UPDATE 3.31.12: This is being worked on still! This area is reserved for what is going on most recently in the game dev. I should probably get one of those forum things, but I wanna get more work done first. The past update history will be kept in the bottom of this post, though.
I decided upon a studio name- Entranse Studios. RELATED PERHAPS? It's not the game's title, but the main city will retain that name. I've come to love it over the years, so that's what I'm stickin' to. I'm also designing this from the ground up kinda in RPG Maker VX Ace. Most recently, it was on XP... and VX was limiting... but I didn't predict Ace coming out, at all. So, yeah.
Nicely enough... parts of the RTP WORK with 2-tile tall sprites. Which is nice! However, I even want to retool those to my needs, and as a result... I'm building completely custom tilesets. I figure resources are made dependant on what's needed in most games, so if I have the power in this platform to make my game my own, I really want to own it with my own art style. It may take longer, but I think it'll pay off.
Currently, I have started a game dev blog of sorts here:
http://entransestudios.tumblr.com

It's where the updates go as well! I'll probably update that more than this topic.

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http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/rpgmestok/gtcharinfo.html

You see that?

Just as quickly, forget it! Genocidal Tale is was my first ever brainstorming for such an RPG Maker game. It was going to have a system in which you could help a group of creatures by providing them berries. That's about the only thing I can see that is somewhat redeemable.

Elves, Humans, OMG Evil badman who wants to destroy the elves. Rest in peace, Genocidal Tale.

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Project Entranse

Progress: Planning Stage(5%)

Preface: Game Setting Information and Features

I. RPG Maker XP Goals in both learning and understanding the software well enough to present my ideas

II. The city of Entranse - Four Quarters of lives

III. Main Conflict - TBA

IV. Characters - Incomplete

1. Amarante(Amarantha) Prideux *playable*

2. Yori Tashiro *playable*




Preface: Game Setting Information
This game is going to be I guess what is considered to be a "traditional" RPG. Though traditional, I desire for it to remain lighthearted and for the player to be able to truly feel the characters. This poses a problem for battle system use; however, I'm sure I can work it in one way or another. Will it be an 18 year old male on a trip for fortune and fame? Nah.

The world in which Entranse exists does not have a singular power or regulated law enforced throughout entire continents. Small communities of people usually fend for themselves, and this self-regulation proves to be most efficient.

Magic does not exist. No evil madman will ever exist in the game who desires world domination. Compared to real life, fashion reflects that of the late 1800s and the early 1900s; however, there is no industrial age and the game is very traditional in the sense that royals still hold power over their respective communities, and that pre-industrial age technology is used.(Sailing without steam, swordplay, Agriculture is still beneficial but waning somewhat).

Features:
* Not really a feature, but should be mentioned- considering this is a first game of mine, the default battle system is being used.
EDIT: Using default battle system with Mink's Animated Battlers with Wulf's modifications.
* Small amount of Mini-Games, one involving treasure hunting. Possibly a pet mini-game, but I need to learn more.
* Enemies appear on-screen before you initiate them in battle, AKA, no random battles aside from world map travel. It is advisable to battle often; however, or else you stunt your own game play.
* Vehicles for faster world map travel

I. RPG Maker XP Goals

RPG Maker XP Technical Goals:
* A better understanding of switches and variables
* How to create a dash button(ex, press z to run)(Solved!)
* How to create cut scenes to my liking
* How to edit text box design(Solved!)
* How to end an event easily and completely... and doesn't repeat.(Solved!)
* How to make maps larger than the default size setting(Solved!), and use camera pans along with narrative text(Solved!)
* How to incorporate a character's portrait while they speak(Solved!)
* How to make a blank preface to the game with a black background, and have text appear that is not in a text box.(Solved!)
* How to incorporate custom fonts for character names/narration text (Solved!)
* How to place small animated emotes above character's heads (ex, a music note, a heart, an angry scribble)(Solved!)
* How to have text auto-run without player input making it go along
* Figuring out if there is a "take over to event" workflow of sorts to emulate console RPGMs
* Figuring out how to edit Animated Battler script for a 2D fight screen(Solved!)
* Working on understanding how edit Custom Menu Script to have Character Portraits.(Solved!)
* Actually making a quick scratch at using a caterpillar script with working cut scene functionality as well by what I'm thinking will involve tweaking add/remove party members.
* Making use of Ccao's UMS with custom character portraits that also include character names. Mastering the shortcut function as well. (Solved!)
* Create a sanctuary(a la Illusion of Gaia) using conditional lines and choices to add and remove party members. This eliminates some of the problem with the caterpillar script when changing members.(Solved!)
* Understanding the use of a day/night system with parallel events, variables, and switches
* Mastering the particle script, and using it in conjunction with night-lighting
* Re-making dash button from older project

