Where's the straightforward naming option?  Like Fire 1, Fire 2, Fire 3 from FFVI or Blaze, Blazemore, Blazemost from DQ?

I'd opt for using the actual element/purpose of the skill as the skill name (ie- Fire, Sleep, Remedy, Heal) and tack on suffixes for variations on that (Firemore, Fireall, Healparty).  Really easy to learn and use (especially important with RM games as people aren't nearly as patient with them as commercial games).

This would be the FF option...

I think it's best to make your skill names unique. I'll give you an example: in Latin the word fire is ignis. You could use that as a magic spell that burns the enemy which is a elemental skill.

This is the Foreign Language option...

Heya guys,

I've been thinking about this for quite a while so I decided just to ask you guys: How would you name your skills? especially the elemental ones?

The options I came up with are:
Completely made up:
The Shin Megami Tensei series has always done this. Their fire, ice, elec and force(air) skills are called, respectively: agi, bufu, zio and zan. The best thing about naming your skills like this is that you can systematize your attacks. SMT for instance, to indicate that the spell targets all enemies they put ma- in front of the skill. So agi becomes maragi (slight exception), bufu becomes mabufu, zio become mazio and zan becomes mazan. Also to indicate that the spell is a stronger variation they just put -dyne behind the word. So agi become agidyne, bufu becomes bufudyne, etc. So the strongest mulit-target elec skill would be called Maziodyne and can be immediately recognized.

Pros: Systematization, names sound cooler
Cons: Takes some time to learn the moves

Final Fantasy:
Final fantasy does basically the same thing as the option above, but instead of made up words they use fire, water, ice and then proceed to call them fira and wateraga or fire II and water III. This option still gives you the ability to systematize your spells while keeping the function of the spells recognizable.

Pros: Systematization
Cons: Very typical for FF... looks very cliche.

Random Names:
I think everyone does this in the beginning. They give all their spells cool names that have nothing to do with each other. Example: they call their first fire skill Blaze, their stronger fire skill Inferno and their last Ragnarok. There is no systematization and you'll have to look at the description every time you want to use a spell to make sure you're using the right one.

Pros: Allows for cool names
Cons: Confusing as shit...

Foreign Language without Order:
Same thing as "random names" but with each word put in a translator...

Pros: Names are most likely cooler
Cons: Now you don't even know what element your spells are anymore...

Other:
Yeah... something else which you like better...

Pros:???
Cons:???


So yeah, please don't just vote, I'd like your opinions as well... What are you doing in your game? Also, please don't consider setting when answering this... I think everyone understands why Alter Alia opted for "Random Names", with names like Napalm and Shock Grenade... that's not what I'm asking.

The problem here is that actors and settings aren't originally MADE for one purpose, whereas game graphics are.  Settings and actors can be reused without a problem in movies whereas using rips in games is frowned upon, because these are two very different things.  Analogy ruined.

This is untrue. Yes sprites were originally made for a certain purpose, but that doesn't mean they can't be used any other way. Take battle animations for example. In pretty much every rpg maker game I play I still find very overused animations used differently. Same goes for character sprites, chipsets, pictures, panoramas and everything else.

Saying all sprites were made for a specific something, and therefore can not be used differently and that is why they suck is just stupid.

Persona? Overused? What may you be talking about good sir?

Also, I don't care either. I mean, haven't we all seen the same blue lunar animation like a hundred times already?

Excuse my ignorance but what does grinding have to do with role-playing in the first place?

Also, yes. Fallout 3, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (although it did take a while to fuse all the right demons), The world ends with you, Chrono Trigger (did my sixth playthrough a few days ago).

But in the end I really don't mind grinding, as long as the battle system is fun (which is is for all those games up there). BTW I also didn't need to grind in Demon Legacy and LotPS though I always bought the best items in every new town.

Ok guys I get the overworld hate a little bit, but I don't get it when you guys say: "I don't like to travel overworlds but I don't mind traveling 50 other maps to get to the next town as long as there is stuff on them... just don't let them be overworlds...". Overworlds were never made to give you a sense of how big the world is. They were made so that you as a player don't need to push the right arrow key for 30 minutes to get to the next town. They were made to save the player time (which is why it's freaking stupid to decrease the hero's walk-speed on the worldmap).

