Common Sense Corner

[Bounty Hunter Lani]

As I return to Save-Point from my indie game adventures, I bring news.
Bad news.

But also good news.

You see, common sense would dictate that you would want your game to be unique. To stand out. To be better than the rest.
You have a quest system, and you want to show it off! You want people to be wowed by your game making prowess, so you give them a quest nice and early in the game-- No, MULTIPLE QUESTS!

But the quest... Oh the quest is to hunt 3 slimes. What's the other quest?
Oh. The quest is to gather 1 slime dropping. You get that by... beating slimes. It has an 80% drop rate. Okay.

You know what? Let's get to our common sense for tonight:

IF YOU HAVE A QUEST SYSTEM, DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT WITH IT.


I find it strange how many games I've seen that make their very first quests fetch quests and monster slaying quests. It sets the tone for the rest of the game-- You're gonna hunt 3 slimes now. End of the game, you're hunting 5 Superslimes. Nothing changes in lots of games like that.
It's quite BORING for the common folk, and if the quest's prize isn't worth it, then it's just a bad idea to do in the first place.

A good quest idea? Well why didn't you ask in the first place?!

Here's one: You have a mechanic in your game. If you use two skills in a row, your regular attack changes to SuperAttack.
Quest: Use SuperAttack at least 3 times!
It teaches the mechanic. It gets the player used to using the tactic to face tougher enemies. If they HAVE to use SuperAttack on a boss to damage it, they know how to do it.

Here's another one: Does your game have platforming? Why not have a "waypoint" quest to teach them how your platforming works? 
Quest: Follow each "waypoint" to the end! Platforming is necessary, so good luck!

It's different than a normal "Get me a slime dropping" quest you get from Farmer Jimbo, who for some reason stands in front of Miranda's house all the time instead of farming. Get back to work, Jimbo!

Maybe you have a wall breaking mechanic in your game. Break a wall with a certain symbol, get treasure. Give the player a quest to break a wall, and maybe there's nothing behind the wall. But the person will explain that some walls with the symbol MIGHT have something behind it.
The player learned something from it, and now knows to be on the lookout for the symbol!


One of the greatest tasks of making a game is give a good first impression. If the first impression of the "quest" system is as fun as a ball-in-a-cup where the ball is glued to the inside of the cup, what's the point of the quest system at all? Don't glue the ball to the bottom of the cup. Be nice. Be better.
Be.

Note: Fetch quests and the like are acceptable, but many do it in a boring and useless way. If you feel that you can make killing 3 slimes fun and worthwhile, feel free to try.

[DerVVulfman]

Allow me to follow that idea up with another....


YOU HAVE AN ITEM DATABASE, DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT WITH IT.


Okay, guys.   Everyone tends to think their database is loaded with WEAPONS!   It's loaded with ARMOR!!  It's got POTIONS AND STATUS EFFECT ITEMS!!!!  IT HAS KEYS!!!   IT HAS BOOKS!!!!

Seriously, items can do more than just heal you, remove poison, or something that just brings up a common event text file.  At least those who use an item to bring up a common event are on the right page.

That's right.  You can enhance items and make them do great things by way of Common Events.

For anyone working with an RPGMaker-like engine, you have a system that allows you to use events on the field map.  These events allow you to use 'event code', a preset collection of commands that can let events to miraculous things, be it making a door animate and deliver a sound effect, bring up a battle or some text for the player to read, or calculate the value of pi to the 10th decimal point.

And you enter the Common Event database and make an event for your items using this same set of commands.

An item need not be just some static object, but something entertaining and dynamic.  

Imagine a modern-era game where you're trapped on an island complex and the electric fence came down.  Your character is trapped... and finds a can of Barbasol shaving cream.  What to do?  What to do?   You go into the ITEM menu and uses it (this item tied to a common event).

The common event for the item, removes the Barbasol Can item and replaces it with two new items:  Empty Fake Shaving Cream can and Vial of Dinosaur DNA.  After that, the Common Event uses the Show Text command to display "Found Denis Nedry's Stolen DNA!"  OMG, we're playing Jurassic Park RPG?

Imagine a dark fantasy world where you are trapped underground, and you find a leather bound mystical cheat.  Your character is informed that it can transmute the weapon you have equipped, but with risk. 