Creative Aspects:
* Custom hero sprites(using a REALLY, really useful RPGMXP Japanese custom generator)
* Custom animated party battlers(of my own doing, may take a while)
* Character portraits for speech and custom menu system
* Concept Art
* Learn how to complete pixel art more decently

II. The City of Entranse - Four Quarters of Lives

Entranse is an expansive city.

Entranse is highly regarded in this world, which does not possess a vast amount of continents. People tend to be clustered heavily in these lands, and small settlements are a rarity but do indeed exist. People employ their skills in order to help others, and in this world, there exists hardly any world-scale conflict. Communities are self-regulated for the most part, and there is no iron fist ruling entire continents.

Entranse contains 4 districts, or quarters.

La Roche is considered the slums section of this city- peasants who serve mainly Le Feu families reside there as well as the local thieves. Clouds of shattered lives roam the street, and the darkness is intense.

Le Feu contains numerous vassals and nobles who struggle to attain traditional status within a subsection resilient to change. Lush rouge leaves daunt most of the area year round in an odd fashion, and ardent shades of warm colors cover the expanse of Le Feu.

The L'eau Quarter proudly hosts the most extravagant sights in the city including majestic fountains, a lush garden, and the large villa that belongs to the royals. In appearance, it is similar to Le Feu with beautiful and majestic reds, golds, and oranges daunt the area.

La Rafale holds the ever-busy working class of Entranse. Servants, attendants, gardeners, entertainers, and other serviceable job holders reside in this quarter. These people serve the royals of L'eau as well as Le Feu families. Located on the outer rim of Entranse, rich green meadows can be seen in the distance along with local farms and windmills.

IV. Characters*NEW*
****KEY:
Protagonist: Main character of the story

Female Heroine: You know, that main lady of the main character.

Lead Character: Party member, aka, the other people that travel with the protagonist and female heroine.

Key Character: Essential NPC character

1. Amarante(Amarantha) Prideux

* Protagonist
* 16 years old
* 5'4'' 130 lbs Average Build
* Blonde-Red Hair that was once flowing past her midsection as a child, but is now much shorter, and almost always in a ponytail for work. Her amber eyes are perhaps her most apparent trait, a recessive gene that came from her mother's side.
* Stoic demeanor usually, but is usually not very good at hiding her emotions. She can be easily excited, embarrassed, or upset at times.
* Works as Princess Faustine's attendant at the L'eau royal villa
* Currently engaged to a wealthy man of Le Feu, Yori Tashiro
Parents are Adele and Edward, Adele's family name is used.
* She is able to use dual hand axes from training with Ashura Kojiro, a retired Le Feu general and friend of Edward, her father. The lessons are a secret between the two, and she only takes them for a hobby.

2. Yori Tashiro

* Lead Character
* 18 years old
* 5'10'' 155 lbs Slender and Athletic Build
* Black hair frames his delicate yet refined features, and he has intense gray eyes.
* Highly detached from the world at times
* Loves flowers- especially Hydrangea, the Tea Rose, and the Freesia
* Yori is like a Hydrangea flower
* Plays piano, and is highly skilled
* Entranse Army General
* Parents are Kintaro and Yuki- Kintaro once held Yori's rank in the army, and Yuki is a typical wife in appearance. Kintaro also resides on the all-male board of Le Feu nobles.
* Desires Amarantha to become his wife, whether his intentions are pure or not is not clear.

