digibutter.nerr

[Yoshio]

I seem to recall TooManyToasters posting an RPG he was working on here. It reminded me of my time with The PS1 RPGMaker and inspired me to go out, get VX, and make somthing

This is my first project in RPGMakerVX

The World Tower

Story
The World Tower is a gigantic tower which contains everything that the people who live in it will ever need. It is an entirely self sufficent community, in fact, no one who lives in the tower has ever been outside of it. Life in the tower is heavily regulated under the authority of Lord Bass. Conformity and obedience to the regulations is considered vital. There is very little room for personal choice though don't suffer and seem to be fairly happy. Many are pleased with the unity and safety the society provides and there is a general feeling that individual desires should be sacrificed for the good of the whole. When children reach a certain age they are forced to leave thier parents for the children's floor to be "educated." They are not permitted to leave thier specific section of the floor and the children's floor is off limits to the rest of the tower. One child, Jayson Fratello, became fed up with being seperated from his family and he somehow busted out. He Makes his way back to his home and is reunited with his mother. The two then set out to reunite thier family even while thier own society aims to keep them apart, and while they are excercising thier own small, private, rebellion, a much larger, more serious, and perhaps even dangerous rebellion looms in the shadows...

Charecters

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Jayson Fratello (playable)
Age: 8
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Bio: Jayson Fratello is a shy quiet boy who is reluctant to face confrontation but will stand tough if somthing threatens his deepest desires. He is not easily excited though he does get nervous very easily. When talking to people he doesn't know, he only says the bare minimum neccessary.

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Muffy Fratello (playable)
Age: 29
Gender: Female
Race: Human
Bio: Muffy Fratello is a chef at the tower's public cantine. She cares very much for her children and is very protective of them. She shows hints of having a zany personality but she conducts herself in a responisble manner and in a role of leadership around her children. She didn't realize how much she missed her children and husband until Jayson returned home. Muffy likes to get right to the point and she doesn't put up with any charecter that displays silly behavior or who speaks too vaugely. The big acception to this is Aiden, she seems to find his antics to be extremely endearing and delightful. Though she is determined to get her family back togather again, she is reluctant to confront the authority directly

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Aiden Fratello (playable)
Age: 6
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Bio: Like Jayson Aiden was sent to the children's wing to be educated. Unlike Jayson, it didn't go in one ear and out the other in his case. He thinks highly of Lord Bass, and to some extent even seems to idolize Lord Bass. He feels the same way about his father and is unable to reconcile Tommy's arrest. Aiden is a very happy and cheerful child who lives in the moment and has a very short attention span. He seems to take delight in his situation no matter what is going on and often doesn't seem to realize how serious some of the events around him are (battles with enemies for instance) Aiden is quick to get excited even over very trivial things

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Tommy Fratello (playable)
Age: 29
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Bio: Tommy is the father of Jayson and Aiden and he is also Muffy's husband. He was arrested and sent to the prison floors for unknown reasons. He used to be one of Lord Bass's high ranking guards before his arrest. Tommy is a very friendly and mild mannered individual, who, like his wife, cares deeply for his sons and takes his role as parent very seriously

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Lord Bass
Age: 41
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Bio: Lord Bass is the ruler of The World Tower. He is a very serious man who always seems to convey a certain air of intelligence. Lord Bass is very concerned about the safety of his society and believes strongly that everyone must conform to the rest of society and unite togather or else everything will fall apart. He is not a man who is quick to lose his temper and seems to have limitless patient. He believes very strongly in his principles even to the point where he will not even allow his own personal desires to be put before what he believes to be in the best interest of the society as a whole.

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Burt Braken
Age: unclear though he appears to be in his 30's
Gender:Male
Race: Human
Bio: Burt Braken is the leader of the resistance movement against Lord Bass's authority. He does not seem to take anything very seriously. He seems to be more interested in drink and the ladies then fighting for freedom. He also seems to enjoy the infamy he recieves for his actions. Basically he in every way appears to be nothing more than a big goof off, though he shares his partner's belief that the enemies of the creation of a new free society are not to be tolerated.

