RMMV Metamorphosis Fanclub

[Pikaia]

Metamorphosis Fanclub

​

Synopsis

Spoiler

• This is my very first attempt at making a game in any version of RPG Maker. I have been working on this game for only a few days now, with the premise being developed a while back (originally as a concept for a graphic novella).
• The game will be a traditional RPG in a surreal, post-apocalyptic setting, drawing inspiration from alternative or unconventional RPG games such as Space Funeral, OFF, Mother/Earthbound and Yume Nikki.
• Throughout the game, the player will have a number of decisions they can make that will affect the outcome of the ending of the story. I have the premise of the game planned, with at least two or three different endings that I may integrate into it.
• Additionally, as aforementioned, the game will utilise traditional elements of RPGs such as the use of EXP and turn-based combat.
• Graphically, the game utilises a variety of mixed media styles, ranging from conventional pixel art, to traditional hand drawn artwork, to photograph collages. The game will also be entirely in greyscale. Primarily however, the majority of the graphics of the game will be done with pixels, such as the overworld maps and sprites.

Premise

Spoiler

Set in the year 2013, the premise concerns a strange, ambiguous critter named Bill, living in a post-apocalyptic landscape after an event known as the Cataclysm. Bill is obsessed with an old, long-cancelled Tokusatsu television show called Metamorphosis, about a warrior who would merge consciousness with different creatures and fight the heinous B.E.A.S.T. corporation.

Bill has what is left of his world turned upside down when his home, along with all his Metamorphosis merchandise, is completely destroyed by strange, angelic monsters that have been appearing around the landscape he resides upon. Desperate, Bill decides there's only one thing left to do-find out what happened to Metamorphosis, to see if they can be called upon to save the world from the strange angelic beasts.

Along the way, Bill meets many people and critters, as he becomes aware of a strange and poignant plot to initiate the rebirth of the world following the Cataclysm...

SCREENSHOTS

Spoiler

SECTION B: CHARACTERS

Spoiler

• Bill
  
  
  A young adult vaguely-humanoid animal with an obsession for the fictitious Metamorphimon television series. He doesn't really think about much else, at least not until his home was destroyed.
• Dog and Kat
  
  
  
  A pair of nomadic Snare Fox friends, whom of which are seldom seen without each other. The two are in many respects polar opposites, but both have their love of philosophy in common. They join Bill in his quest after he helps reunite the duo.
• S.P.D.R.
  
  
  An electronic arthropod that resembles a spider fused with a handheld game console, S.P.D.R. (acronym for Super Proficient Device for Recreation) who was part of a colony of social electronic spiders, but was rejected for gaining a degree of sentience somehow. They can't communicate in anyway other than through emoticons on their screen.

As you can see from the screenshots, a lot of what I have graphically produced so far is rudimentary and will likely be developed further. I'm not the most proficient with pixel work, so if you guys have anything to suggest, such as critique, that would be much appreciated.

Anyway, thanks for checking this out!

 

[kranasAngel]

You had me at Tokusatsu, and then you added in weird trippy post apocalyptic visuals and now I'm definitely into it.

I'll look forward to seeing how this develops.

 

[Pikaia]

Thank you very much! I'm glad you like what you see so far.

I've been chipping away at this thing again today. Here's some footage of the game in action:


For the sake of clarity, a lot of the music tracks being used are placeholders. In the spoiler below I have linked to the sources of each piece of music I added.

Spoiler: Music

Overworld music-YS: The Ark of Napishtim OST-Overwater Drive
Battle music-Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes OST- Midboss
Battle victory music-Pin-Up Went Down-Cadavre Exquis (outro sampled)
Battle loss music-Sampled from this old advertisement.

If you guys have anything to add or suggest, please let me know, I'm very much a noob at using this software lol.

Thanks again for looking guys.

 

[KoalaFrenzy]

That third screenshot is terrifying. Oh my god the Ronald roach. Holy hell.

Too weird for me, but the style might actually get some kind of cult following. I wish you luck.

 

[Pikaia]

Thanks! I realise what I'm producing isn't for everyone, but then I always keep that in mind with whatever it is I produce with any medium. I appreciate your kind words nonetheless.

-

Here's a couple more screenshots from the current version of the game:

A screenshot of an early building-interior map. I'm pretty lost when it comes to pixel art, as I mostly work traditionally with ink for my art. This is still a bit of a work in progress, so if anyone has some resources or critique to offer, I'm very open to it.

