What are the #1 mistakes that RPG Maker games make?

[Indrah]

The stairs thing: I say let it pass, because stairs with more tiles than the wall jsut looks ****ign HORRIBLE visually in the top down perspective. If we start getting anal about that, we'd have to revise the entire RTP and frankly, I don't have the time :/ I don' think anyone has ever come up to me and say THAT was a problem of all things in my games.

The stairs don't look bad ingame mapping-wise. if you make a B tile with an extra step to place at the bottom they look pretty swanky too, so that's my take on that.

And the save everywhere function is godly, f*ck ye XD I despise constricting saves: it may be ok if you have a lot of time for games, but I don't anymore. I don't want to be stuck losing progress or havign to stick for another half hour when I have to leave the game unexpectedly or anything of the sort. Plus why would I NOT be allowed to save anywhere? these are rpgs, not plataformers or shooters. Every ENCOUNTER is another few minutes, and can have any numnebr of variables. For AAA games I may tolerate the inconvenience because the game is good, but for a free and probably mediocre rtp newbie game? Heck no.

Sure, restricting saves can work WHEN YOU BUILD THE GAME AROUND THAT, but the type of rpgs we see here are certainly NOT the case. Get over this whole artificial restrictions already folks :<

Is it a dealbreaeker to me? Not really, but I certainly prefer saving anywhere and the hassle of saving oly in certain loation can get really annoying, and it's one more point of ARRG in games (and if you have enough of those, I will just stop playing).

So not a dealbreaker, but annoying.

As for my pet peeve: forcing the game to start in full screen and disabling anything else. F*ck you dear developer for that.

Get off your arrogant horse, your game does not deserve to hog my entire screen like some sort of desperate attention grab. To me it trasnlates to a horrendous mentality of "you must onyl pay attention to me, Frick your computer". That of course discounts that may of us also have talkign prpograms like skype or messenger while we play or heck, anything else (the Rpg Maker game screen is small afterall). Also it looks ****ign horrible,since the screen is big and the original resolution is small, resulting in distorted graphics. Just freaking stop.

Optional fullscreen? Sure, knock yourself out. But forcing yourself to be fullscreen? Who the heck do you think you are? I rarely even let immersive mmos do that me!

 

[Makio-Kuta]

top-down view is still kinda ridiculous though. I mean. Seeing the entire surface of something and seeing the entire front of something at the same time is... rather impossible isn't it? I just find it kinda strange to debate about one aspect of top down (or even claim it to be a mistake in terms of game making), when the whole concept of it is flawed to begin with. That was my biggest struggle when I started making my own chipsets years back; just grasping the messed up perspective.


aha, but I'm rather simplistic and forgiving when it comes to the way maps work in RPGs I suppose.

As for my pet peeve: forcing the game to start in full screen and disabling anything else. F*ck you dear developer for that.

I agree so much. @.@ I'll decide whether or not your game deserves to have me ignore the rest of my computer-thank you very much.

 

[Sharm]

The reason why the stairs being the same height as the wall bugs me is because stairs take up space on the floor, that's how they work. To me mapping them only to the wall height is like saying they don't take any floor space at all. I do agree that it's impossible to get it completely accurate due to the way 3/4ths view works in a tiled system.


Ksi, I don't understand at all what you mean by "The stairs already have that width included in their tile." I will wait for your mockup.


Makio-Kuta: But you're only seeing 3/4ths of the top, not the entirety of it. It's squished. Yeah, it's confusing.

 

[seita]

I agree with Sharm~

Whenever someone creates stairs that only span the height of the wall, I consider it lazy and inexperience, ignoring the perspective and depth of the actual stairs. I made a mockup several pages earlier, and it doesn't have to look ugly or ineffective. Only giant giant stairs look ugly, and that is also lazy.

It's also the same reason why it always bugs me when the player can't walk under the roof, just because of the default way the roof autotile is handled in the game. It's a minor limitation of the engine and laziness or inexperience by the mapper/developer.

