The Far Reaches Webcomic

It’s so strange how shows like Doctor Who effect me. It’s a very exciting drama (with just enough of that great British BBC cheesiness that I love) but it always gives me the most vivid dreams. So the other night after watching the end finale of David Tennant’s Doctor Who (I’m gonna miss him as the doctor he’s a brilliant actor) I also went to sleep listening to Right Ho Jeeves, by PG Wodehouse and wonderfully read by Jonathan Cecil. It’s a great Jeeves and Wooster book and I fell asleep sometime after this hilarious part about all these telegrams that Bertie Wooster gets from his aunt and his complete stupidity in his replies. It was Wodehouse at his best.

The weird thing that I’m leading up to, is that I had the most intense and bizarre dream that night. I won’t bore you with details, but it was all about me rewriting The Far Reaches, and coming up with a great idea to make a brand new story better and then I was looking all over for my laptop because I had a script I was working on (in the dream) and had to change the beginning. And while this was happening I was actually seeing the adventures of Gilrec as if they were an animated movie happening before me. Um, I guess that was detailed. Oops.

Anyway, it turned all nightmarish after that and I woke with a start, but then madly wrote down notes on the story I had dreamed about. But I couldn’t quite remember it. All I can say is that dreams are rummy, especially after the combo of Doctor Who and Wodehouse. To set your mind at ease, Gilrec didn’t become Docter Who or anything, although he was actually much more of a action oriented go getter in some ways.

I don’t normally like sharing dreams and goofy stuff like that, but I thought this was funny that I dreamt I was writing TFR and had a brilliant idea to make it better. Very strange.

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I thought I’d share a few different game makers and game engines that I’ve found. First is Game Maker 8, which gives you free reign to make all sorts of 2d games. I’m playing around trying to see if I can make side-scrolling RPG prototype similar to Maple Story (only much simpler because obviously I don’t have a crew of artists Right now I’m wavering between different game engines and different types of games. There’s also RPG Maker XP and VX, both of which have been used to make commercial shareware games. They make games much like those from the SNES RPGs in the heyday of console RPGs. They’re both pretty easy to use and allow you to focus on making your game rather than programing. Then there’s Multimedia Fusion 2 and it’s cheaper cousin The Games Factory, which allows for easy and quick creation of many different forms of platformers and action games, among other things. They’re all pretty fun to use and play around with. And of course there’s the free Adventure Game Studio or AGS that I was playing around with a while back (you may recall all the fancy 3d screenshots.) There’s some more powerful engines like Unity 3d, which is free, and Torque 3d, which is more expensive. Both are pretty amazing but are a little above my head right now. I’d rather stick to 2d, it’s simpler. But if you’re interested in making games there’s never been so many cool options.

As for me, right now being as ill as I am, I’m just kind of playing with different engines and working on trying to nail down what story I want to tell. I even have some ideas about how I could revitalize TFR, but right now I’m just not able to work on anything seriously yet. That’s the not so fun part of my illness. I can’t seem to stick with any one project or game engine at the moment. But I am trying to do some story writing. Right now I have several stories in the planning stage, but I’m not really happy with any of them, not yet anyway. But then right now the fun is in the experimentation, something to keep me busy. But hopefully I’ll settle on some story and game engine that I like soon.

I really like RPG Maker since it really let’s you focus on telling a story. The XP version allows more freedom of tile sets, while VX is more shiny and allows full color, but oddly limits the number of tile sets you can use. The result is that VX games tend to look more blocky, though vibrant in color. The XP games aren’t as vibrant, but allow for infinite tile sets. This means greater variety in the locations and game maps in your game. But the key to these types of games is the story, which is where I’m really stuck at the moment. As I mentioned I have several stories in the planning stage, but to write them out and make them good is another thing entirely. So for now I’m just going to keep planning.

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Hey, all. I should begin by mentioning that I’m recovering slowly but surely from my car accident. Some idiot ran a red light and t-boned my car, hitting us in the driver’s side. I was driving. They had to rip the door off with the jaws of life and pull me out. Thankfully the xrays all showed that I didn’t break anything. But I’ve got a lot of injured muscles around my ribs which is slow to heal. So I’ve been taking a “recliner vacation”. My sister came away unhurt except for just being shaken up. So that’s my crazy experience.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. Let’s talk game engines. There are a bunch of them out there and a lot of them I haven’t even heard of or haven’t taken seriously. Here are my favorite ones.

Ren’py: This is mainly for story-driven visual novels. It can also do dating sims and even RPGs but that requires a lot more programming in python. A visual novel is like a better class of “choose your own adventure”. The game engine does allow for more adventure game elements but it is a challenge to program it. This is perfect for telling an interactive graphic novel style game.

RPG Maker VX: This is mainly for making those fun RPGs with chibi character sprites that look like the classic Japanese console RPGs from the SNES. This newer version of RPG Maker supports 32-bit color and is also capable for using visual novel story-telling elements along with cut-scenes with the little characters. It’s great fun to use. This one is also perfect for telling a story and really making it come alive, even if the characters are really small. A number of commercial games have successfully been done using RPG Maker XP and VX.

AGS: Adventure Game Studio is for making classic point and click adventure games. It’s pretty cool although I haven’t been able to get AGS to work right on my laptop. These games rely more heavily on puzzles.

IG Maker: Indie Game Maker is brand new and allows the making of Zelda style action RPGs or side-scrolling games. I’m actually a little more fond of RPG Maker but this new game engine shows promise.

Unity: Unity is free and is awesome for doing 3d games. I haven’t actually tried programming in it as it seemed a bit more advanced to me. I kind of feel that real-time 3d is a little too much work. Still maybe some of you out there might be interested in playing around with it.

MMF2: Multimedia Fusion 2 is pretty cool and allows for creating all sorts of different kinds of games, but everything has to be programmed from scratch. Things like save game and inventory have to be built from scratch. MMF is better for action oriented games or adventure games as opposed to turn-based games.

So these are just some of the game engines I’m looking at and wanted to share with you. I’m still working on the story that I want to do. Story is the most important factor, but you have to have a good game engine too. If you know of any good game engines let me know.

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Back in the day, I remember playing Final Fantasy III and Zelda on my SNES. Now it’s actually possible to make games like those only with much updated graphics. So, which is your favorite style of RPG? The Final Fantasy style with random turn-based battles and lots of skills, or the classic Zelda-style action RPG?

Personally, I like both. I’m a little more fond of action RPGs that have less emphasis on stats and more emphasis on story. I’m not too fond of random battles. They start to annoy me after a while. My emphasis is always on the story. Even so, I’m interested in hearing what all of you have to say on the subject.

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