#rpg maker menu

[wisteriasakana]

For this game I wanted to use Syvkal's Ring Menu (And Roninator2's Add-on). It's customizable and, with Avery's icons, I find the result very nice! (゜▽゜;)

(Of course, the English version will be in English-)

[sausages-and-god]

just a placeholder rn but still i like it a lot

[runjumptaco]

I MADE THE GUN FUCKING WORK AHHAHAHAHAAHAH!!!!! YESSSS!!!!!! IT FINALLY DOES WHAT IT NEEDS TOOOO!!!!

[dreamlink3d]

the Veneer Visor is a new item that’s technically been with you this whole time!  being your visual connection into the Dreamscape, you can now customize it to toggle visual effects as needed!  whether you need to do so because some filters mess with your ability to see the game as you need to, or just because you want to see the game in a new way, this item is your new friend!

[cloverdoremi]

Current DARLING title screen 🎀

[fallingredpetal]

IV + MENU CONCEPTS

[rakkiankh]

Don't have the coding knowledge to make my own game but I have thoughts on my ideal farming game and I've started messing around in rpg maker to make mock ups just so I can look at my own work and go "wow, that would be fun!"

[toskarin]

going on the twine rant again, lads. fair warning.

-

the twine editor is theoretically great software

which is to say, twine editor is far and away the best execution of "a text game maker for people who mostly make text and not games" that presently exists. it's notable for making wholly self-contained (read: does not require interpreter software) text games with functioning mechanics at about the level of code literacy you could feasibly ask from people who brushed off of other more complicated software

this is in large part because the text adventure and IF ecosystem has the same problem as the (similarly insular and incestuous) scorewriting ecosystem: all of the software is made to be used by a group of like 50 people who don't use anything else, so they just settle for whatever exists

twine solves a lot of these problems by simply existing as an html game maker that can automate all of the functions of a gamebook out of the box. the editor has features which (to me) seem to be inspired by scrivener, which is my favourite WYSIWYG writing software for longform fiction on the market (I prefer writing in LaTeX but I can acknowledge that's a habit I picked up and not an endorsement of LaTeX)

that being said, even though there's an obvious utility to being able to prototype out rpgs and such in twine incredibly quickly, I can't really recommend people... use twine for that. because of the problems.

the twine editor is also kind of beautiful for all the ways in which it issoftware designed to torture the user

twine exists with one foot in "games" and one foot in "writing" and this overlap is the totality of its intended use. this space of compromise is still the best that's been made for this specific scene, but it means that edge cases are (at absolute best) operating twine in much the way that someone being hanging onto the edge of a shattered cockpit is operating an airliner

I could go on and on about the specific elements of twine's design that drive me insane, and in how it punishes you both for making too much of a book and for making too much of a game, but there's one problem that kind of sticks out as a simulacrum of this whole issue

by design, twine organises its projects as a story map. this is kind of like the middle point between scrivener's storyboard and a whiteboard, but specialised for use in making text games. this means that each node on it is one screen, called a card, that you can open and edit

doing this opens a window for text input, and the exact contents of this window kind of depend on which format you're writing your story in, but as a rule, you write everything into these sub-windows and that's the game

because twine runs in one window, these cards open more like menus than true windows. you can have one open at a time, and when you need to test something, you close the window and press the button to test the game. simple as

now, for making software, it's helpful to have a versioning function of some sort in case, among other reasons, you fuck something up in a way you don't immediately notice

for writing, you usually want some sort of undo function, in case you accidentally delete something or edit over it

at the intersection of these two, twine does have an undo function. which works differently depending on which version of the editor you're using. in the web version, you get multiple layers of undo. that makes sense.

in the downloaded version, which is the version you have to use if you don't want to use your browser's local storage (?? you shouldn't be doing this) you get

one layer of undo.

in a modern text editor.

that you are expected to write in.

this is on top of the browser-hosted version of twine editor being significantly more stable than the desktop version, so that's obviously the version you're meant to use, which runs in stark contrast to like... how that should work. this should already be raising your blood pressure a little bit if you remember that the browser version of twine saves your project files to your browser's local storage

now, common to both versions is another important feature which seemingly exists to prevent data loss: twine automatically saves your changes when you exit out of a card

this means that, the moment you close a card to go test the changes you just made to your game, they are saved over the previous version of the game with no way to undo them

but there IS a way to get around this without having to write in an entirely separate word processor! several ways even. you can even use the downloaded version if you do this

duplicate the full project every single time you make changes that could necessitate an undo function

make a copy of every card you edit in case you need to revert to it after testing, then remember to delete it afterwards