@Ksi - I don't understand, I would love a mockup as well.

Regardless, it doesn't seem like it bugs anybody else much so I'll just have to live with this one

 

[Indrah]

Hoenslty the stairs thign seems like a very personal thing to me :I Which is fine, don't take me wrong. To everyone their own opinion.

But if you want to make a realist mapping perfect game, RTP graphics (and rpg maker in genral) are probably not the palce you want to be.

I've always felt that style (not 3d for the purposes of this) games got away with some odd things in the presentation, because otherwise it just gets SILLY trying to make everythign real-like (and hoenslty I don't feel like most players even CARE when theyre just playing. It sounds to me like a problem onyl devs have because we tend to be ovrly critical over silly thigns.

I map more or less under the pretense not of realism but of "Does it look utterly stupid? If no, we're fine". All of us agree with the silly rules of map navigation already: cant jump over fnces or low obstalces, can't climb low walls, etc. I think that as long as the player doesnt stop and go "wtf that makes no sense" or feels cheated (I'm, lookign at you, flimsy blockaged before treasure or plot convenience tree stumps) it's all fine.

(Tho this is of course my take so that that as you will).

And seita that "lazy and inexperienced" bit is really misplaced. Some of us jsut dont MIND about that stuff an feel the style is ok. Stilistical stuff is not really "lazyness" so much as PREFERENCE. It would be lazy if I decided for example to jsut slap a flat floor with no cliff continuity instead of any stairs. It'd be lazy If I changed my mapping style midway through the game and didn't fix the previous maps. Stylisitacl choices (mappign the lower wall, how tall the walls are) are not "lazy" or "inexperienced" (or on the flip side, experienced) if you stick to that style and feel it works for you.

Because frankly if we start getting that way we can start rulign out all the mappign choices: shadows, no shadows, map external lower wall, don't map an dmake the lower wall a drop-off, sideway doors, how to map exits, antyhing. It's stylistical and you may or may not like it, which is fine, but as long as it functions and stays coherent thorought the game it's not a matter of "laziness".

TL;DR: You dont like that style? That's perfectly fine. But it doesn't automatically make those who use the style wrong or lazy for whatever reason.

 

[Dalph]

I believe the whole concept about the tool is supposed to break realism, so why bother about this? Seriously.

 

[Sharm]

I get your point Indrah, but your argument is exactly the same as people claiming that they don't need to know anatomy to draw anime style because anime isn't realistic. It's true that anime style doesn't follow all the rules of anatomy exactly, but to do a good job of drawing anime style you have to know those rules, know which rules are being modified and why. The rules are never entirely broken and some rules don't change at all when you're drawing that style.


Yes, you can fudge things like scale perspective in RPGs because it's the style but you don't ignore perspective completely. To me mapping the stairs that way does that, it ignores perspective completely and really does throw me out of the game and makes me feel like the mapper doesn't know what they're doing.

 

[Indrah]

No offense but I'm not an artist and I would not bother remaking all my resources. That's not what I'm tryign to accomplish in my games, to make them perfeclty realsitic. Frankly, I've seen pixel games in many diverse and definitely not "correct" styles have so much more enjoyment for me than the msot realistic of games, pixel or 3d or whatever. It's not something I care about as a player.

Again, I don't feel players give much of a Frick. maybe if an architect (i guess) were to look at them hed get offended? But  honeslty it feels like a very personal nitpick to me. Most players have seen games from the snes era work that game (the FFs and their ilk) and no one gives much of a Frick.

We're dealing with an already "wrong" view, as drop down/frontal is already not realistic to start with in the way games use it. Can you think it's wrong? Sure of course you can. But I don't think players on the whole are going to care, and personally it doesn't bother me.

