Perri Lightfoot
Let's give it a go!
- 173
- Posts
- 16
- Years
- Age 38
- Seen Apr 17, 2022
This post is rather long, so bear with me ^^' I ask that you do read it though, no matter how tl;dr it might seem - the purpose of this post is to propose a vote, and I really need the feedback to decide how I'm going to proceed with Super Rising Thunder in the future.
First off, I owe all you guys a big, heaping apology ^^' I've neglected this thread, and Pokecommunity in general, for far too long. I was sick with a respiratory bug, had to finish planning an upcoming vacation, and then was away on the mentioned vacation (which was awesome - I was in Australia for most of April and the first few days of May). Since returning I'd been jetlagged and tired and had to slowly adjust to being in America again; but now that I'm finally feeling rather normal I've resumed work on SRT. There's a bit of a problem, however - since I've been working on the project again, I've come to grow more and more frustrated with a certain aspect of the project. Scripting? Let me at it! Spriting? Sounds like fun! Designing tilesets? It's a blast! Plotting? I have a ball! But mapping?
Mapping drains me, and I've come to realize this more and more. When I look at a blank map, nothing at all leaps out at me as to how to fill it. Sure, I have a rough idea - a forest, for example, or a plain, or a crumbled city, or a nuclear wasteland (actually, that last one is pretty easy to map - there's not much there!). But the specifics just don't come to me. I've read all the tutorials and have practiced dozens of times - I even have a behind the scenes helper, and he's a godsend I don't know what I'd do without - but no matter what I do, I'm never completely happy with the results. I start off a map by making random squiggles to define contours of the land, and 95% of the time, I hate how what results looks. And with the 5% of the time where I do like the result; filling in the details is a tedious, frustrating experience. It's tedious because of how much mulling over I do before I place pretty much every tile that's part of defining an outline; and the arduous goal I set for myself by mapping forests by using six or seven different trees that overlap in at least a dozen ways doesn't help matters much (I can't help myself there, though - the trees are pretty much the only thing I DO like about my mapping ^^' ). Paths don't present themselves naturally to me; cliffs end up looking too straight and square...nothing ever looks perfect to me, and it makes me feel like a failure as a ROM modder, especially when I venture into the Map Rating Thread and see the absolute masterpieces on display there. Nothing that exhilarating to look at and play on could ever come from my own pathetic failure of an imagination. And I know that no matter how good the scripts or storyline or tilesets or whatever else I may include in SRT are; if the maps are no good, no one will want to play the game.
To switch tactics a little: the following image is a map I finished the other day (it's new and has not been looked at by anyone besides myself prior to posting); the completely revised and redone version of Dapple Path, the first route in the game. I've made this route at least three times - once as a random little area without much consideration for mapping tutorials or else wise; the second time trying to imagine a "Nintendo map" as having been abandoned and allowed to overgrow (which was an ugly, terrible failure, from a playability and aesthetic standpoint), because I thought such an idea would make mapping an easier and smoother process for myself, and the third as...well...this thing. Is my heavy criticism of my ability justified, or is what I'm doing, as odd as it is, actually working, at least a little bit?
(The stairs are placeholders, to be substituted for something more "natural" looking in the future. I didn't bother to map the trees out where the player would not be able to see them, which explains the cutoff you can see in the image).
After that long introduction, I'm now ready to get to the meat of my post: the vote. Fans and visitors to this thread, what do you think I should do regarding this situation? I have three separate options in mind (one of which is rather radical), and I want YOU to decide SRT's future. It's my goal to make this game as good as I possibly can, and I can't do that without hearing what's on your mind. So without further ado, here's the options for the vote:
Option A: No shift in the status quo. I make the maps, get them critiqued, make the needed changes, and move on to the next map. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Pros: I learn mapping skills (whoohoo! Practice makes perfect, after all :) ). Hopefully, I also temper my perfectionist streak a bit, which would be a welcome blessing :)
Cons: Mapping is too frustrating and tedious to be much fun for me, so I very often find it a difficult task to muster the enthusiasm to actually sit down and do it. And when I do, I work at the speed of a snail on Dopamine. To put this into less words - you can consider yourselves duly blessed if you receive even a beta by 2011. I wouldn't have a lot of fun (at least at first - hopefully as my skills improved I'd grow to find it fun! :) ), and you'd the fans would need to have the patience of saints.