if you're editing the cards themselves, see option 1, because there is no way to undo deletion of cards in the story map

and like... that's not good. it's kind of the hell machine for killing all human beings, actually

it's also not a problem remotely unique to twine, because this is the kind of thing you see in most niche-specialised software where there isn't really a distinction made between "this is an expected frustration of working on any artistic project" and "this is something completely insane that absolutely should not be the case and isn't tolerated in immediately adjacent comparable creative fields"

twine can be used to make longer projects, but at the point where you're recommending two layers of supporting software that overlap so hard with the editor that they should be redundancies, it becomes clear that the only thing it's really fit-for-purpose to do is non-linear fiction consisting of two or three paragraphs per card

and that's generally not what it's used for! because that sort of thing is almost universally understood as a stepping stone towards using twine for making either longform non-linear fiction or full-featured rpgs

twine could be really useful software, and in fairness it's generally better than the alternatives it supplanted in its niche (people making little interactive poems probably shouldn't be trying to use Inform or TADS), but it really seems like it was designed with as a cursed amulet meant to cause as much grief as possible while being difficult to justify throwing away

[arcadekitten]

do you use any plug ins for rpg maker :0? i love ur work!!!!

I do!! The plugins I use vary from project to project and the things I intend to do, but in general the ones I use most often are:

-Yanfly's set of plugins (For MV, it's VisuStella if you're using MZ!) They have a variety of plugins for stuff like editing appearance and functionality of the main menu, save files, managing events, so on and so forth!

-Galv's Message Busts plugin! It's what allows me to use busts of characters when they talk rather than the default in-textbox icons (like below)

[r0zeclawz]

great news everybody. i figured out how to make custom menus in rpg maker 2003 which means a bestiary for hyperspace is back on the table

[punkitt-is-here]

hi! any advice you could give when attempting to work with rpg maker? (recommended sizes or anything you bumped with you could have avoided for example?) love your work! susan taxpayer looks amazing :D

start small!!! i know that advice sucks but SERIOUSLY have SMALL goals and work up from there! When i work on astral guard i'm never like "okay today im gonna rewrite the entire menu system and implement these animations and do 9 million face sprites" im usually like. today i will work on making this map look prettier and easier to navigate :) and focus on that one thing. you will find yourself working on cool stuff you like WAY more often if you start with small objectives and learn to be happy with those!

[castleinthemist]

Attract Mode Issue 4 (September 2024)

Welcome to this month’s issue of Attract Mode! If you’ll all allow me to indulge, I want to focus this issue on RPG Maker games I’ve been pecking at lately:

Helen’s Mysterious Castle A 1-on-1 RPG that focuses on rapid, volley-like combat that feels wonderfully fast and rhythmic. It achieves this by making all of its stats available to the player - weapon, shields and spells all share the three stats: Eff, Def and Wait. All of these inform the pace of battle and add to that rhythmic feeling. Real fun and a decently sized, short RPG. Attraction: Saw some praise for the game and its combat system, and while that very much in the draw, I find that there is a snes-era charm to its default assets graphics.

Labyrinth.os (Demo) “The rabbits are always watching you” left with that warning, or premonition, you are newly reawakened and welcomed by the Patron Spirit of the Labyrinth, who provides you with a form to inhabit and a party to form (comprised of some off-kilter classes such as Gun Witch, Bondage Paladin, Technomancer and Assassin Nurse to name a few). This can affect how smoothly battles can go, or what tools you have at your disposal when you form the party but you are free to rearrange it at a shortly later time in the demo. Furthermore, the demo conveys a wonderfully serene mood to the dungeon crawling levels, and befitting to the game’s name, are labyrinthine without feeling too long or tedious. Features many mysterious characters that fit the tone of the demo really well. Attraction: While it’s not 100% my cup of tea aesthetically, I think there is an air of mystery about it, and a cool looking, almost mixed media effect to it’s artstyle.

Aozora – Ancient Abyss Another 1-on-1 focused game where you’ll be balancing your resources (health, the limited items you acquire and turn order!) to succeed in these tense battles. Wonderfully short and engaging. Paints an enticing world with it’s limited story and brief glimpses into its characters. I hope to see more adventures with them in the future. Attraction: There’s a charming scrappy-ness to it – I always enjoy seeing what folks focus on in smaller works like this.

Cataphract OI Engaging in a playful and inventive feeling manner with standard RPG systems, notably the command based menu and the usage of battle formations – Cataphract OI manages to be a creatively fresh feeling game, that no matter how frustrating at time it can feel, due to its difficulty, the whole is so thoroughly engaging and inventive that you can’t help but want to keep playing it. Attraction: I saw there was a time limit mechanic and blacked out to later find it installed onto my PC. Jokes aside, my growing fondness for specific restrictions in games did pique my curiosity with this one.

