RPG Maker
Reviewed by Dyson Turner
RPG Maker, may have been one of the most innovative ideas to
ever hit US shores. This game is like the dreams of every
serious RPG Player ever wanted. This game had high
anticipation around it and low hype. Many people though the
gamers who drooled over it for months would not like it when
they got it. Frankly in my opinion they were dead wrong.
This is a game that takes a lot of patients and a lot of
hard work. This is not a quick 20 minutes creating and have
a 40 hour RPG at your finger tips. It takes days worth of
work, I have just started early on the 19th, and all I
accomplished was 20 minutes worth of work. Some people may
not think its worth it, but when you see your RPG that you
had playing through your mind all these years or on paper on
your television set and knowing you created it, that's an
awesome feeling.
Story 7. 5
Chris Rock, a boat, a white monkey and Bill Clinton walk
into a bar and fight an old piece of gum on the floor to
save the entire world is only one of many stories your brain
can come up with. The story is you make your own story and
that's that. Now I will discuss the sample game 'Gobli' story.
Gobli is the main character in this story. Throughout his
life him and his 'Weakling' friends have been going
through a 'Traditional RPG Forest' waiting for heroes so
they can give them money and experience. Gobli finds this
way of life shallow and unrewarding. He wants to be a boss
to give the heroes a good fight. The story might sound a
little plain but this a very fun game and I picked it up
often to find out new things or when I couldn't figure out a
new element in my RPG. Gobli might look and sound stupid but
believe me it's a game that you must play.
Visuals 6. 5/10
The graphics won't astound you but then again its not that
bad the character size is similar to the ones seen on Final
Fantasy VI. Although Final Fantasy VI looks better than
this. The characters are all distinguishable from one
another, and your party follows you similar to the way they
did on Final Fantasy VII, and the Phantasy Star series. The
background options on the game aren't that good, a lot of
them are plenty plain unless you take the plain patches of
grass and spruce them up a bit. The magic effects in this
game can range from pretty pathetic to awesome depends on
how much you put into them. The in game effects you can do
are ok, they resemble other older in game effects. The
graphics on them being not that fancy. Overall giving when
this game originally came these graphics were average and
compared to now, these graphics are pretty horrific. But the
bottom line is this, the graphics won't amaze you but they
give the good atmosphere around your story.
Audio 6. 0/10
Caution: Do Not Play Background Music While Creating Your
RPG. This will lead to actually added frustration and a
possible headache seriously. Well the music is cutesy for
the most part you can turn the music off which is a good
thing. Most of the tunes sound similar to other RPG's and
they have one for every atmosphere. The evil music or
dungeon music is really effective for boss battles or when
the villain makes its appearances. They also have heroic
music and then just jumpy music that's sort of good. The
sound effects range from useful to wacky. You have all the
good ones, like a dog barking, cat meowing, an evil cackle
then sword clashing sounds all sounds heard in other games
at other times. None of the sounds were really lagging after
all you pick the sounds you want. The music and sounds in
this game in a way if you made them went along with the
graphics, so if you know what you are doing everything here
could sound and look right.
Game Play 20/10
This game is for one player only. When you first play this
the sheer volume of options will overwhelm you. Not to worry
take it slowly and one at a time. You can create just about
every aspect of your RPG, its up to you to control. Well
I'll break this into 2 sections lie the game System & Scenario:
System Data
System Data is the very boring things that go into RPGs like
the variables that I never even thought about before I got
this game. This is where you do some pretty obvious things
like make the Title for instance. You design spells here,
you basically make your own graphics for them. Which I found
mega cool, at first it will seem like you can just do one
thing the different graphics. But delve deeper and you can
make fireballs have a 3 D effect, You can make an ice ball
change into 3 ice balls then have them break up while coming
at the enemy. You also create your main characters here and
the items used through out the game. But the most useful
feature here is creating your dungeon. Dungeon creating is
used for everything from a small shop to an inn, you could
try you creative mind and create your own town made out of
open treasure chest or blocks of gold. You could make a
futuristic tower, or a typical medieval castle. You also
have the option of using Sample, if you are too lazy to make
your own look or, you can't find the proper pieces and the
sample place for lets say a search looks better.
You also create your World Map, which is under the Field
options. You have a couple hundred squares to make a map
with try to have pieces that look like they connect is the
key and you don't have to fill in the whole map just pieces
that people will see. Similar to making your own character
you can make your own enemies as well. There are 99 enemy
graphics to chose from, you can name them and set their
powers and the attacks they will be using on you. One thing
when creating your own character make sure not to give it
unbelievably high stats and give the enemy low stats that it
will be facing, because you will gain levels too easily.
Also don't do vice versa of that or you will not make it
far. You can also create the boss in the enemy design any
enemy design could be used for a boss. You also make weapons
in the item creation make sure when making weapons to make
enough weapons to last through out the game normally 8-10
weapons for each main character will do. Even though all
these things and more may not seem like fun you will need
them for the rest of the game.