Also, a new enemy I added to the game, a rarely-occurring enemy with a very high defence stat that drops a lot of EXP when killed. Kind of like the Metal Slimes in Dragon Quest!

Anyway yeah, if anyone has any critique or general feedback to offer on what I've produced so far, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks for looking! :>

 

[Chroma-Creative-Solutions]

Thanks! I realise what I'm producing isn't for everyone, but then I always keep that in mind with whatever it is I produce with any medium. I appreciate your kind words nonetheless.

-

Here's a couple more screenshots from the current version of the game:

A screenshot of an early building-interior map. I'm pretty lost when it comes to pixel art, as I mostly work traditionally with ink for my art. This is still a bit of a work in progress, so if anyone has some resources or critique to offer, I'm very open to it.

Also, a new enemy I added to the game, a rarely-occurring enemy with a very high defence stat that drops a lot of EXP when killed. Kind of like the Metal Slimes in Dragon Quest!

Anyway yeah, if anyone has any critique or general feedback to offer on what I've produced so far, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks for looking! :>

In terms of the translation of ink and paper art to digital art (in this form pixel related) there is a way that you could probably use the system that you are familiar with for generating art to meet what is required for the "pixel" aspects of your game. If you look at the sprite sheets, for example the sideview battlers for the default characters (along with the reference sheet from the forum posted by @Archeia you can see the breakdown of each individual character motion for the sprite sheet:

Spoiler: SV Character Breakdowns

All you have to do is draw each state that you want the character to be in, and it can be used as the battler for each type of position needed to animate for the game, it does not have to be in pixel art style. So for yours you would like make your character sheets larger so that they can fit your hand-drawn graphics. To do this for sideview battlers specifically you need to meet the requirements that the sheet be 9 "frames" wide by 6 "frames" tall. To do this you will just need to upscale proportionally to the size that you need the frames to be until they will fit your character size. See more info here. You can do this for the regular character sprite sheets as well. Best of luck, definitely a unique style!

 

[Pikaia]

Thank you very much for the helpful response! I'll look into that, as I may draw out all the sprites for the protagonist party characters traditionally and scan them.

I have had some computer issues, my MacBook (the computer I was using to work on the game) appears to not be booting up properly. I'm sending it in to hopefully be repaired, but I'm very concerned that I may end up losing all the work I've done on the game. If I do, I will continue by starting again from scratch, which will be incredibly annoying, but hopefully it won't come to that.

Anyway, just so this post isn't me rambling, here's a couple of enemies I've produced the graphics for on my other computer:

The images are a bit smaller as these are intended as enemies that swarm the player characters in battle.

 

[Pikaia]

Right, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that my computer has successfully been repaired and is functioning again. The bad news? My SSD failed and I have lost everything, including the current build of the game I had been working on.

Fortunately, a number of assets, such as graphics for the characters and enemies, have been backed up through my external devices or through other means. Therefore, I plan to restart production on the game (which thankfully I wasn't too far into anyway) and of course, make sure I make back-ups when necessary.

-

With that out of the way, I have been working on the character and enemy graphics and some other art for the game. Here's some samples:

A couple of battle graphics for two of the enemies found early in the game.

Also, an illustration that may or may not make it into the game...maybe a title screen?

Anyway, I hope to update with another gameplay video once I've rebuilt what I've lost.

 

[GoodSelf]

You call it avant-garde, I call it nightmare fuel, and everyone can't stop looking. Can't wait to see where this develops.

 

[Pikaia]

Thanks, I appreciate your kind words!

--

Small update this time, as I've had to rebuild a lot from scratch. When I have more in the game I intend to post another gameplay video.

Anyway, I need some advice on the character battler sprites. I'm hand drawing them, scanning them and then isolating the drawings to make individual sprites. The frames keep overlapping with each other, like this:

I'm wondering if there's a template or something I can use to prevent this from happening? I'm getting pretty annoyed with this continuing to occur.

Thanks again for looking, everyone.

 

[Pikaia]

I've had other commitments recently such as my university work, but I've made a little bit of progress with the game so far. Here's a gameplay video:


I still have a number of things to fix and add as you can see, but this is just to showcase the graphical style I'm trying to go for. As usual, any suggestions or criticism is appreciated.

