Alright, I need your guy's help. I'll try to keep this short. Slayers' Reign's future as an RPG Maker 1 game is suddenly not looking good, due to memory issues. I already knew that I'd have to keep an eye on memory, but I didn't have any idea how much of a problem I had until I decided to skip straight to the last memory card today. The last card is supposed to have the whole game world open for exploration. So I started off by getting rid of all the Card 1 cutscenes and other stuff that's not on the final card. What's left takes up 32,000 of the allowed 120,000 memory. Without going into detail why, I don't have enough left.

So, I see two options. Make it so the player has to switch scenario cards every time they move between continents, or move Slayers' Reign to RMXP, where I won't have to worry about memory issues. The downsides to each:

• Switching back and forth between cards would mean needing a fourth memory card, which most people far as I know don't have, which means they're not likely going to try going on those subquests on that fourth card, which makes the game's potential audience even smaller than it already is.
  
• Putting my game on RMXP means I'd have to create my own custom graphics (not gonna worry about music), as the style of RMXP's sprites and monsters are way off from how I've been imagining these characters for the past six years. Unless this were a full-time job, which it isn't, it'll take me a long time to make the graphics alone.

Of course, the real kicker is I haven't even started looking at how much system memory I'd need for the whole thing, and system-card switching is an inconvenience (for the player) that I refuse to use.

What do you guys think I should do? I'm open to suggestions, even those I haven't considered.

Um... assuming system data holds out, I wouldn't worry about going overboard with scenario data. Hell, me and SK are working on our 9th card currently.

If you move to XP, you are starting over from scratch... and personally, I like what you've done with RM1. I would think it a bit of a pitty to see some of the resourcefullness gone.

But that's just me. Untimately, you should just do what you think would be best for SR and the players... and I don't think switching scenario cards is that big of a deal, imho.

I don't have much by way of advice. I'm not familiar with RPG Maker 1.
If this was an RPG Maker 3 project, I might suggest shaving off some
material. Go lean on NPCs, cut out a few things you can do without,
shave off an extraneous field map and cram your towns and dungeons
and stuff onto a different map. Economize. Moderation in all things.
Whatever you gotta do to keep it under the data usage limit.

Have a good objective look at the whole thing. Is there an area that we
only visit once during the whole game? Could we do without that area?
Maybe take it out and shuffle things around to compensate. Of course, I
don't know what the biggest data devourers are in RM 1. I'm kinda flying
blind here.

But take a step back and look at your creation objectively. I had to do
that while working on "Raiders Of Lekunder". My massive dungeon
layouts suffered from slowdown, and I was trying to get rid of it. I made
many compromises to my original vision. I took out some extraneous
areas I could live without. I reshaped several areas. I reworked several
floorplans and rearranged entire layouts. I went leaner on events than I
could have in some areas. But that's what you gotta do when you're
working with limitations. And the game was actually better off for it.

I went lean on townspeople NPCs because I knew that all that extraneous
dialogue would devour a good chunk of memory. I actually wanted to do
much more with the game and include a boatload of extras, including uber
secrets, a built-in cheat system, an interactive ending, bonus story
scenes... I took out an entire bonus dungeon that I had created because
there wasn't enough room for it on the map. I toyed with the idea of
adding another map full of bonus features, towns, NPCs, and cool stuff.
But the project was nearing 80% data usage, and I decided that there
wouldn't be enough room left for all that stuff. I saved the ideas for a
sequel (which I've been working on).

Bottom line: I wasn't able to do everything that I really wanted to do with
it, but what I did turned out great.

Another thought: This game is large enough to fit on four memory cards?
Sounds pretty massive. This is exactly why I abandoned the prospect of
making "The Rune Gem War" and did a small game instead. I knew it
would be too massive to handle and would get out of control.

If it's any consolation, Obright finished the skeleton for "Ursus Quest:
Shadow Of The Towers" and ran out of memory! The game doesn't have
any NPCs, and doesn't have much by way of extraneous scenery to see in
the towns.

