DevLog 6: Round-Up

As mentioned previously, I took a large amount of inspiration for my game from the Etrian Odyssey series, one of my favorite game aeries of all time. The biggest thing I took is something I like to call “Adventure Events.” These are just random, almost TTRPG style events that occur in the field, either by stepping on a certain spot or clicking on a glittering tile. These can be anything from coming across a wolf stuck in a trap to escaping a rockfall to gazing into the abyss. Most events will give you either items or experience, so they’re always worth doing when you see them, and really help the world feel alive.

As much fun as I had working on this project, it came with its fair share of challenges. First and foremost, by limiting myself to just the assets included in the base RPG Maker, I saved a lot of money, but I was also very limited in the designs of the areas I could make. I’ve mentioned it before, but there were several locations I either had to change or make do with a lesser version because of this.

Then there are the limits of RPG Maker itself. Without doing some serious self-coding, there are definite limits on the types and variety of skills I could make, but there are also less obvious problems: for example, when creating a skill that hits multiple enemies randomly, it determines where every hit is going first, then always follows that. Everything goes to one enemy, but it dies in the first hit? Too bad, the rest are wasted. Not to mention, the limit of random targets was a measly 4.

But the worst offender by far is that if a battle ends, everything immediately ends. It does not matter if the skill that you used to kill the enemy has additional effects, none of those will trigger. Which was a particular issue in regard to one of the secret endings; Assassinate was originally supposed to be a single-target kill, but had to be changed because of this problem.

Fortunately, most of the problems either weren’t game breaking or had workarounds, and everything turn out decent in the end.

While this project has certainly had its ups and downs, I cannot deny how much fun I had finally getting back into game design. There are a few directions I could go from here.

First, I could keep going with RPG Maker. I’ve already got ideas on how to improve what I did with the first game, and with the Strategy RPG plugin being free, I also have ideas for a Tactics style game in the series as well.

Second, and most likely, I could move on to more professional game design software; getting either Unity or Unreal Engine 5 (or both) in order to get some more practice in with them would probably be a great place to start, and I already have ideas for some simple prototypes I could do to add to my portfolio.

My third option is a bit out of left field, but I have been dabbling increating my own TTRPG from scratch, just like I did with Trading Card Games and Rune Masters. I’ve got a solid foundation for what I think could be a really cool system, so perhaps I start ironing that out.

Whatever I end up doing, I hope you guys are looking forward to it!