Freebie Friday 1

VX Ace rocks

Terms of Use:

• (C) Enterbrain 
• Free for use in RPG Maker VX Ace, or in other RPG Maker versions provided you own RPG Maker VX Ace as well, for both non-commercial and commercial. 
• Please don't redistribute or claim edits as your own. 
• Credit not required when using in a game, but appreciated (Sarah_yt)

I quite like how the bottom right bars turned out with the marble effect. What sort of items could be crafted from this type of material? 

Doodads:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwWoE5nOWivzNU5BVWZVQTlFY2s

Thoughtful Thursdays 1

In a similar vein to yesterday's post, here is an article from the RPG Maker Official Blog about learning from and respecting real-world cultures:
http://blog.rpgmakerweb.com/opinion/creating-fictional-cultures/

I particularly like this quote:

The best way to do this is to understand the culture you are borrowing. Why did they become the way they did? Take the Japanese obsession with fish dishes. Of course, they are obsessed with fish dishes, they are an island nation! A culture that grew somewhere away from the coast, with similar beliefs, would develop different food.

Or take the creation of the folded steel of the Japanese Katana. The reason for this is the quality of iron found in Japan was not as good as the ore found in Europe. Because of this, they had to develop a method that would turn that iron into a higher quality steel blade. A culture that has rich iron mines would probably never develop such a technique.

World-building Wednesdays 1

Welcome to the first 'World Building Wednesday'!

My game, tentatively called 'Wings of the Heart'  is set in a medieval world with races inspired by Australian fauna. The main race, the Avians, are a kingdom of winged people. Other races include:

• Kasuari (native): winged but flightless 
• Harrisii (native): loud, easily angered people. They are wingless and inspired by the Tasmanian Devil. 
• Canici (native): dog-like people inspired by the Australian dingo 
• Vulpi (not-native): fox-like people 
• Fellin (not-native): cat-like people

When basing my races and characters off Australia fauna, I get inspiration from the personalities, habitats and physical attributes of the animals to shape the culture of each race.

How do you get inspiration for the characters and cultures in your game or story?

Regular updates

I'm hoping to establish a regular type of update. God willing, this will be the pattern:

• Sleepy Sundays: no updates
• Must-do Mondays: Me outlining my goals for the week
• Technical Tuesdays (sharing useful game-making articles)
• World-building Wednesdays (info on my game-world)
• Thoughtful Thursdays (sharing articles / interactive voting)
• Freebie Fridays! (Free-to-use RPG Maker materials)
• Screenshot Saturday (screenshot of progress)

VX Ace/MV furniture: shelves and cupboards

Terms of Use:

• (C) Enterbrain 
• Free for use in RPG Maker VX Ace*, or in other RPG Maker versions provided you own RPG Maker VX Ace* as well, for both non-commercial and commercial (*if you use one of the items that have glass, you must also own RPG Maker MV as it uses some of the MV RTP) 
• Please don't redistribute or claim edits as your own. 
• Credit not required when using in a game, but appreciated (Sarah_yt)

Doodads:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwWoE5nOWivzZTJnQW9abUJBQW8

Game making: playing a story...?

The reason I'm making a game is to tell a story.

Mechanics are nice, and graphics can be great, but the thing that really gets me and keeps me interested in a game are the characters and the story that they are a part of. For this reason I'm not a fan of MMORPGs, simulators, RTS, etc.

It's small wonder then that I'm focussing on writing out the story before doing too much in the engine itself. It's going to be a linear story (i.e. choices affect game play but not the ending). The challenge is to:

• leave flexibility open for the player to live out the story, not just have things cut-scened. This includes character customisation.
• keep game mechanics in mind when writing the story. E.g can a chase scene be a timed escape event? What event or character would be behind the puzzles that the main character would have to solve? Does crafting/classes make sense in this world?
• remember that this is a game and not a novel. Each scene needs something to keep the player interested in... well... playing.

So what keeps you interested in keeping on playing a linear game? Or, conversely... what makes you lose interest in a linear game?

I'm interested in your thoughts ^_^

Some of mine:

• clumsy mechanics (a certain level of mechanics-issues is overlookable, but just not too much)
• too many cutscenes that you can't skip
• too much text in one go
• characters that you don't connect with in the first 10 minutes.

Game Making: How to start

As mentioned in my first post, I'm making a game in RPG Maker MV.

When I first started out (with VX Ace), the novelty of the idea that I could make a game made me delve head first into things willy-nilly. Map making, eventing, weapons, battle mechanics, etc. And the first results was...
...
...
horrendous.

Anyone who has been around the RPG Maker community would have seen that one coming ;)

A good lesson though. Don't just think of designs, stories or dialogue as you go along.  It will be disjointed, broken, buggy and an absolute pain to play.

So how should I go about game making now?

From the engine-game-making point of view, I'm trying to apply Yanfly's advice as outlined in the beautiful comics. http://yanfly.moe/comics/

If you haven't seen them before, make sure you read them before starting work on a game (or doing any more work, if you've already started!)

Next post I'll share some thoughts on trying to tell a story through a game.