As for the antomy thing. If an artist chose in his style to disregard anatomy (knowing anatomy still I guess, I'm not the artist here) and make suepr deformed characters, for example (as many do) as a STYLISITC CHOICE, that's fine. You can like or dislike it all you want, but it's stilla  choice.

Also you're comparing art with game making: sure if I was to be the tile maker I may care, but I'm not. I handle a lot of aspects and I'm a master of none. I refuse to be held back by this stuff. Just flat out refuse. I don't make games with that intent in mind, and if we start getting anal we won't get freaking anywhere.

And honestly I cant talk much about the anatomy thing because I'm not an artist and I can't say what it equals to, but I can flat out say the problem you guys have with the stairs is a personal thing. Perfectly fine, but certainly not an universal issue all devs (much less players) are going to have.

Want to work towards making it perfect your way? Be my guest, really. It's just not an opinion or drive I'm going to share, and I have to admit calling everyone who refuses to adhere to your stylistical choices "lazy and inexperienced" rubbed me entirely the wrong way. :/ It's liek sayign all people who don't use pixels and use painted styles, or viceversa, are just doing it PLAIN WRONG. (and that's silly)

I jsut want to strews that BY ALL EMANS you can hate that aspect. It can be a dealbreaker for you, and you can make it known. I agree with that, as I made my opinions on pretty innocent features before such as game saves or whatever.

But saying that a stylisitical and commonly used mapping aspect is objectively wrong is just...no. We're making games, not photorrealist art or whatever. The fact that so many people are ready to defend the "other" choice should tell you that it's not as big a deal as you make it. If we started scannign msot rpgs for mappign execution aspects thata re not real we would NEVER FINISH.

Heck if we start getting that rigid we may as well start hating on Mario because eating msuhrrooms to get big,jumping like you're on the moon, bashing bricks with your head and killing bad guys by jumping on them, is silly and not realistic. I find that you can THINK that, yes, but you can't really discard it as an objective thing that is WRONG, as it's proved so much people enjoy it.

 

[Deckiller]

Meh, all I know is that there are hundreds of professional and indie 2D games that have fairly basic stairs on their maps. I don't really think it's an issue.

With that said, I feel that poor pacing is the major mistake most RPG Maker games make. There needs to be a good gameplay/story balance, unless the game is specifically geared towards being gameplay or story-centric. There shouldn't be, say, an hour of cutscenes following an hour of gameplay. Sure, Xenosaga kind of made  this sort of thing work but it was story-driven (and even then, a lot of people hated that game because of its pacing).

Plus, the pacing should feel organic: if there's a huge block of cutscenes that are required for story purposes, why not add a few playable segments and battles in there to smooth it out?

 

[Zoltor]

If you're playing a RPG. you better have some time, a RPG Isn't like a quickie lol, and in anycase you don't have to  save if something comes, just leave the game as is, and return to it after you finish whatever.

Saving in mainly just there, because RPGs are too long to beat in a couple hours or so.

If you die without saving, I guess that will teach you to be more careful next time, wont it.

You know, I know the problem here, people around here have no faith in a game made through RPG Maker to be good(and I thought the people outside the RPG Maker community was bad, people here are far worse. They are so afraid that people wont play/like their games, they're making their games have even more handholding then a FF game).

I need to finish  Aleasia's Facilities, get a few normal towns, and dungeons done, so I can release a demo, to remind people what playing a good game feels like(because everyone here has clearly forgot, quality beats out brain dead accessibilty anyday).

To Deckiller: So true. I think many people are trying to follow in the steps of the commercial companies, however they are pretty ignorant to not have realized that, that's a major mistake commercial companies make in general these days as well, so people shouldn't being doing things, just because a bad company like Square does it).

 

[Kes]

@Zoltor

See my reply on saving here http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/23769-keeping-people-from-abusing-a-ingame-utility/?p=227426

btw, I think you will find that a lot of people already know what playing a good game feels like.

