Breakdown: Building a RPG on a years+ worth of free time and $6,000

[Horvatii]

The question would be 'why'? Why waste your lifetime on trash?
Here are some encouraging words:
- you wasted how-many-hours on absolute worthless trash, shovelware that has 0 fucking soul or identity, its nothing
- you didnt grow as a developer at all, how even, its rpgmaker
- you didnt form any meaningful relationships with people in your vicinity
- i dont believe for a second that you had fun building this trash, creating content is not fun, throwing ideas around is cheap and easy and fun, working isnt
- you are not getting that time back, it disappeared, vanished in a black hole

Meanwhile, you could have went hiking or learned dancing... or 'learn to code' lel, ANYTHING, would have been better for you as a person, a human being than this trash.
In fact, consuming media probably would have been a better idea...

This is how people who have potential and work ethic drown themselves in shit.

 

[GarrisonFjord]

Yep, nice read. Not my cup of tea, but always nice to see projects come through.

 

[Arthandas]

I finally thinned my backlog enough to give this series a go. I started chronologically with The Singularity Wish and Tactics Arena.
I'm already done with the Wish, I left a Steam review, now I want to publicly humiliate you with the following exhibits:

Spoiler

And more...

Some bugs:

Spoiler

Things that don't make any sense:
- Fentonoxyl causes sleepiness, you can take it before going to bed, yet it's described as an alternative to caffeine which is a stimulant...
- After stimulating/suppressing Vixone, she asks you why you did it. You can admit you wanted "to show her who's in charge" and she'll give her usual reply "I know what you were trying to do Maxis. You were trying to exact some control. To prove that you were in charge of the situation." and I'm like "Yes, bitch, that's what I've just said!".

 

[Tyranicon]

It's just AI-proofing, so people know a human made the game.

But yeah, more seriously there are a lot of typos in the game. I should go back one day and fix a lot of things. You can clearly tell it has the baby's first game thing going on.

 

[Arthandas]

Bro, I'm having some technical issues with the Arena. I'm using a high DPI monitor, if an application is not "DPI aware" it will be zoomed in according to the zoom level set in Windows (I'm using 150%). It's an issue mainly with old(er) pixel art games and it can be easily fixed by right clicking the exe and overriding the DPI scaling in the compatibility tab. The problem is RPG Maker is a shitty engine and it doesn't give a fuck what you set in the properties. Apparently you need to do it manually as the author, at least according to this topic. The only workaround is setting the DPI scaling back to 100% just for this game, which is pretty annoying as it messes up the whole desktop. Can you fix it?

Here's how it looks:

Spoiler

and how it's supposed to look:

Spoiler

 

[Tyranicon]

Bro, I'm having some technical issues with the Arena. I'm using a high DPI monitor, if an application is not "DPI aware" it will be zoomed in according to the zoom level set in Windows (I'm using 150%). It's an issue mainly with old(er) pixel art games and it can be easily fixed by right clicking the exe and overriding the DPI scaling in the compatibility tab. The problem is RPG Maker is a shitty engine and it doesn't give a fuck what you set in the properties. Apparently you need to do it manually as the author, at least according to this topic. The only workaround is setting the DPI scaling back to 100% just for this game, which is pretty annoying as it messes up the whole desktop. Can you fix it?

Here's how it looks:

Spoiler

and how it's supposed to look:

Spoiler

Hmmm, looks like the fix in that thread is for MZ, not MV which I use, so not sure if it's compatible.

Have you tried pressing F4 and scaling the window? Not sure if that would fix it.

 

[Arthandas]

Have you tried pressing F4 and scaling the window? Not sure if that would fix it.

Yep, it just changes between windowed and stretched fullscreen.
Apparently you can set it in the manifest file?
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/w...tting-the-default-dpi-awareness-for-a-process

There's a manifest file inside game.exe, I'm not sure I can edit it directly.

 

[Tyranicon]

Have you tried pressing F4 and scaling the window? Not sure if that would fix it.

Yep, it just changes between windowed and stretched fullscreen.
Apparently you can set it in the manifest file?
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/w...tting-the-default-dpi-awareness-for-a-process

There's a manifest file inside game.exe, I'm not sure I can edit it directly.

So I tried to replicate the issue but had no luck with my monitors, which makes it way more tricky to fix.

If you want, you can actually implement the fix from the RPGmaker thread, which is to go into the steam app files and add this line to package.json. You'll need a text editor, I'm still using sublime.

"chromium-args": "--force-color-profile=srgb --force-device-scale-factor=1",

The path is Steam->steamapps->common->singularity tactics arena->package.json.

There's also some issues that make it hard for me to implement it from my side, because of course there is. But let me know if you try it and if it works or not.

 

[Arthandas]

I tried it already, it has no effect.

So I tried to replicate the issue but had no luck with my monitors, which makes it way more tricky to fix.

What do you mean you can't replicate? The app is not DPI aware so it absolutely must look blurry on anything other than 100/200/300% DPI scaling. Can you post a screenshot of the game in windowed mode?

 

[Arthandas]

I tried it already, it has no effect.

Actually, I reinstalled the game and tried that fix again and now it works! Looks great, crisis averted

Btw, is this game's native res 1280x720?

 

[Tyranicon]

I tried it already, it has no effect.

So I tried to replicate the issue but had no luck with my monitors, which makes it way more tricky to fix.

What do you mean you can't replicate? The app is not DPI aware so it absolutely must look blurry on anything other than 100/200/300% DPI scaling. Can you post a screenshot of the game in windowed mode?

I switched between 100% and 150% and it looks exactly the same in windowed, but fullscreen has bilinear scaling.

I tried it already, it has no effect.

