On The Bright Side

You'll be pleased to hear that one of my New Year's resolutions is to get back into working on my RPG in earnest. I've been thinking about it a lot. The details of the final dungeon are beginning to form more clearly in my head (which is not to say that everything leading up to it is finished :-p), and it's one of the many things about my game that I'm very excited about. I've been studying some of the more sinister dungeons from Final Fantasy IV - namely the Towers of Zot and Bab-il - for inspiration (I love that the Tower of Bab-il is so tall, that not only does it connect the Underworld to the Overworld, but it actually consists of two major dungeons in the game - one going up from the bottom, and another coming down from the top!). FFVI may be my favorite Final Fantasy, but I've been drawing a lot of inspiration for my RPG from the games that preceded it; especially the first one (because it's always good to start with the basics), and the fourth - which has an appealing balance of simple mechanics and a good, dramatic storyline.

You know, when I started working with RPG Maker, I had thought that more people would be using the program as I assume it was primarily intended - to create Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy-style classic RPGs. I love those old games, and I regret that technology has pushed us forward into the 3-D, polygonal, massively multiplayer paradigm of modern RPGs. I'd rather Square release another SNES-era Final Fantasy - with a new story and characters (not one of those lame-o 3-D portable sequels) - than give us more of the innovation we've been getting since FFVII and onward, that increasingly pushes us away from that classic gameplay style. Now, if Square won't do it, I'd take an amateur substitution. Enter RPG Maker. But it seems to me that most serious developers (i.e., the ones who actually complete their games, and are any good) are interested in using the engine to develop unique gaming experiences (often not even in the RPG format, and with an original graphical style). I mean, in terms of creating original content, and building your brand and reputation as a game designer, this is the way to go. But what I really want to see is a fan community like, say, the one Doom has, which spends its time creating new content entirely in the style of the classics, for all the fans who liked the game just the way it was way back when, but would love to have new things to experience within that realm.

Ah well. If I ever finish my RPG (and I do hope I will), I'll be contributing to that at least. It's easy to get daunted by the task of single-handedly putting together a classic 2-D RPG, not to mention surmounting the many obstacles RPG Maker MV insists on throwing one's way. But I was surprised to remind myself of some of the things I've already accomplished. The Wardrobe Manager is pretty much complete, and working entirely as intended. It's a mainly superficial mod to the game - the ability to give your characters alternate outfits - but one that is nevertheless very important to me, because I think dressing your character up in alternate outfits (and picking the one you like best) is a lot of fun. I was having problems implementing it in VX Ace, if you recall, but I found a plugin for MV that basically single-handedly makes it possible, by using "placeholder" graphics that are replaced on the fly. It's ingenious! Of course, I still had to do a lot of work to get the manager running - including the clever usage of an in-game variable as a multidimensional array (accessed exclusively via script calls). But it's running!

I've done a little coding, too. Nothing on the level of last spring's Peep skill (which was a landmark for me), but in lieu of waiting for a plugin to be ported from VX Ace to MV, I found a far more complex alternative and reverse-engineered it to do just the thing I wanted it to do (which is allow for a conditional check before using items - so that, for example, the game won't let you use a Tent when you're not on the overworld map, or other designated spaces). I've also just completed a new modification to the encounter system, partially inspired by the Repel skill in the original Dragon Quest, which causes the random encounter rate to gradually reduce to zero as your characters level up to a point beyond the local average (determined by my usage of Region ID) - so that you're not constantly being hounded by weaklings (e.g., level 1 Slimes) that aren't even worth spending the time to squash under your boot. I'm still not 100% decided on all the details of how I want the encounter system in my game to run, but having this capability puts me one step closer to figuring it all out. :-)