Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
16
Polling / Re: Chrono's Spiritual Successor
« on: November 03, 2018, 11:15:46 pm »
Okay, so, before we go any further, here's a similar thread from a few years back: https://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php?topic=10053.0 . I may have been a bit of a furry purple ass in that one--mea culpa.
Random time travel story ideas of varying degrees of silliness (in addition to the stuff in that thread):
Idea 1: It all started when her pet monkey snuck through the time gate she was testing and came back with a really fancy ring. Which belonged to a Dark Lord from the distant past, who is now really ticked off, and has reverse-engineered her time gate in order to get it back. That wasn't so bad until the fighting between them caused another time gate to misfire, and zombies came spilling in from the future. Now the inventor and the Dark Lord have to join forces to fix the future and avoid getting their brains eaten. (Bonus points if the monkey gets its hands on some future tech and joins the party as a really buff cyborg.)
Idea 2: She's a genetically-engineered, superstrong space marine from a future where humanity is losing its fight against the alien invaders. He's a spoony bard with a talent for magical music, from a past where everyone has special powers. Together, theyfight crime try to save the world by bringing magic into the future. But of course, things won't be that easy.
Idea 3: Humanity is long since extinct, and one robot is curious as to why. Creating a time machine, he ventures to the last era when humankind walked the world...and finds they're pretty nice people, actually. The problem is all the mutant meat-eating plants--long since extinct in the future, because they don't find robots very nutritious. Since he's already got a time machine, the robot and his human allies head back to the previous (steampunk) era to try to figure out where all the nasty vegetation came from.
Idea 4: When Country B lost the war against Country A, the rulers of Country B weren't willing to accept it, and used their recently-invented time machine to undermine Country A in the past. Unfortunately, every intervention in the past made things worse for the entire world. Now the last agent of Country B is about to leave the present time, full of ruins and hunter-killer robots, and return to the past to stop the missions of his compatriots. The problem is that a lot of the records have been lost, so it's difficult to tell who's an agent and how to fix things. (This would probably be a setup for a game sewn together from multiple short quests, where every one that's successfully resolved would cause the state of the present time to improve a bit.)
Mix and match if you like, or toss in some of your own.
Random time travel story ideas of varying degrees of silliness (in addition to the stuff in that thread):
Idea 1: It all started when her pet monkey snuck through the time gate she was testing and came back with a really fancy ring. Which belonged to a Dark Lord from the distant past, who is now really ticked off, and has reverse-engineered her time gate in order to get it back. That wasn't so bad until the fighting between them caused another time gate to misfire, and zombies came spilling in from the future. Now the inventor and the Dark Lord have to join forces to fix the future and avoid getting their brains eaten. (Bonus points if the monkey gets its hands on some future tech and joins the party as a really buff cyborg.)
Idea 2: She's a genetically-engineered, superstrong space marine from a future where humanity is losing its fight against the alien invaders. He's a spoony bard with a talent for magical music, from a past where everyone has special powers. Together, they
Idea 3: Humanity is long since extinct, and one robot is curious as to why. Creating a time machine, he ventures to the last era when humankind walked the world...and finds they're pretty nice people, actually. The problem is all the mutant meat-eating plants--long since extinct in the future, because they don't find robots very nutritious. Since he's already got a time machine, the robot and his human allies head back to the previous (steampunk) era to try to figure out where all the nasty vegetation came from.
Idea 4: When Country B lost the war against Country A, the rulers of Country B weren't willing to accept it, and used their recently-invented time machine to undermine Country A in the past. Unfortunately, every intervention in the past made things worse for the entire world. Now the last agent of Country B is about to leave the present time, full of ruins and hunter-killer robots, and return to the past to stop the missions of his compatriots. The problem is that a lot of the records have been lost, so it's difficult to tell who's an agent and how to fix things. (This would probably be a setup for a game sewn together from multiple short quests, where every one that's successfully resolved would cause the state of the present time to improve a bit.)
Mix and match if you like, or toss in some of your own.
17
Polling / Re: Chrono's Spiritual Successor
« on: November 02, 2018, 11:01:08 am »
Money is the other catch with RPGMaker (although if you stalk Humble Bundle for long enough, you can sometimes pick recent versions up fairly cheap). Unity is probably the most popular general engine with an editor, and you can get the less-featureful versions of it for free (if I recall correctly), but it's primarily 3D oriented.