PROGRESS:
1/21/12: Modifying a tent for use in my game. I'm basing it mainly on the tent from the actual game since I still plan to use most of the default tile-sets in addition to hopefully this custom-one. The one custom one I'm making is mainly for a sun-oriented tribe that should be pretty awesome. You can see the roughs of the tent main-body(still black outlines, etc), and one of the completed posts that will be duplicated over the old ones. The wooden post in the top left is finished and ready for copying.



1/20/12:
ºFigured out a couple more things. Mainly, how to change the default font of RPG Maker XP, and also how to insert faces in a highly simplistic fashion to the menus and also battle system.

ºBought RPG Maker XP! No reason not to now, it's $30 on the official site. Probably am going to buy RPG Maker VX ºAce eventually as well. I think RPG Maker XP is a great place to start since VX vanilla is a bit dumbed down and limited in a couple of ways. XP allows for great freedom out of the box.

ºCreated a file in which I used Mink's Animated Battler script and actually got it to work! It has cool settings where you set weapon IDs in the script(the number of the weapon equipped from the database) to control whether or not the character is stationary or runs and attacks. I love it!

ºBought a digital book on Ruby(programming language RPGMXP scripts system uses). Working on reading through it, even if it just means I understand editing scripts a bit better.

ºUpdated this topic for the first time in years. A lot has changed, but perhaps isn't bump worthy yet!

***Project being moved to RPG Maker VX Ace for the time being. Status WEE PLANNING

Honestly I just get the basic idea whether it's going to be a rich, poor or whatever area and then start messing around. For example in my game Holy-Chaos: Prophecies Unleashed I had to create one town that looked far advanced then any other. I just looked for the most "Modern" pieces and started laying them down. The thing is I have RPGM3 so I have a lot more limitations.

I guess for you I'd say what you have is a great start! Next I would think of how you want to present it on the world map.

I think that's an interesting way to go about things.

I'll be working on main conflict ideas, 2 more party members, and more cities tonight. The continent(s) as well.

I've also downloaded the RPG Maker XP trial. I'm having my fair shair of trouble so far, but I've never been good at these sorts of things. I couldn't get one event to just... end and stop looping. I know the command for that in the original RPG Maker, but not here. I seriously need to look into finding a good resource on the software.XD

I've worked out how to make a character have a portrait when they talk.
I also have to make custom text boxes it would seem... the defaults aren't pretty enough for me.

Good luck Fay.

The way I usually go about designing areas is to take a pencil and paper and ust doodle whatever land form comes to mind... works for me.

Thank you.

Still having some troubles with XP, but it's only my first day on the job and I've learned a lot.

Good luck!

For the text box thing... the skin is easy to change, you just import a window skin graphic into your project and change the settings. If you want more advanced edit-ness, it gets more complicated. =x Read below if that's what you want!

[spoiler]You could do it manually by script, but that'd be hard as hell.
There are two custom scripts that I can think of already done and that work very well.

You have ccoa's Universal Message System, whose nicest feature is that you can make the box fit the text, put in a 'talk balloon' thingie and place it over the speaking event. So you have a comic-style message system.

You have also the Advanced Message System by I-forgot-who, which I don't think has the comic talk thing, but also works very nicely.

Both systems have a feature to add a character face image beside the text, and both make the text appear one-letter-at-a-time, like many RPGs out there. XP's standard makes the text come out all at once.
You can find the AMS anywhere on the web, but the UMS is harder to find. If you want it, PM me, I have the script. ^^[/spoiler]

I advise to stay away from many custom scripts while learning the basics... they really don't help much and serve only as nice additional features.

Good luck with your project! ^^
I look forward to seeing more people working on XP.

May I ask how you did your dash button thing?

Oh! The UMS system sounds wonderful!

I was just using a basic method of making a picture appear when you talked to someone and then erasing it. But that would be interesting to play with.

I don't know how exactly the Ruby scripts work, however. Is there one place in the overall program where you put it, or do you do it every time someone talks?

