RPG Maker game with RTP graphics and you're charging money for it?

[Taka]

Are you joking? I could understand if you had all original graphics or something, but come on...

I'll check out the demo later to see how the gameplay is. I seriously hope you did some serious script modifications...

[Destiny341]

I've seen a lot of complaints about this. Maybe it's because Im not very familiar with RPG maker so everything seems new to me. It plays like a classic JRPG but a more convenient one. You can play on very easy if you just want to enjoy the story or Legendary if you're feeling bad a***. Its got New Game+, you can choose to save anyway or choose a more "hardcore" save system. Maybe Im just easily impressed or maybe its the nostalgic feeling. Who knows? Yeah play the demo and see what you think.

[Mr. Bovine Joni]

How much time would it take to make something of this calibur in RPG maker though?

[Drist]

People forget that these types of games rely on the world detail. How do the maps look, how does the town look? Those can take days to make per map so take 15+ maps and you got 1/2 a month of just object placement alone. $5.00 for a game like this is reasonable and stating that RPG Maker games are bad is foolish.

[Kamishiro Yuna]

Originally posted by Savage.Dingo:

How much time would it take to make something of this calibur in RPG maker though?

A long time indeed. I had a project (mainly for learning how things worked) and I spent about 70 hours on it, overall I had about an hour's worth of gameplay assuming the player was going into it with no knowledge, and explored everything.

People seem to underestimate how much it takes to make something like this.

[Drist]

If this is 40 hours+ long then it sounds like a multiple year project.

[Oppenheimer]

I usually skip over these also, but the assorted praise I heard in the forum made me fully read the description, and wow, this has quite a lot in it. It's also non-linear! I think I'm gonna buy it.

[Sugoiney Weaver]

Originally posted by Destiny341:

I've seen a lot of complaints about this. Maybe it's because Im not very familiar with RPG maker so everything seems new to me. It plays like a classic JRPG but a more convenient one. You can play on very easy if you just want to enjoy the story or Legendary if you're feeling bad a***. Its got New Game+, you can choose to save anyway or choose a more "hardcore" save system. Maybe Im just easily impressed or maybe its the nostalgic feeling. Who knows? Yeah play the demo and see what you think.

RPG maker games all play the same, and have tile editors that make the games different. at one time they used to be free to play by the devs who spent the time with the game making software.

[Alex Core Plus R]

Its definitely worth the five bucks.

[Taka]

Okay so I tried the demo out. First of all let me say that I was being a bit unfair. It seems like a lot of effort has gone into this and it seems like your heart is in the right place, developer. The leveling system and stuff also sounds pretty neat. It definitely seems a lot better overall than most of the RPG Maker stuff I've seen pop up on greenlight.

But I don't only have nice things to say...

Again, the RTP in a commercial game is a no-no. I know we can't all be artists - I'm guilty of the same thing with my projects, but I'm not selling mine for money. I think that if you actually want to make a profit on an RPG Maker game... then you should hire artists.

You also don't seem to know how a lot of tiles are supposed to be used. I noticed a lot of the RTP tiles being put in places that they... just don't work in. They look awkward and they're just plain not supposed to be used for those purposes. This is especially where I think an artist would be needed, so you wouldn't need to worry about "trying to make it work with what you've got", so to speak.

I've also noticed some passability issues. Or rather, some places that should be passable, like behind certain objects, are not passable (many of such places are indeed correctly passable though). Luckily I haven't been able to walk through any walls yet (and yes, I am deliberately looking for places where I could do this), so that's a plus.

Oh and another thing about the RTP graphics. The faces. Drop them. Just throw them out. You've got your own original sprites for the most part and they don't even remotely begin to match the face graphics. The white mage I noticed looks laughably dissimilar to the sprite. You don't need the face graphics - you have nice sprites for the menu displays, so don't even include them for the other places like character creation. Just continue displaying the sprite as you do in the menu and it would look a lot better.

Let's see... what else bugged me...

Oh, in the intro, the lightning flashes are too short.

And uh, why is everything so hard to kill at the very first area on normal mode? I think you need to reduce their stats on normal a teensy bit and also... why doesn't anyone start with any skills? Each character should have 1 skill to begin with. The mages are completely useless without spells.