--

And that’s a wrap! I really enjoyed this issue and I hope you found something that tickles your fancy in here too! Next month, we’ll start pulling away from some RPGs and get going on some other types of eye-catching games. Please look forward to it and take care!

[redleaves-devdiary]

sock u r making me want to make an rpg maker game so bad. red leaves is so cool already i am in love. definitely not biased bc my name is red or anything either btw nope no way

if i may ask. are you using any rpg maker plugins in red leaves so far? id be curious about what they are if youve got any and feel like sharing !! /nf

anyway. loving watching the progress so far this is such a cool project and i wish u luck <3

HI RED HIIIII HIIII heheh I'm very glad you're liking the project so far!!! I am using a lot of plugins yes! I can end a screenshot of what I've got in my plugin manager at the moment, hold on

Obviously you can see that I have some of them Off because I didn't need them in the end but I forgot to take them out BUT I'm happy I left them in because they're still good plugins!

All the ones starting with YEP are from the free Yanfly essentials bundle which DEFINITELY comes in handy. My friend Chip let me know that this is like. something everyone with RPGMaker MV should have and use, it has some stuff that the engine really should have on its own LOL

I haven't touched all of the plugins yet but I imagine I will at some point but they all come in handy. Had to play with a few. Some of the plugins that change the layout of stuff like the save screen and the menu are honestly really nice justs to make things look less default.

I recommend most of these!!

[hypersomniagame]

HYPERSOMNIA MARCH DEV LOG : "If you have love in your heart"

Hi! For all of you who follow HYPERSOMNIA, you should already know what the gist is here, but for those of you who are new, or just new to our tumblr, let me fill you in!

For 2024, I am trying to release a dev log about HYPERSOMNIA once a month, may come earlier, may come a little late, but I'm doing this to help give insight on to how the game is going, and to give me motivation to work on the game.

First things first, sorry about the incomplete drawing for this month's log. I've been sitting on this drawing for months and haven't touched it, and I needed a drawing for this months log so I thought "Eh, what the hell."

For this month, things have been a bit up and down, I've been focusing on more smaller stuff in engine this month, and bigger stuff outside of engine. So there's not a lot that's been added but there is new stuff that I'd like to share. :)

I'd like to start with the smaller stuff first, since I feel like most logs I've started with the bigger stuff and kinda run out of steam by the end. So it'll be along the lines of "Small in-engine stuff > Big in-engine stuff > News/closing thoughts".

NOW LET'S GET TO THOSE UPDATES!

Lots of menu work has been done this month, which isn't very exciting sounding but it's nice to be getting this stuff over with.

HYPERSOMNIA has a smaller resolution than RPG Maker MV's default, and the thing about that is a lot of content in menus doesn't scale accordingly, leaving stuff to get cut off and preventing the player from accessing information.

One of the things I've had to do is get the player's HP and HS to appear on the status screen. These usually appear on the main menu of the game, but since I use an alternate menu for screen space, they had to be relocated. (courtesy of SundialShark, I'm not familiar with JS so they've been a super big help with certain things in the game.)

The game's title screen also saw a slight improvement, I found a plugin that replaces the windowed options on the title screen with pictures, making them more customized. The title screen artwork itself will be revised later, as I whipped it up as a placeholder.

Also, do you remember last month's dev log? Specifically, the part of it where I talked about the equip menu in battle? Well shortly after writing that dev log, it was finished!

This works how you'd expect it to, you can equip/unequip eyes and give them to other party members. The only drawback to this is that touchscreen isn't fully supported I've been told, which is fine since this is a game intended for PC. It does work with controller though which is nice.

Speaking of battles, I've been working on special attack animations! I have the main 4's offense animations done.

My personal favourite is Jack's. Everyone else does it all cool but Jack aims like he's holding a gun which is cooler. I'll probably touch up Ross' animation, since it looks kinda weird to me. I think his head might be too small.

Also, would you believe me if I told you that isn't all the battle stuff that was done this month? This is where that "Big in-engine" stuff kicks in.

THE BACKGROUND SYSTEM HAS BEEN IMPROVED! (ALONG WITH ME DESIGNING SOME NEW ENEMIES!)

This took a bit of time to configure, but I replaced the old background system for a new one

(Which was originally set up with my buddy Majimjam of HYADES, awesome game that has a demo out RIGHT NOW!)

