Zevti

I was shuffling through some old things after my hangover from the BBQ on Monday wore off and stumbled across an old Gameboy cartridge for an old Namco RPG called Great Greed. I had never played the game but supposedly its somewhat rare. So well I popped it in the old gray brick and then instantly ran to the internet to find out what the heck I was playing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Greed

The game, albeit quirky, is pretty derivative. You're transported to a magic world and forced to stop a great evil from taking of the world. Ugh. The graphics are alright I guess for the gameboy, but and the music is recycled to death and sounds like 8-bit vomit.

The battle system however took me by surprise.

-Unlike most j-rpg's where you're controlling an entire party you're just controlling the main character, and all the battles 1-on-1.
-From time to time you'll be teamed up with another person, but they act more as helpers providing buffs/debuffs, healing, or providing information, though all of the actual fighting is done by you.
-There are no turns (sorta) instead of <you attack> <they attack> once you've chosen you're action, both you and the enemy attack at the same time.
-Instead of navigating menu's to choose your actions, your actions and spells are mapped to the actual Gameboy buttons

A=Attack
B=Dodge
UP,LEFT,RIGHT=Your chosen spells
DOWN=Heal
ENTER=Flee
SELECT=nothing

You can't use items during battle.

This set up leads to scenarios where you're trying to predict when is the best time to dodge an attack, quickly healing yourself to take the brunt force of an opponent, deciding to cast a debuff at the risk of being hit, or choosing not to attack lest you run head first into a fire spell, ect.

The result is a game the feels inherently faster, battles feel more like snap judgements and rarely last for more that 20-30 seconds if you know what your doing (boss battles can last for up to 2 minutes). It felt refreshing and far less obtuse than other games. However after playing for a while the enjoyment started to feel very very stagnant. And I have two theories as to why this is.

Theory 1: Despite my love of all things retro, the Gameboy is just too limited. When you really step back an look at the game without the lens of nostalgia, its a monochrome game that relies on text boxes in order to detail the action rather than animation, special effects, or... color. All the workings are in there for a better experience but its just held back by the technology of the time.

Theory 2: The battle system is too limited in what it allows you to do. While the gameplay may feel fast and doesn't waste your time, there's isn't much more than what you're presented with out of the box. No summoning, no inventory diving, just hitting things with your sword and the occasional magic spell. Perhaps just having battle be 1-on-1 is just the wrong way to go?

Either way I wanted to hear your thoughts, if you agree with either one or both my theories on this. I'm not going to remake the game, but I want to keep this battle system in my back pocket for a different game. And there were a way to improve it I'd like to know if you have any ideas.

And I can really say I hold no real opinion what's the right way to go with this, if you for instance feel that this battle system is just broken from the ground up and another one would be better I'd like to know. And also just because this system only utilized 3 buttons and a D-pad I'm not thinking of this as just being a Gameboy game because when I do use it, it wouldn't be played on the Gameboy.

Moo ^..^ Zevti Here.

I've been rolling this around in my head for a bit, and while this isn't specifically for any games I'm working on at the moment, I did feel it would be appropriate bringing this up here.

The common plot and goal for most games is "defeat the bad guy" villains come in all shapes and sizes but at the end of the day it seems like 3 common villain motives are used to death. Kidnapping. Destroy the World. Take over the world -and the variations these may have. This may be a somewhat unfair summation of game antagonist actions and motives, but just sit there for a moment and really think about how we've seen these. Quite alot huh  

Now unlike my stance on Zombies I don't find it wrong that these are used so often, but there has to be more evil than just this yes? And anyone that knows me knows that I applaud breaking the boundaries of character design so why not do this for a game's antagonist?

Its late here so maybe my head is just cloudy. But I'm a kind of tapped for ideas and scenarios. And thus we come to this conversation.

For a videogame, can bad guys do more than just the common 3? Do you have any ideas beyond just badguy steals princess/gem/superweapon or badguy takes over the country/world/universe?
If you are creating an main antagonist (provided your game is good vs. evil) how would you make him/her/it evil?


Apologies if these questions seem a bit all over the place.
_{Is it odd to mention I'm looking forward to Yal's oncoming wall of text?}

Moo! Hello. Zevti, your resident furry game designer here just wondering .. How do you come up with characters?

This isn't me looking for help but rather me seeking to learn how others go about the daunting task of creating characters. And I used the word daunting because the process by which a good, interesting, and well rounded character can be a cake walk for some but be an impossible struggle for others.

Naturally this is geared towards games that are more story based. But even for your voiceless or simplistic characters, game designers still must go through a through process of brainstorming and revision as the character is being created and this can continue pretty far into the game's actual production with last minute changes being common. You'll never see something placed into a professional game 'just because' so even if the most complex character was a color changing block. I'd like to know what went into making that color changing block -if only to spur conversation.

So. What's your process? How do you feel a character should be created? How have you gone about this in the past?  I'm not saying answer those specific questions. Just give your 2 cents.

Now supposed you're new to this? What if you don't consider yourself good at creating characters, or stories in general? It is my intention to create a list of ideas and links as they are provided ...if they are provided. For all I know no one will reply to this ^..^;

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characterisation Learn the basics
• http://www.darcypattison.com/revision/15-days-to-stronger-characters/ The above link pulls from this. There's ALOT of good information here but sadly the first thing you see is a request to join their mailing list. Just scroll down past it.

*Steps out of the corner* Moo, Hello. Zevti Here, your resident GI&D furry.

Information on my game, not necessarily required for this topic but a quick read through would be appreciated.

Too often it seems as though game characters and the people that create them are resting on their laurels, pumping out the same tired archetypes over and over again. All main characters are tough white guys. All women when not damsels in distress, are seductive fems catered to only one mindset of beauty. (I realize these are blanket statements but I'm trying to make a point here). If variety is the spice of life then why does everyone seem so content with choking down the same fast food over and over again? There are more people in the world than tough white guys. Not everybody finds 99lb supermodels appealing. I want to aim away from these tropes and shed some light on personality types and peoples that are not seen as much, misrepresented, or outright ignored by games. And weather or not this hurts the acceptability of my game, I rightly don't care. Its a freeware game made for next to nothing, what do I care if I make people uneasy? Heck more than once I've considered making the main character gay just because.

I could spend the next month or so brainstorming, but I want to know what ideas you may have on this. What types of people do you feel aren't seen much in games? Social-wise, personality-wise, situation-wise, etc. I won't be drawing lines of race or religion as it doesn't come up, but as a quick aside -Does every black man have to be a stereotype? -Does every Muslim have to be evil? -Don't fat chicks need love too?

They can be as subtle or as controversial as you can think of, but I want to make a list and then use them for characters and npc's later on.

The list so far: ones with an asterisk* are the ones I think I might use.

I was cruising my normal spots when I came across this

http://www.fighunter...epages/R2/index


*He's finished the game*

Its these types of games that I live and die for.    You young wippersnappers may not be able to appreciate this sort of thing, but for me it rekindled fond beautiful memories of square shaped controllers past. *sniffle* And how they were hard as hell!