The common event for the item literally takes the item from the lead actor, and then randomizes a number from 1 to 20.  It then chooses a new weapon ID and equips the player with that item.  Simple, but risky if he had a better item at the start.  Basically a knock-off of the Horadric Cube from Diablo II.

Technically, items can trigger a whole host of common event systems as that's been possible since RPGMaker 95 (and I've seen cool Crafting scripts done with them), or you could use them to run script calls to bring up an actual SCRIPT crafting system.  Or you could use ideas like the above to conceal items that need to be found for some 'find-the-item' scavenger hunt quest.

[DerVVulfman]

Even in an open world, not everything is ... open!

Okay, guys. How mnay games have you seen where chests are always open and doors unlocked? Have you seen a house will have every cabinet and drawer completely free to examine without some measure of interference?

I'm talking about locks.

Doors and chests are usually locked to prevent theft. Filing cabinets are under lock and key. And even some drawers or desks have keys to prevent someone from reading confidential documents. Of this, usually the owner of the house has the key. There are many games that let the player just wander into a house and rummage through someone's belongings. But even going back to the early years of Nintendo games such as Dragon Warrior (or Dragon Quest) or PC games such as Wizardry, some chests were locked.

Come on, guys! Don't leave every house open! It would be a burglar's paradise if every home in your game is left unsecured!

Now a solution to this would be that keys are around for the player to find, or give the player some means to open something locked. Is the key lying around to find? Maybe you will find the key to a small jewelry chest lying on top of a night stand. Perhaps the thug you just bested in combat had the key to unlock the iron gates to your release. Or maybe you have a skilled thief with a pickpocketing or lockpickng skill. After all, if you can pickpocket that upper-class snob who stole the treasure map from you, why not try to lift the key to the snob's house from his pocket?

There should be countless ways to check if a door is locked or unlocked. The use of RPGMaker Switches and Variables can be used to check on the status of a door, if not the use of a system such as Klearance by kyonides or Lockpicks!, theLockpick Minigame DerVVulfman posted based on Eilei's work. Or you just have a lot of 'Key' items in your inventory or a key-ring script to test doors or various other locks for access

Whatever works and makes common sense.

[kyonides]

Killing a Main Character is BAD!

(Especially if you're planning to revive him or her )

I do recall a meme I found some time ago where a so called teacher (a model posing as one) says something like killing your main character(s) or write them out is considered a bad writing style. If you do get what I mean here, you'll remember how it continues showing off all of those cases where fictional characters have been sent to the graveyard not one but dozens of times if possible. Some of them were Supernatural's brothers and even the Doctor himself with his ten demises, now they have reached like twelve or thirteen... It doesn't really matter if they are good or bad stories, at the end they were eye catching for years from their respective fan bases' viewpoint. Or think about Dr. Daniel Jackson's adventure as an ascended being in SG1. (I know, this very example sucks, no matter what he ever wanted to get or expected from such an unimaginable experience.)

Guess what? We as game developers or gamers also think that killing them, especially if this happen kind of early in the story, is a bad idea by definition. Says who?

Have you forgotten cases where late in the game some Aeris ceased to exist as a human being? Didn't she kind of return in the CGI movie later on?

What about Chrono, the male Chrono Trigger lead that confronted the evil Lavos? Didn't he perish believing he was helping his mates somehow?

As you have noticed by now, I'm telling you that you're not supposed to keep all of your leads till the (first or most common) end of your game. You can change that at will, you can rely on killing them and bringing them back at will for whatever reason you can think off even while asleep! It's the way you handle it what will make it succeed or not, it's not the idea or concept itself.

Just don't come up with a story that involves Aluxes's Return to Life! Don't even dare, guys!

[DerVVulfman]

YOU'RE RUNNING OUT OF MAPS? OH, NOOO!!!!!

Oh, boo hoo. Your game editor allows you to make a lot of maps. Heck, it lets you make NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE MAPS (or 999 for those who don't wanna read). Still, I've heard some people say that they're limited and are running out.

Limited? Are you kidding me?

