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Me and my buddy are planning to make an RPG maker meme game of our own, do you have any tips for the program and advice?

Off the top of my head:

Don’t be scared of scripts. They can look daunting, but they’ll lead to exponential improvements in terms of what sort of features your game has. U2:O was comparatively basic, but the development process for U2O2/SJB64 has yielded a lot of interesting experiments, so now it has things like a SMT-style press turn mechanic.

Don’t let scale creep set in. It’s tempting to add loads of features and menus and everything, but the truth is, when you’ve got separate mechanics to learn skills from equipment and have equipment weight limits and whatnot, you often just make things more tedious for players. When you’re implementing a new mechanic, try to take a step back and ask yourself: what purpose does this serve? Does it actually make a significant impact, or is it just piling another menu on for the sake of complexity? It’s better to have a comparatively simple game with a couple of really solid mechanics than a Disgaea-esque clusterfuck.

In the same vein, figure out a concrete beginning, middle, and end figured out as early as possible, and try not to let the lore sprawl out of control. It’s very easy to keep coming up with ideas for new party members and subplots and whatnot and letting it all balloon. In all honesty, this was probably the main factor that led to me aborting U2O2 and re-purposing its assets for an entirely new game. You can always save concepts and assets for expansions or new games.

Pay attention to the user interface. Bells and whistles are fun, but they should take a backseat to legibility. If you can’t look at the battle screen and quickly tell how all your party members are doing, trim some fat and make things bigger as needed. On a similar note, when deciding on sound effects for menus/etc., test them to ensure that you won’t go mad hearing them over and over again. Lower-pitched sounds tend to be better than beeps.

Don’t be afraid to play around with RTP assets. Even simple modifications to tiles and sprites from the RTP go a long way towards giving a game more flavor.

For the love of god, don’t fuck around with that “X% chance of escape” shit. Depending on the encounter, you can either run or you can’t. Attempting to run from a battle and not being able to solely because RNG played a bad hand is infuriating.

But yeah, I wish you luck with your project! Let me know if you want any further advice.

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Is this game still coming out?

Maybe. Frankly, with my professional career and mental health, it’s taken a bit of a backseat. I would certainly like to finish it in the near future, I have the story drafted out and many of the assets made, the issue is finding the time to weave them all together. So consider it a kind of hiatus for now. I apologize to everyone who was anticipating the game, but I would rather release it as envisioned than make massive compromises just to cut down on dev time.

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I’m leaning towards the latter approach, after A) trying to make some more headway in World of Light and remembering just how obnoxious all those menus were and B) remembering that this whole game is a massive Joke so I may as well use this to add more weird party members and slap lots of incidental dialogue in there. It gives players more of a motivation to explore and complete sidequests, too, as having a bigger squad gives you more options to work with. Further feedback is appreciated.

Input Zone

So development on U2O2:TDR has pulled a Metroid Prime 4 and soft-rebooted. Most of the plot threads and nearly all the already-made assets will carry over, but I’m re-scripting the story and streamlining the game mechanics. Which leads me to the combat system. Elemental weaknesses and resistances play a much larger role this time around, so there exists a need for players to have more control over what they’re bringing into a dungeon. There are two main ways to accomplish this:

-Have a smaller number of party members, but provide a lot of ways to customize their movesets (the current build uses a Final Fantasy IX-esque system where equipped armor and weapons can be leveled up to learn new skills). The major problem with this is that it adds a bunch of menus and weapon EXP to keep track of. And dragging myself through SSBU’s World of Light has proven a stark reminder of how obnoxious redundant piled-on menus and stats can be.

-The alternative is having a wider pool of party members with different skillsets to work with. The problem here is that it would be nearly impossible to keep them all relevant to the narrative without making it a clusterfuck, so you’d end up with a core pool of story-relevant party members and then a bunch of optional ones who have their major sidequests but aren’t really involved in the main plot (think of the kids from the 3DS Fire Emblem games, or the moogle and the yeti from FFVI).