Long post follows. Something about this seems to have tapped into my "must organize all the things" and "must give others the benefit of the research I did a while back" modes. Don't worry, it's a transient pattern of thought that rarely stays active for more than a few days.
Okay, so, if we actually want to make this a game, what things do we need to establish, and what jobs need to be filled?
Things that Need to Be Established
The important things that need to be figured out before any forward progress can be made:
Criteria to be considered when choosing an engine:
Things that need to be decided eventually, but not right away:
Jobs that Need to be Filled
Long post follows. Something about this seems to have tapped into my "must organize all the things" and "must give others the benefit of the research I did a while back" modes. Don't worry, it's a transient pattern of thought that rarely stays active for more than a few days.
Okay, so, if we actually want to make this a game, what things do we need to establish, and what jobs need to be filled?
Things that Need to Be Established
The important things that need to be figured out before any forward progress can be made:
- Characters (at least a couple of them to start with)
- General plot (three-to-five-sentence version, can change later)
- Artwork style (do we want the classic 2D RPG look of pixel art with SD sprites and tile-friendly 3/4 perspective? Or something more realistic? More painterly? Cartoony? 3D, even?)
- Music style (homage to Mitsuda? Something else? There's nothing that says an RPG can't have a jazz or rock or country (blech!) score. Could also split by world/era.)
- Gameplay (we can assume certain things because of the game genre--characters have progressively growing stats, some form of equipment, etc.--but where RPGs tend to distinguish themselves is in the combat and magic systems. CT and CC both had distinctive combat systems, CC especially.)
- What makes this game more worth playing than the hundreds of bad RPGMaker projects that bedevil the world? (for a Chrono homage, part of the hook is necessarily time travel and/or parallel universe travel, but it needs more than that)
Criteria to be considered when choosing an engine:
- How much tooling (AKA "visual things for writing scripts for you") is needed? Desired? Can we write some of it ourselves?
- Does this have enough flexibility to support the gameplay we decided on? "Simple enough, but no simpler" is generally a good description of what you want.
- What platforms do we want the finished game to run on? (Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile, inside a browser...)
Things that need to be decided eventually, but not right away:
- Where to post this once it's done (I'm currently leaning toward itch.io, which I recall as easy to get onto, no fees if you're just giving stuff away, allows for various price-points including $0. RPGMaker games could also go to rpgmaker.net or similar)
- Full list of playable characters
- Anything else that I've forgotten about ;P
Jobs that Need to be Filled
- Story/script: At least one writer and one editor/proofreader. "Writer" is probably the most fraught job in all of this, since if people don't like the direction the story is headed in, they're likely to drop out of the project. Additional writers who want something with a smaller time investment could also work on generic NPC lines, background lore, item descriptions, and all those little fiddly bits of text.
- Artwork: At least one person, but potentially up to half a dozen distinct jobs (character sprites, backgrounds, monsters, portraits, menu/credits screens, character designs...) It may be possible to get art or helpers from opengameart.com (especially if the art can be released under a free license, such as CC-BY-SA)
- Music: At least one person.
- SFX: Probably the most dispensable job--you can do a lot with places like freesound.org and a few hours of playing with a program like sfxr.
- Coding/scripting: At least one person, but probably several.
- Testing and QA: It's probably best to split this up as much as possible and ask several dozen people to poke at small pieces (allowing them to enjoy the rest of the game). Someone will need to coordinate, although that can be dumped on the project manager (see below).
- Project management: RPGs are, by their nature, really big games. At least one person has to be responsible for keeping track of which assets we have and which assets are still needed, and gently probing people when they drop out of sight. This is the other nasty job, along with "writer".
- Publicity: Not necessary to fill this job specifically until we have at least a demo.
18
Polling / Re: Chrono's Spiritual Successor
« on: November 01, 2018, 06:23:33 pm »Quote
There would have to be contracts in place, etc. Otherwise there's huge liability where some disenfranchised forumite who proposed an idea (that was used) could create legal issues
That's a risk even if there's no money involved, unfortunately. If this gains momentum, better to have a sign-off form granting perpetual non-exclusive use to the game project of whatever stuff people come up with (I don't think actual copyright transfer is necessary, but I Am Not A Lawyer, and even if I were, I'm not from the country most likely to produce vexatious litigants).