 

[Zoltor]

@Zoltor

See my reply on saving here http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/23769-keeping-people-from-abusing-a-ingame-utility/?p=227426

btw, I think you will find that a lot of people already know what playing a good game feels like.

If they're against not being able to save everywhere, I highly doubt it. They're use to games being so easy, they play themselves, they forgot even the basics of a RPG(you know, towns have "item" shops for a reason, It's meant to prepare one for their journey, traveling is a pretty major aspec, and knowing your parties limits, as well as returning to town when you reach such limits, is all part of a RPG.

"If you can save anywhere, there's no danger, if there's no danger, the journey has no meaning"

I like that, I'm gonna make that my sig

 

[Indrah]

You are assuming I would be able to play for two hours straight.

1-I have a life, as strange as it may seem.

2-Stuff can appear unexpectedly and I must leave the computer sometimes. (Strange I know).

3-F*ck this conception people ahve of "the player shoul adapt yo the game". I know a lot of agmes do this very well, but you are not referrign to them, you serve it as a rule.

You know I could go on and on about this, but stuff it I've ranted enough in the above posts.

Short version: You can make both save anywhere and save in select spots works as long as the game is suited to it, and save anywhere is msot certainly not a negative feature by itself.

I don't really care what you have to say about it, because it's your opiion, which is fine, and not a fact, as you assume it to be.

And boy Zoltor maybe get over yourself a bit because you're comign off as an enormous assbutt. (and thats somethign coming from me, I should know)

 

[Sharm]

Sorry everyone, huge reply.

No offense but I'm not an artist and I would not bother remaking all my resources.

You use that many stairs in your maps?

That's not what I'm tryign to accomplish in my games, to make them perfeclty realsitic. Frankly, I've seen pixel games in many diverse and definitely not "correct" styles have so much more enjoyment for me than the msot realistic of games, pixel or 3d or whatever. It's not something I care about as a player.

I don't think this is a matter of realism vs. style. I think it's a matter of informed choices vs uninformed ones. I'm sure as someone who's been doing art my whole life the differences between those arguments are more distinct in my mind but that doesn't make them any less real.

Again, I don't feel players give much of a Frick.

Maybe we can get some non-artists/mappers to comment then? I can't debate something that is purely your opinion. I happen to think it bothers other people who aren't tile artists.

maybe if an architect (i guess) were to look at them hed get offended? But  honeslty it feels like a very personal nitpick to me.

I'm not offended. I'm responding to Ksi's argument that it was wrong to have longer stairs and have been responding ever since.

Most players have seen games from the snes era work that game (the FFs and their ilk) and no one gives much of a Frick.

I have never seen stairs done the "against the wall" way on a non-rm game. This is the reason I think my hate of this style stairs belongs in this thread.

We're dealing with an already "wrong" view, as drop down/frontal is already not realistic to start with in the way games use it. Can you think it's wrong? Sure of course you can. But I don't think players on the whole are going to care, and personally it doesn't bother me.

I think this is the basis for our disagreement. A 3/4ths orthographic view is a mathematically specific thing and isn't really wrong. It's just not physically possible for a person in real life to see in. I do not think that this is a stylistic choice. It's pretty common in creative things for style to be used to defend things that are not actually a style choice, but a problem. I think this is the case here.

As for the antomy thing. If an artist chose in his style to disregard anatomy (knowing anatomy still I guess, I'm not the artist here) and make suepr deformed characters, for example (as many do) as a STYLISITC CHOICE, that's fine. You can like or dislike it all you want, but it's stilla  choice.

Super deformed characters still follow anatomy rules, they only alter or break a few of them. This sort of thing is true for any creative endeavour, yeah you can make something work that doesn't follow the rules but to pull it off properly you have to know the rules before you break them and you can never get away with breaking all of them at the same time.

Also you're comparing art with game making: sure if I was to be the tile maker I may care, but I'm not. I handle a lot of aspects and I'm a master of none. I refuse to be held back by this stuff. Just flat out refuse. I don't make games with that intent in mind, and if we start getting anal we won't get freaking anywhere.

