Merry Christmas from Ganondorf! (Oh, and Me, Too!)

I already wished readers of SuperPhillip Central a Merry Christmas, but let me do so to those who check out my game design blog as well! Merry Christmas, friends! It's been a wild day with some nice family time, fun presents, and soon to be some delicious Christmas dinner! I hope you and your loved ones have had a splendid Christmas day!

Ganondorf wishes you a Merry Christmas as well.
(But he'd rather see the demise of Hyrule!)

No one can find me hiding here! Mwahahaha!

Making an RPG can be really overwhelming! What do?

One of the most taxing genres to focus making a game on, in my opinion, is an RPG. There is generally a very good reason why most creators who want to make an RPG are encouraged to make a short RPG, maybe 3-5 hours long. However, for those of us who have already done that and are foolhardy enough to try a longer RPG, what are some good things to think about before you're crushed under all the work that crafting such a game requires?

Image courtesy of
http://www.smallbizmodo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Busy_Man.gif

For months now, and when college and life in general have giving me time, I've been working on my own RPG, Legends of Adrigal. I have in the past created an RPG on RPG Maker for the original PlayStation, and I also tried remaking said RPG in RPG Maker 2003, which was an eye-opening experience. 

Legends of Adrigal will by no means be an immensely long epic like a Final Fantasy game or Dragon Quest, to name a couple. However, it will be the largest game I've ever worked on, and with that, it requires a LOT of work. There are the NPCs to make, the maps, the world, the scenarios, the dialogue, the characters, the battle system, the items, the weapons and armor, the music, and so much more that thinking about this might put off a less foolish person.

However, I AM damn foolish, and I'm going to try to see this project through. The main thing to think about when creating a game is whether or not you're having fun making it. Now, you can have a bad day or even a bad week while tinkering with your game creation, but if you're finding yourself frustrated much more than you're finding yourself having fun with your game, then you should step back and ask yourself what you can realistically change to make things easier on yourself.

An RPG is a HUGE time commitment-- even just a five hour one. Knowing that I just finished the NPCs of my first town and have yet to really get into the battle system or main hub of the game makes me think hard on how much work I have yet to put into my game. I then sigh, but I quickly realize that I'm still enjoying my time on the game.

HOWEVER! I have advice for myself and for people who are making a big game. The finish line is a loooooong way away, but there is something I do to make myself feel like I'm constantly making progress. What is it that I do? ...Do I see your mouth salivating in anticipation? Well, let me tell you before you drool on your keyboard!

A fantastic way of keeping yourself engaged in your project is to create goals for development of your game. I have the long-term goal of finishing Legends of Adrigal, of course, but I also devise multiple smaller goals as a checklist that I can be proud of having accomplished along Adrigal's development. 

For instance, one of my mini-goals was creating all of the events within Mabel, the first village of the game. This included NPCs, quests, and events that transfer the player from outside a house to its inside, like a door, for instance. I also managed to create the first leg of my item, weapon, and armor systems. I created different items and equipment, gave them numerical values (the cost of buying one, selling one, attributes, etc.), and was on my merry way. My next task is to fill Adrigal City, the central city of Legends of Adrigal, with NPCs and events. 

Think of your game like Adrigal City. It's devised up of various parts, and it's important to note that you don't have to do everything at once. Split up the work between different goals. For instance, make it one goal to create entrance and exit events for each house in the western portion of the map, while you have another goal to set up events for the eastern part of the map. Have another goal being creating the music for the city. The point here is to not think of the map as a whole, but instead the sum of its parts.

Some goals are larger in scope than others, such as my aforementioned task with Adrigal City. While completing smaller tasks all add up to personal satisfaction. Make the goals something you can realistically do, and something that you can be proud of when you've completed them. I've already completed over a dozen different goals, and I'll be creating some more for myself in the future so I have something I can always aim and strive for. 

It's even better if you treat your goal list as a means to treat yourself. For instance, I made it a goal to finish my opening cutscenes, where Casey and friends enter into the Adrigal video game. Once I completed that, I gave myself permission to play a new video game in my family's collection that I was excited to try out. You can set up miniature gifts and rewards to yourself for completing various goals as a way to entice yourself. Although this is not necessary by any stretch of the imagination.

Thus, Legends of Adrigal is going slowly but steadily with its development. I have to remember that I'm but one person working in a game genre that generally has dozens of team members working on it at once. Every little goal completed is a personal achievement and victory for me. It can also work to help you, and it doesn't even have to be something with as much work as an RPG. Whether big, small, or somewhere in between, make sure you're having fun, give yourself some obtainable goals to achieve, optionally reward yourself for achieving said goals, and you'll continue to make progress and enjoy what you're doing simultaneously!