I only played a little bit but... honestly, I think overall you've got some good ideas, but I wouldn't pay money for it. Maybe if the game was $5 without being on sale, then I may have considered it, but honestly... I think you should seriously try and fine tune the game and get original graphics before charging money for it. I don't think this was ready for release at all, but I think that if you fixed some stuff, it could probably be pretty neat.

[occupyjapansa]

Originally posted by Zero:

If this is 40 hours+ long then it sounds like a multiple year project.

Doubtful. The graphics and stuff are all stock RTP stuff. So, no time spent on that.

Most of the scripts I see used are all well-known, preconfigured scripts. The side view battle system, for example. You just plop those into your project and they work.

A good chunk of that 40 hours estimate is going to be battles, which are handled by RPG Maker by default.

Depending on how familiar you are with scripting, making maps, etc. a game like this can either take a while or be quick to make. A huge variable is going to be how familiar the programmers are with the program.

It's probably no coincidence that a lot of these RPG maker games showed up on Steam after RPG Maker itself showed up on Steam. I would go and see when RPG Maker was released on steam and use that as the absolute upper range for how long it took to dev the game.

But yeah, I'm not gonna be buying this. RPG Maker is a totally viable engine for jrpgs but I stay away from paying actual money for games that rely on stock graphics and well-known RGSS scripts.

[Alex Core Plus R]

Originally posted by Not A Bear:

Okay so I tried the demo out. First of all let me say that I was being a bit unfair. It seems like a lot of effort has gone into this and it seems like your heart is in the right place, developer. The leveling system and stuff also sounds pretty neat. It definitely seems a lot better overall than most of the RPG Maker stuff I've seen pop up on greenlight.

But I don't only have nice things to say...

Again, the RTP in a commercial game is a no-no. I know we can't all be artists - I'm guilty of the same thing with my projects, but I'm not selling mine for money. I think that if you actually want to make a profit on an RPG Maker game... then you should hire artists.

You also don't seem to know how a lot of tiles are supposed to be used. I noticed a lot of the RTP tiles being put in places that they... just don't work in. They look awkward and they're just plain not supposed to be used for those purposes. This is especially where I think an artist would be needed, so you wouldn't need to worry about "trying to make it work with what you've got", so to speak.

I've also noticed some passability issues. Or rather, some places that should be passable, like behind certain objects, are not passable (many of such places are indeed correctly passable though). Luckily I haven't been able to walk through any walls yet (and yes, I am deliberately looking for places where I could do this), so that's a plus.

Oh and another thing about the RTP graphics. The faces. Drop them. Just throw them out. You've got your own original sprites for the most part and they don't even remotely begin to match the face graphics. The white mage I noticed looks laughably dissimilar to the sprite. You don't need the face graphics - you have nice sprites for the menu displays, so don't even include them for the other places like character creation. Just continue displaying the sprite as you do in the menu and it would look a lot better.

Let's see... what else bugged me...

Oh, in the intro, the lightning flashes are too short.

And uh, why is everything so hard to kill at the very first area on normal mode? I think you need to reduce their stats on normal a teensy bit and also... why doesn't anyone start with any skills? Each character should have 1 skill to begin with. The mages are completely useless without spells.

I only played a little bit but... honestly, I think overall you've got some good ideas, but I wouldn't pay money for it. Maybe if the game was $5 without being on sale, then I may have considered it, but honestly... I think you should seriously try and fine tune the game and get original graphics before charging money for it. I don't think this was ready for release at all, but I think that if you fixed some stuff, it could probably be pretty neat.

With all due respect, I think you're still being pretty unfair. Most of your comments are nitpicky at best, and I really haven't noticed any of the problems you're mentioning.

Could you give an example of where passability is a problem? Cause I haven't encountered it. I'd also be interested in an example of a tile that "just doesn't fit."

I personally think the portraits are fine. They definitely don't bug me and I think they match reasonably well.

Also in terms of difficulty, the game is inspired by final fantasy. And in Final Fantasy everything was tough and you didn't start with spells. You had to grind a little. Do a couple fights, hit level 3, then go to the first dungeon and you'll faceroll it.

