Screenshot Saturday is NOW LIVE!!!

The following is all handwritten. No AI has been used.

It might be an arbitrary number, but 1500 is the number of downloads I got for my first game, Aquamoon Pandora. That one is about 23 years old now. At the rate I'm going, I'll probably release my 3rd RPG by the time I'm about to retire!

Jokes aside, I'm really grateful for this. The first couple of years after I released my game, I was really ashamed. It had almost zero downloads. I actually gave up on it. But at some point, someone picked it up, a few YouTubers dunked on it ("this game sucks ass!"), and despite that, the small attention it got gave it the momentum it needed to push it along until today.

There was also a spike a few years ago, when a random stranger recommended it on r/JRPG, when someone asked for a good RPG Maker game. Huzzah!! It's by sheer luck that I saw the post as well.

It's a very, very long game, clocking in at 24 hours for some people, and it took 5 years for it to finally get a few long-form reviews from people who played it until the end. Feedback is generally very positive for the few people who finished it (survivor bias!), but from what I've seen, most people give up within the first hour.

That's probably the biggest mistake I've made: the first hour is a story-focused intro followed by a slow, atmospheric exploration of urban ruins. The game is "back-heavy," meaning that some of the most bombastic and emotional moments are within the last quarter of the game.

Also, I created 3 layers of tutorials that I'm sure most people ignored. All on me; this is poor design, and should've been done more seamlessly through game mechanics.

Three years ago, I also experimented with generative AI, and created a "remastered" version of the game with AI assets. Initially, feedback was good. A lot of people didn't care at all, and the tech was new enough that some people got curious rather than put-off by it. Downloads held steady, and most people actually went for the AI version much more often than the non-AI one.

But that changed this year. AI sentiment really tanked in public discourse, and I could see my game sinking in the ranking for the niche, way down to #45. Downloads stalled completely at one point. It could be the AI usage, or maybe it's simply the flooding of new games on all platforms.

I decided to remove the "AI version" and revert the project back to the way it was, with no AI. And guess what? The downloads returned. Not to the level it used to be, but it's better than zero. I think people are increasingly seeing any project with AI to lack any value, and is not worth their time.

I'm also finally "leaving the fence," so-to-speak, and starting to lean towards anti-AI. Not because of any change in moral standing, unfortunately, but because it's just not as fun. Building things is fun and rewarding, and I'd argue that it's still fun with AI, but losing that connection with the community, because half the folks are against it, is not fun. Also, how do you make your work stand out, at a time when games can be decompiled, generated and created in a blink of an eye?

Well, you become the equivalent of a street artist. Or, if you're "upmarket," you become a "performance" at the art museum. Sure, you can now copy and print masterwork-level art in less than a second, but there's no value in that. The value is in the human story behind it. Now, more than ever, I believe that the key not to success, but to everyone's satisfaction, is to show your craft, even if the work is ultimately pirated by some bad-faith AI user.

Anyway, it's been a turbulent many years for me, and I'm sure for many of you as well. We're still in the midst of a huge revolution, and I've been struggling with the "big question" of "to AI, or not to AI" like many people. I've decided that, since I have the skills, I might as well do things many others cannot, and my next game will most likely be a zombie-based RPG made in Love2D. Not because Love2D is in anyway superior to RPG Maker, or that it is in any way more convenient, but simply because I enjoy coding in Lua, and I'll probably enjoy writing about my journey making that next game.

As a teacher by trade, the "value" of my next game would be to show how these things used to be made, the old-fashioned way, hand-coded, with bought and free assets.

And this post "closes" a big arc in my life, so-to-speak. For more than 30 years, I've always wanted to create a crazy, convoluted, science-fantasy space-opera RPG and be able to share the "full experience" with a few people. My first attempt was renowned for its time, but it was ultimately a proof-of-concept. I'm not sure I can ever pull something like The Singing Scar again. As a husband, a dad of 2, and a teacher swamped with work, it's not an undertaking that I have the time or energy for anymore. The new RPG I talked about will be tiny in comparison.