I don't think you understand. My original intentions were to have SR require the use of three simultaneous memory cards: the system card, the Anime Maker card, and the current scenario card. No problem, plenty of RPGM1 games are like that. Going in a straight line from start to finish, I guesstimated the game would be six scenario cards long. Still no problem, 'cause even if you've only got three cards, once you'd reach the end of the card, you can just completely replace that data on it as you move to the next one.

The problem is that, somewhere past halfway through the game, in order to allow for people to backtrack to certain previous areas, they'd have to make use of a scenario card completely separate from the main storyline cards. Those with only three memory cards would have to go to that card, replacing the story card with the sidequest card, perform a couple sidequests, and replace and switch back to the story card once they're done, only to do that again if they want to search for any new subquests on the subquest card. It's a bit of a hassle if it's only to perform a few subquests, and I'm worried that in turn, those who would normally do subquests in an RPG would be less likely to in this game since it requires a little extra work just to access those subquests.

And unfortunately, I can't simply make the story on each card shorter to allow room for the game's subquests, because the game world (far as I can tell) is too large to fit on a single scenario card even without taking cutscenes into consideration.

@Crythania
Thanks for the advice. The thing you need to know about memory consumption with RPGM1 is that it eats up memory really fast, so a single game file can take up a whole memory card (it's not restricted to 1/3 of the card like with RPGM3), and it has a built-in option for memory-card swapping. In fact, event data is saved in a separate file from maps, characters, items, and such, and has its own memory count. Cutscenes and puzzles take up the most memory, depending on how complex they are, and I have plenty of them. After cleaning some memory-consuming things up, my 2.5-hour demo only had I think 28,000 memory left.

Let's see here... Offhand, I can think of only one or two areas in my game that are unneccessary. Every other place, not counting potential subquest-only areas, is important either to show more story or simply because I can't just have two towns sitting right next to each other (RPGM1's world map is point-and-click like in a strategy RPG). With the possible exception of one particular continent and a couple places that get "shut down", all areas in the game could be reached throughout the whole game.

One thing I do for a few open areas is line the edge of the map with events leading to the world map. I did that because I was worried surrounding the area with a fence instead would take up too much map memory, but maybe I could try that and see if it helps any.

There are a lot of extraneous stuff in my game. A lot of objects you can interact with for useless information such as "there's some magazines in here". I really like when you can interact with stuff like that. It annoys me to no end when I play a game were absolutely nothing does anything.

Townsfolk on average take up only 60 memory each, but obviously they add up. I don't think I have too many of them, though. Aside from a couple big cities later on, my towns don't have much of a crowd, and they don't need to be. Just three to five random folk wandering the streets, at least one person in each building, and I only have a few buildings open.

My game makes use of sample maps (which for the most part are devoid of any detail), and you cannot place scenery on sample maps in RPGM1 without the scenery being events. And that's what I've been doing. Otherwise the maps would be pretty monotonous to explore.

I'm not really sure how much it would help getting rid of some of the exess stuff, though. The amount of memory they take up is a very small portion compared to the data taken up by battles (non-random, and too important to the story to be otherwise) and the repeatable puzzles. I'm trying to think of how much memory I should be using up in order for it to work without using a subquest card, and I'm guessing I should be at 20,000 instead of 32,000 used (even the subquests would have cutscenes of some sort), taking into account one island that it would be possible to not allow re-access to. I don't think I can cut down that much memory. Still, RPGM1 allows me to do this extra stuff thanks to the ability to use multiple cards without some annoying trick, and if nobody really has a problem with having to use a special subquest card any time they felt like deviating from the main quest, I see no reason to get rid of the excess stuff when they clearly make the game world more interesting to explore. (But I'm still gonna worry that people are gonna skip those subquests because of it.)