Quote
So the caveat there would be game engines. RPGmaker is definitely not my first choice, but it is the lowest barrier to entry. And then we have to assume we have people who can use that engine.
That's kind of cart-before-the-horse at this point. Figure out the gameplay basics first, then find an engine that will accomodate them as easily as possible. (Frex, let's say someone thinks it's cool to inject platformer elements--how easy is it to make RPGMaker handle those, or would a more generalized engine be better? How about paper-doll sprites? Are so many animations needed that it would be better to switch to 3D? etc etc ad nauseum.) There are other engines with visual editors for non-programmers, although they tend to be more generalized.
Quote
There are Mac emulator-type programs to run RPGMaker games as well
No Linux ones for most versions of the engine, though, unless things have improved over the past two or three years. And even if there were there's no guarantee they would work. (I've had closed-source games fail on Linux for reasons ranging from "segmentation fault" to "developer forgot to mention that a certain piece of garbage called pulseaudio was required, and apulse appears not to be good enough". As such, I'm rather jaded about the supposed uptick in Linux games.)
(I'm also strung out on painkillers most of the time at this time of year, so adjust the value of anything I say accordingly.)
19
Polling / Re: Chrono's Spiritual Successor
« on: October 31, 2018, 06:14:03 pm »
My personal unwillingness to have anything to do with RPGMaker projects is this: I can't play most RPGMaker games, because most versions of RPGMaker are strictly Windows software (or console/handheld software, and the most modern console I have is a PS2). The workarounds are variously annoying (fragile, expensive . . .)
I was working on an alternative take using a cross-platform engine for a while, but ran out of energy before I produced a combat system or any type of editor. Then I made the mistake of trying to re-write it. Emphasis on "mistake". Ugh.
I have most of the (non-music) skills needed to assemble a fangame All By Myself (not that great a spriter, but capable of recolouring/retouching existing sprites), just not the enthusiasm or the round tuits.
I was working on an alternative take using a cross-platform engine for a while, but ran out of energy before I produced a combat system or any type of editor. Then I made the mistake of trying to re-write it. Emphasis on "mistake". Ugh.
I have most of the (non-music) skills needed to assemble a fangame All By Myself (not that great a spriter, but capable of recolouring/retouching existing sprites), just not the enthusiasm or the round tuits.
20
General Discussion / Re: Question...
« on: October 17, 2018, 07:47:06 pm »
Turn of the century was a while ago. Yes, it's probably improved over what you remember. However, it still may not be for you.
There's a tension in computer user interface design between discoverability (the ability to find a function you don't use often, which may be almost everything on the computer for some people) and usability (the ability of an advanced user to make the system do more complex things easily). Linux has always been a highly usable system at heart, but its discoverability varies according to what add-ons you have installed over the base system. Most other OSs specialize in discoverability, but are less usable.
Why use Linux? Here are some reasons:
Why not use Linux? Well, there are reasons for that, too:
I'm a programmer and a control freak, so Linux in general and the distribution I'm using in particular suit me well, but I would still recommend Windows to someone who needs to run old MS Office macros, or Android to someone who just wants to watch cat videos.
There's a tension in computer user interface design between discoverability (the ability to find a function you don't use often, which may be almost everything on the computer for some people) and usability (the ability of an advanced user to make the system do more complex things easily). Linux has always been a highly usable system at heart, but its discoverability varies according to what add-ons you have installed over the base system. Most other OSs specialize in discoverability, but are less usable.
Why use Linux? Here are some reasons:
- You can have absolute control over what your computer does--everything else these days phones home behind your back.
- Old or weird hardware? Once a driver is in the Linux kernel, it'll continue working until it bit-rots away (and even then, if it matters enough to you, you can probably hire someone to fix it if you can't do that yourself). Your hardware won't be yanked out from under you because Microsoft or some hardware firm has decided it's not worth the return on investment to update the driver. And Linux runs on hardware most people have never even heard of (MIPS, frex).