Actually, I reinstalled the game and tried that fix again and now it works! Looks great, crisis averted

Nice.

Actually this got me thinking of forcing pixel-perfect scaling in fullscreen, which is possible. I had messed around with it briefly before, but it led to some issues. Maybe I'll try it again.

 

[Arthandas]

Actually this got me thinking of forcing pixel-perfect scaling in fullscreen

Imo, it's a must in pixel art games. I'm using Lossless Scaling for that since 99% of indie games doesn't include it as a setting.
Tactics Arena seems to be 720p which is pixel perfect on my 1440p monitor with integer scaling:

Spoiler

 

[Tyranicon]

Actually this got me thinking of forcing pixel-perfect scaling in fullscreen

Imo, it's a must in pixel art games. I'm using Lossless Scaling for that since 99% of indie games doesn't include it as a setting.
Tactics Arena seems to be 720p which is pixel perfect on my 1440p monitor with integer scaling:

Spoiler

Yup, native res is 1280x720, and my newest games (everything after Memoirs) will be 1920x1080, which I don't mind telling you was a massive pain in the ass that required completely breaking the engine. I'm genuinely interested what someone well-versed in RPGmaker would think of my projects.

There are a few pixelperfect plugins but there's some compatibility issues with my stuff. Now that I have more experience I probably know how to fix them though.

It'll make the giant workarounds I did for 1080 seem like wasted effort, but I think it's better in the long run anyways.

 

[Arthandas]

To be honest, as far as pixel art goes, smaller resolutions are more compatible because they scale better. If you integer scale 640x360 it will be pixel perfect on 720p, 1080p, 1440p and 4K monitors whereas a 1080p game will scale perfectly only on 1080p/4K. On the other hand 1080p is still the most common resolution, over 60% usage according to Steam survey...

 

[Arthandas]

Bro, two questions about the Arena:
1. Is there a respec feature?
2. Why did you chose to use those retarded anime portraits (which are suspiciously hidden from the screenshots on the Steam page) that look nothing like the in-game party, or the rest of the game actually?

I dig the game so far, though I'm still very early (I just finished the third fight). I wish you put the journal info in a separate pdf so I can check the skills without the super tedious process of opening the menu, selecting the journal, scrolling down to classes, selecting the class, then scrolling again to see the skills...

 

[Tyranicon]

Bro, two questions about the Arena:
1. Is there a respec feature?
2. Why did you chose to use those retarded anime portraits (which are suspiciously hidden from the screenshots on the Steam page) that look nothing like the in-game party, or the rest of the game actually?

I dig the game so far, though I'm still very early (I just finished the third fight). I wish you put the journal info in a separate pdf so I can check the skills without the super tedious process of opening the menu, selecting the journal, scrolling down to classes, selecting the class, then scrolling again to see the skills...

1. I know there is a respect option for Memoirs but don't remember if there is one for S:TA. If it's not an option in the augmentation room then it doesn't exist.

2. All my games have anime sprites, including the Singularity Wish. They're not a big part of the game, but they're definitely unavoidable, especially with Memoirs. My games here are quarantined to the JRPG subforum for a reason.

Here's a rare alternate title screen:

 

[Arthandas]

All my games have anime sprites

That's not the issue, the issue is the portraits look nothing like the characters in-game. They're supposed to be office workers fighting for their lives with anything they can find, not Power Rangers.
When I entered the menu and saw that Eloise is a sci-fi Sailor Moon I though it was a bug.

 

[Tyranicon]

All my games have anime sprites

That's not the issue, the issue is the portraits look nothing like the characters in-game. They're supposed to be office workers fighting for their lives with anything they can find, not Power Rangers.
When I entered the menu and saw that Eloise is a sci-fi Sailor Moon I though it was a bug.

Yeah, it's a comment I get a lot in all of my games.

Mostly my fault. Ultimately I give artists I work with a lot of leeway as I prefer they work in their comfort zone rather than mine. I've found that this often results in better art, but not in a way that necessarily fits the game.

I should really standardize the look and feel of the MoonFall setting soon with the vampire game.

 

[King Crispy]

I enjoyed reading your original post ITT, Tyranicon. Hope the game did/is doing reasonably well.

 

[Tyranicon]

If anybody is curious, my initial prediction was correct and I broke even with sales with a very minor profit. While the game is still generating revenue, it's not more than a handful of copies per month.

Memoirs made much more money.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Arthandas I didn't read through everything very closely, but in the future you should be able to make your own manifest and make any desktop application DPI-aware. You have to download mt.exe, which is in the Windows SDK. Then you make a manifest. You can just copy/paste the example from the link you already posted. Then run mt.exe to apply the manifest, and any application, any game, including any old game that the dev is no longer supporting, is now DPI-aware.

You can fix all of your Steam games at the same time by changing the compatibility settings. Go to the Steam install directory, and then change the compatibility settings on both steam.exe and gameoverlayui.exe. Right Click -> Properties -> Compatibility -> Change High DPI Settings -> Check to Override -> Select "Application."

Tyranicon congrats on the break-even. You've done better than most. The other day I read about the sales of I See Red. Development cost was $200,000 not counting the publisher's work on marketing, QA, and other stuff. Sales were about $10,000.

 

[Arthandas]

@Arthandas I didn't read through everything very closely, but in the future you should be able to make your own manifest and make any desktop application DPI-aware. You have to download mt.exe, which is in the Windows SDK. Then you make a manifest. You can just copy/paste the example from the link you already posted. Then run mt.exe to apply the manifest, and any application, any game, including any old game that the dev is no longer supporting, is now DPI-aware.

Thanks, might come in handy in the future though so far compatibility settings worked for everything that wasn't made in RPG Maker.