I was comparing mapping to another art form because I see mapping as an art. Knowing the rules of an art form isn't limiting, it's liberating. You don't have to reinvent the wheel and can just create!

It's liek sayign all people who don't use pixels and use painted styles, or viceversa, are just doing it PLAIN WRONG. (and that's silly)

I think it's more like using gradients and still calling it pixel art just because it has hard pixel edges, but now I'm arguing semantics.


Okay, I'm going to try and explain this a different way. Indrah, this isn't pointed at you, I'm just trying to get across what I see when I see the "wall stairs" and why it bothers me so much for anyone who is still confused.


RPG Maker's RTP is made in 3/4ths perspective. That means if there is a cube 4 tiles high it will show a 3 tile deep top.

For ease of math let's say you have a wall that's 4 tiles high. On the left you have stairs. In order for there to be an incline of any sort it has to take up some space on the ground. Since I want the steps to be as deep as they are tall I've made the steps take up 4 tiles of floor space.


If you were to take all the verticle peices of these steps and stack them up they would be the exact same height as the wall. This is basic geometry.


Now, if you put that into 3/4ths perspective the steps stick out from the wall by 3 tiles. This is because the bottom length of the steps got squished by the perspective change, making it take up 1/4th less space.


Remember how I mentioned that the vertical bits of the steps add up to the same height as the wall? This doesn't change just because I moved the camera to 3/4ths. At this perspective I still see all 4 tiles of the wall. This means that just the sides of the stairs still take up 4 tiles worth of height. By using that same logic, the amount of space taken up by the depth of the stairs is the same as how far the entire stairs take up. 3 tiles. Add that together and for a wall 4 tiles high you need 7 tiles of stairs. Because of the rules of math, this 7 tiles for 4 tiles high does not change no matter how many steps you actually have as long as rise over run is the same.

Using the way the RTP is built as a baseline I've made 3 images. On the left is how I think stairs should be mapped. In the middle is how big those stairs should actually be because of perspective and math. I've made every step 4 pixels high and 3 pixels deep and if you were to put all the dark peices back together they'd be exactly the same height as the wall, 96 pixels. On the right is the method I don't agree with where the steps are the same height as the wall. See how different it looks from the mathmatically correct one? Do you see why it bugs me so much? The "wall stairs" aren't bending the rules of the perspective, it's flat out ignoring them and doing whatever you want. It doesn't just look wrong to me it breaks immersion entirely. I personally think this whole thing should be avoided by not having stairs to go up tall walls. The stairs on the right side look wrong because that's a ridiculously huge set of stairs!


If you are going to map something that is technically incorrect because you like how it looks that is your choice. You are purposefully altering the rules of perspective for the sake of style. I don't agree, I think it breaks rules instead of bending them, but it's not my game so whatever. The thing I won't stand for is someone trying to tell me that stairs the same height as the wall is technically correct, it is factually untrue.

 

[Milennin]

If they're against not being able to save everywhere, I highly doubt it. They're use to games being so easy, they play themselves, they forgot even the basics of a RPG(you know, towns have "item" shops for a reason, It's meant to prepare one for their journey, traveling is a pretty major aspec, and knowing your parties limits, as well as returning to town when you reach such limits, is all part of a RPG.

"If you can save anywhere, there's no danger, if there's no danger, the journey has no meaning"

I like that, I'm gonna make that my sig

If the lack of a save-anywhere is the only reason your game is more difficult than a game with a save-anywhere then there's something wrong with your game design.

A tough boss encounter is a tough boss encounter, regardless of whether the player was able to save right before its face or if the save point was a 30 minute walk away from it. The only difference is that the game that lets the player save in front of the boss respects the player's time, whereas the game that forces the player to replay the last 30 minutes of its dungeon is just wasting a player's time (not making it actually more difficult).

