RMMV Star Trek: 55th Anniversary (a remake of the NES classic, Star Trek 25th Anniversary).

[JayIsrael]

This is my first ever attempt at creating a game. I decided I wanted to remake an old game, as that would give me a framework to try to emulate.
I remembered that when I was a kid I bonded with my mom over the game Star Trek 25th Anniversary - she is a huge Trekkie, and actually learned English from watching the show.
I was hoping to have this done by her birthday but this whole game making thing is incredibly challenging, so that's probably not going to happen.

Anyway - for those unfamilar with the original game. Basically, the Enterprise gets stranded in uncharted space, with no fuel, and must make their way back to Federation space. The majority of the game has you roaming around strange planets, solving puzzles, shooting enemies with phasers, finding items and then using said items to gain access to other areas, etc. There were also some space battles - which I am still trying to decide how I am going to do that.

The game uses Galv's Map Projectiles for shooting things with one's phaser. I am still trying to work out how to make enemies who can take more than one phaser blast before they go down.

I am pretty happy with how my map designs came out. I do not code, and the plugins give me a nose bleed, but I am a graphic designer so I was able to use photo compositing to create all my maps. I wanted to make the maps look like they are tiltshift images, with blurs around the edges, and on some maps when the player is at the edge of the map, their sprite becomes blurry.

I am striving to use as few default RPG Maker resources as I can.

I have tried to be a bit more ambitious than the original NES game. In this game, at any time you can press a key on your keyboard to ask for advice or help from members of your away team (for example, you can ask Doctor McCoy to heal you, or get Spock to use his tricorder to scan for lifesigns). You can also call the Enterprise at any time, to ask them for help, check on the ship's status, or ask that they transport you back to the ship.

During different missions, different away team members will be more useful than others. For example, during the first mission you'll start out with Dr. McCoy and Spock on your party, but at some point a part of the game will become much easier if you recruit Uhura onto your party, as she is able to offer her skills as a linguist to better help you figure out what local villagers want, and determine the solution to a puzzle. etc.

I am also hoping to have a crew morale system, wherein decisions you make as captain, either make the crew morale better or worse. Perhaps this would lead to multiple endings, or some other kind of bonus.

And if at all possible, I think it might be fun to offer the player the ability to catalog different aliens / plants, discovered, with the goal being to find all of them before the end of the game. But that might be asking too much.

Things that I really need to get better at:
- I wish I was better at making sprites. As mentioned earlier I am striving to use as little of RPG maker's built in resources as I can, so as to keep the game's style unique to it, and that means having to make new sprites for enemies, villagers, etc., but I am pretty sucky at sprites so far.

- I need to make a new pause menu which doesn't show off the usual RPG Maker things - such as your gold, and magic stuff. That obviously doesn't fit with the genre. Just made the title menu today, with the help of MOG's title menu plugins.

- Right now, the game has a lot of talking. I haven't gotten into the puzzles quite yet. Hoping to make this game an actual game very soon.


Like I said - this is my very first attempt at making a game and if anyone wants to help on this project, I am certainly open.