With Jengamon's EarthBound Backgrounds plugin, it's been really fun to just toy with it and see what I can make. I would try and run down how this works, but the funny thing is I don't even know how this works. Or, at least in full anyways. I know how to configure it and set up new presets for enemies.

That's pretty much all the in-engine stuff I've done this month, but I'm not out of stuff to talk about yet.

First, I recently wrote a thread on the RPG Maker Forums about HYPERSOMNIA, which you can read here!

Secondly, some of you might've seen this already but I decided to cut FIREBALL from the game's soundtrack fully.

There were a multitude of reasons as to why, but the biggest one is I just don't feel like FIREBALL fits HYPERSOMNIA anymore. The vision has shifted since 2021 and I feel like music for battles could reflect it better, so FIREBALL was scrapped.

The song was uploaded to my personal YouTube channel though, so you can still listen to it here.

Third, THE NEW TRAILER IS ALMOST DONE!

There's still a few things that need to be touched up, but the music and footage is all fully recorded! All that's left to do is throw it in the editor and refine it until it's finished.

I'm very proud of this trailer so far, and I think it'll blow every other trailer I've made out of the water. My goal for this trailer was to improve the editing and I think that's definitely one of the highlights for this trailer.

I'd really like to post a quick sneak peak, but everything about this trailer I feel will be such a surprise that I don't want to spoil it. You'll just have to wait for the Mother Direct!

And that's it for this month! Slow but steady progress is how I'd sum up March. I'm definitely looking forward to the future. Mostly because I'm going to a restaurant with family later today, but next month will have more in store. Like my birthday! Big things coming.

Thanks for reading to the end of the dev log, same as always, these are fun to write. I appreciate you reading them!

If this is your first log you're reading, or even your first time seeing ANYTHING relating to HYPERSOMNIA, I got a whole bunch of links for you to check out if you wanna know more about me and my stupid little game.

TWITTER

YOUTUBE

STEAM

UNIQUE INDIE RPG'S [SHOW US YOUR GAME!]

[PREV] [ABOUT HYPERSOMNIA] [NEXT]

[dreamlink3d]

been working hard on doing a final pass on most visual designs just to give everything a cohesion to it all, unfortunately while the background here is rather old (drawn by the lovely @sillyzowie btw,) the logo is fully new!  i felt a new, more stylized logo was appropriate to match the overall aesthetic i’m aiming for, and to make it more visually cohesive with a handful of other changes to key game visuals you can see over in this post -- one day i’d really like to have a fully custom title screen with unique buttons and layout, but for now i think i’m just happy to finally have a logo i feel fully fits the game :)

[quietsamurai98]

In Stars and Time might genuinely be one of the most technically flawless games I've played.

When I say "technically flawless", I'm referring to a lack of technical flaws, not saying "it's flawless on a technicality". I'm working on 100%ing the game right now, and have clocked almost 50 hours playing it on steam. In that time, I've only encountered one minor bug that comes to mind, and have had only a handful of technical/quality of life wishes.

The bug I encountered is a complete non-issue. For some reason, Isabeau has two memories of puns in my save. As far as I can tell, this has no actual impact, it's just something I noticed. EDIT — Nevermind, that bug was patched in an update released hours before I even made this post!

As for technical/QoL wishes:

I wish there were more than 12 save slots. Limited save slots are a bit of a pet peeve of mine. In the same vein, I wish I could name saves, like "Act 3 start", "Act 4 end", "OP grind", etc. This might be an engine limitation though... I'm not familiar enough with RPG Maker to know.

I wish that there was a button that advanced text within text boxes, without advancing to the next text box. Some text boxes pause for player input multiple times before they're complete. For example: "(You breathe in, and out) [INPUT] (500 EXP received. [INPUT] EXP doubled for everyone else.) [INPUT CLOSES DIALOGUE]" I wish I could advance through the [INPUT]s with a button that wouldn't advance through the [INPUT CLOSES DIALOGUE], since I've accidentally closed dialogues and advanced text boxes without meaning to.

This is a wish that might conflict a bit with ludonarritive coherence, but I wish you could save anywhere, not just at checkpoints. Restricting saving irritates me as a point of principle. In the load menu that can be accessed anywhere, the save button is highlighted by default, but is grayed out and disabled. Just... Enable that button in that menu???

Anyway, I'm just gonna whisper these wishes into a leaf a few times and drop it under a tree.

Honestly, the game is practically perfect, and these wouldn't really be issues if I weren't putting the game under a microscope to 100% it. If you haven't played the game and have read this whole thing for some reason... Go play it! It's fantastic! And only $20!