Game & Map Screenshots 9

[RhysO101]

My project is very basic and vanilla at the moment.
Here is a map of the first town in the game (unfinished):

Spoiler: Map of Town

And here are some screen shots:

Spoiler: Screenshots

 

[Poryg]

No point in showing unfinished maps, since the city isn't finished yet, I'll keep off any comments. But for the finished ones.. The ration selling grandma's stockpile looks empty. Either fill it or decrease its' size, I'd suggest.

 

[Nebuerys]

Not entirely happy with my attempt to make the cliff part look more natural, but I might as well put it here so I can get feedback on how to improve it.

 

[Celianna]

@Nebuerys I think it looks fine! The map is very wall designed, and the town is very interesting. If you're dissatisfied with the cliff parts, how about adding a small lake?

 

[Nebuerys]

@Celianna Do you think that the cliff walls are not too flat to you though? I might have made a mistake and failed to upload a full-sized picture so here's a closer look.

I was attempting to make a less modular looking tile set for the cliffs and this is what I ended up with.

 

[Pern]

@Nebuerys

I absolutely love that map. The hardest thing for me to put to paper is the layout of towns and cities and that looks gorgeous. Very envious of your vision!

 

[Sharm]

The cliff sides do look a bit smooth. If you want help fixing that I suggest posting in the Resource WIP thread. This thread is focused on the layout, that one is for the actual artwork. The layout you've got looks good.

 

[Celianna]

@Nebuerys you could try swapping them for mine. But mostly you'd need more stuff on the cliffs to break up the monotonous pattern. Any smaller cliffs will do.

 

[Nebuerys]

@Pern Thanks! A couple of stints in architecture and city planning school might have helped me a bit.

@Sharm I'll check out the WIP thread, then. Making my own assets from scratch has always been my weak point.

@Celianna Cool. I think I see a couple of assets that can help make my cliffs look less boring. I appreciate the help!

 

[nkuroo]

here several house that i try to create

 

[TimmyTheNerd]

Work In Progress of Southern Everspring Forest, just south of the village I shared. To the east is the Eastern Forest, which I haven't started work on yet but plan on it being a huge clearing that the village turned into farming land. Further south is the Deep Forest, where the second dungeon of the game will be located. The first dungeon is the cave system in the mountain.

Combined Ancient Dungeons Base, Ancient Dungeons Jungle and Fantastic Buildings: Medieval Tile Sets to make this map, which is 123 by 111 Tiles in size. Notable locations are the Farm (Which plays a role in a side quest), the Hermit's Cabin (The hermit will a different side quest that will involve the mountain), Ashlyn's House, where you can recruit Ashlyn and Helena, the first of 3 party members found in the Everspring area, the Travelling Merchant who set up camp on the lake's island, and, last but not least, Everspring Mountain and the trail that leads into the Valia Mountain Range. Everspring Mountain is the source of the spring that gives the forest its name.

The waterfall, which admittedly took me too long to understand how to animate even with Celianna's instructions, uses the large waterfall charset. Like, seriously. It took me a good three hours before realizing I was suppose to animate it through the Custom Move Route menu and not as an event like the door itself. Felt like an idiot when it came to me.

 

[Celianna]

@TimmyTheNerd but doors are animated with a custom move route, are they not? Lovely map though! Will there be something interesting going on in the grass field in the middle? Otherwise it's just a whole boring of nothingness.

 

[TimmyTheNerd]

@Celianna Yeah but it's done as part of the event scripting and not as the movement type, otherwise you have a door constantly opening and closing. My mind was going along the line of exactly like a door. Only having the event sent to autorun. That...did not work out at all since it froze the game the moment you entered the field.

The middle field is still being decorated with trees. I divided the map up into smaller sections to help me concentrate and work more efficiently. I add rocks to the dirt patches. Then I add trees, bushes and flowers to the 'tall grass' patches. Then I add trees to the normal grass. Once each section is done, I go through again adding small details to make it look more natural. My creation process is a little weird, but I find it hard to get everything done right and to focus properly when not using this process.

 

[Vandriette]

Film grain anyone~?

 

[Solwern]

@Solwern I have several issues with the bossfight you shared.
Graphics are the first one. Everything is so blue it looks ugly. The background, the Battle status window, the aqua skills (even though they are blue naturally, so there's not much to do there... But you understand my point I hope). Also, if you have three characters, I don't see a point of having an empty member slot (can be fixed by tweaking the YEP_BattleStatus's width).
Then from what I have seen, the game doesn't really have strategy. You stacked up barriers, buffed behind them and slowly took down the boss bit by bit. I'm not sure if you saw Yanfly's Unexpected expected battle on youtube featuring "Harold". If not, maybe you should look at it. But the point is, if a boss is uninteresting, it's pointless to have a long fight.
The skill arsenal of everyone, including the boss, is very limited. The boss just casts one aqua attack, only when his hp goes under 50%, he casts some strange looking auras.
Instead of casting his aqua attack, he could have had normal attacks and it would achieve the same results.
Except for the change in BGM I saw nothing that would even suggest a bossfight.
I cannot judge too much more, since I haven't actually played it. But this is what I see in the video.

