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Messages - idiotekque

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1
I just don't think 2D games using 3D methods look very great. Perhaps that's just a personal option, but when I think of Trine, Party of Sin (basically a Trine clone), ...Angry Birds, etc, I just don't think that fits the project or is going to look very good. I really feel like there needs to 2D art and spriting.

2
^ Your thoughts on the spriting, exactly what I was thinking myself.

And I only mentioned the SRPG route because I know of two occasions where it's been done extremely well with both graphic styles mentioned. 1. Full 3D, XCOM: Enemy Unknown (I also think gameplay like that +  the setting we're making would be really, really fun). And 2. 3D map, 2D characters, Final Fantasy Tactics (obviously sort of the godfather of the genre).

3
Problem is, I think fully 3D graphics aren't a great option unless we could create something as graphically beautiful as a newer Final Fantasy game, or TERA, or Far Cry 3 (especially concerning the faces), etc. That's out of our reach, so whatever 3D graphics we had would honestly look more dated than well done spriting, in my opinion.

I'm all for going outside the box, but it all depends. What about an SRPG approach? Think XCOM: Enemy Unknown with swords, bows, and magic.

4
Fortune Summoners and Chantelise are actually fairly simple games. The gameplay of FS is rather complex for a sidescrolling game, but both games are fairly simple (I'd probably say Chantelise is very simple). I haven't done any research about Carpe Fulgar, but I know they're an indie developer.

As for having no spriter... that does suck, lol. A big part of me feels like game needs spriting to keep that Chrono feel. I suppose CC didn't have sprites, but if you wanted a CC feel... you'd need beautiful, hand drawn maps. I feel like that's one of the top three factors that make CC what it is (speaking visually, of course, since that is a notable point). Then again, isn't it safe to say we're missing more than a spriter on this project? Looking for outside help seems like it's gotta happen one way or another.

Character control... If the game was a side scroller similar to Fortune Summoners, I'd say one at a time. The AI in FS is quite good, and you can customize your companion's tactics, so mages will stay back, be conservative, just heal, rain hell down, etc. It works very well. The gameplay of FS is what's keeping me addicted.

5
To be honest, I'll admit I'm biased towards sprites. Games like Guilty Gear X2 #Reload still make me drool, and Chantelise has stirred up my love and appreciation for the art style. It's just such a nice, clean look that can keep the retro vibe while still being modern.

I've done spriting myself, but nothing serious...

6
I still feel that a top-down RPG is the way to go. Spiritual successor can mean a lot of things, but as you venture further and further from what the game was... I think you start to lose the point of things. As far as the graphics go, what graphics akin to newer Pokemon handheld games? Where the environment is 3D, but the characters are 2D sprites within that 3D world.

I've recently been playing the heck out of some games made by an indie developer called Carpe Fulgar. Specifically, Fortune Summoners and Chantelise. Fortune Summoners is how I could see the platformer genre working for this project. Here's a video of some gameplay. Basically it's a mashup between platformer, action RPG, and fighting game (trust me, it's not a button masher). The game makes use of a 2D sidescrolling plane while still creating a world that you both get familiar with, and also have fun exploring (deep dark dungeons and the like, which are unnerving).

On the flipside, Chantelise is a 3D hack-and-slash ARPG, but rather uniquely, it uses 2D sprites for the characters and enemies (not bosses, from what I've seen so far), while the world is 3D. Here's a gameplay video of that (you may want to skip ahead). The game is excellent as well, but like Fortune Summoners, is very difficult.

Just some ideas for the graphical and gameplay style, I suppose. Loving the last couple posts. Full of great ideas and brainstorming.

7
That's not bad, actually. Tushantin's scientist kinda pays homage to Lucca, in that regard.

We shall call it... Franken-Chrono!  :twisted:

8
Nice points, Bekkler.

I don't really understand the thought behind an RPG similar to Chrono Trigger being too difficult to accomplish. I seriously doubt we could make something as good as Chrono Trigger, true, but as far as game development goes, creating something similar to a decades old SNES RPG isn't exactly the biggest undertaking in the world. Time-consuming to make it as grand, yes, but not out of reach at all.

Also, I don't know if anyone has played the game Fortune Summoners, but that side scrolling action RPG type of gameplay could work as well, I'd say.

9
That's kind of the point though. It's basic on purpose so that people can swap things out and tweak it. I didn't even specify where she was going, and waking up isn't exactly much of a ripoff or something that absolutely had to happen. If you think that part is a ripoff, I encourage you to change it. I'd like to see what people come up with.