I personally don't like traveling worldmaps either which is why I opted for the "pick where you want to go with a cursor" kind of worldmap.

Either that or my game doesn't need a worldmap (like when the whole game takes place in just one city or island)

In the end, I really don't think non-story related details are important enough to be thought about so much. Don't get me wrong, when creating a world it definitely needs some thinking like: What is this nations biggist form of income, what is the reason for this town being here and how is it doing economically but I think you may have taken it a step to far oc_gunslinger (my opinion, please don't let me be the one to disencourage you). I also don't care about there living 21 NPC's in a town with 3 houses of which one is an inn. I do care however about 20 of the 21 NPC's not having anything usefull or interesting to say.

Example of games with a big world that make no sense whatsoever:
Fallout 3: (I guess this one can be explained with the atomic bomb and all. Still though, locations feel very randomly scattered)
World of Warcraft: (Lakeshire: A small town next to a big pool of water populated by murlocs, close to a big fort populated by orcs and surrounded by cliffs populated by gnolls)
                              (Darkshrine: If you were to walk for five minutes in any direction, you would encounter either undead or scary wolf undead)
                              (I think aside from the major cities, almost every town in WoW is there for no other reason then putting in quest NPC's)
Assassins Creed: (Every cliff edge seems to have a small settlement or guards for no apparent reason)

Actually there was no morphing aside from making the text 05 transperant. Everything was done by hand to look similar to the textures in the 3D model, here's a comparison shot:

*cool comparison pic*

It still needs some tweaking though, the kanji on the sign isn't entirely correct and some of the colours are a bit wrong. But yeah, this is generally going to be the style of the game so it still feels like FF7.

Vanit that looks awesome. Tell us, how will the battle characters look? Will they be the same size as in FF7 or sprite sized? And will enemies have moving animations?

You can't handle the thruth!

Oh come on, that pic was asking for it =P

Looking good Yeaster but are you sure that is a good place for those hearts (top-right corner)? It looks kind of annoying to have to pay attention to them, while looking at the character's HP bars (bottom of screen) and the command menu (completly left from the screen)

Ironically, since I bet a lot of people would recall Scar as a pretty interesting villain, it's this line alone that makes you seem like you 'should shut up now'.

I don`t get this. Maybe I sounded a little dump with that phrase but it`s not something ignorant. Please elaborate a bit

Lion King is one of my favourite movies, and I think Scar deep inside is a very just and noble character, but his will to make his vision come true and the actions that follows his extreme determination to his cause makes him seem more evil than he deserves. Scar is interested in having an equal society (between Lions and Hyenas anyhow) where they share the prosperity that exist in the Pride Lands (seeing as there clearly are enough resources for hyenas to live the lion way of life in peace). He's overthrown as a leader because his society fails as a result of events beyond his control, caused by a drought that lasted long enough for there to be a massive drop in the availability of prey.

Now this is just wrong. There was no drought. The reason why the land became like that is because the hyenas did not follow the rules of "the circle of life". They ate everything not giving nature time to recover. Slowly all animals started to die or move away trowing the balance of nature of even more until it turned into that wasteland you saw in the movie. I guess you can argue it was more the hyenas fault then Scar`s but meh...

I also think that Mustafa's society is one of oppression and kinship rule. While he is a charismatic leader and treats his nobles (the lions) with great respect he refuses any attempt for the hyenas to live a life of dignity, chasing them off violently if they even attempt entering the Pride Lands.

Can`t really argue with that... though you have to question why the land stayed normal when Mustafa was king and the land turned into a wasteland when Scar turned king. I guess you`re right but the system worked, so...

I also think it's interesting that Simba sends Scar's family and fellow plotters in exile (though this is retracted during Lion King 2 due to his daugher being a slut or something cant remember too much from that flick).

