Things to watch out for when starting?, For beginners, what should we be careful of? Options

[Siggi Trust]

Hi.
I was just wondering, as a beginner making a first game, can somebody tell me and us, things to watch out for. I thought about this after reading that there is a limit to how many maps you can make, supposedly it's 999 maps. I've made a little intro chapter in my game that takes about 15-20 minutes to play and already have like 19 maps or something. I had made each house in my village a different map and each area of my dungeon a different map so I began wondering, should I rather just make one huge map for a village for example and include in that the village itself and all houses and then just transfer the player between coordinates on that one map? I don't know if this would be necessary since 999 maps is probably a lot.

Well anyway. If anyone has something to point out for beginners that could become troublesome later for them, please post anything. There were other things I was wondering about, can't remember what they are though. One question though I meant to ask: Is there no way to profit when you use RPG Maker? Say if you make all your graphics and such?

[Essenceblade]

Well what I've done in terms of mapping for interiors, if I've the entire set of insides of houses on 1 map, if you are paranoid about the map limit.



As a rough example.

Also, yes, you can profit from RPG Maker as long as you don't use a single part of their resources, and your own custom scripts ect. Everything has to be by your hand, or by the hand of your development team or something.

I remember reading a document somewhere where Enterbrain said it is ok to use for commercial use, as long as you don't use the RTP or steal resources via plagiarism.

A few tips and tricks are to play other peoples' already made games and get inspiration from them. It is often you may feel intimidated and / or a lack of courage, but playing other peoples games and seeing how they unfold can really help. Becoming an adept in RPG Maker doesn't come over time, it is something you learn yourself, and you decide when to learn it.

Mapping - mapping seems to be more advanced than usual nowadays, as people are diverting to a new type of mapping called "Parallax Mapping". There is a thread which goes over it and how it is started. You should refrain from it until you have in-depth confidence you can sway your way around Photoshop / RPG Makers' Mechanics.

As for overall experience, as I said earlier, just play games other people have made. Don't try and "perfect" your game because nothing good will come of it. It will more than likely turn into a mess rather than a piece of work. Simply find your style of game design, and elaborate.

Some people like storyline based games, while others like game-play based. As a result you'd find some differences in terms of game play, so be sure to check over many genres too. The only other advice I can give you is that you cannot do everything in RPG maker, so don't beat yourself up if you can't make title screen music, but you can sprite very well.

Everyone has a strength and weakness in terms of game design. Some like writing, some like drawing, some like music composition and some like mapping. There are many approaches and different paths you can take to map out your learning curve for rpg maker. You'll know when you find your RPG Maker style because it'll start to show in your work and games.

[Siggi Trust]

yeah, that example was just what I imagined . I plan on making some dungeons up to 8 floors and transfer events up a floor then another back down to the previous floor but to a different area to get a chest for example, so I was convinced I'd get paranoid with the limit.

When you say you can profit from a game made with RPG Maker as long as you don't use their resources, does that mean that you'd need to script absolutely everything yourself? What about default scripts that control the basics? I was thinking this since I believe I'm capable of making graphics but I have less knowledge on scripting. I have tried some scripts by others and have edited them successfully, but I'd never be able to write whole scripts on my own. This, I reckon means that you'd also need to change the window skins, sprites for all actors and NPCs, animations, icons etc?

Oh yeah, I was also wondering about the limit of switches. Are 100 switches not a pretty small number? I was trying an achievement system in my game and I need a switch for every achievement. In this demo intro of mine, I'm already using about 10 switches, this includes switches for the Steal skill and such but hey, I think 10 are a lot for 15-20 minutes into the game.

This post has been edited by Siggi Trust: Jan 31 2012, 02:21 PM

[Essenceblade]

You can always press the "array size" button under the switches menu which increases the maximum size value to a max of 5000. 100 Switches is barely enough to get you through 6% of the game.

And as in custom graphics ect, everything must be legalized to be used for commercial use, so you don't have to make EVERYTHING by hand, but just make sure it is legalized for commercial use, and you give proper credit prior to using them.

Some authors of resources just plain don't allow commercial distribution of their works, so you have to look out for that too.

[munkis]

yeah, that example was just what I imagined . I plan on making some dungeons up to 8 floors and transfer events up a floor then another back down to the previous floor but to a different area to get a chest for example, so I was convinced I'd get paranoid with the limit.

When you say you can profit from a game made with RPG Maker as long as you don't use their resources, does that mean that you'd need to script absolutely everything yourself? What about default scripts that control the basics? I was thinking this since I believe I'm capable of making graphics but I have less knowledge on scripting. I have tried some scripts by others and have edited them successfully, but I'd never be able to write whole scripts on my own. This, I reckon means that you'd also need to change the window skins, sprites for all actors and NPCs, animations, icons etc?

Oh yeah, I was also wondering about the limit of switches. Are 100 switches not a pretty small number? I was trying an achievement system in my game and I need a switch for every achievement. In this demo intro of mine, I'm already using about 10 switches, this includes switches for the Steal skill and such but hey, I think 10 are a lot for 15-20 minutes into the game.

Actually the limit for switches (and variables) is 5000 I think, although there is a script out there that breaks this. As for the default scripts, you'd probably be okay but don't quote me on that.

Don't kid yourself about scripting; I learned everything I know about scripting from editing other people's scripts (and asking for help when I needed it).

One important thing to remember is start small; no one expects a 100 hour epic right off the bat. I made that mistake with a few of my projects and they never went anywhere.

[Siggi Trust]

Oh yeah there is such a button. Just read somewhere about a 100 switch limit and totally forgot it was there.

This should then apply to user scripts as well as long as they give the go. Is there maybe a list of things online that have to be changed to make the game "original"? A list of things that need to be deleted and edited to make sure nothing's there that you can't profit from? Not that I'm aiming to create a game to profit from, just wanted to be sure. My current, first project is evolving to a mock of Icelandic society, so I'd probably never would profit from it outside Iceland......who gives a s*it about Iceland anyways?

[Siggi Trust]

Munkis:
Yeah, I've had great fun editing scripts and learnt a lot on short time. I just love when you spot what's wrong and say out loud "Ahhh of course idiot" and still it does not work until hours later when you get that feeling. Nice motivation, thanks. And thanks to you Essenceblade as well.