Branching Path Polishing, Overworld building, and Shop Plugins
I added a small branching path earlier in the game to better introduce the concept of branching paths. Obviously it required some heavy rewriting not only to include the additional path but also to make the story cohesive with either paths.
Since I'm now making this as an RPG, I need to add more maps for the players to traverse through. I felt I could get away with NOT including much traveling around and simply just quick cutting to an area in the demo because I labeled it as a visual novel. The Phoenix Wright games are a great example of this. But an RPG without any maze-like, random encounter inducing forests, dungeons, etc. wouldn't really be a proper RPG at all. Because of this, I'm trying my hand at making (at least part of) the overworld for Wayfarers. Here is an INCREDIBLY ROUGH draft of what I made for the area around Compen.
I really would like a smaller (about half the size) train track and maybe a town tile that looks more like what Compen looks like. Oh Also, I wish I had an asset of an opening in the mountains that could look like a tunnel for the train tracks to go into. This is my first time making an overworld so any feedback or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
The (amazing) people that played through my demo most likely noticed there wasn't any actual currency in the game. Because of this, there was no actual shop mechanic either. For Lily's task to get supplies, I set the "shopping" more as a bunch of switches for when Lily and had her simply bill everything to the Sentinels. Again, this was more for visual novel purposes. But now...I need to have currency. However I quickly ran into a little...design based flaw. Long story short, there is a way to buy too much of one item and end up not having enough money to buy the rest of the items on the list. I thought I could fix this little problem by simply finding a plugin that would put a stock limit on items so you could only buy one. I did manage to find SRDude's Switch Shop Plugin which did make it so I could only buy an item only once but the plugin command for it also interferes with Yanfly's Shop Core Plugin. This is a problem for me because it makes the shop interface look very different.
Thankfully, this only happens when I put a specific plugin command before adding a Shop Process command so aside from the display difference, both plugins can at least coexist in the same game. Since this really is more of an awkward "why am I seeing different kinds of shop interfaces in the game" situation and doesn't actually break the game, I'm going to put this issue off to the side so I can move forward until I figure out how to fix it.
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Hey. Substantial update there!
First off, about the problem with Lily's shop quest you could simply put her shopping as an event, and instead of saying to "bill it to the Sentinels", you could have her "hand over X ammount of money" to each of the shopkeepers.That would solve the problem with spending all starting money in trivial things.
As for normal shopping, you could then do the "normal shop processing event" whenever it isn't inside a quest, and as such, what the player buys is of no consequence.
If you need any help with the overworld, I'd be happy to lend you a hand.
I thought about making Lily's shop quest as an event but decided it was important to have a shop interface as a way to introduce the concept of shopping in the game. SRDude's Switch Shop plugin is pretty much using money to turn a switch on so it at least provides a "shopping" experience with the default interface. Since I need Yanfly's Shop Core plugin some of the stuff I plan on having in the game, I want to have the interface look the same between needing to buy regular items and special quest related items. Not just for this specific issue, I also really want a limited item stock type plugin so I can make the buy/sell economy a little more interesting but so far haven't been able to find a good one.
I appreciate the offer to help with the overworld but for the time being, it's one of the things I prefer to work on and figure out on my own. There's still way too many things I feel I need to have figured out before really diving into overworld stuff like the shape of the continents and where each realm is going to be place. etc.
Well, if it's a recurring feature of the shop (to have limited stock), then it's better to use SRDude's plugin indeed.
Also, I seem to remember a game in which you could see how much money the shopkeeper had, so the player knew exactly how much he could sell on that specific shop. Maybe that's something you could look into.
No worries. The offer is there if you need any help. I figure making a whole game on your own can be quite a challenge, and if you ever feel like sharing the "burden", I'm willing to help. If not, I'll be enjoying the game when it's completed. Hahah
Since making maps is the part I enjoy the most, I'm much further on my own game than, say, eventing and even writing.
Yesterday I spent the whole day figuring out a formula that worked for my damage calculations... and man, was it a pain! xD
Anyways, cheers!
Ooooo shopkeepers with a limit to how much money they have? That would be very interesting to have in my game. I'll definitely look into that.
I'll keep that all in mind in the future. I really do appreciate the offer to help.
Oh I'm the opposite. I don't enjoy making maps and like working on events and story based stuff.
Ugh I can only imagine. I recently spent a few hours trying to make sure a sequence of events worked/made sense with two branched paths.
I found out which game has that system - it's The Witcher 3.
I figured that was a very nice feature to have, and would limit the sale capabilities too.
Eventing is where I struggle the most because I haven't learned enough about it yet, so I'm trying to do everything else first, and study eventing in the meantime, and then tackle it head first.
Game making sure is an experience. And if you don't end up learning A LOT of different branches of GameDev, then you're doing it wrong. xD
Oh haha I thought you meant an RPG Maker game. I was hoping if that game existed, maybe there's a plugin for it.
Sounds like a good way to go. Whenever I run into a problem when making stuff in Unreal, I used to spend days on it without much progress. Now I try to limit to only a couple hours before I move on to my next task. Most cases, I'll have "ah-ha!" moments where I suddenly figure out the problem when working on other stuff. If this were an actual RPG, it'd be like I can either use up a bunch of my time grinding to blindly trying to figure out a solution to the problem or just go do some leveling with other tasks which will probably give me newfound knowledge that will make solving the problem easier. Hopefully that makes sense.
Haha I agree. I'm having an appreciation for a lot of different parts in game development that I usually don't pay much mind to.