 

[Pikaia]

I've been chipping away at the game again now that I have more free time. I'm having a lot of trouble deciding on what sort of style/media I should use for the tilesets. Here's a screenshot from my latest attempt and build:

I don't know, does this look decent at least? If anyone has any critique or suggestions, please do let me know. Thanks!

 

[deficiencyproductionz]

These Ronald Mcdonald graphics are haunting to say the least. You have an eye for the surreal!
Personally, I think the tilesets could use a bit more visual interest. As is, they do the job fine though.
Cant wait to see how you push forward with this! Let me know if you ever need testers!

 

[Neonzumi]

You sure have an "interesting" art style. Good luck on your game!!

 

[Pikaia]

Thanks guys! I appreciate your words of encouragement. DeficiencyProductionz, I'll keep that in mind as I will likely require some testers in the distant future!

--

Chugging along with the game still. Here's a couple of screenshots from the very beginning of the story. I won't explain the context of the first one, so feel free to figure that out for yourselves!

Some of the graphical assets here (such as the battle background in the first screenshot) are placeholders and will be replaced eventually.

Anyway, thanks for looking as usual all, feel free to make any suggestions or criticisms if you have them! Have a good day. :>

 

[Pikaia]

It's been quite a few months since I last updated. I've been working on the game during this time where I can, along with my uni work and other projects such as my webcomic. Still, I do have some stuff to show, as well as some things to say about the direction of the project.

I'm reworking the story; the premise largely remains the same but I'll be removing some characters from the story or repurposing them. I've also redesigned the protagonist, Bill, due to him resembling another one of my characters a little too much.

Anyway, here's some screenshots from the first area in the game, called the Stain Forest:

I will be updating the OP at some point with the updated facets of the game, such as the characters. As per usual, if anyone has any suggestions or criticisms regarding what I've shown thus far, please let me know.

Have a good day everyone. :>

 

[Buckbacon]

One thing I notice that would be a quick and easy boost to visual quality would be to swap out the default font. That font is not only an easy identifier of an RPGMaker game (which is a turnoff to some people), it's also tonally inconsistent with the game you're making.

I just did a quick scan of fonts free for commercial use and found a couple that seem tonally consistent with your screenshots: PXFXTall and BitPap.

Anyway that's just my two cents, whenever you start putting builds of the game up on itch.io or something I'd love to try it.

 

[Pikaia]

One thing I notice that would be a quick and easy boost to visual quality would be to swap out the default font. That font is not only an easy identifier of an RPGMaker game (which is a turnoff to some people), it's also tonally inconsistent with the game you're making.

I just did a quick scan of fonts free for commercial use and found a couple that seem tonally consistent with your screenshots: PXFXTall and BitPap.

Anyway that's just my two cents, whenever you start putting builds of the game up on itch.io or something I'd love to try it.

Hey, thanks for the suggestion. It was my intention to remove the default text from the game anyway and replace it with something more fitting. I'll have a look at the ones you've suggested. Thanks for the help and your interest!

--

A couple of little updates:

*The game will have save-points rather than an option to the save the game in the menu. Save-points will be represented by white moths. Below is a gif demonstrating this feature:

Spoiler: Animated gif

*I've also been designing more enemies and characters in the game. I won't spoil too much, but here's a preview of an early game mini-boss, Corporate Nephila.

Spoiler: (TW: Spider)

 

[alice_gristle]

Corporate seraphs and "I miss eating food"? Aaaaaawesome.

 

[Pikaia]

I uploaded a gameplay video of a small portion of what I have produced thus far.


Some notes about what is shown here:

*The music, sounds and some of the graphics and maps are placeholders for the time being. For those curious, the overworld music is the track Battle Against a Machine from the Earthbound OST. Also, the title screen music is Tamariu by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (which I imagine fellow Space Funeral fans will recognise!)

*I still need to balance out the characters (well, the one playable character in this small portion of the game) and enemies. I feel this is particularly evident with the first battle against the Corporate Vulpines.

*Also, as you might have inferred, the Perplexing Moustache enemy is supposed to be akin to enemies found in a lot of RPGs, such as the metal slimes from Dragon Quest. The intention (albeit not shown in the video) is that when killed, they drop a lot of EXP and currency, much like the aforementioned existing enemy.

-

As usual, if anyone has any suggestions or criticisms, please let me know. I intend to take a break from posting progress here until I've got a more substantial amount of stuff to show.

(Also, thank you to Buckbacon for the suggestion of the font I have used in the current build; it works very well!)