Your typical Enterbrain editor lets you make maps of a fairly large size. RPGMaker XP allows one to create a 500x500 tile map. And that's not exactly tiny. I've seen plenty of maps that are a mere 20 tiles by 15 tiles, these being individual home/house maps. And there are those who make a ton of these small maps to fill a town or village.

Really? That's a real waste!

Instead of making a lot of maps of small houses or huts, why not make ONE of those 500x500 maps and put a good number of your houses in that? You could make a map called 'VillageVille Houses' and have a good time, assuming your houses use the same basic tileset. Well, a good tileset changer can fix that. Still, you'll want to put some spacing around each house map, like around 10 tiles on all four sides each. That way you can't see one map from the other.

Yeah, this would mess up the use of a 'Map Name' script (displays the Editor's name of a map in the actual game screen). But the benefit is clear; that your chance of running out of maps in the editor is decreased.

[DerVVulfman]

Traps! 

Dungeons  and ancient tombs have Traps!  
Hallowed vaults of hiding, vile pits of entombed  relics, all have traps!

THEY ALL HAVE TRAPS!!!  Unless you see Starlord's stupid start in Guardians of the Galaxy.  What a knucklehead.

In the days of old RPG games of yore, your players had to actually envision things that their referee, the Dungeon Master (or Game Master) told them was present.  Are they in a darkened chamber lit only by torches along the walls?  Are they in the elegant dining hall of the manor with a crystal and ruby chandelier spreading light throughout?  Are they in a dank stone-carved hallway deep beneath the undercroft of the abandoned and desecrated priory?  And what do they see?  Monsters? Slime and muck? Ancient carvings with holes breathing air into the chamber?

OOPS, those holes feed poison into the room!  DID YOU STEP ON ANY TRAP PLATES IN THE GROUND?

Going through a game, the player needs to be challenged. And more often than not in many games, those challenges are monsters. They are pretty much assumed. You have a bad guy to face... beat him up!  Or her... The Borg Queen wasn't a guy, right?  However, there are two other challenges which may be encountered by the player, puzzles and traps.  Granted, sometimes those can be the same thing.

In old-style RPG games, traps fall into some simple categories, pit traps and dart traps.


Pit traps...

Pit traps may be a little hard, or perhaps boring, to have in an RPGMaker engine game.  A concealed pit should be some event that looks much like the surrounding floor, the map tiles discolored or altered in some manor for the player to 'possibly' notice. Or you may have need of a thief with a special 'skill' to Detect Traps.  Still, if you step on the tile, the player falls into the pit and *SPLAT*... suffers some damage.

There are issues with pit traps however.  They should be avoidable.  Does your game have the ability to let the player jump across?  Can you get to the destination by some other route?  How the hell do you get out of the pit!  This pit isn't a immediate Deathtrap one-shot kill!?

Trap Plates...

Ahh... Trap plates are simple events which can activate so many things.  In an RPGMaker game, this is a tactile event of some sort, made to look like a switch on the floor that MAY be visible, or it may be a beam of light, trip wire, or any number of items that the player may cross or be allowed to avoid.

When such a trap is sprung, it can produce one of a variety of lethal event-based nasties.  Gas clouds that move into the area that poison the player on touch.  Missiles that may shoot out at the unexpected.  Crushing boulders or walls that slide to crush the player.  Give the player some time to get out of the way, or make it as fast as hell to surprise them.

 

True enough, there are issues with Trap Plates and the death dealing results it brings.  Can the plates be seen and sidestepped, or jumped over?  Can you outrun the gas cloud event or missile event in time after the trap is sprung?

Disarming...

Ah, now that's something special.  You may want to be able to cross safely.  This is something that may be done simply by just pulling a lever, or hard to do if the lever or switch is concealed.

Just some ideas, right?

---

THE SUICIDE SPHERE
LETHALITY:  High
MECHANISM: Crushing Pressure
FICTIONAL ENGINEER: Gloti Golpep the Gnome
REAL GAME ENGINEER: Kevin Vance © 2003

1.  Uh oh... what the hell is this, Joe Cocksure?
Some stupid boulder is blocking the passageway.
Now what?


2. Ha!!!  Way to put that  Strength to use, Joe.
If you can't go around it, simply push it down
the corridor. Brilliant!


3.  Ouch.  Talk about doing yourself in.
That's just evil.