Option B: Outsource the mapping. Go to the Team forum and make a thread, which I'll refer to here as Team Pichu because I'm boring like that. This hypothetical Team Pichu thread would explain the nature of SRT's "region", the style needed for the maps (natural, and in a few key places, a sort of overgrown Nintendo style), and then discuss one particular idea for a map in a little more detail to convey what it is I want. Hopefully someone would come along and volunteer their services. I'd ask for examples of their work, and if they find they outclass me (not hard) they'll get the job for that particular map. They'd make the map using whatever ROM they like, I'd insert it into SRT and give it a little makeover (I won't ask anyone but myself to do those hellish trees!), and then hey presto! I'd have a good looking map I didn't have to design, and I'd be ready to post the details of the next map in the Team Pichu thread.
Pros: The mapping issue is taken completely out of my hands (whoohoo! No surprise, but I'd love that XD ). Speed shouldn't be much of an issue; and, conceivably multiple maps could be worked on by multiple people. I could actually start making real progress, instead of remaking the first few routes over and over again because I'm never content with my own work!
Cons: My preferred method of working is flying solo; so outsourcing the mapping would replace my prior issue with a new one: running a team thread (a prospect that's a little scary for me, honestly! ^^' ). No one could end up being interested with helping; which would put me right back where I started. People could be slow working on the maps, which would leave the speed issue.
Option C (the long one!): Change the way SRT is played so mapping (outside of towns) simply becomes a non-issue. This idea came to me in a bout of inspiration shortly after finishing that map above - what if I just went about things differently so all the stress and bother with those damn maps just went away? Towns would still be made using the Option A process, but routes, caves, and forests would become.....
Dungeons.
Imagine, if you will, a hybrid between rougelikes like, of course, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon; and a game like The Legend of Zelda for the NES. Everything but towns will be replaced by mazelike dungeons, just like you'd find in a roguelike. These dungeons would need to be mapped, of course, but for me a dungeon is a MUCH simpler prospect than a traditional route or cave or forest (I have experience with D&D dungeons and autoREALM as well, which makes it all the easier =D ). These dungeons would have traps (some of which could possibly be disarmed with those "rocks" you get at the end of battles - finally, a use for the money system!) and wild pokémon (Flash-born), and items scattered here and there, just like in PMD. But one of the main criticisms of PMD was the repetitive nature of the dungeons - all that really changed about them as you progressed in the plot was how many floors you had to trudge through. There was no variety, except for maybe the tiles used.
Here's where the Zelda inspiration comes into play. In The Legend of Zelda, there are a variety of Temples which are a bit like dungeons. The temples, each associated with a different element, all have a different look to them while they still follow a similar pattern. That's one area of inspiration - picture dungeons that are just one big ice puzzle! Or ones completely underwater, or that you have to Surf all the way through! Or one filled with ledges, or another where you go up and down cliffs to find your way out....but I digress. The more important area of inspiration is the puzzle-solving element. I've always loved puzzles and puzzle games, and I can see a lot of potential to have fun with this idea to help break up the monotony of the dungeon crawling. What if, when you found the exit, it took you not to another area of the dungeon or an exit, but to a room with some sort of puzzle in it that you had to solve before you could go to the next room? And not just things like strength puzzles - what if you had to solve riddles? Decipher a code? Go through a mini-maze? I'm even picturing ways to expand on the plot and setting using this gimmick, which could be a lot of fun. :)
I can hear you ask - without routes, how will we get around? Here's where I took a bit of inspiration from Final Fantasy's early days and Zelda II: have an overworld. SRT's overworld would be divided into six different maps, with each pair of maps representing a separate facet of Pirca's journey to confront the northern evil. Here's a mockup I did of PikpikForest (the first map), using HGSS map tiles (thanks to Pokémon-Diamond for the majority of those used here):
(Sorry for the size - I kept the image small so that it could be turned into a tilesest if need be)
How would this work, anyway? The red dot farthest to the left is the starting town. When you exit, you'll be taken to this overworld map. Simply walk along the white path to get to the next location. Small green dots are what I picture as being like the monsters on the overworld map in Super Mario Brothers 3. These dungeons will always be shorter than the "main" ones, and they'll be short on puzzles and traps. Primarily, their purpose is to give you a place to battle pokémon. Wild ones will spawn, of course, but the highlight of these areas is SRT's version of a Trainer battle - a "swarm." Step on a tile and suddenly be confronted by a message: "It's a Flash-born swarm!" - and bam, you have some monsters to fight and get EXP and Rocks from. Even if I use Option A or B, the idea of Swarms will remain because I realized early on that if the only things to fight are occasional plot-advancing baddies and wild pokémon you can run away from, characters being under-leveled could be a big problem later in the game. Adding in a plethora of battles you can't run away from will help insure you don't bump into a Level 50 foe - at level 30. Anyway, to continue, all the red squares represent towns, and the large green squares represent "actual" dungeons - these will focus less on battles (though there will be a few Swarm traps, as well as spawning wild pokémon) and more on progressing and problem solving. Flags and warp scripts are pretty much how I imagine the overworld will work in game.
