Well, I think this could get some peoples studio's posts up by raising intrest in the game.

Try posting some interesting ideas you have in your game. Maybe a few tricks of the trade you may have ran across.

(RM1)
For example. I hated in dialog when person A would talk... and when person B talked, it look like it was all in the same window. So every time someone else talks I put a 0.0 wait between it. This forces the window to close and open back up which makes it look alot better in my oppinion.

I know that's nothing major, but just a little tweak to make things stick out.

What about you guys?

You know how battles in RPGM1 take place on the same exact screen you encounter them in, except with the screen dimmed a bit? Yeah, that's dumb. So I have every encounter warp the player to another map for the battles, like it would for most RPGs. There's the quirk where after the battle the screen blacks out and fades back in before I can warp the player back to the field map, and it takes a bit of memory since you have to warp the player to the relative spot that each monster is encountered (lots of monsters means lots of spots to warp back to), but it's still kinda neat. Certainly aren't very many RPGM1 games that do that. In fact, mine is the only one that does that to my knowledge.

That's interesting... I like that.

And it does seem quite like a memory hog.


Here's another one.

I have 3 sprites which hold about 27 items I will use in the game. (9 frames per character). There is an item you get in the game that looks like half a sphere (it has a jagged edge... not perfectly flat). Eventually you will get the other half. What I am going to do is make a scene with both halfs come together. I used another frame of both halfs together and I will make an event that move to the same point as both parts before changing the graphic to the full sphere. After I do, I will change the events of each half to no graphic... this should be completely seemless to the player. I will then be able to move the whole sphere as one item as it lowers to the party.

I think it will be neat... though I won't know till I do it...

Figure I'd mention something else. I could write a whole book if I looked at the tricks I used for Jester's Hunt. But here's the most important one I used. RPGM1 annoyingly doesn't have variables. But that doesn't mean you can't use items in their place. Say you have to pull a switch ten times before it flips. Well instead of using Switches 8-17 to do it, you can just create an item called "Switch Flip", and add nine of those to the inventory when you get to the switch. Every time the switch is pulled, it subtracts "Switch Flip" from the inventory. The second page of the switch (when the switch is finally flipped) is activated when you no longer have any "Switch Flips", which in this case would be on the tenth pull. You can't keep exact track of how many items you have, but being able to tell if the amount is greater than zero is a lot more useful than how switches are either just on or off. In fact, Jester's Hunt would not have even been possible without this trick. It's easily one of the biggest limit-breakers for RPGM1.

The only disadvantage would be that it these "variable items" would appear in the player's inventory, which would make it look cluttered if you had a bunch of these items sitting around. Jester's Hunt doesn't have the player use the item menu, though, so I was able to use as many as I wanted.

Actually, if you go into the item menu, you can select from a menu called "show"...

If it is "yes" then you can see the item... if "no" then it doesn't appear.

I've heard of this trick before, and I will in fact have to use it. But yeah, it's awesome.

One from NWalterstrof. If you use the object (I can't remember what number it is) of the plain square and set it to color 3, it will be invisible. Placing that event anywhere will result in the ability to walk through anything... This is in game, not test play.

You sure that's how it works? I'm pretty sure that that option hides the description of the item, not the item itself.

I didn't think you can give items a description in RM1...

I'll have to look at that...

It automatically gives them descriptions. Make an item that heals 30 HP, it will be given a description of "Heal: 30" or something like that. Make an item in the category "Other", the description will say "Other".

I'll find out... But it'll be friday before I'm home again.

I do the window closing-and-opening too. But I usually use a 0.2 wait.

Another thing, I hate using levels. In 90% of my games the character's stats are set or raised without levels. This way, game balancing becomes even kinda fun instead of a pain.

And I also do some switch compressing for choices. For example, if I want the player to pick one out of 4 characters... instead of 4 switches, I use 2, and combine them. That way, character 1 would be 001 and 002 off, character 2 would be 001 on and 002 off, etc.

RM3 doesn't really support collectible items in the sense of Spyro, but I've
managed to do small numbers of collectibles. "The Raiders Of Lekunder"
has potion ingredients, which you can find, collect, and bring to an elderly
sorceress in town who will brew different types of potions for you. Since
the game does not support a visible counter that tracks how many of each
item you have, I programmed the sorceress to list how many of each
ingredient you have whenever you speak to her. There's no visible
counter while you're out exploring, but paying a visit to the sorceress
provides a list of everything you've found, and you can turn in ingredients
for potions.