I am attached the redheaded swordswoman, though. I think that's a nice homage and still interesting.

10
Eh, I don't see the Doctor Who vibe in my suggestion. Chrono Trigger has even more of a Doctor Who vibe in my opinion with Lucca, who's got that quirky Doctor quality about her, and is the one who gets you fired through time in the first place.

But like I said, I'd like to see how people chop up my idea and tweak things. I just don't feel like American human history (even tweaked human history) fits the Chrono vibe with Tobias Edison and stealing inventions and whatnot. Not saying it isn't a nice idea for a game, just doesn't feel like a Chrono successor.

11
There are some really cool, interesting ideas floating around. On their own, as a gamer, I'd definitely give them a whirl.

Unfortunately, I'm not getting the Chrono vibe. At all. We started this whole brainstorming session in the hopes of first, reinventing Crimson Echoes, and then moved onto a grander objective, creating a spiritual successor to the Chrono series. Thomas Edison and little blobs of goo and whatnot are awesome. Very interesting ideas. But I'm sorry, nothing about them says Chrono. There are loads of stories with time traveling in them. Does that make them feel like the Chrono series? Does Doctor Who (as much as I love it to death) feel like the Chrono series? No, not at all. Time travel =/= Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross.

I realize we aren't making something exactly like the Chrono games. Totally understand that. But it really feels like these ideas are traveling into totally different realms that have nearly nothing in common with the Chrono series. Now I'm not trying to jump in and say "All these ideas are junk, here's my better idea",  but rather I'm just trying to steer the ideas in a much more Chrono...y direction.

Okay, brainstorming, you (the protagonist) wake up in a small, modern looking town. You're a young teenage girl with flowing lava red hair and a knack for martial arts and swordplay (we've gotta pay some homage to a certain red-headed swordsman). While the setting looks modern, lets say that technology in your time is still very limited (limited electricity, no firearms/or only muskets and the like, no big cities, town guards and such to keep monsters in the wildernesses away, etc). The protagonist has somewhere to be, a festival, a concert, a fencing competition, I don't care. It would just be somewhere a good amount of people are. While you're there, a young man around your age in fairly odd clothes befriends you, and before you know it, you're whisked through time and space to his era (a much more medieval settings, with knights and wizards and goblins, etc). He explains to you that time is damaged. People and places in his time have been disappearing, and before long, the realm will be in a state of chaos and anarchy (perhaps he took drastic measures and pulled you into his efforts because members of the royal family have been disappearing). He carries an artifact that allows him to traverse the time lanes (he can't choose where he wants to go, he can just travel through time rifts), which brought him to your time. Unfortunately, that rift has since closed, and you have no way of getting home (perhaps you have a personality as fiery as your hair, and this creates a love-hate relationship with the young man). Why did he choose you? Maybe this isn't clear, I'll leave holes on purpose because this is a pretty barebones idea, I'd love for people to fill in the blanks.

What happens from here? I think it would be a cool game mechanic to find time rifts near where people and places have gone missing. You travel into the past, fix what's broken, and the jump back when they're resolved to admire your handiwork (some of these could be vital to the story, some could be sidequests that help people and families, repair civilized areas, nature, etc, for rewards). Now, through your trips through time, you come across a mysterious cloaked figure who tries to thwart your efforts. He's clearly not a good guy, because you're trying to bring people back from the bowels of time and restore their rightful place, while he wishes them dead. Is all of this because of him? Further into the story, maybe the king or queen dies suddenly? It comes out that the time traveling young man is actually the prince. He's completely convinced that time is damaged and the king/queen's death must be changed in time. You fight to change things and succeed... but in doing so, you alter a key event in the planet's history. Time retaliates and tries to correct itself, leading to the very rifts you worked so hard to repair, perhaps even further damage, and you're hurled into another, completely unknown era with no way back (maybe the prince's artifact is damage or lost). All along, perhaps the cloaked man was trying to let the time rifts persist because they were time's way of compensating for the damage you caused through saving the king/queen, and now that you restored them AND irrevocably damaged time, the world is plunged into darkness and destruction.

All of this idea is open to "construction", but especially what happens after this. I could see perhaps that the twisted shell of the world after this point leads to that king/queen who was supposed to die living on, and becoming a powerful, evil tyrant (perhaps this would have happened anyways, hence why they were meant to die, and perhaps it was the cloaked figure who killed them in the true timeline and the prince saw this). Your goal at this point in the game is to kill the very overlord you thought once saved, and in killing them, are able to restore time to its natural balance. And it's sort of thrown in there, but I think it would be interesting for the prince to actually be from another time, sent to his resident era for an unknown reason, carrying the artifact that allows him to travel through time, when he was a baby. Why? I don't know, this whole story is open to construction, new reasoning, etc.