The First Songs of the Legends of Adrigal Soundtrack Are Now Live on Bandcamp!

Yesterday I posted a reminder to check out my first ever self-composed soundtrack for Super Push Adventure. Today, it's my pleasure to provide to you the Bandcamp link to Songs of Legends of Adrigal, the "official" (as official as me posting it on Bandcamp can make it at least) soundtrack of my work-in-progress RPG. There are sixteen current tracks to listen to, and my friend from Fat Bard, a local area company that makes music for games, Patrick Crecelius, provided the excellent sound mixing, giving each track stereo sound and reverb!

I'd love for every one of you that takes a gander at this blog entry to take a listen to the soundtrack. What do you think about it? Do the themes sound good to you?

Check out the soundtrack here!

Check Out (and Listen) to the Super Push Adventure Soundtrack!

I don't think I've mentioned this on my blog before, so here we are with the message! Super Push Adventure released early this year on March 27. That's not the message, though. The message is that you can download the soundtrack and listen to every song from the game for free (or you can opt to pay whatever amount you feel obliged to pay). The soundtrack was composed by me, and had the assistance of Avery Waddell of St. Louis and Natasha Gita of Australia with the sound design. I'm really proud of the overall soundtrack, and I hope you get a kick out of listening to it as much as I had creating it!

Check it out here!

Legends of Adrigal Progress Report - 12/8/15

Welcome to a new recurring segment at StortzumSoft! It's a progress report for Legends of Adrigal, an RPG I've been working on for several months now, off and on, when college, my other blog, and life in general allows me to work on it.

I shared months ago the opening scenes of the game. Today I share some screenshots of Mabel, the opening village that our hero Casey wakes up in when he and his friends are transported inside the video game. I made up the town to have a homely feeling to it, somewhere that players will want to come back to because of how warm and cozy it feels.

One of the things I wanted in Legends of Adrigal was to have a living world. While it's not in my capability to do something like The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask with the manpower I have (or lack, that is), what I can do is have the world feel like it is one connected kingdom. I have done this by updating NPC (non-playable character) dialogue as different major events in the game take place. This is not only to make it seem like the NPCs are living their lives like the player's party, but also to keep dialogue feeling fresh. I want there to be a reason for the player to continue chatting with NPCs.

Another way to keep players engaged with NPCs to create entertaining dialogue that doesn't feel like a machine wrote it. My previous game, Super Push Adventure, used dialogue in a way to make for some fun scenarios and conversations. While the story of Legends of Adrigal is somewhat serious overall, the NPCs allow me to get wacky and sassy with my dialogue. I want the player to speak with NPCs not because out of a necessity and duty, but because they want to see what entertaining things the characters will say.

NPCs also talk about events that happen in other places. For instance, this next screenshot shows a miner from Dorter talking about an issue with the mine. I wish to have it where countless NPCs will help create a feeling of cohesiveness with the world of Legends of Adrigal, helping to build the game's lore in the process.

Another important thing to have in an RPG for longevity is that of side quests. Legends of Adrigal will have a quest system that is incorporated into Adrigal City, the central hub of the game. However there are also side tasks that can be done in the game just by talking to specific NPCs. An early example is a game where a Mabel child hides three coins in three patches of grass. In finding them all, Casey receives a Healthy Steroid, a vitamin that grants permanent upgraded attack strength. Though it is a bit humorous that a child would take a steroid from his father's drawer to give as a prize to a stranger. That's just my goofy sense of humor chiming in here.

There is also fun to be had with exploring and investigating different objects in town. While not everything that the player examines will have text to it, there are some interesting discoveries to be found.

The latest events I've done story-wise are when Casey introduces himself to the mayor of Mabel, Mayor Wendell. He suggests that Casey go to Adrigal Castle to meet with the king to ask for any leads on where his friends might be, and also how to get home. He then offers advice that Casey should visit Mabel Academy for battle advice, and asks his grandson Nemus to tag along as a chaperon along the dangerous Mabel and West Adrigal Roads.

My next duty will be filling Adrigal City with NPCs and creating houses for the east side of the metropolis. This city is the most crowded and largest in the game, but I find it fun to inhabit it with different NPCs with updated dialogue as the game goes on. I hope you'll look forward to the next Legends of Adrigal progress report, as much as I am looking forward to continuing work on the game!