And guess what? I'm running The Singing Scar as a Dungeon World 2 (a ttrpg that just ended open beta) campaign for my students at school, because they voted for it in D&D club. They enjoy wreaking absolute havok in my poor world, but I'm so glad they're having loads of fun with the custom classes I've written, based on my characters: The Gunslinger, The Siren, The Sentinel, The Maker, The Templar, The Titan, and The Corrupted. The classes all have "transformation moves" on a critical roll, which lead to such fun moments, just like in the game.

This is my main audience now, and I'm very glad that I have the opportunity to facilitate a completely different, and often hilarious, retelling of the story, lead by my students.

Sorry if I've gone on for too long. Here's the game if you're still curious.

Still not curious? The most overpowered item in my game is a bomb that kills your own party member and has no other effect.

I also added after the bakery what I added to the Hunter's Lodge as well.

The Bakery was created yesterday, and I got the Hunter's Lodge scene done today. My composer came up with the idea of a bakery or butcher shop yesterday, and this is what I came up with. I want the world to feel alive, even if a naval trading and battle game like Uncharted Waters, I wanted when the player is in a town to feel like there is life. Not sure if this is enough.

Also, with the Bakery, I am thinking of having the clerk walking over and selling the cakes and pies to the NPCs instead of just a money sound. But this is what less then 24 hours looks like.

I've been working on a game for a while, but I really dislike its graphics and writing, and I'm torn between completely abandoning it for a new idea, reworking it heavily, or moving on since my ultimate goal is to sell my first commercial game. What do you guys think I should do?

Hi! I'm a new RPG Maker gamedev, and I'm trying to learn and create my first small game. I'm currently trying to do a prototype of my team UI, but I have a BIG problem.

I'm using the "Alternative Menu Screen: Busts and Icons" plugin mostly because I like the arrangement of the UI element, but I have the problem that my team is only composed of two party members (sometimes 1), and it doesn't center itself!

How can I fix this? Do I need to change the plugin script?

Don't mind the bust image; it's an OC of mine I'm using as a test image lmao.

Update 1.5 is finally out! This new version brings a lot to the table:

• New Animations (Attacking, Casting, Dodging, Damaged, Celebrating, Laughing);
• New Poses (Ready, Blocking, Weakened, Dead);
• Animation Preview: Take a peek on how is the animation is looking before exporting;
• Randomizer: Let fate decide how the character looks like;
• Batch Generator: Select which categories will be locked, everything else is randomized, generate up to 100 characters at once;
• RPG Maker Side View Battlers: Export SV-Battlers ready for your RPG Maker project. Left, Up and Down facing SV-Battlers can be exported;

Available for Mac, Linux and Windows. For now the update is only available on itch, Steam version is published by Gotcha Gotcha Games, so it will take some time.

Those thinking about getting it on Steam, since it is part of the Official RPG Maker DLC program, it will only be available if you already have either RMK MV or MZ. So, if you don't have any of those, get the itch version instead!

Oh yeah, I am holding a sale on itch as a thank you to everyone supporting my work. Thank you guys!

Aqui ensino a baixar a tradu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YupKuajMBCw

I currently have both in my demo. Just wondering if people think one is better than the other.

If you want to try the demo heres the link:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5408160/Those_We_Serve/

So bear with me, I have a bunch of options here and I would like to discuss further and get some opinions to choose.

Keep in mind you'll have to look through the pictures and their captions to understand what I'm talking about.

First, when initially working on the game, I was planning on using the Otani Pixel DLC packs. They are very reminiscent of the Octopath Traveler battler sprites, which my game draws some inspiration and mechanics from. However, there were not nearly enough sprites to fulfill the needs for the whole length of my game.

Then, I ended up AI generating some similarly-styled pixel monsters. The premise of my game requires every enemy to have 3 visual variations.

