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Topic: More doodles (Read 7595 times)
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Arne
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Yak!
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I was watching a Final Fantasy Legend 2 / Saga 2 video let's play, and randomly also thought about Star Control. Saga 2 is kinda fun because it's such a mish-mash of humans, playable monsters and technology / fantasy.
I suppose this idea doesn't make much sense at all, but I was in the mood...
That's all!
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« Last Edit: November 12, 2011, 11:03:22 pm by Arne »
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Biflspud
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Seems like an ambitious project. Probably doable on RPG Maker VX if you had the patience to draw the sprites. Not sure what game you're getting at, though. Pokemon? Gotta catch 'em all (and sell 'em to the Melnorme!)
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Steve-O
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LOVE the artwork! Thanks for sharing. I always enjoy seeing this sort of fan-art, especially SC-themed. =D
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Arne
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All of my projects are ambitious, even the unambitious ones. Art-wise, I don't know if a still-picture and 2-frame-walk RPG is that demanding, but these things are always more work than one thinks when staring out. I'm just playing around here anyways.
Now some ship doodles, unrelated.
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Arne
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Inconclusive experiments. GB resolution stuff has the advantage of being so small and abstract that you never really notice whether your guys are properly equipped, are drawn in an odd perspective or scale, etc. One solution is to use a vehicle for world map travel, but that doesn't work well in towns where the characters needs to be shown after all. Towns with no people might look dead and stale... unless perhaps a zoomed out solution is used (cute small people and vehicles). But, vehicles sort of distract from the guys-on-foot combat mechanic.
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Anthony
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Star Control Lives!
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If I remember correctly, Nintendo supported different graphics modes such as a grid layout and showing a textures at an angle to give an impression of 3D.
Awesome art as usual. I'm sure someone could slice those images into a rough walking animation of the Syreen.
In addition to the mix of humans, monsters, aliens and tech, even the ships looked unique in both shape and color. Some of the ships do not even look like space ships at first sight. Such as the Slylandro Probe and the Andrysynth Guardian.
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Arne
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I actually made a simple program which loads my image and shows me the animation. I don't like animating in PS much.
I didn't like the SNES Mode 7 much in RPGs. It felt very flat. With isometric gfx you can have some simple overlap. However, doing tall grass and stuff which covers the feet does take some extra work.
Today's doodad. Doing just 2 walk frames is the simplest option. A standing frame requires a bit of extra work, but it can perhaps be snuck in as a mid-step frame.
The world map would be using a different scale than indoors/indungeon.
The greedy Druuge could actually be used to explain (better than most RPGs) why the heroes, who are saving the world, still has to pay for stuff.
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Arne
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I guess there are a few RPGs where you're just one of many adventurers throughout the game. MMOs for example. Diablo perhaps. I'm sure there are other examples too. But, I was more referring to RPGs with chosen ones, or eventually obvious and recognized saviors.
Let's imagine parallel RPG worlds, one where the hero is eventually recognized and given free endgame stuff, versus one where the hero has to grind for everything.
Which world would you like to live in? Let's assume that if the hero dies even once (no magical resurrection), everyone in the world is tortured to death, including all of the merchants.
But yeah, there is the chance that a bad hero is given the Vorpal Sword and falls into a volcano, severely reducing the real hero's chance of defeating the boss. Or that lots of heroes suck the merchants dry and no one even has swords anymore.
On the other hand, in some RPG's you don't have to be a magical chosen one. Any mediocre, randomly generated characters chosen by the player has a chance of saving the world. Examples are Final Fantasy Legend and Dragon Quest 3 (bunny girls!).
The world economy may or may not be wrecked when the merchants in the last town gives the heroes free items, but you're probably looking at a 90% chance of the world being saved with this scenario.
On the other hand, you can wager that the hero will make it without help, and save the world economy too! Who completes a game on his first run without dying though?
But, you also have to consider that... in a game like Dragon Quest 1, the evil monsters will disappear once the last boss is defeated. The swamps turn into flower fields and stuff like that. Every moment the player is forced to grind, people are dying, cities are sacked and and economic damage is done. Higher level monsters give higher XP, so a player with great items could level much faster to match the endgame equipment, and defeat the boss quicker.
The player probably earned a lot of gold in the process too, and could compensate the merchants afterwards and salvage the economy.
That's my take on it. It kind of comes down to what type of game world you're in.
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« Last Edit: November 19, 2011, 04:40:58 pm by Arne »
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Quinarbre
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The price the merchants are asking for does not necessarily come from pure greed. Whether the hero is the world saviour or not, swords are manufactured items, which require iron, coal to power the forge, food to feed the blacksmith, special cristals to enchant them, etc. Maybe the merchant hasn't the money for that upfront and needs the hero to chip in somehow. Paying it in gold instead of assorted resources and making the sword available straight on purchase is just a way of taking the tedious part out of the narrative.