So which is the lesser evil here? Feedback is welcomed.

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Input Zone

So development on U2O2:TDR has pulled a Metroid Prime 4 and soft-rebooted. Most of the plot threads and nearly all the already-made assets will carry over, but I’m re-scripting the story and streamlining the game mechanics. Which leads me to the combat system. Elemental weaknesses and resistances play a much larger role this time around, so there exists a need for players to have more control over what they’re bringing into a dungeon. There are two main ways to accomplish this:

-Have a smaller number of party members, but provide a lot of ways to customize their movesets (the current build uses a Final Fantasy IX-esque system where equipped armor and weapons can be leveled up to learn new skills). The major problem with this is that it adds a bunch of menus and weapon EXP to keep track of. And dragging myself through SSBU’s World of Light has proven a stark reminder of how obnoxious redundant piled-on menus and stats can be.

-The alternative is having a wider pool of party members with different skillsets to work with. The problem here is that it would be nearly impossible to keep them all relevant to the narrative without making it a clusterfuck, so you’d end up with a core pool of story-relevant party members and then a bunch of optional ones who have their major sidequests but aren’t really involved in the main plot (think of the kids from the 3DS Fire Emblem games, or the moogle and the yeti from FFVI).

So which is the lesser evil here? Feedback is welcomed.

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What's the line Torgus Interactive are taking on this deltarune business? do you feel like toby is unlawfully encroaching on your territory as developer of undertale 2: overtale and its sequel, undertale 2: overtale 2: tokyo drift revengeance?

i fail to see the connection here, as the new game “deltrarune” clearly has a completely different title to “undertale”

if anything, i feel sorry for my good friend toby fox, who is unable to work on a new IP without it immediately being assumed to be connected to his prior work

this must be how hideo kojima feels when people ask him if death stranding is connected to metal gear

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Am I allowed to make a spin-off game based off of yours?

Absolutely! I’d be flattered to see what comes of it!

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how's the progress on the game?

If we’re gonna be completely real here, it’s on semi-hiatus. Work has been all hands on deck, I just moved into a new place, the depression has kicked back in something fierce, and I know that forcing myself to continue working on it at this time wouldn’t do it justice (it’s hard to do Jokes when you’re grappling with very dark thoughts, and I’m not about to pull a Hideaki Anno here). I’m still shooting for 2018, but it’s in firm “it’ll happen when it happens” territory.

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Could i get a link to that absolute fucking banger from the trailer

Right here!

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Regarding the future of Torgus Interactive

To all my followers, I thank you deeply from the bottom of my heart for your support and passion throughout the development of Undertale 2: Overtale 2: Tokyo Drift REVENGEANCE. It is this same passion that makes what I’m about to say all the more painful. Due to a variety of factors, development on U2O2TDR has unfortunately been suspended. Explaining all the reasons behind the game’s cancellation would take much too long for a single post, but in the meantaaaaaaahahahahaha yeah no it’s joke motherfuckers, here’s a trailer

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How much Love Live stuff will there be in overtale 2? I fucking loved that shit in overtale one

more content than in the first game, but less proportionally (mostly because there’s a hell of a lot more of everything this time around)

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i’m glad the rerelease of undertale for nintendo switch will give gamers an opportunity to catch up on the undertale lore before undertale 2: overtale 2: tokyo drift REVENGEANCE launches in 2018

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getting there

placeholders are ugly as hell lmao

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placeholders are ugly as hell lmao

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Estimated date for overtale 2? No other game is able to fill the void

(Jokes aside tho, it’s one of those things where you’ve gotta decide between quality and speed - I’m really going buck wild trying to stuff this mess with content, but that all takes time (it also has considerably more non-RTP sprite assets compared to the first game). It’s been kind of a hobby project for a while, working on it in spare time between work and life, so things add up. I have two dates in mind, but I can’t promise which of them it’ll be at this point. I will say that it’ll be out by summer, though.)