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Mr. Guacamole
Age: unknown
Gender: Male
Race: Monster
Bio: Mr. Guacamole is an extremly flamboyant monster who confronts and battles the heros but afterwards he decides to be helpful to them. He constantly disguises himself as a human in an extremely flashy clown outfit. He seems to be quite taken with the heros and loves to refer to people as "silly buns" or "sweetie" or "Mr. Grumpy Pants" I really don't know how else to describe this charecter except to say he's just fruity as hell

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Sylvester
Age: unclear though he appears to be in his 60's
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Bio: Sylvester is Lord Bass's personal servant, though Lord Bass often discusses even the most secret of plans and policies with him and he is understood by many to be Lord Bass's second in command. Sylvester is a very cold individual who seems to never talk to anybody except Lord Bass, preferring to communicate in cold disdainful glares instead of words

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Vito Miceli
Age: unknown
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Bio: Vito is a member of Burt Braken's freedom movement. He is a very powerful magic user who wears a mask all the time because it gives him an air of mystery. Unlike Braken, Vito Miceli takes the resistance movement and the concept of individual rights and freedoms very seriously. He is a very idealistic person who has a hard time understanding how anyone outside the official authority can be hostile or indifferent to the freedom movement. He refuses to let anything get in the way of creating a new society. he is in every sense more focused, serious, and intense then Braken.
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you might have noticed that I didn't mention which charecters are "villians" that's because with the exception of the player controlled charecters (who are basically good) it is not very clear at all which charecters are "evil" if any of them truly are

Screenies

most of the monsters are Etoiler's battlers with some found in the RTP. I love the uniqueness of many of them and I think they fit the mood of my game much better I think


yeah you heard the crystal, no random battles in this game


I decided to use Etoiler's face sets, I can't tell you how much I love them, I think they add so much life to the charecters


the menu screen. As you can see I'm using unclestan's star ocean window set. I never played star ocean, I just really like how this screen looks

Scripts Used
-Trickster's Catepillar script
-Game Baker's Battle Status Faces script

what to expect
this is my first game and its basically just regular old RPGMakerVX though there are a few unique points about the game. Firstly there's the no random battles as you probably already know if you saw the screens. Also the entire game takes place inside The World Tower. So there is no world map. You could say the entire game is just one big dungeon. Every location is directly connected with every other location in the game. There also isn't a very big focus on different classes since none of the playable charecters are in the traditional RPG hero mold (with the possible exception of one of them) Also I'm pretty sure this is the first game I've seen where all the party members are directly related. This may affect the way the player views the game. Somthing I noticed about this game that I think is unique is that even the basic grunt monsters have different personalities and they aren't depicted as being evil or even working against the charecters. The game seems to treat the majority of the grunt monsters as actively helping out the heros.

I also am having a system where you can learn extra spells by finding hidden spellbooks and returning them to a certain charecter. I even have a few custom status causing spells

I'm also using Etoiler's battlers and facesets

so what do you think? Keep in mind that this is my first project so I'm still learning the program. I also won't get the chance to get adventrous in mapping and make some impressive looking enviroments until later in the game when the player reaches the more "out doorsy" areas. Mostly I want to know what you guys think of the general idea, the stories, and the charecters. Also even though this game seems to take place in a very small and confined world I entend to make it a very lengthy game.

I'll be posting more screenies as I finsish more of the game, and I'll try to get my first demo out after I get about a quarter of the way through

oh and here's a userbar


yeah, this is basically the reason you guys haven't seen much of me lately

[Mana7]

Jayson does not look likes hes 8 at all

[Yoshio]

his was the second youngest looking male face set so I used it

I recently ran into a few better options but I kept that one for nostalgia reasons. If it really is a problem, I'll change the face set

[Paper_Waluigi]

Yesyesyes. Yes.

First off, I like the idea of no random battles. Random battles are way-outdated design that was okay in the 80's. Of course, rather than just letting the player skip battles as they please, you could make it so that they have to try and avoid the battles if they wish. Change the graphic to a monster charset, make them follow a set route or follow you once it's onscreen, set the trigger to event touch and make it go into battle processing. That's what I'm doing.

Now, the graphics. That's a sexy windowskin, but I notice that all the other graphics except the monster graphics are RTP. You might want to try drawing something or editing something or asking someone to make some new facesets (I really hate playing as Ralph) and using this for charsets. It'll make it much more original and more people will play your game.

The gameplay. I'm assuming it's a dungeon-crawler; there's nothing wrong with that, but you haven't said anything about it that really breaks the mold. Just killing things and having all your characters level up in totally static ways is boring. Try using a unique skill or class system with events. You can do a lot more with events than you might think.

I like the story. The whole Allegory of the Cave deal has been done before- like, in The Matrix- but this is a totally different setting with totally different characters so it should be fine.