But due to the controversies of AI, I started thinking of a way to make something original, especially because I didn't want to just mix various style-conflicting DLC packages, and it came to me:

My game's lore (mild spoilers) shows that every monster and level inside of the main dungeon is constructed by the memories of a fallen hero from another world, who's lying in the heart of the dungeon. As such, I could make the enemies purposely stand out and NOT fit the rest of the world around them because they are a mishmash of distorted memories given shape. And I was looking to make this "original world" also look more realistic and less spritey somehow.
Then I added some vectorized emotion masks I drew on top of them - except for bosses.

And then there were Phantoms, another type of enemy in my game. At first they were also fully AI generated pixel graphics, but then I went a different way with them and drew a vectorized path around their silhouette manually and made them translucent.

And for Phantoms that were the lost souls of heroes of old, like this Sorceress above, I got the default MZ battler graphics for these classes and gave them a ghostly edit.

It was what I was working on is that stock-imaging+photoshopping the enemies and bosses might end up looking TOO jarring for some people... so to achieve the same intention, make something original and AI-free, I was thinking of:

Frankensteining/photoshopping parts of the default MZ monsters into something purposefully wrong.

And for the Hero Phantoms:

Make SV animated battlers in the same style as the playable characters, through the generator, and give them a ghostly Photoshop. After all, they used to be just like the player...

So for now I have these options for each kind of enemy:

Normal enemies + Bosses

1. Use the grotesque Photoshops
2. Use the Default MZ Frankensteining
3. Revert to the pixel style AI pics

Phantoms

I'll probably keep the translucid vectors for them tbh, unless I should revert to the AI pixels.

Phantom Heroes

1. Use the ghostly default MZ graphics
2. Use fully animated SV battlers

Thanks for your suggestions...

Hey everyone, as the title says, I'm super new to RPG maker aside from a few creative sessions that never really went anywhere. I'm deciding to make a full commitment finally but I'm struggling a little bit with the dialogue early on. It's not about writing dialogue or setting it up but about using the custom faces I made in the character creator. When I go to use the faces I made (and *did* save) they don't appear in any of the sets but there's also not a "custom" set either for the displayed face during dialogue. How do I add them to the selector? Also while I'm asking the question, is there a way to trim down the top of the characters head in the image? I brought the hair way down to get an edgy bangs over one eye look but that results in the characters head peeking out over the top of their head.

Regarding the minor NPCs, you really can afford to make them more unique when you pull a Undertale and don't worry about giving them walking sprites unless needed.

And I'm happy about how good Queen Floralia's battle sprites look now. Wonder if someone will get what the new appearance of the defense form is based on.

Hey guys, I'm QueL. I tried to mimic the survivors-like gameplay loop in my rpg maker game. There are a little bit of changes like instead of gathering exp and leveling up, every kill will grant you reward instead because you're not battling against a swarm of monsters, you're going to kill enemies one-by-one in a turn-based game. But overall, the gameplay loop is the same. Kill enemies -> powerup -> rinse and repeat until the final boss.

There are 12 bosses in the game; it's the 12 Zodiacs. And before the final boss, rather than battling thousands of the same trash mobs (eg. skeletons), you will battle against 20 unique enemies from a pool of 78 unique enemies, each having their own gimmick, unique set of passive and active abilities, and as well as upgrades. Kill one, and another one will take its place. There are epic monsters and minibosses as well.

Another change is stats. ARPG stats system makes more sense in a turn-based game and for my game as a whole. So since survivors-like have similarities with ARPG gameplay, I tried to mimic the ARPG stats system on item drops rather than having a survivors-like stats system (the range, duration, movespeed, projectile count, etc.).

Here's the game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3054470/Rogue_Zodiacs/

My game takes place entirely inside a massive interdimensional dungeon and all its sublevels. They are still fantasy setting dungeons but they are alternate dimension-like, distorted projections, and both for the dungeons and the floor hubs an expression of my inspiration and liking from liminal spaces and analog horror.

It is not a horror game, but I still want to make it creepy.

Ideas?