The only lag that might be induced is either when the temporary variables are set (30 conditional branches being checked to set 10 to 15 variables) or if I have no Wait somewhere for picture display.
I might be missing something in relation to your post.

Well if you have 500 fork conditions, would it create more lag to check them all than it would take to check 30?  I'm under the impression that the answer is yes.  Although in my experiences, you can check a lot of fork conditions without hardly any lag, I don't know if that's also true of other commands like performing large amounts of variable math.

Finally, Lackeos, I am wondering why you picked the seemingly random 3,000 lines of code.

Well duh.  What year will it be 991 years from now?  I rest my case.

I guess my criteria for something advanced would be...
a)  Something that requires more than 3,000 lines of code, and the code isn't pure repetition
b)  Something that is utilized in less than 4% of games, and requires some programming skill
c)  Using a command in a completely original way, that is also logical (i.e. if you played a random sound effect every time you took a step, I would consider that feature to be illogical).

Btw, thanks for explaining how that often overlooked command works.

Well basically, you dug a semi-deep hole by featuring 30 characters with customizable skills and a CBS.  I tried to think of a handful of ways to minimize the lag, none of them would be really good, so my conclusion is either...

a)  Have a zillion forks for all of the abilities and just deal with the induced lag and the programming monotony, or...
b)  Simplify the system by reducing the amount of characters, or the customization of skills, or the CBS.

If it were me, I might reduce the amount of characters and simplify the skill customization system.  But feel free to try option A and see how much lag is induced.  Just make sure you don't use the Wait 0.0 command to reduce lag, because it would hurt not help in this case (you might already know that, but I made that mistake).

How does Set Terrain's ID work exactly?  I tried to read about it in the help menu, but uh... I don't speak broken English very well.

Has anyone played "Sunset over Imdahl"?
You get through the game by figuring out clues.
And honestly , it was the best rpg game I have ever played.
Perhaps I could do something similar with a great bible story.

I've played that.  The spelling, grammar, etc. were God awful.  Yeah, that game is roughly what you could be aiming for.

Yes, I agree that this disagreement is realistic.  It would be really neat to have a party that disagree on a course of action, leading to a split, so one or more characters 'go their own way' and are temporarily (or perhaps permanently) removed from the party.

Although, sometimes there is some compulsion to go along with someone else's intentions even if you disagree.  This can be because some party members are more of the follower type of personality, or it can be that the relationship between two characters is such that one of them has a need to please the other.

Make it like The Last Temptation of Christ + Dogma + Year One, with a little Stigmata thrown in.

Make sure the gameplay, graphics, and soundtrack are freakin' sweet.

Avoid common events that are parallel processes, except for when completely necessary
Don't do anything stupid (it's hard to think of good examples of this)
Avoid parallel processes and auto starts that could potentially repeat a zillion times per second.
Avoid displaying too many numbers or other pictures that involve a freaking ton of Fork Conditions.  For example, if you want to Show Picture the value of variable A, it might require If A = 1, Show Picture Number1, If A = 2, Show Picture Number2, all the way up to 99, and doing tasks like that seriously slows down gameplay.

I have been tempted by the thought of an RPG with something like a stock market you can participate in, or like the auction house in WoW where you can manipulate the market for profit.  But imo, this would just be a silly, not especially interesting mini-game.

My idea of economics in RPG's, though, is to just have differently costed items in each town.  For example, a town near a silver mine would have cheaper silver weapons than other towns, towns with some sort of Harry Porter wizardry school might have cheaper magical items like +1 Swords, and so on.

I could've just made an ending from my chapter. I hope you guys didn't fuck with my chapter.

It's certainly possible that they did.  I get the sense that certain chapters contained plot devices that didn't make any sense, and they had to go back and try to reduce the amount of contradictions.

Hey, I have a quick question. I have an idea for a game, but I have no clue where to start. Can someone please tell me what order to make my game in and how to make a better plot.
Ex: Maps, Characters, Story, Etc...
Ex2: Intro cutscene, Journey, Training, Twist, Death of close one, Etc...

Although I want it to be a lot more detailed, like telling me how you made your game.
 

I suggest if possible that you have a team of programmers.  I don't know how everyone else feels about that, but basically I think that the more you have to think about each thing like programming, mapping, and storyline, the less attention you can dedicate to any one aspect.  Each member of the team should be solely responsible for one thing, like mapping, or writing the story, or doing all of the programming (although, there are some things like scouring the net for resources, designing monsters and equipment, etc., that are so easy that you don't need to dedicate an entire person to them).

The way I do it (and this may not be 100% relevant to you, because your game may not contain any hard programming) is I work on all of the hard programming first (i.e. CMS, CBS, etc.), while I try to brainstorm everything else.  In your case, I would suggest starting out with some sort of short story, almost like writing a movie screenplay.  While you're writing the screenplay or w/e, get online and find all of your graphics and soundtrack resources, and just continue to periodically scour for resources until you've finished the screenplay.  Then do the tasks of mapping, cutscenes, and what not.

Try to just make a finishable game.  There are numerous things you can do later to improve it, like add hysterical jokes, increase the symbolism, add deep structure, etc..  As much as people debate things like storyline vs gameplay, the real enemy of many programmers is failure to finish the game.

I hope I won't have to finish it, because I don't have RM2K3, and I've never used it, and my own project is pretty cursed as well :-D  Despite all of that, I think I might have to be the person who finishes it :-D

So Mirthless, what is the status of the game, exactly?  20 days ago, you basically said you want someone to take it off of your hands.  20 days later, are you still waiting for someone to take it from you, have you been working on it, or have you shipped it to someone else?

How about renaming it to Chain Game Fourever

Matter of fact, if they name it Chain Game 5, they might fool the curse of Chain Game 4.

I don't understand the problem, really.  Right-handed people frequently use those N64, X-Box and whatever console controls that have the directional joystick on the left side.  But left-handed people can't use a directional pad on the right side?

Here's the game in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JbXqes9pC8&feature=related

I just read this whole thread, and this is a very pathetic display of attempted programming.  Was the beginning and middle of the game so good that there's just tremendous pressure to make an ending so good that nobody can actually make it?  I mean, honestly, how can it take more than one day to finish this game?

P.S.  Please, no minigame.  That will just delay this process (the release date was supposed to be like September 2008).  Plus it's rare for an RPG to have a minigame at the very end; usually that's where you just put repeated super battles with big bosses in a very lengthy dungeon.

Also, make sure that after you beat the game, where a game would normally say like "You win" or whatever, it says "You've broken the curse of Chain Game 4."

New tileset. Thinking of making the characters more saturated, colorful, and defined so they don't get lost in the background.

The status quo is light panorama, light chipset, black-outlined charsets.  You can do that, or you can flip it and do dark panorama, dark chipset, white-outlined charsets.  But do neither and there will be contrast issues, imo.

Blue is the only color a CBS menu is allowed to be, right?   


I use a transparent white square for my "which monster are you targeting?" cursor.