How best to handle an episodic game with RM?

[EternalShadow]

So, no battles - basically these are going to be like playable TV shows? And you are aiming to pitch them as such (A new episode each week!) ?? am I gathering that right?

Something along those lines! Maybe not -every- week, but something like that!

If each 'episode' is planning to be so short, then why not bundle 3-5 'episodes' per release (how many of these do you have planned?) and allow the player to pick which episode from the title screen. Like a DVD? Having longer episodes be like 'movie' releases with only one 'episode' on the file.

If each episode is about half an hour to an hour of gameplay... that's a LOT of game dev time to make three to five episodes per release, depending how far apart they are. At three episodes, that would be 1:30 to 3h gameplay time, while five episodes would be 2:30 to 5h gameplay time.

I mean, if I'm understanding what you're saying and your aim is to basically make a TV show using RPGmaker (with perhaps some playable elements of exploration and puzzles??), why not package it as such?

HOW precisely to do that is what I am questioning though: individual releases of bundles of episodes, or all in one game, updated every X episodes?

 

[Wavelength]

My instinct is that it's better if at least some data carries over (this is way easier to do than you might think), but it's almost not even worth discussing at this early point.  Make your first two "episodes" the way you think it should be best, release them, and see what kind of feedback you get.  Then make any changes that the consensus finds necessary for the connection between the two games, re-release them, and continue with episodes 3+.

 

[Tsukihime]

I would just release them as separate games. It is not "one large game broken up into different parts", it is just "several games that happen to take place in the same universe following a timeline"


If necessary, I will build a save file importer to transfer data from previous games.

However, RPG Maker doesn't allow the creation of individual games and then the merging of everything (maps, events, etc) into one game.


Therefore, this leaves budding game devs that want to make episodic games with only 2 options:


1) Create the individual games and ask players to download new "episodes" when they come out.


2) Create the one game and ask players to download that one game every time a new "episode" comes out.

I'm assuming you're talking about the ability to patch data.


This is perfectly possible in RPG Maker, assuming you are ok with not encrypting the later episodes.


If you do require encryption, you may consider system such as FEUX encryption that will allow you to distribute encrypted patches that will be merged with the main project.

 

[EternalShadow]

A save file importer would be quite useful for games that do require it - and I imagine a few people asked about that sort of thing in the past. I can only imagine the video you'd do for it! :'D


I will need the game/later episodes encrypted, especially since it would likely use store product. However, I may have to look into your suggestion of the FEUX service later, if I go down the one-game route. At this rate, it looks like multiple games. If games rely on save data from previous ones, then it could be that I copy over those database entries.


However, there's still the whole issue of redownloading resources already used... Yeah, FEUX might be the best option at this point, since RM is unable to patch games by default. Don't you just hate it when you place a player in a wrong starting position and have to re-send 200+mb of data to a beta tester?

 

[sabao]

Seeing as absolutely nothing carries over anyway, treating them as separate stand alone games seems like the simplest solution. I mean what's the point in mushing them together when there's really nothing that carries over between episodes anyway? Nevermind how long each episode stands. Back in the 'episodic' days of RMXP, some folks would let out games were that were no more than 15 minutes long and had no gameplay to them, at all (ScriptKitty's Akasha Seal, for example). People were okay with it. You can just compile everything into a single game afterward when you're done (Volrath and ArtBane's Master of the Wind series, which was at first episodic then combined).

If you wanted something expandable, the easiest solution is probably to keep the game unencrypted. Have something that logs changes like SVN so you know what's being changed between updates and upload only the relevant files every update to reduce file size. Updating would be as simple as copying and pasting the update folder into the main game folder. It's not the cleanest solution ever, mind you, but I'm running on the assumption here that you don't have any other fancy scripts to do the job for you on hand.

Also, at least this has proven true in XP and older versions, it's easy to carry saves over to new games. When making the second game, build it over the first one. Delete the resources you don't need (all the map events, maps you no longer need, sprites you no longer need, etc) and make sure you don't use any of the database slots (characters, variables, switches, etc) that you may have used in the old one. This ensures that all the old player data recorded in the first game are protected and the game will still read whatever was on them when it tries to load it.

Want your party from the first game to show up again with their items and levels intact? No problem. You want your recorded choices in the first game to affect the plot of the second? Easy. Did you set a switch on the first game so if you loaded your old save from the first game to unlock a cool secret character on the second? Also possible. Just have players copy the save data on the first game and paste it into the folder of the second.

 

[EternalShadow]

Seeing as absolutely nothing carries over anyway, treating them as separate stand alone games seems like the simplest solution. I mean what's the point in mushing them together when there's really nothing that carries over between episodes anyway? 

Because you'd have to keep redownloading data that already exists, in the other episodes.  How do you combine a game that is episodic, into one thing anyway?

 

[mogwai]

I like the beginning of an old adult Dos RPG called Knight of Xentar, where the hero starts out as a really high level with the final armor weapons and armor, but after getting mugged and losing all his items, he also gets fooled into kissing a stone to get through a magic barrier, that drains his experience all the way down to level 2.

The whole having to start over thing, would probably be better for separate sequals with the same hero, which I guess is like episodes. Sometimes sequals that aren't episodes have completly different worlds and characters.

 

[sabao]

Because you'd have to keep redownloading data that already exists, in the other episodes.  How do you combine a game that is episodic, into one thing anyway?

These would be for short 15 minute episodes though, right? How large could the game folder possibly get?

Wouldn't know how MotW did it exactly, but I imagine they built everything in one project folder from the start and just took out the data (graphic/sound assets and maps mostly, or scripts to systems you don't want introduced yet) irrelevant to that particular episode before release. That's the cleanest way to do it, at least if you don't want new and old data bumping into one another once you merge. Honestly, I think it's more trouble than it's worth when each episode will be designed to work independently of one another anyway.