RPG Maker Forums

Setting up your project with room to grow.


Let’s discuss this, because there are so many school-of-hard-knocks mistakes I have made, and I wish I could skip as many as possible in the future!


1. Set up your resources from the very beginning with each actor’s graphics in separate files.


Justification: For example, if you are using Actor 5-3 {Rick) as your main character, the database is already set up with his face graphic and sprite. This is bad. This is very bad. The reason it is very bad is because RPG Makers Change their Minds! At some point you will say, “Gee, I really could use an emoset of faces for Rick, because when he is talking in the scene of great sadness, he looks like a dope standing there smiling.” Now what will you do? Now you will have a full emo set for Rick, but you will not be able to easily change all of the former dialog face graphics. So when you edit dialog that needs an emoset added, you have to go lookup the file for the emoset. But that is just the beginning. Now your game is really taking off, and Literally the Entire Human Race has made RPGs and THEY ALL USED RICK! Infact, they hate Rick. New games with Rick die on the vine! (poor Rick) How can you change every single face in every Show Text Event? You cannot! You must now begin to say “I should have listened to Granny, I should have listened to Granny!” Because if you had listened to Granny, you would have taken a separate file with Rick’s face graphics, conveniently named after the Character in the story, or named “Main Guy” or whathave you, and just replaced the file with the new face graphics, using the old name. Voila! All faces changed in three minutes or less. Same thing for actors’ sprites. Separate files, folks.


There are other areas I think I would have handled very differently if I had known.


How about you? What early decisions left you beating your head against the pavement because they took so much work to correct?