When you reach the last square or dot on a map, when you exit it you will spawn on the next map, filled with more dots and squares for your amusement. This game is more linear and you don't have much reason to backtrack once you reach a new map - but in the few times the plot requires it, the game will warp you there and back safe and sound.
Pros: It's a gimmick I've never seen done in a ROM mod before. It eliminates most of the map worry (huzzah!) while still letting me practice on towns, and I get to keep 99% creative control over the proceedings, rather than have to resort to outsourcing. Puzzles are fun. Dungeons are easy to map. In short, I'd have more fun which would make me happier. You'll find yourself asking, "Is this really Pokémon?" (haha.)
Cons: You'll find yourself asking, "Is this really Pokémon?" It might be TOO different. Dungeons could get boring or repetitive despite my best efforts. The fact it's not traditional could be a problem - a big problem. I might find myself short an idea for a dungeon or puzzle. Introducing an overworld gimmick could be totally going against the grain - in a bad way.
So please vote, my fans and visitors! Option A, B, or C? Also, tell me why you picked what you did in your response. :) I need all the feedback you guys can give so I know how to proceed with my work - when I finally finish SRT, I want it to be great, though I gotta tell myself it'll never, ever be perfect ("perfect" is best left to the guys who know ASM XD). So.....what do you think? ^^
First off, I owe all you guys a big, heaping apology ^^' I've neglected this thread, and Pokecommunity in general, for far too long. I was sick with a respiratory bug, had to finish planning an upcoming vacation, and then was away on the mentioned vacation (which was awesome - I was in Australia for most of April and the first few days of May). Since returning I'd been jetlagged and tired and had to slowly adjust to being in America again; but now that I'm finally feeling rather normal I've resumed work on SRT. There's a bit of a problem, however - since I've been working on the project again, I've come to grow more and more frustrated with a certain aspect of the project. Scripting? Let me at it! Spriting? Sounds like fun! Designing tilesets? It's a blast! Plotting? I have a ball! But mapping?
Mapping drains me, and I've come to realize this more and more. When I look at a blank map, nothing at all leaps out at me as to how to fill it. Sure, I have a rough idea - a forest, for example, or a plain, or a crumbled city, or a nuclear wasteland (actually, that last one is pretty easy to map - there's not much there!). But the specifics just don't come to me. I've read all the tutorials and have practiced dozens of times - I even have a behind the scenes helper, and he's a godsend I don't know what I'd do without - but no matter what I do, I'm never completely happy with the results. I start off a map by making random squiggles to define contours of the land, and 95% of the time, I hate how what results looks. And with the 5% of the time where I do like the result; filling in the details is a tedious, frustrating experience. It's tedious because of how much mulling over I do before I place pretty much every tile that's part of defining an outline; and the arduous goal I set for myself by mapping forests by using six or seven different trees that overlap in at least a dozen ways doesn't help matters much (I can't help myself there, though - the trees are pretty much the only thing I DO like about my mapping ^^' ). Paths don't present themselves naturally to me; cliffs end up looking too straight and square...nothing ever looks perfect to me, and it makes me feel like a failure as a ROM modder, especially when I venture into the Map Rating Thread and see the absolute masterpieces on display there. Nothing that exhilarating to look at and play on could ever come from my own pathetic failure of an imagination. And I know that no matter how good the scripts or storyline or tilesets or whatever else I may include in SRT are; if the maps are no good, no one will want to play the game.