- Ultimate customizability. Windows and OSX (and Android and...) offer a single graphical environment that can be tweaked only as much as they allow you to. Linux has, typically, 6-8 different ones at any given time (granted, some of them have greater longevity than others--the one I use is >12 years old, and still recognizable as the same thing I was using in 2005, but there are far newer and flashier options). You can also have a Linux system with no GUI at all, if that's better for what you're doing with that particular machine. It can fit on some pretty small embedded devices.
- If something's supposed to work, and it doesn't, with enough patience and reading of documentation, you should be able to make it work.
- The makers of your Linux distribution will provide you with a software repository--a large set of programs that you can install with a couple of keystrokes or mouse-clicks. Sort of like an app store, but free and more carefully curated. You're not required to install from it, but anything you take from there should be safe to install and Just Work with the rest of your system.
Why not use Linux? Well, there are reasons for that, too:
- Stuff that "just works" 99.9% of the time on other OSs may only "just work" 95% or so of the time on Linux, and require you to poke around to fix something.
- Usually people telling you how to fix something will have you go to the command line. There are good reasons for this (it's much easier to explain what you need to do without screen shots or video, for one), but command lines scare some people.
- Some hardware Just Isn't Supported because the manufacturer supplies no drivers and no one working on the kernel has been interested in that particular device.
- Much software Just Isn't Supported. This is especially a problem with games--for most productivity software, you'll be able to find an equivalent that does work with Linux.
- Many of the advantages aren't relevant to people who just want a web browser or media consumption device.
I'm a programmer and a control freak, so Linux in general and the distribution I'm using in particular suit me well, but I would still recommend Windows to someone who needs to run old MS Office macros, or Android to someone who just wants to watch cat videos.
21
General Discussion / Re: Question...
« on: October 09, 2018, 11:15:58 pm »
I've used all three major OSs at one time or another and settled permanently on Linux more than twelve years ago now (where I have the option, anyway--I'm stuck with a Windows machine at work because some people there are addicted to Excel spreadsheet macros). It's all a tradeoff. In my case, knowing what the guts of the machine do and being able to fix anything that goes wrong is more important than Windows' wider software compatibility or OSX's . . . actually, I've never been sure why any technically competent person would pick a Mac unless they grew up with them. I was never all that impressed by them.
22
General Discussion / Re: Question...
« on: October 08, 2018, 01:47:22 pm »
I'd agree. Unless you absolutely need OSX for some reason, a Mac simply is not value for money. Their hardware is good, but overpriced.
Also, never tinker with the guts of a Mac (laptop or desktop) unless you know exactly what you're doing. OSX is picky about what hardware it'll run on--it doesn't accept the full range of parts available for normal PCs. This is why hardware lists for Hackintoshes (non-Macs built by enthusiasts to run Apple operating systems) tend to be very specific.
Also, never tinker with the guts of a Mac (laptop or desktop) unless you know exactly what you're doing. OSX is picky about what hardware it'll run on--it doesn't accept the full range of parts available for normal PCs. This is why hardware lists for Hackintoshes (non-Macs built by enthusiasts to run Apple operating systems) tend to be very specific.
23
General Discussion / Re: What is the abhorrence towards RPG Maker games and the lot?
« on: March 06, 2018, 05:00:27 pm »
Well, I'll typically ignore RPGMaker games because using a Windows-only platform indicates the game's creator isn't interested in me as an audience. I have better things to do than jump through hoops to play a fangame.
But I suspect that other people may be less than impressed because RPGMaker, by lowering the barrier to entry, allows the immature and the incompetent to push out a lot of very bad games, especially bad fangames. Even if yours is the best game ever written, it's going to be tainted by association.
But I suspect that other people may be less than impressed because RPGMaker, by lowering the barrier to entry, allows the immature and the incompetent to push out a lot of very bad games, especially bad fangames. Even if yours is the best game ever written, it's going to be tainted by association.
24
Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: Why do you think Chrono Trigger went with only three party members?
« on: February 25, 2018, 09:55:45 pm »
There is no "standard" party size for a JRPG. Three and four are the most common, but I've encountered everything from one (Dragon Warrior I) to six (most of the Suikodens).
