intended to be entirely identical regardless of what you do in the tutorial - for instance, the consumables I used during the tutorial were replenished. The text stating that you still get items and experience from the tutorial if you skip it almost suggests that it's detrimental to use consumable items during the tutorial.
* The Niblick is missing from the equipment granted to you if you skip the tutorial. It looks like you are given an extra shield for the second character as well - so make sure skipping the tutorial gives a shield for each character. I didn't check if it did.
* Why is a status recovery item worth more than a revive?
* Some switches can be activated from above. I'm guessing that was not intentional.
* Too much money management early on before the player really knows what equipment/items are useful and necessary. I'd say either fewer choices or more starting money would be a good idea. Consolidating some of the item categories into a smaller number of shops might also help (e.g. one shop for weapons, rather than a bow shop and a sword shop).
* I see Ace Message System in your scripts list. I highly recommend adding
--- Code: ---\n<Name goes here>
--- End code ---
to all dialogue. You can nest in the RPG Maker default actor name display commands in this structure as well, e.g.
--- Code: ---\n<\n[x]>
--- End code ---
in order to display a box containing the name of actor x. This will make it easier to associate character names with their graphics.

* The regular encounters are incredibly overpowered. Several enemy types in the first dungeon are capable of defeating player characters within two rounds, and often occur in large groups. I found it necessary to heal after EVERY battle just to survive, even in the tutorial. This is bad when your heals are finite!
* If you run out of healing items in the first dungeon, you can't leave to go get more of them. I'm not sure if that's still a problem later because I gave up.
* Continue practicing your mapping. Your current maps are fairly boxy. This can be okay for manmade maps, but, for example, the first dungeon looks like it's a mix of natural and man-made structures. If you want it to be that boxy, consider replacing the tiles with something that looks more man-made. These boxy maps are fairly common among beginning RPG Maker users, so if you share your game with the community, you can expect a lot of people to pick up on it very quickly.
* An easy way to make your game look a little less like a generic RPG Maker game is to change the font.
* I'd recommend lowering the transparency of the text window. The text is currently a bit hard to read in some spots.
* It does appear that some effort has gone into making the database items customized from the default. This is good - it makes the project less generic!
* Definitely follow namida's suggestion for the teleporting bridges/doors.
I can't really comment on the full length of the demo currently. The enemy balance is too poor right now for me to be willing to work through it all. That said, there is nothing here that cannot be fixed - while there's nothing here that really stands out, there's also not much that stands out as bad other than the enemy balance, and enemy balance is fixable. I think there's three main approaches you could take here - you could make the characters stronger, the enemies weaker, or implement more healing between battles. These are not mutually exclusive options.

It does appear that some effort has gone into this project; I've seen some RPG Maker projects that look like someone just slopped it together. For someone's first project (your post makes it sound like this is your first go at it), this is good. It seems I've lost my first project by this point, but mine was quite bad and I doubt much of it would be salvageable if I could find it!
All in all, I do recommend attempting to finish this project, taking into account some of the critiques in this thread. If you keep at it, I bet you can make something really good!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page