im thinking of doing the contests. this would be a good chance to put some of my short game ideas to work and produce a game for once. as one contest is about making a game that doesnt exceed 30 hours on the sys counter, im going to rely mainly on the single scen data i can use.

the game itself seams to be shaping in my mind as a sailing pirate game, perhaps mirrored from the big enemy of hadair from crystal shores. i want to cram the maximum amount of fun into this game as is possible since its working on such narrow constraints. i also want this game to showcase my skills so i will forsake the leveling system of rpg maker but i still need to keep the battle portion of the game, just change the way the mechanic is used.

my yet untitled game will feature a sphere grid mechanic for the soul character in the game. this grid i havent overly worked out but in theory it will govern all stat growth, be responsible for key skills, and perhaps have some free choice slots. it will operate on the principle that you will need tokens or some other freely gotten item to operate. as the name implies it will be spherical, like final fantasy 10 and its interconnected stats but not quite so elaborate as space and switches will gravely impact how much i can do. im fully confident i can easily pull off this mechanic as ive done similar for use in mini games.

the party will consist of three basic mechanics rather then party members. the main person will be your controllable character (called captain or some such), this person will be responsible for casting stat (moral) boosting spells (called commands or encouragements) on the other two party members. the second will be called the ship, this will have the bulk of the party hp and will have many hp using spells like ram. the final member will be the crew which will deal much of the direct damage in the form of attacks. every enemy you will meet at sea will be comprised of these 3 elements and you will have to overcome all 3 to defeat the enemy.

since my game has no need of levels and i do want the player to battle, i will instead use 100% or close to that drops to give the player tokens for using the grid and other uses. additionaly the game will again use controled battles which gives the player the power to fight as they like and allows me to make it possible to roll through easy encounters without fighting (an overpowerment level or something). leveling up for the captain will be done by the sphere grid, leveling of the ship will be in the form of ship upgrades (equipment), and for crew it will be in the form of buying man power or certain types of man power that ups the stats, using items or making use of the trade system.

the plot i havent much clue but it will be semi open ended and heavily focused on exploration, a liberal use of mini games to break up an otherwise boring recourse, and something simple to push the game forward. there will be a lot of time put into this game but i will have to use every second of system time to make something which could mean playing with an idea and making multiple saves or remaking new stuff quickly.

my inspiration will be grandoble or whatever its called, a game i played many years ago that was stellar for a game made within a time budget. i also will be drawing on some of the fun i had while playing rones games (tsebaoth, the tale of cloran hastlings).

lets see where these musings take me.

the scenario card is limited to 30 hours as well.

the timer is controlled by the sys data. when i reload the sys data at a lower time it reverts my scen data as well.

I must have forgotten all about that.