To switch tactics a little: the following image is a map I finished the other day (it's new and has not been looked at by anyone besides myself prior to posting); the completely revised and redone version of Dapple Path, the first route in the game. I've made this route at least three times - once as a random little area without much consideration for mapping tutorials or else wise; the second time trying to imagine a "Nintendo map" as having been abandoned and allowed to overgrow (which was an ugly, terrible failure, from a playability and aesthetic standpoint), because I thought such an idea would make mapping an easier and smoother process for myself, and the third as...well...this thing. Is my heavy criticism of my ability justified, or is what I'm doing, as odd as it is, actually working, at least a little bit?
(The stairs are placeholders, to be substituted for something more "natural" looking in the future. I didn't bother to map the trees out where the player would not be able to see them, which explains the cutoff you can see in the image).
After that long introduction, I'm now ready to get to the meat of my post: the vote. Fans and visitors to this thread, what do you think I should do regarding this situation? I have three separate options in mind (one of which is rather radical), and I want YOU to decide SRT's future. It's my goal to make this game as good as I possibly can, and I can't do that without hearing what's on your mind. So without further ado, here's the options for the vote:
Option A: No shift in the status quo. I make the maps, get them critiqued, make the needed changes, and move on to the next map. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Pros: I learn mapping skills (whoohoo! Practice makes perfect, after all :) ). Hopefully, I also temper my perfectionist streak a bit, which would be a welcome blessing :)
Cons: Mapping is too frustrating and tedious to be much fun for me, so I very often find it a difficult task to muster the enthusiasm to actually sit down and do it. And when I do, I work at the speed of a snail on Dopamine. To put this into less words - you can consider yourselves duly blessed if you receive even a beta by 2011. I wouldn't have a lot of fun (at least at first - hopefully as my skills improved I'd grow to find it fun! :) ), and you'd the fans would need to have the patience of saints.
Option B: Outsource the mapping. Go to the Team forum and make a thread, which I'll refer to here as Team Pichu because I'm boring like that. This hypothetical Team Pichu thread would explain the nature of SRT's "region", the style needed for the maps (natural, and in a few key places, a sort of overgrown Nintendo style), and then discuss one particular idea for a map in a little more detail to convey what it is I want. Hopefully someone would come along and volunteer their services. I'd ask for examples of their work, and if they find they outclass me (not hard) they'll get the job for that particular map. They'd make the map using whatever ROM they like, I'd insert it into SRT and give it a little makeover (I won't ask anyone but myself to do those hellish trees!), and then hey presto! I'd have a good looking map I didn't have to design, and I'd be ready to post the details of the next map in the Team Pichu thread.
Pros: The mapping issue is taken completely out of my hands (whoohoo! No surprise, but I'd love that XD ). Speed shouldn't be much of an issue; and, conceivably multiple maps could be worked on by multiple people. I could actually start making real progress, instead of remaking the first few routes over and over again because I'm never content with my own work!
Cons: My preferred method of working is flying solo; so outsourcing the mapping would replace my prior issue with a new one: running a team thread (a prospect that's a little scary for me, honestly! ^^' ). No one could end up being interested with helping; which would put me right back where I started. People could be slow working on the maps, which would leave the speed issue.
Option C (the long one!): Change the way SRT is played so mapping (outside of towns) simply becomes a non-issue. This idea came to me in a bout of inspiration shortly after finishing that map above - what if I just went about things differently so all the stress and bother with those damn maps just went away? Towns would still be made using the Option A process, but routes, caves, and forests would become.....
Dungeons.
Imagine, if you will, a hybrid between rougelikes like, of course, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon; and a game like The Legend of Zelda for the NES. Everything but towns will be replaced by mazelike dungeons, just like you'd find in a roguelike. These dungeons would need to be mapped, of course, but for me a dungeon is a MUCH simpler prospect than a traditional route or cave or forest (I have experience with D&D dungeons and autoREALM as well, which makes it all the easier =D ). These dungeons would have traps (some of which could possibly be disarmed with those "rocks" you get at the end of battles - finally, a use for the money system!) and wild pokémon (Flash-born), and items scattered here and there, just like in PMD. But one of the main criticisms of PMD was the repetitive nature of the dungeons - all that really changed about them as you progressed in the plot was how many floors you had to trudge through. There was no variety, except for maybe the tiles used.