Yeah the second movie is not half as good as the first. But why is this interesting? I think it`s actually the nicest thing he could do as the next best option would be execution. I mean, there`s no real forgiveness for what those lions did.

I don't see what this has to do with Indie Game Development so... I don't know where to move this, because dealing with villains in general and not like solely film or video games... I'll move it to General, I guess. If it's unfit to be there, hopefully it'll get moved where it fits.

I don`t really understand this. It`s pretty much a "what makes villains good" topic but instead of everyone saying "make them realistic/give them good motives/blah, blah, blah" I`m asking for actual examples which, in my opinion, is much better then people just saying the same thing over again because "good motives" may differ between people.

So the purpose of this topic is for people to give examples of villains and for other people to share there opinions on them and maybe draw some inspiration. Therefor I thought I should post it in IGD. But you`re the mod, you`ve been around longer and must know better (no sarcasm intended).

Hey guys,

So lately we have been discussing villains a lot. There motives, what make them good and even there battles, but I`ve never seen this topic which I`m making now so I thought I`d make it =P

So without further ado, which villains are in your top 5/10 villains? And why? You don`t need to write a whole paragraph of info on why you like these villains so much if you don`t feel like it but something would be nice. It can even be as little as "very believable motives" or "original villain" or anything.

I`ll start:

1. Yagami Light - Death Note - I know I said I like the insane, no motive villain but that doesn`t mean I can`t like the total opposite too. Death Note is the best example I can think of of a serie about morality and questions like "is it ok to kill someone who killed someone else?" It goes so far that I bet some people may disagree with me about Yagami Light being a villain, but to those people I say heroes and protagonists are 2 different things.

2. Dr. Steinman - Bioshock - I love this villain a lot. He was once a normal surgeon that all of a sudden had the ultimate tools to do things he only could dream of before. Slowly he started to think that he could fix anyone of anything and slowly began to think that what limited him to make the most beautiful humans were not his tools but his imagination. He started to deform people saying he was an artist and was doing the same thing with a scalp as painters did with a brush (abstract wise). The thing that makes him so awesome is that you get all this information from finding tapes which tell you how Dr. Steinman slowly goes insane.

3. Scar - Lion King - Let me start by saying that anyone who thinks "OMGWTF dude you iz 16 now! Stop watchingz Dizney, Bi4tch!" should shut up now. I bet that most of us have watched this movie as a kid. As a kid though you wouldn`t understand why I think Scar is such a badass. I came to this conclusion after watching the movie some time ago with my 8 year old brother. After that I kept thinking about Scar a lot and it led me to watch the movie again a few days later with me paying special attention to him. The reason I liked Scar so much is because he`s smart, charming, convincing but most importantly, physically weak. The reason Scar is not seen as an awesome villain is because (aside from the fact that people think the movie is for children) the story in which he was placed doesn`t really do him justice (don`t get me wrong, the Lion King`s story was awesome but it didn`t really put much emphasis on the villain. The story could have worked just as well with a bulky, dump, leaderish villain).

4. The Major - Hellsing Ultimate - This is basically the insane "I need no motive to be evil" villain. The reason I like him so much is because he`s anything but "realistic" but he does what he was made to do extremely well, which is be one insane motherf*cker.

5. xxxx - xxxx - can`t think of one now... There are some good villains, but nothing worth my top 5 so... I may edit it later.

So these are my top 5 (4) villains ever! Tell me what you guys think and post your villains.

Wow. You just put everyone through all of this hell, trying to figure this out.

In any case, you'd need an emulator now. But I don't think you're supposed to discuss that or warez or anything like that on GW, last I recall.

--Terin

In my defence, I had no idea. =P lousy excuse (more like no excuse at all) but still...

yes. are you stupid or something? "hey guys help me play this game i stole!!!!" do you really think this is the kind of place to ask that?

Oh come on. Like you never do this. Are you going to tell me you don`t download music on the internet? Very noble of you, but kinda stupid...