And like I said, I'm not set on saying "My idea is best", and I'm inviting people to take it apart, smash it, and put it back together. The point I'm trying to get at is creating a world and storyline that really feels akin to the Chrono series. I think this general idea could really hit on that mark, and wouldn't be something that is all that difficult to MAKE as a game (I really think it should be a classic RPG like Chrono Trigger as far as gameplay goes).

Any ideas? Pleeease chop this thing up and put it back together. 8)

12
No offense to anyone here, but we're going nowhere with the conversation. Story, plot, characters, and writing in general are extremely versatile and faceless things. Argue till you're blue in the face that there are RIGHT ways and WRONG ways, because there are always things that are going to work better, hit harder, while others fall on their faces, but in the end, it's a subject that can be argued over until the stars go out.

What's happening right now is basically:

This is how it should be done.
No, this is how it should be done.
You guys have some good ideas, but you're both wrong about this and this.
No, sorry, in the nicest way possible, I'm smarter than you.
Actually you're not, because this vague, abstract concept you're speaking of is slightly wrong, hence totally wrong, hence I am right.

And so on and so forth. I'm not innocent or absent from that either.

I know that no one here is purposely trying to be a jerk or insist that their way is the only way, but unfortunately with extensive debates like this focusing on subjects that even the "pros" argue themselves (don't even start the story/plot snafu), it's not hard to come across as a know-it-all ass. The important thing is to put our heads together and focus on compromise, even on subjects that you hold very dear, to achieve a cohesive end result (or hell, even get started). No movie, video game, novel, or any creative product is perfect. Creating something purely via one's own thinking will give you a flawed result. Creating something via a group's thinking will... also create a flawed result. The important thing is that we work together to create a result in the first place. After all is said and done, if the end product isn't amazing, it's still a better than nothing. And I'm not saying "Make something crappy just because", I'm only encouraging more focus, more cooperation, more compromise.

Put simply, if any of us are "right" in our individual arguments, congratulations, but it doesn't matter. Moving on now.

13
I don't think Lynx's character was handled badly. I think it's an important point that his motives were shady and not recognized until later in the story, but I'll admit a lot of Chrono Cross was vague and confusing (which is why the majority didn't connect with it as well as CT, which wasn't so confusing). Your first encounter with him? He poisons the girl you're quickly beginning to love as a character. The second encounter? He STEALS you body, then stabs her again. Then he turns her against you.

Those are dramatic events that create a lot of animosity against his character, while still weaving that mystery about his character. Whether the final reveal could have been handled a little better or not, I don't think it much detracts from his CHARACTER, it simply convolutes a story that could have been a little bit clearer.

And I talked about the Dragon God, I just called it the Time Devourer, which I suppose it is not. My error.

Why don't we take a bit of inspiration from Radical Dreamers? It would be a simpler endeavour, combined with Lennis MGS gameplay suggestion, along with stealth of thieves. We could somehow have time travel into the midst. What do you think?

Not a bad idea at all. As much as I love Radical Dreamers, though, we'd need to make it significantly less... weird.

14
Magus is an awesome character, I agree with that. When you think of Chrono Trigger, though, do you see him as the grand antagonist? Hell no, he's a gray area character, and he ends up being more or less GOOD.

Do you think of the insurmountable, unstoppable force of the world eater Lavos? Do you think of the accomplishment you felt when you cracked that shell open and took down the most powerful destructive force in the universe? Hell yeah.

I'm all for gray characters and intricate stories that make you think. I write them myself. I simply don't think they have a strong place in this kind of game, this kind of story, this kind of project. By all means, there can be gray area characters, but the primary antagonist? Utterly disagreed about that.


EDIT: But hey, I'm not in charge. I'm just giving a writer's perspective that I think applies to this case. I've even had teachers who insist on that hated antagonist in any story. I disagree with that rigid of a view, but there's a lot of merit in that view. To SOME extent, it's extremely important to have that reader vs. antagonist relationship, even disregarding the characters in the book. When the reader/player/viewer feels emotionally invested in things, the story profits.

15
If you're writing a Ludlum novel, sure. If you're making an RPG that is the spiritual successor of the Chrono series, I disagree.

I understand your perspective (because I don't necessarily disagree with it in every setting), but I don't feel it fits this circumstance.

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