Here's where the Zelda inspiration comes into play. In The Legend of Zelda, there are a variety of Temples which are a bit like dungeons. The temples, each associated with a different element, all have a different look to them while they still follow a similar pattern. That's one area of inspiration - picture dungeons that are just one big ice puzzle! Or ones completely underwater, or that you have to Surf all the way through! Or one filled with ledges, or another where you go up and down cliffs to find your way out....but I digress. The more important area of inspiration is the puzzle-solving element. I've always loved puzzles and puzzle games, and I can see a lot of potential to have fun with this idea to help break up the monotony of the dungeon crawling. What if, when you found the exit, it took you not to another area of the dungeon or an exit, but to a room with some sort of puzzle in it that you had to solve before you could go to the next room? And not just things like strength puzzles - what if you had to solve riddles? Decipher a code? Go through a mini-maze? I'm even picturing ways to expand on the plot and setting using this gimmick, which could be a lot of fun. :)
I can hear you ask - without routes, how will we get around? Here's where I took a bit of inspiration from Final Fantasy's early days and Zelda II: have an overworld. SRT's overworld would be divided into six different maps, with each pair of maps representing a separate facet of Pirca's journey to confront the northern evil. Here's a mockup I did of PikpikForest (the first map), using HGSS map tiles (thanks to Pokémon-Diamond for the majority of those used here):
(Sorry for the size - I kept the image small so that it could be turned into a tilesest if need be)
How would this work, anyway? The red dot farthest to the left is the starting town. When you exit, you'll be taken to this overworld map. Simply walk along the white path to get to the next location. Small green dots are what I picture as being like the monsters on the overworld map in Super Mario Brothers 3. These dungeons will always be shorter than the "main" ones, and they'll be short on puzzles and traps. Primarily, their purpose is to give you a place to battle pokémon. Wild ones will spawn, of course, but the highlight of these areas is SRT's version of a Trainer battle - a "swarm." Step on a tile and suddenly be confronted by a message: "It's a Flash-born swarm!" - and bam, you have some monsters to fight and get EXP and Rocks from. Even if I use Option A or B, the idea of Swarms will remain because I realized early on that if the only things to fight are occasional plot-advancing baddies and wild pokémon you can run away from, characters being under-leveled could be a big problem later in the game. Adding in a plethora of battles you can't run away from will help insure you don't bump into a Level 50 foe - at level 30. Anyway, to continue, all the red squares represent towns, and the large green squares represent "actual" dungeons - these will focus less on battles (though there will be a few Swarm traps, as well as spawning wild pokémon) and more on progressing and problem solving. Flags and warp scripts are pretty much how I imagine the overworld will work in game.
When you reach the last square or dot on a map, when you exit it you will spawn on the next map, filled with more dots and squares for your amusement. This game is more linear and you don't have much reason to backtrack once you reach a new map - but in the few times the plot requires it, the game will warp you there and back safe and sound.
Pros: It's a gimmick I've never seen done in a ROM mod before. It eliminates most of the map worry (huzzah!) while still letting me practice on towns, and I get to keep 99% creative control over the proceedings, rather than have to resort to outsourcing. Puzzles are fun. Dungeons are easy to map. In short, I'd have more fun which would make me happier. You'll find yourself asking, "Is this really Pokémon?" (haha.)
Cons: You'll find yourself asking, "Is this really Pokémon?" It might be TOO different. Dungeons could get boring or repetitive despite my best efforts. The fact it's not traditional could be a problem - a big problem. I might find myself short an idea for a dungeon or puzzle. Introducing an overworld gimmick could be totally going against the grain - in a bad way.
So please vote, my fans and visitors! Option A, B, or C? Also, tell me why you picked what you did in your response. :) I need all the feedback you guys can give so I know how to proceed with my work - when I finally finish SRT, I want it to be great, though I gotta tell myself it'll never, ever be perfect ("perfect" is best left to the guys who know ASM XD). So.....what do you think? ^^
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