Secret Project: Operation Superstar

[brokenxnote]

oh hey good, no more silhouettes haha. i think that was most of our main problem earlier lol. we didnt mean offense, we meant constructive criticism.

well, i like the battle system, besides the already-stated issue of them facing each other, and the attack animation, which youve said isnt final. also im wondering, are these images screencaps of something already programmed?

and about the OW background, it sounds like a creative idea to me, but ill need to see it in practice to accurately critique it. i think youve noticed by now that im a very visual person haha.

 

[Ravecat]

Haha, yeah.

No, sadly this isn't coded at all. This is all Photoshop work as of yet.

What would you suggest for the attack animation? Obviously the tacky Photoshop one looks pretty bad, but I don't know what approach to take.
What can RMXP handle?

 

[brokenxnote]

Haha, yeah.

No, sadly this isn't coded at all. This is all Photoshop work as of yet.

ah damn, i was hoping itd be coded. oh well, scripters and coders are hard to come by these days. if you guys are coding on your own, good luck. if youre looking for help, tell me where you found it because i need a scripter and coder for my game too lmao.

and about the XP bar, i didnt even notice it down there. it might be a good idea to find some way to make it stand out a bit more. maybe make it a bit less inconspicuous, or even just move it up top perhaps? whatever you think looks best, but its pretty unnoticeable as of now.

and ill have to go into RMXP and see what direction the attacks are made for, since i havent looked in a while, but i remeber the actual built in attacks looking pretty decent for a pokemon game, even if only as a substitute until custom attack animations are made. im not practiced in animation, so ill have to play arround with it to see just what can be done, but i feel like some nice animations could potentially be made for this battle set up you have.

 

[Ravecat]

Thanks for the help. Much appreciated.

 

[JakeG]

The battle system looks pretty cool.

 

[Ravecat]

But we need someone to script it. :3

Shouldn't be too hard for anyone with a lil' experience.

 

[Maruno]

Wow, thankyou. :)

It will, but to start we're only going to sprite the custom Pokémon and a few select old ones, such as Blastoise here.
Once the game's finished, we might work on spriting and adding the other 493 Pokémon.

Changed it up a tiny bit:

Suggestions? Especially for the XP bar. I don't know if it looks any good there.

My observations:

There should probably be an HP bar in there, along with the numbers. Maybe you could even design something similar to the Street Fighter style, where the HP bar is big and the other information (name, level, status, XP) are clustered around it.

If not, I would put a big box around all the information, rather than just the name and level like you have at the moment. I'd still have the HP bar in there, though.

The icons for choosing the command and move aren't that great, in my opinion. All the info should be displayed at once. The commands themselves should be moved to the lower left of the screen, away from the Pokémon.

Aside from that, it looks interesting.

 

[Ravecat]

Thank-you for your advice, but did you essentially just say I turn it back into the conventional Pokémon battle system?

HP Bar likely isn't happening, we're going numbers. This generally works fine in most RPGs.

Big box around all the information could certainly look better, I'll give that a shot and rig up some demos. Thanks.

The icons? :/ I drew inspiration from Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga, hence the title of the thread.
I like it like that. . . It's one of the main reasons we even came up with this battle system.

Thanks for the cc though, but in the future bear in mind that this is not supposed to look like the Pokemon battle system, nor is it suppose to support anyone's individual taste. I'd like to point out the essence of this project in general; difference isn't necessarily bad. So try to be open-minded and rate as objectively as possible.

Thankyou. All help and constructive criticism is deeply appreciated.
Also please, to anybody who feels like starting a useless argument again, we ARE listening. That doesn't mean we have to follow absolutely every suggestion, especially ones that go against what the team has specifically decided on for a reason. I take all suggestions seriously, but we will not be making this look more like the default battle-system.
:)

~

On another note, story overview coming maybe later tonight or tomorrow.

 

[RedSonicX]

Fantastic battle screens there man. If you want, you can make the health points color coded according to the health (i.e. Green-Normal, Yellow-Caution, Red flashing-Critical). the xp. bar? well, I can see it, but probably others can't. you can put it somewhere near the top (and maybe change the color of it, in case the other battle BGs are green.)

