Charas-Project
Off-Topic => All of all! => Topic started by: Grandy on March 30, 2013, 01:39:46 AM
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Just wondering. I think one of the reasons most Charas games never were finished is because RPGs are, by nature, complicated. Oh, sure, the gameplay is just menus, but because the gameplay is so simple, people expect tons of stuff into it; a character can't have just a combo and one special move, he's got to have hundreds! And enemies must be unique to each dungeon! And there better be enough dialogue and NPCs and whatnot!
A Beat Them Up, on the other hand, seems much simpler in theory.
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I'd say rpgs take more work overall. Prob more so than any other genre.
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Games are hard.
RPGs the most so, unless it's like a roguelike.
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ABS games also takes quite awhile if you're managing multiple party members in any manner. If you're just by yourself. That's fine.
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ABS games also takes quite awhile if you're managing multiple party members in any manner. If you're just by yourself. That's fine.
So... many... poses...
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Pretty much any game is hard and complicated to make. There's a great movie called "Indie Game" that covers this. No matter what, you need to create graphics, music, and levels. RPGs have the added complexity of pretty much requiring a great story, which pretty much requires more levels and a more lengthy story. Other game types usually don't require as many levels or as much as a story to be good, but there's no general "maker" that takes care of the hard part of programming the engine/system. In short we have two options, spend lots of time designing a lengthy rpg with the awesome story we want to bring to life, or spend a **** ton of time creating a different game type, and THEN creating the levels and story for that game type. I found that either way, making a game by yourself is incredibly difficult or just takes a tremendous amount of time.
In the end, I view game making not as an endpoint, but as a hobby that is just fun to do.
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Ed made that Bout game some time back, it was more of a fighter though. Looked great, didn't work on my computer for some reason though.
I think the biggest problem with beat 'em ups is that you need tons of animations and poses and stuff to make it look good and interesting. Also, people kinda expect more of the enemies than an RPG, if we are facing a gelatinous beast with high resistance to magic - we're absolutely fine. But if we just keep on fighting enemies that walk right towards us and use 1 melee attack, it's gonna get a bit dull unless the player have tons of flashy skills.
My biggest concern as always is gravity, it's friggin hard to get that thing working right.
Which is why Sprite till you Die kinda ended up like it did (y'know, that game I made? with a link in my sig?) I wanted to make something more beat 'em up - fighting like. I worked a bunch with it and concluded that I couldn't get any sort of gravity or flashy controls done in RPGM, decided upon a turn based system 1vs1, where you do some combos and then the enemy attack you and you have to input the right command to take less damage from the attacks they make. All done with pictures in the end rather than neat fluent sprites though.
Could be done of course, do you have a plan?
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Beat-em-ups are like as hard as you can get them. Especially if you consider something like streets of rage/final fight:
- Faux 3 dimensions - Characters can move both vertically and horizontally on the ground, as well as jump. Traditional fighters (Street Fighter 2, etc) don't have this problem, with only the ability to move left, move right, duck, and jump.
- Animations - Each character has a rich set of sprites, usually large enough to enable players to be able to tell what a character is doing
- Design - Characters need to have their moves balanced. Not just in how much damage they do, but also in how far they reach, how quickly they come out, and what sorts of controls need to be put in to move it.
- AI - It's not as simple as just scanning a player's HP/MP balance or anything like that. Really good AI's, particularly ones that use similar characters as the player, will need to take a lot of courses of action into account.
- Control and Timing - Trying to make a fighter work really well with a keyboard aside, you'll need to encode some sort of input system that's responsive and robust enough to enable a player to use their character's moves reliably.
So yeah, stick with RPGs.
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I would imagine it's relatively simple to make a functional beat-em-up engine, and relatively HARD AS HELL to make it balanced and fun enough to be worth playing.
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I think with RPG maker 2k3.
ABS or RPGs are the way to go.
Even though you need many poses for an ABS. (even an RPG if you're going for flashy animated skills.)
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I'd say rpgs take more work overall. Prob more so than any other genre.
Games are hard.
RPGs the most so, unless it's like a roguelike.
Neither of these is true. Really depends on your design depending on which is more advanced. You can design a really simple beat 'em up that can be programmed in a weekend or you can make a really advanced one that requires a lot of specialised code. The same with RPGs, you can do a simple RPG or a really advanced one. Just keep in mind, with any full game you make it will cost a lot of time to make something you'll be proud of.
Edit:
Adding this one to the not true:
Beat-em-ups are like as hard as you can get them.
And this is somewhat true.
I would imagine it's relatively simple to make a functional beat-em-up engine, and relatively HARD AS HELL to make it balanced and fun enough to be worth playing.
It's not that I disagree with Sai'kar, it is difficult to make a game balanced. But this is definitely not limited to the beat 'em up genre, and a functional beat 'em up engine can take just as much time as making it balanced depending on your game design.
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Not to be rude, but duh?