Hmm... You should be at 20,000, but you're at 32,000. That sounds like a
lot of stuff you'd have to shave off. It would be especially painful to shave
off stuff you've already worked hard on and completed. Hard to say what
I would do in this situation. The stuff I cut out of "Raiders Of Lekunder"
was stuff I hadn't worked on yet. The only thing I had to get rid of that I
had put some effort into was that one dungeon layout. I have a good
memory of the layout, though, and plan to use it in a future project.

The way that I worked on my project was, I did the main quest first from
start to finish, then I added in the townspeople and side quests. Anything
that was absolutely essential to the story or gameplay got created first.
Then I had a good idea of how much memory was left over for amusing
stuff on the side. That's not to say that I didn't think about the side quests
while I was working on the main stuff. I used lots of events as empty
placeholders for stuff that I wanted to be there, and then filled them in
later when I worked on the side stuff.

My second game is much more ambitious than the first was. I'll be
keeping a close eye on my data usage as it progresses. If I start heading
toward Crunchville, I'll do whatever it takes to keep it under the data limit.



The way I linked two contiguous maps in "Tales Of Valasia" was with a
pair of simple invisible events (one for each map). "Travel east to [name
of region]?" Answer yes, and you get warped to an appropriate location
on the other map. The events are on roads at the edges of the maps. I
use dirt roads leading to towns and areas of interest. The regions are well
traveled areas. There should be roads. It also provides the player
with a near constant point of reference. "Okay, there's a road here, so
that's where I should probably go to get where I need to go." I don't need
to line to edge of the map with events. A player who follows the road
can't miss the "travel to other region" event. Granted, the road that leads
to the second map is in a small valley with mountains to either side, so I
wouldn't need very many events if I wanted to line the edge of the map
with them. But even if there weren't mountains blocking off most of the
east side of the map, I would still use a single event on a road. That's all
that's needed to get one from map to the other. The roads are there for a
reason. Follow them when you're not looking for offroad goodies
elsewhere.



That annoys me, too. "Raiders Of Lekunder" is full of extraneous things
like that. I made a "library" in a dungeon that's full of "book on table"
events, and they show the main character reading the book's title and
deciding that it's not something that'll be helpful to the quest. She finds
old mining tools and tool boxes in an abandoned mine, and lots of other
useless stuff.

Well, it sounds like even if you did get rid of a boatload of extraneous
stuff, it likely wouldn't free up enough memory. Like I said, hard to say
what I would do. I'm using a different program with different memory
constraints. If it were me, I would probably have a good look at the
whole thing... everything, every detail... and shave off as much as I can
live without. Shaving off stuff can add up, too.

When I was working on fixing some things in "Raiders Of Lekunder" in
December ... (I think it was in December) ...I took out a large number of
treasure chests from a few of the dungeons. I had decided that I'd gone
overboard with the treasure chests in the game. There were way too
many, and it was kind of ridiculous. Some rooms had rows of treasure
chests lining the walls. I took out a large number of them (writing down
what each chest had in it) and redistributed the gold and items elsewhere.
The game lost one or two percentage points of data usage in the process.
And this was after I'd already released the game in early November. I
rereleased the fixed version in December. It is possible that you may
look at your project later on and find some things that you actually want
to take out.

It's sort of like making a movie. A director will cut out a scene, perhaps
because of editing for running time or because the scene interrupted the
flow of the movie. In most cases I've seen, the deleted scene just kind of
got in the way and interrupted the flow. It may even be a scene that the
director is fond of. But it had to go for the betterment of the movie as a
whole. It's a process of getting the creation up and running and then
figuring out what's working and what's not.

It's not really linking contiguous maps, though. Here's an example of a world map in RPGM1 (pic made by Lantis; hope you don't mind my use of it)
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f205/ ... leylia.png
Each marker on the map represents a separate isolated area. It's point-and-click, so there's no exploration on it.