Scenario
There isn't much scenario date, but there are lots of event
options. Event options is where you create things character
say or the way they move. You create all the usual events in
an RPG like regular people talking, you give them a graphic
and allow them move randomly, or slow whatever you choose.
It is possible to make a sort of cut scene where lets say
the main boss kills one of the heroes father. That is very
hard to do to make it look effective, it will take at least
an hour just to do it, but when everything is finely tuned
and you don't cut corners this will work. You can also
change what people say to you by using different variables
it could be something like when you have 0 gold, they say
'get away from me you poor bum.' When you have 5000 gold
they could say 'hey your rich!' This is a very basic event
used with the page option, but you could have it do more
advance things than what I put up there. You could also have
2 and 3 way choices, some choices that alter the game, or a
choice that just might get a different response. You can
also change, character look, say if you want him to hide his
identity, you can change event data. You can make an event
move to a certain point say a person is supposed to be
running towards you, or away from you. You can make Intro
events where as soon as you step on that page, an action
occurs, normally you link this to another page.
To do that you will have to use the Take Over option take
over enables you to take over an event, in the middle of
another one, like if you want a villain to move a certain
way and go to screen from screen. First you would have to
make it a playable character but then again you don't want
to have to move it yourself. This take a bit of skill, you
shouldn't skimp here or cut corners. That is one thing never
to do in the game, just because you don't 'feel' like
doing more to the scene. Do everything to the scene to make
it perfect. If you don't aggravation is sure to follow. You
can also do a small event like a Treasure event, which is
normally used for making treasure chest. You can use it for
other things like if you want a character to disappear this
is the only short cut you should take. When making an actual
treasure event before to include that you got something a
sound effect and a message of what you got. That takes at
least a few minutes, for a one second event. Then there is
the dreaded Text entry, there is now way around not making
text, and despite what people may have told you it isn't
that bad. The cursor moves fast and you can get the letters
in there although if a key board was there a one page
message would take 8 seconds instead of a whole minute. But
there will be less typo this way.
You can enter different types of text as well, like you
could have the text scroll on the page or be right in the
middle for the beginning or end of the game. Speaking of the
end of the game, you can put your name in the credits, as
game designer and stuff. But that's not even the half of it,
to make a cool ending there is a snap shot feature, where
while the credits roll you can see pictures of things you
snapped shot during the game, maybe its when you first met a
party member. Or when you discovered someone important died.
Try to make it make sense, and don't worry it will go
together because the game automatically will put the
pictures in order. You can also do shop events you don't
have to implement the two way choice here. Just put a
message before hand. You could also do a trade which is
actually pretty unique. You trade some items for lesser item
or a greater item the choice is yours. You can also stay at
an inn as well you don't need a message for this the game
does a default one. Then of course another important one is
the move event. Where when you step on a block it moves you
to another location on another screen or the same screen
this is absolutely essential. Then there are switches,
switches are used for changing pages or events in the game.
You usually don't announce that a switch has been made, so
tuck those in events, so when say a villain kills your
father after he does so he sets the switch so when you the
hero returns he is dead. You could also have other things do
this like I explained earlier but this in my opinion is the
most effective way. You also some generic helper event
options like sound effects and music change, and what not.
There are plenty more but these are the ones that you will
use the most. The difficulty on Gobli is medium, although
you can adjust that. The game takes up to 3-infinity blocks
of memory.
Anime Maker
Along with 'RPG Maker' there is another option called
Anime Maker. Anime Maker sounds cooler than it actually is,
it's very hard to use. Since a PSX mouse will be very
difficult to find you are stuck with the regular ol'
controller. Plus this game isn't dual shock compatible so it
is extremely hard to get anything decent unless you
carefully draw each blocking one by one. Make sure every
line is strait and actually have some artist sense. If you
aren't an artist there are other features available, you can
make an animation run, or a short video neither of these two
things are used in the actual RPG, Although both are fun to
use in my opinion. This is something to do when you are
bored with creating your own RPG. Anime Maker takes up
several blocks a memory from 4 to 15.
Overall 10 out of 10
This is a truly excellent game, and I recommend it for
anyone who ever wanted to put their plans in action to see
their RPG come 'alive'. This game is definitely not for
the person who is easy to frustrate or if you are too busy
with life. Once you get hooked on this game you become a
living vegetable, you can actually sit in one spot for 6
hours, without any sense of surrounding. This games takes
tons of time to make, you will not even get a full RPG even
if this is all you do all day for at least a month. The Fun
Factor is pretty much medium, because when you test an event
and it works properly and you can move on its fun. But when
you forget to include a move event and you can't leave the
shop, that's frustrating. The replay value on this is higher
than any other game created, you get bored create a new
game. This is the game that keeps on giving, plus if you
have a Dex Drive why leave the house? Why even buy new
games? Well, if you are not creative and you don't have time
just wait until the Dex saves pop on the Internet and plays
them. This game leads up to dynamic fun, but without friends
with the game or a Dex you might not want it as bad. Even if
you have neither of these I still say give it a whirl, you
will be happy you did.