I would sugest the following.
Spread skill arsenals of at least the boss, because his one attack is seriously pitiful. But the fact that your skills pretty much force the game strategy isn't ideal either.
Actually engage the player. Animated background, dialogs, plot twists... So much to do with the bossfight to make it more lively.

Dude, seriously, thanks ALOT for the feedback

First of all, I am planning on having multiple main characters with guest actors for certain side quests so I didn't really bother to adjust the UI because of that.

Next up, the boss actually is supposed to destroy those barriers upon transformation and has an array of buff skills but the default AI does not use them for one reason or the other (Other than the aqua aura I had it force use upon transformation) so I'll be looking at Yanfly's enemy AI script and see what I can work out from there.

As for the graphics, they are underwater so everything blue is a given... or so I think, I'll increase the transparency on the foreground and in the battle itself, I'll see if I can find a scrolling battle back script amongst other things.

As for this boss itself this is a test run so buffing it's AI to actually use the barrier break skill is one thing but as it is a side boss, defeating this boss contributes changes to the story itself and allows the player to fight a "Hidden" boss which affects the story as it goes.

 

[cabfe]

@Akumai - Film grain effect is really a personal preference. I systematically deactivate it in games, but if you can make it optional, why not?

 

[Rhino]

@Akumai That map just oozes atmosphere- I love it

My fourth map attempt but first time posting it.. Feedback/advice on how to improve would be much obliged.

It's an item shop, but you can go to the crystal ball and get a random fortune! The shadows are so big since I'm using regions to shade the characters.. I left the walkways big since they'll be quite a few npcs, but I'm not sure if that makes it look a little lop-sided..

 

[Poryg]

@Solwern

First of all, I am planning on having multiple main characters with guest actors for certain side quests so I didn't really bother to adjust the UI because of that.

The UI can be adjustable based on the amount of your party members, if you know javascript A question of editing one line of code, precisely Battle status window width.

Next up, the boss actually is supposed to destroy those barriers upon transformation and has an array of buff skills but the default AI does not use them for one reason or the other (Other than the aqua aura I had it force use upon transformation) so I'll be looking at Yanfly's enemy AI script and see what I can work out from there.

So let me sum up... He is supposed to destroy those barriers. But if your characters are buffed, you don't need to bother with it, since you can just go all out from that point. Or, if he destroys the barriers, you can still set them up again (which you actually did in the video and then used the old man as a heavy hitter).
Buffs are nice, but they are far from the point. It's pointless if the enemy has only one single target attack. It's Kraken, the giant octopus... Octopi have tentacles, ink, they can manipulate water with their rage, throw destroyed ships, eat their foes... Whatever. And he only has one single target aqua attack. No offence, but he can just have a basic attack instead, if he's going to have only one single target attack that damages foes. And no buffs will change that (but wait, basic attacks don't get reflected by magic reflect barrier... But then if a character has a skill and doesn't have a normal attack only because it's reflectable by magic reflect barrier, it's bad design). If you want to make the boss more interesting, give him more attacking skills. AOE skills. Anything. It's Kraken, so he should be more of a majestic boss. He should pose some challenge. Even if he's a mere side boss, he's still a boss.
As for the graphics, you can definitely play more with it. It is underwater, underwater you have corals, stones, sunken ships, ... and much more. Ok, maybe not, because the world they are in looks like some kind of hi tech thing... But at the same time they are in front of a portal. You can play with the portal part too. Glowing portal, animated background, water, pixi (ok, not everybody knows pixi, I don't know it either, but I want to learn it, because it gives you some nice graphical abilities), dialogs, cutscenes, random battle animations, the transformation being accompanied by WHOAAAAA! from octopus to show his anger... There are so, so many things you can do to make the scene look more appealing. It's a boss, don't be afraid to be creative.

 

[Sharm]

@Poryg @Solwern stay on topic please. If you want to continue the conversation you could move it to PM.

 

[IAmJakeSauvage]

I really love the purple bookshelves and things - I'd strongly suggest adding more carpet on the side of the store where the bookshelves are though.

@Akumai That map just oozes atmosphere- I love it

My fourth map attempt but first time posting it.. Feedback/advice on how to improve would be much obliged.

It's an item shop, but you can go to the crystal ball and get a random fortune! The shadows are so big since I'm using regions to shade the characters.. I left the walkways big since they'll be quite a few npcs, but I'm not sure if that makes it look a little lop-sided..