It's not as simple as placing an event on the edge of a map, either. The area map grids in RPG Maker are set at 65x65, and you cannot edit past the edge of the grid, yet you can walk all the way to the edge if the ground is walkable. I don't fill my maps all the way to the grid's edge, so if I simply placed a few warp events at the map's edge, the player could easily walk around it and into empty space (filling that empty space with scenery would just consume too much memory and make the area unneccessarily wide-open). Same thing with towns, as they're completely and only customizable so they don't come with a barrier around them with a single exit like RPGM3 does. So yeah, only two ways to prevent that is to line the area with warp events or line a fence around it with a couple warp openings.

Ah, I see. From what you're describing, it sounds like a big pain just to
make it so the player can't skirt around an event that's supposed to
transport him to the main map. Ugh.

Sounds like RPG Maker 3's field map design is a big step up from RPG
Maker 1 (don't know about 2). That invisible barrier surrounding the field
map does indeed make it easy to just place a single event that transports
you to another map. And the walls surrounding towns... Yep, golden.

You'll have to pardon me. I'm used to working with RPG Maker 3, which I
understand is the easiest to use of the three. I'm used to taking that
invisible barrier and other things for granted. I didn't realize that the
other makers were harder to use in this respect.

Well, I find RPGM1's maps easier to create. It's not that it's hard doing it, either. Simply making a barrier of trees or a fence doesn't really take a whole lot more memory than leaving it all open, and RPGM1 doesn't have an object limit so the fence could be as big as one needs it to be.

Well, yeah, it's much easier to generate what I'd imagine is a 2D
overhead view map. But if I had to constantly create barriers of trees or
whatever to surround my game areas and block the player in so he can't
go somewhere he's not supposed to go... I dunno, seems like a lot of
extra work just to do what RPG Maker 3 does by default. I like being able
to concentrate on generating lush, gorgeous geography and interactive
scenery with the knowledge that I won't have to put undue effort into the
mechanics of how the player gets from one area to the next. If I had to
create the mechanics that operate entering and leaving a dungeon, for
example, that's a lot of repetitious work to do.

Of course, I'm somewhat of a hypocrite because I designed the mechanics
that operate event based battles, and that's a lot of repetitious, labor
intensive work as opposed to just using the default random encounter
style.

What makes the field maps in RPG Maker 3 so difficult is that vertical
mode editor. That thing is a piece of work! You know, I actually think it's
a great tool now that I've mastered it, but getting there was a journey of
trial and error. Field map work is something that I dread having to do
because it's so difficult. But when I load up the program and "just do it", I
end up working with it for hours upon hours. It's very engrossing,
enjoyable work.

Yes, I realize I'm off topic. Apologies.

One of the reasons why I participated on this thread (the other reason
being to try to be supportive and helpful) was to advocate the idea of
cutting material out of a game. I think that cutting something out can be
as helpful as putting something in. I also think that working with
limitations can sometimes be more beneficial than if you had free run to
do whatever you want. Seriously. My deleted treasure chests are a great
example. It looked good while I was working on it, and I actually
playtested it many times before deciding that I'd gone overboard with it.
It eventually hit me. "There are too many treasure chests. This is kind of
ridiculous." Also, if I had been able to do everything I wanted to do
with "Raiders Of Lekunder", there likely wouldn't have been a sequel. I
think doing a sequel is better because some of the ideas for things I
wasn't able to include in the first game have improved since their initial
conception.

Well, whatever you decide to do, you're putting a lot of thought into
it. And putting a truckload of thought into one's project is always a good
thing.

(Yes, I'll shut up now. Sorry for the long posts.)

Oh no, I agree. One of the reasons I like RPGM1 is because it has limitations. I enjoy working around them, and I think it shows in my work. Plus I have an easier time deciding what to do when I'm given a set of rules to follow. At the same time, I enjoy showing off stuff that one wouldn't think of regarding RPGM1. My last game is a great example, as I doubt anybody really thought that a good scavenger-hunt game could be made on a tool made for blocky RPGs. And that's pretty much my goal with this game, to show that an epic RPG could be made on a tool that could barely outdo a Dragon Quest game, and with subquests to spare.