You can also find unique treasures, which was an homage to the classic
Zork text adventures. There are 16 treasures in the game, each worth a
valuable amount of gold. There's a guy living in town who offers to buy
them off you.

I also included a whimsical vending machine with four items you can get
from it. The machine accepts a special coin, of which there are few
(enough to afford everything in the machine). It's a fully functional
vending machine, with options to "insert coin", operate the "coin
return", "make selection", and "exit". Like the sorceress, the machine
tells you how many coins you have and how many you've inserted. One
of the items you get from the machine opens up a bonus area of the game.

RM3 also does not support any type of elemental combat system.
Nevertheless, I developed a system with four elements, each with
strengths and weaknesses. It's not very complicated, but it works. A
tutorial offers complete expository about how it works, so that new
players can (hopefully) get acclimated to it with little difficulty. The tutors
also offer to spar with you so you can try it out with no penalty for losing
or making a mistake.

My next project is gonna do more with "custom made shops" and
collectible items. In addition to the potion ingredients, treasures, and
coins, you'll be able to collect colored gems and trade them at trading
posts. And there will (hopefully) be more vending machines to spice
things up. In addition, you'll be able to collect bounties on monsters at
the Town Hall. I'm not yet sure how much redundant coding this will
require, but hopefully it'll turn out to be a nice addition to the list of cool
things you can do while at town.

Outside of the equipt trick with RM3, that's probably the best I've read about getting around RM3's limitations. I haven't used RM3 myself, so I can't say much... but props none the less.

I used RM1 and pulled off 4 elements. Fire, Ice, Thunder, and Terra. But the catch is that only the first 3 are weak to each other. Terra is what is considered 'None' in magic class. What I tried to do is seeing as fire, water/ice, and lightning are all elements of earth, I tried to make it seem like the element of Terra was a nuteral element that deals more with status spells that attacking spells.

Thanks. Getting the code for those things up and running was a lot of
fun. It was probably easier than it looks. A little ingenuity goes a long
way. They all operate pretty much like "custom made shops". The
character tells you how many collectibles you have, then you can
exchange them for items. Each collectible also has a treasure item that's
associated with it, so you can look at your treasure ineventory and see
that you have at least one of it while out in the field.



I did almost the same thing. Each character belongs to an element: Earth,
Water, Fire, or Wind. Water, Fire, and Wind operate like rock, paper,
scissors. Each with an advantage and weakness. Earth is completely
neutral, evenly matched with all. The Water, Fire, and Wind characters
wield the most powerful direct-damage spells while Earth can use the
weakest ones. Because of the rock/paper/scissors relationship, I didn't
have any Earth spells. Water spells are healing, Fire spells are enhancing
(attack, defense), and Wind spells deal with speed and a couple
miscellaneous things like getting around traps.

The thing with spell class in RPGM1 I adapted to fit my martial arts game being made. Each attack 'spell' (that is, martial arts technique) has a different 'element'.

You had Spirit for magical martial arts things like those crazy Kung Fu (think Hadouken). You had Acrobactical for even crazier stuff (one of my better ideas yet on a game: a monkey who know Monkey-Style Kung Fu!)... and lastly, Grapple for grappling moves. 'None' was called 'Strike', that means, all the rest.

Grapple beats Spirit, Spirit beats Acrobactical, and Acro beats Grapple.

That's nice dude... I like that. A very nice twist on the magic class system.

What a lot of people don't know is that you can make 81 one-sprite items in RPG Maker.

Seeing as the sprite model has 9 frames (up, left, and right walking 1-3; the right is the reverse of left), then by careful positioning, you could cram 81 different sprites into your game.

That's... intelligent...!

An useful. But only for people who can draw in Anime Maker... =/

actually, you can use any image editing program on your computer. Thanks to the RPGC. You can get it here:

http://www.rpgmmag.com/utilities.php

I use the snot of of it.

It's a nifty trick, though you have to have the screen blacked out while you move these events into the proper pose. The more unique graphics you move, the longer it takes to move them all. Still useful, though. I mean, I use it, and you don't have to worry about creating those longer "load times" if the graphics are sitting in the center column.

You don't even have to have a black screen honestly.

Instead of setting an event graphic and moving it to face the proper direction, you can move the event (without the graphic) to face the proper direction, then change event graphic. It will appear on the current frame it stepped after the event was moved.

It's better than a black screen at least... or I would think.