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Arne
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It might be so... but many RPGs have crafting/fetch quest mechanics for producing equipment as well as regular stores with finished goods.
At any rate, it brings up an interesting point. Should enemies drop what they're actually carrying? Very few RPGs work like that, and I can see how such a system might cause problems:
1.) Should the player carry tons of loot around? I was thinking of using a tame hopping/prancing blobby as a mule to solve the backpack problem, regardless.
2.) What shall be done with all of the loot at the end of the day? Sold? Gifted? Converted to raw materials / re-crafted? Used to equip an army?
3.) Enemies probably shouldn't drop over-powered stuff. Stuff can break though... Maybe critical/skilled hits damages equipment less? Something to think about.
I wrote a few lines of code for this project today (character/stats class), but I doubt I'll get further with that. Maybe I should just finish a simple gfx set instead. Or do what I'm actually supposed to be doing.
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JudgeYohance
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Captain in the Black Spathi Squadron
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It might be so... but many RPGs have crafting/fetch quest mechanics for producing equipment as well as regular stores with finished goods.
At any rate, it brings up an interesting point. Should enemies drop what they're actually carrying? Very few RPGs work like that, and I can see how such a system might cause problems:
1.) Should the player carry tons of loot around? I was thinking of using a tame hopping/prancing blobby as a mule to solve the backpack problem, regardless.
2.) What shall be done with all of the loot at the end of the day? Sold? Gifted? Converted to raw materials / re-crafted? Used to equip an army?
3.) Enemies probably shouldn't drop over-powered stuff. Stuff can break though... Maybe critical/skilled hits damages equipment less? Something to think about.
I wrote a few lines of code for this project today (character/stats class), but I doubt I'll get further with that. Maybe I should just finish a simple gfx set instead. Or do what I'm actually supposed to be doing.
If I recall right, the Ultima series worked a lot like this, so did the original Fallout games but that would take some serious coding to make it work right.
The SC universe actually could be revamped into many kinds of games I think. A MMO using the races already present would not be a bad idea. We have the basic character designs as well as the races ship builds so we could create other classes along the same appearance and technology as well as a way to write dialog choices among them as we know how each race likes to act and talk.
I think I would be a part time human trader delivering copies of the Umgah guide to practical jokes in my Chmmr modified fighter while simultaneously working as a merc for the Yehat/Pkunk hunting down Iwrath survivors from the war and killing them ...with love...for money.
Or better yet! A corrupt tax collector collecting back taxes on Sapthiwa from Sapthi who forgot to pay on time while threatening them with a carrot! My hobby can be to use the money to get rare utwig masks for my walls.
or a pirate working for the Druge, an Arilu seeking enlightenment, A kor-ah survivor trying to rebuild there fleets to begin the war again, A Vux beautician, A supox accidentally having chosen Charlie Sheen as my symbiont, a Chmmr with brain damage thinking he is a borg...
See the possibilities are endless! 
In seriousness I love the drawings, I wish I had even a 10th of the skill you had so I can at least make my stick figures look good. I'd be interested to see what/if you make something from this.
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Of course there are fates worse then death......after all.....you could always make me angry
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Arne
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Steve-O> Game worlds are of course very different from our world, so it's hard to draw parallels about economics and grind and world destroying villains. Moral is not an easy thing. Does the end justify the means? Perhaps the hero needs to be a little thieving bastard, or the world is likely done for? Like you sort of said... Maybe it's probable that the gold initially belonged to the people, and it should probably be returned to its former owners right away. A hero who insists on paying merchants, might also insist on first returning the gold to the people who lost it or just strangers who are suffering, and thus have very little gold to spend on things, further reducing his chance to save the world.
It's also possible that merchants are actually antagonists in the sense that they are preventing the world from being saved, along with the monsters (who might just be going about their natural monster business). A good merchant (or one with any sense of self preservation) would offer his goods for free in order to expedite the world being saved, or go and save the world himself. Thus, the merchants can be seen as being more on the side of evil and the thieving hero can remain fully "good" in the sense of a B/W RPG world.
Megagun> I'm coming closer and closer to finishing stuff every year. I almost finished three different projects this year. I think I've written about 15000-20000 lines of (BlitzMax) code. I have so little left to do on them, it's embarrassing.
Looking at the amount of GFX that I need to do for this project, I think I'm looking at a month of fulltime work, if I do it using a simple B/W gameboy palette and don't do any tile variations and such. I don't have the time or health now to do that, but it's still fun to play around with the idea and research old games.
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