Of course a simple rpg isn't going to take as much effort as a highly complex and advanced design for a game of a different genre lol. That didn't even need to be mentioned.
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Not to be rude, but duh?
Of course a simple rpg isn't going to take as much effort as a highly complex and advanced design for a game of a different genre lol. That didn't even need to be mentioned.
Then don't claim rpgs take more work overall.
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Well, the thing with an RPG is that it's essentially three major things in one - exploration, combat, and a story. If you fail at making the battles fun, but the storyline is good and it's fun to run around and see the corners of the world, then the game can still be playable in a way. But a fighting game is all fighting. Nobody is there for anything other than the fighting. So you really have to polish the hell out of that or it's a huge waste of everyones' time.
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Well, the thing with an RPG is that it's essentially three major things in one - exploration, combat, and a story. If you fail at making the battles fun, but the storyline is good and it's fun to run around and see the corners of the world, then the game can still be playable in a way. But a fighting game is all fighting. Nobody is there for anything other than the fighting. So you really have to polish the hell out of that or it's a huge waste of everyones' time.
I still don't entirely agree. Again, I agree that polishing takes a lot of time and any developer should not forget this stage of the development, but as an RPG can be broken up the beat 'em up genre can be as well. You can have an excellent fighting system, with mediocre enemies and bland levels and people will still play it. You can also have an extremely basic fighting system but advanced enemy AI and interesting levels to get people interested. It all depends on your selling point. If you make an RPG with the selling point of an excellent story then of course people will forgive a little bland combat system if the story is really well done. The same goes for any game from any genre, you have to deliver what you're selling, the rest might be forgiven.
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Ok, Best known oldschool 2d beatemups off the top of my head are Battle Toads, River City Ransom, Double Dragon, and Golden Axe.
Good graphics, touchy gameplay/controls, little to no plot, no character development, less than 15 unique enemies, not lengthy.
Best known oldschool 2d rpgs off the top of my head are earth bound, final fantasy 6, chrono trigger, secret of mana.
Good graphics, simplistic gameplay, no/few control issues, highly plot driven, large character development, greater than 15 unique enemies (with 2 of the games having as many poses for enemies as a beat-em-up would), and all are fairly lengthy.
AVERAGING out the quality and quantity of what the games of each genre above deliver, the more well known rpgs have higher of both than the more well known beat em ups.
So yes, it is completely possible to make a turd in one genre and a diamond in the other. However, making a diamond rpg will more often than not require more effort than making a diamond beat em up.
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AKA, all game genres are not created equal.
You've got to remember that people expect vastly different things from different genres, as well.
The best way I can think of to put it is just amending my previous statement.
Games are hard.
Different types of games are harder in different ways, however.
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Ok, Best known oldschool 2d beatemups off the top of my head are Battle Toads, River City Ransom, Double Dragon, and Golden Axe.
Good graphics, touchy gameplay/controls, little to no plot, no character development, less than 15 unique enemies, not lengthy.
Best known oldschool 2d rpgs off the top of my head are earth bound, final fantasy 6, chrono trigger, secret of mana.
Good graphics, simplistic gameplay, no/few control issues, highly plot driven, large character development, greater than 15 unique enemies (with 2 of the games having as many poses for enemies as a beat-em-up would), and all are fairly lengthy.
AVERAGING out the quality and quantity of what the games of each genre above deliver, the more well known rpgs have higher of both than the more well known beat em ups.
So yes, it is completely possible to make a turd in one genre and a diamond in the other. However, making a diamond rpg will more often than not require more effort than making a diamond beat em up.
Now you're just going full retard. Have you taken in account: The amount of people on the development team, the development time, the individual talents of the team, the experience of the team, the amount of money available for the team. You can't just take two games and state "Game A was easier to create because Game B is shorter". Plus, times are different and the genres have changed from what they used to be. What was received well in the 80s might not be received well now, especially when it comes to 3D graphics and gameplay. Argueablly a 3D RPG will be just as difficult to create as a 3D beat 'em up and again it depends on your GAME DESIGN.
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Ace, we're not talking which genre is superior, not talking which is better, etc. I'm trying my best to keep any bias out of the discussion. The topic was simply about which is more difficult/complicated to make. My post above is just showing that what is considered a good/renowned rpg takes more effort to create than what is considered a good/renowned beat em up, on average. Money and Dev team/time are also related to the amount of effort put into a game, so if it is higher for one than another, then that would be a supporting point.
As far as your 3d statement, I could've used 3d examples, but there is a very fine line between beat em ups and hack and slashes when you change dimensions, and I don't personally know of any well done beat em ups in 3d besides comic book to game transitions that are a dime a dozen. Aside from that, all examples prior to my post were of 2d games, and this forum atm is mostly about 2d game creation.
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You're still wrong.
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Not sure I'd say one genre is harder than another, it really depends more on the games you want to make with them and how you want them to work. Then again there is tools to make working with certain genres easier such as RPG maker and saves you ton of work.