[LemonRush7777]

Originally posted by Destiny341:

I've seen a lot of complaints about this. Maybe it's because Im not very familiar with RPG maker so everything seems new to me. It plays like a classic JRPG but a more convenient one. You can play on very easy if you just want to enjoy the story or Legendary if you're feeling bad a***. Its got New Game+, you can choose to save anyway or choose a more "hardcore" save system. Maybe Im just easily impressed or maybe its the nostalgic feeling. Who knows? Yeah play the demo and see what you think.

JRPGs are sought out for one of the following 3 things, mostly:

1- A great battle system: RPG Maker severely limits this aspect, since all you can pull off without very complicated scripting is the very archaic and stagnant turn based combat present on NES games. I am not saying turn based is bad, mind you - the Mario RPGs turn based system, for example, are great, but that is because they have a twist to it. Those few devs who can evolve the system through intensive scripting most likely know enough programming to use a better program to fulfill their creative vision, like Gamemaker, for example.

So, if you see a RPG Maker game, you can be pretty damn sure the combat will be terrible, unbalanced and grindy to make it seem like it has actual depth and to artificially lengthen the amount of hours it takes to beat it.

2- Great characters: Sometimes, even a somewhat bland and run of the mill story can be saved by charismatic and endearing characters. For example, I heard a lot of people say they love the Tales series despite not really liking the story exactly because of the cast. Crafting good characters doesnt take only writing skills, though - things like shifting facial expressions on portraits that accurately depicts the mood of a certain scene (or skit if you prefer) or even poses done by your pixel avatar (square was great at this) to better convey in a visual manner what is happening on the screen all help flesh out your characters. Tell me you didn't actually like the portrait-based party banter in Tales of Phantasia and I will call you a liar. That really helps a lot more than just have a message window appear over your faceless pixel avatar.

However, if the dev uses stock art, he is forced to resort to just what is already bundled with the program. This will prevent him from giving a personal and unique style to his game, as well as pidgeon holing what kind of scenes he can have unless he just describes them on a message window over static pixel characters.


3- A great story. Anyone can potentially write a great story, but if you are really confident about your story, would you waste it on a "I am still learning" project that would not bring it any justice to it whatsoever? Would you handle the labor of your love to a faceless design that was not tailor made to suit the world building you worked so hard to create? Would you willingly squander your own potential doing that? Most people wouldn't.

Now, there are good RPG Maker games, true enough. But those have very unique aspects you can easily identify right out of the box. Yume Nikki, for example, has absolutely nothing to do with the tired medieval fantasy setting with teens trying to stop the ancient evil that has awoken. The same can be said of To The Moon. They also happen to have unique art which further distinguishes them from the rest of the pack.

All of this to say that the bad rep RPG Maker games get is justified, and that using stock art is really unprofessional for something you expect to sell, no matter the cost.

[Just A Dream]

Originally posted by Not A Bear:

And uh, why is everything so hard to kill at the very first area on normal mode? I think you need to reduce their stats on normal a teensy bit and also... why doesn't anyone start with any skills? Each character should have 1 skill to begin with. The mages are completely useless without spells.

Just wondering, are you actually using the gold given to you at the start to buy gear to use? weapons and armour...they tend to help. Your heroes arnt given free default gear to start with, you have to buy it.

Also mages are kinda useless without skills but the first spell choices for the mage are only 40 to buy which is just a couple of fights that you will be handicapped for.

[occupyjapansa]

Originally posted by Zero:

People forget that these types of games rely on the world detail. How do the maps look, how does the town look? Those can take days to make per map so take 15+ maps and you got 1/2 a month of just object placement alone. $5.00 for a game like this is reasonable and stating that RPG Maker games are bad is foolish.

Hi. I'm an advanced RPG Maker user going all the way back to Don MIguel's translations of RM2k.

The maps in this game look like garbage. Spend 10 seconds GIS'ing "RPGMaker VX Maps" and you can see some extremely beautiful maps. All my research points to this game being made over a couple of months, tops.

[Alex Core Plus R]

Originally posted by lolno:

Hi. I'm an advanced RPG Maker user going all the way back to Don MIguel's translations of RM2k.

The maps in this game look like garbage. Spend 10 seconds GIS'ing "RPGMaker VX Maps" and you can see some extremely beautiful maps. All my research points to this game being made over a couple of months, tops.

Adorable.