At any rate, I love to share what I've learned from other sources!

http://www.rpgrevolution.com/tutorial/28/

It's a really easy thing, thankfully.XD
You just need one blank event each map in the game for dashing, so hypothetically you could decide when you want your player to be able to dash. Maybe if you're in a church or something, dashing could be turned off.

With the great majority of scripts:
Open the Script tab, right-click on 'Main' (the last one), slect Insert. You'll create a blank page above Main. Then just paste your custom script there. It all works by magic, because of the order the engine reads the script and so on. But if you're using multiple custom scripts, you have to beware of the order you place them above the Main, because it makes a difference.

With the UMS:
You do that above, and place the UMS above the Main. Then you have to customize it for every person that talks.
For instance, a regular speech could look like this:

"Hello, my name is NPC-1."

But an UMS text would look like:

"\ignr \e[1] \nm[NPC-1] \face[001]
Hello, my name is NPC-1."

This would display the message above event #1, with a name box of "NPC-1", and a face graphic called "001" of the game database.

It works both ways. You have to install the script, and then every message needs a little bit of customizing. The regular engine can't read the \ignr, \nm or \e tags, but the UMS script can.

Hope I made some sense =)


Actually, you don't need one blank event each map, you just need one common event. Common events are active all the time. You find them in the Database.
The reason I asked about the Dash is because I know of this Dash method you posted, but I'm afraid it might lag the game in some computers – I mean, having the game check every microsecond if the A or whatever button is being pressed can't be good, can it?


Anyway, sorry for the long post. I'm just excited another XP user came along. =P

Thanks for the information on common events!

This software really spoils me from what I'd have to do on RPGM.

A question though, after my events go through once, they keep repeating. In RPGM, there was something like an "end event" kind of thing. Do they have something like this in XP?

There is an Erase Event command, that erases an event from the map, but makes it come back when the player re-enters the map. Works best for non-random enemies.

The way I find best to keep an event from repeating is activating a Self Switch. There's a 'Control Self Switch' command. A Self Switch is a switch that only works for that particular event.

When you want an event, for example a cutscene, to not repeat again at all after it's completed, you can put this in the end:
Self Switch 'A': ON

Then make a new page, put Self Switch 'A': ON as a condition, and leave it blank.
That way, when the Self Switch A is on, the event will change to the blank page, which is blank and will do basically nothing.

^^

Ah, I see! Thank you!

Self switches are a freaking god send.XD

Oh, yes. Yes they are. =]

Sounds good so far! Looking forward to know more about it.

Ah, another character update after a week of me being useless. Bwahahaha...ha.

I have a pretty good idea of the one of the main conflicts of the story, however, I still have to introduce the other two playable characters before I can really explain what the hell I'm pondering about.

In technical attributes, I have found a lovely "caterpillar" script in which your party members visibly follow you(ala Lufia II, or Dragon Warrior). The caterpillar script and the Universal Message System scripts will be the only two external scripts used in this project. I'm pretty sure on this.

I hope you enjoy reading about Yori. Though he doesn't seem like much, I've really fallen in love with his character... though it probably isn't apparent WHY yet because of me blocking a lot of spoiler-y information with the character descriptions.

Wait, so you have both a Protagonist and a Lead Character? *is confused*

Cities and continents...? Iunno. You definitely have to work with what you've got, so a good starting point would be looking at XP's database and see what's available to you. And you can base your locations on their tilesets.
Or you can try and base your locations on real places, which would also work, since you probably know the places you'll be basing yourself on.

As for the caterpillar, I've never been a huge fan of it (since Breath of Fire II – that game traumatized me in so many aspects)... I hear there might be some bugs with the script when moving the party through events, so you better test it carefully. Maybe there isn't anything, but who knows?

Ah, I'm sorry. I figured this would cause confusion. The protagonist is the main character... lead characters are basically party members. There are other characters just as important as party members, however you can not play as them...

I'm playing around with developing the world, I'm not in a hurry.

Is that so, with the script? I've always been a big fan of being able to see that. If it proves too buggy, it will be scrapped.

This is really cool!