Wasting time =/= Difficulty

 

[Indrah]

@Sharm: To me, visually, the same heigh stair on the right looks better than the other two options. And that's pretty much it :I

-I didnt mean only stairs to remake. I meant that most of the rtp is conflictive with each other, many pieces face in different angles and everyone can agree that it can be a clusterfu*k (autocensor you are one annoying butt). If I got that entrangled in stairs I'd have to fix everything else, and as I stated already, I do not have enough of a problem with it to bother doing it.

-Didn't take log to find an old FF screenshot with wall=strairs. http://www.finalfantasykingdom.net/4gba/caveoftrailsmap1.gif and more of em here http://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff4/ff4maps.htm

Um....really that's all. I have no problem whatsoever with you defending your choice. At all. Nada. I dont particualty claim my style to be realistic or right, I conider it the style I prefer, and that's about it. My issue lies excusively with trying to be dogmatic about it or insulting those that take the other option, which you didn't (as far as I remrmeber this has gone on for a logn time now and I'm slipping already), so that's all I have to say, I think.

 

[Dalph]

This is another thing that bothers me quite a bit:
 

Spoiler

The custom font selection.

Many developers go for pretty over functional and readable (I'm sure Indrah will agree with me on this one) and this as I said bothers me quite a bit, because most of the custom font selections in RM games are a bit...painful for my eyes.

Sometimes I also have a bit of troubles while reading the text messages, and that's annoying as hell.

I personally have a bit of troubles in finding the right custom font too, but I always avoid cursive\italic\bolded or too extravagant fonts, and just go with regular and readable.

 

[Zoltor]

You are assuming I would be able to play for two hours straight.

1-I have a life, as strange as it may seem.

2-Stuff can appear unexpectedly and I must leave the computer sometimes. (Strange I know).

3-F*ck this conception people ahve of "the player shoul adapt yo the game". I know a lot of agmes do this very well, but you are not referrign to them, you serve it as a rule.

You know I could go on and on about this, but stuff it I've ranted enough in the above posts.

Short version: You can make both save anywhere and save in select spots works as long as the game is suited to it, and save anywhere is msot certainly not a negative feature by itself.

I don't really care what you have to say about it, because it's your opiion, which is fine, and not a fact, as you assume it to be.

And boy Zoltor maybe get over yourself a bit because you're comign off as an enormous assbutt. (and thats somethign coming from me, I should know)

Who says you need to play 2h before getting to a save point(that certainly wont be the average thing anyway). People are assuming the worst scenario(either that or they never played a non-RM RPG in their life)

Leave the game on, the same thing people have been doing with console games for over 30 years now. It's not god damn rocket science.

 If that's how babies who love their hand being held,see me as, I take it as a compliment, because frankly I don't care what such people say anyway. I'm into quality game design(and It's geared towards people who get this, actually like playing RPGs), not accessibilty crap

To Milen: Every minute people become even more ignorant. Look not allowing save anywhere alone, just makes it not a baby's 1st RPG, there will be ofcourse more things to make the game actually difficult.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

This thread leaves me positively petrified about touching stairs in games now. Brb switching everything to ladders :s ((and proves to me why I failed the perspective unit in art school. Honestly... Perspective boggles my brain))

 

[Sharm]

Didn't take log to find an old FF screenshot with wall=strairs. http://www.finalfantasykingdom.net/4gba/caveoftrailsmap1.gif and more of em here http://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff4/ff4maps.htm

Wow, what a mess. There are both types of stair mapping even in the same map! I stand corrected.

My issue lies excusively with trying to be dogmatic about it or insulting those that take the other option, which you didn't (as far as I remrmeber this has gone on for a logn time now and I'm slipping already), so that's all I have to say, I think.

I did say it was wrong to do it that way, and didn't clarify that I meant technically. So, yeah, it could have been seen as personally insulting and I apologize.