Best way to make games

[MammonMachine]

Ok, so I've been trying to put my game together, but I've realized that I'm doing it in a rather haphazard way. Sometimes I'll work on maps, then other times I'll go tweak the characters, maybe then create items and skills, etc...


Unfortunately, by doing a little bit of everything, I find that I haven't been accomplishing much. This is my first time creating an RPG so I'm wondering what order people usually go in when making games. What do you start with and how does it work out for you?


I'm thinking about just making all the characters and heros first, completely making their graphics skills and then all the items etc, and then just hoping the rest can fall into place quite nicely.

[Starduster]

why not try it that way then?X_X

[Drighton]

Game development needs structure. You need to know what your going to do, how your going to accomplish it, and how its all going to end before you even start.

My suggestion is to start with the story. The first thing you want to think of when creating a story is how the story will end. Then you think of how to get to that end, and the laughs, conflicts, and climaxes that arise along the way. After you have your story down, you usually have an idea of what you want your characters to look like.

Basically, gather your materials before you start. Find out what you need, get it together, and then jump in

[Dashman]

I do this the following way(most of the parts of my game are improvised):

Make the charsets and face sets for the heroes and important people on the game, the title, music, etc. Plan and make the Intro of the game(with auto start events).
Suggestion: If you want to make an intro where the hero does not appear, change his starting graphic to a blank one. After the intro, change his graphic to the one you want.
Then, just continue making the game. If you think that you need to change the story, characters, etc, do it.

I'll suggest you to test your game once in a while and save at the last part you made. So, when you make a battle or something really hard to make, you can test the battle or the hard part and modify it. Also, if you forgot to save, press f9 and modify the switchs/variables to advance faster(when testing the game)

[MammonMachine]

My uncle (who was on the production team for Final Fantasy 6), told me that the first thing you start with is always the story and background information for characters etc...

Then, you start creating the Universal Objects, like Heroes, Items, Spells, Monsters, etc...

After all that is in place you create areas and mini games, etc... You also set up the battles at this point and make sure everything is balanced out. This is where you will spend most of your time doing work.

And THEN, finally, you create the cutscenes in order to tie all of the areas and story lines together.

During this whole time, there should be an entire team creating graphics etc, but since RPG Maker games have small teams or even individual people making them, the graphics should be created as they are needed.

[Slayer004_69]

why do you ask the question, if u already have your answer then ? lol

[MammonMachine]

I didn't know the answer to my own question. But now that I found out some good info, I decided to post it for anyone else that may read it.

[Guzeinbuick]

I usually make the sprites for the main characters first, and then I start creating them in the Database. Then I do their unarmed atack animations, and then their weapon animations and so forth. But that's just how  I do it. It may not be the "best" method.

[Me5kuTis]

Here's what I do :
1. Get inspiration of some game/movie
2. Think of an awesome cbs/cms something like that
3. When I make the custom thing I think "Uhh what am I going to do with it?" and create a story.
4. I make some maps. (Including cutscenes)
5. Make the needed stuff for the maps like chipsets/charsets/pictures etc..
6. Repeat 4,5.

[RPG LORD]

My game story is still developing, strangely enough..

[Blademon]

A good idea when making your game is for your story to have a premise ( ex : save the princess, good vs evil  etc). Even the biggest projects don't have everything layed out from the start, you don't know what a NPC is going to say in town #20 do you? Or maybe some minor side-quests are not tied into the story just yet.

The thing to do is have a strong premise and build the world around it as you go. You start with a conflict, then each event is built with the premise in mind.


Example, you must go from City A to citiy B. In the way there's a "dungeon" you decide to put. You have no idea what dungeon it's going to be, or what characters it will have.

If the premise is good vs evil lets say, the dungeon could be a satellite organization of the big evil empire, or maybe a old vestige of a destroyed civizilation. Then you decide the characters to either be an ambitious young leader who possesses a great talent, or maybe some incompetent side-kicks, or some characters just as warped up as the main villain. If the dungeon is the old civilization, you could meet an old wise character that teaches you about the errors commited in the past, giving your party a greater sense of urgency and duty towards destroying that evil.

All this part was made on the fly as I was typing it... it was not planned or associated with anything. You have a good strong base for your story, you can eek out the rest of it as you go, tying it to the game as a whole.
This is pretty important, as opposed to random events that are bestowed on the party.

[AsakuraHao2004]

I get an idea in my head, and then base a story line off of it. I try to have an idea of the characters then I just map out and set the events as I go.

It's kind of like writing, in school they always set you down and tell you to brainstorm and write ideas before writing a story, but I just can't do that, and most people say I'm an impressive writer.

But game-wise, I usually map first, putting in "temp" chars as characters then makeing sprites for them later. I usally wait awhile before making fancy things like CMS's and CBS's, mainly because it's the story that's important, the graphics and systems just help make it visually appealing.

Whatever works for you I guess...