I would really appreciate feedback on the demo/game. Please either post here or email contact@aivgames.com. Thank you!
Ok I tried it…
Well I guess you’re looking for any feedback at all, so here it goes:
- No basic tiles, you have to draw everything yourself. Meh.
- Player spawn point was ignored. A bug?
- Map looked different in editor than in the game. Some kind of bug, I guess.
- No pathfinding for enemies. They just walk toward you. Looks retarded when you have an obstacle between mob and player.This needs to be in.
- Combat wouldn’t work at all, I pressed attack. Nothing happened. Had to quit. Another bug?
- Visually very unappealing overall.
I understand you put in 1 year of work, but it feels very unfinished/buggy.
Art:
The buttons, the background, the player sprite, everything just looks bad. I know how it feels, I cannot draw myself. My art looks like shit too :
Good luck.
Alright, I didn’t have too much time to actually look at it in depth, but I must agree with seismic on the art. I’m terrible too at art, so you won’t hear anything else from me about that. However I can see that you put effort into making something, and I do appreciate a few details you put in such as the abilities you get when adding enemies and tiles. It’s very basic, but it’s a really nice start.
As I already said: I didn’t get too much of a look at it, but I do believe it needs quite a lot more polish. (Fixing bugs, etc.) and perhaps trying to make dialogs more attractive to look at (and maybe a few dialogs less?) Also some actions a user needs to undertake are a bit off… I feel as if I have to confirm things like 20 times before I can continue (feels a bit like windows Vista).
If you try to make it more user friendly and fix the bugs seismic was talking about (if there are any) it might become more usable.
Hope you can use this
-hwin
A suggestion for the “art-part”
If you are not an artist, and dont want/cant affort an artist, and dont want to use free assets:
You have 2 options:
-either create a rendering method, that produces visually appealing art from very simple to create shapes
(like some fake 3D with shadowmapping and particle/bloom effects)
-> so let your technical skills define the art-style
or
-research and play around with a very easy to produce art-style, that you can manage (given your skill) to create
enough assets.
examples:
- use very low res graphics with a very limited color palette
- create a voxel renderer and make yourself an editor for it
- use simple geometric shapes and create nive looking transitions and effects or textures, something of a workflow that you can
do and redo again and again in your graphics editor - use a vector drawing program (like inkscape), draw your art roughly as a bitmap and then convert it into vector graphics
(an easy way to create high resolution graphics from a sloppy simple base-drawing)
-> add some effects to it too
anyway, play around with a WORKFLOW that allows you to have a coherent art-style without the need
for a lot of artistic skill.
what you dont want to do is spend lot of time to create a single asset, then realizing you have to do 100 more
thats a grind, and something only pure (paid) artists might enjoy.
here a random example of an isometric scene made from simple geometric shapes and simple textures
You dont need to be an artist to create these shapes (or generate these textures), its more programming skill.
http://pokepetter.deviantart.com/art/Isometric-Game-Concept-181300309
here an example of very low res tiles with a very limited color palette:
a simple drawing, vectorized using inkscape:
this is a good example of creating a nice scene based on your technical skill (without the need to be a big artist)
player spawn point was ignored -> It was probably ignored because you opened the map in singleplayer before setting the player spawn point. This causes it to ignore spawn point set in leveleditor because the last location the player was when playing the map is the one used when the map is loaded back up.
So:
creates map
edits map
player map in single player: an x and y position is created for where you are in singleplayer
sets spawn point in level editor: spawn point is ignored because it is loading from the x and y position where you were last in singleplayer, not the spawn point. So you are not ‘spawning’, but resuming.
Map looked different in game than in map -> I have no idea why this would happen. It works every time I test it.
No pathfinding for enemies -> There is a system for the enemies to go around blocks toward the player. Why this won’t work I do not know, but suppose it would bug out if you had a complicated path, because the pathfinding code is rather basic.