 

[Poeman]

Two questions,
Are you the person that made the Hotel For Cats MMORPG?
Secondly is this being made in RMXP, and are the screenshots in game or mock ups?

 

[Ravecat]

Fantastic battle screens there man. If you want, you can make them color coded according to the health (i.e. Green-Normal, Yellow-Caution, Red flashing-Critical). the xp. bar? well, I can see it, but probably others can't. you can put it somewhere near the top (and maybe change the color of it, in case the other battle BGs are green.)

Hm. Interesting.
Yes I think the XP bar will be changed.

Two questions,
Are you the person that made the Hotel For Cats MMORPG?
Secondly is this being made in RMXP, and are the screenshots in game or mock ups?

First, no. Sounds amazing, but no.
Second, it is being made in RMXP, but the screenshots are mockups.

 

[KingCharizard]

Atleast ur honest, But why post a thread with nothing actually created? Its nice to need or want ideas or feedback about ur idea but I think u should begin the dev process with ur idea then take ppls feedback into account.

 

[Ravecat]

Atleast ur honest, But why post a thread with nothing actually created? Its nice to need or want ideas or feedback about ur idea but I think u should begin the dev process with ur idea then take ppls feedback into account.

Well, that's a good point.

We are developing at the moment though, in areas such as mapping and whatnot.
The only thing we aren't developing is the Battle System and other various scripts as we do not have a scripter.

 

[KingCharizard]

Well then thats good, When you get a map ur happy with show it off... :) anyways this is interesting i'll continue to check back.

 

[Poeman]

Oh that cat hotel thing wasn't... it was made by a ten year old with no programming knowledge X_x

Reason I asked is I wanted to know if this was going to end up like that haha well good luck!

 

[pokewebsites]

Wow! This game looks great. Maybe instead of putting numbers for HP you put the bar thingy but when you get hit it blinks and goes down. That would be a great visual.

 

[kay3o]

Wow! This game looks great. Maybe instead of putting numbers for HP you put the bar thingy but when you get hit it blinks and goes down. That would be a great visual.

Ha, well thank-you, but once again we've decided to not use a HP bar.

 

[Maruno]

Thank-you for your advice, but did you essentially just say I turn it back into the conventional Pokémon battle system?

HP Bar likely isn't happening, we're going numbers. This generally works fine in most RPGs.

Big box around all the information could certainly look better, I'll give that a shot and rig up some demos. Thanks.

The icons? :/ I drew inspiration from Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga, hence the title of the thread.
I like it like that. . . It's one of the main reasons we even came up with this battle system.

Thanks for the cc though, but in the future bear in mind that this is not supposed to look like the Pokemon battle system, nor is it suppose to support anyone's individual taste. I'd like to point out the essence of this project in general; difference isn't necessarily bad. So try to be open-minded and rate as objectively as possible.

Well, technically, I suppose. But I haven't said you should change the side sprites, which seems to the the only real change you're making.

When I said "icons", I meant the red/green/blue boxes with "Attack", "Bag", "Hydro Pump" and so forth next to them. Those are fine, but I think that since you only need to make one more option visible in order to never hide any of them (which can be a pain if you want to see at a glance what moves you have), it's not a big change but it makes a big difference. Also, move them downwards (to where the XP bar is at the moment) so they're not obscuring the Blastoise as much.

I still think it's a mistake to not have a HP bar. People tend not to like working from numbers alone - a simple graphical indication is much preferred.

I advise that you don't try to make your game too different from regular Pokémon games just for the sake of it. The battle system in Pokémon (as well as other menus) work well for what they do, and you risk making things worse if you're determined just to look different.

 

[Ravecat]

Thanks for your input. We'll have a look. Definitely see what I can do with making all the options visible.

I'm still writing the story, I don't know if we're happy with it yet. I need to talk to Kay3o a bit more before I post it.

Oh, someone wandered by and rated the thread 1-star. I sure wonder if that was any particular spiteful person I seen viewing the thread earlier.
>implying thread ratings matter