Quick Design Questions

I say go for the larger screen size. It stands out from other fan games, and widescreen is more aesthetically pleasing anyway.

I wouldn't worry about the menu being too small. As long as there are no functional problems with the interface, the player will quickly get used to whatever design you pick. Bring back the dark tint effect used in the smaller resolution pictures though; it looks nice.

A larger screen looks better in battle. It does mean more of a map is visible at once, but you can design maps accordingly to suit the size of the screen. The pause menu doesn't need to fill the screen, it just needs to stand out; darkening everything else would help with that.

The larger screen size would require a lot of effort making the various menus and screens suit it.

Your choice of which Pokémon sprites to use is quite irrelevant to the choice of screen size.

th3shark said:

I say go for the larger screen size. It stands out from other fan games, and widescreen is more aesthetically pleasing anyway.

I wouldn't worry about the menu being too small. As long as there are no functional problems with the interface, the player will quickly get used to whatever design you pick. Bring back the dark tint effect used in the smaller resolution pictures though; it looks nice.

Click to expand...

The dark tint was not added yet, it would be there. I just mentioned it before adding the tint, because I am already aware of how it will look.

The wide screen is nice, until you get to the overworld part of the game, where the player spends a good amount of time. The detail on the maps finds itself making less of an impact and get's rid of a good amount of visual stimulation. Instead, it gives the player a lot more to look at which is fairly desensitizing. That is my issue with the larger screen. The menu can be adjusted or redone in such a way that it can work even with smaller things. Even if that means just adding more to the display to kill space, such as moving a clock into the lower left or something.

The overworld is where the problem lies.

Maruno said:

A larger screen looks better in battle. It does mean more of a map is visible at once, but you can design maps accordingly to suit the size of the screen. The pause menu doesn't need to fill the screen, it just needs to stand out; darkening everything else would help with that.

The larger screen size would require a lot of effort making the various menus and screens suit it.

Your choice of which Pokémon sprites to use is quite irrelevant to the choice of screen size.

Click to expand...

The menus are not something I am too torn about having to make for a larger screen size, simply because they are not really done other than what people have already seen from the game, which means that I need to work on them anyways.

I basically am going to find myself remapping almost every map to accommodate for this screen size change if I want to keep the detail on the maps attractive and still grab the players attention. As it is, it is hard to grab that attention with so much space for the eyes to wander while playing.

Remapping is a lot of work, considering I have done it already and am still doing it for some maps here and there. It is not even the workload that bothers me, it is redesigning the world for a 3rd time that does. The world as it is right now is designed for a 16x12 tile view not a 25x15 tile view.

An alternative, to accomplish both, would be to have a frame while in the OW, that will disappear when you enter a battle or a cutscene. Such as something below (very basic idea)



The animated sprites are also too big for the smaller screen. A good portion of the larger pokemon simply will not fit. Gyarados and Zygarde are good examples of Pokemon that are cut off by the top edge of the screen in the small resolution. Mega Tyranitar and such would be other examples of ones that are likely to be cut off.

I think using a frame would be the best way to go if you don't want to redesign your maps to suit the new screen size. I, however, think frames are kind of ugly. Just my personal opinion.
I think a script that resizes the screen depending on if you are in a battle or not would be better, aesthetically speaking, but I don't know if RGSS allows that.

tImE said:

I think using a frame would be the best way to go if you don't want to redesign your maps to suit the new screen size. I, however, think frames are kind of ugly. Just my personal opinion.
I think a script that resizes the screen depending on if you are in a battle or not would be better, aesthetically speaking, but I don't know if RGSS allows that.

Click to expand...

It could be done I am sure, but it would be really annoying having the window size changing like that all of the time.

ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ™ said:

The animated sprites are also too big for the smaller screen. A good portion of the larger pokemon simply will not fit. Gyarados and Zygarde are good examples of Pokemon that are cut off by the top edge of the screen in the small resolution. Mega Tyranitar and such would be other examples of ones that are likely to be cut off.

Click to expand...

If you're adamant about having the Gen 6 "sprites", then you'll have to have the larger screen size for them to fit. If you could live without them, then you have a choice.

So, do you want to put in all the extra work of getting a set of Gen 6 "sprites", and either do some remapping or implement a frame, just to make the battle screen look a bit prettier and less cramped? Might it be possible to make the "sprites" a bit smaller?

tImE said:

I think using a frame would be the best way to go if you don't want to redesign your maps to suit the new screen size. I, however, think frames are kind of ugly. Just my personal opinion.
I think a script that resizes the screen depending on if you are in a battle or not would be better, aesthetically speaking, but I don't know if RGSS allows that.

Click to expand...

I also think borders/frames look bad, particularly if they're not going to be omnipresent (i.e. they disappear during battle).