Combat won’t work at all, I pressed attack, nothing happened. -> This is because you have different moves for each type. You can have different attacks, heals, and buffs. The initial combat screen is just a screen where you select the type of move to use. You need to create attacks, etc. beforehand in the level editor to be able to use them. You likely selected a category, then, in having no moves created for that catagory, tried to switch but that did not work because the category was selected. This is a known bug that the category will select even though there is no moves for that category. I will fix this asap.
A complete tutorial on how to use the game can be found here
Can you send me your map for me to look at the map looking different in game than in map bug and the pathfinding bug?
Thank you.
Do you know where I could find art that is available for commercial use? I would have used other peoples art a long time ago except that I am afraid of the legal implications that go along with using other peoples stuff. Anyway, thanks for the advice about creating my own art. I don’t want to aim for a retro, pixel art look because it seems to me that it is overused a lot when it comes to indie games.
You’re in a sticky place on that one. Even the art that is available for commercial use (at free or small cost) isn’t available for re-sale which is effectively what you’d be doing.
Cheers,
Kev
I suggest not to spend money on assets yet.
Also, whatever you will find in some (commercial) collections will likely not cover everything you need.
Then you are stuck with aquiering assets (with the same art style) for the missing elements.
This is something where you need an artist. And that would cost.
And then seriously, dont expect to earn money from your project. Its not nearly far enough to be marketable.
(not just because of missing art)
See it as a way to learn skills and enjoy as a hobby.
Also look into creating a little YouTube demonstration for how your project works.
Its better and more entertaining than explaining it with a wall of text.
I made CustomRPG with the goal of it to earn money. I would be very interested in what you mean by it not being far enough to be marketable, other than the art. What is missing from the game that ruins its marketability?
Are you referring to the tutorials with the statement ‘creating a little YouTube demonstration’ ? I think the tutorials are very clear and structured well with headings, subtitles and the like, not just a wall of text. How exactly are the tutorials a wall of text?
thank you for the feedback!
What people are trying to say in the nicest way possible, is your product just isn’t polished enough to be marketable/sold to the general public.
This product has to be sold to a customer, the customer doesn’t care you have been working on this a year and they most certainly are not going to say “Well, it’s ok he can’t draw” they’re going to say “HAH! idiot can’t can even make a tileset? and he wants WHAT for this? this doesnt even have sound effects?! Whatever!” then go buy RPGMaker. They don’t care about your limitations, or your excuses. They will not be understanding… and most importantly, the people using your game won’t be real game developers. You can’t keep non-serious developers interested in this project unless you have a huge bank of artwork, sounds, music, everything they need. That’s just how it goes. I strongly suggest you look at what makes RPG Maker so popular. It’s mainly because of the massive amount of raw high quality assets it has included in it, and no matter how much you try to avoid being in competition with them, well tough shit, you are.
I really, really don’t mean to sound harsh, I’m just showing you what the perspective will be from a customer’s standpoint. Over here at JGO we understand the whole picture a little better than the average person because we’re all programmers. Your customers though won’t understand. :-\
And I am asking what, besides the graphics/polish is not marketable?
I realize that the public is going to be unforgiving with the art. I didn’t expect the game to become instantly popular or anything. What I did expect, is to create a small community of people who are willing to dedicate time to create decent maps, which normally means creating tiles yourself. Later, when I would add more people-oriented features to the game such as sharing maps, I expect more people to join. And this is where CustomRPG differs from RPG Maker. The majority of the owners of CustomRPG, in time, I expect to mostly play single player and download other peoples maps. I expect them to mostly use the map editor for changing other people’s maps, such as modifying difficulty to suit them.
so, this is what I hope (and somewhat expect, to an extent) to happen:
-CustomRPG has a small community of dedicated map makers, and a large community of people to download maps and play them.
-The dedicated map makers will be able to make high quality maps using their art
-The players will download these maps and play, but won’t use the level editor a whole lot
RPG Maker has a large community, yes. RPG Maker has a lot more focus on the ‘high-quality, easy to use map making’ than CustomRPG, and I definitely do not want to compete with it in that aspect.