25
Chrono Cross Modification / Re: Tutorial for itoikenza: how to delete music from battle
« on: February 03, 2018, 11:27:46 am »
At the time I wrote Purple Cat Tools, I wasn't coding for a living. Now that I'm back to doing that, I have very little energy or interest left over for writing additional code on the weekends. So little or nothing gets done. 
26
Welcome / Birthday / Seeya! Forum / Re: Age++
« on: February 03, 2018, 11:22:25 am »Yeah I turn the big 4-0 this year!!I don't want to. ha ha!!
Did that a few years ago. You guys are all making me feel old again.
On bookcases: scary quantities of those here. Many of them stacked three deep with SF&F novels. And I'm running out of space again, sigh. The video games are crammed onto a mere two shelves.
27
Chrono Cross Modification / Re: Tutorial for itoikenza: how to delete music from battle
« on: January 20, 2018, 04:42:29 pm »
If you mean the PC Leena, etc. you might just be able to overwrite their weapon files with the Masamune's. (Or not--I've never tried.)
Most current version of Purple Cat Tools is attached to the second message in the "Chrono Cross Toolsets" thread in this forum (https://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php?topic=10927.0, or scroll down). No changes have been made since those were posted. Doesn't include additional scripts created by prizvel or others.
Most current version of Purple Cat Tools is attached to the second message in the "Chrono Cross Toolsets" thread in this forum (https://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php?topic=10927.0, or scroll down). No changes have been made since those were posted. Doesn't include additional scripts created by prizvel or others.
28
Chrono Cross Modification / Re: Tutorial for itoikenza: how to delete music from battle
« on: December 09, 2017, 05:47:16 pm »
Apologies--the weather's started acting up again where I am, and I'm back to having constant migraines, which means less energy for doing things like offering advice here.
No idea what's happening with utunnels' program. .weap files have a couple of junk subfiles (containing ASCII letters "www" and nothing else) at the end, but as far as I know, they're valid .cpts. decpt.pl from the 0.4-alpha version of Purple Cat Tools unpacks them without any problems, although I can't guarantee that the output is correct.
No idea what's happening with utunnels' program. .weap files have a couple of junk subfiles (containing ASCII letters "www" and nothing else) at the end, but as far as I know, they're valid .cpts. decpt.pl from the 0.4-alpha version of Purple Cat Tools unpacks them without any problems, although I can't guarantee that the output is correct.
29
Chrono Cross Modification / Re: Tutorial for itoikenza: how to delete music from battle
« on: November 19, 2017, 09:53:35 pm »
(mutter mumble Windows sigh)
The normal syntax for running a Perl program is "perl [filename].pl". If you've been running Purple Cat Tools at all, you have Perl installed, since I released the software as raw scripts. So in this case you would:
1. Unzip the files.
2. Make the changes I described to "test.pl" using a text editor (not a word processor). If Notepad runs everything together on one line, try Notepad++ instead.
3. Open a command prompt in the directory holding test.pl, and type "perl test.pl".
The normal syntax for running a Perl program is "perl [filename].pl". If you've been running Purple Cat Tools at all, you have Perl installed, since I released the software as raw scripts. So in this case you would:
1. Unzip the files.
2. Make the changes I described to "test.pl" using a text editor (not a word processor). If Notepad runs everything together on one line, try Notepad++ instead.
3. Open a command prompt in the directory holding test.pl, and type "perl test.pl".
30
Chrono Cross Modification / Re: Tutorial for itoikenza: how to delete music from battle
« on: November 16, 2017, 08:13:45 pm »
Some thrashing around in disused corners of my hard drive found some old scripts that may be of use in TOC generation. In particular, the "test.pl" script inside the zip seems to be set up to generate a Purple Cat Tools 0.3 style TOC file from a .bin disc image. You'll need to replace the bit in line 3 that says [CD image file] with the actual name of your file, since I never set it up to take parameters. You may want to change the output filename in line 18 to something other than out_addrs_j.csv, too.
I don't even remember writing this, although I guess that isn't surprising after ~10 years. Good thing I'm a digital packrat, or it would have vanished a long time ago.
I don't even remember writing this, although I guess that isn't surprising after ~10 years. Good thing I'm a digital packrat, or it would have vanished a long time ago.