Using the Animation Editor will tell you that it is indeed possible to resize the screen. However, doing this is worse than having frames.

The sprites, I honestly am not attached to, I think project watchers are more attached than I am, which is why I was hesitant on asking the public. I could let them go if a smaller resolution is best going to display the game in the long run. Re sizing them is only going to work at 50% +/- increments.

ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ™ said:

The overworld is where the problem lies.



The menus are not something I am too torn about having to make for a larger screen size, simply because they are not really done other than what people have already seen from the game, which means that I need to work on them anyways.

I basically am going to find myself remapping almost every map to accommodate for this screen size change if I want to keep the detail on the maps attractive and still grab the players attention. As it is, it is hard to grab that attention with so much space for the eyes to wander while playing.

Remapping is a lot of work, considering I have done it already and am still doing it for some maps here and there. It is not even the workload that bothers me, it is redesigning the world for a 3rd time that does. The world as it is right now is designed for a 16x12 tile view not a 25x15 tile view.

An alternative, to accomplish both, would be to have a frame while in the OW, that will disappear when you enter a battle or a cutscene. Such as something below (very basic idea)

Click to expand...

I've played around with a few things, and actually, that "frame" thing is not a bad idea. For the overworld you could have that "framed" screen, maybe looking something like


and perhaps you could add some buttons or something to the empty space around it


but actually the really cool part would be the fact that you're switching from that "framed", to a full window screen. You could make a nice little visual animation when switching between interfaces that would create a nice effect. To illustrate what I mean, I compiled a little GIF.

Luka managed to capture what I meant when I said the screen should be resized in the gif.
I think it looks great.

Either way, I think everyone would be okay with whatever you decide to do ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ™.
Your amazing battle graphics more than make up for any issues that might occur with a larger screen size imo, should you decide to go that way.

So I haven't "played" Pokemon since Gen 4, and I'm quite unhappy with some of the Gen 5 and Gen 6 Pokemon (Vanillite, Scrafty, and Slurpuff are a few examples). I'm contemplated redesigning these Pokemon for my fan game, but I'm still on the fence about it since I'm editing Pokemon based on my own opinions. It would be different if I was editing all of the Pokemon to fit a different theme, but as of now there are no plans to do that. Do you guys think I should tolerate the overly childish sprites to preserve the canon of the Pokemon?

I would just stick with them. There is no reason to bastardize Nintendo's work because you don't like them. If you don't like them, exclude them from being obtainable.

Canon is only important if you care about it. You can do whatever you want with your game, including changing the appearance of Pokémon. I think the best advice is to make the game for yourself.

In the same situation, I personally would just tend to exclude Pokémon I don't like the look of, rather than try to tweak them (I have poor tweaking skills) or tolerate them (I don't need to because it's my game).

Thanks both of you for your input, it's always good to get the opinion of both sides. Anyways, what I decided to do was to keep the Pokemon as is for now, but eventually update the graphics to take on a more realistic tone. This will include updating all Pokemon sprites and the tilesets, but it won't be until after I finish the game and release what you could call a "beta".

Again, thanks for the input.

Hello guys!
I'm making a custom menu over the old one, so that I don't have to change many scripts.
Can you tell me what do you think?
http://i.imgur.com/S4L5UEM.jpg
I'm stuck because I may want to have a more B/W like menu.

Daruda said:

Hello guys!
I'm making a custom menu over the old one, so that I don't have to change many scripts.
Can you tell me what do you think?
http://i.imgur.com/S4L5UEM.jpg
I'm stuck because I may want to have a more B/W like menu.

Click to expand...

pretty solid, change the pokeball icons so they're less pixalated, and more fresh to go with the new style, and for the little icon to show the info or w/e at th 1st triangle, the edges of the icon should be cut off to mimic the triangle shape, as though it were behind it, and not just sitting on top of it

Thanks Raven!
I don't really like these triangles, really, even the style of the black ones isn't fantastic.
What may be a problem is the size, the default one was 10 kb this one 40 kb and I noticed that it takes some time more that the old to open the menu. just some frame...

Guys, do you have any ideas on how I should name an ability, exclusive to Delcatty, that doubles her special attack?

Feral
It sounds a little extreme, but it's the name of a homeless house-cats offspring. Essentialy a wild house-cat.

Pedigree
A cat with a proper lineage and non-random breeding, though not a perfect purebred.

Moggy
A cat with completely random lineage.

Hmm Pedigree sounds nice, I'm going to stick with that. Thanks! =) Most of Delcatty's attacks and abilities in the TCG have something to do with "Energy", so I tried to base the name of her ability on that too.

Hey everyone!
I need a name for a Fairy-type Thunder/Blizzard/FireBlast-move. (120 Power, 80 Accuracy, 5 PP)