CustomRPG will focus more on the distributing of said maps than RPG Maker. As far as I am aware, RPG Maker does not have a built in map download system, let alone one that enables you to edit maps you have downloaded.
Can you show something you have made in the past? (Game, engine or something)
It doesn’t seem you realize the scope of the project you are trying to achieve.
Would inkscape be legal to use for commercial purposes? That is, can I use an image created by inkscape in CustomRPG?
Inkscape is Free and Open Source Software licensed under the GPL.
It says that right at the bottom of their home page. The Open Source license used here describes that you can use and distribute this software freely and even ask money for the physical act of tranferring a copy of the source code or product, so I guess making something with the product and selling that isn’t prohibited.
So, since I need the help on graphics…
Which of these grass images looks best?
http://s14.postimg.org/8eqztudnx/grass.png
http://s28.postimg.org/656jue9ah/grass_1.png
http://s28.postimg.org/jxkyq1021/grass_2.png
Anyway to improve the grass textures more?
^ this one
But, you should probably go find some tutorials on shading in 2D art, because that will greatly help you get the quality and depth you’re looking for. I’m on my iPad at the moment, so I can’t go find you anything easily. But they’re all over the web.
Even if you don’t plan on using pixel art, you should read some pixel art shading tutorials, because the skills easily transfer to transitional 2D game art and typically Pixel Art tutorials are easier to follow along with (in my past experience anyway).
I made some default tiles that are included with the game.
these blocks are:
-a variety of boulder tiles
-a tile with a bunch of smaller rocks, or ‘rubble’
-a grass tile
-tree tiles, a top and bottom half
-a water tile
-a sand tile
-a cactus tile
of these, 1 boulder, the rubble, the grass, and the water tiles are available in the demo. The demo no longer has the ability to import your own images to use as tiles.
should I make some more tiles? if so, which ones?
I am going to create some default enemies as well.
next version is Beta 1.2, aiming for summer release.
progress report:
downloading/uploading maps ingame (DONE, still need to do some testing)
default blocks (DONE)
default enemies (DONE)
advanced pathfinding for enemies (DONE)
different graphics for npc’s, vendors and the player, including a walking animation for the player (DONE)
currently working on rewriting the game to use opengl instead of java2d, then need to update the demo and tutorials to reflect these changes.
I don’t know why you cannot get it… but i will try it a bit harder
[quote]I made CustomRPG with the goal of it to earn money. I would be very interested in what you mean by it not being far enough to be marketable, other than the art. What is missing from the game that ruins its marketability?
[/quote]
Maybe you’re just afraid of accepting it, but:
No one - will - by - your - rpg maker.
Reasons I think where mentioned in a scope big enough to explain it.
If you wan’t to go for a few dollars, i would suppose the following:
Learn android programming and create a little casual game. Really, only a basic implementation
of a nice idea. Play with it. Play with your skills and learn how to achieve stuff. With the time you
can expand the project. Maybe add new things, change the gameplay a bit to make it more complicated,
but don’t plan too much in a short time! Then, if you have something that
- look’s good
- is playable
- is fun to play, although it’s for a few days or only hours
you can try to cell it in the play store for a small prize like 0.99$.
Maybe you find 10 people who buy it, maybe 100. If you have good ideas you can go
for the 1000. With the skills and experience you get with such a project, you can make
a new game, and more people will buy it because it will be better then your first one.
That’s only my personal oppinion.
edit: and sorry for my bad english 
I think that it’s cool that you’re working on this, but you seriously need a reality check about how commercially viable this actually is. I mean, just google “game maker” and you get thousands of fleshed out commercial game makers that are made by professionals and already sell well.
I will concede to your continued work on this expecting commercial success if you can give me a legitimate answer to this question:
What does your game maker do or do better that the other options don’t?