Just a small suggestion- using a black panorama instead of the cloudy sky would give it more of a claustrophobic feel, but I like it the way it is too.

Try posting it here. Got a demo planned?

[Yoshio]

whoa! Thanks for the in depth feedback!

Basically there's a reason for the monster's lack of hostility toward the player that is revealed in the story. Mostly I handle the optional battles by making the bosses unbeatable unless the player defeats say 80% of the monsters (this is easy since I know exactly the amount of exp. the player will have at any point in the game) for example the first boss can't be defeated unless the player is level 2 when he fights him, which can only be reached by fighting all save maybe one of the monsters in the area before him. Personally I think the way you suggested is better if the monsters are represented as enemies like in most RPGs but in this one the monsters seem to almost be on the player's side (for true enemies I'm planning on doing what you suggested)

also you're mostly right. The charecters are mostly RTP (though I do use alot of recolors and some fully custom ones) As for Jayson (Ralph) you got your wish I completely overhauled his appearence here's his faceset:
http://blog-imgs-27.fc2.com/t/o/r/toriaka/f_ex06manA.png
what do you think? (the sprite matches it, and he finally actually looks like a kid)

and yes, I changed all the face sets to Etoiler's so now I'm using the RTP only for a couple of bosses

lol no one can say I don't listen to feedback, you and rave got me to totally change a key charecter, though I'm glad you did cause I'm loving this so much more!

As for the gameplay, I can't help but think your're right. However I am planning on having the charecters have some spells that they can only get by finding spellbooks hidden throughout the game and returning them to a certain charecter (two of the planned spells even involve custom status effects) I'm hoping this, the optional battles, and the unique way I treat monsters should be enough for the player to feel like this isn't like everything they've played before. I'm also trying to significantly vary the types of skills known by each party member

By calling my story the allegory of the cave I can't help but feel that you've predicted somthing significant near the end of the story. It has been used alot but like you said the charecters make it different. Basically I'm hoping that having the party consist of a husband, a wife, and thier two kids will have an impact about how the player sees/plays the game. I'm also trying to make the game have a sense of humor and I'm taking things like charecter personality and dialogue very seriously

the reason I'm using the blue sky parallax is to give the suggestion that the player is very high, but this will be made obvious once the player gains access to the massive lower levels. So I might just turn off the parallaxes. I think the claustrophobic effect will do wonders for the notion of the confined world the charecters live in. Thanks for the suggestion

I'm planning on releasing a demo when I complete 25% of the game (conviently enough there is a cliffhanger at this point which would be a great end to a demo)

also I will definately see about posting my game at that site[/url]

[Yoshio]

killing a kitten to tell you that I updated all the screenshots

the RTP graphics have been reduced to 2 map tile sets and a few bosses, and of course the charecter sprites

also the icons, I like the RTP icons so I'll just use them

edit: posted the charecter's face sets in thier bios

happy now Rave Raze and Too Many Toasters? lol

[Paper_Waluigi]

Alright. I downloaded the demo of this off RMN, and it's alright. I got up to the agricultural floor. You should really make it easy to teleport between areas; it's a pain to walk all that way. At least disable dashing and just turn the walk speed up way high. A map of the tower would be nice too.

In the first dungeon, you should give Jayson a skill or two. The battles are all literally just using the Attack command over and over. People who play RM games are notoriously impatient; most would be put off by the first dungeon, maybe enough to just shove it in the recycle bin. Muffy could use another skill as well.

Just a note, the cherries and fine wine don't heal 20HP, they heal 40. It's much better that way, though, trust me.

On that note, a lot of the strategy in the first few dungeons comes down to items. They're also your only way to heal yourself, which gives the player the potential to get totally screwed if they don't have enough money to heal. That's why I like making healing free; it can be exploited, but paying for healing can sometimes be counter-intuitive. Weigh the pros and cons and see which is better.

I have a problem with a lot of the text in the game. There are a lot of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. You should get someone to proofread it if your grammar is bad. talking like this is alright for a forum post, not in a game

All in all, though, this is decent for a first try, and worth expanding on and improving. You should consider using modern algebra's Quest Journal script; it'd make sidequests a lot less confusing for the player. Modern algebra makes good shit. ФֻФ ФֻФ

[Mana7]

I love what your doing right now, I mean the character faces look amazing, the battle systems fleshed out, you got a plot already, but the only thing, and this is just nitpicking, MAKE THE CHARACTERS OLDER geez sure lucas was like 8 n stuff but a 6 year old o_O hes only been walking for like 4 years