EDIT: Just took a quick peak at the rules. I actually didn`t realize I`m stealing the game. I`ve been doing this so much I kinda stoped seeing it as a crime. Anyway, I admit this is against the rules so if someone wants to lock this, by all means do so... And warn me for breaking the rules if you must... Sorry...

RPGer, you DO have custom firmware right? I'm just wondering, because if not what you're doing is pointless.

You need a Memory Stick Pro Duo for the PSP, at least a 2GB for you. If you don't have that, you'll need to buy one. From there, connect your PSP to your computer through the USB option. A pop up will come up and you'll be able to view a bunch of different folders on your PSP(if it's custom firmware). From there, you do what Aten said, move the ISO to this:
X:\PSP\GAME\(PSP games)
or
X:\PSP\GAME\GAMEFOLDERNAME(ps1 games)

Oh... I thought I could play it on computer. So it`s only possible if I have a PSP? That sucks.

Did you have to use size increase?

1) If its multiple .rar files, then you rightclick on partnumber.00 and click "extract here", it will extract and merge all the files into the main one you need.

Yes so far, this is what happened.

2) if it extracts into an ISO file, then all you need to do is put it in your PSP under the, well, ISO folder. Same with a CSO file.

No. The .rar file didn`t have an iso in it. It had a normal yellow map file and with a lot of stuff in it (psp_game) and some Bin-file

EDIT:

you don't EXTRACT the .ISO file silly. You just extract the original .rar file. You PUT the .ISO file on you memstick under the ISO folder.

Eh.. excuse me, what? Ok so I used UMDgen v4.00 to make a Iso file of the .rar file. It turned into an iso with psp_game in it and this little Bin-file. What`s next. I need to put it in my memory stick under the ISO folder? What would be a computers memory stick?

Hmm... the file already was a .iso when I extracted it I got the psp_game folder. What do I do with this psp folder?

The file is fine. You need to convert the psp_game folder in an ISO file. There are several programs out there that do this. I'd recommend UMDgen, just google for a download.
Usually PSP games come in ISO format, so you probably could have found a file already converted.
But yeah, hope you have custom firmware.

So how do I convert the folder to an ISO? And what happens when it`s an Iso? How will I recognize it?

I know absolutely nothing of this stuff Neo. You`ll have to hold my hand through every step on this one. Please.

Hey guys,

I`ve downloaded a game using bittorrent. The torrent is loaded, but I don`t know what to do now. Now I have a big file in my computer and I need to know how to use it.

I tried mounting the image with daemon, nothing. I tried a emulator, also nothing. The place where I downloaded the torrent also didn`t give any info.

I`ve been looking around the internet for about 2 days now and starting to get desperate. So does anyone know what I need to do to play this game?

It`s a psp game btw. The map contains many .Rar files and other random files. I tried opening a rar file. In it there was an other map called psp_game. This looks like it could be the game but nothing in it allows me to play (unless I`m missing some program to play)

(And sorry if all this is very noobish. This is the first game I ever downloaded with bittorrent)

I definitely agree about worlds needing critical changes, but I just wish the changes people make would be a little more imaginative... It's so disheartening to see so many designers sticking to the whole 'generic fantasy world' setting. Where are the worlds made entirely out of sugar and blood, the cities residing on the spines of a massive nine-dimensional potted cactus plant, the universes inhabited solely by microscopic clockwork ants fighting a terrible war against tiny eight-limbed eyeball monkeys? How come fantasy's gotten so damn unfantastical?

Can you take a game seriously that has microscopic clockwork ants fighting a terrible war against tiny eight-limbed eyeball monkeys? I sure couldn`t.

"it's like our world, but with magic!"

This pretty much. But you asked for something more so... I guess it`s pretty much our world, but with magic and with monsters that come out at night. How`s that? =P

We don`t know the people. You should know better then everyone hwo they will react.

If you tell your friend the girl will be disappointed in you and your friend will want to kick your ass/not talk to you anymore.

Why don`t you try to talk with her? Tell her how you think this is going to be awkward and how you can`t stand to see her kiss another man (serious sope drama ​)

But seriously. Talking to her is probably the best thing to do.